FREDDIE MERCURIAL
by Ben Wilmott (*)
"I said to Richie Hawtin," laughs FRED GIANNELLI in his nasal
mid-Western drawl, "'I hear you started a cult'. He didn't
know what I was talking about, so I said, 'Yeah - The Temple
Of Plastik Youth'. Because he's got this Deadhead following
(as in The Grateful Dead) who are driving eight hours to gigs
and getting tattoos. That's what happens when you tour
America."
Fred's an expert on such matters, of course, having spent
years trawling round the States with much despised
industrialists Psychic TV - founders of the mysterious (and
now disbanded) organisation Temple Ov Psychick Youth.
"I think if electronic bands do play in this country it'll
help techno in the States," he continues, "Psychic TV had a
great reputation in this country because we actually went to
every little town."
The early industrialists, Fred insists, had little in common
with today's macho chestbeaters and while they remain about
as fashionable as incontinence, the current techno breed,
bands like Autechre, Germ and Scanner still hold them in
high regard.
And considering Psychic TV's pre-runner Throbbing Gristle
released some of the first underground records as far back
as 1977 and founded the idea of an organised alternative
music scene to combat the corporate sterilisation of music,
their importance in today's thriving electronic scene
shouldn't be underestimated.
When the band split in 1991, Giannelli continued his solo
experiments until a collaboration with Hawtin and Dan Bell
(responsible for DBX's floor-filling single 'Losing Control'
last year) as Spawn, erm, spawned his own label Telepathic.
"John and Richie mentioned setting up a label for me through
Intellinet (the organisation they run to co-ordinate and
distribute Plus 8, Probe, Definitive and a host of North
American imprints), when I went up to do the second Spawn
record," relates Fred, obviously grateful to the pair.
"Things didn't go too well - a friend of mine just got
killed and I wasn't really in the mood," he continues, "not
to mention half of Richie's gear getting hit by lightning.
We didn't want to release it, so I took up the offer of a
label and when I got back I recorded the first release
('Painkiller' as PSI). It's too bad the Spawn record didn't
come out but I'm glad I got a label."
These doomy tales of disaster seem to follow Giannelli
around. On the way to his first live show earlier this
year, he was involved in a head-on car accident: "My chest
was really bruised," he says nonchalantly, as if this sort
of thing happens all the time, "but I did the gig. That was
the Telepathic launch!" The second was "another fiasco",
Fred says again laughing sardonically, "everything's gonna
run like clockwork from now on."
If bad luck visits Giannelli from time to time, it hasn't
stopped Telepathic becoming a world-respected techno label
with releases from Hawtin (his collabaration with Fred on
'The Acid Didg' is an experimental classic), Vapourspace's
Mark Gage and Giannelli himself pushing it high up the
Saturday afternoon shopping list of most self-respecting
trainspotters.
A recently released compilation, 'Telepathic Wisdom Volume
1' (through German trance label ESP) collects the best of
the label's first ten productions for those who don't
fancy rooting out the originals; in the meantime, Fred's
got a stack of projects for other labels about to surface.
"I'm doing a CD for Sahko," (Finnish label, home of Jimi
Tenor and numerous other wigged out analogue technicians)
says Giannelli. "They seem very connected to the early
industrial esthetic too. I'd like Telepathic to be as
experimental as Sahko; I don't know how they pull it off
and still sell records."
So will Fred be using his new-found esteem to form his
own cult? Apparently not.
"I'm not into any of that magick stuff," he says, "in
any case, I live in Salem (he setting for Arthur Miller's
witch-hunt play _The Crucible_) and they burnt witches
here, so it wouldn't be a very good place if I were!"
* Telepathic are set to release Monte Cazazza's
'Telepathic Cazazza' as well as new singles from
Edinburgh's Tobias Schmidt and Fred's own Splurge project
within the next fortnight; Giannelli also has a remix on
the current Swim Remix LP 'Water Walker' and a mix of
former Throbbing Gristle members Chris and Cosey's 'Twist'
on the forthcoming C&C remix LP 'Twist', due out on T&B
Vinyl in late August.
(*) from NME 17 June 1995
---
ERkki
Tampere, pHinland
trerra@uta.fi