Ones To Watch: Twinkranes

You’ve got to love a band whose motto runs “100% psychedelic as much as you can.”

Given their sprawling, Krautrock sound you might not guess Dublin’s Twinkranes’ year-zero band. “Growing up, one of the first bands we got into was Happy Mondays,” says the band’s Anto (AKA Blonde Fox). “It was kind of like a gateway drug, we got into so many different bands through them; Roxy Music and Eno, onto stuff like Cluster and all those bands. Y’know when you get into a band and people reference them then you follow through as see what they were into. That’s what forms you and influences you.”

Maybe not so strange when you recall the Mondays’ love of Can and Twinkranes’ similar manifesto of trying to meld the structures and sounds of dance music with a more rock-orientated, live instrument set-up. “We were always into dance music and were trying to make dance music live, with live instruments.”

Spotted by Twisted Nerve’s Andy Votel, he snapped the trio up putting them to work on his Migrating-Caustic-Mutable tour, honing their chops. The three members, Blonde Fox, Rooster and Auburn Spinner, are long-time friends who coalesced into the self-proclaimed “psychedelic power trio specialising in zone-out progressive pop musik” from various elements of Dublin’s vibrant music scene. Blonde Fox clarifies: “It was kind of overdue that we got together and got a band together. We’d been friends for a long time and I’d been working on some material and we just got the lads involved and one of the lads, Ray (AKA Auburn Spinner), is a DJ and he wanted to get on board, and meself and Rooster were working on some material and we formed the band that way.”

The band is part of the latest blooming of talent from their hometown, which is something they put down to the credit crunch. “Things have been going really, really underground, which is great. I think a lot of the money has gone out of the city so it’s kinda put an edge back to it, y’know gigs going on in people’s house and spaces where you never had it before because I think a lot of the rents are a lot lower, so it’s getting a bit of its identity back after the way things were, so supposedly affluent.”

Their debut album, ‘Spektrumtheatresnakes’, was recorded live in Stereolab’s London studio in an intense three-day period that saw the band focus and streamline their live excursions into seven fat-free tracks, playing live in the studio with only the vocals overdubbed. Their adventurous live sound hasn’t been ditched though, as the trio hope to do some one-off 12” releases with a side each devoted to extended workouts.

With talk of new material already, it’s apparent Twinkranes are building up a momentum equal to their thrilling, pulsating music.

Words by Nick Annan

Where: Dublin
What: Psychedelic motorik power trio
Unique Fact: Their ‘Being Kong’ song was used in the film Cherrybomb starring Rupert Grint, who has apparently turned his Harry Potter co-stars onto the band.
Get 3 songs: ‘High Tekk Train Wreck’, ‘Fizz Not Feedback’, ‘The Charmer’