LUXT

Let me start with the name: where did you come up with it?
ERIE: It was a strange spelling of "Lust" actually. Didn't mean anything. It's just strange that Anna has a lux pentagram tattoo and I have a female symbol tattoo (which both mean "venus" in some symbolitry) so (after coming up with the name) I was playing with symbols for the band that were a female sign with a lux pentagram in the circle. Which when you think of it, is Lux with a "t" at the bottom.

ANNA: Strange huh?

ERIE: I prefer to think of Luxt as meaning a balance of energy (positive & negative) just like the lux and nox penagrams, yin & yang, etc. Especially when you look at what the songs are about. Which brings us to the next question...

How does it relate to your music and lyrics?
ANNA: Well, Erie writes all the lyrics...

ERIE: Generally I just don't understand the common psyche, so I spend tons of time analysing things, people, etc. Things actually look pretty simple to me, but most people just don't get it. I mean I can say, "Why are people so afraid of change?", but then I realize that with new things, just like in an electronic circuit, resistance is neccessary, or the circuit gets overloaded and burns up, so I have to accept that things are a balance even in my own perceptions of things and realize that most things exist for a reason. So the lyrics are usually a reflection of these observations, as well as fictional stories that I am currently writing. I write about the places and people I invent in these settings, but even then it's still observations of the way people react to life.

Can you describe what the atmosphere in Sacramento is like for your style of music?
ERIE: There isn't really much of a scene here. In fact, we run a club in Sac called Biomech. It's the most popular underground industrial dance club. There really aren't any other bands doing a lot of shows or putting out music here right now. In a lot of ways we've actually become the scene. That might sound arrogant, but we're just about the only band in town who's motivated right now. I wish more of them would be, because I've heard some really good music from them. I often ask, and even hound, them to give me something to play at the club, but still, nothing.... I don't get it.

Do you find the scene has had a positive, negative or no effect on your musical developement?
ANNA: Well, if being pissed off about the fact that people(in general) are so lame that fuels our inspiration, yeah, it's had a positive effect. (laughs)

Reading your bio, you have a very refreshing attitude toward the incorporation of guitar into your music ("It's all just sound."). Have you actually had any negative feedback from electronic purists out there or has the whole synth vs. guitar debate been blown out of proportion by forums like R.M.I.?
ANNA: Actually we haven't had much negative feedback about our use of guitars, most people have commented that they liked the way that we blend the two.

ERIE: Yeah, we don't really use guitars like many "industrial rock or metal" bands do. We sample our own playing and then tweak the hell out of it to where it actually sounds much more like synth or something anyway. Live it's a little different though, but still not totally "metal" or anything.

ANNA: It's definitely blown out of proportion in RMI because most of those people want to turn it all into a sports arguement, like "my team can kick your team's ass". They choose a side then go to bat for it. It's lame.

ERIE: I used to be very anti-guitar about 9 years ago, but I was naive about sound at that time. Now I think "hard" sounds are what interest me, and guitar is definitely one of the "hard"est.

In terms of sampled sounds, what have you found to be the best source or method of creating your own?
ERIE: We've sampled a lot of things. Garage doors, drills, etc

ANNA: We sample all of our own drums through effects. Drum machines are too thin, even if you put effects on them after the fact.

ERIE: Mostly I love the weird samples I can get off of guitars and basses and synths sampled through lots of different distortions. Not just notes, but the little clicks and squeals you can get my toying with the strings on an instrument.

What equipment do you favor for sampling?
ERIE: Well on the album we used an EPS and an EPS 16+, but (sadly) right after the album was completed we aquired an Emu ESI-32 with 32 megs, which is our weapon of choice now. We like to use a Boss SE-70 or our Digitech RP-10 to sample through and tweak the sounds.

ANNA: Just recently we started playing with software sequencers and sample editors on the PC, and that is really going to give us more power for sound manipulations.

