A brief interview conducted with
DNA Girl from Astro Al on the winding road…
Count Robot: What would you
say is your biggest influence on Astro Al?
DNA Girl:Monty Python, 60’s avent garde movement,
Robyn Hitchcock and the Three Stooges. We’ve been compared to the Bonzo Dog
Band.
Count Robot: What is your
view of playing live verses playing a song in the recording studio?
DNA Girl: More nervous live, more relaxed in the
studio. Love the audience reactions but playing in the studio we can experiment
more.
Count Robot: What’s your
favorite live gig we’ve ever done?
DNA Girl: The Landing Pad in Philadelphia. We had a
ball there and people seemed to get us there.
Count Robot: What was your favorite recording
experience?
DNA Girl: The thing that stands out the most to me are
the videos we made. Some of the most interesting things is when we are
recording against other peoples music like when Joe Davis (from Harts Horn) or
Brian Fowler (from Spaceseed) contributed music.
Count Robot: Which video is
your favorite?
DNA Girl: Hands down, You’re Dead, So Shut Up, had a
ball doing that one. Rio Santos was a hoot too. It was fun not having to play
the straight character. It’s been fun having our friends in these videos. It’s
turned into an extension of our old theater group.
Count Robot: Where do you
get your inspiration?
DNA Girl: A lot of is from crazy dreams, like the song
Cocoa Clouds Hides the Chocolate Dimension. I just woke up one day with that
phrase in my head and Rodney the Rodent Roadster was based on a dream.
Many of the best horror stories
leave it to the reader to fill in the gaps and use the darkest parts of their
own imaginations to fully develop the terror of the tale they are reading. The
HP Lovecraft story, The Music of Erich Zann is an excellent example of this
type of fiction. If you like a good creepy story and haven’t read the Music of
Erich Zann than seek it out.
With our track Ghost Story we took
that approach.
The idea of suggesting enough
things to send the listener down many shadow filled paths.
What happened between Jack and his
wife? Did he really love her and she him? Was the ghost trying to please Jack
or did she want something else?
The video was shot in an
impressionistic style to attempt to emphasize the gothic mood.
Some of the houses in the video are
no longer standing.
The cats in the video just happened
to be there while we were filming. It was an interesting coincidence to say the
least.
So here it is, from Pet Noizes, our
horror fiction, Ghost Story.
I’ve always thought that dolls are
an odd and weird totem for our society. We project onto them the things we want
to be and the things we fear to be and do. They are portals to our imagination.
And sometimes our imagination is a
very frightening place.
From Pet Noizes here is The
Dollhouse of the Damned.
