The Echio Quizz with Jordan GCZ

How did you learn music and did you have mentors?

Well, my parents had a piano, actually, it was my sister's piano, so I enjoyed tinkering on the piano as a kid. At some point my parents sent me to piano lessons, so I had that for maybe a year and then I kept tinkering and, kind of taught myself and, played with friends and they helped, so forth. Later I studied some bass with a great musician from Haifa in Israel named Udi Kazmirski. Let's say he was the closest to a mentor I ever had. I went to him to study bass, but we became good friends. And later we played music together in a band. So, yeah, he was my mentor.

If you were not making music what would you do?

At some point when I was a kid, I enjoyed, acting, I thought. Maybe an architect.

If you could spend a day in the studio with one of your heroes, who would it be?

I would love to spend the day in the studio with my mentor, my friend Udi, back when we were, making music together and jamming. I didn't have the studio yet or the skills, so. Yeah, truly would be wonderful if somehow, miraculously, I could have Udi in the studio for a day.

What was your worst / funniest performance experience ?

A Magic Mountain High gig decade ago, more than a decade ago, probably in Madrid. Back then, we relied heavily on rental, synthesizers and such. The venue or the festival provided us with a bunch of new, Roland gear at the time, which, was really bad back then. It was before Roland started, making the boutique series or the emulation of the classics. It was, kind of bad period for Roland. So yeah, we couldn't sync any of our, our live set up. So we ended up playing a live improvised show, totally unsynced, and it was horrendous. I had to play basslines with my left hand and try to play leads with my right hand on a different ugly sounding synth. You know, it was very funny and very frustrating. Funny when I look back. But back then it was stressful and annoying.

What’s the special object in your studio that you can’t live without ?

A lot of special things to me. I mean, the Pro 1 is special, of course, the 606 is very special because I often use it to trigger the Pro 1. This is a new edition which is also special because it was a gift from my friend Shawn Rudiman. Very generous gift. I love you, Shawn. And what else? Well, I guess the most special is my Fender Rhodes, which my partner bought me for my 40th birthday, which was a long, long time ago. But it's very special. It's a Fender Rhodes from 73, which coincidentally also the first Juju & Jordash tracks were recorded with it,even though I didn't have it back then. But yeah, my girlfriend, she bought it from the original owner.

What is your secret weapon ?

The Klemt Echolette. Juju picked that one up. It's a tube bass preamp with a delay, which is like magnetic delay Which is super weird and hasn't been working for more than a decade. However, the preamp part of it does work and I would say that’s, That's the secret sauce, kick drums, bass. Anything actually. I love everything through it. You can distort with it also, but the magic spot is when it is just a little and dirty. The tube. Yeah, it just sounds lovely.