Andy Ilgunas is on a roll; the UK effects designer's Funny Little Boxes brand only recently announced the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to the successful 1991 pedal with Skeleton Key Josh Homme-inspired overdrive, and he's got another surprise ahead of the company's attendance at the UK's Brighton Guitar Show: a brand new overdrive pedal.
Punk Spirit had actually been in the works before Skeleton Key and planned especially for the 15 July event, and it's inspired by one of Brighton's most successful bands: The Levellers.
"The Levellers have been a constant in my life," says Andy. "When my now wife and I first met eleven years ago, a shared love of the Levellers was one of the common threads between us that drew us together. We have seen them together many times; attended their festival in 2013; conducted our own Levellers-themed pub crawl around Brighton, and when we got married had their hit “Beautiful Day” playing as my wife walked down the aisle.
"With all this in mind, Brighton Guitar Show seemed a fitting place for me to pay tribute to the Levellers in pedal form."
The one-knob overdrive pedal bearing the band's rolling anarchy logo (hand stencilled by Andy and his wife) will initially only be available at the show.
"Although an extremely niche and limited release, the Punk Spirit is the most personal FLB pedal I have created to date and hopefully serves as a fitting tribute to a band that has always been a willing thorn in the side of the mainstream musical establishment," says Andy "I hold them in the highest esteem, their music having given me untold amounts of joy throughout my life. The Punk Spirit lets me pass a bit of that joy on to you."
In other Funny Little Boxes, the launch of the Skeleton Key has had to be delayed, but it is coming.
"I genuinely thought the Skeleton Key would have been on general release by now and I am gutted that it’s not," admits Andy. "It is a very frustrating thing to have done all the hard work and built up the excitement for something only to have a drawn out wait to get it out there because of manufacturing issues beyond your control."
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