/// STUFF@night 2nd Annual ‘100 Fiercest People in Town’ Issue

MACHINE AGE Meet the multimedia ensemble known as More Machine Than Man. By Suzanne Kammlott MORE MACHINE THAN MAN, or MMTM to their friends, are not your average industrial goth/fetish/techno/performance-art ensemble. With more goings-on than a small community opera company, MMTM (a name taken from RETURN OF THE JEDI) has quietly, effectively, and (oddly enough) all but anonymously generated a large fan base in the often fickle and uncooperative world of Greater Boston multimedia. With freaky original video footage of penis surgery, and of women blindfolded and shrink-wrapped, set over songs that call to mind, KMFDM, Filter and NIN, MMTM’s jaw-dropping, eyes-covering, nightclub-consuming presentations are headed to CBGB’s goth night, Alchemy, later this month. Here, members Tech, Tasha, and Boy talk about their shtick. TECH- Southie native, 25, choirboy WHY ALL THE WORK? WHY NOT JUST ‘ROCK OUT’ AND CALL IT A DAY? I never considered myself the greatest guitar player or singer, but I’ve done the rock-and-roll thing. In a typical band set-up, someone’s bound to get diluted, but [with] this type of project, there are fewer cooks in the kitchen. The technology allows me to take an idea from inception right through the end. It’ll go through variations without losing anything, and I won’t have to explain everything to other people. It’s much more streamlined: it allows more creativity once you harness the technology. WHY SO ANONYMOUS? We started in the fetish/goth community, and we don’t want that to bleed over into our lives. A couple of us are self-employed. In the Boston scene, there are some characters, or maybe caricatures would be a better word for it- they don’t do much, but they’ve been around and made a spectacle of themselves long enough, so they’re some kind of celebrity. The three of us-not that we’re unfriendly, but we have anti-social natures. We aren’t interested in that kind of notoriety. We want people to be familiar with MMTM’s art and music. If we walk into a club and nobody knows we’re behind the show, that wouldn’t bother us at all. YET YOU REALLY WORK THE ‘P.R.’ ANGLE…WHAT’S YOUR SECRET? We spent a lot of time promoting the band, getting artwork and CDs out there. We were doing that six, seven months before we ever did a show, so by the time we did, we had built a following that other people have to play a nine o’clock gig on Tuesdays for two years to get. WHO THE HELL LIKES YA? We’ve mostly done the goth/industrial crowd, so we know we have a fan base there, but we also attract a real rock-and-roll crowd that doesn’t go to goth nights. But when NIN came around, these kids were there, kids that wear jeans and rock T-shirts and dark glasses, probably computer-science geeks into NIN. I didn’t think we’d had a lot of reach into that crowd, but when we were handing out CDs or fliers outside the show, they already knew about us. HOBBIES? I do a lot of woodworking. I’ve made stocks, big crosses, coffins-I’m always making stuff like that. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A COFFIN? WAS THIS FULL-SIZED? No [laughs]. It wasn’t a big hardwood coffin that’s lined. It was more of a mock-up coffin. TASHA- Metro West-ite, 26, recent Pilates convert. FOR THE NIAVE, WHAT THE HECK IS MMTM? We’re a multimedia performance-art group. We’re not just music. There’s an entire art show that goes with it: film, animation, video. It’s hard to just give someone a CD and say, This is what we are. WHAT WAS THE EVOLUTION OF MMTM? I was listening to Garbage and Loreena McKennitt and pushing for a gothic feel, while Tech wanted more of a hardcore background and wasn’t thinking about integrating a female singer. We blended it together and, after playing out, got some pretty good feedback. Now we’re starting to work with a lot of effects to get more of a hard, edgy sound. I think our next CD will be more extreme. We don’t want to do what’s been done before. WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE ANONYMITY? We’ve just have to, because of the fetish. I mean we’re all professionals. We can’t talk too much about our other lives. It’s funny, we have a multimedia presence, but people don’t know what I look like or who I am. I think it’s great. THINGS YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE TRIED? There’s one thing every show. We’re so technology-driven, and we’ve got a ton of equipment. I mean, More Machine Than Man: it’s in the name [laughs]. CRAZIEST VENUE? Club Hell in Providence on Erotica night; they’re crazy down there, they’ll be dancing on the tables. They love us. GIMME A STRANGE IMAGE YOU’VE USED. One illustration by Boy is this devil is coming out of this woman’s…she’s like, you know, giving birth to Satan. He used a piece of cantaloupe. It’s just really, really warped. HOW’D THE RECENT SHOW AT BILL’S BAR PAN OUT? It was great. The ball game was just over… OH GOD, HOW DID THE CROWD REACT? I’m sure we scared some people, and I’m sure some were scratching their heads saying ‘What is going on?’ But people stayed around and were dancing. Not everyone was dressed in latex. We do have a crossover effect to a hard-rock audience. WHAT’S THE POINT OF ALL THIS? We want to be disturbing, we want to be sensual, and we want to be beautiful. BOY- Webster native, 30, first kid in town with a mohawk. HOW DID YOU GET TO THIS LEVEL OF CREATION? In ’78, I can remember the Sex Pistols [getting really popular] in Boston, and my mom was like a Studio 54 chick, a disco-club waitress. So I kept getting left with these punkers. I got exposed to a lot of glam and stuff early on. When I was 14,15, cable access first came out, and people could set up their own editing. I was setting up systems for different towns; they didn’t even know I wasn’t 18. After high school, I started to do special-effects makeup. Then I worked on animated effects for this guy, this is crazy…this guy whose life was turned into a movie called F/X with Brian Brown and Brian Dennehy; he did a couple years in jail for the Gambino crime syndicate. I was working on his huge farm in the Adirondacks for two years. It was awesome. SO WHAT ABOUT COLLEGE? I was supposed to go to Bryant for business, but I blew that off. I remember being 18, and the bong hit that did it. I’m straight-edge now, but this is sort of what it sounded like [affects stoner tenor]: "Oh man, that was great…[exhale]…Dude, if you go to business school, you’re gonna be a freak and lose your soul, they’ll find you scribbling in some ledger and put you away." And I was like, "Wow, that makes sense, I’ll tell my parents in the morning I’m not going." SO, AGAIN, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU GUYS DO? It gets kinda tough to describe. I say we’re a multimedia performance group, then I have to explain a little, because people respond, "Well aren’t you really a rock band?" We get that a lot. Well, no, I tell them: you have to see what we do. We run events, take over clubs. We make our own films, clothing, artwork- everything we do is 100 percent original. We don’t take or steal from anything. NO EGO STRUGGLES? The multimedia thing is something I’ve been trying to get off the ground forever. It’s popped up in Boston, but it never took a foothold. I could never find people I could collaborate with, but with Tech and Tasha, we joke I should be wearing a claddagh ring- It’s like we’re married. NIGHT THEY HAD TO READ MMTM THE RIOT ACT? The Haven in Northampton was taking a dip in its’ numbers, so we thought, Let’s have an event along the lines of a horror-movie promotion. So instead of ALIEN’s slogan, "In space, no one can hear you scream," we called it "Put your evil on: More Machine Halloween." I’ve never had so much fun. After we played, we filmed some video in the club. They’re very cool with us [at The Haven]. By the end of the night, we had 15 to 20 people walking around completely naked…sex in the bathrooms. It was wild, just chaos. SHARE AN ODD SELF-REFLECTON. I was walking through the food court at the mall during Christmas. Everyone was out: Mom, Dad, the kids. And I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I’m a pornographer!"