We have to admit, when we saw this story on a lazy Easter Sunday, we thought it was an April Fool. But apparently not.
According to an interview in The Oberver newspaper promoting the band's forthcoming best-of, The Places Between, Doves guitarist Jez Williams recently bounced a riff off the moon, using it as his own interstellar delay pedal at Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, UK.
Assisted by the facility's resident astrophysicist Dr Alastair Gunn, who "had a load of dials on a box", Williams "plugged into it, [then] he just dialled the moon, like you do... and two and half seconds later it [the riff] comes back.
"It messes up the signal beyond recognition, it's pretty wild. We've got a recording of it that we'll definitely use at some stage."
"Put that in your fucking pipe, Rick Wakeman!" added Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin.
Click here to read the full Doves interview, which includes a more scientific description of the process involved.
Back in March 2009, we checked out Jez Williams' live guitar set-up on tour in Coventry ahead of the release of fourth studio LP Kingdom Of Rust. Sadly, the moon doesn't feature, but you can see our video walkthrough here:
“A unique octave bass fuzz with a built-in, 2-voice ring modulator”: The Maestro BB-1 Brassmaster is a super-rare bass octave fuzz from the ‘70s that sounds great on guitar, sells for $2,000+, and Behringer just made a $69 clone of it
“The same hand soldered through-hole construction and super rare military spec germanium transistors that were used in the original”: EarthQuaker Devices celebrates two decades of stompbox design with the Hoof Fuzz 20th Anniversary Edition
