In Scott Crary’s 2004 documentary of New York City’s 1980’s no-wave scene he depicted the majority of the noughties new wave of ‘experimental’ bands plying their arty wares in the Big Apple (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, et al) as careerist, recognition-driven acts pillaging the musical larders of their predecessors, but leaving their admirable creativity-as-catharsis motivations on the shelf, like gone-off eggs. This new omelette, he argued, was far too sweet, and the chefs most certainly reading from a recipe book. On the one hand its all too easy to take the side of Lydia Lunch, DNA, Sonic Youth and Swans as some of the most radical musicians (or non-musicians, as most no-wave acts styled themselves) of their day, and despair at the vacuousness of the bands in their stead now. The other side of the coin, though, is Telepathe. Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes, the band’s founders, are ripped straight from the “Dos and Don’ts” pages of Vice magazine: perfectly aloof, silently magnetic, a walking pair of tabula rasae waiting to be written on. They’re most often posited as a more accessible Gang Gang Dance or Effi Briest, two of the city’s more rewardingly challenging eclectic-is-cool bands, and for better or for worse this is an accurate reference point for those at the gateway of contemporary American art rock. So is their door lock marked engaged or vacant?
2009’s being dubbed as Telepathe’s year to make it big. How’s it weighing up against 2008 so far?
Ummm, I don’t know?
Do you think having a place on a “Top Ten Bands To Watch in 2009” list is more pressurizing than encouraging for a band? Do you feel pressure to work harder at the band in order to fulfill the hype?
We’ve always felt pressure to work harder. We put it on ourselves, because we want to be the best we can be, musically speaking, otherwise its just so fucking boring. We only do it to feel like we are growing, and making something really new and exciting. From the beginning, we set out to be on top.
You guys are most inspired by hip hop when it comes to beatmaking. Which rap acts or producers are you most influenced by?
It changes everyday, but the major guys stay the same – Dre, Darkchild, Missy Elliot, and the list just goes on, but we listen to everything.
How much of an influence do you reckon Dave Sitek had on the album? Has working with him changed the way in which you’ll make music in the future, do you think?
Dave had a major influence on us. He was one of the first people to believe in what we were up to and multiply it by a trillion. We learned so much from him, and most of all we learned to never compromise what we believe is right. That is what we will be carrying into the future – “we do whatever we want and we aren’t going to apologize for it!” Basically, be as creatively free as possible.
You have a song about luring a man to the woods with the promise of a blowjob before murdering him – I’m hoping your lyrics aren’t based on personal experiences?
No, that never happened in real life. We watch a lot of films (horror), and the day we wrote those lyrics we had just watched Wes Craven’s “Last House On the Left.” Very disturbing movie.
There seems to be a far greater amount of twosome bands making it big now, and a much bigger proportion of attention for female acts. What are the attractions and the limitations of being a music duo, and are there any tangible advantages or disadvantages being women in rock music you’ve experienced?
Really? I haven’t noticed. I think that we definitely get treated differently, because we are women in a “boys club”. However I do not feel like discussing our patriarchal world in a Telepathe interview (but we are here to destroy it, hahaha). Ideally, it would be cool if objectification of women and misogyny didn’t exist! Playing as a duo is economical I suppose. I think things are easier when there are less people involved.
What comes first with Telepathe, making art or making pop music?
Making art, but they are the same to us.
You’ve been putting out singles and EPs for a few years now, what made you wait so long to put out the album? Is this the closest you’ve been able to get to a representative collection of Telepathe’s identity?
It took a long time to make decisions about who we trusted to put out our album… We set out to make music that sounded like “our music” and we accomplished that. Now we have to continue to make new music that doesn’t sound like anybody else.
Do you think there’s a wider acceptance for music like Telepathe’s in the wake of the success of bands like Gang Gang Dance, TV on the Radio and Animal Collective?
Yes. TV on the Radio and Animal Collective have proved that people were sick of hearing recycled music.
If you weren’t Telepathe would you buy the Telepathe album?
Yes, of course. We make music that we would actually want to listen to.
Telepathe’s debut album Dance Mother is out now.
Words: Daniel Gray
