interview

in "3D World", Music Newspaper, Sydney, Australia, November 2002.

This interview was in regards to ELF being 1 of the 5 finalists in the Dance Music category of the Australian Music Industry's www.musicoz.org competition, November 2002.

3DWorld: What do you like about dance music and what made you want to start producing it?

John Citizen: The thing we like most about dance/electronic music is the sheer diversity and possibilities of expression and sound. I was originally a fervent anti-electronic music guitar-head. But I was reborn on hearing cyber-electro groups like Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Severed Heads, Nitzer Ebb and Kraftwerk. They were the catalysts which led me to a love of all noises electronic and groovey. I started making electronic music at the end of my final school year. I had one more unit to fill in to complete my double-major in music and I chose an electronic music subject. It was so much fun and blew away all my silly anti-electronic music prejudices. I wish I'd always studied it. I was hooked. Over the next half-a-decade or so all my spare earnings went into this addiction. EYE was our first music project, and ELF spawned out of that.

Jane Citizen: My original inspirations were pretty much the same, except that I've always greatly preferred electronic music. I just started collecting bits of music gear without fully realising it: wanting to have a go at making sounds I'd hear others make. Also, I grew up in the USA, whilst John is a native Canberran.

3D World: You have two CDs out already, how would you describe your sound?

John Citizen: Actually those are mail-order CDR releases exclusive to http://www.blatantpropaganda.com. However, we have some factory-pressed releases scheduled for early 2003 and tracks popping up on compilations all the time.
The ELF sound ranges from catchy radio-friendly electronica to more esoteric pieces with doses of electro, tech, drum&bass, acid-house and glitchcore with an industrial bite.

Jane Citizen: Sound-wise, we enjoy and strive for diversity with a coherency. We're influenced by
contemporaries ranging from Daft Punk to Speedy J, from Pitch Black to Concord Dawn.

3D World: Ideally, where do you hope your music career takes you?

John Citizen: Ideally, ELF would like to make more and more people smile, jump about cathartically, think about things in new ways and for us to be able to make a liveable income from our music!

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