Twink Deville

Widely hailed as Ireland’s own take on classic Krautrock, Dublin three-piece Twinkranes look poised to take it to the next level in 2010. Signed to Manchester label Twisted Nerve, their just-released debut album Spektrum Theatre Snakes is looking like a contender for Irish album of the year. Since its release, it has received the kind of critical accolades that better known bands would kill for.

Twinkranes are Blonde Fox, Rooster and Auburn Spinner, three friends from Dublin (Drimnagh and Ballymun) who got together to form what they describe as a “psychedelic power trio specialising in zoned-out progressive pop musik”. According to drummer/vocalist Blond Fox (aka Anto), the band formed through a mutual love of all things electronic, experimental and psychedelic.
“The line up is myself on drums and vocals, Rooster on guitars and he also looks after the recording end of things, while Ray (aka Auburn) deals with all the synthesiser sounds, the squeaks and bleeps," he says. “We were all big into dance music. We’re also into psychedelic '60s bands and all the German stuff like Can and Neu!, though I hate quoting Can in interviews because they’re so obvious. Everybody mentions them when it comes to electronic music. Happy Mondays were a big influence on us, too. They begged, borrowed and stole from everything they heard and mixed it all up, adding their own thing.”
As a drummer-vocalist, Anto hasn’t escaped the inevitable Phil Collins jokes that have come his way. But he reveals yet another influence that might come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Twinkranes.
“I get the Phil Collins thing all the time – but don’t forget Karen Carpenter who was a drummer and singer. I love The Carpenters, Karen’s voice especially. There are a couple of bands I’ve got into recently, such as Indian Jewellery from Texas, a noisy, droney kind of band, like the Velvets mixed with The Jesus & Mary Chain. We’re not as anti-pop as people might think and, everything we do, we try to get a hook into it.”
The reaction to the release of the album is, he says, a welcome surprise. But it hasn’t gone to their collective heads. “It all helps but it’s so hard to get your profile up these days,” he avers. “The album is only starting to filter through but so far it’s been well received. We’ve had a lot of support from people like Dan Hegarty at 2FM and the lads from Phantom have been great too.”
At just seven tracks long the album includes live favourites such as ‘Spores’, ‘The Charmer’ and ‘High Tekk Train Wreck’. The sound is at once propulsive, immediate and sonically exhilarating.
“We’ve learned to strip the band right down,” says Anto. “When we play live there’s nothing on tape – it’s all live – and our set would be anything from 50 minutes to an hour long. We’re probably a bit more experimental on stage compared to the album. When people come to see us they see a lot of pain and agony in our faces and I think they appreciate it. And we seem to attract a nice mixture of musos and music nerds to our gigs (laughs).
“There’s a few women in there too. They’re the kind of people that might come to see us one night and go to a hardcore punk band the next night.”
The deal with Twisted Nerve came about relatively easily.
“Some friends of ours were running a club in Kennedys in Westland Row and Andy [Votel, label boss] came over and checked out the band, and said he wanted to put our stuff out. It suited us perfectly. We recorded the album in Stereolab’s studio in three days. It was basically our live set at the time. It’s warts and all. There are glitches, pops, and noises, which is the way we wanted it. These days, everyone is photoshopped and everyone has beautiful MySpace pages. It’s all too polished. We want to keep it as real as possible.”
They’ve appeared at Electric Picnic, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound and Belfast’s Oscillation Festival. They plan to up the ante in live terms over the coming months.
“We did a lot of touring in the last year and it was good but awkward, if you’re not in a tour bus. Bringing an old Korg synth or a kit of drums on a plane isn’t a great idea. I usually end up playing hybrid kits when I’m abroad, which isn’t good for your chops. We’ve had good, mainly independent, promoters bringing in acts and giving us an audience.
"There’s a lot of underground stuff around, especially in Dublin with bands playing upstairs in small pubs, that sort of thing. But we’ve been doing gigs in all sorts of places, including galleries, as well as on the usual circuit in places like the Button Factory.”
Meanwhile, a new track, ‘Being Kong’, features in the new Rupert Grint movie, Cherrybomb – yet another step forward. Anto: “A lot of our music does actually sound a bit soundtracky. It makes sense. It was great to see how it was used in the movie. It was kind of a druggy scene. We’re not sure if there’s going to be a soundtrack album but hopefully there will.”