How did Transister come to be?

Eric: Drinking. I met Gary in an L.A. bar. It was happy hour.
Gary: Drinking, then music -- in that order. I invited Eric over to London to work in my home studio, messing around with samples. Trans, our label, started there.
Keely: E & G used to watch me play in a club on Fulham Road in London. Eventually they asked me if I'd like to join.
Eric: I only had six weeks left on my visa so we started working around the clock.
Gary: We wrote, recorded and mixed six tracks in six weeks, all of which made the album.

How did you get signed?

Keely: The original idea was to finish an album and release it on our own label.
Eric: But when I got home, I played the tape for a friend who passed it on to KCRW DJ Chris Douridas. He played a few tracks on his L.A. morning show, and within a week, labels were calling us. It was mad!

Being from different sides of the world, what if anything do you have in common?

Gary: We hate each others home towns, which means at any given time at least two out of three of us are miserable.
Keely: Other than that, we've all seen the Sound of Music.
Eric: And we all liked it.

What is the recording and writing process?

Keely: We all write together. One of us brings in an idea and we sit around with guitars -- and usually wine, we trash it until it resembles something decent. I'd say nine out of ten times it works like that. Occasionally we'll start with a track or a loop and work from that. We laugh a lot writing Iyrics -- especially the sad ones.
Gary: As far as recording, it's quite experimental, really. Eric and I will muck around with sequencers and samplers for days -- just trying ideas. We slam information on tape and much of it is random, which is what makes it exciting. We bounce off walls and thrash about; it gets quite vicious.
Eric: When we think the track is semi-decent, we concentrate on vocals, again in a pretty random, experimental way. It's not unusual to have three tracks of Keely singing, with completely different vibes, a few tracks for sections where we want an unusual sound, and a few tracks of just mad, loony stuff.
Gary: Everything else is changing up until the final seconds of the mix.

Transister's music has a lot of diverse influences. What's the glue that holds it together?

Keely: We all totally believe in the power of 'the song,' but we're also always in search of ways to screw things up.
Eric: That works in the studio too. We very often add noise, as opposed to trying to get rid of it.
Gary: Yeah, tape noise, vinyl, amp hums and hisses. I think the digital world is a bit clean for us.

What are the plans for Transister live?

Eric: To be totally fuckin' brilliant.
Gary: Expect showbiz.
Eric:: Dark showbiz.

What's up for Transister future?

Eric: More songs and noisier noise.
Keely: I don't even know what I'm doing tonight.

taken from i-music