For two people, Jucifer makes a lot of noise. The husband and wife duo from Athens, Ga., performs an elusive mix of dark, howling punk and intricate purring, grinding instrumentation. The couple's self-proclaimed "brutal live show" is driven with the aid of 14 speakers behind singer Amber Valentine's electric guitar. It's known to blow a fuse or two in small venues, but it promises to tear the roof off Club Congress tomorrow night. Valentine took the time to talk to the Wildcat before blowing it all out.
Wildcat: So I'm calling you on a cell phone right now, right? Does it have a cool ring or anything?
Valentine: Actually, I'm roaming so I have this really obnoxious ring. It sounds like something's about to explode. My phone's kind of old so it doesn't have all the cool options, and the least annoying ring we could agree on is "O Christmas Tree."
Wildcat: Have you been to Tucson before?
Valentine: It's been awhile. We were supposed to play last summer, but we had like five blowouts in a row.
Wildcat: Amplifiers or tires?
Valentine: The tires on the asphalt because it's so hot. We ended up missing the Tucson show because of that.
Wildcat: It's beautiful here right now.
Valentine: We love Tucson, and we loved it in the middle of summer. So I'm sure we'll love it right now.
Wildcat: How important is the live show aspect of being Jucifer?
Valentine: We love it. When we used to not tour all the time, we hardly rehearsed because in our house, we couldn't use all of the amplifiers. It just wasn't the same. It's a very intense experience for us and keeps us feeling sane and happy to blow it all out all the time.
Wildcat: Still using 15 amps?
Valentine: It's 14 right now, the same amount of speakers but in a couple of different pieces.
Wildcat: How did you get so loud?
Valentine: When we started playing, I played through one bass cabinet and one guitar cabinet. And it sounded great, but it wasn't loud enough unless it was running through the P.A. We theorized that because I'm a girl and I sing, a lot of (sound engineers) want to focus on the vocals, so our mix would be really loud vocals and really loud drums and hardly any guitar. But part of why you want to play an electric guitar is so you can hear it and feel that electricity working and to feel the power of playing with electricity through amplifiers. And it's a terrible feeling to be on stage and not be able to hear what you're playing. So we maybe, kind of, overcompensated.
Wildcat: How does your personal relationship, as husband and wife, translate into the band relationship?
Valentine: Inextricable · and that's how we like it. We were both looking for the kind of relationship we now have. And we're very appreciative of it.
Wildcat: How does the song writing process go for both of you?
Valentine: It can happen in every imaginable way. Mostly, one person comes up with something, but even in that case, the other person has some kind of input. Sometimes it's almost exactly 50/50, and sometimes I write a drum part. Sometimes he writes a guitar part.
Wildcat: It's hard to peg down your music. Do you strive for that ambiguity and diversity?
Valentine: Both of us appreciate every genre of music that exists, and we both love music that much that it would be really unnatural for us to try and define ourselves and try to make one kind of music. It's cool that people can really take it and put their own interpretation on it, that people from different music backgrounds can still appreciate it.