Geared Up: Thotcrime on the Challenges of Using Technology to Create a Distinctive Sound

US/UK-based cybergrind group Thotcrime recently released their third album, Connection Anxiety, through Prosthetic Records. Their blend of whiplash-inducing breakdowns and edge of your seat blast beating combined with warehouse rave makes for a sense-wrecking listen but one guitarist Melody Jane from the band describes as a “a logical evolution from our previous one and I hope listeners have as much fun listening to these songs as we did making them.”

Turning from a studio project in 2023 to something altogether more tangible, Thotcrime pushes the boundaries of the genre with their sound despite the challenges of producing music with a fairly large band of water between the various members. Distance has not stopped the band, though, and their use of technology mixed with their individual creativity has pushed the band to new grounds with the sound on their third record.

For our latest edition of Geared Up, we are joined by the band to talk us through their favourite pieces of kit, the gear they use to write music, and their favourite ‘Gear Gone Wrong’ tale.

First things first: what’s your current setup?

“Right now, rocking a top-of-the-line and definitely up-to-date refurbished 2014 MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch running Logic Pro X.

For my vocals, I use a Telefunken M80 mic in hot pink. (fun additional fact: I won this in a remix competition for Electric Callboy)

For guitars, we use a gorgeous PRS SE Custom 24, an ESP LTD H-207 (Melody’s guitars), and an Ibanez RG7321 (Mine)

For live, I’m using an Akai APC Mini to control Ableton Live to trigger samples, loops, tempo changes and time changes. I’ve tried using stuff like mainstage and all that but Ableton lets me visualise what’s actually going on in a much more Beau-Brained way.”

Thotcrime Geared Up

What one piece of gear do you use to obtain your signature sound?

“Less gear, per se, but more a plugin. all the guitars are run through Archetype Gojira. Lets us really go in deep to make sure the guitars fit in the dense mixes without standing out or getting buried. Combined with the pickups in the PRS, we get a super chunky sound that’s very easy to work with!”

How did you come to possess this piece of equipment? Vintage shop, regular shop, borrowed money, gifted? Give us the details.

“My mate Long James was really getting into production and writing music at the time and let me nick his iLok account. To begin with, I was just testing it out to see how it worked and all that. Ended up being my go-to for all guitar tones.”

Thotcrime ‘Connection Anxiety’ Album Artwork

What made you choose this particular piece of gear and were there any close seconds or alternatives?

“We used to use Guitar Rig but it kept crashing or corrupting. it’s a very unstable product in my experience and was a lot larger in file size than it really needs to be. Where the Archetype Gojira is lightweight enough that we could use it live if we needed to.”

Did you use this gear during the recording of your latest song or album? If so, please elaborate on how and for what parts.

“For the way we make music, it’s very hard for us to get in a room to record, being based on either side of the Atlantic and all that, so it can be tricky to get the synths, drums, bass, etc. in a mix and then tailor a physical amp to the space we have. It’s much easier for Melody to record a DI and then I can run it through an amp model that we know works rather than having to record it 6 different ways with different amp settings to work it out.

Physical amps will always have a place, I think, but for us, being able to model and tweak the amp and make it sounds sort of electronic-y in the studio really helps us create the record we wanna make. Incidentally, live, Melody uses an Orange head and it is a beast!”

Do you have a special way that you recreate your album (guitar/vocal/bass) tones in a live setting, or is it more just plug-and-play?

“We really just plug and play. On record, I try to use as few effects as we need, to be honest. Between the synths and SFX, and the dense layers of echo and reverb on everything, it’s easy to go overboard with FX and gain staging and all that. But live, we use a guitar into a pedal board, into a head, into a cab. We’ve got a lot more room to experiment.

The general amp settings remain the same, bass at 1 o’clock, mids at 11, and treble at 1, but we’ve got room to have phasers and choruses and big distorted delays and all of that. We sort of less aim to recreate the songs in a live space and more seek to add that live feel to make it something unique and different.”

What was your first ever instrument?

