There Is Life After Orgy, A Damn Good One At That: A Conversation with Amir Derakh of Julien-K
www.myspace.com/julienk

Yes, there is definitely life after Orgy. Case in point, Julien-K, the new project of former Orgy guitarists Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck, are ready to take the world by storm in all formats. Their debut album, the aptly titled ‘Death to Analog,’ is out and is ready to be consumed, devoured if you will by all who will give it the time.

‘Death to Analog’ is a surprising work, full of guitars, drums and a healthy, very healthy dose of synth and electronica. There are enough of both worlds on this album to keep musical technophiles and conventional fans alike happy. They have also enjoyed some commercial success already, as you might have heard their song ‘Technical Difficulties’ on the Transformers movie soundtrack.

Guitarist/programmer/DJ/do-it-all Amir Derakh recently gave me a bulk of his time in order to talk (vent and rant in some cases) about all things Julien-K, including how the album ‘Death to Analog’ came into existence today, reasons for multiple versions of the music video for lead single ‘Kick the Bass’ as well as some possible upcoming touring plans, and even offered some juicy tidbits about their upcoming joint venture with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington in Dead By Sunrise.

Get eXposed: Tell me about the recording process of ‘Death to Analog.’
Amir Derakh: Ryan (Shuck) and I, while Orgy was in a hiatus, were still writing music, and it didn’t seemed like it was something that was going to fit in Orgy. We didn’t really plan on it becoming a band, but it just sort of turned into just that. Originally we were thinking we might just write some cool electronic music, and that I was going to DJ or something, hence the name Julien-K came around as an alias or a fake name. It was our alter-ego and eventually it kept growing and we had interest from labels to make a record. Through that we ended up basically making the record over the last couple of years and we had some help from some people along the way because we had been working on it for a while, so we wanted some outside help to come in and take a look at it. At the same time we were doing the record with Chester Bennington for Dead by Sunrise, which will be out sometime later this year.

GE: Why did the release get pushed back a month?
Derakh: When we started to put all of the plans together we had a bunch of different labels that were interested and it honestly just took a bit longer than had been expected. There were a lot of great offers but with timelines and things like that we really wanted to put it out on February 17, (to coincide with America’s communistic change to digital cable) but I guess it didn’t matter since the whole thing got moved anyway. We thought it would be a fun tie in that would be relevant. At the end of the day it became too much of a rush, so we just went with the video and the single for ‘Kick the Bass’ coming out on that day.

GE: What influenced writing the record?
Derakh: I can speak for myself, I know that Ryan feels the same way, that we really have grown to love electronic music even more than before and have really gotten more and more into it over the years. We wanted to figure out a way to be more electronic but still be a band, some type of middle ground, some type of hybrid. Obviously Orgy was like that but we took it a little further with this. We set out to write songs in an unconventional way. I have been DJ’ing for many years and it seems like there has been a resurgence in the electronic scene, so we just wanted to move more in that direction. Typically when we write we start more electronic then add in the other elements like guitar. It’s really based along programming and writing that way. With this, it definitely starts with programming, an idea and a direction for a track, and then we build off of there. We leave the guitar as one of the last thing we typically add. We try to do the tracks without guitar then see what it needs. It’s backwards that way.

In Orgy we always expected to have guitar, but with this we set out to try to be able to do tracks with no guitar or very little. A lot of the tracks on the album are like an experiment just to see what would work best as far as our style and our direction. A song like ‘Systeme De Sexe’ has really no guitar in it, maybe one little part, but you can’t really notice it, that song really rocks live when we play it, but there’s no guitar. Obviously there is other song on the album like ‘Technical Difficulties’ and ‘Death to Analog’ that are more of the hybrid with guitar throughout but it’s still not something like Orgy would do because that band is more guitar/bass driven.

GE: Tell me about Julien-K’s involvement with the band Dead by Sunrise.
Derakh: Chester has been a friend of ours since around 1999 or so, when we did the second Orgy record. We all met in the studio right about the time they (Linkin Park) were finishing their first record. We were fascinated by Chester’s voice and ended up being friends, touring together and such. We’ve helped each other through all kinds of stuff. He heard what we were doing with Julien-K and he wanted to be a part of it in some way, and he realized it needed be a little different. He called us one day and told us he had a bunch of ideas and wanted our input on them and to maybe help him develop them. Before you know it, something started happening and it started turning into this whole other thing. We worked on it pretty intensively for a few months and wrote a good majority of what’s going to be on their record, at least half of it. We really didn’t want them to sound like us or Linkin Park; it had to be something quite different. It’s a much more organic and raw record, but there are electronic elements, and it’s more of a pure rock record. There some cool things to it that really don’t sound like anything else.

