Anonymous

The masked, the mysterious and the really really mysterious

Interviewing people who want to be anonymous presents certain challenges.

Those TV spots with a shadowy figure and a distorted voice are a recognisable feature of investigative pieces about some political intrigue, or revelations of shady business practices. 

I’ve never conducted such an interview. I imagine that much of the time the interviewer gets to see the interviewee - it’s the audience who don’t get to know who’s talking. 

What I have experienced is interviewing people who don’t even reveal their identity to me, the interviewer.

It would be interesting to try this in person, or even via Zoom — maybe they’d be wearing some bizarre mask, I suppose that’s exactly how I’d be if I ever got to interview GWAR or Slipknot. 

Whether it’s KISS or Daft Punk or Buckethead or The Residents or MF DOOM, there are plenty of examples of performers who choose to cultivate some kind of masked persona — with varying degrees of commitment to keeping their identities secret. 

Sticking to a persona for a meaningful length of time must be hard and I think the dedication has to be respected — as far as I’m aware the members of Laibach never drop their characters in public — add the extra layer of maintaining a hidden identity and it’s even more impressive.

I remember once going to a small music festival in Scotland, for which I decided to hire a full bear outfit. The whole first day there, only the friend I travelled with knew who was under the bear mask. It was fun, but even the next morning when I joined a bongo workshop I started to feel a bit weirded out by the minor unease I was creating with my hidden identity. 

I took the mask off. 

That was just one day and I got sick of it. 

The various bands/ artists mentioned above may all have their own intentions and stories for why they choose (or chose) to hide their real identities. I’m pretty sure though that none of them made that choice through a need to protect their safety — like a corporate whistleblower or political dissident. 

That may or may not be the case with the two anonymous bands I’ve interviewed to date.

The most recent time I interviewed the Parisian duo of Void and Moon — at that time for their Biollante project — I innocently asked at the end of the interview if there was anything else they’d like to promote.  

I was expecting some comment about future recording plans, instead I got an enthusiastic promotion of freight train looting. When I told them I couldn’t submit an article advocating criminal activity, they quizzically replied that I already knew they were anarchists and revolutionaries, so of course this would be something they’d be in favour of. 

They did have a point. Like the frog carrying the scorpion across the river, what did I expect?

Still, I scrubbed that part of the Q&A - incidentally, I do have an agreement to interview them about their political views sometime, to better understand their ideology.  

Clearly Void & Moon have good reason to keep their true identities secret. In the case of the even more mysterious duo of Mamaleek, who knows what need for anonymity they have?

I recently interviewed Mamaleek for a soon to be published feature and if there’s a band out there who guard their hidden identities more closely, I am yet to discover them. 

Mamaleek are known to be two brothers. There’s a photo online of them as kids. They apparently live in San Francisco, with some unclear connection to Beirut. Since 2008 they have released eight albums — including the forthcoming Diner Coffee — and that’s pretty much all that is known about the pair.

My interview was, I think, their third ever and all correspondence was through their PR agent. They don’t even give themselves pseudonyms like Void & Moon. I may have corresponded with one or both of them, or even some guy who sweeps the floors at the record label. Who knows?

Of course the simple thing to do would be to just ask them why they choose to be anonymous, right? Well, believe me, Mamaleek are far more enthusiastic about cultivating a weird mythology for themselves than they are giving neat answers that can be plugged into Wikipedia. 

And you know what? Fair play. 

As with Non Serviam/ Biollante, if the music wasn’t interesting it’d all be a wasted effort, but with Mamaleek creating a mix of noise, black metal, sludge, jazz, lounge and trip hop — the likes of which I’ve never heard — they can maintain the mystery and pull my leg with all the tall tales they want. I remain fully onboard.  

Who knows, maybe they’re just really really ugly?