Best known for his work in Total Control and Lace Curtain, James Vinciguerra is also a talented producer who has stepped out solo to create fractured electronic music under the Nicky Crane guise.
Named after Nicola Vincenzo “Nicky” Crane, the legendary gay roadie for notorious UK Nazi punk band Screwdriver, Nicky Crane produces brooding electro with varied drum machines, samples and mysterious dictaphone vocals.
Videos by VICE
After releases on Redundancy and Future Archaic, Vinciguerra is set to release his latest work, a CD-R on Rhythm Works, a new label run by Melbourne producer Rory McPike aka Dan White.
Recorded live and mastered by his Total Control bandmate Mikey Young, the cd contains seven tracks of kicking drums and cracking beats. We are premiering two of the tracks below.
Noisey: You say most of the tracks are pretty free form but what sounds were you hoping for when you started Nicky Crane?
James Vinciguerra: Just seeing if I can do something on my own and not rely on other people. They are free form in the sense that I don’t really know what I am doing. The creation of sounds varies from pretty straight up drum machine stuff to endless resampling of sounds. I use a dictaphone a lot. My methodology as far as song craft is concerned is more refined than it used to be. It was more like being in the zone and shitting something out but now I take the turd in hand and with a popsicle stick I shape it into something that resembles your more classic ice cream whipple style turd. But it’s still a turd. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
You come from a fairly punk background. Was this the reason why you called a drum machine project Nicky Crane?
Well, yes I’ve played in a lot of punk bands but I’ve always listened to lots of different music. Choosing that name has much more to do with themes of sexual orientation than wanting to reference something punk and has even less to do with wanting to flirt with Nazi imagery or ideology, which is something I have zero interest in at all.
I feel that instrumental tracks are maybe more inspired by places and lyrics often inspired by people. Are tracks like “Hara Sloj” or “Mop 84” about particular places?
None of it is about anything, but both of those are named after good friends of mine. I am hesitant to call any of this music, I rely a lot on friends to expose me to music and also get a lot of encouragement from them for which I am very thankful. So most of the “songs” on this are named after friends who have helped me, specifically with music related stuff. One song is called “1/5 Turk” because I recently discovered that 13% of my DNA is from Asia Minor, but since naming that I have realised that I am actually much, much less than one-fifth Turkish.
Where are the vocals from “_____” from?
I’d been reading about this place called Skinwalker Ranch and was also at the same time upset because someone drew a picture of my room, which was messy and gross, with the words ‘Skin Crawl’ underneath. Rather than do something immature like smear poo all over his window I recorded that little monologue off the top of my head. You can also hear some garbled voices and a persistent “beep” throughout which is the sound of my Nonna’s heart monitor shortly before she died in hospital.
What do you think of Jarrod Zlatic from Fabulous Diamonds referencing you as maybe sounding like Graham Lambkin teamed up with the Burrell Brothers?
It’s a completely ridiculous statement and I love that he said it. Jarrod was the first person to show any interest in anything I did and I love him for it. I am pretty sure he only sold one of those tapes as far as I know and the person who bought it was Rory McPike who is the person that released this new CD. Ah, the circle of life.
The Nicky Crane 7-track CD and digital is available next week from Rhythm Works.
