An interview with Amir Derakh, Ryan Shuck, Bidi Cobra and Alex Gonzales
Interview and Photos by: George Archibald

​As many people may say when they first encounter the band, “Who the Fuck is Julien-K?” well they are in for a treat. Julien-K was built after the fall out of Orgy and has deep roots in the late 90’s early 2000 music scene, having connections with Korn and Chester Bennington. Founding members Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh were looking to do music after Orgy wound down and began writing. Soon they would hit the world with Death to Analog, a dark opus of electronic and hard rock music that would have many fans flocking. It is this die hard following that has helped the band crowdfund their way to making further albums California Noir, and Time Capsule. Currently Julien-K is on the road with Stone Temple Pilots, Bush and The Cult for the Revolution 3 tour, while writing their next album Harmonic Disruptor. Through all the chaos I was able to get to sit with Amir Derakh, Ryan Shuck, Bidi Cobra and Alex Gonzales of Julien-K and discuss touring, the music business, and their inventive writing process.
GA: How about we start with in your own words how the band came to be.
RS: We came to be from the ashes of Orgy. Orgy has to be the most successful music project that we have ever done. Both Amir and I have been in music for a long time, Amir had a lot of success even back in the eighties with some metal bands. I had a bit of unexpected success when my lead singer left and joined Korn, and they started playing my music, ‘Blind’, ‘Daddy’ and stuff like that. It changed the world for me, and through that Korn introduced me to Jay Gordon and Amir Derakh. In about two days Amir and I became best friends. We hung out and talked, we just understood each other. We made it through all the Orgy tumults and crazy times. When Orgy started to lose its way, we didn’t know what was going to happen. We were still an entity on the radio, we are making money, but Amir and I still wanted to make music. We started writing, and I had experience doing vocals from Orgy; Chester Bennington and Amir conned me into becoming the singer for Julien-K. We kind of slowly evolved into this band.
GA: I have been listening to the band’s California Noir album, and I really enjoy it. There are bits in it, that remind me of eighties electro pop. What was the inspiration to write an album with this type of direction musically?
AD: I think every one of our records we try to have sort of a concept behind it. Ryan came up with the concept of California Noir, the idea and feeling behind it. So, some songs started to form, and as that was happening it started to bloom into what it was, which is how all the records start out. Even though we are very electronic, there is a very organic process to the way we create our music. Things kind of come together and fall together as I may say. Halfway through writing that album, it turned into a double album. It was something that started to happen, as we were going along we started seeing a way of how to put it all together. We wanted to put it out as two separate parts. Two crowdfunded campaigns then eventually it becomes what we really envisioned; which is a double album altogether. It was a fun experiment which we think worked.
GA: Is the band currently working on newer music, and if so can you go further into detail about it?
RS: Yes, we are working on our new album called Harmonic Disruptor. Amir came up with the concept for this album. We feel like it is going back to our roots in Orgy, with a heavier more industrial feel. We think it is going to be a crowd pleaser, and our fans are going to love it. We think there isn’t any one else doing this style right now, we want to show everyone why we are the guys at the top of this dark heavy goth industrial type music that is missing right now. We also crowdfunded this album and went number 1 on the first day and raised $20,000 in twenty-four hours. That was totally insane, and we went in in-demand which means the campaign was so successful that it just keeps going. Which is useful, because as we are out here, and there are people that may never have heard of us before start connecting the dots, and like what we are doing; they too can have a chance to get onboard and help support what we are doing. That becomes the way we can fund our albums and the fans are our record label. I think the work we put into Harmonic Disruptor we are proud of so far. It is almost like we all have this secret, that we can’t really tell anyone yet. Anyone can hear the commercial on Indiegogo and get an idea of what we are doing; but we are going to fuck people up with this new album. We are going to do it on purpose, like we meant to strike your attention. It is going to be really cool, and I think everyone is going to be really proud. We have barely scratched the surface of it, we got a lot done, but there is still a lot to do.
GA: When writing a new music, do you have a routine on how you put songs together, and what sparks your creativity when writing?
AD: We try to do different things every time. Ryan is more of a singer songwriter, where I am more of a conceptual writer, but we also work with a lot of other people. The new album also includes Bidi Cobra and Alex Gonzales helping us write material as well. We are always open to try new things. On our second album my DJ friends who were producers’ kind of had the concept. At that time, I thought it might be fun getting ideas from other producers, and building upon them and turning them into Julien-K. With Harmonic Disruptor there are sounds and things I want to happen on this record, so I have to force that vision on everyone. There are certain drum machines I will seek out that have certain sounds I am looking for, the same for keyboards and guitars; all this stuff that  goes into the sound coinciding with the concept I have in mind. The sound, the feel and the songwriting all are encompassed in this concept, and I think it is important in the beginning to have kind of focus, to have a bit of blinders. You don’t want to go too far one way or the other, let’s keep it here.