How did you end up with 21st Circuitry for you latest release?
ANNA: We sent off our self released debut cd "Jezabel Thirteen Three" to Recon, COP, Metropolis, 5th Colvmn, 21st Circuitry, and a few others and then started playing shows to start networking with the right people. 5th Colvmn actually wanted to sign us at first, but when we told Don from 21st Circuitry that they were interested, he suddenly wanted us as well. Both labels offered us similar deals, but 21st Circuitry is really close to us geographically and there were a few details that were better with Don so we went with 21st Circuitry. We've been very pleased with them so far.

Do you have distribution for either of your discs outside of the US?
ANNA: Not yet. I'm not sure how 21st C. handles that sort of thing.

Do you have a sense for how known Luxt is outside of the local scene?
ANNA: Just in talking to people while we're booking the tour, and feedback from the web. 21st C's publicist is really good and also a very nice person, from what we've seen so far, she's been a big help.

How would you personally compare Disrepair to Jezebel 13.3?
ERIE: Very different. With Jezabel, we weren't sure about the sound that we were trying to achieve. By the time we finished Disrepair, we realized that we have a very good idea of what our sound is, and were very satisfied that we had achieved it. From here it's just going to be further steps (in sound as well as writing) in the same direction with a few new things here and there.

Seibold contributes an interesting remix of "Devil's Advocate" for Disrepair. How did you originally meet up with him?
ANNA: We first met him because we had put on a show with Hate Dept. and Unit:187 in Sacramento, which was also the reason we met Don.

ERIE: Seibold has been a big help to us. We usually send our stuff to him, just to get his reaction, before it gets released. He went out of his way to do that remix for us when he was extremely busy and we're very thankful for that. Seibold is a very sincere and honest person as well, and it helps that he has had a favorable reaction to our music also. He's always willing to offer advice or talk to you if he has time.

Your bio claims your live shows are "not to be missed". What can people expect to experience when they show up to a Luxt show?
ERIE: Energy.

ANNA: Yeah, we really get into it live. Even when the crowd are a bunch of dead fish, we just love to perform.

ERIE: Right now our shows focus on the performing of the music, not so much props, theatrics or lighting (not that those things aren't good as well). But we figure that playing the music should be the first priority.

ANNA: I don't think that most industrial bands focus that much on the actual playing of the music.

Also regarding your live performances, you make a point that every note is 100% live. Having recently attended a show where the band was running mainly off DAT, I can really appreciate your attitude. How important an issue is this for you?
ERIE: Boy, that's an interesting point right now. At one time we were playing with backing tracks, which we have no problem with ethically. But coming from a background of actually playing electronic type music fully live, I know how much easier it is to do fully live, and how much better it sounds without the backing tracks muddying it all up.

ANNA: Yeah, you have to realize that Luxt music isn't a bunch of atmospheric noise and things that should be on backing tracks. Almost any noise on the cd is "musical" and represents something that has a tonal pitch. So it's not like a backing track that contains noises, it's like trying to play similar things on guitar and keyboard that already exist on the tape, so it gets muddy.

ERIE: For the past 2 months we've been practicing completely live, and we plan on doing just that on tour in July. But we have been having problems making it sound full enough, so we've played with the notion of going back to using partial tracks to fill in the blanks. But I for one would always prefer to do it all live. It's so much easier.

ANNA: Right now we might be adding a new guitarist who's very skilled and that would complete the sound enough to do it fully live, but we won't know for sure till the end of this week.

ERIE: I'd love to say this for sure, but we think that we will probably be fully live on tour.

It appears you've done a number of shows over the past year. Could you relate the most memorable one, good or bad?
ANNA: Hmmmmm... Well, the worst one I won't mention, we've kinda erased it from our memory. It was our first SF show and 5 people were there listening to us play through one blown main speaker.

ERIE: It was hell! But the worst crowd ever was definitely San Jose.

ANNA: Yeah, those people are asleep. It's real strange when you get a great reaction from 4 different places in SF, then travel an hour in another direction and run into a wall of attitude.

ERIE: I think it was just a bad crowd, I'm sure there are people in San Jose that would get into our sound, but they just weren't there.

ANNA: We've really enjoyed all of our SF dates, the Troc, the Catacombs, So What, and Roderick's chamber, but we always get a big response in Sac.

