Lezzies On X: you read it here first

for high resolution image please email: lezziespress [at] gmail dot com	♥ Press articles ♥ Austin Chronicle March 17, 2006 Hot Canadian queer dance party drips into town by Kate Getty It was such a good concert, I took my hat off. Had to put it in my back pocket to really shake it on out, my floppy blonde hair in synch with the electronic drums, head-banging like the olden' days, shaking it for daddy - daddy being The Lesbians on Esctasy's leather-clad front-wom Fruity Frankie, the only one of the quartet sporting the band's usual uniform chaps this go-round. But they all had their leather, vests and ties and such, and we had our dance party, starting slowly, like a faggy climactic techno ditty, with only a few feeling it at first, the way bar-goers do when giving into those first few rounds. If you build it, they will come. Fill the bar with beer and smoke and lights and lesbians rocking it, electronic-pump-yer-fists kinds of jams, and they'll all start dancing. More. Then, more. Until, and the band couldn't really see past the blazing spotlights, but there were rows of dancing, not-afraid-to-get-sweaty pleased crowd members, grinning ear to ear, thinking hey, these lesbians sure do know how to boogie. And they did. Boogie. From the get-go. They took the stage. Brought the lights down to darkness, and then chucked handfuls of glow sticks at the crowd, fearing not of lawsuits or a raver catch-the-bouquet frenzy. Just to get it started. Because they drove 30 hours, and they're Canadian, dammit, and they're going to make you dance, dammit. Glow sticks, Bernie Bankrupt spinning the brilliant computer-geek foundation with bottom lines so good that bassist Veronique Mystique has to rock it front-of-stage style, milking that riff and taking us all for a walk, with front-gunner Frank-meister piping up on a distorted mike and Jackie the JackHammer jackham-hammering on the ones and twos and eights, the octagon pad, the drum of the future - 'til the frenzy was too much, and it just had to break open. All the way open. Man, the shit was hot. The kids were dancing. And the Lesbians on Ecstasy had fun. They said so. Free beers. Because it was just about having some fun. Front-row-like because they're my new favorites. I'm writing home about it. The Canadians are bringing dance to the lesbians. Finally. The kind of dancing I get to do at The Faint, when I've gotta wash up after. It's kinda dirty, kinda German, kinda deep drum and bass, with lyrics of Melissa Etheridge spotting in, and Indigo Girls making a comeback, and their rendition of High School Confidential ... that was the closer to end all closers. It was sexy, with a better climax than phone sex. Frankie, sweaty at this point with shag stuck to her smiling, wide-eyed face, whispering seductively her foreplay of "You've been naughty. Please report to the principal's office," urging a sudden but unanimous desire for detention. Simply put, this song broke it off, saved it all for last, and just ripped it to shreds, leaving us gasping for more. "Who are these guys?" whispered the industry folk, who had just stumbled in because they heard you could smoke here, everybody needing a good fag after a set that got us all sweaty. Needing. And thinking dirty thoughts. www.austinchronicle.com :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
	Montreal Mirror September 29, 2005 Lesbians on Ecstasy re-radicalize gay zombies with dance moves and debauchery by Raf Katigbak After exploding onto the Montreal music scene three years ago, and then logging extensive tour mileage and media adulation, Montreal's Lesbians on Ecstasy are back with a vengeance: darker, louder and drunker than ever. "I feel we've all become way harsher alcoholics since we started touring," reveals technical mastermind Bernie Bankrupt, half jokingly, "which is a lot to say, since we were really big drinkers to begin with. It really takes the edge off of touring." And tour they have. Thanks to opening slots with underground sensations Le Tigre, LOE have managed to empty fridges in 11 European countries and in almost every major city across the United States and Canada-no small feat for a band that does mostly covers. But rest assured, there's nothing gimmicky about LOE?s electro-punk reworkings of lesbian anthems by Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang. With solid production and a darker, nu-goth-metal-tinged live show that's an all-out, in-your face dance riot, the quartet rounded out by frontwoman Fruity Frankie (aka Lynne T), bassist Véronique Mystique and drummer Jackie the Jackhammer is set to make waves again with the imminent release of their remix album Giggles in the Dark. With an emphasis on DJ-friendliness, the nine-track, vinyl-only release features thumping remixes of their debut full-length by Le Tigre, Scream Club, Tracy & the Plastics, Sean Kosa, 1-Speed Bike, Katastrophe, DJ Aï, Jody Bleyle and Kids