aether sanctum interview.

Page 2 of 3.

A.S.: ... Tell me about your live performances...

EYE:

Unfortunately, EYE don't play live all that often anymore. However, the concerts that do occur are fun for all the family! EYE arrange a special little floorspace just in front of the stage for all the young children to sit in, and have seats placed in the rear of the auditorium for the parents and grandparents. When the audience enters the hall at the beginning of the evening, each person is given a balloon and a tambourine to wave and thump about during the performance.

EYE like to start up with an up-tempo sing-along number to get all the children dancing, clapping their hands and singing. It usually takes a couple of songs to get the older folk to lose their inhibitions, clap their hands and wiggle their hips. But once they get going, there ain't no stopping them!

About a third of the way into the performance, some of the grandparents go into trance, begin speaking-in-tongues and heal the sick through the laying on of hands. The first sets of convulsions start to occur in the youngest and oldest audience members about a song or two after this and by the time EYE launch into the number "Zombie Stomp" the entire audience is on the ground rolling to and fro, frothing at the mouth screaming for their "mommies" and re-experiencing their birth trauma. It's usually around this stage of the evening, sometimes a little later, that the spontaneous combustion of the more excitable punters occurs.

Once the last of the combusters have burst into flames, the U.F.O's land, abduct the small children for medical experiments and zap another several dozen people for good measure. EYE then conclude with a very special cabaret rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" which features a 400-piece choir, symphony orchestra, pom-pom dancing girls, performing bears from the Moscow Circus, a re-enactment of the crucifixion with Madonna playing the role of Jesus Christ and Michael Jackson as Pontius Pilate, as well as a fireworks finale. As you can imagine, the audience tends to get a little bit overexcited by this stage, so the U.S. military enters from stage-left in the last 8 bars and shoots everyone in order to restore the peace. Occasionally, if tour dates coincide and we are playing in the same town, God makes a special cameo appearance during "Stairway to Heaven" to lead the singing. After the concert, those who survive are allowed to go home and tend to their wounds.

Well, that's the basics of an EYE concert, nothing too fancy, EYE like to let the music speak for itself without having to rely too much on special effects and gimmicks.

A.S.: The Australian Government paid for part of your first tape - come clean about that one.

EYE:

Not only that, but they have since financed further EYE recordings! You see, EYE had some dirt about the then Prime Minister Paul Keating's private life. EYE said to Paul: "Hey, Paul, give EYE some money to record with and EYE promise EYE will never tell the public about what you do in the bathroom". Well it worked! EYE plan to extract more money soon from the present Prime Minister John Howard by threatening to expose to the public that he is, in real life, a Ken doll look-a-like and that the person who appears in public is just an actor used for his good looks - it's a set-up a bit like that truly great '80's pop band Milli Vanilli.

Or hang on, maybe the government money had something to do with an arts grant from the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.) Cultural Council? EYE can't remember exactly . . . the blackmail explanation sounds more impressive so it was probably that one.

A.S.: Favourite conspiracy theory?

page 3 yields the mysterious answer >>>