ERIE: Yeah, we're rock stars!!! Ha! We played in our own club, what do you expect?

ANNA: The last show we did with 16Volt and people were chanting "Luxt, Luxt, Luxt!" it was great. Then 16Volt came on and the place exploded. It was fun. We liked playing with them.

The production on Disrepair has a really compressed, almost claustrophobic feel to it, and it reminded me of some of Die Warzau's recent work. Are there any special aproaches you take when you're in the studio?
ERIE: Well, I'm a big fan of Die Warzau, but I hated their last album. Ha! No, really, the claustrophobic feel probably comes from the fact that the EPS's are mono samplers which don't lend to much to spaciality. All of those problems are gone now and we're extremely high-tech since then, so the next album is going to be much deeper work.

ANNA: We just work really fast in the studio.

ERIE: Yeah, it's hard to catch all of your ideas on tape if you don't work the controls fast enough, so we tend to churn stuff out really fast. I let the songs tell me what they're about and work the lyrics in from that, so perhaps that claustrophobic compressed sound made me write that type of lyrics. Much of Disrepair has to do with the feel of living in a very large city. And that can get pretty claustrophobic.

Both Luxt CDs have been produced and engineered by Luxt. Do you forsee a time when you'd work with an outside producer?
ANNA: No.

ERIE: Fuck no. A producer exists to give you a "sound", but with our music, that "sound" is part of the music to begin with. Maybe we're closed minded for saying it, but I personally have no interest whatsoever in working with an outside producer. Ever.

If forced to, who would be your top choice for the job?
ERIE: If it was forced upon us, I'd actually like to work with people that I know right now, not some force in the industry. I know some people that have very good ideas. I respect people like Seibold, Eric Powell, Rhys Fulber, Ogre, and even Trent Reznor, etc. But I'm not interested in seeing someone else's interepretation of our music put out as a "Luxt" album. That's what remixes are for. I love to hear what other people do to our songs. Up to this point I've been at the mercy of bad equipment, but not any more. I've been doing electronic based music for 14 years now, and I can take any sound from my head and make it happen. Now I just want to make more and more music.

ANNA: We're very sure of the sound we're after now. And we believe it's a sound that people will love.

Your lyrics are gritty and very fitting for the music. Who is responsible for writing them? Also, where doest the inspiration for writing them come from?
ANNA: Once again, Erie writes all the lyrics.

ERIE: I have these stories about a world that exists in the future, and I like to create characters and set them loose in that environment and see how they react. I write a lot about that. Plus I tend to write about my personal life as well. In the last two years I've shed a lot of the people who held me back for quite a while, so much of that comes up in our songs as well. Mostly it's just my observations on life, which can be pretty dark sometimes. Not in a mopey gothic kind of way, but in a way that makes you feel stronger for dealing with things and overcoming them. Kind of an emotional military approach. Ha!

Luxt covers Gary Numan's "Cars" on the 21st Circuitry Newer Wave compilation. What inspired you to choose that song?
ERIE: I thought it would be cool to have a female doing the vocals on it and have a driving guitar line instead of the old elecronic backing.

ANNA: Yeah, it was a song that everybody knew and we thought it could be updated well in this genre.

How has the response been to that track?
ANNA: Overwhelmingly good. Almost too good. We keep making all of these playlists, but for a while all they were in to was "Cars". That's changed, which makes us happy to have our original material on charts, but still, playing it live is hell.

ERIE: It's like 5 minutes of the same riff! It goes on forever. But people still want to hear it, and they love it live, so we torture ourselves. Think of how sick you get of hearing a song when it's popular. Then think about the fact that it's been around for 16 years. Then spend a month working on it in the studio, then imaging practicing it for months and months, then going out on tour and playing it.

ANNA: You get the point.

What is your favorite pastime outside of music?
ANNA: Thinking "Boy, wish I was doing music".

ERIE: There's an outside?

ANNA: Honestly our lives completely revolve and exist around music. All of our friends, our lives, our free time (of which we have little) are all absorbed in it.

ERIE: Our little arogant self-proclaimed title as of late is "Luxt, the most ambitious band.".