Prole patrol

>> Garage rock revolutionaries the International Noise Conspiracy bite the hand that feeds

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Rising from the ashes of prog-punks Refused, Swedish band the International Noise Conspiracy pull an about-face, ditching the math and the jazz in favour of bowlcuts and fab mod riffs. The communist fist-shaking remains intact, though--amped up a few notches, even, given the exten-ded diatribes in their lyrics and liner notes. The Mirror got in the ring with singer/tambourine hero Dennis Lyxzen to spar over counterculture, over-the-counter culture and the necessary evil of their label Epitaph.

Mirror: I'll start with a statement, and see how you react. It's my impression that the INC mandate is in part to mine the strata of popular culture for effective platforms for dissent and subversion.

Dennis Lyxzen: The problem with finding platforms is that most bursts of spontaneous creativity end up getting recuperated by the capital. Like dada--it started out as a movement of resistance, and now they're in the museums. So it's hard to find a proper platform. We know where we are active--within the rock industry. But we try to not let that limit us in our expression. We're very hard on our label, very much in charge of everything that we're saying and doing. So we try to expand popular culture so that eventually, popular culture will be the idea of resistance. We'll see. It's a hard project--many have tried before us and failed miserably.

M: It's been my feeling, for many years, that the most effective vehicle for subversion is in fact the mainstream. Even at the cost of compromising a degree of artistic and moral integrity--say, if you want to quantify it, 25 per cent--one still reaches a hundred to a thousand times as many people.

DL: Yeah. We wouldn't be doing interviews with magazines, going on this big tour or putting out records on Epitaph if we didn't have an idea of where we could reach the most people. The do-it-yourself, the traditional punk rock ethic, I think, is a brilliant idea--a noble and healthy action, not only for resistance but for creativity also. But we have to ask what's more important, preserving punk rock or spreading political ideas to anyone who might want to hear it, putting aside all genres, youth cultures or whatever. We know the implications of prostituting ourselves to Epitaph, but we want to reach a good amount of people. It's a very pragmatic way of thinking.

M: It's funny, what you're saying about Epitaph. I actually consider them a great example of independent culture becoming self-sustaining and successful.

DL: Hey, I just put out a record with them! But they're not really interested in overthrowing capitalism. They make a fine living from it.

M: They just don't want to get their hands too dirty.

DL: Which is cool enough. If they can do it in a way that they feel is morally and ethically right, that's fine. I'd prefer to be with them than with, say, Sony. But I don't see a huge difference in their intentions with the music. I think they see the potential with the INC--"Oh, here's a bunch of crazy radicals, we can sell that"--and I'll respect that. We say, "Here's a big record label we can use to tour North America." So it's a symbio-tic abuse of each other. :

With At The Drive-In at Club Soda on on Monday, Oct. 23, 8pm, $12