Mental Overdrive

Photo by Elizabeth A. Bethea

Bands tend to treat the “Influences” column on their MySpace page like their own personal peacock parade. A chance to puff their chest, display their plumage, and concoct the most eclectic, obscure and populist list possible. Most of the time it’s just easier to listen to the tracks.

A list that includes Three 6 Mafia, DJ Assault and Digital Mystikz to describe what has affected the sound of a Brooklyn electronics duo does not bode well… were it not entirely representative of the paradoxes that make Telepathe so great. Busy Gangnes (hello, best name of 2008) and Melissa Livaudais make music that’s as much in thrall to the hip-hop hooks of a Hot 97 playlist as it is the loops and drones of Charalambides or Growing. They fuse primitive chanting and electronic feedback with celestial vocal melodies and dippy rhythms you can dance to.

When NY avant-overlord David Sitek heard their recent “Farewell Forest” EP he got so funkin’ excited he offered the girls a month in his studio to make another record. Out popped the perfect “Chromes On It”—and cue me not listening to anything else for three weeks.

Vice: You refer to your music as “process-orientated”. What does that mean? Am I an idiot for not knowing?

Busy Gangnes (voice and FX):

Maybe. It’s just the way we write. The process changes all the time. We continually change the instruments we use, our roles in the band, and the people we collaborate with. We place a lot of importance on how we make the music, not just the finished product. This takes the weight and pressure off the final thing being “good”. I guess it’s more of an ideal than a reality, though, because we definitely end up stressing out over recordings.

It sounds like you have a case of “output OCD”. I have that with a lot of stuff. Like, I can only use Pilot V5 Rollerball pens.

Melissa Livaudais (voice and FX):

Erm, well, everything is very well-calculated, yes, but not always well-executed. No space for playing is ever the same and even if it is the same space there is no way we could have the same exact experience twice. Improv does not appeal to me at all so I guess that is kind of OCD, yes.

Is there a hot New York boy-boy duo who could be your avant-garde mirror image?

Busy:

Stay High

Melissa:

Stay High is for real. Some hot ass, cute little boys that make some fly music.

I hear wedding bells. Who are your favourite telepaths of all time?

Busy:

Carrie White.

Melissa:

Maybe Darth Vader but we are telepathic in the sense that all life on Earth is telepathic. We’re the same as you.

CANARY DWARF

The Dance Mother LP is forthcoming on Social Registry. myspace.com/telepathy