w/Trans Am, Movies
Mon May 31, Chop Suey, 8 pm, $10 adv.
The no-wave genre is crowded with scrap-heap experimentalists turning angular clamor into art. It's a landscape where other genres, from pop to punk to noise, can emerge war-torn, disemboweled of their pleasant continuities and turned inside-out with shiny synth guts and ripped riff-seams showing.
Currently there is a lot of runoff in the indie DIY scene from the groundbreaking work of early influences like the Residents, Suicide, and the Screamers. Among the young no-wave generation, Montreal's Les Georges Leningrad fit well into the aesthetic of such acts, with music that's a mishmash of mismatched instrumental and vocal tracks. They'll jerkily stop and start sped-up singing in foreign tongues, splice in loops containing the fuzzy crunch of old record needles on vinyl, and allow beats to clop around like blocks knocked off a table. Or an accordion, acoustic guitar, and depressed male mumblings will sound like a circus tragedy expressed by a clown after drinking a bottle of firewater. LGL create a manic, messy stew of music, in which the aim seems to be to provoke as much as entertain, especially when it contrasts the sometimes shrill screeching of vocals with soothing, glassy-eyed bass rhythms.
LGL's debut album, Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou, was recently reissued on Alien8, but the band had already built momentum before being taken on by the same label that signed the Unicorns. After self-releasing Deux in 2002, LGL went on to tour with Le Tigre, the Locust, and Numbers, creating a buzz for both their recordings and their live shows, which are a smear of Wet 'n' Wild cosmetics and thrift-store-costumed havoc, much like the performances of San Francisco's Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes.
Poney P, Mingo L'indien, and Bobo Boutin of LGL requested that our interview take place via e-mail, and their answers were as amusing and nonlinear as their music. What follows is part of a longer Q&A with the band.
I've read other interviews where you've talked about ghosts haunting the band. Is that still the case?
Yes, caporal, Portuguese ghosts, moonwalking sleepwalkers.
Do they ever get into the music and make noises you didn't think would be there?
We are able to wait hours in this situation, waiting for the ghost, breaking through a dream with unfortunate pimples around our adolescence. He says, "Beat up the lazys, make some noises." In 1964, he killed a little child and had it on tape. It's a scary story. We hate when we get drunk and start to tell this story.
What are some of the more inspired pieces of stagewear you've put together?
The elderly outfits. Ninety-nine-year-old petrochemical rockers. Harassing people with a lady handbag is pretty fun. The smell of pink peppermints mixed up with naphthalene and feces brought the people back to something very far, kid memories.
It would seem that a band like yours would constantly feed off each other's work. What have been some of your most brilliant/breakthrough moments?
Every composition is a volcanic blast! The ebullition is constant. We love to do everything!
What are some of the common themes in your music?
Lost islands, cannibals, sugar, sudden death, revenge of the small, poverty, atrophied muscleman, sea, abyss, alcohol, homosensuality, idiots, dictionaries, friendship, rotten tooth, Neron, Idi Amin Dada, Giulietta Masina.
I like how a lot of the songs build up only to feel like they're falling apart. What mental factors figure into your music?
Psychosomatic troubles, ethylic experiences, poverty, and the absolute REIGN of our breathless YOUTH! Kid spasm orgasm!
What's the best thing that can happen to you as musicians?
To travel all over the green and blue globe, funny customs, funny people everywhere. Like the Fratellini Brothers and others, play with that breaking line where you use construction, destruction skills in a loop, like a mother shaking her baby in the stroller, with unfortunate madness and then feeling guilty and feeding him with lollipops.
