PUNK HEART
interview by quinn omori (one hot man)
When I met up with Jesse Taylor of Twin Crystals, it was in the
building that the band shares with a few other Vancouver bands and
artists—fittingly named, the Secret Space. The artists’ enclave exists
in one of the few areas of Vancouver that hasn’t yet been touched by
the forces of gentrification, just a few doors down the alley from the
sadly, now defunct Emergency Room, the former home base of the musical
scene that Twin Crystals are at the forefront of.
“All of us—pretty much anyone who’s involved in the ER and most of
the bands—are from the Okanagan,” said Taylor, harkening back to the
days before Twin Crystals, when he was drawn from his hometown of
Vernon to Vancouver.
While the Metro Vancouver area boasts a population of over two
million, it didn’t take long for Taylor and his cohorts to carve out
their place in Vancouver’s music scene. “We had always aspired to move
down here and play, but we thought it was like a big city,” he
recalled. “We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into and that
it was just another small town.”
After relocating Taylor was in a variety of acts, most notably no
wave outfit, Channels 3+4 and he’s still involved in multiple projects
outside of Twin Crystals. But while Channels 3+4 garnered some buzz
overseas, it wasn’t until he formed Twin Crystals with drummer Jordan
Alexander that one of his projects garnered a larger following.
“I don’t know what happened in Vancouver, but nobody cared before,”
Taylor said, explaining the climate in Vancouver five years ago. “Even
when the ER started, there were still only 20 people at the shows. And
then two Halloweens ago there were 500 people there and it’s been like
that ever since,” he noted with a smile. “It’s scary sometimes. It’s
weird to see a fan base shifting from your friends … but things are
awesome now.”
Twin Crystals formed when Channels 3+4 was winding down and it
solidified when Taylor and Alexander rounded out the line up with
Jeremiah Hayward on synthesizer. This freed Taylor to pick up a guitar
and complete the band’s mix of hardcore, new wave and noise. “Since
then, we’ve never looked back,” Taylor explained.
“Never looking back” has meant a prolific output for the trio, who,
according to Taylor, in the last year alone have put out “seven or
eight releases.” And that’s just the vinyl.
“We had a lathe 7″ called Disappear Forever that we only did 31
copies of. And then we did a lathe 10″ and we did 51 copies of that.
And then we did the Two Girls 7″. We weren’t even going to do Two
Girls, but Summer Lovers really thought that was the hit and wanted to
keep going with it,” Taylor said, explaining just a handful of those
releases on the band’s biggest label to date, the relatively small,
Summer Lovers Unlimited. The rest of the band’s output, including their
latest, a self-titled LP, have been spread out on tiny, d.i.y.
imprints, which fits with the band’s fiercely independent outlook.
“I don’t really think any of our bands have a mainstream rock sound
at all,” Taylor said when asked about the prospects of Twin Crystals or
any of the other recently christened “weird punk” bands in Vancouver
garnering a larger following outside of their hometown. “Sometimes
there’s bits from emails and stuff that make it seem like things are
going that way,” he said before pausing. “I would totally have fun with
it. It’s not a fun business to be in, so you’ve got to do things to
amuse yourself. We’d do it on our own terms.”