Emerging from the shadows of Dustin Shuler's 'œSpindle'?, the cars-stacked- on- a- spike landmark of J+J+J's Schiller Park, IL (made famous in Wayne's World), Johnny and Joanna's beguiling electronic-pop stylings find itself illuminated by the cross-beams of church hymns, old cover songs and bad emo. Tongue-in-cheek, they invited Jesus into their work in homage to these humble beginnings. They've shared the stage with the likes of Troubled Hubble, Animal Collective and I Am Spoonbender. With a Wavelength appearance, an East Coast tour and the release of their debut album They Hump While We Go Nuts all the J's have been busy.

HOW'S THE TOUR COMING TOGETHER?
Basically, Joanna has some time off from school, so we wanted to go traveling a little and figured why not play some shows? We're dragging Goudron (from Adult's label Ersatz Audio) along and he totally rules. It's a great way to see an artist we love play 12 times in a row.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR DEBUT ALBUM, THEY HUMP WHILE WE GO NUTS. 'œHump" is a bedroom recording that doesn't sound like a bedroom recording...or at least we don't think so.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF GIVEN ACCESS TO A LARGE STUDIO? HOW WOULD YOUR SOUND CHANGE?
The Centre For Electronic Music in Amsterdam does this 12" series called "Vynalogica" were they get badass electronic artists to spend a weekend at the studio going crazy with all this old gear...walls and walls of synths. If we could record in a large studio it would be that one. SO I HOPE A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CEM IS READING THIS AND WILL ASK J+J+J TO DO A PROJECT WITH THEM SOON! The resulting record will be technically amazing, but we'll be singing about some silly crap.

IF YOU WON A COMPETITION TO RECORD A ROCK OPERA (WITH A CAST), WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?
On "Hump" there's this semi-instrumental song called "Vicious Advantage", it's the opening credits for a TV show Joanna dreamt about where horribly mismatched animals battle each other in an aquatic battle zone. We would make an opera about the animals training for battle and shit. Cast wise it don't matter '˜cause they're all in sweaty ass animal costumes. Actors will not be required to have any singing background. It will be like Cats meets Hedwig meets an Erasure concert.

IS THERE A STRONG SENSE OF COMMUNITY SURROUNDING YOU?
In Chicago, we have an amazing community. All our best friends make electronic music. At the centre is Ghost Arcade Ltd. (www.ghostarcade.com ), which is kind of just a glorified gang...but instead of killing other gangs, we go to concerts and put on shows together. Everyone is very supportive. GAL also releases limited edition 7-inches that we all chip in for.

THE STORY GOES THAT YOU MET AT A CONCERT IN A CHURCH PARKING LOT. WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE BAND PLAYING?
It's so embarrassing to us because the band is kind of a joke in our suburb...they're called Pale Green Stars. They're always playing in the park or at the church or whatever... mixing oldies standards with emo originals. We started talking about PGS's suckness and I told Joanna to check out my punk band (which didn't suck). She did, and the rest is history. Very few people know that the real reason we got started is because the song "Skeeball Vs. the Mall" was rejected by my old punk band Yellow Snowmen (theyellowsnowmen.tripod.com). She said we should start a band just so we could make that one song. She played the keyboard part exactly like I mouthed it. She's awesome!!! Now she writes most of the songs...go figure.

COUPLED-DUO, JESUS REFERENCED, KEYBOARD PRIMARY'”YOU SEEM TO BE SURROUNDED BY MANY TOUCHSTONES, PERHAPS EVEN PIGEONHOLED BY THOSE WHO'VE NEVER HEARD YOUR MUSIC'”DO YOU OFTEN FIND YOU HAVE TO WORK TO CONVERT A CROWD?
The reason we put Jesus in the band is that we wanted people to think, "whoa, this is gonna be some heavy religion shit." Then we bust out on to stage cursin' and singing about skeeball and ultrasounds, and people let out a sigh of relief and start partying with us. We were gonna just be J+J, but there was already too many Double J bands. We were gonna spell out the "plus's" too (JPLUSJPLUSJ), but that's too IDM.. As for converting a crowd'¦for us it's always been easy. We're not too dancey. We're not too rocky. We're somewhere in the middle. And our subject matter is so silly if you can't laugh with us we don't want you anyway. J+J+J is about taking all the things people hate about electronic music and making them like it.

By Mark Russell