What is your vision for the Mutilated Mannequins and how do you see yourselves in relation to other artists?

As historical narrative, using text from the past through editing (like Todd Haines, Isaac Julien and Derek Jarman) to tell another story. I want to make emotional music that doesn't trade on cheap sentiment. Not cliché ridden. I have an analysis going on with the music, with politics and with culture that can disrupt. Deep. The songs are about wanting to deal with complicated emotions from rage to anger to despair and loss. Grieving. A lot of mourning. Diamona Galas is a huge influence. People either love or hate us - we're a revelation for some people - there's no in between - others despise us. The way I sing is the most alienating thing - the male operatic soprano's abject nature. We use humor, sarcasm and camp to tell a story. Some people can't get past the voice, but I am committed to that. I can't figure out another other way to be as over the top as I need to be on an emotional level, an ironic level, and with sarcasm. Being an abject male is very political. A castrated male. Historically men who would sing that way were castrated in the 18th century. Being a black man and the anxiety about black male emasculation. I find all that fun to play with. There is an anxiety about authenticity. The male soprano is considered a false thing and not really your true voice. It's really interesting - the idea of what's true in regard to gender identity and gender transgression. It's more of a feminist statement than a queer statement. I'm interested in progressive feminism and there's a real critique of masculinity going on. It's being in a heavy band juxtasuposed with way that I sing - an undead dandy - which is one of our songs. We want to do culturally transgressive stuff by being presentational.

What's your relation to goth?

Goth is hugely important because of the over the top drama and death rock historically. I like more of the old stuff like Bauhaus and Joy Division - that was a major thing how tortured Ian Curtis was. The music certainly but especially his lyrics and the way that he sang them. All the pathos and all the tragedy. I'm interested in tragedy and juxtasupposing a more over the top absurdity with that. The Joy Division interest is the more internal stuff. The external thing is the King Diamond / Iron Maiden interest. We're more fantasy orientated, that's a huge part of it and there's the character play - the undead dandy - one of the characters - he becomes cast as the Queen of Spades, another song. A lot of parts and acting. Theatre. I want to have a dark theatrical experience, a macabre one related to surrealism as in classical goth meaning and surrealism.

What are your music and lyrics about?

It's complicated. In a lot of hardcore music you get garbled singing. In a lot of punk rock shows they hand out lyric sheets and I've thought about doing that. A lot of the live experience is not about the lyrics for the audience as much as a visceral experience. I want to foreground the viscerality of it but I'm conflicted because I spend a lot of time crafting the lyrics and I take them very seriously. 'Let Darkness Descend' is kind of nihilistic. It's all about a racial anxiety. The songs reflect on a history. I can't find myself in the black bourgeois stuff that's been constructed post 60's. I'm the ultimate outsider. I feel I want to mock and talk about all the stuff that's going on. Like in hip-hop, there's all this 'you have to gang bang and pimp - the authenticity about being a thug. It seems like for an African American or Negro or black person - pick your term - to make cultural production in America there has to be this investment of authenticity. I think certain kinds of queer sensibilities disrupt that enough that those cultural productions are really out there in a really visible way. I'd like to be more visible just to disrupt this question of authenticity and not be playing into the urgency for someone to be real. We had a song called 'Fake' and the phrase 'we ain't keeping it real'. All this 'realness' question and even in drag there's the whole obsession with realness. What is this whole thing about the 'real'? You know "I Am Spoonbender"? There's this west coast performer on that magazine on the cover and talking about the subjectivity of reality. It's pretty obvious. I'm interested in dealing with that idea and would like to take it further and celebrate the fake. Now that we realize that reality is subjective, what kind of realities are we going to try and construct for ourselves? It's a lot of what the music's trying to do. There's a lot of revenge stuff too. And insanity and places where people are breaking down. The different characters in the songs I guess are just different parts of myself. The lyrics are very explicit and they're very abstract. For example: "I'm afraid of the sun. Blistering light, burning bright. Holy darkness skin. Field and fields of cotton bathed in southern memory. The sun never shed a light. It's labor and never free. Let darkness descend. I'm afraid of the sun. Casting shadows in the light. In darkness we're all equally lost. We're afraid of the sun. In fields and fields of cotton bathed in southern memory. I don't believe the cost, I don't believe the dream." For me it's referring to Martin Luther King's historical "I Had A Dream." Like not believing the myth of America, the mythology of all the potential. It's absurd really. So 'Letting Darkness Descend' is an equalizer and also very doomy. Art isn't about reality; art is about possibility beyond reality, about dreaming.

What are your feelings on queer hip-hop, punk, soul?

I have real problems with queer hip-hop. Deep Dick Collective are really smart and they do this fun cultural deconstruction of mainstream hip-hop. I have problems with identity basically. I think that DDC's way that they foreground their blackness and their bisexuality and homosexuality seems like a marketing tool. It doesn't create any space and room in my life. Maybe it does for people who really identify with them like the black community who want to reconcile all these things. It just seems like another box that one puts oneself in. I've been working on this song called 'Negro Actor' about how in America you have to negotiate some expectation of what someone wants from you. They want you to be this thing, as opposed to being. I've done things in both queer and black context before and always felt outside and alienated.

Punk isn't really an influence for me although I enjoy both the confrontational and political aspects of it. The Sex Pistols are a brilliant cultural moment. I'm conflicted between music and culture, too. Wanting to make music and wanting to make culture. Two different things. I love that they're screaming out different kinds of political things in punk and the defiant nature of it but I don't know how effective punk rock is nowadays. It's so commodified, like a style, one would have to question if anything revolutionary can come out of it.

I grew up with soul. I love it, although most of the new stuff is crap. It can't help but seep into our music. I'm really into the minimalism that goes on in hip-hop, the beats and rhythmic construction. In terms of innovation, I think a lot of the things happening in hip-hop are more relevant than the things happening in rock. I'm interested in how technology has changed everything - like pro-tools. The Edit. I try and play with that in the construction of the music, literally. Our music is about the journey, about fantasy, about fiction. I'm working on a song called 'Public Humiliation' about mob mentality, very violent. Public ridicule. On a historical level, you fantasize about a reversal.

Do you consider the MM a sexual/sensual band and what is your take on sex? Do you identify as a queer band, a gender-bender entity or something completely different? How do you feel about the debate concerning People Of Color and queer issues?

Definitely sexual. Rock is a whore. I'm living that when I perform. The name Mutilated Mannequins is about being glamorously fucked up. Damaged. I think there's something both base and transcendental in our music. The lyrics are about revenge, imagining other places you can occupy in the world, fantasy - these places where you breakdown, when you've lost it and are speaking from a place of insanity.

Queer people? Well, a faggot's only good for one thing and they're not always good at that. I'm much more sympathetic to people of color than queer people. Racism is a different kind of institution than homophobia…

What's your take on drugs?

I think drugs are a really good idea. Please do quote me on that. I'm not into being politically responsible. I think drugs are a really good idea because the world is a really horrible place. Obviously drugs ruin a lot of people's lives. I don't advocate them but I don't not advocate them. Drugs are a reasonable response to an irrational world.