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It was a balmy September day when my phone rang. I was expecting the call and reclined for an easygoing conversation with Jim Davies.

His solo instrumental effort Electronic Guitar is mind blowing. The album is complete with this disclaimer, “All of the sounds on this album, apart from the drums and the bass synths were created by the guitar.” Wow! An intimidating challenge that Jim and his team executed perfectly.

Marcey: Did your experience with The Prodigy help shape the sound of this album?

JD: A little bit, yeah. Before I got into that band I was very much just a metal rock guitarist. I spent a lot of time practicing and I got to a point that I was a pretty good rock guitarist. I had quite a lot of “chops” as the Americans call it. (Laughs)

But I just kept thinking to myself, am I going to make any difference? There are so many millions of good rock guitarists. So for me, getting into dance music was a way of actually thinking at a slightly different angle. And once I heard Jilted Generation, the Prodigy album (which influenced me massively as a guitarist), I loved all the sounds, the layers of synths, and that completely changed the way I played guitar. That got me into dance music. So I don’t think I could say the album sounds like The Prodigy, because it definitely doesn’t. But dance music has totally influenced how I write and how I play guitar and one of the biggest influences had to be The Prodigy. So in a way they have definitely influenced it but more mentally than actually how the music sounds.

Marcey: The album isn’t just a dance album. At times it’s very industrial and all Rock and Roll. Was it your intention to write such a crossover album?

JD: Yeah. It’s pretty much the only thing I could have done. To me it’s definitely not a dance album. If I wanted to write a dance album the drums would be more prominent and I’d be using loads of synthesizers and I’d be basically be making an instrumental dance album. That’s not really what I wanted to do. At the same time I didn’t want to do an instrumental rock album, because that would be boring. And there are so many people who have done that and done it amazingly well. That’s why it took me a long time to work out how to do this album because I’ve always wanted to do an instrumental as a guitarist. I grew up listening to Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert; you know massive influences. But I’ve always written instrumental music and I had to think there’s no point in me doing a shreddy sort of rock guitar album. Because there’s people out there like Vai and Satriani and Gilbert that can just do it better than anyone. So I wasn’t going to touch that. But I’ve always wanted to do it and I came across the idea from writing a song for my band called Victory Pill. One of the tracks was instrumental. I thought, “It’s just a B-side, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to do something a bit weird”. So I did this track. And I don’t know what happened. Whether my keyboard wasn’t working that day or whatever, but the whole track was made up of guitar sounds. I just went through my toys and dug out all the sounds and made this entire track out of, basically, guitar sounds. I had to use drums and bass, but the rest was all guitar. And when I listened back, I thought hang on a minute. This is quite a good idea. Maybe, do you think you could set yourself a challenge? Do you think you could do a whole album like that and that just kicked it all off for me. It was like within a couple of months I’d pretty much done it. And that was the mission, to try and write an album that was different and I think if you don’t know that all the sounds on that album were made by the guitar you might not really get it. Then you might think that it’s just a dancey-rocky crossover album. But when you actually know what the idea, the concept is behind it hopefully it seems a bit more planned. That was the idea, and that’s why I was really happy that Mascot (records) picked it up. Because I didn’t know what to do with it. I had the album. I just thought well, you know I could send it to these instrumental guitar labels, but would they like it? When they’ve got people like Steve Vai… I’m on the same label as Paul Gilbert for God sakes. So to Mascot’s credit, I sent it to them and they came back straight away and said they hadn’t heard a guitar instrumental album like it and they wanted to take it on. Now I think the reason for that was I was doing something different. When I listen back to the album I think to myself, should I have played more technical stuff? Should I have done more sweep picking or play faster? And I have to say, “No”. You know when I listen back to that album it was about the sound and creating really strong melody. And I’ve had some really nice feedback on this album and people say to me, “I’ve never listened to a guitar album in my life. But I like yours because I can sing the melodies and can hear the tunes and it doesn’t sound like someone shoving’ off for five minutes on every song. Because, lets face it that’s what a lot of instrumental guitar albums sound like. I had to really hold back and sort of play tastefully and think yeah, you could do a little twiddle here, but what’s the point? What’s it actually doing? For me it was trying to write some really good instrumental bits of music while limiting yourself a little and using only guitar sounds.

Marcey: The album is very audience friendly. I love Steve Vai, but that’s where my instrumental tastes have always ended. I think this album could appeal to a whole new audience.

JD: Yeah. I hope so. And that’s funny that you say Steve Vai. Because I’ve got people like my brother, who don’t play the instrument, and the only thing I got him to listen to  when I was growing up was “listen to this” he’d listen to other guitarists who where just speeding around the fret board and he just didn’t get it. But I remember giving him Passion and Warfare and he really liked it. Passion and Warfare, even though its incredible guitar playing, it’s really melodic at the same time. Vai’s got such an amazing sense of melody. The first track “Liberty” is amazing and so I’m definitely influenced by him and trying to find a really strong melody that drives a song completely. Then once you’ve found that melody, like a track on the album called “Hot Shot” has a really nice melody to it. And after I found that melody the track wrote itself. All I had to think about then was the fun stuff. It was almost like painting a little canvas and trying different colors on it and trying build different textures and layers on top of that really strong melody. That was easy.

Marcey: What brought you to guitar in the first place?

JD: I was a geek. And I couldn’t get any girls. And I was really shy at school. So I think I went to my Teacher and said “I want to learn to play the guitar” and they just laughed and said, “Hmm… no. Have you thought about the violin?” So I didn’t really want to do the violin and there was another school in my town that was far more music oriented. So I went up there for music lessons and that was it. I just loved it and I think at that age, I didn’t start playing till I was 16, so that’s quite late really. But I just completely immersed myself into it and found myself all of a sudden a bit cool. You know, when last year you were a geek. So I think that’s what drew me to it. I’ve always not seen myself as just a guitarist. I tried to write songs from a very early age. I’ve got really crap demos of me writing instrumental bits of music. They’re hilarious now when you listen back but at least you can hear I was trying to learn a scale and how that sounds. I’d put a little drum beat down and try to play around that scale and see if I could come up with a tune. That’s a really good way to start as a guitarist. So you know I don’t remember a particular day when I went “Oh let’s play guitar”. But I think I was just bored at school.

Marcey: Who were your early musical influences?

JD: Yeah, that’s easy. Because when I started playing was in the heyday of Satriani, Vai, and Gilbert. That was when Paul Gilbert had his drill on his guitar and Steve Vai had his Gem guitar with the handle. And all I wanted to play was Ibanez from that moment on. So totally those guys and definitely Hendrix. I think if I had to list a list it would be Vai, Hendrix, and I like Satriani but he was never as much of an influence as Vai, and Gilbert was a massive influence. I like all his instructional videos. I thought he was such a great communicator even though he’s absolutely credible he didn’t make you feel like... I mean, Steve Vai is so good you look at him and go “You’re an alien! There’s no way I could ever be as good as you.” But you look at someone like Paul Gilbert you say, “You’re brilliant, and I know why you’re brilliant. Because you practiced 79 hours a day since you were 3.” If I did that, maybe I’d be that good. And he’s got a really good way of relating to you in his videos. So they were my main influences. Before I got into dance music.

Marcey: Who do you listen to now?

JD: That’s a very good question. And it’s mostly really moody electronic music. I like all these quintessentially English bands. I like The Jam. I like The Cure, Sex Pistols. But from a rock point of view, because I have quite a rock background as well, Deftones. There’s a band called Quicksand in New York that I absolutely love. And Helmet. Nine Inch Nails; they’re one of my all time favorites. So I like a lot of electronic music that’s got heavy guitars. I like Depeche Mode, Killing Joke and quite a few dance acts. But from the dance point of view these days its mostly older stuff. I was in a band called Pitchshifter and we toured America for about a solid year and we played with a lot of bands like Gravity Kills, Deftones, and then Ozzfest with Pantera. I was a massive Pantera fan. Massive Dimebag fan. So, yeah most of my rock interests are in bands like that.

Marcey: You mentioned the “quintessentially English” sound. Do you think that still exists in music being put out now?

JD: Not really. It all sounds a little bit faked. I mean take someone like Oasis. They’re English to the core, really. And I don’t think they’d ever try to sound any different. I think a lot of English bands desperately want to make it in America. And it’s so, so impossible to do that. You get the occasional band like Coldplay that do it. But Coldplay sounds English. I don’t think they changed their sound to appeal in America. You can hear on their second album they get picked up by a label and the vocals suddenly sound a little Americanish and there’s that tone to the voice. And that’s terrible. I love, so much, American rock music, but I’ve never wanted to sound like that because I don’t think I can. You have to play to your strengths. And that’s why I love bands like the Jam and Paul Weller, people who are just English to the core; not trying to change their audience. You wouldn’t get an American coming over here and suddenly changing how they sing. That would be quite embarrassing I think.

Marcey: When you’re experimenting, do you pull in a lot of different genres?

JD: Yes, definitely, definitely. I love a lot of quite moody electronic music. Massive Attack and that sort of stuff. This album is sort of slow-ish and moody on tracks like “Empire”. But at the same time, I delved into a little bit of jazz. I just think jazz musicians are on another planet and they’re just incredible and make rock guitarists look very silly. And I sort of delved into a little bit of that. I like funk and groove stuff. But for this album I wanted it to be a complete miss-mash of genres. So when I got stuck I just tried to do something completely different. There’s a track called “Rockers vs. Ravers” which is a really techno sounding track and I remember thinking, “Why don’t you try to do it like a techno, dance, sort of 4:4 track. But obviously stick to your rules. I don’t use any synths; I just used a guitar and a really good funk. And it’s a really good sound. I listen back to that track and it sounds pretty heavy but there’s not a synth in it. It would have been boring to do an album with just one genre. Because that’s not really what I’ve ever been about. Any band I’ve ever been in, Pitchshifter for instance, we used to take all sorts of influences from everywhere. And I think that’s what makes bands unique. This is a good representation of what I like.

