Skip to main content
Read page text
page 102
Singer Dandi Wind Belts It Out Like A Banshee On Stage But She’s Actually A Mild Mannered Hippie Child P r iMA l Sc r E A M tHe r Ap y With a name like Dandilion Wind Opaine Schlase, you can probably guess that Dandi (for short) has hippie parents. The petite Canadian grew up 14 hours north of Vancouver, with a sculptor father and activist mother in a little cabin with no running water and greenhouses in which they grew their own vegetables. Which might go some way to explaining why she is so good at expressing her primal rage. On stage, clad in lycra leotards and Ziggy Stardust make-up, her band Dandi Wind unleash an electronic storm, courtesy of Dandi’s partner in crime, Szam’s Devo-like analogue and sequencer beats. Professing a deep love for Kate Bush, Lene Lovich and Einstüürzende Neubauten, as vocalist, Dandi is not one for staring at her shoelaces – she throws herself across the stage like a woman possessed. “I’m always in pain after every show,” she laughs, on the phone from Montreal, where the band moved to avoid Vancouver’s rising rents. “I’m physically aware of my body on stage, but not always aware of where I am. I go into a sort of trance. The mood of the crowd really affects my performance – if they stand there staring, it can bring out a bit of primal anger, which is probably pretty evident.” Dandi met Szam when her family moved to Vancouver and she went to art school. Initially, Dandi made sculptures and performed movements to Szam’s music, once using 50 heating grates as a wall of percussion. But soon, she was singing too. “A lot of bands at the time were maybe too shy to put themselves on the line. We wanted to do something that was a proper rock show, with really high energy and an interesting lead performer: me.” With her outlandish homemade costumes it’s no surprise that Dandi’s goal this year is to play Japan, and she talks excitedly about the teenagers who hang around Harajuku, posing for photographs and swapping comic books. First album Concrete Igloo (named after the taxidermy museum Dandi grew up next door to), features a stop-motion animation video for every song, shot on $20 budgets. One features Dandi fighting with a plastic sheet and eventually vomiting blood into a pile of cardboard boxes, in another, various disintegrating fruits crawl around the floor. Having completed their second album, Yolk of the Golden Egg, this year, the duo move to the UK, where both records will be released this spring. And in keeping with the all-round high energy, they’re already working on two more – one “spastic electro album” and one “early goth, Bauhaus album”, with tribal sounds courtesy of new drummer Evan Pierce. Text Hannah Lack Photography Mel Bles Concrete Igloo and Yolk of the Golden Egg will be released this spring. 100 AnOtherMan Music
page 103

Page Text

View plaintext

Singer Dandi Wind Belts It Out Like A Banshee On Stage But She’s Actually A Mild Mannered Hippie Child

P r iMA l

Sc r E A M

tHe r Ap y With a name like Dandilion Wind Opaine Schlase, you can probably guess that Dandi (for short) has hippie parents. The petite Canadian grew up 14 hours north of Vancouver, with a sculptor father and activist mother in a little cabin with no running water and greenhouses in which they grew their own vegetables. Which might go some way to explaining why she is so good at expressing her primal rage. On stage, clad in lycra leotards and Ziggy Stardust make-up, her band Dandi Wind unleash an electronic storm, courtesy of

Dandi’s partner in crime, Szam’s Devo-like analogue and sequencer beats. Professing a deep love for Kate Bush, Lene Lovich and Einstüürzende Neubauten, as vocalist, Dandi is not one for staring at her shoelaces – she throws herself across the stage like a woman possessed. “I’m always in pain after every show,” she laughs, on the phone from Montreal, where the band moved to avoid Vancouver’s rising rents. “I’m physically aware of my body on stage, but not always aware of where I am. I go into a sort of trance. The mood of the crowd really affects my performance – if they stand

there staring, it can bring out a bit of primal anger, which is probably pretty evident.” Dandi met Szam when her family moved to Vancouver and she went to art school. Initially, Dandi made sculptures and performed movements to Szam’s music, once using 50 heating grates as a wall of percussion. But soon, she was singing too. “A lot of bands at the time were maybe too shy to put themselves on the line. We wanted to do something that was a proper rock show, with really high energy and an interesting lead performer: me.” With her outlandish homemade costumes it’s no surprise that Dandi’s goal this year is to play Japan, and she talks excitedly about the teenagers who hang around Harajuku, posing for photographs and swapping comic books. First album Concrete Igloo (named after the taxidermy museum Dandi grew up next door to), features a stop-motion animation video for every song, shot on $20 budgets. One features Dandi fighting with a plastic sheet and eventually vomiting blood into a pile of cardboard boxes, in another, various disintegrating fruits crawl around the floor. Having completed their second album, Yolk of the Golden Egg, this year, the duo move to the UK, where both records will be released this spring. And in keeping with the all-round high energy, they’re already working on two more – one “spastic electro album” and one “early goth, Bauhaus album”, with tribal sounds courtesy of new drummer Evan Pierce. Text Hannah Lack Photography Mel Bles Concrete Igloo and Yolk of the Golden Egg will be released this spring.

100 AnOtherMan Music

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content