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“Julian pushes the boundaries on the guitar. He’s got a specific sound and message he’s going for”: Meet the virtuoso axe-slingers from the Voidz – Strokes singer Julian Casablancas’ inventive other band
Amir Yaghmai and Jeramy “Beardo” Gritter on how Julian Casablancas’ high standards and vision for the Voidz is letting them stretch out and express themselves – hand fatigue be damned
You’ll be familiar with the New York five-piece the Strokes, renowned since their formation in 1998 for their angular, stripped-down rock singles.
While that band remains sporadically active, back in 2013 singer Julian Casablancas announced the formation of the Voidz, a side project featuring guitarists Amir Yaghmai and Jeramy “Beardo” Gritter, bassist Jake Bercovici, keyboard player Jeff Kite and drummer Alex Carapetis that has grown dramatically in profile over its decade-plus in business.
The appeal of the Voidz is obvious. Their charismatic debut album, Tyranny (2014), set the tone perfectly, with Yaghmai and Gritter exploring a wide range of experimental textures on singles such as Human Sadness.
As musicians, the guitarists use unorthodox tones and complex lines to complement the synth-heavy songwriting, leading to a sound that’s worlds away from the knowingly retro approach of Casablancas’ day-job band.
It’s no surprise that multi-instrumentalist Yaghmai has a diverse resume that includes sessions with Daedelus and Scarlett Johansson (for Break Up, her 2009 album with Pete Yorn), while Gritter has built an online presence with W.A.N.T (featuring Andre Legacy) and other projects.
On their second album, Virtue (2018), the Voidz expanded their sound while reining in the experimental edges, delivering five singles and touring alongside Beck and Phoenix.
The band’s third album, Like All Before You (2024), covered even wider ground — see the 15-minute video for Flexorcist/Prophecy of the Dragon for evidence — and a new EP, Megz of Ram, is out now.
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Although its leadoff single, Blue Demon, released in March, was primarily electronic and highly Autotuned, the two musicians reassure us that guitar is very much at the forefront of the Voidz’ approach.
How has your music changed since your first single, 2014’s Human Sadness?
Amir Yaghmai: “Human Sadness was pre-2016 when we were doing more introspective stuff. Then, with the pandemic and everything else going on, collectively everyone is more aware of external forces. Human Sadness and Blue Demon came about during really different times.”
Jeramy Gritter: “I think we were all at a point in our musical journeys when we wanted to push the limits a little bit, and the guitars kinda followed that. Hearing these melodies, I wanted to do something that was a little more chaotic.
“Also, Julian pushes the boundaries on the guitar. He’s got a specific sound and message he’s going for. That first song blended external things with specifics from Julian’s experience, which he really hasn’t done that much in the Voidz since then.”
The Voidz: Flexorcist - Official Video (double-feature w/ Prophecy of the Dragon) - YouTube
How do the differing personalities co-exist in your band?
Yaghmai: “With any band, it’s the result of everyone reacting to one another and bringing a style. I definitely think we’re lucky. We had different careers before this, so I’d never expected to join another band. I thought I’d merge into more production and studio time and other things, not get started with a new band.”
Gritter: “I was thinking about that too, since keeping a band together is hard. It’s like five horses pulling in five different directions and hopefully we all run the same way forever. With the guitar, Amir will tone-search for the records. He knows right away when it’s wrong or right. I’m such a loose artist in my brain, so Amir structures me in a way, and I make him a little looser. I always used to joke, ‘If it ain’t feedback, it ain’t working.’”
Yaghmai: “There are a few days you get where everything will just come together and it just happens.”
Gritter: “And we don’t want to let each other down. When you have six people in a band, you take what you don’t have from them, and they take what they don’t have from you.”
The Voidz - All The Same (Official Audio w/ Lyrics) - YouTube
Yaghmai: “All of us come from very different backgrounds, and we’re bringing five different things at all times. We’ll have this whiteboard and Julian will jigsaw it all together. Even if he’s not physically engineering the album, he’s doing it in its own way.”
Gritter: “We all have our studios in L.A. and create our own stuff, so if we’re getting ready to make music together, we start a random Dropbox and everyone has their own folder, including Julian. We all add what we think will work for the Voidz. I dumped Blue Demon into that box as a sequencer line.”
How did you create the unusual melody that runs through Blue Demon?
Gritter: “I used a Korg MS-10 synthesizer to a Korg SQ-10 sequencer through a Neve. Then I wondered what it would sound like on an electric guitar. The only way was through octave displacement, where you’re jumping between them.
“You could play a low D, but you play a high one instead. It’s tricky since you have to skip strings. I put down this crazy line but didn’t record it. Months later, I was thinking about that wacky line when Julian said we’d play Blue Demon live on TV for millions of people. That’s the lineage of the song.”
“Blue Demon” - The Voidz (LIVE on The Late Show) - YouTube
There are a lot of great players out there, but they’re more like ‘Look at me!’ on YouTube instead of ‘Go learn!’
Jeramy “Beardo” Gritter
Gritter: “I think that guitar-solo moment in Human Sadness was important because I don’t think that was happening as much then, and I don’t think it does now. There are a lot of great players out there, but they’re more like ‘Look at me!’ on YouTube instead of ‘Go learn!’
“We live in this digital era, but we came from analog. When we first got together in New York, Amir and I were learning and figuring out how to play this crazy-hard technical song, Human Sadness, and we knew Julian was expecting a 10 on the guitar.”
Your songs require a lot of picking-hand dexterity.
Yaghmai: “Playing it live, you have to do it correctly 30 times in a row and avoid hand fatigue. You have to get it right.”
Gritter: “There’s just a lot of parts that happen in the Voidz. I get smarter just being around these guys. We’re just like, ‘What can we do now? What haven’t we done?’ Isn’t that the whole idea of writing, but with as little words as possible?”
![The Voidz perform live on Jimmy Fallon in October 2024: [from left] Amir Yaghmai, Julian Casablancas and Jeramy “Beardo” Gritter](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/RJQhcs7LQmsMefG5v9TaYf-1920-80.jpg.webp)
