Telepathe
"Telepathe give us a glimpse of a pop future that confidently fuses kraut jams, urban beats and Gang Gang Dance-style rhythms into a hypnotic, droning whole. If this is the sound of what's to come, then we certainly have something to look forward to." - Drowned In Sound
Melissa Livaudis and Busy Gangnes were part of First Nation and Bloodlines respectively. Telepathe started as a side project for for these groups. With its first line up of rotating members, the band's debut release, the Farewell Forest EP is a dense as the current incarnation, but was made by a full band in the expected set up. Their Sinister Militia "12 inch, recorded with the current line up (including semi-permanent guitar hired gun Ryan Lucero) is the bridge to how they sound now: synthetic ambience without full-blown machine beat. But it wasn't until recently that they hate jamming and gave it up for the hectic commotion of technology.
"Chrome's On It" a song that splashes with pitch-shifted Mannie Fresh beat syncopation, low tones and stuttered snare is their most immediately striking song, but only because it's the least subtle. Livaudis says she was listening to an old Cash Money instrumentals CD the week before they made it. Their music has more in common with the do-it-yourselfness of self taught beatmaker Soulja Boy than former tourmates !!!. But were they to reply solely on their hip-hop influence, they'd be a lot limper. There's so much in so many genres happening at once that it feels like an experiment in pastiche and overload.
Their woman-meets-machine mishmash is present throughout their forthcoming Dave Sitek-produced album Dance Mother. "We're making a specific lifestyle choice which I feel is political," says Gangnes. And although she follows that up by saying "I didn't know what I was going to say as I said that," it's vital that they even think about the tangled implications of being two women in a band backed by drum machines. "People will be like 'Will you please sing on my beat' and its like, Dude, we make our own beats,'" says Livaudis. "There's no smoke and mirrors!' she says. "Anyone can do this." And Telepathe certainly did. So while maybe it was just a matter of taste and convenience that Livaudis put down their instruments in favor of the LCD glare of a compuer screen, it also made for a big boom and it made a better band.
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