BC: This reminds me of when I was in college, I was taking a class on just how to run an art gallery, on putting together an art show. These things, concept, idea, and theme all had special focus on them. When you go to an art show, every piece is to coexist with each other. That artist might be good at drawing sketches, or illustrations, or even computer illustration; but when you go see these media everything there is conceptual and follows a theme, and that’s what Julien-K does (when approaching albums). We follow a theme with colors, sounds; and the songwriting from what I know is, there are no rules. You can start with the smallest idea on guitar, and it can become this massive song when everyone gets on it. It can be a hook, a verse, a riff, a beat; we use anything and everything for an idea to spur a song. It can even be a finished song, and we will re-listen to it, and get an idea for another verse and grow from there. Even though we are electronic musicians we are also a rock band.

AD: This is like one of the songs we are playing in the set now, ‘Photo Voltaire’, which is our new single. There were a few songs that I had this idea, that on the next couple of day we are going to write something completely on the spot. This isn’t going to be like Ryan has an idea, or Amir has this idea, this is going to be on the spot right now. So I pulled out a drum machine and started playing around until something got everyone excited, and that was the beat that sparked ‘Photo Voltaire’. It didn’t sound like that when it came out of the machine, I had to tweak the drums and add to it to make it this big drum sound. We all kind of wrote parts, some fell short but then there were others that had something there for sure. We did a couple more songs like this, I think two or three that were written on the spot. Everyone must be on their A game; it’s like if you don’t nail it, I will nail it, and if I don’t nail it, you are going to nail it. Whatever it takes till something comes together. It was a fun experiment, we never did that before. Typically, someone comes with an idea (Ryan, Amir, Bidi, Alex, or even an outside source) when writing, and we will go through them and pick the ideas we think will work best.
AG: These guys handle everything with precision. Amir has a very keen eye on making sure we stick to the vision. There can be ideas out there, but it may not be what fits for the concept now and he will be the one to say it.
BC: It is sometimes hard because Julien-K has covered so much ground musically. They can make a certain type of song, like a soft ambient song, so in your head you have an idea like that and think maybe I should present this to the band. I think it could potentially be a new Julien-K song.
RS: This is how you get double albums. (Everyone laughs)
AD: This is what really is happening. Everyone is focusing on this thing, but we have a whole other set of ideas we have been writing on. All these other ideas that could possibly form the album after this one.
AG: That speaks volumes to how these guys (Ryan and Amir) handle every facet of the band. They know what they want, and it is amazing. (writing-wise) To know exactly what kick to use, and what snare to throw on the song. Its amazing to me to see that kind of laser focus on a vision.
GA: That’s awesome that you all have that kind of relationship to say this is what we have and what fits for now. That these other ideas can be shelved for the time being and can be revisited for future music.
AD: That’s how the Time Capsule album came about. We listened to our fans a lot and over the years the fans have asked us, ‘whatever happened to those Myspace demos, or where’s those songs you had up in your studio videos? Where are those songs?’ They obsess over it, for years and years and years. A few years back I started looking at some of this stuff and listening to these rough mixes and demos we had; I realized, wow we have a lot of unreleased material. I went to the guys and said, ‘look we have all this stuff, maybe now is the time to put all this together and do something really ambitious.’ Time Capsule has been our most successful campaign to date, because our fans really freaked out over it. We over delivered on the project, Fu and I spent so much time going over everything.

GA: The members of Julien-K are multi-instrumentalists, what would you say for yourself is your favorite instrument to play on? This can be something outside of your primary instrument.
RS: I am a singer songwriter and Amir nailed it on the head, I play guitar and I sing. I’ve been the guitar player backup singer for multiple bands, Dead by Sunrise, and Orgy. I can do keyboards and drums, and I also write on bass, and feel like I am a better writer on bass when coming up with ideas, but that is just me. Singing however is the hardest job. I like to sing, I want to be a good singer and I work hard at it, but you can’t tune your voice. If you feel sick, like I do now, and the road is hard on you, it can be a really fucking unforgiving position. It can become the most embarrassing position, when you watch the social media replays every night, and you are not singing well, you are fucking embarrassed. So, I love it, but I also hate a lot of it.