on TV. Add to that plans to return to Europe in the spring to support the release of a track on a Chicks on Speed Records compilation, and possibly a split seven-inch on a London label, for the Lesbians on Ecstasy, it seems the world is their oyster. According to their soon-to-be-completed debut video, the LOE world is an oyster filled with gay clones and zombies. "We wanted to do this gay-clone-zombie concept and we wanted to shoot it during Pride, when all of the gay clones come out in great numbers," explains Bankrupt gleefully. As it turned out, the shoot didn't go exactly as expected. "We had this whole plan to be abducted on stage by zombies. We were backstage and our friends were in zombie makeup and costumes, ready to go, when suddenly the generator ran out of gas. We were like, ohhh... In the end, we still had a zombie street dance. And later on we relocated to an empty alley in Mile End." Partly a statement on the homogenization of gay culture, and partly an excuse to get a bunch of friends to dress up as zombies and drink and dance around, the video, shot in Super 8 by film collective Volatile Works, ended up a smashing, brain-gorging success. "Fifty people came dressed up as zombies and danced like gay clones in the alley, and then got transformed back to being radical queers through the power of dance. We were superheroes who killed all the zombies with the power of excellent dance moves." Record launch with DJ Mini at Parking tonight Thursday, Sept. 29, 10 p.m. www.montrealmirror.com see the video! http://alien8recordings.com/loe-video-320.mov :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
	AfterEllen.com February 3, 2005 Review of Lesbians On Ecstasy album by Kris Scott Marti Damnit, these chicks are just helping build my case to move to Canada! Montreal-based Lesbians On Ecstasy roll with humor and hard dance beats. And LOE does it without playing the same licks twice, as is so often the problem on dance albums when every song starts to sound the same. Lesbians On Ecstasy spent last Fall running around with Le Tigre after they released their self-titled CD in time for Halloween. LOE is Bernie Bankrupt playing the Ensonique, Veronique Mystique on bass, drummer Jackie "the Jackhammer," and lead vocalist Fruity Frank. Their gig photos look like a page out of the Tribe 8 school of punk-dyke couture, very leather daddy chic. LOE can also be seen as their occasional side project, Dykes On Crack, that includes a bigger drum kit for the Jackhammer to make like The Muppet Show's Animal. The hook for LOE is that they take familiar lesbian lyrical standards from k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, and the Indigo Girls and slam them into a variety of house beats with occasional deadpan punk cultural commentary thrown in. This album is heavily influenced by the mashup movement of the last couple years, but with more original music and less sampling then 2 Many DJs or DJ Dangermouse. "Kundstandt Kroving" apes the k.d. lang hit while poking fun at consumer culture and mixing in that ubiquitous beat from every lesbian dance club circa 1996. You'll either recognize it and laugh, or you didn't go out that year. But wait, there's more: the song gets a weird and spacey techno edge like Nina Hagen ate Kraftwerk and they didn't sit well with her. The songs a little fractured, but fun. Track two, "Parachute Clubbing," holds a disco-y happy house lesson in queer politics and history. I'm going to geek out here for a minute, so skip ahead if you need to. The Parachute Club was a seven member band formed in Toronto back in the late 70s/early 80s. They are best known for their song "Rise Up" that spoke out about gay rights and racial equality. They were a mixed band of men and women with a vision for a better world that was recognized and honored in Canada. After the band broke up, several members continued on in different artistic directions. The Parachute Club's lead singer Lorraine Segato is still recording and working as an artist for social justice. "The Pleasure Principal" spins a naughty scenario that conjures images of all girl schools mixed with the cheesy guitar soundtrack of a breakout scene from a women in prison movie. The beat is all gay boy circuit party, but the guitar is straight up blaster ala Leslie Mah of Tribe 8. More goofy then dirty sexy, for ladies that laugh when someone slips a hand in their pants. "Tell Does She Love The Bass" ties the panties of the Melissa Etheridge classic in a knot and leaves it in the neighbors mailbox. Then LOE wakes up Tracy Chapman's sleepy "Talkin Bout A Revolution" with "Revolt" like a wrecking ball busting through the living room. These women sound like they are actually starting a revolution. And to complete the rewriting of the monsters of lesbian rock, LOE unleashes "Closer to the Dark" an Indigo Girls ripper. They rock some vicious machine gun percussion that reminded me of British drum and bass like