by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

A band so out of the loop that they’re ahead of the curve, locals We Molecules (formely We Are Molecules) are throwing their St. Valentine’s do a day ahead. St. Vee Day itself will likely seem anti-climactic after the Molecules and their cast of kooks (Plastik Patrik, the World Provider, Jack Gallagher and more), abetted by something called a Magic Idea Machine, launch their new EP Silk & Venim at, of all places, a Chinatown tearoom. The Mirror focused its microscope on gee-tar Molecule Adam Gollner for a scientific inquiry.

Mirror: First off, how would you define the music of We Molecules?

Adam Gollner: It is like biting into a nouvelle vague peach. Our sound is the beauty of geometric abstraction. It is gilded lace in a world of bitter, salted tears. Our music is a gossamer loincloth in a dark cave of minotaurs. Truth be told, our music is a smoky, impenetrable fortress.

M: In other words…

AG: New wave.

M: So what is Magic Idea and whose magic idea was it to do a Valentine’s gig there?

AG: Magic Idea is our favourite place in this hemisphere. It is the bubble-tea hotspot in Chinatown, frequented by Taiwanese teenagers and satellite kids. The ceiling is a celestial mosaic of shimmering blue starlight. The Molecules stumbled into it one lost and delirious evening in the middle of a blizzard.

M: What about this Magic Idea Machine you intend to use at the show?

AG: It’s sort of like a super computer who has special powers including, but not restricted to, turning into the Taj Mahal, a light bulb or a whooping crane in a magnetar. The Magic Idea Machine is whatever you want it to be. Or more specifically, whatever we want it to be. It converts our ideas into actions. Whenever We Molecules need help to make an idea a reality, we turn to the Magic Idea Machine and "whizzo-prang!" Normally, confiscating a steamer in the middle of the Baltic Sea, sailing it to Leningrad and then presenting it as a gift to the Czarina would pose a problem. No longer.

M: If the Magic Idea Machine is in fact magic, do you have to get a magician to fix it if it gets broken?

AG: We are magicians, Rupert. Magicians of the mind. The Magic Idea Machine dwells in the realm of the inexplicable. But the real question is, "How do you mend a broken heart?" Come, venture with us to find the answer in the depths of Cupid’s quiver.

Stupid Cupid

M: Yeah, I noticed that your night will be "curated" by Plastik Patrik but "hosted" by Cupid and his magic arrows. You ever see those compound bows that Ted Nugent uses to hunt wild boars? Those things can put an arrow through a fucking oak tree at 100 paces. I’d like to see that little fruit Cupid do that.

AG: What about the tree sprite living in that oak? What about the gingerbread house next to that tree? What about turning into a faunlet and prancing about contentedly? What about Rumpelstiltskin seizing his left foot and tearing himself in two? It’s people like this boar hunter who put the fear in Zamfir.

M: I’d like to put a knee into Yanni, right in the breadbasket. Anyway, I’m actually quite troubled by your numerous references to magic. The molecular aspect of your band name inclined me to think that you were all three fairly level-headed persons who relied on hard research and empirical data to construct your worldview, and not given to wide-eyed flights of fancy and unicorns and flying carpets and all that shit. It seems I was tragically mistaken.

AG: We Molecules straddle the line between science and magic. Mystery is our playground and mesmerism is our bedfellow. The world is not what it seems - nor is it anything else, either. There is another world, but it is in this one. Carl Jung saw doorbells rung by invisible forces. I assume that you are familiar with the Ganzfeld procedure - a scientific process for testing psychic phenomena wherein a sender in an isolated room psychically transmits visual images to a receiver in a sealed room with ping-pong ball halves covering their eyes and white noise being piped in through headphones. Thirty-five per cent of the receivers actually "saw" the psychic messages. We are the ping-pong balls on the eyes of the universe. Instead of white noise, we propose a molecular love assault that will nibble your earlobes unto a quivering climax.

M: Yeah, sure. Oh, about this Midnite Kiss Countdown - does this differ from a Kiss Countdown in which the word "midnight" is spelled properly?

AG: One understands when one loves. One loves when one understands. :

At Magic Idea (30 de la Gauchetière W.)
on Thursday, Feb. 13, 9pm, $5

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