by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Dandi Wind wasn't raised by wolves. It's not exactly a rumour, just an overheard joke about her "alternative childhood," and she finds it pretty hilarious. Born Dandilion Wind Opaine Schlase to hippie parents, her father a sculptor, her mother an antiwar activist, she spent her first 12 years in a northern B.C. cabin minus mod cons (like running water), next to a taxidermy museum shaped like a giant igloo - hence the title of Dandi Wind's upcoming CD/DVD, Concrete Igloo.

Shortly after the family relocated to Vancouver, she met Szam Findlay, a budding musician who would spend eight years creating a sinister experimental LP called Die Hautfabrik (released in 2001), about which one BBC reviewer said, "Listen to this and cross yourself before you go to sleep." Wind's sculptures were featured in the CD booklet, marking the start of the duo's artistic alliance.

That same year, they prepped and performed Morior, the prototype for their band, at the Emily Carr Institute.

"The music had no rhythm and was more caustic [than what we do now]," she explains. "I didn't sing, but did a movement-based performance to the sound in a large set with a Butoh-esque costume. We got 50 heating grates and created a giant Einsturzende Neubauten-style percussive wall."

Less abrasive, but sometimes no less aggressive, the duo's current incarnation is crash-test electro with coarse synths, jackhammer beats, supple melodies and honey 'n' jalapeño vocals, as heard on their EP, Bait the Traps. Dandi Wind is the ideal mix-tape segue from Duchess Says (with whom they're playing at Diver/Cité's Sex Garage) to Les Georges Leningrad, which was part of the impetus for moving here three months ago. They were drawn to Montreal by like-minded artists, repelled from Vancouver by a meagre music scene.

These days, their love of Montreal is matched by their loathing of Toronto, where they've been cheated and mistreated. Wind tends to let negativity possess her when faced with hateful promoters or deadbeat crowds, or both, as at a recent corporate gig in T.O. that essentially ended with her attacking people.

"I'm either spastically angry or spastically jubilant," she says. "We have enough songs to do a set [where] I'm just dancing with the audience and sharing their energy. If there's no energy to draw from, I have to exaggerate my negative feelings. Then, performing is like being a caged animal."

That may explain those wolf-girl rumours. But the real canine content in the Dandi Wind project is the influence of their hometown heroes, Skinny Puppy.

"Skinny Puppy is the greatest band to come out of Vancouver, without a doubt, and probably the best from Canada," she says, forecasting a more experimental, industrial future for Dandi Wind, both sonically and visually. "[Skinny Puppy] must be one of the most bizarre groups to have ever achieved the success they did without getting really shit," she gushes. "[They're] Szam's favorite band and, for me, their live show is unparalleled. We'd like to incorporate a set and videos into our show, though it's extremely tough given the size of the venues we're playing now. But we'd love to move in that direction."

At Sex Garage 1, corner of de Maisonneuve and St-Denis on Saturday, July 30, 5 p.m., free

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