So you've said that it all started with David Bowie for you?
"I first started getting into doing Lazerstar when I first started listening to Marc Bolan a lot, T. Rex. "Electric Warrior" is the album to have for any glam rock initiate. Definitely Bowie's Low. The Berlin trilogy is my favorite period of his work. That's what really caused Lazerstar albums to be conceived in my mind. But before that, before I even knew what "Low" was, I was listening to a lot of Of Montreal, an Athens band. I totally loved the way they sounded. That's what Lazerstar initially was: an ode to both of those genres. Electronic and glam.

I had been in bands since I was fifteen, so I was already proficient in songwriting and producing. The next step was being able to put together drums, bass, piano and guitar, all of those things by myself. When I was 16 I learned how to play piano because I wanted to know how to play the songs I was creating using computer programs. Because I didn't want to be unable to play what I created. I got into synthesizers... The first synthesizer I got was an Akai AX-60, which was an analog synth from 86 and I used that for sounds. And then I had an MPC-2000, which is still one of my staples. It's a classic drum machine sampler. I would sequence those up together. When I got that MPC-2000 is when my solo career really started."

What was behind the birth of Lazerstar performances, going from a more punk background to this flamboyant alter ego?
"At first Lazerstar wasn't as flamboyant, the original versions of a lot of my songs were more psychedelic. But as I realized that my setup was getting smaller and tighter, the music could also be a bit more compact. The music became more dance-oriented, everything had a straight-up dance beat. And that's how I started to realize that this was how I could participate with an audience. All I am is this person with machines and a microphone, but I can take that to another level by being flamboyant with an audience. By letting them lose their inhibitions, and everyone working together to accomplish something. Letting them sing a part of a song. Lazerstar was... There are a couple of songs where I really try to get the audience to scream, I always would go off the stage and dance with people, so... Lazerstar was a lot of like, being in physical shape, I was doing a lot of karate, so I would always be in my spandex and dancing the whole time, so people would get into that. In my eyes it was supposed to be a character, but people really got attached to the spandex. I stopped doing Lazerstar when I kept hearing people go, "Where's the spandex?" It's interesting, a lot of people don't dance when I do Lazerstar with my normal clothes, but when I have the spandex on, they go crazy. A thin layer of spandex between you and them, it tends to lighten the mood somewhat. It wasn't frustrating, but I guess I was defining myself by my image instead of my music. And to me, I've always been more of a musician than an image person. I want the music to stand on its own."

Have you ever thought of evolving the Lazerstar character - like Bowie did going from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke?
"Yeah, I've thought of doing that but it's hard for me to do that now. I sit down and I try to write things that I think would be Lazerstar-inspired, but I kind of created Lazerstar as separate from Chase Capo and so I pigeonholed myself and hurt myself that way. So I don't know if it's necessary for me to kill Lazerstar to get my normal identity back..."

Maybe a stage death for Lazerstar.....
"That's interesting, I don't know how I'd perform..."

Or how Alice Cooper beheaded himself every night?
"Exactly! (laughter) The stage production is going to be very simple – it might just be a fake knife with a little fake blood. See, that's why I like Lazerstar, because it's okay for me to be theatrical. It's a good way to influence an audience to think one way, it creates unity.

The evolution from Lazerstar, I think, is that I take my songs now and kind of use them in a collaborative effort, which I enjoy. I think Lazerstar is laying dormant right now. I have to reinvent it. But even the name is really fun, and so it's hard to reinvent Lazerstar as being anything other than Lazerstar. It's hard to make it something serious. Maybe I can make it really gothic! (laughter) Blackstar! Black nail polish!"

How long had Lazerstar been going before you decided to go live in a Buddhist monastery?
"Lazerstar was conceived in 2005 There was a show in Athens, my first time in Athens, and I played Tasty World with this band Commander Chameleon, a really good band, and they were like, "Everyone hates us in Athens, nobody comes to our shows." But at least two of them had girlfriends, so that was great. The guy at the club gave me ten dollars, and I was like, "Can you give me 20?" And he was like, "I'd give you twenty if you had a whole band!" But on the way back, I was like, "I want to come back home and create this mystery of this awesome band I found in a record store called Lazerster." So Lazerstar was going to be this awesome fake glam rock that said they were from outer space. Hawks in space and lasers, that's what I was going for."

Like Silverhawks?
"Silverhawks, that's I was going for! There was a pink one and she left behind a trail like a rainbow. And that's what I wanted the music to sound like. Like, "Woah. That was really glamorous." That's the concept I was going for. I'm going to totally have everyone check out this album I found, but it's going to be my album - hahahahaha. But then I'll make another album and it's going to be inspired by this other album, that's really a fake album. So I ended up changing my own project's name to Lazerstar. I definitely wanted to have the world "laser" in it. Maybe it was one of those Beatles dreams. There's a bar called Laserstar, and I was like that's so brilliant, why didn't anyone ever think of Lazerstar?"

