By Keith Walsh
The new album by Media Jeweler, The Sublime Sculpture Of Being Alive, is an energetic affair, with each of the band’s members delivering animated performances in the art rock/psych pop genres. I asked bassist Thom Lucero, who presently lives in Berlin, Germany, what kind of preparations were made before going into the studio? Was there a definite blueprint or was it more spontaneous?

 “So, the latest album.” Lucero said, “was half of the songs were written over the course of a really long time, of us just rehearsing and then touring the songs, which was a process of jamming. We would jam, record the jams, listen to them, and pick out parts that sounded good and then like lock onto those and like ‘repeat repeat, repeat’ until things kind of started to naturally come out. So that was like half the songs and playing them live a lot, would kind of like form them also on their own. But then the other half were written like in kind of using some demos that Sam recorded on his own and then just like written like crazy fast over the course of like two weeks before we recorded.”

I’m compiling stories for a future article from members of Media Jeweler about the colorful experience of recording The Sublime Sculpture Of Being Alive, which involved the band sleeping in a neglected studio in Omaha, Nebraska, while making repairs to the facilities.

As the bass player of Media Jeweler, Lucero brings tasteful low end to the band’s sound. “I think a lot of the work that I’m doing as a bassist,” he said, “is listening to what everyone else is doing and finding and waiting for the right time to strike. I’m certainly locked in with Bryson (Mounts, drummer of Media Jeweler.)

Lucero first played violin in the fourth grade. As for the influences that inform his bass playing, he said: “I think I’m definitely pulling less from specific people, and more the people I’m playing with, the other people in the band, they kind of pull a certain kind of playing out of me. It’s kind of funny, but the origins of my style come from who I was listening to when I first started playing. Which is when I was 13. So the the guy from Anti-Flag and Mark Hoppus from Blink-182 very much informed the way that I played, that kind of stuck. The way I played at that time, playing with a pick and playing with a lot of chords.”

Japanese Influences
After these early experiences, Lucero said his tastes became more sophisticated, and he got influenced by bands he met while on tour with Media Jeweler. “Then, just kind of listening to weirder and more experimental stuff as I got older, jazz and stuff. What kind of forms all of us a lot is, we went to Japan in 2018 and played with a lot of incredible bands. And I just started listening to those bands a lot, and they definitely had a huge impact on us.” Bands mentioned by Lucero are Loolowningen And The Far East Idiots, Green Milk From The Planet Orange, Kuunatic, Hanazono Distance, and Kisima Alternative.

Lucero plays a Fender Musicmaster bass from the 70s, that he’s modded. “I got it on eBay and the person who was selling it made some adjustments to it. And then I did my own stuff to it. It’s one of the only instruments I have that feels very much like mine.” I asked what mods he made to the bass.

“Those basses in the 70s, they made them with guitar pickups, which is pretty funny. I think it was just like a money saving thing that Fender was doing. It’s a weird thing that happens with those basses because they’re guitar pickups. So the magnets in the pickups don’t line up with the strings because there’s six of them, not four. So it can make things sound really weird. So I got a new pickup for it, and then I started using flat wound, nylon black strings.” Lucero told me he added a Seymour Duncan pickup to the bass. As a bass amp, he says he uses a bass head and cabinet owned by Media Jeweler, a Music Man tube head.

Lucero met Media Jeweler vocalist/guitarist Sam Farzin when his band Dash Jacket played at UCI, where Farzin was recruiting bands to play live shows there. That’s how Lucero met Media Jeweler guitarist James ‘Jac’ Aranda, as well.
Lucero explains: “(Sam) was the radio station music director at UC Irvine, and he also used to throw DIY shows in portable buildings on campus at UCI, as a booking entity called Acrobatics Everyday. There was a nice little scene of weird experimental music around Acrobatics Everyday, and I was in a band called Dash Jacket that got kinda pulled into that orbit.”

Lucero continues: “So I met Sam at those shows, and then we started playing music together shortly after that. That’s also how I met Jac!” Lucero studied Studio Art with an emphasis on Photography at Cal State Long Beach, where he also created lots of sculptures.

In addition to his work with Media Jeweler, Lucero creates music using virtual synths, and has an electronic music project called Painter, which I want to feature on synthbeat.com soon. Stay tuned for more coverage about Media Jeweler, including compiled stories about their experiences  in 2019 recording The Sublime Sculpture Of Being Alive in the Enamel Studio in Omaha Nebraska.

Thom Lucero Official
Media Jeweler Official
Media Jeweler On Bandcamp
Thom Lucero On Bandcamp

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