Graham Massey / Sisters Of Transistor - Interview

The Sisters Of Transistor is the latest project of Graham Massey, one of the founding fathers of Techno as we know it today. His latest adventure however is poles apart from 808 State. Here, he joins forces with four organists for a baroque horror disco extravaganza, complete with harmonised singing matching outfits and a rather camp sensibility.

So how did this project come about? It’s quite different. Well, me and Mandy Wigby, who is one of the organists, talked quite often about doing a project that was, well let’s say we share a love of horror sound tracks, things like Goblin and Dario Argento type movies and John Carpenter, that kind of thing, and we have always talked about doing something. At the same time I collected synths and stuff from the 808 state thing for years. I have got into some of the more obscure areas of keyboard collecting, which is like 60’s organs and stuff, like the transistor ones, called combo organs. Those are the things, which we used in the Sisters. We don’t use Hammonds or anything like that. They have to be Italian sounding, a particular sound.

So you only use obscure organs? Yeah, most people would know like the Doors, the most famous usage of organs, but yeah I have collected about 14 or so. They break down all the time, so we have loads of broken ones, and ones that are slightly out of tune, and stuff. It’s quite a challenge to keep four running and in tune with each other!

So is it just four organs in your live set up? For the bass, we have found that we can use a synthesiser for that, just to give it a bit more bottom end, cause you know, we are a keyboard band.

But you have live drums as well? Yeah, that was the other part of the deal. I have just taken up drums over the last couple of years. I am just a beginner really and it was a deal that I got to play the drums!

So this was your idea, the project? How did you come to work with the other 4 girls? You seem to take a back seat in the image of the band. Yeah, well, I wanted to play the drums really, it’s not a matter of a backseat or whatever, that’s what I wanted do. I wanted to do the drums. Then, because Mandy was already an organist, she used to be in Lion Rock for instance, and she’s been in bands around Manchester for a while, she bought a friend of hers in who she met on a music project, who used to play what Dakota Oak trio. So a lot of the girls have been in bands in Manchester before, apart from one, that just started learning keyboards. So we have one complete beginner as well!

How does that work working with such a range of experiences? Well, I write it on the computer, I’m very much a one fingered guy on the keyboard. We do have the real keyboardists though, just local Manchester musicians really. There’s quite a social group of musicians in Manchester, we all stick in together really. So long as everyone could give up their Tuesday afternoons to rehearse, that was OK.

So how long have you being playing together, when did you start doing shows? About a year in all. It happened quite quickly. It started off just as a bit of fun really. One of those mad projects you dream up in the pub, and then set out about executing it really. There was never anything initially. We already had this equipment, these parameters, so we could go about seeing what we could do with it. That kind of dictates the kind of music that comes out it. Which is why some of it is quite baroque sounding. When you are writing for four keyboards, you’re going to have to find lots of intertwining lines .You know, it does get quite ornate. That’s why we came up with the idea of baroque disco!

The disco element was quite a surprise, as when we started off we were almost doing a pseudo-classical sort of thing, like you might find on Moog records, which was quite a good starting point for us.

Am I right in thinking you have some ‘classics in your repertoire? Yeah! We started off doing quite a lot of covers, but now we are playing mostly our own compositions, now we have got into it a little bit. We just needed a starting point.

Organ quartets were around bit in the 50’s weren’t they? Well, the first thing I heard about an organ quartet, what stuck in my mind, why it should be a project, was the Steve Reich piece - the minimalist, called Four Organs. I always used to see the cover of that album and that was a really appealing. That was the seed of the idea planted in my head. Also an organ quartet, called the Apparat Quartet, from Iceland. They didn’t quite sound like what I had in my head, so it was just another excuse to try and set off on our own version of that.

And how are people reacting to it live? Well, after doing a number of gigs, we found the dancey element of it. The more we have carried on, the more the club stuff has stayed and some of the other stuff has fallen away. Having said that we do quite a lot of other stuff, we don’t want to be just some disco outfit.

There has been lot of Goblin type influences over the last couple of years, but you seemed to have taken it in a completely different direction. Well if you take, 808 State, I have been doing keyboard based music for a long time now. So it’s not such a big jump for me, it does relate to techno or whatever.

Are you going to do an album? Yeah, we have most of it done already, taken from our live set, but you know there are things you can do on an album, that you can’t do live. I am quite interested to see how the album will turn out yet.

When is it going to be released? We are aiming for early next year, February, March, that kind of thing.

So what is it like working in a band with four girls? Do they boss you around? Well, I have been working with 808 state for many years, and its certainly very different. That is a very male environment, its very blokey, very Mancunian, as you can probably imagine! This is a lot more… well, the atmosphere is completely different. For instance, we had a band meeting the other day, which consisted of sitting round, eating cake, and sitting for a couple of hours signing tokens. It’s slightly less rock and roll, but it’s very enjoyable.

I suppose that makes it different creatively then? Yeah it’s a different energy, to a male thing all of the time. And a lot of the music I do is quite aggressive. With some of the other projects I do, it’s all about peaking music, very, erm hammering things home. Whereas with the Sisters, it’s very much a different energy that brings out different things in me, as far writing goes anyway, definitely.
Interview by Gareth Owen