Hailing from the fence filled shores of Stanmore, i like cats will be supporting CODA Friday Sep 12th at Manning Bar along with WIM and main support Cloud Control. Intrigued by their penchant for indulgent and spleen-jarring crescendos, I sat down with some of the guys to discuss where they get their inspiration from.
Sitting in a smoky room smelling of cheap perfume and cigarettes, our conversation wandered. “Jaie’s porn star name is Jaie Gonzalez,” guitarist Rollo Augustus Anderson tells me of bassist Gonzalez.
“Mine was Buffy Bonds,” Cellist – Dominic Mercer adds. “Buffy Bonds! That’s huge, but I’m Big Kensington,” Rollo retorts, an incendiary grin creeping across his mouth.
I ask them about Tommy, the mysterious raven haired beauty ever present at their performances. “Tommy is our shaman,” Rollo informs in full seriousness. “I can’t really go into details, but basically she channels a kind of ambient chaos through our knees when we play. It’s as of yet an unexplained biological phenomenon, although Dom has actually been conducting some studies recently.”
“Yes.” Dom responds calmly. “I’ve been using tuning forks. The fork is meant to stay at the same pitch but after the shamanism has been going on, when you whack your knee – it actually modifies the sound.”
“And it’s those intervals that he gets between those non-shamanic and the shamanic period of the knee resonance, those intervals are really the main inspiration of most of our songs,” says Rollo.
Confused and bewildered, I ask what the hell any of this has to do with cats. Putting out his rollies, Rollo replies, “well cats give Tommy the shamanic power through their reverse knee action… and so we like them.”
ilikecats will be playing:
Exquisite Corpse: The Oxford Arts Factory – Sep 11
Manning Bar – Sep 12, supporting CODA w/ Cloud Control and WIM
Spectrum – Oct 12
Check them out online: http://www.myspace.com/ilikecatstheband
