Electrasy

“We’re in rock ‘n’ roll,” says lead vocalist Ali McKinnell of U.K. born Electrasy, “because we don’t have to conform. No one can tell us what to do. It’s sheer expression, from the heart. It’s a license to thrill.”

On its debut U.S.-issued album, In Here We Fall (Arista Records), Electrasy rocks with passion and without compromise. “We don’t mime songs in front of 12-year-olds,” says guitarist/songwriter Nigel Nisbet. “We’re a rock band.”

How rock ‘n’ roll is Electrasy? Well, Nisbet was once married to a Hungarian porn star. And when McKinnell first met Arista chief Clive Davis, he’d just stumbled drunk off a plane from Glasgow and, not knowing who the legendary Davis was, kept calling him “Mike” throughout their first meeting apparently because Davis resembles an actor on a popular British TV series.

Yet Electrasy is also as unique as its name. In Here We Fall, produced by Matthew Wilder (No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom), blends the acoustic and the electric, the progressive and the raw, using technology only to manipulate the organic, such as pre-’76 keyboards and vinyl records. Electrasy is about bringing everything together to create big songs–in sound and substance. “Even if a song starts out acoustic or electronic or has hip-hop beats,” explains Nisbet, “the foundation is a wall of disgustingly loud guitars firing off like rockets.”

But perhaps what Electrasy most importantly brings together are Nisbet, who has a university degree in Pure Mathematics, played violin since he was five years old and is the son of a novelist, and McKinnell, who has been known to strip naked in front of 2,000 fans, fall from the stage and angrily walk off.

“We’re both free spirits but Nigel is a thinker,” says McKinnell, “and I’m more instinctive. I had meetings set up about going to university but I had gigs on those days and my love has always been rock ‘n’ roll. Nigel’s more rational. But put us together and, while it gets heated sometimes, we’re very strong.” Nigel agrees: “Ali connects with anger. I’m not given to fits of emotion. But we’re like planets when they come into alignment–magic happens.”

Far from the London scene, Electrasy hails from seemingly another planet too, the rural Westcountry village of Yeovil. It was there that Nisbet answered an ad in 1994 in a local paper looking for musicians to join a band. “We had been living parallel existences,” suggests McKinnell. “We were both fed up with the music scene when our paths crossed.”

“I was searching and then I met Ali and Steve (Atkins)” says Nigel, “and the most wonderful thing was they had a demo tape that was very rough but was all about the melodies and songs and choruses and a light bulb turned on in my head. I hadn’t written for years and now the floodgates opened.”

He called in drummer Paul Pridmore, with whom he had played since they were teenagers at school, and keyboardist Jim Hayden, with whom he’d played in earlier bands. Joining McKinnell and guitarist Atkins, they formed Electrasy. As they performed and recorded–usually at PJ Harvey’s Yeovil cottage–Nisbet taught drums and guitar at a girls school (“14 to 18 years old, a dangerous age group”) and lived in a trailer in the woods. McKinnell meanwhile was scraping by doing construction on $100 a week.

In January 1997, the band (with Nisbet on bass) played a gig in Camden and the music industry descended. Signed to MCA, Electrasy debuted in the U.K. late the next year with Beautiful Insane. The single “Morning Afterglow” went Top 20, Electrasy toured for 10 months, and Nisbet’s brief tryst with the porn queen surfaced in the tabloid press and on TV. Then everything, including a U.S. release, fizzled to a halt thanks to MCA’s merger with Polygram. “A kick in the bollocks,” McKinnell calls it. Suddenly, Electrasy was without a record company.

But a stroke of good fortune was in the offing. Just as someone in the Arista U.S. video department was marveling at the “Morning Afterglow” video (shot in reverse, one take, one camera), an Arista A&R executive was marveling at the band’s demo. Once they realized they were waxing hopeful about the same band, meetings with Davis led to a showcase for executives in New York–a rehearsal room, 20 people in suits. “So we covered the stage with 300 candles,” Nisbet recalls. “The ambiance was incredible. When we finished, Clive asked us to play the entire set again! We ripped into it, just rocked out.”

Now with Alex Meadows on bass (Nisbet on rhythm guitar), the band arranged a summer U.K. tour on its own–crashing with friends, no tour support–and ended up at the famed Glastonbury festival performing to 8,000 fans singing along to “Morning Afterglow.” In an import twist, the song and band even hit in Providence, Rhode Island, where “Morning Afterglow” became the #1 most requested song of 1999 at modern rock WBRU.

“What we do comes from the heart,” continues McKinnell. “In a way, I channel the band. I can be mischievous, angry, happy. If I’m not enjoying it then the band doesn’t enjoy it. If I’m rippin’ the roof down and jumping off balconies, there’s spots of blood on their instruments from playing so hard.”

What Electrasy does also comes from the soul. “I write about being vulnerable,” says Nisbet, “and the songs have an emotional resonance with people, touching places deep inside. What we’re saying is that the point of music, the point of being in this band, is to be able to let it all out, unburden yourself. Electrasy is about feeling uplifted.”

That indeed is the thrill of rock ‘n’ roll.