|
Fantasmic voyage >>
Crossover take electro for a magic capsule ride
Mirror:
So you two met working in retail at Smylonylon. What kind of store was
it? Mark Ingram:
It was a dead-stop clothing store that sold old but never-worn clothes
from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, but there was also a lot
of music. We made about 30 volumes of Smylonylon mix tapes, everything
from uneasy listening to foreign disco, early electro into new wave,
music from all around the world. That was a research period for us because
we were playing this music over a big sound system eight hours a day.
We’re really interested in making people dance and all that music
had beats and heavy basslines, and, if it had a nasty keyboard over
the top, it made us happy. M: How did
Crossover get going? MI: Crossover
started with a story we wrote called “Fantasmo,” then we got
into messing around with a four-track and decided that’s what we
wanted to do, make some music. We felt we were dealing with future music
so we developed a concept, an idea that interested us. M: Without
giving too much away, what’s the story like? MI: It’s
like a cartoon adventure. Desmond and Verona are two characters lost
in the Crossover capsule, and the experiences they have are relevant
to our everyday life but, instead of using people’s actual names,
we turn them into characters in our story. We’ll keep making these
stories and, hopefully, throwing them onto records. It makes things
fun for us, like an adventure. M: Are you
building a Star Wars-style mythology? MI: It’s
like Star Wars in the sense that the story came first and the album
came after, but it’s more humorous, like a Sid and Marty Krofft
kind of thing, or Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. We hope someday we’ll
have our own Fox TV syndicated show with fast edits, sets, miniatures,
animation, all of it. M: Are you
using other media, Web sites or— MI: We make books called the Pirate Communiqués. The first one was a colouring book with lots of info about the characters. We actually hand sew the books and bind them and give them out every time we play, but they’re limited edition. For Montreal, we’ll have a new one, it’s called The Pin-ups Book, it’s all the flyers from our 17 shows. : With Tiga vs. Zyntherius, Luther & Johnny and Thomas Lord of the Marionette, plus visuals by Unisex, at SAT on Saturday, May 18, 9pm, $20
|
New
York City’s Crossover is electro with a difference. Italian émigré
Vanessa Tosti and Texas native Mark Ingram are the duo whose funky synth-pop
debut Fantasmo found its way onto DJ Hell’s mighty trendy International
DeeJay Gigolo label. But Tosti and Ingram are also Verona and Desmond,
characters in their own sci-fi tale that informs most of their lyrics.
The story so far will be recounted on a 12” (to be released in
August) also featuring a new track and remixes by Tiga and Noddy, but
first, the astro-duo will touch down in our town to play and display
their wares. From a far-off Gamma Quadrant (aka Phoenix), the Mirror
received the following communication.