TAS In Session: One eskimO
The Alternate Side's own Alisa Ali recently spent some quality time with London's winsome, ambient popsters One eskimO - singer Kristian Leontiou, drummer Adam Falkner, bassist Jamie Sefton and guitarist Peter Rinaldi - during their stopover in New York during their summer tour with Tori Amos. The group, which was built from the ashes of Leontiou's rather successful solo career, release their self-titled debut, produced by Rollo Armstrong (Dido, Faithless) on September 22. Alisa had a wonderful hour with the band, live in session:
Since the band One eskimO is presented as an animated band, like Gorillaz, I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into the interview. I was sort of half expecting puppets or something. I would have been perfectly fine with having a conversation with someone's hand in disguise. However, it turns out that the band is made up of actual people (with undisguised hands). They were all a bunch of characters though. One of them was wearing a villainous mask that he'd concocted out of black masking tape, another goggle-wearing musician was sitting in front of a drum kit that looked like a motorcycle and the singer was wearing a cute little hat w/ ears (similar to one that I used to own but recently went missing... hmmm).
Musically, One eskimO's album is quite intricately arranged and lots of time and effort seemed to be put into Rollo Armstrong's - yes, Dido's brother - production of it. Sonically, it's very impressive, but you always wonder whether musicians can actually pull this off in a live setting. I'm happy to report that they were the real McCoy and did a fantastic set right before my very eyes (and yours too if you watch the video) with lots of multi-tasking going on.
These guys are heavily influenced by film (their short film "Hometime" won a 2008 British Animation Award) and with the help of Warner Brothers and Passion Pictures (Gorillaz) are releasing a "visual album" to accompany the music album. The series of 6-10 minute online episodes kicked off last week. The animation in the film is stunningly inventive. Check out a trailer for it here:
