 16volt began in 1991 with the mission to merge the raw guitars of early punk with the heavy beats and energy of industrial dance music. 16volt’s debut, ‘Wisdom’, was co-produced by David Ogilvie (Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy) and Keith ‘Fluffy’ Auerbach (Ministry) and was released in 1993 on Re-Constriction Records. Met with worldwide acclaim from fans and press alike, ‘Wisdom’ officially put 16volt on the map and was credited with helping spawn a genre of industrial known as ‘coldwave’.
In 1994, 16volt skipped the industry-standard ‘sophomore jinx’ and released the slightly more raw-sounding ‘Skin’. ‘Skin’ reached the #2 slot on Rolling Stone’s alternative charts and charted everywhere from the United States (CMJ) to France, Germany, Ireland, and Japan.
16volt’s third release came in 1996 by the name of ‘LetDownCrush’. Co-produced by Jeff ‘Critter’ Newell (Ministry, Filter) and featuring special guests Stella, William Tucker (Ministry), Marc LaCorte, and Bryan Black (Haloblack, Motor). LDC charted again, this time at #1 on the Rolling Stone alternative charts and globally on college and commercial radio. This release also marked the debut of 16volt’s national touring career with the likes of Chemlab, Bile, Acumen Nation, and Korn.
In 1998, 16volt signed with Slipdisc/Mercury/PolyGram and got to work on the band’s fourth release, ‘SuperCoolNothing’. Produced by Bill Kennedy (NIN, Megadeth, Sepultura) and Joseph Bishara (Drown, Danzig), SCN was the band’s most aggressive album to date. This time, Powell and Co. got a hand from special guest Chris Vrenna (NIN, Tweaker) on drums. After several serious set-backs with Slipdisc/Mercury/PolyGram Powell was forced to shut down operations and pulled the plug. 16volt was later tapped by Sony to provide the soundtrack to a new PlayStation 2 game called ‘Primal’.
In August of 2006 , Powell had a new record under his belt called ‘FullBlackHabit’ Which soon got taken up by Metropolis Records and signed a worldwide multi-album deal. ‘FullBlackHabit’ released in 2007 featured guest artists including Paul Raven (Ministry, Killing Joke, Prong); Steve White (KMFDM); Bildeaux (Necrofix, OHN); Kraig Tyler (Chemlab, Virus23, Crazytown); Scott Robison (Dr0ne); and Jason Bazinet (SMP).
In the Spring of 2008 16volt, with live members Steve White (KMFDM), Jason Bazinet (Chemlab, SMP), and the return of 16v veteran Mike Peoples hit the road for a highly successful U.S./Canada tour. Immediately following the return from the road, Powell and Peoples began to shape the process for the next album.
September 2009 16volt mark a triumphant return with another solid record. “American Porn Songs”, The follow up to 2007’s “FullBlackHabit” features the bands trademark layering of heavy, aggressive guitars over pummeling electronics and beats. The album includes guests Steve White (KMFDM), Joseph Bishara (Rasputina, Danzig), Bildeaux Sarver (OHN, Scum of the Earth), Sean Payne (Cyanotic), Jason Bazinet (Chemlab, SMP), Tim Skold (Marilyn Manson, KMFDM), Jeremy Inkel (Front Line Assembly, Left Spine Down), Scott Robison (Drøne), and of course 16volt mainstay and Eric’s wing man, Mike Peoples (Skrew, Daniel Ash Band).
The band starts hitting the road again on the 2009 “Precursor Tour” in July of 2009 with plans for a full North American tour in Spring of 2010 with a special stop in May at Montreal, Canada’s “Festival Kinetik”).
FXpansion catch up with 16VOLTS main man Eric Powell in October 2009 to get some insights into the bands production techniques and inspirations behind their latest album!
Listen to "American Porn Songs" In the mp3 player top left of page and
listen out for BFD2 on tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 :)
FX -Tell us about "American Porn Songs"? What were your aims and inspirations for this album?
