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Dayton's Brainiac plays cracked machine punk

"We're not trying to be weird," insisted Brainiac guitarist John Schmersal in a recent interview with The Michigan Daily. Yet somehow, they are anyway, at least to most listeners. The Dayton, Ohio, quartet cranks out some of the most schizophrenic, frantic, distorted music you're likely to hear with your current pair of ears.

Their three albums, "Smack Baby Bunny," "Bonzai Superstar" and their latest, "Hissing Prigs in Static Couture," stretch the boundaries of music, incorporating samples, keyboards and processed sounds and vocals in a way that's, well, iconoclastic. Just don't use the "`w' word" around Schmersal to describe Brainiac's sound.

"It's not weird to me at all," he continued. "It's not weird to me to sample a Morse code training record. I like to listen to stuff like that. We want to be original, we don't want to be typical. It makes me feel weird when people say, `Your music is most annoying,' or that we're a parody band, that we sound like Ween. It makes me feel like they're missing the point, because Ween's music is mostly funny and Brainiac likes to express all emotions."

That "weird" label persists, however, even among the band's fans. When asked why the band's name is nearly synonymous with the unusual, Schmersal replied, "I guess it depends on what kind of music you like to listen to. People listen to the radio a bit too much, maybe. (Brainiac) is new, and sometimes it takes a while for new things to become listenable to people."

Yet Brainiac manages to make even the most daring sonic adventures enjoyable, even poppy. Once accustomed to the psychotic vocals of singer Timmy Taylor and the sonic soup of samples, keyboards and angular guitar riffs, Brainiac's sound becomes addictive. "Hissing Prigs in Static Couture" particularly encapsulates the band's distinctive mix of punk and avant garde noise.

Noises of all kinds fascinate Schmersal: "Basically, if you can't tell how a sound is produced, it's impressive," he said. "I like to use things that when you mix them with other sounds, you can't tell what they are, but they sound cool.

"I think the most interesting effect we've used on a song was an electric fan. ... Again, it's not an effect where you can tell, `Oh, he's singing through a fan.' It just sounds really cool."

Sounding really cool doesn't cost the group much. Years of hanging around the Dayton area's pawnshops garnered the group almost all of their instruments, particularly when they were starting out. Schmersal explained Brainiac's low-cost experimentalism: "For one thing, we don't have a lot of money. That's why we used a lot of Moog and Moog-type synthesizers for a while, because in the Dayton area they were really cheap."

"Hissing Prigs" shows that Brainiac is moving even farther away from any type of easily classifiable sound. Songs like "Pussyfootin'" and "Vincent Come on Down" sound like typical (if there is such a thing) Brainiac rave-ups, with loud vocals and louder keyboards and guitars. But tracks like "Indian Poker Part 3" show the group exploring quieter sonic territory. For the third time, the group worked with Eli Janney of Girls Against Boys as their producer, a partnership that's resulting in ever-stronger music from Brainiac.

Schmersal said of the band's new album, "It was pretty planned out. Some of the songs started out as live songs, some of them were beefed-up home recordings and some were originally home recordings that were redone in the studio. Eli is a great person to work with. We've been learning a bit about studios and what we want to do, but we still don't know how to use the studio well yet, so it's good to have someone like Eli around."

While "Hissing Prigs" is in the Brainiac non-tradition of crazed experimentalism, it also marks a turning point in the band's sound, particularly in how the band approaches songs in their charged performances. Schmersal said of their new songs, "Some of them are really different, and some of them can't translate live at all. They weren't meant to translate. Some of them aren't even songs; they're just like little intermissions between the songs that could end up on a film soundtrack."

Even though the group's records never fail to intrigue, the best way to experience Brainiac is to see one of their incredible live shows. Their last two shows in Ann Arbor electrified the crowds, and tonight's gig at the Shelter looks to be just as charismatic. Expect lots of jumping, screaming and heckling -- from the band, that is. Live, Brainiac looks to provoke a reaction from their audiences.

"We would like them to dance," Schmersal said. "But if they don't want to, I guess that's OK. We like to put on an energetic show, and when you're jumping all over the place and you look out on this still-life painting, it's kind of weird. If people are hollering and screaming that they love us, or if they're badgering us, it's cool. There's nothing more obnoxious than going to a city and having people just stand there." And there's nothing more exciting than seeing and hearing this iconoclastic, entertaining, and (sorry, John) occasionally weird band.