the amp at the feet of riton is a vox VBM1 “brian may special”. it’s designed to mimic a little battery powered amp that john deacon designed for brian may, which he used to get that signature tone (prior to running it through a wall of AC30s). it seems like a cheesy/gimmicky product but this little 10watt amp sounds fantasic, i am a previous owner.

i am not a massive Queen fan but i got some pretty incredible t-rexy glam tones out of this, equal parts shimmer and grit. also, it looks great: white with gold trim and red & green diamond pattern on the mesh.

sadly though, the amp died on me. before i left perth i was in a band with some friends (jimmy swift/donalde dijon from electric limosine, daniel burt and matt funnell) called Decades although i wanted to call it Futuristic. jimmy played drums, i played synth (strings on the right hand, droning bass on the left hand), matt played guitar and burty played bass. there is only one recording of anything we did and it’s the mp3 i’ve included here. it was recorded on a knock-off dictaphone (so you can’t really hear the synth bass at all) in the corner of the room under a pillow. around the minute mark you can hear the guitar cut out. somehow, we pushed it too far and something got burnt on the solid state circuitboard bit. it was a real downer. whilst listening to the mp3 you will also note that i am the last one to notice that something has gone wrong.

Decades/Futuristic “Reverb Anthem” (half a demo)

You can pre-order the debut Die Verboten release here.

Tags: brian may, deacy amp, die verboten, fergadelic, queen, riton, roulade, soulwax, vbm1, vox

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 6:34 pm and is filed under not good, tracks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.