by RAF KATIGBAK

Finding out that former Six Finger Satellite guitarist Juan Maclean is heavily inspired by the writings of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick should come as no surprise to anyone who’s picked up Less Than Human, his debut album (after a long stretch AWOL) on New York’s mighty DFA label. At first you might not catch it, but it’s all there, the eroding sense of reality and humanity and a genuine malaise which sounds like someone struggling back from a murky place, desperately trying to make sense of the world.

Certainly the first thing you’ll probably notice is how insanely danceable it is, a quality that makes Less Than Human so utterly fascinating. Like the outspoken and fiercely independent man himself, the album is dystopic, chaotic, defiant, funky and absolutely crucial right now, a slow burner of an album that ends up sounding like Clive Barker, D-Train and Juan Atkins doing DMT at the Paradise Garage.

Mirror: After Six Finger Satellite, you took a necessary hiatus. What was it that finally convinced you to come back?

Juan Maclean: The idea that I could make a grandiose statement with music again, that I could actually do something that might stir things up, get a reaction out of people. The electronic scene seemed ripe to be bulldozed by something. It had veered so far into IDM territory, very chin-scratchy, very cerebral. It seemed like a huge dose of retarded good-time music could make people’s heads turn. Plus, I realized that, as clichéd as this sounds, I needed to make music. It’s just something I was meant to do.

M: Philip K. Dick’s protagonists often discover that those close to them—or even they themselves—are secretly robots, aliens, supernatural beings, hallucinations, dead, from another time or a combination of these. Have you ever had the same notions about people you meet?

JM: Err, I have been accused of being that person. And feel like that person. In fact, starting when I was like 10 years old, I had an ongoing paranoid notion that pops its head up from time to time, that I was created this morning and implanted with memories that make me think I have been alive for years. I have done some pretty cold things that haunt me every day, but I have always blamed the drugs I was taking at the time. The most defining feature of my life is the haunting of my psyche by the ghosts of my past crimes, some pretty fucking grim things, things I did for reasons as justifiable as protecting my life or as selfish as needing money to buy drugs.

Report to the bridge

M: Dick was also plagued by recurring dreams—do you ever have any?

JM: For years and years, as long as I can remember, I have had this dream that I am trying to make my way across a bridge, and as I go along, the bridge is deteriorating. By the end of the dream, I am crawling across a skeleton of the bridge, there is shit falling off it at every step, and there is a terrifying drop below. I never make it to the other side, ever. I guess it wouldn’t take a genius to figure this one out. I have made a disaster of just about everything in my life, except my musical endeavours. I begin things all right, like a thing with a girl or an acid trip, but pretty soon I have turned it into a nightmare.

M: Apparently your video for “Give Me Every Little Thing” is based on a true story, and you were actually beamed up by aliens. Do you think you were specifically targeted, or was it a sort of random, fly-by anal probing?

JM: Well, I’ve had a lot of experiences that people find hard to believe, mainly because they happened under the influence of substances. But I was with these chicks once, a black one and a white one, and we were engaging in sexual relations, and I woke up after and I was standing in Times Square in New York City. That video is sort of a collection of things that have happened to me over the years.

M: I know you’re also a big fan of Kraftwerk. Did you see any of their latest shows? I saw them, it was kind of sad.

JM: I’ve not seen Kraftwerk live, but some of the DFA crew went to see them last year and the reports were dreadful. They said it sounded like a Microsoft commercial. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I guess it was very tame, very unexciting. The DFA boys were on a lot of pot, but still, I trust their judgement.

With Tim Sweeney and Duchess Says at l’Ambi on Sunday, Feb. 5, 9 p.m., $16

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