Headrillaz, with enough scratch to satisfy any itch that smoothly evolves into screaming punk vocals. It's cool. Right now, no dyke bands that I know of can touch this. This album does have its more ambient, sweet moments as well. "Manipulation" is a saccharine, slowed-down ode to the toxic relationship. It's full of bubbling techno flare that adds to the hilariously ominous cello solo, poking fun at the heavy handed drama and deadly dull oversharing indicative of folky ballads about lesbian relationships. This is great if you recently broke up with a jerk and are feeling nostalgic about her. Funnier than Peaches and more danceable then Le Tigre, Lesbians On Ecstasy is fantastic! www.afterellen.com :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
	San Francisco Bay Guardian November 10, 2004 Lesbians on Ecstasy are talkin' 'bout a dance-floor revolution. By Jimmy Draper 'WHY ISN'T THERE lesbian dance music?" Bernie Bankrupt, speaking over the phone from her home in Montreal, asks with frustration. As the electronic mastermind behind Lesbians on Ecstasy, one of today's only lezzie dance acts, Bankrupt knows all too well about the dearth of dyke-made music in the electronic world. So why wouldn't she feel irritated? After all, queer artists such as Tracy and the Plastics, Scream Club, and Le Tigre's J.D. Samson may be slowly making inroads in the dance scene, but even after the female-friendly electroclash explosion, lesbians are still musical anomalies at the discotheque. Lesbians on Ecstasy, as their name implies, hope to change that. "People revisit a lot of music that was done in the 1970s and '80s and turn it into dance-floor house music, but nobody's done that with lesbian music," Bankrupt continues. "It just seems like a fun thing to explore what lesbian dance music would sound like – and since it was obviously gonna take a bunch of lesbians to try it, we knew we were the girls for the job!" Culling from the history of dyke music, the quartet – keyboardist Bankrupt, vocalist Fruity Frankie, bassist Véronique Mystique, and drummer Jackie the Jackhammer – are a cover band of sorts. Instead of recording straightforward remakes, however, they sample themes and lyrics from their predecessors' folk- and rock-oriented songs, recontextualizing them as rather genius dance hits. "Constant Craving," by k.d. lang, becomes a scorching anticonsumerist manifesto, while selections from Team Dresch's "Screwing Yer Courage" and the Indigo Girls' "Prince of Darkness" are nearly unrecognizable when set to explosive, original beats. "Basically, we want to bridge gaps between generations," Bankrupt says. "We want to make music for the older and younger sets that, if they came out to the party and heard it, would feel like it's sort of familiar but also sort of new." Close encounter over Etheridge Formed in early 2003, Lesbians on Ecstasy began after a chance encounter with an old Melissa Etheridge song. Though ensconced in Montreal's dude-heavy electronic scene – a far cry from the lesbian music circles of their past – Bankrupt and Frankie found themselves at a friend's birthday party when a woman launched into an acoustic cover of Etheridge's "Like the Way I Do." "We were just sitting there, suddenly listening to this type of music we never hear anymore," Bankrupt says. "We were both like, 'Wow, this would make an amazing dance hit!' " That realization prompted the two women to start looking at their record collections in a new light, searching for other lesbian songs they could retool into full-fledged dance anthems. In an effort to move away from being so sequencer- and sampler-based, they enlisted a drummer and bassist and, almost immediately, made their live debut at the Canadian feminist technology festival Maid in Cyberspace. "After [the festival], we thought, 'Let's just take the concept and keep going with it,' " Bankrupt says. "There are lots of lesbian songs out there!" The result is Lesbians on Ecstasy's self-titled debut (Alien8 Recordings), an impressive maelstrom of dark, distorted techno, glitchy pop, and electropunk that subverts and perverts a slew of dyke classics. In their hands, "Like the Way I Do" is transformed into a slab of throbbing, electro-lesbo lust, while the title of Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" becomes the feminist riot-inciting chorus of "Revolt." In fact, the references are so abundant – Tribe 8, Parachute Club, Rough Trade, Fifth Column, etc. – that the album is ultimately both a crash course in the history of lezzie music and a rousing game of lesbian-spotting for longtime fans. "Some people will recognize the Indigo Girls, and some people will recognize Fifth Column," Bankrupt says, then laughs. "Of course, some people will recognize all of it." No retro Despite the past's heavy influence on their music, however, Lesbians on Ecstasy aren't merely retro revivalists. Sure, many contemporary dance acts make their names by ironically