Interview from Performer Magazine by Jeff Breeze, October, 2004

For Mike Langlie, the creation of his toy piano band Twink was a reaction to the dark sounds around him and a direct result of the simple joy of an instrument with a limited sonic palate. "I probably never would have gone in the direction of silly, sugary melodies if I hadn't stumbled across a toy piano at a thrift store. That was about 10 years ago, when I was still in a doom-and-gloom band. Around that same time, I was getting fed up with retreading the same musical ground and dealing with equipment problems, and the toy piano called to me as a way to goof around without any of that baggage. It was liberating to have such primitive limitations, and the idea hit me to try a project that kept things simple and fun. Soon I started finding toy pianos all over to bring home. It became a real obsession... each piano has its own character and tonal quality, and none have a 'perfect' sound. I have to struggle now not to add to the collection, I've run out of room."

Langlie claims to have 3 dozen toy pianos which all make appearances somewhere over the two albums, the eponymous debut and 'Supercute', he has composed using his pianos. "I'm not a great musician to begin with," Langlie says, "and playing those tiny keys just compounds my ineptitude. This project would never have worked without multi-tracking. I can spend a day poking out a tune over and over trying to get it right. For most songs I'll rearrange and layer parts on my computer. There's a lot of clean-up involved, toy pianos are noisy beasts."

The limitations of the toy piano nearly vanished as a result of the possibilities that the computer can provide in recording. Technology made things mutate in a way that spiraled away from the original concepts however. "My original intention was to keep things simple, but as I work on a song I can't help adding tons of other parts on synths and other goofy toys or instruments. Most of the collaborations are done through the mail, and then I mix parts together at home."

Langlie brings a lot of folks into this second record and the array of accompanists effects the sound pretty dramatically. "Most of the folks involved are friends, or people I've gotten to know online that share a common aesthetic. I did write to a few people I'm fans of to see if they'd be interested in collaborating, like Ralph Carney and Steve Cerio, and we've become friends to varying degrees. Some of the weirder partnerships came from people approaching me, resulting in unlikely combinations of noise and jingle. For most of the songs, I'll hand off a basic melody and backing parts, and let the person just go nuts. In these cases I'm familiar with the kind of feel and arrangement a person is capable or fond of, and trust that they'll do something interesting. I'm always surprised by how inventive people are, they really bring the material to a place I wouldn't have expected or thought of."

But despite the guests that appear on the album, all of them are bringing sounds to the album and words remain outside of the purview of Twink. There is a sample from the film Down By Law on the new disc, but the twisted approach is left wide open to interpretation without any libretto to speak. "Reaching a really broad audience has always interested me," Langlie continues, "and I think I can connect with more people by keeping it wordless. I've gotten feedback from young kids and adults, from all over, and it seems like people interpret different things from Twink depending on their perspective. That might get lost if I tie things down with specific words. However, bands like Stephin Merritt's the Sixths and Dave Grohl's Probot intrigue me, in how far a project can be pushed by a variety of voices, while keeping to a basic theme. There are some vocalists I can imagine being appropriate for Twink, so I wont rule it out."

Without words, the booklets for Twink's discs are filled with illustrations provided by Langlie himself. The cartoons don't follow a narrative with either record and yet they're pretty integral to each album. It's an outlet for both Langlie's musical and visual personas. "I'm a designer and illustrator, and love fancy packaging, so I put a lot of love into the presentation, Langlie says. If someone's going to buy it, I feel like I owe it to them to give as many goodies as I can. The comics and recordings are worked on simultaneously, and take their own directions. I considered having a story-book that followed the music more closely, but thought it might be overkill. The way it came out, it's more like a look into the world that the music could have come from."

Without any words and with certifiably cute illustrations, Twink is an innocent music of someone aiming for a navet of a simpler time. It's like the traditional sense of the G rating for General audience instead of the ham-fisted approach that most studios use if they're not striving for PG-13. "Even when I was in heavy bands, I never found the need to use profanity or explicit language to get a point across, Langlie says. Even the suggestive stuff in my work has always been buried in layers, just to add some subtlety and mystery. Personally, I roll my eyes when I hear someone swear to appear tough or extreme... it's just lazy, a total cliché."

