BOSTON'S MOST ECCENTRIC

If Lewis Carroll were alive and throwing house parties, Think Tree would be his band of choice. Formed in 1987, the band consists of vocalist Peter Moore, guitarist Will Ragano, electronic drummer and percussionist Jeff Biegert, and two, count em, two guys on synthesizers, samples, and vocorders, Paul Lanctot and Krishna Venkatesh.

And, as Alice said, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

The band is an electronic spectacle of otherworldly sounds which are lucid one instant and garbled the next. The rhythms and tones layer and splay, reaching vertiginous crescendos then vanishing into something new, leaving a motif hanging in the air like the Cheshire cat's smile. But no sequencers or automatic drums are used--this is all done manually (albeit on mind-blowing pieces of musical technology). Think Tree plays these instruments, rather than simply programming them. The resulting combination of sophistication and sponteneity has earned Think Tree recognition on the local music scene and airplay on local radio, most notably on alternative giant WFNX. When asked about their musical influences, the band is unanimous on one point: "Not slick pop in any genre."

15 MINUTES:How do you reconcile your dislike of slickness with the fact that your music is so electronic?

MOORE: Electronic, now, has come to mean slickness, largely because that's what it's employed for, because it can do so well making something sound really slick and nice. Electronics do that really easily and automatically. The cool samples, the factory samples, whatever. But to us, that is the abuse of that technology; that is exactly what music shouldn't be. Electronics doesn't equal slick to us. It just means a whole new palette of sounds, that if you use them creatively, can be the antithesis of slick, can be raw as hell. It depends on how you use it. It's just unfortunate that it's so grossly misused.

BIEGET: It's kind of like the difference between buying a paint kit with a limited number of colors and painting by numbers as opposed to getting a blank canvas and mixing your own paints and slapping it on with anything--brushes, toes, whatever. We approach the instruments in a way that most of the music population in general doesn't, because it's so new and they're so flabbergasted by the fact that they can take this thing out of the box and sound like Michael Jackson. If you really get inside and learn it, there's a lot of creative possibilities for the composer to go inside and get those sounds that are inside your head that can onlybe realized by a sampler or a really coolsynthesizer module and developing the techniquesnot only to play the instrument but also to playthe sounds.

15 MINUTES:How connected are thelyrics and the music in terms of writing?

MOORE: It depends. Say Krishna throwssomething together or Jeff throws somethingtogether, and they don't have lyrics. Then I'll goback and look at some poetry that I've written andsee what would fit best. With the songs I write,usually it's the music first, with some sketchylyrical ideas, and it takes a longer time to workthe lyrics out. There is a balance that must bestruck at a certain point. There has to be acertain kind of weight. If the lyrics have a wholea lot of weight, you don't want the music to haveway too much weight, too. For example, "MondayA.M. First Thing" is a song that has a lot oflyrical activity and weight to it; the music isn'tas demanding as some other songs, which ask a lotmusically. You have to be conscious when you'repulling from two different sources that you don'thave these really, really hugely heavy lyrics thatdemand all your attention and this really, really,complex music that commands all your attention.

15 MINUTES:What are your guidingprinciples as musicians?

LANCTOT: I purposely try not toconsciously copy anything. Any musical idea youcome up with is most likely from something youheard somewhere before. Unless you consciously sayOK, I'm going to take that baseline from that songbecause I know its cool, when at least you knowwhere it came from, you may write a song and haveit all together, only to realize years later that,Oh my God, the chorus sounds just like a Styx songI heard when I was in high school! And then you'reruined. But I try not to do that. I don't usefactory sounds that come with the machine, becausethere's so many more you can do on your own.

BIEGERT: Personally, I like to explorenew territory as far as being a drummer or apercussionist. I want to do something differentwith the drums and take them into other areas. Ikind of step on the area of being a keyboardplayer sometimes, or take on the role of a bigpercussion section at any one point song.Sometimes there isn't much distinction [betweenkeyboard and electronic drums]. I play someoutright keyboard sounds that might be hard toplay in the keyboard because it's repetitive orwhatever. I hope to blend that more in the futurebecause there's a lot I can do with it.

RAGANO: Never playing small talk orplaying down to people. Getting new sounds, 'causeI know a lot of different guitars, and I'm notamazing at any of them. SO I just try to smashthem all together.

VENKATESH: First of all, to get as muchfun out of this as people I consider to be mymentors or my favorite musicians orcomposers--without dying. But also, down the road,to make 10 years worth of albums that each have adistinct sound, different from each other.

MOORE: It's sort of an intangiblething--just making stuff that's really vital,that gives a nice I.V. injection of life back intopeople. That's an accomplishment, if you can dothat. If I can look back in 10 years and say,well, may be that's dated, but still, all thisstuff gave life.

