Miranda Sex Garden

Miranda Sex Garden have gone through several phases in their relatively short career, but now they seem to have truly found their niche. The group was originally started up by singer and multi-instrumentalists Kelly McCuster, Katherine Blake and Jocelyn West. The debut 1991 LP, "Madra," was comprised of mostly a capella madrigals, but the follow up EP, "Iris" marked a major change in the band and their sound. With West replaced by Donna McKevitt and the addition of guitarist Ben Golomstock and percussionist Trevor Sharpe, Miranda Sex Garden now has a fuller, and even more unique sound. This Spring, the group released their second full length LP, "Suspiria," an album that full realizes the potential of the new line-up.

While the new Miranda Sex Garden sound is not really more commercial, but it is certainly more accessible and interesting than the band's early work. The rich, almost classical arrangements tailored to the rock format mesh perfectly with the three singers. And most importantly, it is a true "band" situation, unlike the dance track "Gush Forth My Tears," which introduced American audiences to the band several years ago.

"At the time it was kind of like 'how can we commercialize this vocal thing'," explains Trevor. "So they got Thrash from the Orb and other people coming in doing all these dance mixes to kind of like get it out to the public. I mean musically, its nothing compared to what we're doing now."

The new line-up hasn't really affected the way the band works, since Blake still comes up with most of the lyrics and basic melodies.

"A lot of our songs come about in different ways," explains Trevor. "Ben comes up with a lot of the original ideas and then we'll all work on it. It's just a noise or some chords that he's into and I'll put a rhythm to it and then Donna will come up with the Viola line or something, it's just like patching pieces together. Some of the songs start off on keyboards, some of them start off on guitar. We just sort of collect it and try to turn it into an event"

Although the wide variety of instruments used on their recordings may make it seem that the music would be difficult to adapt to the live setting, Miranda Sex Garden actually create their music with performance in mind. The live instrumentation consists of drums, guitar and bass with lots of effects, electric viola and two violins.

"It's got more of an edge," says Donna. "It's how we originally intended the music to come across. it's quite hard. It's a different experience"

Trevor adds that this sound will become more apparent on their next studio endeavor. "We're going to get nastier," he says. "We're going to try to be as intense on record as we are live and try and be a bit more straightforward."

The latest LP, which takes its title from the horror film of the same name, is filled with off-beat touches. "Play," for example, features vocals by Blake that start off as sweet singing before evolving into evil sounding yells. There's also some some interesting covers: a version of "My Funny Valentine" and a rendition of "In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song) from David Lynch's film "Eraser Head."

The album took 6 months to make total, and 14 days to actually record. The band says that they could have got it done faster, but they find working 8 hour days "dull" and say that they are too lazy anyway.

Because of their dark and gothic style, the name "Suspiria" is a fitting one for a Miranda Sex Garden album, as the 70's horror film was all about witchcraft.

"It's visually really intense. There's a real atmosphere in it, it's like really quite chilling. It's quite stylized. There is a kind of link between the film, or I'd like to think there is anyways. Because it's a great film and we're a great band," says Trevor, laughing.

Although in past interviews the Miranda Sex Garden have said that their name doesn't really mean anything and they just took it because they needed a name in the hurry, Trevor and Donna decide to be a bit more creative this time.

"It was this girl called Miranda, this friend of ours. She's a bit of a tart, basically, and she kept having sex in our Garden, that's where the name came from," explains Trevor. "She's out there, she's always on the guest list."

Donna adds, "She was wearing wellies when she did it."

"It was a bit of a muddy garden," agrees Trevor. "She actually had three of them out there on one night. I think that's where the name came from because it was such a notorious event."

With their gothic image and their fusion of classical music and guitar rock, Miranda Sex Garden don't really fit into any particular category. But the group enjoys not just appealing to any certain audience.

"I could say people who are into classical music, we're aiming things at them, and people who are into horrible guitar dissonance, we're aiming things at them, but there's loads of people," says Trevor. "I met this strange woman in Amsterdam, she was mid-40's, she travelled all the way from god knows where to see us, it was really odd. We don't seem to get typical gig audiences, we get a wide range of people."