Their name comes from the well-known urban legend about organ snatchers. (Those people who've ever been to a bar with me would probably swear I've had MY kidneys stolen.) Their music comes from a Nine Inch Nails/Tori Amos marriage of heavy industrial sounds coupled with haunting lyric-writing and strong female vocals. "Kidneythieves" is a L.A. based band made up of vocalist (and primary lyric writer) Free Dominguez, and Bruce Somers who does, well, everything else. He does all the instrumentation and programming for the band. Together, they create some pretty good techno industrial music which is enhanced greatly by Free's vocals.

Their debut CD, "Trickster," opens on a strong note with the interestingly titled track, "Taxicab Messiah." Vocally and lyrically, this song will invite comparison to the Tori Amos song "God," but it has a techno flavor which the Amos song lacks. This is followed by the noise barrage of "s+m (a love song)," that features the heavy guitar and drum sounds augmented by a number of other sonic effects. This is also the first single released from the album, and should be popular with any radio station willing to play it.

One of the things that I think separates "Kidneythieves" from other industrial techno bands, is their willingness to experiment musically. A perfect example of this comes with the track "Swanmate," which bridges the tracks "s+m" and "Feathers." "Swanmate" is a short spoken word track, and the soundscapes that Bruce Somers engineers seem custom-made for this type of track. (I'm personally a fan of the spoken word style and it was refreshing for me to see it used here.)

The title track, "Trickster," starts off surprisingly low-key with a subdued drum track and gradually incorporates other sounds: a bass line, some keyboard work, and finally Free's vocals. On most of the songs, the layering of sound is rather impressive, and as more and more layers are added, the listener has the pleasure of still being able to pick individual ones out.

Though songs like "Trickster" add variety, I personally like the heavier stuff, and songs like the next track, "Creature," give me my noise fix. It puts me in mind of a Siouxsie and the Banshees type song incorporated with a 90's sound. It's the kind of track that says "Play me loud. Blow those speakers out. You can always afford new ones if you continue to work 70 hours a week."

The album switches gears with the next two tracks, "k" and "Pretty." These songs have more of a lush dreamy quality, reminiscent of Portishead, with Free's vocals seeming to soar over the horizon of keyboard and guitar effects that Bruce creates. These songs are further examples of the constant experimentation that keeps the music on the album as a whole fresh and exciting.

The album is mixed by Sean Beavan who has also worked with Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. Therefore it does have that dark tinge to the sound, but the music retains it's fun quality throughout the CD. All in all, this is a good sampling of techno and industrial drum/guitar-laden sound, complemented nicely by a strong female vocalist. I'm going to be enjoying this CD quite a bit in the future, and I'm very thankful that Free was NOT thinking about the John Bobbitt story when she had the idea for the band name.

AMZ - Let's begin with the band name itself, "Kidneythieves." I think we all know the urban legend that the name comes from, but how did you as a band arrive at the name?

Free - Well, we were in the studio, and I was telling Bruce about that urban legend, and Bruce says "We should name our band Kidney Stealers," and I said "No, Kidneythieves." I'm really into the symbolism of a lot of things. I've studied a lot of philosophy, and I'm really fascinated by myth and the way it affects the psyche, and the kidneythieves story has become sort of a myth. Does it really happen? I don't think the important thing is really whether it happens or not, but the effect that it has. It gets a reaction from people, as do a lot of mythical things. That's why we stuck with the name. Myth attracts imagination. It has a lot of interpretations.

Bruce - If I can add to that, chicks kind of dig it.

Free - Yeah, and it looks good on paper too. Aesthetically, you can do a lot with it.

AMZ - Myth also in a way inspires creativity, because the people that keep myths going add their own elements.

Free - Totally. We're living in a mythical time. For example, the millenium. Is the world going to end? Is it not? There's all kinds of age-old myths that keep going, and it's a deep-rooted thing, and a culture, and a collective psyche. People use it for a mode of transendence or closure, and hopefully we'll be able to keep imagining with our future.

AMZ - How long have you two been writing and recording together?

