Dance Mother

Insound Staff Pick - 2009! Melissa Livaudis and Busy Gangnes were part of First Nation and Bloodlines respectively. Telepathe started as a side project for for these groups. With its first line up of rotating members, the band's debut release, the Farewell Forest EP is a dense as the current incarnation, but was made by a full band in the expected set up. Their Sinister MilitiaM 12" inch, recorded with the current line up (including semi-permanent guitar hired gun Ryan Lucero) is the bridge to how they sound now: synthetic ambiance without full-blown machine beat. But it wasn't until recently that they gave up jamming for the hectic commotion of technology.

Telepathe's woman-meets-machine mishmash is present throughout their forthcoming Dave Sitek-produced album Dance Mother. "We're making a specific lifestyle choice which I feel is political," says Gangnes. And although she follows that up by saying "I didn't know what I was going to say as I said that," it's vital that they even think about the tangled implications of being two women in a band backed by drum machines. "People will be like 'Will you please sing on my beat' and its like, Dude, we make our own beats,'" says Livaudis. "There's no smoke and mirrors!' she says. "Anyone can do this." And Telepathe certainly did. So while maybe it was just a matter of taste and convenience that Livaudis put down their instruments in favor of the LCD glare of a computer screen, it also made for a big boom and it made a better band.