On their second full-length, Mourning You, Ontario post-punk quartet Bonnie Trash are purging the darkest depths of their souls and holding a mirror to the most unsettling aspects of the human condition.
At the heart of the music is Emmalia Bortolon-Vettor’s heavily fuzzed and delayed guitars, a cavernous cauldron of washy noise and screaming feedback underneath twin sister Sarafina’s infectious, gothic serenades. It all makes for a sonic mass that’s abstract, beautiful and bloodcurdling in equal measure.
“I wanted to use a lower tuning and more slide on this album to wail away with a sense of dread,” the guitarist says. “It was all about layering the noise to tell an emotional story, rather than just creating background textures. I took it to a new level of exploration.”
This is well documented on tracks like Haunt Me (What Have You Become), where the atmospheres become intoxicating and ruthless in their quest to drown the listener in chilling ambience.
For a band with only one six-stringer, the secret weapons behind the monolithic wall of sound include a Pigtronix Infinity Looper and a DIY ring slide that can be found in any hardware store for $1.
“The looper is what carries those big strummy ideas,” Emmalia says. “I like to build the layers into a whining banshee sound. And I love using my homemade ring slide. It’s a piece of copper coupling that you can cut down to whatever size you want. For some reason, that seems to work best for me. If you lose gear as much as I do, you need more economical alternatives.”
Once you unchain yourself from the burden of protocol, you can go anywhere
The two guitars used for the sessions were a 2008 Custom Shop Strat and a regular American Strat, which were fed into a Fender Deluxe combo. As for pedals, Emmalia sticks with a classic Tube Screamer and a Zvex Effects Box of Rock for extra gain stages, plus EarthQuaker Devices’ Sea Machine for chorus and an Electro-Harmonix POG for extra depth. As we’ve already learned, however, this is a guitarist who has a very open position on what tools can be used to get the job done.
“Because I use single-coils, you can put anything through them,” Emmalia says. “I like doing weird things like playing my phone through my pickups, and then looping that while playing over the top. It makes each performance different, with more of an improvisational element.
“By removing yourself from having to be exact, you can be artistically free. It’s perfect for texture-based work. Once you unchain yourself from the burden of protocol, you can go anywhere.”
- Mourning You is out now via Hand Drawn Dracula.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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