Bruce - About 2 1/2 years. I met Free at one of our favorite eateries in Hollywood. She had heard of me through a mutual friend, and she came up to me with all this energy and all these songs and ideas, and I was looking at her like "Who is this girl and what is this about?" We got together after that, so it's been about two years now.

AMZ - How would you describe your music itself? It seems to be a mix of a bunch of different styles.

Bruce - I think a lot of musicians have a hard time describing their music. I think most people come through and say "Yeah it's original. You've never heard anything like it." I think there are definitely some original elements, obviously there is some pulling from our industrial influences like Ministry, lots of the Jorgenson stuff, the Nails stuff, tied in more contemporary stuff, anything from Madonna on the melody side, abd things like that. The way I usually describe it to people is that it's a pretty hard-edged industrial vibe with a female melodic singer on top, like a Portishead thing.

AMZ - Bruce, how much of your sound comes from working with Free's vocals, because obviously your sound is a bit heavier than her vocal style?

Bruce - That was a real challenge when we first started working together. When we first got together, I had worked with other female artists before and I sort of backed off and went into the old acoustical Lilith Fair kind of mode, so to speak, but as we started working more and more she just kept questioning me, telling me to bring on the heavy stuff. We brought up the Les Paul, plugged it in direct, and started getting some nasty sounds out, and that seems to be what really inspired her and myself. It took us about four or five months to find our sound and when we found it, the real challenge was to make a vocal like hers come out on top even though you have some pretty heavy stuff going on. We found that niche, and more importantly, found that space for the melody she sings. Finding the right space to put everything is sort of like a puzzle. Once we did that, it clicked a bit.

AMZ - It also seems that she has a greater vocal range than you're normally used to working with with this type of music, and I'm sure that helps you.

Bruce - I think that's the thing that really sets it apart. Free brings such an incredible melodic strain to all the stuff. I usually would start out with riffs and loops and some ideas, and she would immediately start singing these wonderful melodies to them and that sort of takes me to the next place. Much easier then to find a bridge and chorus. After she starts, it opens something up in my mind. For example, the song "Layers" started off with just a riff, and then she started singing and it was easy to make the leap to the chorus. I knew instinctively where to go after that because she opened it up with the melody.

AMZ - Your single, "s+m (a love song)," was released in April. What sort of feedback have you gotten from that?

Bruce - We were blown away. I think the record company expected just to sort of put it out there to give our distribution company, BMG, something to have so that we would actually be doing some music. They didn't really expect to do too much with it. They put it in a bunch of kiosks and they sold almost 6,000 copies with no advertising and no marketing, with just the single in a couple of kiosks. We were really very exciting. We've got a pretty good following it seems, like in Miami, and a real good midwest following in Chicago and Illinois.

AMZ - I was just about to ask if there were certain areas that you were enjoying more success in than others.

Bruce - We're really blown away that there are potentially 8,000 people out there that have heard our music before that we don't know or anything. We've gotten some really good feedback from the cards in all the singles that people fill out. We got a whole bunch of those back. It's been awesome just getting the feelers out there.

AMZ - Are there any plans for touring at this point?

Bruce - Right now we have just put together a band. We have an incredible band put together. It came together about 1000 times faster than I thought it would, and I guess what I didn't expect was that people would want to do this. I was thinking that we're small and independent and people would say "Yeah, I'd rather be doing my Celine Dion gigs" or something like that, but we found these monsters coming forward. We've got a guy named Sid Riggs who played with the band called Two on "Nothing," with Rob Halford, on Trent's label. He came in and just blew our minds. He's technically amazing, but he's such a hard hitter he broke my drum head the first time and bled all over my drum kit. I thought "This guy's gotta be in the band." The band's together pretty much and we're just rehearsing and preparing some live tracks, so we hope to be out by October. We're booking with a bunch of agencies right now and trying to get some opening slots out there.

AMZ - As far as attracting other musicians, I think you have a strong musical sound and I think other musicians appreciate that and would want to be a part of it.

Bruce - Yeah. That caught me off guard. Most people, when we get past college, it's all about money, and with the guys we got, it's all about the music first. There seems to be a real gravity pulling toward this project. People are coming out of the woodwork that really believe in it.

