15 Questions With… SHAW & GROSSFELDT

Simian Mobile Disco’s Jas Shaw and Bas Grossfeldt make an album completely inspired by a Yamaha Dysclavier. Why not?

Jas Shaw is best known for his endeavors as Simian Mobile Disco with his partner James Ford. For his latest record Klavier, he teamed up with Bas Grossfeldt to produce an album the latter describes as ‘piano studies in a breaky-techno-ish surrounding’. It was inspired by a Disklavier, a blend of acoustic and electronic tech first built by Yamaha in 1987. Sounds intriguing to say the least, so it’s time for Jas and Bas to explain all…

1 So what’s the story with the new album?

JS: “The record is called Klavier as it came about from discovering a classic Disklavier in the studio. We abandoned the synths and let this strange but familiar instrument lead us down a path that neither of us had imagined.”

BG: “The process was pretty much what makes the record special. We built a setup with the Disklavier and some Max Patches and then altered the sound of a piano hands-on in the studio, pushing and pulling its strings and so on. We then processed the recordings in various ways and the main amount of sounds you hear on the album are piano-sounds.”

2 When did you get into music-making

JS: “When I started it was still tape in nice studios and PCs with cracked software and ropey soundcards at home. We couldn’t afford studio time so we used the best PC that we had between us and saw what we could do with it. It was very basic; we had to bounce down parts constantly and edits were destructive but we got plenty of music recorded.”