AD: I don’t know, I play guitar and keyboards, programming, drums, bass, whatever is around I guess that inspires me is what I go with.
RS: Amir is driven by a tone, or an interesting piece of equipment which I have always liked. He will find a thing, and know what it is and from what era it is from, and get so intrigued and inspired by it. Amir makes it really cool, because he always brings in a new toy, and that becomes a new song. He is obsessive about it. Bidi and Alex also write on everything, which made this album coming up really special. We did a lot of writing one on one style, Bidi brought in a bunch of ideas, and Alex and I got together and wrote, and a lot of these ideas we are using. Then Amir brings in a huge chunk of work to Harmonic Disruptor, from pieces of gear, to sounds he wanted. He really had a vision for this, but what I discovered was that wow, Bidi and Alex both write great vocals, they can sing, and they can do all this great stuff. They are not just a drummer and guitar player keyboard player guy, we have all this talent. That is what we look for, we look for talented rad people with a great perspective. Then we just do our weird shit and try to stay weird.
BC: Instrument-wise it is different, in the studio and at home: I like writing more on synths and keyboards. It’s like a one-man band, something about layering certain textures. I have always loved The Cure and Depeche Mode, there is something about hearing multiple layers, slightly different maybe the same coming together creating the mood. For live, being stuck behind a keyboard isn’t always the most exciting, but it is cool. So, the fact that I get to go back to my roots as a guitar player and bassist, it makes it exciting to run around. It’s fun getting to rock out on stage.
GA: Julien-K has been apart of many projects since its inception in 2003, having worked on soundtracks, video games and movies, to even working with the late Chester Bennington. What has to be your most to the heart project you have gotten to work on?
RS: This is like trying to choose between your children, you don’t love little Alex more than little Brian. You know what I mean? We were listening to Dead by Sunrise yesterday because it was the one-year anniversary of Chester’s passing. When I was listening to it, I was like “Fuck, this is fucking good man!” I am loving it. I am a self-hater masochist when it comes to my projects, but occasionally I will listen to something I have done and say we did a good job on that. I think that it is hard for me to say the work I am really most proud of. I think we put our heart and soul into everything. It’s funny because on Death to Analog, our first album, in my head I would be like that album isn’t that good. I didn’t feel like I was a very good singer and didn’t know what I was doing. What are we doing now, playing a ton of Death to Analog songs, and we went back to that influence because the fans love it. So, I look at it differently now.
GA: Getting to tour with The Cult, Bush and Stone Temple Pilots must be a dream come true for you all, can you tell me a little about how you got hooked up with this tour?
RS: Everything in our careers to be honest with you… I am writing an article on this for Control Forever. I’m writing an indie business article, and I am being honest on how things happen, and how we do what we do as a band. The first article is called ‘Crowd Surfing your Way out of Hell’, ten steps to basically figure out your career like we have. Like once we were on a major label, and all this stuff was handled for us like promotions; and now we are completely crowdfunded, and we do everything ourselves. I am going to get into this more in the article; but everything is relationships, everything is being around, everything is getting involved, everything is putting yourself out there and trying, usually failing. We were just commenting on a comment a friend of ours in the industry posted, saying you have to be a bitch if you are a woman to get what you want, this type of argument. I couldn’t disagree more. Like if you are in the music industry, it’s tough so you have to be an asshole or a bitch. I would say no, be humble, and you have to be well liked. You earn respect by being cool and being good at what you do. In this case we have earned a lot of friends over the years. We have earned a lot of connections. We haven’t burned any bridges. We take this shit very seriously, and that is why when I throw our name into the hat for something like this tour I feel confident. We are just this little band Julien-K, we are not even on a record label, with no right to be up here from the business world of music. So how do we get up here? Well our former manager Jeff Forner (current manager of Bush) and our other former manager Peter Katsis (current manager of Stone Temple Pilots) are involved with this tour, so I threw my name in the hat. Then all the things converged, and here we are. I can’t stress enough, play your fucking cards right, don’t use people, be a good person, be a good friend, make great music, and don’t be a fucking asshole. We have been doing this shit for twenty, thirty years now, almost our entire lives, and I run into people all the time where everyone hates them. They shit on everyone to get where they are and are fucking assholes. If you play it cool and smart and focus on doing a great job and being a great person, building lasting relationships its only going to help you. I said these guys were my former managers, but we are still great friends, our parting wasn’t fire and brimstone, we just ended up doing different stuff. Bands ended like Orgy, things changed, management companies change, and you just keep it fucking real, and there you go. Now we are out here on this giant tour with three of our favorite bands, and in my opinion three of the best bands to ever hit the planet earth.