EP - Coming off the last tour, Mike and I just really wanted to get some songs out that just rocked. It's always more fun playing those "barn burners" live, the more aggressive material gets the crowd going which in turn gets us going. For this record we really wanted to up the aggression and tempo a bit. We also really wanted to have layers and layers of things where upon first listen you wouldn't get, but the more you listen, the more you discover. We have always felt like we write the kind of music that really grows on you after you listen to it. They take a while to sink in. The title is really a reflection of the state of things in our society, a lot of the thinking of the typical American is completely wrong and it can be seen as a form of pornography, not in the literal meaning of porn, but in the more reactionary definition. We felt like the songs as a group really live up to that idea, the content is usually about some form of dealing with humanity and how we can get so lost in our small minded-ness, we forget that we are on a big ball of deathly hot burning magma spinning 1000 miles per hour hovering in space. It's really crazy how small all of this is but we get caught up in our lives and forget how fragile everything is and i think especially in America and the larger economy driven societies our selfishness comes to the forefront and we forget about each other and our place in this world.
FX -How have you used BFD2 on "American Porn Songs"? do you have any tips on how to create an aggressive and tight metal drum sound?
EP - Well, once again BFD2 is used on just about every song on the album. I use it first and foremost to write. Having the immediacy of hearing what is virtually a real drummer get my ideas down very quickly is priceless. And being able to do that in my own studio without having to pay for a live room and a drummer and a bunch of different kits... again, priceless. So from the get go it's one of the first things inserted in our sessions. And it ends up being the guide for the final drums in the song.
Mike likes to record a bunch of little scrap riffs, like 4 bar riffs, a lot of times we will just start from there, take a 4 bar loop, drop in the riff and start a drum sequence. Sometimes there is a drum loop or a sample, or a synth or a melody that triggers the root of the song idea but within the first few tracks we start laying down the rough drums. They rarely stray very far from that initial pattern. On the last record, we ended up recording live hats and cymbals, mainly because I am not a drummer and I don't get the feel of where real drummers place cymbal hits and the dynamics of the hats. For this record we wanted to try more layering. So with BFD as our map we headed into the studio with Jason Bazinet and he played on top of what we had mapped out, he would listen to what our idea was and go from there. His patterns were often more complex than what we would write, especially with fills.
One good thing about BFD2 for us is that the sound is already there, we could never reproduce the quality and variance in there, all the kits, the outboard gear, it's massive. So we take Jason's performance and then layer stuff with BFD back over him. So we are getting a mix of his feel, the sound we get in the studio, plus the sound of BFD2, when you add in all the samples we have collected over the years, there is really a limitless amount of choices. So for example on the title track "American Porn Songs" that drum sound is setup like this, the kick is a layering of Jason's outside kick mic (just the low end) and the snap and mid off a kick in BFD2. What we get is our own sort of original twist on a BFD2 sound that we could never get on our own. We can tailor every drum piece that way so they fit in sonically. Then we do things like combine our room sound with BFD's and it creates this really cool layer. All of the toms on the record are 100% BFD and generally speaking 90% of the kick and snare in the final mixes are all BFD2 using the layering we do. This way we are able to shape not only the BFD2 sounds in a way that imprints our signature on it, but to also shape our own kit sound with these amazing sounds BFD2 has.For 16volt, drums are a huge deal, we mix them as upfront as possible, we like to hear the drums, we don't bury them in reverbs, they are not placed in the traditional mix space, they are in your face and we couldn't do that without BFD 'For 16volt, drums are a huge deal, we mix them as upfront as possible, we like to hear the drums, we don't bury them in reverbs, they are not placed in the traditional mix space, they are in your face and we couldn't do that without BFD.' The tightness comes from using a mixture of dynamics processing, that starts as well in BFD2, using the EQs and compressors right in the PlugIn is awesome. It's immediate and it doesn't slow down our process.
The BFD2 mixer is an amazing new addition to BFD, the plugins and routings are awesome. Being able to separate all the elements of our BFD2 track onto their own tracks in Pro Tools provides a ton of control, the top and bottom of the snare for instance, being able to pull out some of the top and hear some more of the rattle, being able to dampen the kick a bit can add that tightness, these are controls that frankly, you don't get anywhere else. And using BFD2 throughout our process, it's always a living piece, we are constantly adjusting as we go on, it's truly an amazing piece of software.
FX -Tell us a secret about the way you make music?
