CHRISTEENE: CUM. GIT. IT.

At some point in the next three weeks, when you’re a few drinks down and full of enthusiasm about the night to come, you might feel the urge to venture down to the Cowgate and do something thrillingly deviant. If this happens to you, be sure to find a controlled environment in which to let go. This is what The Christeene Machine is for. You’ll get your fill of deviance and you won’t catch anything – except, if you're lucky, some of Christeene’s stank magik.

Christeene, the creation of drag artist Paul Soileau, is a sexually omnivorous disco-skank with a filthy mouth. She dresses like somebody who's just had a dangerous backstreet makeover: matted black wig, ripped clothing, messed-up teeth, brutalized makeup. The beats that accompany her squalid rapping sound like trashy '90s electropunk – but next to Christeene, Peaches is about as sexually threatening as the Moldy Peaches. She performs with the aid of her DJ, JJ Booya, and has two dancers in train. They’re not dancers of the chiselled-abs variety but sweating, pale-buttocked, groin-churning gimps called T Gravel and C Baby. Christeene calls them her “sexual assault drones”.

There's a satirical edge to Soileau's work in The Christeene Machine. "I am your new celebrity; I am your new America" - the opening lines to 'African Mayonnaise' (the video for which features Christeene and her gang going to a mall and doing disgusting things near unsuspecting people) sum up his strategy – in essence, to turn a Gatling gun on 21st Century America's hypocrisy about sex.

Other songs are just messed up. In 'Working on Grandma', Christeene makes the idea of helping the elderly sound like a euphemism for something perverted beyond comprehension. "I've been working on Grandma / Every single fuckin' day / I've been workin' on Grandma / Tryin' to find a way to make her stay."

Christeene’s PR person requested that Fest spell her name CHRISTEENE, as though she’s liable to come crawling out of our computer monitors like the girl from The Ring if her name isn’t properly capitalised. 

She is also said to have an “ass that just won’t quit.” 

We asked her some questions. Her responses are reprinted as given.

CHRISTEENE, how do you want people to feel during one of your shows? How about after?

Shit. U better just feel like ur alive before durin aaannnd after diz show. We here to wake u up an take ya'll back to da woods an back to the secret places dat you may remember when u were a lil child...da places dat you were able to be urself an be dangerous an be free.

What's your message to the people of Edinburgh?

I want deeez people uh Edinburrrgh to git up and feel da stank majik cummin from diz nay-nay.

What inspires you artistically?

Vulnerability.

What's your earliest memory?

Der was a bird inside of my mouth an diz bird would always whisper things too me when I was sleepin or just wakin up. One day da bird took its wings and spreak open my mouth an some wild songz came rushin out. Before dat happened i cant remember nuthin.

I don't reallly find myself havin a style idol. Anybody who can break down alll these costumes that we givin when we were born, da male da female and all dat bullshit...anyone who can find there own freedom an style is a idol tooo me.

I sit around with my boyz T Gravel an C Baby an we like to have sum whiskey an we dance a lot an we smoke adult cigarettes. 

Was 'Tears From My Pussy' inspired by a particular experience?

Tearz frum my Pussaaaay came frum a very sad place. I was all broken in tha heart department an there wasnt anyone round who could help me fix myself up, so I wrote dat song to try and help me dry up da cry between my thighs.

Would you say 'African Mayonnaise' is a political song?

'African Mayonnaise' iz about celebrity. It's about me fucking celebrity right where it needs it. I couldn't take all dat stupid bullshit anymore. Hell, I still can't. All these people with their arranged marriages too keep dem 'normal' and 'straight'...all these fucking baby bumps and bodies after the babies are shit out. Dem strannnnnge fuckin secret societies. All tha fuckin reality television shit dat people watch like cray pigs. Iz so fascinating and so verrry dangerous and so verrrry full of bullshit. I luv it. I hate it. I wrote a song about it.

I read once in a review of your show that "you brought along an ass that just won't quit". Is that accurate? Has your ass ever been known to quit, or even flag for a brief period?

Fuck no. And not only my ass, but my two dancers C Baby and T Gravel. All of us got asses dat will not quit! It's just not possible.

Sum up your act in three words.

CUM. GIT. IT.