Marcey: Was it a conscientious effort to put out a progressive album without pretension? Or is that just who you are?

JD: Yeah. To be honest Marcey, it’s the only way I could have done an album like this. It wasn’t like Mascot came to me and said we want you to do an instrumental album. So I went out, did lots of research to make it sound like this lot. I literally did not know if this album would get released. I just did what I would do, or how I would do an instrumental album. And I was really happy with the results. That’s when I started really pursuing getting it released. And if people like it, that’s really good.

Marcey: Are there more solo albums in your future?

JD: I really hope so. I think this is a really cool angle for me know. I’ve been playing in bands for a longtime and I’ve toured so much, it’s hard to sustain that and it’s not really what I want to do so much anymore. This has been a real eye opener for me. It’s gotten some really nice reviews and hopefully it does okay in America. But I think I’ve got another seven or eight tracks, so I’d love to do another album. But for now we’ll see how this one does.

Marcey: Do you intend to do more with Victory Pill?

JD: Yes. Definitely. I’m still working on that. It’s a labor of love really. I don’t do it because I’m trying to get signed to some record label, because I know that’s never going to happen. I just do it because I enjoy it. Me and my friend Pete get together on weekends and we do it when we want to. There’s no pressure to write an album. We’re very happy with that first album. We’ve got some really good songs. So definitely. I’m just not sure how soon that will be.

Marcey: May I ask where the name Victory Pill came from? It reminds me of a George Orwell novel.

JD: Yes, because I love that sort of thing. I’m quite fascinated by “1984” and that sort of thing. It’s a funny one really. I had two ideas for a band name. One was “V for Victory”, because I’m very much into my history. V for Victory was all over posters during the Second World War in England. And Churchill with his two fingers up. There were loads of bands that sounded like that. And the other name was either “Red Pill” or “Blue Pill”. At the time I was obsessed by The Matrix. So I searched the names and there’s millions of bands named that. Then I saw those two names next to each other and thought, “That sounds really good.” And then I started to think, because another thing I’m really into is all the Russian Second World War propaganda. And that fits into what you’re talking about; the Orwellian sort of thing. About how in the future they’ll just dish out pills to the troops to make them completely fearless. And they wouldn’t even worry about the consequences of what they’re doing. Or collateral damage, or friendly fire. They’re thinking of one thing…Victory. That probably has me thinking deeper about it than I ever have. But yeah. That’s exactly where I’m coming from. Same angle as you. The Orwellian thing.

Marcey: How do you see yourself and your sound evolving over the future?

JD: I don’t know how my sound will evolve. It sounds silly, but I kind of like it as it is. I’m really quite happy with it. I keep finding new bits of equipment that make me think the guitar is still so unexplored. Sometimes I think, “Has the guitar been done to death? Since Hendrix is there anywhere else you can go?” And then there’s all these bits of software coming out and now I’m hardly using an amp. I’m using software and there’s so many different angles and places you can go with it. Since doing this first album it’s made me think there’s still quite a lot of stuff I can explore. I’m happy with the sound I’ve got. I don’t want it to change too much. But I see myself getting better at writing instrumental music because I think that’s the way I’m gonna go. Hopefully I’ll get better and not worse. That would suck.

Marcey: Do you have favorite toys that you use to manipulate the guitar’s sound?

JD: Yep. I’ve got some pretty stock bits that I always come back to if I get stuck. I’ve got this one piece of equipment called a Rocktron Chameleon that’s a little one unit thing. I remember when I was real young, I was about 16 or 17 and I read in the guitar magazine that Page Hamilton of Helmet used it. It was really quite expensive at the time but I saved up and bought it and then I ended up using it for some of the Prodigy stuff. So it ended up becoming a bit of a signature sound without me even meaning to. And then before, I would do a lot of work with electronic artists. You know a lot of these producers don’t really know much about mocking up guitars and I haven’t got space to mock up. So when I was doing sessions for other people I just turned up with a small little unit and go straight out of the back of it and that made things a lot easier for them but also created this much harsher sort of searing sound that you don’t get through mocking up an organic sort of guitar amp. My sound has always been very heavily processed and effective and I like that. That’s the way it’s always been. So the Chameleon has been a real useful bit of gear. And there’s definitely Guitar Rig. That completely blew me away when it came out. That’s a kind of new software I use on my laptop. It’s actually incredible the sounds you can get on that. I’ve done sessions in the past where I’ve turned up with just a laptop. And the producer is just going, “Ah, what are you gonna do with that?” Then you open up Guitar Rig and you got this amazing wealth of sounds. It’s great. I think Guitar Rig and the Chameleon are my main two toys.

Marcey: I suppose as technology progresses the sky really is the limit?

JD: It is. If you’re a guitar purist you probably don’t like some of the stuff I do because it’s a little bit more experimental. I think there are so many great guitarists out there that are keeping that real organic guitar style alive and that’s amazing. I love that stuff. But my interest has always been how can I bastardize this instrument? How can I make it sound like the devil? And that’s what keeps me wanting to play.

By Marcey