GE: Is there a set street date for that record?
Derakh: No, I don’t think it is set. It’s tentatively September from what I’ve heard. It will be later in the year. We are finishing tracking everything right now and still have to mix it.

GE: How did ‘Kick the Bass’ get chosen as the first single?
Derakh: That was one of the first songs we actually wrote. When we were going around to different people and labels we actually weren’t trying to get a record deal, we were trying to get some remix work. We were showing people that song and everyone flipped out over it. We didn’t end up signing with anyone back then; we just ended up doing some stuff on our own. Part of that is what took us so long to get the record out, because of some legal things that happened. We wanted to actually drop the record about a year ago while we were touring. So a few months back we made the deal with Metropolis to license the record.

That was sort of the start of that song. When we came back a few months ago and played that song along, radio people and label people picked that song actually. We’ve made the rounds a few times to get people we know and respect, get their opinions, and it always comes back to that song. That’s why we made the video and went with that song as the single.

GE: Tell me about the music video for that track. Who came up with the idea for it? It’s one of the more interesting videos I’ve ever seen.
Derakh: The concept basically started with Ryan and me. We enlisted this director, Ryan Rickett, and he took our idea and made it a lot better. We knew what we wanted to do. To me, there’s always a couple way to make a video, either you do something very specific to what the song is about and the other is you make something that’s completely not. We thought about it and didn’t see it as something not totally about the song, so we set out to do a video that portrayed what the song is about, just not in a super obvious way. There’s lot of hidden meaning to what’s going on. We don’t really want to spell it out since there’s so many ways it could be taken. We wanted ted something edgy and dark, something that portrayed what the song was about.

GE: You and Ryan had the idea for the video, and you didn’t bring in outside treatments?
Derakh: Rickett wrote the initial treatment, based pretty much on a lot of our ideas. We knew what we wanted to do with it and he helped to pull everything together.

GE: Why the decision to release a clean version and an explicit one?
Derakh: We actually have three versions, one hasn’t been released yet. The dirty version is really the real version, and to us portrays what needs to be portrays. We didn’t want to limit ourselves by not having a clean version because there are a lot more places it can play. I think it’s still a good video, but the clean version doesn’t have the edginess that the other versions have as far as the drugs and sexual part of it go, it’s not as explicit. We have another version that’s actually cut to a remix that She Wants Revenge did of the song that is out on the double disc version of ‘Death to Analog.’ We had Bobby (Hewitt), Orgy’s drummer, do his own edit of the video. We had about two hours extra of footage shot from when we did the video, so basically we had the amount of footage to do multiple videos. We wanted one other version but we didn’t get around to doing it, and that one was going to be cut to a dance/club remix of the song. I thought it would be fun. Part of it is, even though we did it all in one day, we ended up with a lot of footage. It’s just editing really.

GE: Have the other Orgy members heard what you are doing with Julien-K?
Derakh: I’m sure they have to some degree, but I’m not entirely too sure. I’m hoping to see Jay (Gordon) soon so I can give him the album. I know he has heard us, because he came to one of our shows so I know he has seen us. I’m not sure what they think of it though. It’s just one of those things that I’m not going to ask.

GE: What can we expect from Julien-K the rest of the year?
Derakh: Were right now focusing on getting the record out and we are going to do some touring. We are still figuring out what that is right now. That is the next step, to promote everything. It’s all starting to come together right now. We’re planning to work it all summer, not just when the record is released. We want the record to get out a little bit before we go out and play. We want people to have the record.

GE: Do you have any plans to tour this summer?
Derakh: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Later in the year we will be doing some Dead by Sunrise stuff, which could also tie into Julien-K somehow but we’re not sure.

GE: Anything else you’d like the fans to know?
Derakh: Yeah, we actually did all of the music for the upcoming Transformers video game that will be out this summer. We scored all of the heavier, industrial songs for the video game. Steve Jablonski did the actual string scoring for the game and then we created almost an album’s worth of music for the game. I think there’s like 30 minutes of music for the game.

Go ahead and head over to www.myspace.com/julienk to check out everything there is to know about Julien-K.