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REB BEACH, WINGER's GUITARIST, "IT WAS GREAT WORKING WITH KIP AGAIN"

Debbie Rao, KNAC, recently spoke with WINGER guitarist Reb Beach about the resurrection of the band, involvement with WHITESNAKE, his time with DOKKEN and his solo career. Few excerpts are follows:

KNAC.com: How would you describe the new album, Winger IV. Does it pick up where Pull left off?

Beach: "It is some of the best guitar work that I have done. It was really a very hard album to make. I don't know if it picks up where Pull left off. I was gone a lot of the time, (while) it was being written. This is really Kip's baby. The production of Pull was much bigger, and the budget was so much larger. But Winger IV is more of a progressive album. It only has one ballad on it. It was great working with Kip again in the studio; we forgot how much fun it use to be working together. Kip is really an amazing songwriter."

KNAC.com: Last time I got to see you perform was on the Metal Mania Tour last winter. Actually you performed double duty, playing guitar for both Don Dokken and Kip Winger.

Beach: "The Metal Mania Tour was so much fun. I really enjoyed working with Kip. But the real fun came when I performed with Don. Don did a great job-playing guitar. The guitar jams were so much fun with him. I love Don; he is fun to work with. I love playing Dokken songs; they are so easy to play. You can jam for hours."

KNAC.com: Let's talk about some of your studio albums. You mentioned you worked with THE MOB with Doug Pinnick (KING'S X). What was that experience like for you?

Beach: "It is one of those deals, where I wanted to put out a band type album. I said I wanted to work with Doug Pinnick, and the record company said no. I got Kip to convince them it would be a really different record. There is a lot of different kinds of music on there, a lot of guitars, with vocals that are up in the stratosphere. That is kind of what I am like. I am good writing that 80's straightforward stuff. Doug put out an amazing unique voice, singing just the straight-ahead stuff. It didn't come out exactly how I wanted it but it is close. It was an honor to work with Doug. I can remember seeing King's X perform in Hoboken and saying that is the coolest stuff I ever heard in my life. I said I have to work with that guy one day. I have been dreaming of working with him ever since."

KNAC.com: What has Kip taught you as a musician?

Beach: "Everything I learned I learned from Kip. Kip taught me how to write a song, basically. He is brilliant, and really a smart guy."

Source KNAC

   

ULI JON ROTH TO PRESENT THE REVOLUTION OF NEW INVENTION AT 2007 NAMM

BW&BK reports that ULI JON ROTH (ex-SCORPIONS) will present a revolutionary new invention at the 2007 NAMM Music trade fair in Anaheim, California in January. He has recently come across a new self-tuning guitar technology, which was developed in Hamburg, Germany by Christopher Adams. Uli was so intrigued and fascinated by this landmark invention that he had it installed on his favourite white Fender Stratocaster guitar last week. The auto-tune technology is currently only geared for six-string Strat-or Gibson-type guitars, but Chris Adams has promised to extend the system for his seven-string Sky Guitars in the near future.

When asked to endorse the new invention, Uli immediately agreed and had the following to say: “This is something I totally believe in. I can’t remember getting as exited about new technology as I am about this one. Uli calls the Tronical Powertune system the fulfillment of a long-held dream. This was one of the last frontiers to cross in the development of stringed instruments; until recently, before I met Chris Adams, I thought I might never see the day… a solution seemed so far off because of all the technical difficulties,
but Chris has absolutely thought of all the angles and has designed something here that is just perfect!

Because I don’t use a locking system on my guitars for reasons of sound, I sometimes have annoying tuning issues on stage, particularly, since I often like to play a whole set on one guitar only. All this is going to be behind me from now on - and what’s even better: now I can tune down the guitar to E-flat or even D and C# within a split second. This opens up a whole new world of musical possibilities. For example, when we’re performing some of those old Scorpions tunes on stage – as we have done recently – I can fret the songs the way they were originally written, instead of having to transpose them, say, from A to G#, in order to hear the same result. Due to the lack of open strings in some keys that is sometimes musically awkward. In those days we used to tune down a semi-tone, and I like to play the songs in their original pitch. Up to now, detuning on stage was a complete impossibility, because it takes a long time for the strings to settle when using conventional manual tuning. Powertune achieves this result flawlessly within seconds! In my mind this is clearly the most significant technical development on the guitar since the invention of the pick-up. It’s THAT groundbreaking - and the best thing is that it absolutely works, and that it’s beautifully thought through in its economy of means.”

Source BW&BK

   

MORTIIS COMPLETES WORK ON 'THRALL'

Mortiis has issued the following message:

"[I] just finished another ambient/atmos piece. It was the last piece that didn't make the deadline for the 'Broken' film [Adam Mason's ultra-violent horror film whose soundtrack Mortiis contributed to], so it's in that vein sonically and atmospherically. I called it 'Thrall', in the spirit of 'Broken'. If Adam ever gets the DVD version he's been talking about out (which should have a lot more of my music in it that the cinematic version) maybe we'll put it in there, or maybe we'll put it on the soundtrack album I'd like to put out some day. Somehow it'll see the light of day though. I had to finish it, because it really pissed me off seeing it laying around sort of half-done."

Mortiis and Adam Mason worked together for the first time when Mason directed the "Decadent & Desperate" video for the single of the same name.

MORTIIS has been busy writing and recording new material for a new album, to be released 2007 through an as-yet-undetermined label (the band is no longer signed to Earache Records).

"The music so far is pretty varied," said Mortiis. "There's a bunch of really heavy stuff in there, probably the hardest stuff we've done so far, really guitar-driven shit. Then there's some really ambient sounding stuff, very drone-y and atmospheric, as well as some more electronic sounding songs too."

Mortiis noted that the songs are still in various stages of completion, leaving them open to many shifts and changes before the follow-up to "The Grudge" is recorded.

"It sounds really interesting right now," Mortiis said. "Some old vibes came back to us on some of the songs, some 'Smell of Rain' vibes and some 'Grudge' vibes and some new vibes. It's all totally dysfunctional and fucked up in one way or another. Diseased or hurt minds never really heal up, I guess, and because of that, all in all it's going to be a really hard, attacking kind of album with the moody stuff in between."

Some of the working titles are: "Zeitgeist", "Great Deceiver", "The Ugly Truth", "Looking Glass", "Doppelganger", "Sins of Mine", "Scolding the Burnt", "Live Forever" and "Road to Ruin".

Source Mortiis

 

 

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