Interview

Some bands seem to come pre-packaged, seemingly delivered out of thin air. Then there are others who crash the party with explosive new sounds and transgressive stage sets that force people to take notice. Such is the case with Sherlock's Daughter. After getting together this spring, releasing a five-track EP through Australia's Inertia label, and supporting The Temper Trap and School of Seven Bells on their respective summer tours down under, the Sydney-based fivesome booked plane tickets to New York on a whim hoping to secure a few shows after confirming last-minute spots on a couple CMJ showcases. (PHOTO: SHERLOCK'S DAUGHTER)

"I think we're just impatient," says bassist Liam Flanagan. "We figured if we didn't book any shows we'd at least have a good holiday." Looks like they'll be getting both. On the heels of the trippy dance party they delivered at The Hours Norwood showcase, the band scored a monthlong residency at Pianos, which kicked off last Thursday with a crowd chockablock of entertainment lawyers. If you get a chance, go see them. With a name that's an ode to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a singer (Tanya Horo) who was kicked out of her Christian high school and a youth camp–in Christchurch, New Zealand, no less–for being a witch, and a woodsy, synth-backed sound powered by Horo's whispery Nina Persson-esque vocals and an almost aboriginal backbeat, they should have some staying power. Thurston Moore even namechecked them as a band to watch in an interview last Friday with NPR.

Currently living together in Prospect Heights in an apartment where they share bunk bends ("I'm on the bottom," jokes Horo), the band is hoping to record a two-track 7-inch disc at the Catskill's renowned Outlier Inn before going back to Sydney next month to record their first album. "Unless something amazing happens here we're going back in December," says the singer, who was formerly known as the actress Marvey King. A cross between Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ellen Page, and Karen O, Horo weaves around the stage like a black-clad pixie in some psychedelic forest. "When people describe our music it always ends up in a forest," says Horo. "Liam calls it Chinese country."

However you want to describe it, it's intoxicating to see the spell Horo and Co. cast on stage. Which brings us back to the witchcraft. "I did get kicked out of high school because they thought I was a witch, but I'm not a witch. I think it was because I had a boyfriend who was gothic. Also somebody spray-painted this massive white pentagram with 666 under it and I got blamed for it," she admits, though won't go into specifics about a purported voice that needed to get out of her at that time. "I'll tell you the whole story someday." No need to worry though, says drummer William Russell. "We're trying to steer her away from her witch past."

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In the four years since she turned the brooding bohemian Claire Fisher of HBO's Six Feet Under into a hipster icon, Lauren Ambrose has been prolific on stage (as Juliet and Ophelia in two seasons at The Public Theater's Shakespeare In The Park, and more recently on Broadway with Ionesco's Exit The King) and on the big screen (Cold Souls, Where The Wild Things Are). But, this Sunday, with a group of musicians from the Blue Ribbon Boys, The Two Man Gentlemen Band, and other Berkshires-based players she's been jamming with for the past month, the operatically-trained Ambrose will make her NYC singing debut at Joe's Pub as Lauren Ambrose & The Leisure Class. "We'll play standards and covers of rock 'n roll songs in our style," says Ambrose, meaning Ragtime, Louis Armstrong-style jazz. If you can score a ticket to the already sold out show, be sure to listen for the band's two original songs, "My Love, How Could You?" ("A really beautiful slow jam") and the "jazzy, old-timey" "Reefer." If not, no worries–they might be back sometime soon. "These guys are really like gypsies on the road all the time," she says. "So I guess that's where the idea of The Leisure Class came about because it's truly a leisure pursuit."


SLENSKE: You've actually been singing for quite a while?

AMBROSE: Yeah, I've always sung, and I always try to find a way for music to be in my life. I don't know this whole band just came about organically up in the Berkshires. All these guys are in a million different bands and I've sang with some of them in the Blue Ribbon Boys which is a little country band up there.

SLENSKE: But this is more jazz?

AMBROSE: Yeah, I'd call it hot jazz, Ragtime, Dixieland, there's a definite Louis Armstrong influence, Django. It was just kind of what we were all interested in playing. The idea is that we're doing it just for the joy of the actual physical experience. We may record something just for the fun of it, but the idea is just to be truly joyful and truly fun, especially for me, because I take myself too seriously all the time [laughs]. It's no pressure really, it's just an experiment, because I come from a classical music background these guys come from playing country and old time stuff.

SLENSKE: And The Leisure Class is totally new?

AMBROSE: Yeah, we played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in The Blues Brothers with the chicken wire. This place called The Brick House, in Housatonic. I really can't believe we're going to play for people in New York City. I'm terrified, but it's a small enough room. But it's really just supposed to be for the fun of it.

SLENSKE: Are you working on anything new outside the band? Stage work?

AMBROSE: I don't know yet. In this economic climate it's a mystery on what will and what won't come together. I think I need a little break. I've got a two-year old. I'll be part of The Leisure Class for a while.

