ArcTanGent 2024 brought the world’s largest conglomeration of progressive heavy and alternate guitar-driven bands to a field in southwest England, with the festival’s 10th anniversary lineup featured the planet-destroying power of Meshuggah and the post-rock reveries of Mogwai.
Math-rock, 21st-century instrumental prog, noise, alt-metal, all of the above at once… it was all there and then some, and so too were Canadian noise-rock stalwarts KEN Mode, who turned in a ripping set, convulsing to the sound of Skot Hamilton’s bass guitar, with frontman Jesse Matthewson administering the unpleasantries vai his Telecaster.
We took the opportunity to catch up with Matthewson to try get a bead on what it takes to put a sound like this together, and, precisely, just what goes on your pedalboard when flying in for a festival performance.
As Matthewson tells it, there’s only room for the essentials; “a proper overdrive” and maybe the best delay and reverb pedal ever made, plus a few added extras to shape his Tele’s low-end and give it the weight it needs to be heard in the mix.
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It might be all the convincing you need to audition an EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master for your ‘board.“And also you’ve got to have a tuner,” says Matthewson. “What kind of idiot doesn’t have a tuner?”
The ‘board Matthewson shows us is quite different from his US board. There’s no need for the ABY pedal.
Some of his more obscure units didn’t travel with him, such as the Hellstache, the TS-style drive with “brutal boost” that Abominable Electronics made in collaboration with Kurt Ballou’s God City, and the Heavy Electronics Grind Fuzz, which is gnarly stompbox for sure but one that Matthewson only uses as a pinch-hitter for bass.
KEN Mode’s Void is out now via Artoffact. For more information about next year’s festival, head over to ArcTanGent: Melvins, Rolo Tomassi and more have already been confirmed for 2025.
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