Calculating madness

>> Add N to (X) are machine-loving maniacs

By GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

 What happens when three art school misfits, all equally obsessed with sci-fi and electronic musicology, with aggressive, futurist-leaning mindsets and a love of leather get together? Why, Add N to (X) happens, that's what. The Sheffield-born trio toss their own wildly unique twist into the old man vs. machine wager--they make it all dirty and punk and... weird. And boy, have they been busy. Barry 7 recently made a full-length porno spin-off from their vid for the single "Plug Me In" off their latest, Add Insult to Injury, and started the label Cercle Records with Jarvis Cocker of Pulp. Meanwhile, Anne Shenton's been playing hooky with a bunch of bikers in Boise, Idaho. We got Shenton on the horn to tell us what the hell she's been doing down there.

 Mirror: What are you doing in Idaho? I heard you were hanging out with bikers.

 Anne Shenton: (laughing) It's a long story. I've got a boyfriend here and it's brilliant to be able to get out of London for a few months. My boyfriend's got a couple of bikes and there's a biker gang out here called [what sounds like] Brother Speed. We've been to their clubhouse a few times and we'll go on rides. It's a novelty for me to hang out with these caricatures of biker men, like Vietnam War veterans with long hair and Harley Davidsons and guns--things I only saw on TV in England. I'm recording a lot here with my little portable sampler. One of my neighbours is a banjo player, very Deliverance-sounding. I'll come home in the evening and he'll be outside playing the banjo. I've also been recording these mad bullfrogs in the stream just down the road to integrate them into our music--not so it'll be like a nature special, but I'm gonna use them the same way that we use incidental noises on the Moog or the Korg MS 20.

 M: Will nature be a new frontier or will your sexy machine fixation prevail?

 AS: That will always come up in our work. How does a machine love? How does a machine have sex? Like the track "B.P. Perino," about a computer that falls in love with a fly that lands on its screen. The computer can never tell the fly that it's in love and wants to have babies with it. And the track "Plug Me In," about humans having sex with machines, and there was "Metal Fingers in My Body" [off '99's Avant Hard]. Did you see the animated video?

 M: Indeed, it was hilarious.

 AS: Yeah, it was supposed to be the antithesis of the film Demon Seed. We wanted the woman to fuck the brains out of the machine instead of being dominated by the machine. I think we'll always be interested in this subject. I mean, look at the Internet--it's all sex. I just got some junk mail the other day about a penis enlarger. I don't have a penis! It's so funny to see these sleek, pristine black and gray laptops sitting there in the corner of the room and there's so much information and junk mail that's sexual, like, "pop stars in their knickers." I just don't need to see Britney Spears in her underwear. :

 With the Unireverse at the Centro Social Espanol on Monday, July 16, 9pm, $15

 

At the Spectrum on Wednesday, July 4, 6pm, $29.50