Three Of A Different Kind

What a relief to listen to music that isn't squeaky squeaky clean! London based threesome, Transister, like to incorporate into their recordings the sound of tape and vinyl noise, amp hums and hisses. The result is a gamut of pleasurably varied pop songs that veer from hard noise to gentle acoustics, featuring original sampling, sequencing, musicianship from Eric Pressly and Gary Clark, and strong brave vocals from Keely Hawkes.

Gary, Eric and Keely met about six years ago in LA while Keely was recording her solo album. The three became friends, and decided to hook up when they all found themselves living in London. Transister, the band's first album, was soon put out by Virgin, and recently Gary, Keely and Eric have been expanding their fan-base by supporting the likes of Headswim and The Smashing Pumpkins on tour.

How do Transister describe their music? Is it the kind of thing the band would like to hear themselves?

"Well it is," says Gary in a broad Scots accent, "but there's not one person that could make it on their own. It's to do with a combination of the three different things that people bring, especially with everybody being from different places." Here Gary touches on one of the reasons why Transister's creative endeavours are so unusual and fruitful: they're all from different cultures. Gary's a Scotsman, Keely is from England and Eric is from LA.

"The developments that I bring to the party, that Keely brings to the party, that Eric brings to the party are all very different," Gary explains.

Says Eric: "One of the things that's common to all three of us is that we're all songwriters. Gary and I met through our publishers in LA, and that's the foundation of our record. Inside of that, Gary's quite technical - he has a studio at his home - and because I'm always really picky about drummers, and being a bass player, all these things cross paths. Keely being a singer is into melody, but again, it's not any one person who's assigned a job - we all participate in all aspects."

Is that unusual, to have such close creative empathy among three people?

"Yeah," agrees Keely, who's been writing songs for years. "I found in the past when you're writing with more than two people for it to be pretty difficult. I actually think that this is the first time that I've found three people working well in a writing situation; usually you connect with only one of them, and it might as well just be two people writing."

What do Transister usually write about?

"Each song is a story in itself," says Keely, "and it's always different lyrical content. We don't write about the same thing every time, or it would be a bit boring!"

The shaved-head, blue nail-varnished Gary takes up the theme: "Because there's again three different sets of ideas, we filter that down to get the best ideas from it. Keely might be singing about something that's happened in my life that I've brought into the song, or something that's happened in Eric's life, or her own, so we're never really short of lyrical ideas, there's always a lot of stuff to bring in. It's honing it down to the song that's the hard bit; the craft of it."

"I get a lot of ideas from my friendships," bass-player Eric explains, "observing people that are close to me, and exploiting their pain! Because we were all friends before we were in a band, and because we're so close and have remained close, it's sometimes maybe easier if Gary's going through something, or Keely's going through something, to help channel whatever the situation is into a song, than maybe they could do on their own. Or maybe it helps to colour it through a friend. I know sometimes I'll be half way through an idea and Gary will be pulling a lot of stuff out of me that I would never have thought of. Meanwhile, he's recognised what I'm writing about before I did!"

It seems that Transister - whose latest single, 'Dizzy Moon', sees release at the end of June - have that special ingredient that glues a band and their music together: shared lives which they can see through each other's eyes. n

• Transister is out now on Virgin Records.