THE MYSTERY JETS

When Korg arrive at Shepherds Bush Empire the multi talented Mystery Jets are preparing for sound check for their sell out NME gig and the atmosphere is already building... This is a band whose various influences combine into a melting pot of sounds and their Korg gear including the Radias and Microkorg help them achieve this. 
 
Since the release of Making Dens in 2006 Mystery Jets have been working their way towards something pretty special...
 
Their latest album Twenty One takes the bands original sound and strips it down culminating in an album that is beginning to define what the band are about. Produced by electro producer Erol Alkan; the 80s synth beats and 90s Britpop influence bleed through. Singles include the unbelievably catchy 'Two Doors Down and 'Young Love', featuring the hauntingly beautiful voice of folk starlet Laura Marling.
 
Read on to find out more from the bands William Rees and Blaine Harrison.
 
KORG: What made you get into music making?
Blaine: From a very young age my dad was an inspiration and was behind us putting the band together - he's in the band but doesn’t play live anymore. Him feeding us videos and old records that he used to listen to when he was younger was initially what got me into it - probably in the same way that someone would get into football. He's always followed music and played guitar so I’ve grown up with it.
 
KORG: What were your early influences growing up and how has that’s changed now?
Blaine: When we started off it was initially a lot of 70s bands - mostly prog rock - people like Yes and King Crimson. When we were younger we admired the techy side of those bands - they were nerdy bands to be into. In the early days our music reflected that - it was almost a pastiche of the prog rock our parents would listen to. But I found we all individually found different things along the way which is how we got to the sound we have now. 
 
KORG: What Korg gear are you currently using?
Blaine: Were using The Radias a lot in the studio. We have been using the vocoder and the arpeggiator is really good. I’ve found I’ve used more of the basic tones but modelled them myself rather than the presets on it (not that they are not good) I just think you if you've got a song and you have a sound in your head you can spend hours trying to find the sound you want, or just create the exact sound you have in your head yourself.  We also often use our keyboards in conjunction with guitar pedals too.
 
KORG: How similar are your studio and live set-ups... how do the two differ?
Blaine: Live, we try and have as little as possible on stage - I use a sampler that I trigger using my Korg MicroKontrol. I trigger the sampler with it and other than that in the studio we have all our gear all around us. When we work with our producer he has all the keyboards set up in a chain, he then sends the signals through that chain and we can pull things out and put things back in.
 
KORG: What gear have you got your eye on for the future?
Blaine: The Nano controllers! I make a lot of music on the go on my laptop -  demos and sometimes slightly more dance music and ive always just used the actual laptop keyboard. It's so annoying because you can’t actually play it and it's there in your head ready to be recreated. You can't write stuff like that, it's quite hard. So the nano controllers will be perfect for that.
 
KORG: How would you say Twenty One differs to Making dens (1st album) sound wise?
Blaine: I think we tried to go for a slightly more compact sound. When we set out to make Twenty One we said that we all felt that listening to Making Dens there was sometimes lots of things going on when there could have been one thing. But it would have sounded like more because it would have been bolder. We just always wanted to add more and more.  I think with Twenty One we didn’t want to simplify it in the sense that we were stupidifying it but we wanted to streamline it - to strip away the unnecessary and that was a lot to do with how the songs were going. They became a lot more like pop songs, than prog rock.
Will: Yes Twenty-One is leaner and meaner!  We wanted to cut the fat away from our sound so its an album of songs - its all about melody and lyrics. The last tracks were quite phsycadelic and twenty- one is more straightforward.
 
KORG: Where do you see your sound going in the future?
Blaine: We will carry on pushing in a pop direction. Id like the new record to be the quintessential Mystery Jets record. In the way I want everything we’ve been trying to do over the years to come together. We’ve talked about in terms of recording setting some consistent sounds..so having a guitar sound - have about 5 amps and whole load of pedals and just basically create this guitar sound and not touch it for the rest of the album and on every song you walk into it and that’s the sound in that room. And having a vocal sound - a certain series of gear a certain mic and that's it we don't change that. Same with drums....right from the start get a drum sound that sounds great in a room and sounds great through the speakers and then just don’t touch it.  That's what we want to try and do. In the past each song has sounded really different and for the next record I would like it be consistent sounding.
Will: On the next record we want more space in our sound - more landscape, more distance. So the songs aren’t immediate. Playing that live would be quite interesting because when you play big venues the songs bounce around so making it a bit more atmospheric would really work.
 
KORG: In Young Love you duet with Laura Marling - how did that come about?
Blaine: Fist we had the song and Kai sung it because he has a high girly voice. So I just thought why don’t we get a real girl.  It was Erol our producer’s idea. I knew Laura liked our music and we like her stuff a lot  - she did it on one afternoon at our producer’s house. She didn’t even do it at the studio - she’s amazing.

KORG: Any duets on the new record?
Blaine: Yes I’m writing one at the moment..........its like a Dusty Springfield style song  - a retro sounding ballad, but the verses are going to be split so it's like your speaking to each other rather than one verse each.

KORG: And what about for the future?
Blaine: Still some promotion of the current album to finish, and we have some US and European gigs. Then were going to do a few of the festivals in the summer but we want to then concentrate on the new record. Its over half way written so possibly will be released end of this year - early 2010.

To listen to the mystery jets check out www.myspace.com/mysteryjets
Korg recommend Flakes and Young Love!
 

IMAGE GALLERY: THE MYSTERY JETS DURING SOUND CHECK