By Keith Walsh
Julian Shah-Tayler is very much in touch with the primal elements. Inspired by his romantic life, his new single “Earthquakes” finds the LA based singer-songwriter quaking with desire, in a tune that falls between a ballad and a straight ahead pop song.
“You are the one who can set fire to the sea/The elemental serpent coiled in energy/Our violent delights have silent ends/The ashes of our past will scatter and suspend two worlds/Feels like the end of my world” — from “Earthquakes” by Julian Shah-Tayler
The lovely bass riff and delicate guitar figures and vocals are the main forces at work; once again JST’s masterful instrumental skills are in play. There are only minimal keyboards in the form of occasional piano and electronic synth textures.
As Shah-Tayler tells me: “There are synths on the track, they are minimal, it’s mostly guitar. What I’ve been prone to in the past, with something like ‘Evolution,’ is saturated sound with synths, and actually sometimes that’s a bit lazy. To make a pad sound with a synth, is very easy, just plug and turn it on, and craft the sound. Whereas with a guitar you are genuinely manipulating the sound with the strings and it’s kind of cool to do that. I have this pedal that I use a lot, the Electro Harmonix Cathedral reverb, so whenever I use that it kind of washes things out so you get pad textures and I’m quite amused and happy with the sounds that I get out of that.”
Once again, as with JST’s previous single “Bet Your Life,” the fretless bass of David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) makes an appearance. “It is David’s fretless,” Shah-Tayler says. “He didn’t play it, I played it. It was in my studio for a while, so I wrote a number of songs for that instrument, this is one of the ones that I think vibes the best.” The lovely guitar figure played through the aforementioned EHX Cathedral reverb was played on a Fender Stratocaster.
Shah-Tayler frequently visits themes of romance in his songs, but for “Earthquakes” he jokingly admits that the drum samples used in the track (which he says are either from Mick Fleetwood or Siggi of the Sugarcubes) might have inspired the passionate theme of the song. “Yeah, it’s possible that that indicates that it was Siggi’s drums (Sigtryggur Baldursson) that I may have been inspired by — the fact that they’re from a tectonic, earthquake-prone land.”
Shah-Tayler refers of course to Bjork’s band from before she launched her solo career. “I loved the Sugarcubes, I was a big fan. Particularly his style — and his snare sound was very idiosyncratic…. I think he’s the biggest session player in Iceland.”
The drums on “Earthquakes” simmer and percolate, blending in with the track in satisfying ways. It turns out that JST has a unique way of creating his drum tracks in Pro Tools. “I’m using blocks of samples,” he says, “and I’m manipulating the blocks of samples – that’s what I normally do. And I bolster the kicks and snare with Linn, a Linn snare and a Linn kick. I very rarely use sequencers or samplers. Sometimes I filter the drums so they have some kind of flow.”
Those drums do flow, like lava released from below shifting tectonic plates — and that’s music to our ears.
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