The Hellblinki Sextet have formed a musical trinity that invokes opera, punk rock and Sesame Street.
They have only three musicians, but they make enough noise to sound like six.
"We wanted to have kind of a jazz-type name, so it had to be a sextet," frontman Andrew Benjamin said. "The fact that we were a sextet for a while was a coincidence. I play drums, guitar and sing at the same time. We basically are a sextet because we're playing enough for six."
The trio, based in Asheville, N.C., will come to Burt's Tiki Lounge on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
One of the singers and the bassist live in a mansion that used to be a tuberculosis ward.
"Valeria's in the former storage room, which does have a spiral staircase," Benjamin said. "Brad lives in the apothecary - the pharmacy part. That's where they kept all the drugs. But he's moving out of the apothecary and into the ballroom, where Mr. Mustard did it with a knife."
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Armed with theatric, heavy percussion, accordions, bass, anthemic vocals, strings, horns and whatever else they've dragged along with them, Hellblinki sound like a carnival band from hell, and they sometimes sing in Italian.
"We're a little weird for Asheville," Benjamin said. "But we're growing on Asheville. A lot of the good bands in town that travel a lot and do great elsewhere have trouble in Asheville. But let's not talk about Asheville. We're coming to Albuquerque."
Valeria Meiss said she has had no formal vocal training, though she has been in a few operas. Her influences are patched together.
"A lot of my opera influence comes from Klaus Nomi from the '70s," she said. "He's this kind of terrible, kind of wonderful avant-garde, poppy, really weird new-wave artist. And the kind of raspier voice is from listening to old records."
On their recordings, some songs begin with the sound of a rolling film projector.
"Every once in a while, we'd have a projected film, and it wasn't the most reliable of instruments," Meiss said. "We changed to a DVD projector. If you hear a recorded film projector, it's probably a real thing. Most of our found sound is authentic. It is a show of music, but it's very theatrical music. We're extremely theatrical, and we're always trying to make it more theatrical."
Benjamin also grew up attending operas-his father was the general manager of the Augusta Opera Company in Augusta, Ga.
Legendary singer James Brown is from there, too. He introduced Hellblinki on television once, Benjamin said, when they participated in a Christmas special.
"It was called 'A Very Groovy Christmas,' and we were one of the premier Augusta bands at the time, and they asked us to participate," he said. "And we said 'Christmas special? We must do this.' We did a song called 'Nothing for Christmas.' It was big in the '40 or '30s. So we did that song, and they taped it."
The band's image draws from old clothing styles, old technology and sounds from the past.
"When old stuff gets that patina of crust, of age, of dirt, grime - that's when the tough get going," Benjamin said.
