Ohm and the Trans.Sky mutation - an interview with Brendan Jury.

I remember trying to get some sleep down in the stinking Shifty basement on a rotting piece of foam, freezing my balls off in Bertrams, having spent that day and night recording for 'Tightroper' - Urban Creep's second album. The drone of a Barimbau being sampled and looped over and over again filtering down through the floor boards, really testing my patience - Warrick and Brendan pressing on into the early morning, going straight to mid-wife without passing begin and the birth of 'Trans.Sky' already howling through my brain.

A bullet in the leg prompted Warrick Sony (ex-Kalahari Surfers and Lloyd Ross' partner at Shifty) to move the studios down to Cape Town where the two continued composing songs and recording commercial soundtracks for a number of interesting films, documentaries and tv programs.

Trans.Sky burst onto the live scene as a duo with backing tracks, releasing their EP 'Heaven to Touch' almost immediately and later a full album 'Killing Time' through Tic..Tic..Bang! A support slot for Massive Attack and they were already gaining serious attention. Since then though, Trans.Sky has been adding and subtracting members in a metamorphosis of note, finally changing it's name and settling into life as 'Ohm' - band for the the new millennium with members Andrew Janse van Rensburg on guitar, Sven McAlpine on bass, Brendan on viola / vocals and Gaston Golliath freelancing on drums...

>I notice you still play the Kalahari Surfers song 'Durban Poison' - to what extent is Warrick still involved?

>Ohm did not metamorphose out of Trans.Sky. The three of us (pre-Gaston) met because we were playing as the Trans.Sky band and discovered in the rehearsal room that we had a powerful synergy. Whilst we were jamming and exploring this dark magic with Damian Staz as our drummer, Warrick found it increasingly difficult to tour in the midst of his family commitments. The sessions were too good to let go, so we decided to form a new band 'Ohm'. Trans.Sky still exists as a studio project and we have a few film and theater projects in the pipeline - another collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Theater Company is on the cards, also a dance project choreographed by Jeanette Ginslov that Ohm will be performing the music for in March 2000. Gaston has fortunately decided to join the group permanently, which is a great relief. We have now changed base to JHB.

>When Trans.Sky first started, the programming was quite a feature, in that the sounds were particularly good, affording the band quite a unique position in the live music scene - why the decision to return to a more traditional band line-up?

>The move to a more traditional line-up came in an organic fashion, simply as a result of our rehearsals. I also became sick of spending 12 hour days in the studio. Ohm has a particularly powerful live performance ability, so I felt we didn't need sequencers or samples.

>The music has also changed quite a bit from a collection of quite miss-matched pop, rap, trance and drum 'n bass to a more uniform dark, anthem sound with slow grooves and layered harmonies - certainly less commercial - was the move a conscious decision or a natural progression in terms of the new members and has it worked for the band?

>For me Ohm has been a return to my source as a live musician who sings and writes songs. I still work with Warrick and I am very grateful for the steep learning curve experience of writing and producing in the studio. But the band and I went through three particularly harrowing experiences through '98 and '99 and the more dark sound naturally occurred as a result. As far as Ohm's commercial viability, I wouldn't know. We are gaining a strong audience following and are fortunate enough to attract bookings at all the right festivals (OppiKoppi main stage, Synergy, Martell Grahamstown etc.) so we must be doing something right. As for mass appeal I wouldn't hazard a guess. We certainly are very happy with our material and the more we play for each other, for us, the more people seem to like it.

>On a more frivolous note - the individual styles amongst the band work really well on stage - do you co-ordinate specific clothing with this in mind or did it just happen?

>We are very serious about our clothing and I am very proud to say that we wear 90% SA designer clothing. Mostly Rip Torn by Preston of Carfax, Blue Zoo (who also design for Nataniel), Wilma of Cape Town, Young Designers Emporium and Laurie Holmes of Durban etc. We usually have a short planning meeting about what we will wear on stage.

>The album that you recorded with Warrick and the man from the Orb for Electric Melt2000 - is that still to be released and do you have plans to record with Ohm in the future?

>The Trans.Sky / Alien Soap Opera Album (with Greg Hunter ex Orb) is due for release. It is still being mixed. Ohm is about to enter into the studio to record it's first EP for the Melt label.