covering inane nostalgia like the Cars' "Just What I Needed" and Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night," but Lesbians on Ecstasy – by revisiting music that was highly politicized to start with – offer a welcome reprieve from their peers' vapid, apolitical posturing. Indeed, it's hard to think of many – if any – other electronic acts today who'd cover songs by Etheridge and Tribe 8, much less "Prince of Darkness," a song penned by the Indigo Girls in 1989 that remains as relevant as ever with lyrics like, "Someone's got his finger on the button in some room / No one can convince me we aren't gluttons for our doom." In other words, contrary to much of the mindless revelry you're likely to encounter under the strobe light these days, Lesbians on Ecstasy are a reminder that music's politics and pleasures can't, in fact, be separated. "By relistening to older music, it makes you examine where we're at in the world," Bankrupt says. "With our songs, we want to question what's going on with social struggles, to see how things are changing – or how they're not changing. Sometimes maybe we're deceived into thinking things are changing when actually [we're facing] the same struggles." Thanks in no small part to Lesbians on Ecstasy, there's at least one struggle – for dyke visibility on the dance floor – that's truly making headway. Lesbians on Ecstasy perform Nov. 18 at the Eagle Tavern San Francisco and with Le Tigre Nov. 19 at the Fillmore. www.sfbg.com :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
	Now Magazine, Toronto January 6, 2005 Montreal's Lesbians on Ecstasy use NYE soirée for intriguing identity experiment By Sarah Liss The only way to start off a new year right is to show it who's the boss (apologies to Tony Danza and Judith Light). That's why I was so pleased when, at 11:55 pm on December 31 a smoking Frosty the Snowman, a grumpy-looking Santa queen (or was she Jackie Frost?) and an adorably 80s sweatshirt-sporting Will Munro invited a host of volunteers onto the Lee's Palace stage to have their way with Baby New Year. Six brave souls climbed over a sea of faces blowing horns and hands holding noisemakers and, when the clock finally struck midnight, a nekkid oversized baby ass (complete with adult diaper) got spanked. Luckily, neither Dick Clark nor Regis Philbin was in attendance. It was hard to imagine how fast-rising Montreal sapphic revisionists and sometime Le Tigre cohorts Lesbians on Ecstasy could top the spectacle. When charismatic frontwoman Fruity Frankie appeared onstage clad head to toe in sparkling white, followed by her bandmates in similar Kabbalah-esque gear, they seemed to be relying on the supreme power of white light to ward off evil spirits. Remember the dandyish snowy suits worn by Ashton Kutcher and Madge ? er, I mean Esther ? in Britney's Me Against The Music video? The Lezzies on X do Keter so much better. Any fears that the electro-punk crew were the latest casualties of the mystic influx were quelled when they launched into a twisted take on the Parachute Club classic Rise Up that proved they're the proponents of only their own perverse spiritual revival. Frankie fans will be pleased to learn that the foursome have cut down on the gimmicky effects-pedal D&D filters on the singer's vocals. After tossing a bunch of glowsticks into the crowd and giving a girl down front a bouquet of flowers, they announced they were gonna "try something very special." While the beat went on, the band disappeared, minions tinkered with their gear, and the ladies returned in full rawk costumes. Po-faced drummer Jackie Gallant ditched her retro Octapad for a drum kit, sturdy Véronique Mystique (wearing Seattle butch flannel, natch) started pounding out funk bass lines, and Frankie, posing in leather-daddy cap and gloves, shouted out a punk rock decimation of Auld Lang Syne before launching into a trashy take on Talkin' 'Bout A Revolution. As a concept, it's hard to take the Lezzies seriously (evil house revamps of tunes from the lesbo canon?), but oddly enough, they make it work. Part of the trick is that they're a surprisingly talented band. Bespectacled programsel (think programmer + damsel) Bernie Bankrupt , who bounces behind her iMac-slash-keyboard set-up, may come off as the (evil) brains behind the operation, but the Lesbians would be little more than a clever-clever cover band without the insane energy and captivating stage presence of Frankie (aka Montreal DJ Lynne T ). She's the bridge between their appropriation of the better aspects of rave culture (the delirious dancing, the primal pulse, the utter lack of embodied self-consciousness) and the dirty, sexy attitude of rock 'n' roll. And, dude, how often do you watch a band completely reinvent their aesthetic over the course of a single set? Fucking impressive. www.nowtoronto.com :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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