VENKATESH: OK, Peter (Moore) is JesusChrist.

BIEGERT: He's really into that Big Blackalbum. Songs about fucking.

RAGANO: Yeah, Peter wants to give lifeto every woman on Earth.

15 MINUTES:How has the band maturedmusically?

MOORE: The technology we had at the timemight have defined our sound somewhat. Theequipment that we had, the technology we hadavailable, with the money we had then--the way youcould use it and sound cool was making that kindof music. Like with Jeff's drums. He had a moreprimitive version of an electronically triggereddrum set.

LANCTOT: Things that had acharacteristic sound to it, like an analog drummodule, might have some characteristic sound. Nowwe've got more instruments, and the samplinginstruments are more the sampling, flat sound,true reproductions of sound. So hopefully, youdon't hear the instrument; you just hear thesound.

MOORE: With Jeff's drums--well, he's inhock for the rest of his life--we've gone intodebt getting stuff, but he can call upon anymyriad of sounds that are much truer reproductionsof say, a tabla, or a talking drum from Africa.You can get a wider palette. Therefore, we can dosome-thing like, say, "Rattlesnake," a realBeatle-esque type of song, because we can mimicthat better with the type of instruments we havenow. We can sound more would musicy more ethnic,because we have the technology to imitate thoseinstruments better than we could in 1987.

RAGANO: In other words, we can express asong more the way that we want to hear it now,because we have better technology. The stuff wehad used to dictate the way we sound, but thestuff's so sophisticated now that you can soundany way you want--bigger a lot more convincing.

15 MINUTES:What's your attitudetowards pop? For instance, "Rattlesnake" isgetting airplay. How is your musical repertoireaffected by the knowledge that there is that onepop song on the album?

RAGANO: It's a thorn in our side. No,really, it's just another challenge. We thought,why not try it out--a three minute song. It's justsome thing new.

MOORE: I was listening to Monkeesrecords, actually. And these guys get this coolsound, great songs, perform it fine. And it's justthis cute little pop song. That's all that thingwas, so I brought it in. The band liked it, so welearned it, and that was a pop song we did, asopposed to Krishna bringing in "A court JesterNamed Sa Sa," which was a more intense industrialpiece. It's just a different thing we decided topull on, that we got inspired from, that we wrote.And it just happens to be that the song isprobably the least offensive-sounding, sotherefore the record company figured it would bethe least difficult thing to market as a single.It's not like, gee, guys, gotta write a single.Gotta write a pop tune. If we were to have goneinto the studio in July and said, "Let's crank outa hit single," we probably wouldn't have come upwith something like "Ratlesnake", because it'sreally not what's going on the airwaves right now.We would have gone and made something moresub-poppy, or something with a hip-hop beat andswirly things around it, and that would've been asell-out.

RAGANO: For those who haven't heard"Rattlesnake" and don't know what we sound like,"Rattlesnake" is a pop song for us. Relatively,it's a pop song, because when I play it for myfriends at work, they still go, "Man, that's someweird shit." Anything we do sounds weird in thesuburbs.

BIEGERT: After working together for solong, it's really hard to step out and figure outhow this really sounds. It gets harder and harderto be objective about it. Is this pop or is itnot? I don't know. I like the song; it's cool.Let's play it. If people like it, that's fine.

15 MINUTES:Would you classifyyourselves as alternative?

MOORE: Yeah, in the true sense of theword, because what we're doing is not part of anygenre. Unfortunately, the word "alternative" hastaken on the characteristics of the term "newwave," which was such a blanket term which wasapplied to a wide range of music but which skimmeddown to anyone who wore white shirts and skinnyties. Alternative has become a catch word whichmeans either R.E.M. or the Manchester thing. Whenyou say alternative, it conjures up a relativelyslim categorization. There are so many bands whichare called alternative just because they'realternate to the mainstream, but they are themainstream after a while, and you can categorizethem. Sub pop is a category. We defycategorization.

BIEGERT: To me, alternative meanslistening to some kind of aboriginal shoe-weavingmusic or something phenomenal and totallydifferent like Javanese gamalon music. Oh, butwell, that's World Music.

15 MINUTES:Yeah, but World Music isalso a marketing term.

BIEGERT: The marketing and the music isjust totally blurred after a while, so you've gota lot of terms and a lot of people saying," "Imust like this because it's alternative."

LANCTOT: It's like, where, 10 years,would you put hummos in a food store? It's not,like, in the diary section or in the vegetablesection. Where are you going to put it?

15 MINUTES:With the cheese, isn'tit?

LANCTOT:I think it's like that--we'realternative, but they always box us in with thecheese --and most of our fine brothers and sistersare cheese. But its' our quest to stay in thehummos section