Tell me about the craziest Lazerstar show.
"They were all pretty crazy, man. (laughter) Any of the early ones at TSI where the spandex first got introduced were really off the chain. There's one particular show that I remember that I was really into, my second or third show at TSI, and people had just started to hear about Lazerstar. There were only about twenty people up front. And I was like, "YEAH, I'm working this, I'm working the crowd! Lookie here! I'm on my way to fame." And then the next time there are only five peole there, but you play the next week anyway, because they don't have any local bands. It was awesome show, I got everyone singing the synthesizer part at the end of this one song and it was call-and-response. It was awesome because you could hear everyone singing it and they were doing a good job and it was a very complicated rhythm, and everyone was like, "Yeah, you got that! Ah, it feels good, you feel good, I feel good!" It was cheesy like that, but you could be like a little kid. I think that's what really weird about music, you're fulfilling childhood fantasies in some way? It can also be a spiritual thing. There're so many things it can be. It's beautiful. It's a constant guessing game. The house shows were really fun. When I came back from the monastery, that show was really fun. No spandex, shaved head, really weird purple glasses; it was a comeback show and it went really well. Everyone was like, "Man you came back and sold your soul to your devil to get better!" (laughter)"

It's interesting to me that you went to a Buddhist monastery in New York for some time, because Leonard Cohen did the same thing, And Pete Townshend had a guru. The Beatles and the Beach Boys with the Maharishi...
"Well, I'll tell you what that is. As a musician, as a performing musician, it is a highly ritualized thing and it doesn't strike me at all odd that being immersed in such a highly ritualized and personal thing, it makes complete sense that you would be attracted to spirituality and religion. Your music is all tangled up inside and you're trying to figure out how to play it and trying to learn how to play yourself in a way that you can become more beautiful as a player and be able to let the music that is beautiful within yourself be heard by the whole world."

So you come back from the monastery, return to Jacksonville re-energized… How did Cpt EO come out of that?
"It must have been right after that comeback show. Brenden was like, "Dude, we should make some music together. I always run sound for you and we always think of really awesome ideas on how to make things sound great." And I said, "Yeah we should." So I found a friend who was nerdy about synthesizers like me. That was really cool. Brenden's girlfriend is always joking like, "You guys are perfect for each other. You guys are the only two who know what the heck you're talking about." But Brenden is even more logical than me and we just try to inspire each other and come up with stuff. We work together all the time. Brenden will take stuff and do it on his own, but I'll bring in pieces of music and I'll remix his music. It's a really free collaboration. It's taken a long time to earn each other's trust. I do feel that it can be compromising for me because I can be so creative that I come up with a lot of really zany ideas, a lot of big ideas. And I'm still trying to figure things out! I wish that we could come together on that and have some really interesting ideas. He's more practical."

Cpt EO is a defiantly anti-image band, in stark contrast to Lazerstar. What influences went into EO?
"Well, it's funny. And I think that this is why it took so long to evolve - we would just play and kind of let it come out. A lot of New Order influences. Definitely very New Wave, we knew we wanted a certain kind of guitar sound, very indie disco, but we were really going for synthesizer-based pop. "Captain Eo" is the short film by Michael Jackson; 17 million dollars for something like a million dollars a minute, it's in 3D. Excellent. We were doing the project for a long time before we even named it. At first Brendon was brining a lot of songs to the table, and I was just trying to find my place. But then we stepped up our game, I stepped up my game writing the songs. Definitely heavily inspired by low-fi funk and bands like Cut Copy, MGMT, Justice. I get really excited when I talk about EO. People always ask, "What are you doing with Lazerstar?" Who gives a shit? EO is tight! Come see the live show!"

With EO, I also like how you try to keep it as live as possible, different than a lot of point-click-laptop electronica type stuff. Is that a conscious move?
"Yeah, it definitely is conscious. We always have live synths for us to perform actual pieces on. As of right now, we've been doing lots of recording, so you're going to hear a lot of sequenced stuff, alongside our real-time stuff. It's very interesting, how much different it can sound, how much more of a live feeling we can bring."

You're really confident about the material you're working on right now?
"I am. I'm very confident about it. We're trying to assemble an album. It's looking really good, the material we have."

Are you going to put out the album yourself?
"Yeah, it's gong to be all DIY. We're going to be doing home duplicating and then putting it on the internet for free, pretty much. We just take the money that we make from shows and put it back into the band."

How are people taking to the material?
"People like it. We haven't had a really big show yet to expose it. We opened for Gil Mantera and people were into it. But Jacksonville... I think they're coming around. I don't think we've really been exposed to the live scene yet."

Are there any bands locally that you feel a kinship with?
"Definitely, Juicy Pony is one, It's indie, dancey electronic music with all the vocals sung through an autotune vocoder. It's very good stuff, very poppy. Sunbears is excellent. The stage projections just kill me, the grandiosity of their songs, it's so beautiful. Infintezmal have a very interesting collective."

What's on the horizon for Cpt EO?
"To finish this recording. I'm going to get some crazy-ass shows together. I really want to get a Sunbears/Juicy Pony/Cpt EO show together."

What else is on the horizon for you?
"Well Lazerstar is having a baby, so... You thought my songs were cheesy now? (laughter) Just wait until I start talking about roads crossing and rainbows and "you are the light of my life!" Baby Sean Lennon, Sean Lennon Capo! Me and the girlfriend are putting out Triple Fantasy!"

http://www.myspace.com/purpleofcassius
http://www.myspace.com/eocapitan