AMZ - How hard is it to reproduce your particular sound live?

Bruce - It's a lot of work, but I think that from what we've seen so far (and we've literally only had about 4 or 5 practices), it's blowing me away. I think it's gonna be bigger (than the album) in terms of just the sonic force of having multiple people and multiple energy together. It's all been Free and I for two years in the studio with no outside feedback, so to speak, and now all of the sudden we have these people energizing it, and it's gonna be hard, but I think it's gonna be a great show. It's almost going to be more theatrical than say heavy metal or something like that. Our focus is to put on a show that blows people's minds as opposed to "Yeah, that band was cool, blah, blah, blah." Most people do that. We want to be different. Amazing lighting, etc. (On a budget of course.)

AMZ - As opposed to the typical 10 song set "Let's play this and get out of here. They know our music. Let's give them what they want and blow this place."

Bruce - Exactly. You want to be blown away. The top five concerts I've seen I'll remember because I was blown away.

AMZ - Yeah. I buy a band's album to listen to. I don't want to pay $25 to go to a concert and hear the exact same thing I've just heard on my CD player.

Bruce - You know, I used to go see Rush. I dug them a lot. Now that I think about it in hindsight, it was kind of missing that awe. They reproduced everything perfectly which was intense, and really hard to do, but especially today people want to see that one step further. We just got to see a show that was ten bands back to back and Green Day just stole the show. They were awesome. I don't know if we'll be hurling our drums into the audience right now, though. We're on a low budget.

AMZ - You could hurl one cymbal into the audience or something.

Bruce - Exactly! Wait...Maybe a drumstick.

AMZ - I think that with the addition of all these musicians, it will enable more of an interplay with the live sound.

Bruce - Definitely. I'm actually really psyched. I'm doing some writing and with different people playing, I'm hearing it back almost instantly, as opposed to me having to go through and overdub everything and then hear it back. It's an instant feedback thing that's really cool.

AMZ - I know with your particular experimental music sound you're probably always in the studio working on one idea or another, but are you and Free doing any recording together at this point?

Bruce - Definitely. I have no idea what the next album is going to sound like but Free has some amazing conceptual ideas already. Sonically, I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, but you're influenced by everything you do each day. I don't know where it's going to go. We might do some writing with the band or we might just do some writing between Free and I. I don't know. But, you're always influenced by something day to day, and everything changes, so it will be interesting for us to see too. It takes a long time to write this stuff....just getting every sound...

AMZ - On this particular album, the sound is very layered, and there are a lot of elements. I can't imagine you could whip one of these songs out in five minutes.

Bruce - Exactly. It would be nice sometime to write a song in five minutes though. We always start out with a basic track and we say "Well, lets make the drums cooler" or "Let's do this," and all of a sudden every sound is our own, and we mess it up here, or change it here, or pull from here, and that's what takes the most time.

AMZ - I think that's a necessary evil. I don't know too many people that can sit down and write a perfect song right off the bat.

Bruce - If you're doing simple stuff, same drum and guitar sound on every track, nothing is wrong with that. That's just not what we do. We try to create soundscapes. I think that's an expectation that's out there. If I was a Kidneythieves fan, I would expect that, and when I listen to albums, I like to hear the next track blow me away. It's like a vocalist would change their sound from song to song. We like to do that with guitar and drum and everything else.

AMZ - Free, do you have any specific influences as far as your vocal sound or songwriting?

Free - I'm more inspired by certain artists that I vibe with their space. I understand where they're coming from, or they have a sort of honesty that I can relate to. That inspires me to be honest. Most of the stuff I write comes from my journal, and poetry, and personal thought experience. As far as writers, I'm very influenced by a lot of poets, and Malcom McLaren, 'cause they are extremely honest, and I love the way words can create such a visual image. The honest of some women have inspired me, such as Stevie Nicks and Annie Lennox, and more recently women like Tori Amos and Erika Badu are extremely honest where they're coming from - at least to me. Very visual lyrically.

