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and Dagger enlisted Eagles of Death Metal guitarist, quasiNew Orleanian and rock ’n’ roll elder statesman Dave Catching. Yseult and Catching met in the ’90s when White Zombie took Catching’s band on tour. Catching assimilated into Star and Dagger quite naturally while he co-produced Tomorrowland Blues at his Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, Calif. Rancho de la Luna is most famous as ground zero for the recording of several Queens of the Stone Age albums. “New Orleans is officially my home,” says Catching, who also is known to DJ around town and has made a cameo in the parading Mardi Gras rock band Pink Slip with Sue and Jimmy Ford. “My business is out in Joshua Tree, and it is always busy,” he says. “I live at my studio half the time, and the rest I try to spend in New Orleans.” Singer von Hesseling is a relative newcomer to the stage, but is familiar with New Orleans’ rock ’n’ roll scene via her husband Ryan Hesseling’s ownership of One Eyed Jacks. Her voice — more Heart than L7 — is Star and Dagger’s soulful centerpiece. “It’s almost funny sometimes to hear Marci’s beautiful voice on top of these metal riffs,” Yseult says. Finding themselves temporarily
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3:45 P.M. FRIDAY LE CARNIVAL
homeless after Hurricane Katrina, Yseult and husband Chris Lee of Supagroup bought a place in New York, where Star and Dagger lately has spent time playing shows and looking for a label to release Tomorrowland Blues. “I still have the place in New Orleans,” Yseult says. “New Orleans is home, but after Katrina I remembered how much I loved New York.” Following a year of brief tours and shows with Down, High on Fire, Helmet and Eagles of Death Metal, Star and Dagger is ready to return to New Orleans and will screen the video for “Your Mama Was a Grifter” during its show at Voodoo. — MICHAEL PATRICK WELCH
un into a dance crowd, yell “Skrillex” and shield yourself from projectile vomiting, shrieking teens and arms-flailing party bro howls. Follow it with the question, “What is dubstep?” and throw on a flak jacket for the barrage of opinions. What was once a burgeoning electronic music obscurity has become a synonym for gym-mom dance-pop, pimply high school party music and the butt of a poorly written music joke in 2012. In the late ’90s, South London DJs chopped up 2-step, dub reggae and drum-and-bass elements distinct from the powerhouse grime and house music scenes dominating the clubs. Subtle pitch shifts and dark, bass-heavy “drops” and sparse beats were defining characteristics. Fast-forward to 2011, and a former emo band frontman in oversized sunglasses and a goofy haircut has amassed three Grammy Awards and millions of fans for his take on the genre. Skrillex (real name Sonny John Moore) relies on aggressive drops and explosively warped sub-bass robot blasts, taking the club culture to packed stadiums, with DJ as heavy metal guitar wizard. Skrillex released a string of EPs in 2010 — breakout hit and Grammy-winning single “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” with its skittering
patterns and big beat electro-pop, introduced the “drop” to mainstream audiences. Forty seconds in, Skrillex turns the knobs to Transformers frequencies. That “drop” is his signature, and its imitators and contemporaries of what is derogatively named “brostep” rely on the drop’s success on the dance floor, or in the car or dorm room. Though critics and DJs deny Skrillex as a “true” dubstep producer, he isn’t attached to the name, either. He points to progressive electronic producers like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher as primary influences. Last year’s “Bangarang,” his biggest hit to date, is a straight-forward house banger, equal parts Daft Punk dance party and radio-friendly dance rock, a la fellow Voodoo headliners Justice. Skrillex mines dubstep’s bass-obsessed breakdowns but cranks the volume to sugary highs with absolutely no room for club dance floor subtlety. — ALEX WOODWARD
SKRILLEX 6:15 P.M. SUNDAY LE PLUR
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
don’t like to say it’s straight-up metal,” former White Zombie bassist Sean Yseult says of her new heavy guitar band Star and Dagger. At a fighting weight closer to Down than her other band Rock City Morgue, Star and Dagger flirts dangerously with Southern metal. Its online debut offered a different sound. The band put its heavy metal aside on its first single, the anomalous boogieblues stomp, “Your Mama Was a Grifter.” Yseult wrote the campy lyrics, a duty that normally falls to guitarist Donna She Wolf, late of Cycle Sluts from Hell. The song’s video slips the band’s founding female members — a trio rounded out by singer Marci von Hesseling (owner of the French Quarter wig and costume shop Fifi Mahony’s) — into a black-and-white homage to Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The band’s first press photo shows the three women performing a seance, but Star and Dagger also features two men. After drumming on Star and Dagger’s three-song vinyl EP and its upcoming debut album, Tomorrowland Blues, Dustin Crops departed and Queens of the Stone Age drummer Gene Trautmann took over the kit. “He’s kick-ass,” Yseult nearly shouts. “It’s really exciting to play with him.” Around the same time, Star
PHOTO BY LESLIE VAN STELTON
Star and Dagger
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