"For Twink specifically, I decided early on that not only would I like to have as broad an audience as possible, but I felt a responsibility to kids who would be attracted by the packaging. It was very tempting to go completely ironic and over-the-top, like Happy Tree Friends or Meet the Feebles, but the novelty of shocking stuff like that wears thin pretty quickly, like a repetitive joke. I think you can make something of quality that is slightly subversive without being pandering. The guys from Homestar Runner have had great success with all crowds while staying kid-friendly."

The first album is full of a lot of exploring as to what sounds Langlie could actually get the piano to use so a degree of menace (no greater than Tchaikovsky's Peter and the Wolf) is pervasive beneath the simple melodies. For 'Supercute', as the title may imply, things take a turn for the lighter. "With the first record, I was really trying to see how many different directions I could push the sound of the instrument in, so it's pretty varied. Every tune wandered into unknown territory," Langlie says. "By the time I started on the second disc, I knew what things worked better than others, and had preferences for certain feels and moods. I also felt like making something more fun overall. The comic artist James Kochalka had just released his Cute Manifesto around the time Supercute was being finished, so maybe it was something in the air too."

Aiming toward making children's music has made Langlie intrinsically aware of the history of the genre. When you drop the needle on vinyl that survived Fisher Price needles and auxiliary use as a frisbee and find sound, old children's records can be a true hidden gem. "Those records are like visiting another world, you realize some are pretty tripped-out when you go back and listen now. Twink has really renewed my interest in children's music, and I pick up old records whenever I'm at a thrift shop. They're a great inspiration for simple, catchy melodies."

"In general, kid's music is such an overlooked genre, your typical music fan wouldn't give it the time of day. It's a shame, because the older stuff that's getting lost is really rich with cool arrangements and sounds, played by great musicians. My goal is to rescue some of those nuggets and present them in a way that the regular radio listener would enjoy. Of course, I'm adding my own spin to mutate things into audio punch lines."

The next Twink disc won't feature any of Langlie's collection of toy pianos. Instead Langlie has hooked up with Negativland's Seeland label for an album comprised completely of vintage children's record samples. "Hopefully," Langlie says, "it'll be an album that inspires folks to seek out and appreciate some of the original records."

While Twink can be found contributing to some tribute discs (the Sonic Youth tribute 'Confuse Yr Idols' is out now, and there's a Devo one in the works), doing a split single with New Granada, and adding toy pianos to friend's records, expect that you won't be seeing him on a stage anytime soon as Twink. "I've had a hard time trying to come up with a live set-up that would do justice to the recordings, and also be an entertaining show. My friend Blaik, who has an electonic kiddie music project called Playsoundz, has been struggling with the same problem, and we've been toying with the idea of combining our acts into a multi-media puppet show. If I didn't have such a demanding day job I could probably pull something off, but right now I'd rather focus my time on new material than preparing a live act."

Despite not being a live concern, Twink is exactly the sort of musical outfit that Langlie has wanted to find himself in. "I really can do whatever I like, without having to worry about conforming to a given genre or style. Its like reverting back to a silly kid, pounding out ridiculous stuff on the family piano that drives your parents nuts. Above all, I'm doing it to amuse myself, to make real the kinds of crazy things that run through my head while I endure the boring day-to-day tasks of meetings, paying bills, washing dishes."

While Twink may seem the sort of obsession that can border on the unhealthy, Langlie has kept his toy piano collection under control as well as he reigns in his musical output. "There's a newsletter I get from The Miniature Piano Enthusiast Club. Its mostly older women with huge collections of tchotchkes. Whenever my wife starts to sweat about how many pianos are invading our space, I pull out an article about a woman with 1500 piano-shaped knick-knacks and that helps put things in perspective for the moment."