AMZ - I think it shows when you're not. I think that's very important lyric- wise, especially when you're trying to reach someone on an emotional level. If the honesty isn't there, it's obvious.

Free - It's going places where you don't want to go. It invokes a lot of power, and that comes from striving to be honest. At the end of the day you can sleep knowing you're honest (even if a lot of people think you suck. <joke>)

AMZ - I like the idea behind the songs Swanmates and Feathers. Were they deliberately written as two tracks or did that start out as a one-song idea?

Free - Feathers came from a poem that I wrote called Swanmates, so I wanted to have sort of a prelude, and also a separation of the two different thoughts that are between them. You have s+m, and then Feathers next and I wanted a bridge to it. I wanted to put something that showed what inspired Feathers.

AMZ - I like the spoken word part of the song. Any plans on doing any more of that?

Free - Yeah. I'm a big fan of spoken word. I think it's unfortunate that there's not more of it around. It's extremely fair, and it can really be used to invoke thought and emotion.

AMZ - I also think Bruce's music is a perfect complement to the spoken word sound, with the images he can create and the images the speaker can create.

Free - Oh definitely. One thing about me and Bruce is that it's hard to put into words, but we become like this one funnel when we're together, and to me words have a color and a rhythm, and he'll either see that and translate it into his words which is music, or vice versa. I'll hear a groove of his and the words or melody will pop from it. It's a very very special sacred thing that we have.

AMZ - Bruce, you've worked with Sean Beavans, the producer, before. How helpful was that in this recording process?

Bruce - It was weird. Sean and I worked together when I was in school a while back and we started doing a whole bunch of things. We played together for a long time and he's pretty much been my mentor in terms of music and engineering and a lot of things. He's opened me up to worlds that I would never have even imagined. It's bad, but we hadn't worked together for about 6 years. I came out to see him in New Orleans in 1996, and it was amazing to me that even though we hadn't been in each others face, we had the same sort of similarities in music, and the way I was thinking and the way he was thinking musically was still right in line. Sean has been a huge influence on me. With this album, when he came to mix it, it was an honor for both of us. His influence inspired both of us, sort of that gravitational thing again. It was great. It really kicked us into a new gear when Sean mixed this thing.

Free - Sean has this great way of seeing things. Bruce and I, we hear a song 1000 times, and we've got our blinders on sometimes. He'll just come in and go "Well, why don't you look over here?" and it really helps.

AMZ - I guess it's hard when you've written something yourself, because you know where it comes from and where you want it to go, but that's all you see. Someone else can come in and suggest other ideas.

Bruce - When you work with someone, to me it has everything to do with respect. Most people are defensive about their work. You work so hard on something and it takes everything out of you, mentally and physically. Then someone comes in and says "Why don't you do this?" and 90 percent of the time, it's hard for most artist to deal with. Sean can come in, and the way he says and what he says, bypasses everything else and goes right to the source...right to the core. He's like a great surgeon, and his points are so concise they're easy to take.

AMZ - Free, we discussed tour plans earlier. Are you looking forward to getting out and interacting with an audience?

Free - Definitely. We've got a great core of musicians together and we've been playing around in the studio a bit. We're going to put a show together, and it's going to be more than picking up instruments and playing. It's going to have a lot of personality and theater to it. Instead of just dictatating, it translates everything we did on the album in a bigger way to me. I'm very very excited to do that.

Bruce - We're experimenting with a bunch of stuff to see what comes through, but one thing we're experimenting with is that I was first and foremost a drummer, and everything in music starts with rhythm, whether it's vocally or some kind of energy deriving from rhythm. Based on that priority, in practice we've been working on some stuff where I'll play drums also. Not necessarily in a Grateful Dead vein, but more in terms of two different people having two different sounds playing rhythmic instruments, vibing off each other. It's been really cool.

AMZ - Before we return you to your regularly scheduled programming, I wanted to ask you where the title of the first song, "Taxicab Messiah," came from. It's an interesting title.

Free - That actually was something that happened to me. I had a twilight zone experience in San Fransisco, and I got in a cab and had a very strange experience, and that was my interpretation of it.

AMZ - Well, thank you for your time, and good luck!