Tinkertoy
WL 358 — Sunday April 8, 12am
Purveyors of: Long distance electronic wizardry.

Kate Carraway sat down in Toronto with Andrew Wedman, one of the two techno wunderkinds of Tinkertoy, just after he’d gotten back from playing with Polmo Polpo in New York. Paul was in Victoria, where he lives. Kate and Andrew talked about Europe and drank beers and watched some funny kids eating dinner.

So, Paul is in Victoria. What do you do to work on stuff?

We’ve been working long distance for a number of years now, actually, most of our time has been long distance, and so we only get a chance to record together once in a while, like if I happen to be in B.C. or he’s here. It’s essentially a remix project. If I come up with an idea, he’s allowed to just do whatever he wants with it: add stuff, tear it apart, do anything. Then it just bounces back and forth between us until it starts evolving into something useable.

How long does it take on average to do one Tinkertoy track?

It ranges with us, between a week and a year and a half. Sometimes it’ll take forever for a song to evolve until there’s a certain quality, when it’s like “That sounds like Tinkertoy,” and it’s hard to describe what that is exactly, but something will just start working. It’s really intuitive in a way, just a feeling that the song is done. If it’s cool enough or the sound is right or if it starts working musically somehow, then it just makes sense.

It’s interesting that you’ve ended up doing it from far points.

For the first album, we were both in Toronto, and then I moved to Europe. The first album we did after that was called Transatlantic Love Machine. I was in Cologne for a little bit, and then Barcelona.

I’m really interested in individualized scenes. Is there anything you can tell me about those towns?

Every place I’ve been in or that [Paul’s] been in, has definitely affected the music. Now, whether that’s the scene that’s going on or just the surroundings of the city… Obviously in Cologne (Germany), I was listening to classic Cologne techno. It definitely influenced me. I started making hard techno. Then I went to Barcelona and it got all mixed up. I started listening to Flamenco and all kinds of crazy stuff that I’d never had an appreciation for, ever, but I’d just be in the park and people would be practicing Flamenco and busking on the streets. All of that just started filtering in and started affecting everything I did and everything started getting more twisted at that point. A lot of ex-pats live in Barcelona, tons of people, but there’s this bizarre feeling that there’s not really a music community. And Sonar [a giant music festival] happens, so everyone has this idea that it’s such a lively place, where everything is happening and everyone’s collaborating and it’s all mixed up together, but I felt very isolated. I met a lot of musicians, but it was never like they were part of a community. I found it kind of hard and strange. And then coming back to Toronto, I was a little bit sad, I was missing Europe a lot, but I started experiencing a musical community here that I hadn’t really seen… I think Toronto really has something unique happening.

Jonny (Dovercourt) told me that you’re pretty funny and I suggested to him that instead of an interview we could have a joke off. Your band does seem pretty funny, and your genre of music doesn’t usually go that direction.

It’s strange, because I think Paul and I are. I don’t think our music even represents us very well, you know? It doesn’t even represent our live shows. The album is like this other thing that we create. You can’t capture a live show and so I kinda thought someone’s going to put this in their CD player and they’re going to drive in their car or put it on in their living room. So let’s create music for that. We did, essentially, create an album as opposed to whatever we do normally, which is drink our faces off and be total idiots, and be humorous or whatever, and I think that comes out maybe in the titles here and there. And Paul is completely insane, but in some ways he’s restrained, maybe we both are, when it comes to “We’re going to present this album, and we have this nice little cover art, and this nice little music,” but when you look at our promo shot, there’s a version of it where I have my shirt off and I’m covered in olive oil, and it was totally disgusting. I just slathered it on; it’s weirdly homoerotic and kind of strange. Then we’re going to do an album and it’s like, “We have to structure it and really think about it.” Techno is not funny at all. It’s so boring, to be honest.

By Kate Carraway