EP - Well, one thing we do that is fairly untraditional I suppose is, we don't "jam". I live in Portland, Oregon, Mike lives in Los Angeles, etc. One of our biggest writing tools is our FTP directory. We use Pro Tools exclusively and we both have BFD2 so sending sessions back and forth is a breeze. I am not sure we have really any secrets, our bass sounds maybe, let's just say all of our bass is recorded direct and dry, all the amping is post. I am not going to give away our secret on that :). We tried a bit of guitar re-amping on the new record and while it's become very popular, i don't like it. We won't do it on the next one. There is an emergence of recording with micro stacks. And that is the way we will go on the next one, using the Krank Amps Rev Jr. series with a 57 on it, you can't beat it. As for drums the only other thing I would add is, I am a big fan of the "New York" drum buss trick. We buss all of our drum tracks to a 2 channel aux send and pop a compressor on it with fairly heavy compression. As you bring that fader up in the mix it makes the drums sound massive, you still get all the dynamics but you also get this wall behind them and depending on the material you can really get the drums pumping with the song or just slam it and push it all in your face! I love drums!, there is so much to them. So many choices and nuances and it's the root of the song, the beat, the rhythm, the driving force. I am not trying to be a sales guy here, BFD2 really is indispensable for us, it's kind of another member of our lineup. Plus it doesn't talk back, it doesn't smell and it has no rock star demands. You can't beat that. Drums machines have no soul? That's not true anymore. BFD2 IS a drum kit. Actually it's a ton of drum kits.
Interview with 16VOLT September 2007
FX - How did you first get interested in making music and what has led you to where you are today?
EP - I first got really serious about it in the late 80's although I always showed an
were always around. I realized I wanted to do it for life when I left high school early at the age of 17 and went across the country to Full Sail. It was there that I felt like I found myself and became really interested in developing my musical/creative side. Being an engineer was my backup plan and when I moved to Los Angeles to start my internship my main goal was to record more demos and shop them around and see if I could get a record out. At the point right before I went to Florida, I was really into bands like The Cure, New Order, Minor Threat, D.R.I., RKL, mostly a weird mix of punk and post modern/alternative stuff. I had this friend who owned a record store and he kept giving me promos from Wax Trax! Records and I soon become completely hooked on industrial stuff. I never wanted to become "too industrial" though, I have always
maintained the pop ethic with hooks and melodies.
In 1991 I landed my first indie record deal for my band "16volt" with Cargo Records where I was able to put out 3 records and work with some great people like David Ogilvie (NIN, Jakalope, Skinny Puppy), Keith Auerbach (Ministry) and Jeff Newell (Ministry, MxPx, Angels & Airwaves). We did massive amounts of touring over those years and got a lot of great press and critical acclaim from the underground. In 1998 I signed with Mercury Polygram and went to work with my band Mike Peoples and Kraig Tyler and our co-producers Joseph Bishara (Drown, Danzig) and Bill Kennedy (NIN, Motley Crue, Sepultura) on our fourth record "SuperCoolNothing". A few weeks before the record was released Seagrams bought Polygram and we lost our whole team on it, we also lost our funding and lost all promo efforts. The record became a catalog piece with Island Records until 2000 where we were able to finally buy the rights back for it. We ended up re-releasing it on our own with some bonus remixes. At the same time we ended up working with Sony on the Playstation game "Primal". We did 12 tracks for that game and some of them were resurrected from SCN.
In 2002 we did a big national tour with KMFDM and signed a deal with Capitol where we spent a year working on demos and it ended up fizzling out on both ends. We called it a day and I went off to do another project called "Ringer" with my long time friend Kraig Tyler (The Pharmacy, Crazytown), it was a sweet little indie pop project and we did some shows around LA and just wanted to do something different with it musically. It was really simple lovely stuff.
I took a well deserved hiatus for a few years, had two beautiful little children and got the itch to get back on the computer and start writing. In 2006 I signed with Metropolis Records and this time I took the responsibility wholly onto myself. It's my first time writing, producing, engineering and mixing the whole project. I had some great guests come in for the final tracking of live stuff, Paul Raven (Ministry, Killing Joke) played bass on it, Steve White (KMFDM) played some guitars and we did some minor cymbal tracking with Jason Bazinet from SMP. The album "FullBlackHabit" came out a few months ago and I am looking at getting out for a tour either in November or sometime next year. It all depends on how my production work is going. All along I have been doing lots of remix work and TV/film and advertising stuff but it hasn't really been my priority until now. Recently I did some music for the new Microsoft Surface website, the new Molson website, a boost mobile commercial, and some stuff for some Red Bull ads. It's busy around here but I get grounded by letting the kids into the studio here and there. My 1 year old goes right to the back of the racks and starts pulling cables and my 3 year old loves to de-tune all the guitars around here.
FX - What are you working on at the moment?
