“People ask me what I do,” laughs Jared Louche, “Nowadays, I refer to
myself as a conductor.  I conduct other people's creative electricity and
channel it to produce the songs I hear in my head."

      Best known as the eloquently confrontational frontman of groundbreaking
“machine rock” outfit Chemlab, Jared Louche returns to the to the rock and
roll fray after a two-year hiatus from the music world. Covergirl, his first
post-Chemlab project, finds the self-described conductor leading such
esteemed collaborators as JF Coleman (Cop Shoot Cop, Phylr), Martin Atkins
(Pigface), Jason McNinch (Lick, Final Cut), Meg Lee Chin and Martin King
(Test Dept, Subgenius) through the ritual disembowelment of classic songs by
Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, Public Image Ltd., Love, and Frank
Sinatra. Released in the autumn of 1999 by Invisible Records (who are also
preparing to reissue Chemlab’s Burn Out At the Hydrogen Bar and East Side
Militia; both feature bonus remixes and new liner notes from Jared),
Covergirl is a bold conceptual and musical statement by an artist who thrives
on defying boundaries and expectations.

    “I can do raw, raging, rock-and-roll-machine,
21st-century-jetboy-destruction all night long,” Jared explains, “But hey,
I’ve already proven I can do that. I want to do more than that, and working
with other people’s material provides a very interesting format for me to
experiment in. It allows me a broader sonic and conceptual palette from which
to draw, as well as by which to be defined.”

    According to Jared, Covergirl is made up primarily of “songs that have
been going around and around in my head for the past twenty years. I’ve heard
different ways to orchestrate them in my head, and have always wanted to do
them, but Chemlab was never really the format where we could do something
like that and really do it effectively. These songs are known equations, and
I wanted to tear them down and rebuild them, so that they become something
completely new. They speak with my voice, but I’m using their words. So the
song becomes, conceptually, something that can function on different levels;
and the recording of the album should, theoretically, have been simple to do."

    "Of course," he laughs, "the actual realisation of the project was
anything but simple.  Since I don't play an instrument...there was no
pre-production whatsoever. I gave music to the different people that were
working with me, and wrote down how I wanted it orchestrated; fortunately,
they were able to understand the way I approach songwriting and production.
Jim Coleman, who did the music for the Roxy Music song, ‘In Every Dreamhome a
Heartache,’ had never heard the song before. I had a very specific idea in my
head of what I wanted in terms of its dynamic, in terms of its pacing, and in
terms of its overall Phantom of the Opera feel. I gave him all those
reference points, and he turned it around in three days.  He understood
exactly what I wanted subsequently providing one of the best tracks on the album.  It's
certainly one of my favorites.”

    Jared honed his conceptual chops with Chemlab, the explosive “machine
rock” project he formed in New York City with techno-wizard Dylan More.
Chemlab’s first big break came in 1991, when Trent Reznor asked the
then-unknown outfit to open for Nine Inch Nails on a tour of the United
States. “Performing in front of a couple thousand people every night was a
godsend from straight outta nowhere,” reflects Jared. “That Nine Inch Nails
tour really helped establish us, especially in the underground.”

    Chemlab soon developed a rabid core following, thanks to the challenging
mix of computerized rhythms and rock and roll chaos that informed such tracks
as “Summer of Hate” and “21st Century”.  Chemlab’s debut EP (1991’s Ten-Ton
Pressure) and two full-length releases (1994’s Burn Out At the Hydrogen Bar,
and 1997’s East Side Militia) are now all considered classics of the “machine
rock” genre. “It’s really funny,” says Jared, “I’ll look in the back of variou
s electro-zines at ads for people starting bands, and we’ll be listed as one
of the desired influences. They’ll say things like, ‘Influences: Sisters of
Mercy, White Zombie and Chemlab.’”

    Unfortunately, the chaotic forces that made Chemlab so compelling
eventually pulled the project apart; after a soul-scorching 1997 tour with
Gwar, Jared and Dylan decided to call it a day. “It was much too
self-destructive,” says Jared of his Chemlab tenure, “And a lot of people
just couldn’t figure us out, which made it difficult for us to take it to the
next level. I guess it was an important process to go through — you know, the
underground glory and the nightmare of self-immolation. But I’m glad we had
the run that we did.”

    The idea for Covergirl originally came to Jared while he was working as
an investment banker on Wall Street, a job he took shortly after Chemlab’s
demise. “I’d quit rock and roll completely,” he says now. “I was $160,000 in
debt, my teeth were falling out — forget about it, man, I needed some money!
I wasn’t working with musicians at all, and I really didn’t want to; but I
wasn’t in a context where I had an outlet for my creativity, beyond just my
writing. Covergirl started as sort of an exorcism of some of the songs I’ve
always wanted to do.  Since the material isn't mine, it allows me to
experiment in ways that people might not necessarily be prepared for if they
were all new songs of mine that take these same chances."

    One of Covergirl’s biggest surprises is a radical reworking of Chemlab’s
“Suicide Jag,” recast here as a brooding excursion into the smoke-filled
world of late-fifties jazz. “It’s both for me and for Chemlab fans,” Jared
says of his reinterpretation. “I’m taking the piss out of such a powerful
song, but I’m translating it into a framework that I think can also be very
powerful. You don’t have to be hard to be cool; with just three notes, Miles
Davis could be more powerful than a whole Marilyn Manson show.”

    In discussing his return to the stage, Jared advises people to come with
an open mind. "My approach to live shows is to try to give people a
'live-wire' show.  The songs on the album cover a  spectrum that ranges from
a smoky nightclub atmosphere with Sinatra on Ecstasy, to futurist Machine
Rock

Action. However, it is also very possible that I may do one-off shows with a
backing blues band. I definitely want to reinterpret the material live, but
by the same token I don't want to take it so far out that people have nothing
to grab onto, nothing recognisable. I want to use both the album and the live
show not only to entertain people, but to redefine my creative output."

    After performing a well-received solo set this summer at Ireland’s
prestigious Liss Ard Festival, Jared is also considering the possibility of
dispensing with live musical accompaniment altogether for certain numbers. “I
may well do Frank Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wind’ very much the way it is on the
album, with no one else playing — just do it with a CD backing track the way
I did it at Liss Ard — and croon the songs as best a crow can,” he says. “I’d
love to do a whole tour of all Sinatra songs, like ‘One For My Baby.’
Sometimes I think that since there are so many good songs already in
existence, I might never write another original again.  Frankie was never a
songwriter; he was the century’s greatest interpreter. And who knows? Maybe
I’ve got a career in Las Vegas waiting for me, after all!”

    Jared Louche — lounge singer? It’s certainly an intriguing possibility.
But whether he’s trashing the stage at a thousand-seat theater, or propping
up a piano within the crushed velvet confines of a Sin City lounge, you can
bet that Jared’s experimental edge and iconoclastic wit will always remain
intact. “If they ever do put me onstage in Las Vegas,” he laughs, “They can
forget about all that goddamn ‘family-oriented’ bullshit. The broads, the
booze, the drugs and the mafiosi — they’re _all_ gonna come back!”
 

For Publicity Contact:

Carl Hanni
Mod Media
Phone/Fax  520-432-4493
PO Box 1142
Bisbee, AZ 85603

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