by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Equal parts punk ruckus and performance art, preschool panic and e-pop shakedown, Montreal's Les Georges Leningrad parlayed their first album, 2003's Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou on Blow the Fuse, into stage time with Sonic Youth, Le Tigre, the Gossip and Trans Am. Despite the departure of bassist Toundra LaLouve, the remaining trio - Poney P, Bobo Boutin and Mingo l'Indien - are no less weird and wired on their new release on Alien8 Recordings, home also to the Shalabi Effect and the Unicorns. A round-table inquiry into the new CD proved every bit as Georges-iastic as Sur les traces de Black Eskimo itself.

Mirror: Your first record sounded like what would happen if someone brought an espresso machine to an international daycare centre for kids with behavioral problems. Sur les traces de Black Eskimo, on the other hand, sounds like the record for those kids, all full of strong coffee, if they went to a disco. Will you win a Grammy?

Bobo Boutin: Oh, no, Rupert. A Grammy means that they want to rape the kid out of you. I am riding this bike pretty seriously. Those adults are no fun at all. Black coffee smokes and smell revenge. I just want to say that if they want to put a Grammy in my tiny bear paw, I am going to do an outrage to my stomach by drinking all this black coffee. I don't want their hideous recognition. I just want a quiet donkey to finish my days, in this little shell called Black Eskimo.

Mingo l'Indien: The first album was an ommagio to the children we are. Simple things and simple sounds mixing with the first time we drink alcohol and take drugs. We are adolescent now and beginning to explore the new society and the new world. We want to find the "who" and the "why" of those first peoples to live here. The natives, they call them. It's a kind of tribute, too, to this fabulous no-man's land. Strong coffee can make young people dance. Disco is made now of Guru drinks, but not ours. We can't drink it...

Poney P: Oh, it sounds like this Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. Revolution from the coach potato... These "rehabilitated" debilitated kids get back from the alley, suddenly go into those mains streets, yellow-eyed, and go inside the giant department stores and destroy their consumer powers. It reminded me too of my dream last night. You know, these Pharmaprix drugstores, they tend to grow bigger and bigger. In my dream, they were so big it was scary. They were cold, neon-lighted, with thousands of different brands for washing-machine soap. It is and was evil. I wish they go so big that they will explode. One Grammy more for Pharmaprix and poof! Revenge of the small. Revenge of dirt. Revenge of nature. Ecological Leningrad. Disco for the swamp kids. Moulded disco. Disco supplies for the avenger.

Eskimo no-no

M: So who is this Black Eskimo, anyway? Your press material says he's a qallunaaq - a big-brow, a white man - and that's about it. Why are you hunting for him? Doesn't he just want to be left alone, like Charles Bronson?

PP: I don't want to develop on this question, because it is Bobo's legend. And every time he reminds me of it, I always forget. I am bad at keeping up on jokes. But I am fascinated about the relation of the words "black" and "Eskimo." It is like a no-no. It makes a yes. One day, we made a show with this amazing Inuit throat-singer, Tagaq. She came to me, very upset and sad. There was this branché clothing store on Pine called Eskimo. For her, it was an absolute insult. Because it is the white people who called the Inuits "Eskimos." It is like calling a fancy, pricey, white-trash clothing store Nigger. So this album evokes a coloured skin and a racism at the same time. It is like we called it Bastard-Bastard, which is the so-much-spoken-about nature of Les Georges. In deep shit, flowers grow. Ha, ha!

BB: He's here on my side, he's there on yours, Rupert. I saw him for the first time behind my back in a mirror. It would be an irreparable error to hunt him, or, more dangerously, for him. He does everything by himself. I was following his traces when I felt his cold breath on my neck. I turned back on my feet quickly and I was standing there on the front page of the Mirror, with my two thumbs up on my side. At the age of 16, I swallowed that Black Eskimo pill. After 30 minutes, someone was knocking at the door. I opened the door and then I saw myself with an all-dressed pizza, eyes wide twitching, asking if I was at the good address.

MI: The white man can't go hunting by himself. He needs help. We can't leave him alone, 'cause we will find him dead with wolves turning around. So it's why we go hunting with him to protect him from the bad mystery of the white plains. In a certain way we are all the Black Eskimo. Maybe you are the Black Eskimo. Or Charles Bronson - who knows?

Masters of the Garbage

M: The cover art of your album features you guys hanging out with none other than He-Man's green-and-orange sidekick Battle Cat, in his unarmoured Cringer state, from the beloved Masters of the Universe line of toys. I think it's very cool that Les Georges are friends with the Masters of the Universe, but what are you going to do if Skeletor comes to your shows, gets drunk and starts fights?

MI: I think Skeletor will come drink with us on the stage, and if he wants a fight, our manager will protect us with his mysterious gougoune and his cellphone. It's why we call him Super-hyper-ti-père #5. He is a superhero. I know too where Skeletor lives and I don't think he will come that night. He needs to take care of his women. But we have a lot of friends in the superhero team. Les Georges are maybe a kind of superhero crew here in Montreal, and maybe we go out till the night comes and we rescue old persons and dogs, cats, birds - who knows.

PP: I was a girl, really girl, dressed in pink from head to toe when I was a young kid. I had a boy haircut from my mother, and it was a real secret drama. I knew Barbie and not He-Man. I just found these two really cool green tigers in a church basement sale and I did three or four paintings of them. I always draw them - they obsess me. They are so Warhol. But you learn me it is one of the Masters of the Universe?! Wow. Skeletor makes me shiver now. You see how Les Georges are Masters of the Garbage? Legends from the dump. So the story is, Battle Cat was found ill and abandoned in an alley by little Poney and she took it home and called him Bingo, which means Mingo, but with a bad cold.

BB: Rupert, the Tri-Klops can stop that old woman called Skeletor. The greenish Tri-Klops will put his red eye and the Skeletor will be out of sight. The blue eye, the qallunaaq one and then the red-seein' eye, colour, colour, colour.

CD launch with Q And Not U, Tim Hecker and DJ Satan Bélanger at Theatre Corona (2490 Notre-Dame W.) on
Thursday, Sept. 30, 9 p.m., $12

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