by LORRAINE CARPENTER

If space is the place and love is the drug and rhythm is a dancer, then the Unireverse is the all-encompassing sound. With a wealth of cranky but loveable old analog gear, Michael Caffery, Brian Damage and Alex Moskos link musical styles as disparate as disco, post-rock, prog and pop. On a series of self-released EPs and CDRs, they weave psychedelic epics out of songs by Donna Summer, Brainticket, Hawkwind, the Silver Apples, godspeed you! black emperor, the Human League and more. On stage, the band matches their lo-fi aural delights with simple but transfixing acid video FX, towering shadow dancers or masses of blinking Christmas lights.

The trio promises a proper album by mid-2004, featuring familiar Unireversed ditties - re-worked since Caffery filled the shoes of drum & bass personality Suzuki Kid, who left nearly two years ago to teach English to Slovakians - along with the Beatles' psychedelic landmark "Tomorrow Never Knows." But "U Feel Love" is their new offering, a split 12-inch EP with that Donna Summer cover on the A-side and, on B, "Tell Me Does She Love the Bass," aka Melissa Etheridge's "Like the Way I Do" interpreted by local foursome Lesbians on Ecstasy. Leading up to the launch, the Mirror spoke to Damage and Moskos about tackling their tunes, loving prog and connecting with Caffery.

Mirror: So what's Michael Caffery's story?

Alex Moskos: He's been a figure in the Ottawa music scene for a long time, he's a really versatile guy.

Brian Damage: He's kind of like the Jon Ascensio of Ottawa.

M: How did he join the band?

AM: Well, the first couple of CDRs were just recorded at home with a tape deck and we wanted to step it up for the Katron EP, so we went to Michael's studio in Ottawa. He ended up playing on the record and it was just such a great time.

BD: He was living above this candle and hemp shop so we recorded it in the store at night with candles going and all these wizard postcards and tie-dyed, psychedelic clothing surrounding us. It was real psychedelic kitsch, it was perfect.

M: Has he changed your sound?

BD: A great deal. I'm pretty happy with the new tangents we've been going off into lately. He's got insane old-school gear, so in addition to laying on the beats, he's doing a lot of keyboard work so it makes the sound fuller, and Mike really knows how to take it out with a solo. He's got a good handle on the crazy sounds. Whenever we're at his studio, he'll run off and pull out some crazy piece of gear and a soldering iron.

AM: Yeah, Michael's an electrician by trade. He's really on the same wavelength as we are. Not that it wasn't the case with Joseph [aka Suzuki Kid], but now there's finally a third member of the band, even though he lives in Ottawa, which is a pain in the ass.

BD: It makes the recording process very slow, but it feels right recording there. We just pack our gear into the van and head out for the weekend.

AM: It's really nice for Brian and me to get out of Montreal occasionally. Ottawa isn't the most exciting city in the world, but it's quiet.

BD: The only distraction is, of course, Michael's insane record collection. A jam usually starts off with a long session of listening to his latest finds, but that's good too. It's inspirational.

AM: Listening to records is a big part of the band.

Undercover brothers

M: Have you guys ever tried to cover a song and failed?

BD: "Sabre Dance." That one's tricky just because it's so fast.

AM: We tried "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow" by Funkadelic and it worked out okay, we'll try to get back to that one, but sometimes these sorts of songs present too much of a challenge. "Brainticket" is a really crazy song, it's this repetitive riff with a really weird time signature, and we've never quite gotten it right but we took liberties with it and made it our own. The thing that's so amazing about those old synthesizer records is how well they tackle the songs, how they arrange them. We try to do it - give it our own flavour, but it's hard sometimes. It's tough.

M: Is it important to you that people recognize the original songs?

AM: Yes and no. With our bigger covers like "I Feel Love," I think part of the appeal is that people know the song and it's great to hear a band playing it live with synthesizers, but tunes like "Brainticket" are just too deep and too nerdy.

BD: The fact that these songs are covers is really not the main point of the band. If it's obscure and people don't recognize it, that's not really a problem.

AM: The band should be enjoyable to anyone, no matter what music they've heard or not heard. If you get into that, it's just too exclusive. The songs are just frameworks for us to go off and make our music, they're an excuse for us to play synthesizers for two hours. The nice thing about doing covers is proving how much room there is for variation in songs we all know. Good jazz bands take popular favourites and make these whole new things out of them. The song is a theme and you kinda tear it apart, work with it, muck around with it, improvise, do it differently every time, and sometimes things will go off in this really awesome direction. That's the exciting part.

Have your Pie-IX and eat it too

M: In Wire's recent review of your EP, I thought it was interesting that they brought up Montreal's prog lineage.

BD: We're pretty happy about that. We're proud Montrealers.

AM: I'd be the first to admit that I'm a big progressive rock fan. When I first moved to Montreal [from Ottawa], I was amazed at how much prog was just sitting around the record stores and a number of people said the same thing - in Montreal, prog just never died.

BD: Disco as well, it broke here before anywhere else in Canada.

AM: Yeah, in the '70s there were a ton of small disco record labels here. There's a very specific style of Quebec disco. Who knows why? In the most positive way, I think Quebecers, both English and French, are just a little more sophisticated, for whatever reason. Being in Montreal has been really good for the band 'cause people have just been really receptive, and living here had such an influence on us. Even the metro stations - you're in a prog band just waiting for the metro, going out to the Big O. It's funny, we were hanging out with the Lesbians on Ecstasy last Sunday and they were talking about how there should be a metro stop tour.

M: How did you hook up with them, anyway?

BD: Lynne, the singer, is a good friend of my wife Josée. Early in the summer, we couldn't figure out what we were gonna put on the B-side of this 12-inch and I heard that the Lesbians were going into the studio at the same time, that's how it came about. The track turned out great and over the summer they started to get really popular, too. And they're cool.

AM: It's a good match. On one side you've got lesbians covering a lesbian anthem and on the other side you got synth nerds covering a big gay anthem (laughs). As Michael says, it's a great thematic single.

M: Are they working on an LP?

BD: They are, they're at the same point with their proper CD as we are. Actually, we're slightly ahead but that's only because we started two years ago (laughs).

AM: It's a race, like the moon landing. It really is a space race. But, in this case, I think we're the Russians.

With Lesbians on Ecstasy, Joel Taylor, DJs Slutsky, Lynne T. & The U at La Sala Rossa tonight, Thursday, Dec. 11, 9pm, $5

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