Interview from Robots and Electronic Brains by Jimmy Possession

Intro: There's not exactly a glut of man/animal crossover rock. There was The Animals, of course, John Cougar Mellencamp, Billy Swan and The Boomtown Rats but none of them were really confused about their identity, none of them looked like a band fronted by an animal. Mike Batt was The Wombles but a Womble isn't an animal as such and there have been records by Pinky and Perky, Roland Rat and other puppets, but no-one thinks they're anything but puppets. Last year, Jim Avignon put out the Neoangin album ("a friendly dog in an unfriendly world") but that was under his own name about the cartoon dog. Which brings us to Twink. An album of what could be children's music, on toy instruments, with a storybook, by a rabbit. Or is it Mike Langlie?

One thing I need to sort out first? Who is Twink? Is it you, the rabbit, or the band?

Twink is the name for the overall project. It's sort of like a band, but I'm the only fixed member. Different folks contribute their musical talents on a song-by-song basis. There are a couple of people whom I would like to deputize as full-fledged band members, but they have their own projects that they're very much tied to.

So what's the rabbit called?

The rabbit in the book was nameless for a while, but people assume he's called Hoppity Jones (for the first track on the disc), so that name stuck.

Would you be offended if I described your record as a concept album?

It's definitely a concept record. I guess the idea is to take the listener on a musical journey through the various moods and bizarre places that I could push what is usually seen as a very limited-range instrument. The rabbit's story in the book reflects that...sometimes fun, sometimes scary. In fact, the one complaint I get the most is that the disc and the book don't follow each other more literally.

Is it a kids record?

It's also sort of a kid's record, in that it's playful and whimsical, but I also tried to express the wide emotional spectrum that children have. Most of the bland children's music I hear being made these days seems to ignore how complex kids really are. I wanted the album to be something that anyone could enjoy, so the tunes are instrumental and the book is wordless.

Have you had any feedback from children? Have you played it to any children?

The feedback from people has been good overall, but I'm especially happy with the response the album gets from children. Friends and family members have told me that their kids will bang along on their own toys when the disc is on! Their parents must hate me. :)

Why make it with toy instruments?

For years I played keyboards in bands, always trying to do something different than what other groups around us were doing at the time. After a while I got kind of disenchanted with the music scene, and didn't feel like I was covering any new ground. One day a few years ago I was working on an already frustrating project, when my equipment quit on me. I was about to throw in the towel, and started goofing around on a toy piano I'd found to get my mind off things. The more I played with it the more fun I had, something I was missing in making music. I've now got a huge collection of toy instruments, and they're really fun to play! I'm constantly surprised by the things I can do with them.

Did you actually play all the instruments together as a band, or did you stitch it all together on the computer from samples of the instruments?

Ahh, the magic of multi-tracking! I admit to being a poor musician, especially when fumbling with tiny piano keys. Recording a track that I'm happy with takes forever. Most of the songs on the disc are stitched together from countless takes and tracks. I've also made a bank of sampled toys and funny noises to use for making rhythm tracks. Most of the guests on the album mailed their parts to me. The downside to using all this technology is that I still haven't found a way to translate it into a live set-up that I'm satisfied with.

What's the best instrument you've got?

As far as toy pianos go, I've found Jaymar and Schoenhut to be the best. Even the beat-up models from the 1950s that I have sound beautiful. Most of my collection consist of little, weird-name brands, that aren't really very useful musically, but I play a few notes from them here and there for variety. Stay away from Kleinways...they look like gorgeous little grand pianos, but all the ones I've tried sound like old buckets.

One of my favorite things is called a pling plong, which I ordered from France. It looks like the guts of a music box, and it works like a tiny player piano. You write music for it by punching holes into a long paper card, then running it through the device by turning a crank to trigger the tines.

Right now I'm getting a lot of cheap electronic toy instruments. They're quite cute...big colorful keys, animal head buttons, huge drum pads. They're not all great, but some have terrific sounds and effects. I'll be incorporating more of these into future releases, and hopefully circuit-bending a few.

How about the story book? Was that developed at the same time/before/after?

My creative time is spent equally between music and illustration/design, so Twink is a really satisfying project. I love unique packaging, and I wanted to release an album that would really get people's attention. The beauty of releasing both a CD and picture book was that if I got tired of working on one, I could switch gears and work on the other. Developing both simultaneously helped me figure out the order of the tracks, to sort of match the flow of the book.