Electric Tape

“I’m probably not going to die,” Marquetta Miller said. She stood awkwardly, trying to stay close enough to her microphone to sing into it without standing in the pool of water on the floor.

Miller gestured like Vanna White towards a support pillar by the puddle, and the electrical outlet halfway up it. “I’d like to draw your attention to this,” she said. A six-way surge protector was plugged into the outlet, with three more six-ways plugged into that.

“You’re probably not going to die any more of the rest of us,” said Austin Sousa. He sat at his drums under a set of stairs so steep they were practically a ladder. “You know what we learned the other day? This is also on the same breaker as the furnace and the living room.” This is Sousa’s basement. The ceiling is low, too low to stand under where the ducts run, and when it rains water leaks in and puddles on the cement floor.

It rains a lot, as Kristian Swearingen, standing with his guitar at the mic between Sousa and Miller, pointed out. “Welcome to Seattle.”

This is the practice space of Electric Tape, a band that has never played a show in Fairbanks and lives a five hour plane flight away, but are in a sense a Fairbanks band nonetheless. Four of the band’s five members are veterans of the FBX music scene, and their music is a new iteration of former Golden Heart band Kelsa.

Since each of them moved to Seattle, they’ve united as a new band. While they work on breaking into the big city music scene, they’re making due with what they’ve got. Practicing and recording in a cramped, leaky basement, getting instruments for free on Craigslist, and singing into headphones when there isn’t a microphone handy.

Behind her keyboard to Sousa’s right, Jessica Deeken asked, “Are we going to do ‘Carnivore’ tonight?” Deeken is from Wisconsin, not Fairbanks. She looks confused when the band discusses Willis Fireball, and gets amused when everyone else starts doing a capella versions of Roman Candles keyboard lines.

In a creepy voice, Swearingen whispered, “One… two… three… four” into the mic and began to strum. On the other side of the furnace duct that divides the basement down the middle, H.B. Telling started a spooky melody on his bass. Telling sat in a computer chair with an open briefcase at his feet. The peddles he uses are anchored inside the briefcase, and with it he’s all set to be a door-to-door rock star.

“Kill me now!” Swearingen sang the chorus. “Just kill me, just kill me!” Miller intoned under his voice. “Get it over!” Swearingen sang. “Carnivore!” they harmonized.

Electric Tape’s old incarnation Kelsa described themselves as ‘indie pop for bitter hearts.’ Slower, mellow songs with a Pedro The Lion vibe, bitter lyrics from Swearingen’s dark and futile view of love. Swearingen’s gotten married and changed his opinion since then, and Electric Tape has Miller singing and writing songs too, and she brings different influences, jazz and classic female vocalist sensibilities. Electric Tape has speeded up and built the energy, turning familiar Kelsa classics like “Ooey” into power-pop songs that almost sound like Anchorage’s old Roman Candles.

Electric Tape rose from the ashes of Kelsa in 2005. Kristian Swearingen was moving to Seattle to pursue a Ph.D in Chemistry at the University of Washington. Seattle appealed to Kelsa bassist H.B. Telling too. He got a job with Microsoft, and suggested the two be roommates.

Marquetta Miller happened to be taking her singer-songwriter style to Seattle too, and the three decided to be roommates and bandmates. They signed a lease on an apartment in the University District sight-unseen, and lots of hummus, Pabst Blue Ribbon and “guitar parties” in their apartment followed, according to Miller.

Miller had been in Seattle the previous March to record some songs with Fairbanks expatriate Austin Sousa. Sousa had been the drummer in Fairbanks bands like 16th Breath and Insondae in the late ‘90s. He’d moved to Seattle to get a degree in music production nd a job at a prestigious recording studio where he helped record bands like Death Cab For Cutie, Harvey Danger and Pretty Girls Make Graves. Swearingen and company recruited him to play drums, and he helped fill in the minimalist percussion Swearingen’s songs had during the Kelsa days.

Miller started out as the keyboard player, “and it was disaster city, because I can’t sing and play piano at the same time.” Then she started working at the Online Coffee Company, and met Jessica Deeken. When Miller found out Deeken played keyboard, Miller invited her to play with the band. Sousa got an organ for her to play for free on Craigslist, sawed the legs off, and attached carrying handles on the sides. The band estimates it still weighed 150 pounds.

Their first show came in May. Former Fairbanks band Whiskey Tango invited them to play a show with them at the Comet Tavern, a historical landmark in the Seattle punk scene. “We made a whopping $48,” said Mill - FBX Square, January 25 2007