Playing since she was five, multi-instrumentalist Mera has played in a variety of bands, most notably for Projekt’s black tape for a blue girl and for goth rockers Faith and the Muse. Mera also released a solo project,Oblivia, which resulted in the self-published debut EP Spitting Embers. She then hit the road from Chicago to Los Angeles. Once in L.A. she met Rodney Orpheus of Cassandra Complex and played on a short US tour supporting Front 242. “Most recently I’ve done some cello recording with The Last Dance on their albums Whispers in Rage and Once Beautiful, and sat in with them live on cello at a Repent show in Anaheim.” Says Mera. Her current band, Mercurine, are based in Los Angeles and will be releasing new material and touring later in the year.

Patrick Ogle: Tell me a little about Mercurine and how it differs from past projects? What are you trying to do musically?

Mera: I started Mercurine as soon as I moved to Los Angeles. I wanted to create a band that had elements of all my favorite inspirations (New Order, Cocteau Twins, MBV, Curve, The Police, Sonic Youth and maybe even some house music…) which at the same time was unique and would catch people’s attention on and off stage. I was looking for someone to collaborate with, as my solo project taught me that there are some limits to being self-propelled. I was lucky and found my ideal collaborator, the supremely talented Byron Brown. Together we have evolved Mercurine into this very eclectic musical entity.

Mercurine is different from any of my past involvements on several levels. For starters, I’m the lead singer. Musically my involvement is much greater than simply playing an instrument in someone else’s band. While creating music for Mercurine I’ll use synth, bass guitar, and cello as well as voice, usually building a song from bouncing ideas back and forth with Byron who primarily is on guitar but also plays bass, synth and sings some occasional backing vocals.

In performance with Mercurine my image is different from appearances I’ve made in the past. For a long time it seemed I was thought of as some delicate creature inhabiting the ethers of fog and lace, which is nice but not entirely me. This new incarnation has put some distance between me and that past, but starting over is not always an easy route.

Finally, I’m in charge of management, publicity and all other related business. To say that Mercurine has taken me through uncharted territories would be an understatement.

What one piece of gear that has the biggest impact on your music?

The computer, I hate to say.

What do you use to record?

We love our hardware synths, and have a ton of them! Rather than list all of them I’ll just mention the most-often used: Roland JD-990 (we’ve actually got two of these), JD-800, JP-8000, and Fantom XR. We’re using Ableton Live controlled by a Korg Kontrol49 for the bulk of our recording, but rather than a ton of virtual synths we prefer to create sounds and record audio from the (real) synths. Guitar, bass, cello and vocals are also just recorded and further processed with Ableton Live.

Our recording methods changed from album to album. Our first album, Music Is Chemical, was done at Wisperthal, William Faith’s recording studio. We imported some of our recorded partial tracks from our studio (then running Logic Audio Gold) to his ProTools rig and recorded the rest in his studio. Mastering was done at DNA in Studio City.

Our second album, Waiting For Another Fall, we did entirely ourselves. We recorded audio and MIDI into Emagic (not Apple!) Logic Platinum on a PC, using Sound Forge and Izotope for mastering. This was definitely a challenge on a lot of levels, not the least of which was using ambient mics on an acoustic drum kit for all our drum tracks. The cello was also recorded using ambient mics. Both of us learned a lot.

We’re just starting on our third album, and still working out exactly what’s best to use. We’ve got ProTools but generally hate it, preferring Ableton Live to most anything lately. As the music evolves, so does the method of recording!

How about live? Do you still play the cello?

Mercurine live is a four-piece band. Byron is on guitar with all manner of wizardry at his feet, we have a bassist, a drummer on a standard drum kit, we run old-school live MIDI from a Roland MC50 sequencer in a rack with the Fantom XR and sometimes a few of our other synth modules, and I’m singing. We like lights and fog and will usually bring our own. I would love to incorporate the cello into a Mercurine set, but so far practicality has ruled that out. Not only is the cello difficult to keep in tune and unharmed when you don’t have someone like a stage-manager or roadie to handle it, but it would take the vibe down to where people in a club might lose interest if there’s no one at the mic. And so far, I haven’t mastered singing and playing cello simultaneously.

Have you faced any particular sound issues live peculiar to your band?

YES. To sum it up: in order to sound the way we should, we need a real stage with someone to run monitors and someone else to run house sound. We’re too big for the average club stage.

What are your plans for the immediate future? Shows? Tours? recording? Midget wrestling?

Pretty much all of the above. We’ve got a tour coming up this July. Watch for us in the South, Southwest and Midwest! We’ve also just signed on with Thirteen 13 Booking and Promotion company in the UK. We’re hoping to have some shows this fall in the UK and possibly Europe. By that time we should have a new release, and that’s pretty much the sum of this year-- give or take a little midget wrestling here and there.