Spring King are drummer/vocalist/producer Tarek Musa, guitarists Peter Darlington and Andrew Morton, and bassist James Green. Together, they’re part of a new vanguard of UK-bred garage rock.
The band recently unveiled a blistering new video for ‘Rectifier’, directed by Jack Whiteley and produced by Ellie Fry, a mini-biopic covering the band’s evolution from Musa bashing away in his basement.
Having toured with Courtney Barnett, Slaves, and FIDLAR, and with props from the likes of NME, Clash, The Guardian, Stereogum, and DIY, Spring King are ones to keep an eye on.
We recently caught up with the band to nerd out about their gear and find out what bits and bobs, parts and pieces they simply couldn’t live without.
Back To Basics
If I had to break my gear down to the basics, I’d bring a piano, bongos and a bass. You can literally conquer the world with those three instruments alone.
Evolution
We’ve slowly upgraded our gear but our set up hasn’t changed much at all. We’ve got some decent Fender twin amps now, which have so much more depth to their sound. The tubes break really nicely when you crank them! Working guitar pedals and decent power supplies also help too.
Honestly a lot of small things have kept changing, like the quality of cables or power supplies, which are really important, until recently when we’ve made a huge step up in terms of the amps we’re using. I’m now using an Ampeg cab and head, which have given my tone so much more bite.
Hitting The Studio
We kinda work the other way. We write in the studio and try to translate that sound live. We use a lot of slaps, echoes and reverbs in the studio as well as distortion on most guitars and vocals.
Live, we have the new RE20 guitar pedal versions of the original space echo for vocals and guitars. Boss Blues Drivers for crunching up guitars and James has a Sans Amp in his bass chain with the drive cranked. Pete has a really cool death by audio ‘fuzz war’, which really has some bite to it.
Back In The Day
Tarek: Some kind of 20 watt Marshall combo amp and my dads old Strat!
Pete: My first electric guitar was Yamaha Pacifica that I still own and play occasionally. My first ever guitar was a 3/4 size nylon string that I still use to write songs on.
James: First guitar was a Squire Strat, which I still have kicking around, and my dad’s old AC15 combo! I was mainly a drummer and pianist at the time, so my understanding of that kind of gear was super minimal.
Song Vs Gear
Pete: Most of the songs begin life on an old organ or a nylon string guitar. I think it’s important that they start in that stripped back way to perfect the choice of chords and intricacies of the melody. Gear influences the production choices rather than development of the core of each song.
James: Honestly, the songs tend to influence the sound around them rather than the other way around, once the body of the song is together then we start the conversation around where it’s heading sonically.
Getting Weird
Not that it’s used within the band, but I’ve bought an Mbira (thumb piano) from an old tutor that was brought over from Zimbabwe – it’s one of my favourite instruments.