GA: What is next for Julien-K after this tour?
RS: We are looking at hitting the entire world. We are going to Europe. We are doing Mexico. There is a possibility of doing a West Coast run near the end of August. We have been offered more Revolution 3 shows, we are performing really well, and they offered us more shows. We are booked but are trying to figure out how to do it. Then somehow in-between all of this we have to work on Harmonic Disruptor. This is all a part of being in a band and writing, that we are trying to figure out how to make it work.
GA: Can you tell me more about your live rigs, and what you are using? Any endorsements please mention.
RS: We are happy to talk about Friedman Guitars. We were very precise on what we were doing, and why we were doing for live shows. Amir can tell you better than anyone.
AD: The sound is getting heavier; our friend Dave Friedman has been helping us. Dave built our racks when we were in Orgy. There are guitar racks out there, but I think mine was a little more complex of a build because of all the synths. So, I think it was a fun challenge for him, because I had all these ideas on how I wanted to do it. So, we because good friends back then. He was doing amp mods for a long time and eventually started coming out with his own line of products. I heard about it, and then one day when I was in Guitar Center I saw his Friedman amps in there and thought it was crazy. I plugged in and I was blown away. We were using Orange amps and have been for some time, and it didn’t have quite the sound I was going for, for the new material. I liked the Friedman after trying it and talked to Dave about making some custom builds for touring and moving forward. His guitars are equally as good, Grover Jackson is making them. Before Dave had Grover making the guitars, Dave and I were meeting about other stuff as well; and he was telling me about starting to make guitars and I told him he had to get Grover. I brought Dave one of the guitars Grover had made for me and he really liked it. I am not saying I had anything to do with that, but I am happy that they have partnered up together, because the guitars they are making are amazing.
BC: I was at rehearsal and almost everyone shut down their rigs, and Ryan had his rig still fired up. He was just playing on his own through a 2 x 12 cabinet. I come from a time where Korn and Orgy were getting big, and back then you needed a full stack or a half stack to be taken seriously. You know back then if you came to rehearsals with a 12-inch combo amp you would get laughed at. Amps today do not sound like they did back then, his sound was huge coming out of that cabinet. You could only imagine how full it would sound with both playing.
AD: We used Yamaha for in the studio for equipment. I am still using them today for a lot of things, their basses and all kinds of equipment for recording. Our signature models have become so valuable and scarce since they made a limited run of them, that we stopped touring with them and looked for other options. I talked to a friend of mine, Davey who was repping this company Ozztosh, this is the aluminum guitars we have. This company is out of California, and they are all handmade and look like robot parts. It immediately caught my eye, because I love weird futuristic things. They have graphite necks, and all this other stuff which makes them appealing.
BC: I met up with Davey, and I have a gold pick guard on my bass, and he is like, “You know that is gold-plated right?” I couldn’t believe it, I fear hitting it. It sounds really good and made with so much love. The bass was on loan to me for the tour and then he asks me if I liked it, which I responded I love it. He tells me to just keep it, which is such an honor. I am using that bass and a Gallien Krueger combo amp. It’s a 115 and solid state but works for what we are doing.
AD: A lot of people are downsizing their gear now. Its like building planes, they are quieter and use less gas now and more efficient, they are more powerful. Well that’s happening with all the gear these days. Everything is getting smaller but does a lot more. That’s what we did, we sort of cleaned house and got newer great stuff that allows us to tap into more sounds without all the bulk.
AG: I play all DW stuff, I am a DW collector. It is what I love to use. I also use K Custom cymbals. I do use Haram Drumsticks which I am endorsed by. Anything I ask for they deliver on. If I want a custom pair of sticks they will make them for me and get them right out. I use an XPS for condensing which gives me all these sounds through my DAW. It makes it fun for me to even do electronic music and play through pads.
GA: Where can people keep up to date with all things Julien-K online, and if they want to support the band or buy merchandise where is your online store?
RS: Indiegogo.com if you search JKHD it will take you to Julien-K Harmonic Disruptor. Our website, which has everything on there. We are also on Amazon, you can follow us on Facebook, also you can follow any of the members personally. We also promote on Instagram, and Twitter.
GA: Anything else you all would like to add?
RS: Please check out our new album Harmonic Disruptor that is in a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.

Julien-K Contacts
Main: http://www.julienk.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julienk
Instagram: @JulienKOfficial
Twitter: @JulienK
Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jkhd-harmonic-disruptor-band-design
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Julien-K/e/B001UO36KG

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George Archibald

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