DDT
by Lila Lieberman 
    What is the fate of an "industrial" band when it is forced by circumstance to exist within the electronic music vacuum of Boston, MA? Noel McKenna (drum programming and  vocals), Elaine Walker (keyboards and sequencing) and Lisa Sirois (drums, samples and most recently, vocals) know only too well. The trio have been together for over two years now, and have watched as their music and persona have evolved while the rest of the scene continues to stagnate.
     The origins of the band lie in the meeting between Lisa and Noel at Cambridge club Manray.  Elaine, who graduated from Berklee College of Music with a music synthesis degree, joined later. From the beginning DDT was an industrial band.
     "You're influenced by the music you like best," says Noel. "And in our case we all really liked, and we all still really like industrial music. And we wanted to emulate that. And being a young band, we tried to imitate it."
	     The influence of prototypical industrial bands initially permeated both their music and stage show. Says Elaine, "I used to wear a fake machine gun, a machete in my boot, and we would have fake skin and fake blood, and we looked like burn victims."
     "We used the typical gas mask stuff," adds Lisa. "We didn't use something if we didn't think it was industrial, so we ended up using all of these things that were already used by every other band, which of course, we didn't know."
     Things are different now. "At the beginning, I think we tired to be a certain way," says Lisa. "Then we forgot what we were trying to be, so we just ended up becoming our three personalities instead of something that we tried to be."
     This metamorphosis has allowed the band member's individual influences to emerge more forcefully.
	    "We come from different backgrounds and I think we have different attitudes, but it works together," says Elaine.
	     This eclectic mix includes Elaine's classical music training, Lisa and Noel's art background, and Noel's interest in techno music.
     "What happened was the whole rave/techno scene, and Noel really caught onto that and he really likes it," says Elaine. "And I hated it, with a passion, and Lisa just didn't care. She just thought it was funny. So Noel wanted to go in that direction and I was almost fighting it and I finally found a way to make it kind of work were I didn't hate it so much. Actually, I like the sound we've developed."
     "Now we're being influenced by techno and house," adds Noel. "I mean if you look at it, it's very closely related to industrial as far as I'm concerned. If industrial didn't exist and people didn't start making music with computers, techno and trance and house and all of the rest couldn't exist either."
     How have these genres impacted upon DDT's music?
     "There's a lot of beautiful music being made by a lot of techno bands - a lot of legitimate, beautifully produced, beautifully orchestrated music being made. And I think that it would be really innovative to create a hybrid between a lot of this really beautiful, beautifully layered music, really euphoric, and add a touch of the aggressiveness and the ugliness of traditional industrial music. It creates kind of the perfect contradiction of something being very beautiful and angst-ridden at the same time."
      Is Boston ready for this? Elaine claims that, "There isn't a music scene as far as our stuff goes."
     Noel adds, "As far as being an 'electronic band' in Boston, Boston is both good and bad. It's good in that you're kind of one of a kind and you're kind of a novelty. But very quickly the novelty wears off and you're just ultimately met with a lot of prejudice. Boston is a very traditional city as far as music goes. It's a city that's prejudices against electronic music which is really bad and the one thing that is probably the most discouraging thing as far as being around here. It's kind of like a rock-n-roll hell."
     While DDT still intend to play in Boston with a new stage show beginning mid-summer, they will be concentrating upon larger and more appreciative audiences elsewhere, both on a national and international level.  They would like very much to get signed, and have recently completed recording four new songs. They continue to evolve.
     "I think we've gone in a new direction, but we haven't finished figuring out what that is," says Elaine. "We know we're different and we have an idea of where we're going, but it's not finished."
     Lisa adds, "Well, we have a long way to go, but if we were really finished then the band would be finished too. If we had everything figured out then why even be in a band?"

DDT can be heard on Re-Constriction's "Shut Up Kitty" compilation. An electronic DDT press kit can be found at all of the same Internet sites as Chaos Control, as well as American Online. For more info, email DDT at ddt@world.std.com.