Last month, LA-via-Paris duo Pearl & the Oysters returned with their sixth album, Monkey Mind, a continuation of their Stereolab-like vision of psychedelic pop music that takes a day-in-the-life approach to enduring the collective anxieties of the year 2026. Titled after a Buddhist metaphor for the restlessness of a worried brain, the project effectively channels feelings inspired by the surreality of daily existence into contrastingly relaxed space-age electronica.
Given the duo’s meticulous approach to instrumentation and synthesizers, it makes sense that Pearl & the Oysters’ Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack have partnered with Roland to unveil a new performance video filmed at the music company’s creative studio in Los Angeles. Roland’s Artist Relations team works with artists through key moments in their album and touring cycles, making Pearl & the Oysters a natural fit, with Roland and BOSS instruments and gear integral to the duo's music both onstage and in the studio. Before launching into their performance of the album track “Wide Awake”—a song that sees the band “transform terrible emotions into something comforting, like lullabies,” as they explain in the clip while finishing each other’s sentences—Davis and Polack note how Roland’s gear made the transition from studio recordings to live performance relatively easy.
Additionally, the band caught up with Roland to discuss all things synths and more. “This album wasn’t the synthiest yet, but there were some things that were very precise and needed a JUNO, like the verse on ‘Mandarin Moon,’” Polack shared. He went on to elucidate on a few of the key synth sounds the duo relies on: “The RS-09 is the secret weapon of Pearl & the Oysters. It’s on every album. It’s really unique-sounding, and you can make a lot of stuff with it. Actually, we have this BOSS PC-2 Percussion Synthesizer. It has a little pad on it, and it always makes me think of the first [Yellow Magic Orchestra] album. You can make it do little electronic toms.” Polack and Davis also cite Roland’s JC-120 guitar, BOSS Katana Bass amplifiers, and CUBE Street amps as favorite pieces of gear.
Watch their performance of the Monkey Mind single "Wide Awake" live from Roland Warehouse and Creative Studio above, browse photos from the private event below, and visit Roland’s site for more with the duo.
