A Million Things You Didn’t Know About: CSS

I sit down with the Brazilian mentalists ahead of a one-off show for Xbox at Koko, London, to find out exactly what we don’t know about them. Turns out, it’s a lot. And they talk all over each other. All at once.

So the idea of the interview is to unearth ten things we don’t know about CSS…
We all came from the same mother.

That must have been painful…
Yeah at the same time.
We were all collected from the same tree.
We were all Chinese and we all had to have reverse surgery; we were all male and had to become female.
Our favourite Sex and the City character is Charlotte.

Really?
What, no it’s not! My favourite one is Sarah Jessica Parker.
No we hate her!
Yeah I love her! She’s so inspiring for me. I just sit on my computer and I just write and write and tell everyone things about my life and how my friends are so amazing and all my problems with men. I started wearing magnolia clothes just because of Sarah Jessica Parker. I’ve got her mole! She took off the mole and I bought it.

If the band doesn’t work out, you can make some money on that…
We’re already rich from other stuff. Almost so much I can’t stand it.

So, you’re playing this branded gig tonight, where someone has chosen you specially: How does that feel?
It feels like being Keanu Reeves on The Matrix.
You’re the chosen one, we love when people choose us. We feel like the number one. We just like to be chosen. Look how happy we are!

You’ll do anything to be chosen?
No, we just love being chosen. If we were a fruit and you choose us, we’d be a happy apple.

Not bananas then?
No bananas. Anna Banana; that’s our DJ name.
I’ve DJed with Hannah Montana
Yeah, she’s huge in Brazil. But now she’s had the most famous DJ (me) going back to back.

That’s pretty massive…
I taught her how to use the DJ machine, because she didn’t know how to. She bought my adaptor.

If you had to choose your own dream line-up for a gig, what would it be? Who would be your headliner?
Tequila Tequila, Anna Banana and Hanna Montana and Solange [Knowles] at the doors. And Kathy Griffiths would do stand up of course.

Since we’re so influential, they would play for free. So we could keep calling more people on. We could go for weeks.

I want to see this festival in action!
And obviously we’d also have Destiny’s Child and I’d like to have Rhianna with Jay-Z, just playing ‘Umbrella’ non-stop so there would be loads of tension backstage. And we’d love to have Mariah Carey on the bar, just doing cocktails.

Apart from talking about your dream line-up, what do you guys tend to do backstage?
We do choreography, yoga, Pilates…I make coffee. It’s very relaxed. But first of all, when we get into our dressing room ,we really like to wear bright clothes like white and beige – like Angelina Jolie’s family – olive green… I am Sahara and each one of us is one of Angelina Jolie’s adopted children.

Would you like to be adopted by Angelina Jolie?
Yeah! You know we’re from Brazil, so we’d have a chance. She does get people from weird countries. We’re third-worlders.

So it’d be Angelina over Madonna?
Oh yeah!

Are you not fans of Madonna?
No, we love Madonna, I just wouldn’t want to be adopted by her. I love her but would much rather be adopted by Angelina. She’s a Leo and …it would be nicer because I’m a Cancer…
And I’m a Gemini…

Do you guys read star signs?
Oh yeah, we’re really into star signs. If you ask someone, we know what their star sign is. What’s your star sign?

I am a Sagittarius.
Wow, cool! Party on! So you have a birthday in December?

Yes, you?
It’s in March, which makes me a Pisces and that means I’m the coolest person on earth and that I have a DJ duo with Hanna Montana.

So you were talking about your festival – would you allow drugs?
Drugs like coffee and sugar? Like legal highs! Did you know that ‘BO’ is a good legal high?

Your BO?
Yeah, just not other people’s BO, that’s toxic. We’d go for legal highs, like sugar, chocolate, coffee, BO…

No alcohol?
No, we don’t drink alcohol, we pretend. We just have tea on our tequila bar.
It’s all tea and water. We have a special roast of coffee that’s called Tiea-quila.

What’s in this blend?
The leaves of like you know the cactus. You know, the ‘quila’?

And it doesn’t get you high of course?
All: No, it’s caffeine-free, all our skin is a lot better. We all get caffeine-free stuff and brown sugar.

I was going to ask what’s your best piece of improvised drug paraphernalia…
No we don’t do it. Crack is something that Brazilians don’t understand because in Brazil, crack is constant bribe. You know little children are so hungry that they have to smoke crack so as not to feel hungry. So when rich people in England take crack, it’s the most disgusting thing. It’s like, why don’t they just try living on the streets straight away? Go to Brazil and be a homeless kid! Yeah! In Brazil you can buy crack for like five pence.

