Kings of Quiet

What They Play

By Derk Richardson

December 2004

(.......)
Erland Øye says it’s been a struggle to achieve the sound he and Eirik Bøe are after in KINGS OF CONVENIENCE. “The problem we’ve had all our lives is that we’ve never had anyone our age who we can ask for advice,” he explains. “The only person we can ask is Nick Drake. He’s dead. Simon and Garfunkel? Their manager probably won’t let us talk to them. All these artists from the ’60s could probably help us get the sound we wanted, but when we wanted to record ourselves, there was no one there. Our record company in England, on the first time around, was trying to get us a producer. ‘Fine,’ we said, ‘but can you just get us a guitar tech?’
“I have never really been happy with any of my guitars,” Øye continues. “Right now, I’m playing a Martin, but I don’t really know what it is. It’s an expensive one.” It’s fitted with a Fishman piezo pickup and preamp. “I’ve had a lot of problems with strings, too,” he says. “I really like GHS silk-and-steel because you can put them on and instantly they sound soft. You don’t have to play them in.” Eirik Bøe plays a Takamine acoustic-electric nylon-string guitar with built-in Takamine electronics. He prefers D’Addario Pro-Arté strings. Both Øye and Bøe play fingerstyle. For the recording of Riot on an Empty Street, Øye and Bøe bypassed their built-in electronics and played into microphones: a B&K 4011 through a Joemeek VC1 preamp for Øye, and two Neumann KM 184s through Millennia preamps for Bøe.