LES GEORGES LENINGRAD

(Disorder Magazine, 2005. An exceptionally awesome band I managed to grab a few minutes with. What transpired was one of the most delightfully bizarre interviews I've ever conducted.)

“We are the protochemical ironclad Les Georges Leningrad. We touch everything without fear to dirt our nails and to break them right after a slow and painful slide on a school board. Our sweaters got holes in their elbows by the super power to admit our violent candour demonstrated by our grape juice moustaches.”

This was the self-introduction from Montreal’s schizoid synth-punks for their decidedly esoteric debut release ‘Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou’ in 2002. Since then, attempting to find an adequate description for the intangible sounds of this extraordinary band has proved challenging for many critics. Usually, it’ll involve Lene Lovich and Cabaret Voltaire covering a Slits tune in a sewer sometime in 1982. Sure, they may share the same shambolic lo-fi nature of equally ace bands like Numbers, Erase Errata and Panico, but nothing can really prepare you for the unique onslaught of sliced-up sounds on their second album ‘Sur Les Traces de Black Eskimo.’

An opening skit, which is roughly as unnerving as a date with Papa Lazarou gives way to speaker-stripping crunches of bass and piercing screams, before the mutated dub-spasms of ‘Missing Gary’ kick in. Elsewhere, ‘Supa Doopa’ is pogo-friendly acid-punk and ‘Fifi F’ sounds like a roller disco on poppers descending into hell itself. In short, they’re exactly the kind of no-wave racketeers that you’re testosterone-free shit-for-ears neighbour (you know, the one that’s been blasting ‘X and Y’ at you through the walls all frigging summer) won’t even be capable of comprehending. Oh yes!

Poney P (“the voice of strange ill falling on a pillow like a crying knife”) has a shrill vocal delivery (weirdly, Poney’s spoken voice sounds just as distorted on Disorder’s tape recorder) that jostles for space above layers of noise. Mingo L’Indien (“the mysterious melodist on the Spain warpath”) is usually masked and responsible for the electronics and guitars. Bobo Boutin (“the crowd beater and the great boiling theorist”) is the sole destroyer of drums.

Currently in the middle of a lengthy club tour, they’ve been exposing the uninitiated to their freakish live spectacle all over Europe. With a penchant for dressing in the costumes of superheroes and Mexican wrestlers, smeared cosmetics, pie-throwing and generally fucking shit up wherever they go, Disorder corners the three of them  in a bar just minutes before a secret gig in Shoreditch and fires a few random questions at them.

How did you meet and decide to form this band?

Poney: “Back when I was a kid I was into The Addams Family and the darker stuff, so it’s part of our nature to be the darker people in the class. So I guess that these two guys were the darker people in their own class when they were kids… eh, Mr Bobo? He used to live in the hallway of his classroom. So I guess at the time we just met where the people have to stay to copy the dictionary…?"

You mean detention?

“Yeah, we met in detention… in the sky, you know?”

What kinds of things were you all into at the time?

Bobo: “Breaking cars, PCP, hyper-ventilation, peroxide, chains, Subhumans (‘EP-LP’, ‘The Day The Country Died’).”

Where does the name of the band come from?

Poney: “It’s like a found baby in the street. You see a new baby on the street in a basket with their name on? It’s accidental. I think it’s a really ugly name but that’s how we were born and we didn’t question it. It’s a bastard!”

Do you all have very varied tastes in music? What do you like listening to?

Bobo: “I only listen to American hardcore from 1980 to 1983. It’s very eclectic, ha-ha. But I’m not ashamed because I’m doing the beat so I only need to keep the rhythm. You only need anger. I’m a very laid-back person in life, so it’s time for me to release the beast when I’m on stage.”

Poney: “I watch a lot of fifties movies with the starlet moving. I like to study their moves for dancing. I like the movies of Marilyn Monroe. I’m into Yma Sumac, a famous South American singer from the sixties. She sings like a lovebird. She possesses a range of eight octaves for her voice. It means she can break glass, mirrors and windows. This is a super power for a girl. If all girls had a special voice like hers, there would be no more raping.”

So if Les Georges Leningrad were in a film what would it be like?

Poney: “French-Canadian expressionism. Cardboard decors. Real animals – donkeys, monkeys and honkeys. Special FX. Stinky bombs. Prince Charles with no ears. A Quebec Bollywood, because French-Canadian are masters of bad taste. A paradise for John Waters, the director of our movie.”

Can you tell me a bit about your relationship with the Black Eskimo and why you named your album after him?

Bobo: “He is our physically disabled mental mentor living up our North like a brain in the arse. He smoked raw tobacco and dreamed in a cloud for day and night in his cracking rocking chair. One morning he turned-in the radio on a sound like a thousand bugs – the idea of north, loneliness and solitude.”

What do you do to pass the time when you’re touring?

Bobo: “Reading on the Klu Klux Klan. Jules Verne’s ‘20,000 lieues sous les mers’ and William Blake poetry. German lessons. Making our best in postcards every day. Drawing. Dreaming. Eating foreign candies. Sleeping like baby hogs.”

Your live shows can be quite riotous. What’s the craziest experience you’ve had on stage?

Poney: “There was the bleeding in Toronto. We started the show and we didn’t realise there was some broken glass all over my keyboard from some drunken people. We started to play and all of a sudden we could really taste blood. We were nervous and people didn’t know if we were serious or not. But in that kind of situation you take a benefit from it and make it gory-gory!”

Mingo: “People were bringing us tissues while we were playing and helping us cover the wounds because the gashes were always bleeding.”

Poney: “People were like, ‘Why?’ because they didn’t know us. They were very scared.”

What’s the best description of your sound for someone who hasn’t heard your records?

Poney: “Nails on a chalkboard. A crow in heaven. Waterfalls in hell. After the White Stripes, it’s the black dots. The polka-dots!”

Mingo: “Snow-wave. It’s what you will never hear from Michael Jackson.”

Lots of people find the music you make quite abrasive, but do you think there should be a place in the mainstream for the type of music Les Georges Leningrad make?

Mingo: “There is a place everywhere for Les Georges. We are preachers for the old people and for the blank. We are fishing the furry trout.”