Appendix™ Magazine Online

Interview by Laura Lotti.

Manchester has always played a key role in the development of British music history.

Its own strong music tradition startd to grab the World’s attention in the late 70s with Joy Division and A Certain Ratio and reached its climax in the Madchester era thanks to ground-breaking bands the likes of The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, 808State – just to name a few – and proper “institutions” like The Haçienda and Tony Wilson’s Factory Records. After a few years of silent activity, today there’s a new band to perpetuate this tradition: they are The Sisters of Transistors – 4 “sisters” named Wigby Elka Whippany, Ragna Teisco Dottir, Naomi Doric Pencrest and Henrietta Vox Humana – plus Graham Massey of 808State fame.

From the rather skanky club in East London where we went to see them, they immediately teleported us to other worlds thanks to their obscure yet dreamy and sophisticated melodies and hypnotic choirs. And if even Jarvis Cocker and Ladytron were there in the crowd with us to check them out (no, seriously!), maybe it’s worth listening what they have to say.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and your music?

Sisters Of Transistors are a Keyboard group. We mainly use 1960’s Transistor Organs; they have a very unique sound, not to be confused with church pipe organs or Hammond organs. We also use synthesizers and other vintage keyboards from The South Manchester Museum Of Keyboard Technology (S.M.M.O.K.T).

We have weekly meetings held at the museum, where we may have Tab Lab or a seminar in electronics, costume design meetings, soldering or choir practice. There is a strict limit of 20 minutes for gossip per session and cakes are expected to be of a high standard.

Tea is provided and is made with soft water (we never drink tea in London where the chalk content of the hard water makes the drink worthless).

When did everything starter?

The most recent version of the group formed in 2007, though there has been a ladies organ quartet in the Manchester area since 1944 and some of the music has been revived via the archives at U.M.I.S.T. [on of Britain's most distinguished universities] and family sources.

So your Myspace reads “The Sisters Of Transistors”(S.O.T.) are a Combo Organ Quartet and Ladies Social Club” – it’s all about girl power then?

Yes only 50% of Sisters Activity would be classed as music. In order to fund the Museum and Archive activity many fund raising activities take up our time such as The Wayward Wives’ famous Jumble Sales, Cosmetics and Fungus Parties, Pie Contests, Archery, Social Picnics and fires.

All this sounds a bit wicca-esque. Are you secretly witches? How can you become a SOT? Do you have to go through some obscure ritual? Did you have to sell your soul to the Devil of Elka?

As an extension of what used to be called “club culture” and its innate shallowness, many areas of the UK have built alternative social networks deliberately outside the internet. It may seem closed, but its value is in true social contact and all its dangers and pleasures.

You come from Manchester. And The Man of the band is a member of 808State. How has the glorious past of Madchester influenced your music?

I think we have a true view of Manchester Music History, which is often clouded by a convenient molding by 1990s London centric journalism. We work very closely with the staff of the Manchester District Music Archive [and institution created “to celebrate Greater Manchester music, protect its heritage and promote awareness of its cultural importance”]. For instance it is a commonly held belief that The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays were key Manchester Groups. Anyone knows the important music-changing works of the late 80s and early 90s were made by the anti-personality cults of 808State and A Guy Called Gerald, who were hugely inspired by their forefathers of dance music The Bee Gees and 10cc. Its no coincidence that most of these groups originated in Chorlton-cum-Hardy or at other points along the magical River Mersey which starts in the Pennine foothills above St Ockport, flows though Didsbury before Chorlton and on to Liverpool. The Mersey Valley is surely a coronary artery of pop inspiration. Other members of Chorlton’s Hall of Fame include Hermans Hermits, Freddy and The Dreamers, Edward Barton, Badly Drawn Boy, Steven Fretwell, Triclops, Elbow, Jim Noir, Alcock&Brown, Sirconical, The Whip, Toolshed, MayMing, Howard Devoto, George Best, Dennis Law and Sir Matt Busby to name just a handful. We are here at the source, so that we may alter this in the future.

There have been quite a few other great bands coming out from Manchester lately. One is Delphic, for sure. Do you know them, how do you relate with what they do?

We don’t know them so we don’t relate with what they do. It’s important that we work in a vacuum free of influence and the pollution that is most modern music. Sisters are made to hand over any iPods or Music phones on entry to S.M.M.O.K.T. or the tour bus where music is strictly forbidden before a gig. It is highly irritating to have to play alongside other bands, get changed in toilets set up the wiring in the dark or under flashing lights. Anyone considering hiring us should bare in mind that a unisex dressing room is not acceptable, and that it is only polite to take us to a restaurant approved in advance by our secretary.

Your sound and stage presence made me think a bit about Delphic, again, Chrome Hoof, a acid prog disco version of The Shangri Las (with the ability of actually playing, and really well, instruments)… But what are your real influences?

The French group MAGMA, (Chrome Hoof are so obviously influenced by them also), Lilian Myers, Korla Pandit, DK Singh Gay Ron Cuboard, Greenslade, Tony William’s singing and RD Burman’s orchestrations.

Have you got some big plans for the near future?

We have just finished recording our debut album and hope to have it released by September, with a preceding single. It’s our ambition to have an extension at S.M.M.O.K.T. as a permanent performance space, where people who truly want to see us can come to see us, instead of us travelling.

We have some issues with travelling due to the antique nature of the instruments, and the disrespectful sausage factory nature of the current music industry.

Manchester International Airport is one of the world’s major hubs and can accommodate this, we have a shuttle bus direct from the airport to Chorlton where you will be met by one of our hosts and transferred in a windowless van to the compound car park at S.M.M.O.K.T. But meanwhile in order for S.O.T. to perform abroad we currently have a number of “Organ Doners” across Europe, Japan, the U.S. and now Argentina. Anyone wishing to become an S.O.T. Organ Doner can apply on line.

 You’ve got a thing for vintage Italian organs, if I’m right. Is there anything else you like of Italy?

Of course Italian pop music from the 50s and 60s led the way for modern electronic keyboards.

“Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation” by Francesco Adinolfi covers this subject very well.

Farfisa made the first and best transistor organs, we love Dario Argento films and the music of Italian proggers GOBLIN and Nino Rota (lovely use of organs).

We love a bit of Morricone and have recently recorded an hommage in Dies Irie from the film “Mask of the Red Death”. We have a juke box in the canteen at S.M.M.O.K.T. which is filled with a batch of Marino Marrini’s 7 inches from one of our car booth extravaganzas. We would love to perform at the clifftop venue at Revello! Please somebody sort this out!

We make our own Cannoli and eat them at every rehearsal (sometimes we get a delivery from Bob the Bastard – he runs the supplies to the Italian restaurants in the UK).

So, Appendix is a “visual magazine”, which emphasize images and look. How important is the image to S.O.T.? Why you always wear capes? What’s the idea behind it?

We work with many of the Manchester designers, and I think we have a cape designed by most of them now. Again we’ve started to leave “wardrobes” at friends’ houses around the UK, so we don’t fill the tour bus with them. We had some capes from Thomas Oberheim from Bruges that we wore last year but we could not get them cleaned and are now favouring the Manchester Designer Ken Scott Thomas. We have a deal for shoes with Kiss My Feet and have taken on a fulltime Hairdresser who doubles in tarot readings does (Morgan Pugh).

Right, I guess that’s all. Is there anything you’d like to say to our readers?

yes -”Key Ron Gay,Hey Re Or, Exchelsis!”

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