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"I didn't know anything about his story at all," says Ulrich Lang about Tony Clifton, the louche Las Vegas lounge singer whom Andy Kaufman and collaborator Bob Zmuda turned into one of comedy's most inscrutable characters. (Though Kaufman swore he met the real Clifton after ambushing Elvis at a Vegas hotel in 1969, many fans believe he's entirely a figment of the entertainer's imagination.) Whether he exists or not, in September Lia Gangitano, founder of the Lower East Side non-profit art space Participant Inc., asked Lang to make a fragrance for Clifton, which debuted last night at Participant's Up My Sleeve exhibition, curated by artist Jonathan Berger. (LEFT: NIGHTSCAPE BY MATT LICARI)

Lang was a smart choice. The German born fragrancer has always toed the line between art and commerce. For the packaging of his first two fragrances—Anvers and Anvers 2—he commissioned Erik Swain and Katy Grannan to photograph Belgian art dealer Roger Szmulewicz (of Antwerp's 51 Fine Art). An unlikely choice, perhaps, but in a world of mass-produced celebrity schlock, Lang's boxes are considered as provoking and mysterious as his cult-followed fragrances. For Nightscape, his new leathery patchouli-focused scent, he gave 24-year-old photographer Matt Licari a lab sample and asked him to shoot urban landscapes across the country.

Applying the same rigor to the Clifton project, Lang soaked up every clip of the singer he could find on YouTube, along with the hilarious Japanese ads for Mandom, which depict Charles Bronson bathing in the cheesy scent. He also took notes from Kaufman and Zmuda's script for The Tony Clifton Story, which he brought to the renowned Drom Fragrances so they could deliver "an aggressive cologne" peppered with Jack Daniels, Lucky Strikes, and BO. Drom loved the idea so much they even concocted a vile fragrance (which didn't make the final cut) based on the Limburger cheese Jim Carrey reportedly rubbed on his skin to prepare for his Clifton scenes in Man On The Moon.

"It's the same ingredient that's in Chanel No. 5, but they just use a drop," Drom's Robert Stapf told me at last night's opening. Meant to evoke dime store hairspray and stale cigarette smoke and showcased in a decanter-like bottle designed by Marc Rosen Associates, Stapf says the singer's scent "offended our lab assistants without even being there." Don't worry, Clifton (or maybe Zmuda) will get his chance to offend in person next Monday at Santos, where a team of burlesque dancers are going to spritz the crowd with the hot, spicy, and generally off-putting fragrance throughout the three-hour spectacle. And, if you leave the show actually wanting to smell like Clifton, you might be in luck. "It was purely an art collaboration," says Lang. "But we left it open ended."

Clifton on display through December 20 at Participant, Inc. and on November 16 at Santos Party House; Nightscape available at Barneys New York and Aedes de Venustas, www.ulrichlangnewyork.com.

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As evidenced by Katharine Harmon's new book The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography (Princeton Architectural Press) map-related artwork is hot right now. But of the 150 artists in her new tome–including Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Olafur Eliasson, Maira Kalman, William Kentridge, and Vik Muniz–one is particularly intriguing: Florent Morellet. As you might know, the famed Meatpacking District restaurateur was born into an artistic family–his father, abstract minimalist painter Francois Morellet, has many pieces in MoMA's permanent collection and is currently installing seven new permanent window installations at the Louvre in January. (IMAGE: FLORENT MORELLET; EMPTY LICHEN)

"I'm so obsessed with maps," says Morellet, who's been making maps since he was 10 years old. "My work is insane, it's completely conceptual–and realistic." To wit: In a 1997 show in Paris years back, he imagined the City of Light from five different vantage points–think Cairo superimposed over the Seine–and five different climates, complete with tongue-in-cheek almanacs detailing the imagined political, economic, and educational landscapes. For this book's accompanying art show, opening tonight at New York's Christopher Henry Gallery, Florent put Harmon in touch with Soho gallerist Christopher Henry to cull maps from a dozen artists including Morellet, who has created 11 new pieces, including a series in tribute to his late patron and friend Roy Lichtenstein. Though Florent doesn't have any new designs on another restaurant at the moment, he may be forging a new path into the hospitality game soon.


MICHAEL SLENSKE: Hello, how are you?

FLORENT MORELLET: Great, how are you?

SLENSKE: Great. So how's it been preparing for this show?

MORELLET: I did a dozen pieces. Most of them I did recently in the past couple of months. I mean I was working to the wire. I've been working every day and every night for the past week. In the book what Kaite chose are three pieces I did with lichen, you know the moss. I did a picture together with a graphic designer I've been working with for 20 years named Douglas Riccardi. He helped me work on the pictures digitally to isolate the light away from it's background and turn it into a nice image. I was seeing maps everywhere and lichen really looks like the map of an island, especially a volcanic island.

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