“My first instrument was a £10 ukulele that I had to save up for to buy! In the town nearest where I grew up, there’s this little music shop where my sister used to take clarinet lessons. One day, while waiting for her to finish, I saw there were these “little guitars” with 4 strings and I thought they were the coolest looking things ever. I was all of about 7 or 8 years old at the time. saved up my pocket money for weeks and finally got my own yellow ukulele. Still have it and play it, although I doubt we’d find a good way to get it in a Thotcrime song.”

Thotcrime Geared Up

What’s your favourite piece of equipment you’ve ever owned?

“My Ibanez RG7321. As I mentioned, my sister did clarinet lessons. My parents bought her her first ‘good’ clarinet and said they’d do the same for me one day. When I was 13, my dad bought me this crappy little guitar from a supermarket for christmas. I was hooked. When I started music college, I told my mum that I needed a proper guitar, so we looked at every ebay listing for just the right one.

I’d been a huge fan of Dragonforce for a while and really wanted an Ibanez. We finally found the axe that I would later name Kat and I’ve played that guitar every single day since I got it. Even now that I’m more on the production and electronics side of things, I keep that guitar by the head of my bed and play it every chance I get.”

What’s your dream instrument?

“No hesitation… Starr Labs Ztar Z6! Pendulum is my favourite band ever. Rob uses one of those to control synths and samples while he performs and he uses a wireless midi system. If I could get one of those and combine it with my current setup, I’d be over the moon. Every single sensor and button on those things can be assigned to pretty much anything you want, so it’d give me the freedom to trigger the samples and tempo/time changes live while also getting to write and play more natural and human sounding synth parts. They also just look cool as hell!”

Thotcrime Geared Up

What’s a brand or bit of gear that everyone else seems to love that you can’t stand?

“It’s 2, but they seem to be part of the same package. Gibson and Marshall. I’m sure that they do what their users need them to do but it all sounds the same to my ears. I know people tend to call a Les Paul into a Marshall stack the “classic” rock sound but to me it’s grating and overdone.”

What setup do you think serves musicians like you the most in the style of music you play?

“We like to make the live show something different to the recording however we can. A lot of more electronically inclined bands will have the backing track completely on rails and the set is a set length, they have cues telling them when to come in and when to change guitars or tuning or whatever. That can be really cool for certain aesthetics. But as we’re kinda within the “punk” sphere, we like to keep it spontaneous.

So using Ableton Live is the perfect setup for us. We have the guitars running through an amp so we can get that gnarly feedback and the stage rumble, and to get to use FX pedals here and there for that lovely shiny sprinkle, then we have samples and loops from the songs: drums, bass, synths, backing vocals, SFX, etc. and tempo/time changes being triggered in real time with an Akai APC Mini.

This then gets sent to Melody’s in-ears and means that we can be album tight but we can do little electro jam interludes or loop a section in the middle of a song to talk to the crowd. We essentially rebuild the songs on stage using loops rather than tracks so we have the freedom to really make live versions into something fun… it also gives us the opportunity to fuck up royally!”

Time for some fun. Give us your best “gear goes wrong” story.

“We were playing in this venue out in Richmond, Virginia on our summer 2023 tour – a bike shop with no real equipment. Me and Cocojoey ended up doing sound for the whole show. We did a line check before doors opened, and my laptop/Ableton Live was working fine. The other bands play and it goes pretty well. We go on stage, and Ableton has decided it no longer has drivers for the interface we were using. I hit play on the walk on music and nothing comes out.

We decided to “go full grindcore” and just have vocals, guitar, and drums. So we’re playing this high energy grindcore set we haven’t rehearsed, while I’m trying to do my own tech support. It was really a one of a kind show moment. I ended up, while performing, copying every sample, time change, tempo change, and marker, into a new session and we managed to get 2 songs with the full experience before our set ended.

It was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever encountered as a musician, but it was one hell of an experience. One of the other bands ended up recording all the sets on a 2 track handled zoom recorder so we mastered that audio and released it as a bootleg!”

To pick up your copy of the new Thotcrime album, Connection Anxiety, head over here.