EP - Right now my main project is programming/composing for the
upcoming feature film "Repo! The Genetic Opera", it's coming out in 2008'I use BFD all over the place... there is just so much stuff to do with it, it's endless. So many great drum pieces, it's insane!'
from Lionsgate and is being directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2, 3, 4). It's a musical that is sort of like a cross between The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bladerunner and Saw. The music pieces are really fun to work with and the original authors just did some great stuff that we are able to really build off of. I think there is in total like 60 pieces of music in it, something like that. It's a ton of stuff but it's been one of those "once in a lifetime" projects. The movie is destined to become a classic, it's got Paul Sorvino, Tobin Bell, Bill Moseley, Paris Hilton, Alexa Vega, and a ton of other great, interesting people playing some great, interesting characters.
You can check out more about it here.
FX - What impact have advancements in music software had upon your production technique?
EP - It's absolutely changed the way I work. I remember sitting in a studio on the first record spending half of our budget and more than half of our time dumping sampler tracks onto 2-inch. My first record was all analog, SSL mixed, no computers. My latest album is Pro Tools, one of the greatest things about software is being able to work on things that in the past you couldn't. Not many musicians can go into a studio and spend the time it takes to get a good kick sound out of 30 different kick drums. It just doesn't happen. With stuff like BFD for example, we are able to expand our tools for creation way beyond what we could in the past. I can take a kick performance and spend an hour listening to different kicks and how they fit into the overall vibe of the track. I am not even sure you would want to do that in a studio, I mean, that would just be ridiculous. That's just one example, the editing and inspirational aspect is amazing. Before software, if you wanted to move a chorus you needed a razorblade, a calm oil-free hand, and a lot of guts to slice into a tape. Now it's all non-destructive and quick. Don't get me wrong, I am still using analog gear, but it's all much faster now and much more able to facilitate creativity and that's really what it's all about. The process of creation shouldn't be hindered by the tools we use and we are getting closer and closer to a point where it won't.
FX - What BFD products do you own and how do you use them. Do you have any techniques that you find you use all the time?
EP - I use BFD all over the place. The latest 16volt album is mostly BFD 'one of the greatest features on BFD is being able to listen on the fly to sounds without even loading them first.'
drums. I am using it on the Repo! soundtrack too, the tom room sound tuned all the way down makes for a really dramatic transition hit that has a total cinematic quality to it. I just love the room tracks and I have even used them to re-enforce an actual drum performance. You can take recorded drum tracks in Pro Tools, and duplicate the performance with BFD, if you pull down the close mic'd stuff and just put the room stuff tucked in there, it is amazing how much it can enhance a recording. I use the 8 Bit Kit stuff all over, and I am a huge fan of the tama classic kick from the XFL collection. I mean, there is just so much stuff to do with it, it's endless.
So many great drum pieces, it's insane.
FX - How did you process the drums and what did you use in combination with BFD to create the sound on your new album Full Black Habit?
 EP - There is all kinds of different things, I use Metric Halo's channel strip on pretty much everything, just a touch of eq and compression here and there. I also use the Digidesign Smack Compressor or I’ll use my external UA 6176 to create a drum submix. I love the PSP plugins and those are something I can't live without as well. I do layer a lot of drums for example I will take a snare from BFD but I will layer it with some other samples, my one and only sampler nowadays is MOTU's Mach Five. There are cases on the record where I might have 2 or 3 kick drums layered, just to give it something different, the snap from something, the low end from something else. I am a fan of big, thick kicks so I spend a lot of time on them.
FX - Do you have a favourite BFD kit that you have customised?
EP - For me one of the greatest features on BFD is being able to listen on the fly to sounds without even loading them first. I usually start off with my default kit but as the song comes along I end up tweaking stuff. Being able to just shift-click on drums and audition them on the fly is mind blowing.
FX - What software developments would you like to see in the future?
EP - It may sound simple but I would love for a tape simulator that really sounds like tape to be developed. How cool would it be to be able to take a BFD kit and slap a tape simulator on it that sounds really like tape! I don't have a $30,000.00 tape machine sitting in a room here at home so that's a pretty selfish one, there are some that are close but it's just not there yet. I am loving GURU and I think more things like that, like Abelton's Live, those things are really changing the way people write music. I am a die-hard old school Pro Tools guy so you won't catch me out of that environment any time soon but it is cool to see how these tools are evolving not only how we think about creating music but how the outcome of the music is changed.
FX - What have you got planned for the rest of the year?
EP - I am looking forward to getting this soundtrack done, and I hope to just keep getting more work. I have lot's of music in me that I just don't have the hours to get out so anyway I can release it is really cool.
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