ruby mines beat from multitude of soundsBy Nisha Gopalan
Daily Bruin Contributor
Think of ruby singer Lesley Rankine as the kid who comes back
from summer vacation looking totally different.
Music fans will remember the bald-headed, combat-booted Rankine
as the singer for British loud-band Silverfish and part-time member
of the "industrial" supergroup Pigface.
One hardly recognizes Rankine nowadays. Leaving Silverfish (a
not-so-friendly parting), she abandoned her former image. Rankine
now has hair on her once bald head, wears make-up and even dons the
occasional dress. This change appears to consume the utterly
baffled British music press.
"As if I’ve never had hair in my life. As if I’ve never worn
dresses," Rankine growls. "Nobody should make any judgments or have
any preconceived ideas based on what they see."
Well put, considering no one, not even Rankine, knew what to
expect out of her new band, ruby. In fact, Rankine and her studio
collaborator, Mark Walk (Pigface), not knowing exactly what they
wanted, composed their debut album, "Salt Peter," as they recorded
it – to avoid any musical constraints.
"After doing that gut-oriented music in Silverfish, having the
vocals already set and established music, I wanted something that
was much more melodic and much more fluid, and songs that would be
written around the vocals," Rankine says. "I wanted the lyrics, the
vocals, to be melodic and have some sort of sinister element to
them as well. I think you need to have a balance of something
that’s beautiful and something that’s nasty."
"There were always periods when I didn’t know whether I liked
(the new music) or not," Rankine adds. "But after I recorded it, I
was completely happy with it."
The resulting album signifies Rankine’s most ambitious endeavor
yet. She experiments with dance beats and melodic layering, as well
as an impressive vocal range, making ruby’s music difficult to
classify. Take, for instance, the KROQ-approved dance cut, "Tiny
Meat," and contrast it to the sound of the dreamy "Paraffin" or the
jazzy "Flippin’ Tha Bird."
The consensus agrees that ruby’s sound comes closest to
trip-hop. Rankine, on the other hand, insists that neither she nor
Walk had any exposure to the English dance scene.
"The reason it’s got a groove is simply because we wanted to
have some kind of a human feel to it," Rankine says. "We made this
record in a basement, for the most part, totally isolated from the
rest of the world. Then I come back to Britain, and suddenly I’m
part of a dance scene."
If Rankine sounds a bit perturbed, well, she is. She detests
typecasts. One wonders whether ruby is, in part, a reaction to
constraints placed upon her by everyone from the British music
scene to her former bandmates.
Consider the terse aphorism written discreetly in the CD
booklet, "Revenge (revenj) n: A dish best served cold."
"I don’t think anything we’ve done is revenge-driven. When I
came back from London, it seemed appropriate. I found myself
muttering it (the epigram) quite a lot," Rankine says. "I found out
some things that have been going on with the ex-members of
Silverfish. The things that they’ve been doing and saying. And it
was like, ‘Fuck you!’ I’ve got a life after that."
The revenge aphorism proves a larger point.
"I come from a long line of pretty belligerent women," says
Rankine, a feminist and professor of the now-famous Silverfish and
Pigface "Hips, Tits, Lips, Power!" lyric. "I know what my world
must be."
Rankine continues, "I see other people around me who allow other
people to have some form of control over their life. I’m just not
interested in that. I know what I want. And for the most part I
know how to do it."
CONCERT: ruby performs at the Dragonfly in Hollywood on Friday.
Call (213) 466-6111 for more information.
ruby vocalist Lesley Rankine will perform at the Dragonfly
Friday.
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