Meet ambient shredder Jakub Zytecki – the trailblazing virtuoso who picks plugins over pedals and performs a Kurt Cobain-inspired 8-string

Polish guitar virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jakub Żytecki has solidified his place as a trailblazer in progressive guitar music with a superb new album, Remind Me. 

The shred-meets-ambient specialist additionally teases an eight-string signature guitar and divulges why it’s time to tear it up like his teen hero as soon as extra.

Inform us in regards to the one guitar you couldn’t reside with out…

“It’s in all probability the one which I recorded many of the album with – my Mayones that they constructed for me. It’s an offset mannequin, a bit completely different from their catalogue. It’s impressed by the Fender Jaguar, so it’s obtained this Kurt Cobain-ish form. 

“I truly acquired that guitar as an eight-string model lately. I haven’t proven anyone, however it’s a guitar that we’re engaged on and there’s going to be the signature coming this 12 months.”

Do your tones come solely from plugins or do you employ pedals, too? 

“I obtained some pedals considering it was going to vary my course of, however nonetheless I’m ending up recording super-dry and altering it within the post-process. It was on my first file that I began utilizing Neural DSP stuff as a result of they’re superior, in all probability the perfect out there. I’ve been utilizing a Valhalla Reverb for years – it’s all over the place – and I exploit EchoBoy in relation to delays.”

How would you describe your method to the guitar? 

“It’s in all probability a bit cliché to say, however it’s only a instrument to inform some type of story. You’re part of a much bigger image. Clearly there are locations to have the guitar within the highlight however there are additionally moments the place it’s simply supporting different issues. 

“Often, it’s about recreating a sure feeling. I see music by the final emotional concept that it carries. Let’s say I have a chord; I attempt to consider why I like this chord and how much emotion it provides me. The extra I perceive it, the higher I painting the emotion.”

You’ve been quoted prior to now as saying that you don’t listen to much guitar music. The place does your inspiration come from?

“I feel that was possibly two years again – possibly from the earlier file – and I used to be feeling like that for a few years. The final time I used to be listening to guitar music was as an adolescent obsessive about Dream Theater. Proper now, it feels prefer it got here again to me a bit of bit. With the factor that Polyphia and Plini are doing, I really feel prefer it’s an attention-grabbing second for the guitar and I really feel impressed by it once more.”

Are you able to single out a efficiency on the file that you simply’re particularly pleased with?

“That is the primary time I truly got here again to the traditional conception of guitar solos. There are not less than two solos that I wouldn’t have finished three years in the past – typical high-gain, two minute-long solos. There’s one in MOONGHOST alt which is type of like a John Petrucci-style solo with a wah pedal on the finish. You possibly can’t get extra traditional than that, and I prefer it as a result of I haven’t finished that in years!”

• Remind Me is out now.