Seriously?!
Yeah, it’s ridiculous, it’s like a homeless chewing gum drug.

So what’s the cool drug then?
I don’t know, we’re not really into drugs. I don’t think it’s very cool.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s so cool either. So…you like celebrities?
Yeah, you know all those like Oprah, Mariah Carey, Angelina Jolie and all her family…

All strong women?
Oh yeah, definitely. And celebrity men, apart from George Michael, you know I don’t know why he was smoking crack in a public toilet. We read about him in the papers. And Brad Pitt because he’s married to Angelina. And Tom Cruise because he’s so freaky…

What’s the oddest country that you’re famous in?
We went to Mexico and it was the craziest place… But probably [Freetown] Christiana [in Copenhagen]. It’s a big place, independent and before there were far too many drugs there…

It’s always drugs with you! I can imagine that your fans must be pretty… What’s the weirdest thing that a fan has a done?
Once a girl gave Teresa a knife and asked Teresa to write her name with a knife andI also once went home and there was a fan in my closet, naked and there was another fan who broke into my house with a piece of carrot cake, chocolate cake and truffles. Though our craziest fan is Elton John.

Yeah?
He’s craziest about us and he’s all the time calling us and wants to hang out. And we’re like, come on! ‘Your Song’ was written for us and he wanted to name it after us but we said ‘No Elton, that’s too much.’

You need to get invited to one of his parties.
Yeah we’re going to one of his parties next week.

What are you going to wear? You have to wear something crazy…
All: No, he accepts me the way I am. He says, ‘Dear, dear, come as you are.’ And then he plays the Nirvana song, bang bang bang, on the piano.

You guys have lots of on-stage gimmicks, like stripping, balloons, confetti… Which is your favourite?
The next step is kids.
We don’t have strippers, we don’t have these kinds of things. We would like kids on stage, a whole range.

That’s a bit Michael Jackson style…
No! Don’t go there! We are not like him! It’s not going to be like Michael Jackson.

Moving on, what else are you good at doing?
Cooking
I’m really good at searching at stuff on Google. It’s a good skill to have. It’s hard, man, but I can find anything.

That’s an interesting skill.
I’m good at networking too.

You’re also very good making stuff up on cue, it’s very good.
We’re good at networking, branding, launch parties. And we love disrupting Wikipedia.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever read about yourself on Wikipedia?
We don’t read about ourselves, we just destroy the other entries.

But you know, anyone can change it so surely you…
What’s your name?

Kate.
Kate what?

Hutchinson… I don’t have a Wikipedia page.
Well, we’re going to make you one.

What would my Wikipedia page say?
You know that guy who was taking photos just now? They were for us.
And you can do very good things with Photoshop. You can’t imagine what’s going to happen.

I’m very worried now…
I used to work with David LaChapelle back when I was in LA

Did you used to be a man, like an Angela Lepore?
No, but I love her. She’s on my top friends list and she has amazing songs.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever read about yourself?
The thing about being party people, is we like to party… We don’t need drugs! We were born retarded!

I don’t think I can print that!
You know we spend the whole day just joking and laughing and we never leave each other, we’re always together. We’re ‘together’ retarded.

So you share a brain?
We don’t, we have our iPods.
We do love to talk about drugs because we like to talk about that, but we don’t really do it as we’re mentally challenged. The hardest thing we ever had to learn was how to speak English.
Adriano has a very special thing about him: Wherever he goes, whether it’s Japan, Germany, France or wherever, he changes his accent so the locals can understand him. Go on, ask him a question, talk in an American accent!
I’m a Gemini I have this problem. This problem causes multiple personalities. Choosing between a gift and a problem though, that’s a gift.

Elton John would have to give you elocution lessons! Another serious question now, obviously you guys like to party and I like that about you. I’m a party girl.
Yay! Sagittarius!

Where is the best place to party in the world?
Helsinki. With us! No, we had a party in a bus and it was amazing. We listened to loads of gay disco songs and then all the male members of our crew took off their shirts and it looked like…my hair caught on fire…everybody got on the bus and to get on the bus you had to take off your shirt…and it looked like such a gay bus. But yet there were all these straight men.

You guys inspire homosexuality in the straight men?
Yes of course! We like to embrace it!

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