Interview: Telepathe May 16, 2009

Telepathe are Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes, a pop duo emerging from Brooklyn’s new electro-avantgarde. From the borough’s industrial abyss of Bushwick, they released their debut album  earlier this year on V2. Dance Mother was  produced by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek.

Always out to straddle the lines between weirdness and pop, Telepathe come along with a brand new beat that doesn’t really sound like anything you’ll have heard before. It is a sprawling, deranged, yet glorious mess of sound that manages to go from spheric electronica or droney shoeagaze to frontal club rap within a single song, or as they describe it themselves, sounds like nothing and everything at the same time.

Article: Hello Melissa and Busy, tell me what to expect from the gig tonight!

Melissa: We’ve always seen ourselves as producers first, then performers, so the live side of the band was always kind of patchy, but over the last few months we’ve found a way to make our music come to life. We can recreate what we’ve done in the studio which took us a long but we sound really dynamic now. We have a really awesome sound person with us now, and have been much more confident lately, for us it is great fun to play these days.

Article: Your music is some sort of futuristic dance that no one really understands yet, but how would you best describe it to some one who hasn’t heard it?

Busy: I hate the term electro, I’d leave it at Pop.

Melissa: It’s different for different people, a couple of hip hop producers really like it, which makes us really proud. It’s pretty genre crossing and that’s something we always wanted it to be, and I like that description the most.

Article: How do you feel about being called avant-garde, does it mean anything to you?

Busy: Not really, we are not avantgarde, we are weird. Our music is supposed to be accessible, and avantgarde is not. 

Article: Let’s talk about Dave Sitek. While working with him, could you figure out why he’s so highly regarded?

Melissa: Definitely. Working with him was amazing, he made us feel comfortable from the beginning, and he has so much energy! We’d work at his studio in Willamsburg, it’s a mess there, meet him in at 4 work till 4, get coffee, walk through empty Willamsburg at 6 in the morning, getting new ideas all the time.

Busy: we had written all the songs before we came to the studio but he’s been a great help. We are huge nerds when it comes to sounds, and working in his studio, with his collection of synths and all, was a great experience.

Article: So what’s Williamsburg like, supposedly the centre of the hipster universe- I know you’re friends with Effie Briest and Animal Collective and all that but do you feel part of a scene?

Busy: Willimsburg’s crazy, easily one out four people’s in a band, a lot of our friends are musicians and it’s really helpful, it’s all a big community. 

Melissa: We feel like we should step away from it though, we’ve given up our homes and are moving when done touring, where , to, we don’t know, maybe Berlin?

Article: What about the lyrics, the album’s themes all seem very creepy and dark?

Melissa: Yes! Real life inspires us, and that’s just what comes out, the news, our country’s wars, the (former) dark administration, dark times, and the gun shots we hear at night in Brooklyn. Me and Busy always hand a note book back and forth, we collaborate both on music, and lyrics, and work out ideas, always very democratically.

Busy: We also get inspirations from books we read, like Nabakov and Poe and take phrases we like and give them our own twist. I’m also fascinated by 90’s dance hits’ lyrics, really simple and graphic ones.

Article: There’s one particular song on the album, that’s really graphic, ‘Michael’ (about a boy getting a blow job in the woods and being killed afterwards).

Melissa: Yes, we made that one really fast, we had watched this horror movie the night before and that’s where we got the idea from.

Article: Finally, what will the future bring for Telepathe?

Melissa: We’re touring throughout Europe and Japan till fall, but then we’ll work on our new album! We collect ideas for it all the time, it’ll be dance orientated and a lot more poppy. Ever since we’ve started, we’ve come into writing with a pop structure more and more and this is we are heading song-wise. It used to be all very loose and improvised, and now we have been tidying up our way of writing. 

Busy: It’ll be about melodies! And we really can’t wait to go back to the studio and record.