“Offensive” is one comment that electronica rock duo Gross Fugue hears about their performances. But they take it as a compliment.
“We try to push the envelope as to what is acceptable,” says Ed Eibel, who plays double bass and co-writes the songs for the band, which plays tomorrow night at Sappho de Base in Taipei.
What offends some is the graphic nature of Gross Fugue’s multimedia show. During the group’s Fiction of God, the audience sees a string of video images projected on stage: a hockey player with a bloody face, a crucifixion scene, random scenes of fisticuffs, nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Iraqi prisoners being tortured by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
The song compelled one restaurant owner to ask the band never to come back again. But Eibel insists that they “don’t want to be gross for the sake of being gross.” The images are necessary to “to complete the song,” he says.
Besides, says Eibel, the song expresses what he wants to say: “If god isn’t a fiction, why do these things [the violence] happen?”
The band, which is named after Beethoven’s famously dissonant piece, takes the karaoke concept of singing to a prerecorded track and gives it an indie-rock slant. But unlike typical karoke tracks, Gross Fugue’s music is drenched with distortion and electronic effects.
Eibel creates the skeleton of each song by prerecording the drum and bass parts with computer software and electronic synthesizers. Then he compiles footage for an accompanying video. On stage, he plays the double bass with a bow, while bandmate Erik Kolmarnicki plays electric guitar and sings over the prerecorded tracks.
For the duo, the partnership is an ideal one. Having met through the expat music scene, the two say they have realized a common artistic goal: to combine visual elements with music. Before meeting Eibel, Kolmarnicki had just started to use MIDI synthesizers and became “excited by electronic music.” “I like being able to blend heavy music and melodies,” he said.
The pair also share a penchant for off-the-wall performances. Eibel, an American expat who also produces children’s music for non-native English speakers, used to play Jimi Hendrix covers on the ukulele as Jimi Ukulele and the Ukulele Experience.
Kolmarnicki, a native of Canada, used to perform with Taipei expat comedians Hartley Pool and Chris Garvin under the stage name Eddie Bruce Jr. His repertoire consisted of 1980s songs, which included We Are the World. He didn’t sing the songs to be funny, but rather to be “weird,” he says.
With the generally darker content of the music, Gross Fugue tries to lighten up its one-and-a-half-hour set with a grunge-electronica cover of Deee-Lite’s Groove is in the Heart.
Tomorrow VJ Ferox Neutrino joins the group on stage, adding visual elements to the band’s videos with self-designed software that “reacts” to sound.
With Gross Fugue’s shows, Eibel and Kolmarnicki are looking for a connection with an audience, whether positive or negative. Having this band, says Kolmarnicki, is a “chance to do something emotional and visceral.”
“[We] want people who watch the show to be physically and emotionally exhausted when it’s over,” says Eibel.
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