"First thing, we are not Gothic," vocalist-songwriter Lacey Conner says, quite emphatically. "When you're labeled 'Gothic,' you tend to alienate people who have these preconceived notions about what Goth is or isn't. We really don't sound like a Gothic band anyway. We're much more aggressive."
Gothic or not, the members of Nocturne certainly emit an aura of decadence, if not out-and-out morbidity. With their high-heeled boots, eyeliner, and black plastic attire, the group's appearance suggests something from the pages of an Anne Rice novel served with a steaming portion of Black Sabbath on the side. No wonder that during the past few years, the band has found an audience playing in clubs throughout Louisiana and Houston -- areas traditionally identified as bastions of all things, er, Gothic.
Conner -- a petite, pretty twentysomething with long, dyed red hair -- is, for all intents and purposes, the focal point of Nocturne. After all, she started the band about four years ago, wrote all their early tunes, and gathered the musicians -- including core members Chris Telkes and Ivan McRoy -- together to realize her vision. The offspring of a musical family (her father is a composer for television and film), Conner was something of a prodigy, taking up the piano at the age of 4 before moving to guitar in her early teens.
After a stint in local band the Furies, she quickly discovered that dedication and diligence were as important as passion and talent when it came to holding a band together. To that end, she has made sure that Nocturne has earned a reputation as one of the more ambitious industrial-Goth bands around. The hard work has borne fruit: The 15 tracks sprawled across the shiny surface of Twilight showcase a band as comfortable crawling through the catchy, hook-filled pop of "Seeing Things" as they are concocting the speaker-shredding mix of digital loops and diamond-hard fretwork that make up "Monarch."
His long, brown hair usually shrouding much of his face, Telkes (who spent most of his youth in Southeast Asia) is the co-conspirator behind much of the trio's music. Onstage, the guitarist-programmer is a striking visual counterpoint to singer Conner -- a sort of Cousin It to her Morticia Addams. Former schoolmates at Walden Preparatory, a small private academy on Royal Lane and the Dallas North Tollway, the two found each other's company somewhat awkward at first. Despite sharing mutual acquaintances, they didn't spend much time together until after graduation, when they began to collaborate on fleshing out a collection of riffs and songs at Lacey's behest. After meeting multi-instrumentalist and Medieval Times knight (seriously) McRoy at a Marilyn Manson show in 1996, the trio -- along with their drummer, known only as Dave G. -- decided to make a go of it with a different direction and a new name.
Playing Thursdays and Sundays at The Church (the regular industrial and Goth nights at the Lizard Lounge), they garnered a small yet dedicated clutch of local fans. Inevitably, drummer Dave bowed out, citing personal issues. The band witnessed a number of drummers and percussionists come in and out of the fold before the highly talented McRoy, a former bassist, turned his attention to the traps. Deciding it would be a mistake to play to the unforgiving beats of a drum machine during live gigs, Nocturne has opted instead to sequence the bass parts, allowing a certain flexibility and energy to its set. The new lineup has also coincided with a move away from the rarefied confines of The Church and into more traditional rock-and-roll venues, such as Trees and the Curtain Club.
"It's a conscious thing, trying to expand our audience," explains Conner. "We just played Deep Ellum Live for the first time a month or so ago [opening up for Ministry], and that was a great experience, finally reaching a point where we were playing to a group of people who probably wouldn't go out [to The Church]."
The band's current three-album deal with Hollows Hill, an offshoot of Triple XXX (the label that launched Jane's Addiction and an early incarnation of Korn, not to mention homeboys Decadent Dub Team), has allowed them an unusual amount of creative control. Nocturne has seen fit to utilize its freedom in every aspect of the process, from artwork to mastering to recording. Telkes, the resident "computer nerd," even installed a home studio in the house he and Conner share in North Dallas; the trio recorded three of Twilight's tracks there. The rest of the album was engineered by Coke Johnson (whose credits include work with The Artist) in various recording facilities during the past year and a half.
The acid-fueled lyrics and ominous, fantastic images might hold the masses at arm's length; yet the band, uninhibited by the reduced sonic expectations that weigh down most modern indie rock, have consistently striven for a sharp, clean sound and high production value that is anything but a joke. Pulsating electronics and mega-distorted guitars blend together with Conner's half-sung/half-shouted treated vocals to create a hybrid that recalls Nine Inch Nails and early Skinny Puppy without aping them. Their take on the Sex Pistol's "Sub-Mission" reveals the seminal punk band's domination anthem to be a gurgling, psychedelic, and -- gulp -- feminine, if not feminist, statement of intent.
"Sex is a part of Nocturne's appeal," Conner acknowledges. "I know guys might come out just to see [a girl] onstage, but I'm OK with it, because I consider myself a performer. I'm doing it for the music. I'm not a dimwit, dancing around and singing..." She trails off. "I mean, I wrote a lot of this music as well, and I hope that people realize that. But the bottom line is that I want people to enjoy their experience with us and I want them to enjoy it visually as well as audibly. Otherwise, they might as well just sit at home and listen to the CD."
Despite the relatively low regard given by the mass media to the industrial and Goth cultures, especially in the wake of the Columbine massacre, Nocturne has remained calmly aloof, if not a little defensive. Issuing an e-mail to their online mailing list following the shootings in Littleton, Colorado, the group excoriated the newspeople and moral watchdogs for lumping the doomed, trenchcoated killers in with the Goth subculture.
"Those guys were not Goth," Conner says. "You get these conservative Christian groups who just need someone to demonize, so they're picking on people who are outsiders, people who wear black. People I know who are into Goth are actually really peaceful, maybe the most peaceful I know."
Since the middle of the year, the band has been touring constantly down the West Coast and through the Midwest, gaining valuable exposure by opening for such scene stalwarts as Christian Death, Ministry, and band faves the Genitorturers. Currently in the works is a prospective deal with a national booking agent that's "almost 100 percent" and, well, more touring. Just don't expect Nocturne to try to lead a new Industrial Revolution.
"We're not out to change people's minds about what [industrial] is or isn't about," Telkes says. "Moving away from the Gothic scene has just made us appear like a bunch of weirdos, because now we're playing amongst pretty normal-looking people. For us, it's usually the other way around."
When it comes to contemporary popular music, the group is content to occupy and mine the niche that they have carved for themselves. Right now the members are writing and recording upcoming songs for their next release on Hollows Hill, keeping their collective nose to the grindstone, and ignoring the distractions of passing musical trends and fads.
"Modern music, contemporary music, just doesn't affect us," Conner says. "We're not competing with someone who sells, like, 30 million records. We'll never compete with that, so we don't worry about it. It's not like, 'Goddamn that Celine Dion. If it wasn't for her, we could be number one on the charts this week!'"
T. Erich Scholz plays bass for The Tomorrowpeople, which is also not a Goth band.
