“Every single riff in every connotation has already been done”: Why this “guitar band” is turning its attention to electronics
Skunk Anansie didn’t wait nearly a decade between albums just to rehash the same rock clichés. On The Painful Truth – their first record in nine years – the genre-defying UK quartet returns with a renewed approach to writing and sound design, and a rethinking of what a “guitar band” can be in 2024.
Speaking in a new interview with Blabbermouth, frontwoman Skin says that while the guitar is still “really important”, these days, the band is more interested in telling stories without drowning their songs in recycled riffs.
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“The way we used guitars, we started as a rock band. We’ve developed from there,” she explains. “I think electronics is the most exciting thing on the planet right now, the things that they can do. That’s really exciting.”
“That’s where the creativity is on the planet. It’s not in rock guitar. It’s about, ‘Where do you place the guitars?’ We are essentially a guitar band. It’s really important, but you don’t have to do all the big old fucking riffs.”
In fact, Skin argues that the genre’s biggest sacred cow – the riff – is creatively spent.
“They’ve been done. Really, every single riff in every connotation has already been done. It’s that people like those. It’s things that people like, so that you can offer different flavours, and people will like them. It’s that Led Zeppelin and AC/DC did them, and you can change them a bit, and people still like them because they like that sound. It’s all been fucking done.”
For now, what makes the guitar “exciting”, says Skin, “is that you can place and texture them and juxtapose them with electronic songs. That’s where the excitement lies with me: how can you do what we do, but do it in a different way?”
That said, tearing up the playbook comes with its own set of risks.
“That involves a lot of experimentation,” she admits. “To be honest, you go down a path and at the end, it can be a dead end, and you have to stop and go down a different path. There’s a lot of experimentation in that. [Laughs] It’s not like playing a kick drum to find the right sound for two days. We don’t do that because we have a drummer. It’s about finding ways to tell the story that doesn’t clog it up with riffs.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
