BORN IN GUATEMALA CITY, lived in Washington, DC, and Florida. At 20, moved to New York with her twin sister Claudia. Along with Phillip Wann, the twins created the band On!Air!Library! Specializing in hypnotic atmospheres of raw guitar and electronic loops swelling beneath melancholy vocals. Their self-titled debut is a collection of moody, visual, almost cinematic, songs.
You are on your first U.S. tour; describe what it's like. It's kind of surreal because I've never been across the U.S. like this before. But it's also unfortunate that we can't spend more time in each city. For instance, I was really excited to go to San Francisco, but by the time we got there it was already dark and we got there just in time for set-up.
How did you come together? Claudia met Phillip because they worked and lived in the same neighborhood. You know, New York is like that; you pretty much know everybody in that small scene. He started writing songs with Claudia, and I showed up later with a couple of songs.
How long did it take for you guys to gel? Actually it was kind of forced because we had only been messing around with a couple of songs when a friend of ours, Chris Leo, who was in a band called the Laughs, told us they were playing a show at the Knitting Factory and asked if we wanted to play. We were like, okay. So we had to rush and write all these songs in a month. This was in 2000.
Describe the communication between musicians when playing. With our music, a lot of it lies in this call-and-response thing. There has to be a constant connection between us, because a lot of the music doesn't necessarily have a set structure. So we have to be there with the other person and understand where they're going. We rely on each other during a show.
How do you sculpt an album from beginning to end? We wanted it to sound like a story, like a movie soundtrack: different songs that play into different things, the whole spectrum of emotion. It's hard for me to listen to a record where it's one emotion for the entire album because that's not human. Humans aren't like that.
What do you prefer, the studio or live? When we recorded the first record, we were really pressed monetarily, but I think I'll enjoy making the next record more as a recording experience because we're going to have, hopefully, more time and money to explore a little bit. But I'd have to say live is starting to catch up. I love playing live now.
On!Air!Library! is opening for Interpol on Thurs., Nov. 11 at Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 W. 34th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-307-7171; 9, $25.
