Have you ever noticed how boring encyclopedias are? I mean, no matter how interesting the subject matter, they always seem to take the fun out of it. Example: 'œIron oxide is often used in magnetic storage, for example in the magnetic layer of floppy disks. These consist of a thin sheet of Mylar plastic, coated with iron oxide. The particles can be magnetized to represent binary data.'? Never mind the fact that iron oxide is often used in all kinds of explosives. And there lies a better connection with Iron Oxide, the band. Luckily they've forgone any of the tedium that could be thrown at their chemical-composite name and head straight for the good stuff. Dylan Reibling talked to the Cleveland duo about carols, Cleveland, and wedding Canadians.

TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT IRON OXIDE.

Our official bio says: "Iron Oxide is a two-piece band from Cleveland, Ohio, consisting of Jeff Curtis (bass, vocals) and K. Stewart (bass, Farfisa, and vocals, to name a few)," though on this tour, K will just be controlling the Farfisa along with her vocals. We usually tell people that we're some kind of 'noise' or neo-no wave band, but we've also been known to do covers of 1960's garage, soul, & Motown songs in our own way - so make of that what you will..

NO NO NO. TELL US SOMETHING JUICY! WE LIKE GOSSIP AND DIRT HERE AT WAVELENGTH.

Egad. We've got more juice than you probably have bandwidth here.

WHAT BRINGS IRON OXIDE UP NORTH?

Searching for any Canadians who might be desperate enough to marry some noisicians from the Rust Belt who are into kinky citizenship action. We're both life-long Canada fans, and have been wanting to visit Toronto ever since we got together about three years ago. Our pals in the Creeping Nobodies helped hook us up to the Wavelength evenings when we were trying to sort out a tour earlier this year, and the rest is history!

WHAT CAN THE AUDIENCE EXPECT FROM IRON OXIDE?

Passionate, intense, organic sound generation, both improvised and rehearsed, and gut-affecting bass signals. When we're not playing you'll probably see us laughing uncontrollably most of the time.

OKAY. NOW WHAT DOES IRON OXIDE USUALLY EXPECT FROM THE AUDIENCE?

We usually expect the audience to remain in their pathetic shell of hipper-than-thou indifference caused by their total ignorance of good music. Though I expect the hearty Canadian Wavelength audiences will no doubt be up to the task of hearing a full-force Iron Oxide set with no problem. The more people crowd around and make themselves known while we're playing, obviously the more likely we are to feel energized into putting even more of ourselves into our performance. So as long as we don't actually get physically assaulted, everything should be fine!

YOUR WAVELENGTH SHOW HAS YOU PLAYING WITH A FAIRLY ECLECTIC MIX OF BANDS. DO YOU FORESEE INTER-BAND BRAWLS? HOW ABOUT A NOISE-VAUDEVILLE-POP-ORCHESTRA-APOCALYPTIC CHRISTMAS ALBUM?

We have great empathy for all kinds of music; both the other bands we're playing with sound pretty cool and different to us, and we're happy to be sharing a bill with them! Jeff has always wanted to cover "Good King Wenceslas" for some reason. Most Xmas carols lack a good underlying rusty/gritty texture in their recording that we could surely help remedy.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE CLEVELAND SCENE?

It has had its moments; unfortunately they sometimes seem few and far between. Right now I think is one of those 'far between' times, but we're definitely working on trying to change that.