Artist description tribal tech-house/acid techno/hard trance/minimal/intelligent played as a live performance.

Music Style [live] tribal tekno, some house, some minimal, some hard trance

Musical Influences richie hawtin, marco corolla, sven vath, adam beyer, skylab 2000, aquasky, rabbit in the moon, [titonton duvante], orb[ital], richard james/aphex twin, underworld, fsol, autechre, kraftwork, art of noise, yellow, tito fuente, brian eno, miles davis, laurie anderson, stomp, all of the incredible music here on mp3.com, street traffic, police sirens, various liquids, chemical reactions, video arcades in the 80's, drum circles, chaos and repetition

Similar Artists daft punk, ben sims, joel mull, octave one, dan curtin, paul birken

Artist History As long as I can remember, I have been called and artist, without really understanding what the word "art" actually means. I used to look at art as being the end result of a performance, or perhaps the performance itself, whereas a certain amount of effort and expertise is exercised. But now I see art art this: if only one person calls something he or she perceives as art, then it is. That one thought has transformed that ordinary event into something beautiful. In my opinion, art is the result of at least one single consciousness and its reaction to something it has seen, heard, felt, tasted, or touched. Since my elementary school days as a young cartoonist and Apple Basic programmer, I have always enjoyed producing things. I wanted to surprise, or impress, or scare people.. just keep them entertained. I believe entertainment should have a close tie to my art. I learned how to use a mouse around the time I was learning how to write cursive, and was making abstract masterpieces on PC Paintbrush at the age of 8. By that time I had become interested in music. My elementary school required all students to try out for band, a policy I am quite grateful for. I ended up coming home with the biggest, strangest instrument I could find: a french horn. After about 3 years of lessons and practice and recitals, I decided to give up the horn for something a little more versatility, a yamaha clavinova keyboard. I took piano lessons for another 2 years or so, even performing in a large organ recital, eventually stopping the lessons when my teenage years hit. My next instrument (not including my computer) was several years later: an electric guitar. I even took a few months of guitar lessons, so that totals 3 completely different instruments I had some training in. I then started playing with digitized video and audio when I got my first computer, an Amiga, at the age of 12. That computer allowed me to create things I never thought possible, from music consisting of collected sampled sounds, to an animation of my high school blowing up. I created a video game starring me and my friends riding our skateboards away from the cops. In the time of Vanilla Ice, I even created my own rap video, a parody of sorts of my high school life and of rappers themselves. It seemed to me the possibilities with my computer were endless. My only problem was that it was difficult to share what I do. People had to come to my house to see most of what I had been creating. The years I had spent creating music resulted in strange tapes of terrible sound quality of music that nobody seemed to like except for me. My musical evolution started with me sampling guitar riffs from my favorite metal bands, or even my own guitar notes or chords and FB-01 synthesizer notes. I was creating "industrial" music before ever having heard it. As time went on, I started creating music that was a lot more experimental. My purpose was to reinvent the typical rhythm; to make something that sounded like rhythm but didn't consist of the normal kick and snare drums, high hats and cymbals. I would take a drum sample, mix it in with a sample of someone yelling, and raise the volume to 1000% making it almost completely distorted static. I would take loops of music and run them through filters and play them on off beats creating something entirely new. Some of this music can still be downloaded from my web site. Later, I wrote a fairly corny dance/pop song, and became the drum programmer for a little industrial/pop band during my freshman year of college. My Amiga was an excellent musical tool; it taught me a lot about sample manipulation and drum programming. But it had some drawbacks: My favorite program was called "Dynamic Drums." This strange beast allowed you to load 10 different 11-16 khtz (CD quality is about 44 khtz) samples into memory and create 10 different "patterns" of them in a 4/4 time signature. You were only allowed to play only 4 of these samples at a time, though, which left me to do a lot of fudging trying to get the samples from stopping when a new one would come in. The end result was music that had a unique muffled and choppy sound quality, and though it sounded ok, it was nothing you could use for professional production. Around the age of 20 I decided to start investing in real music equipment. I first bought a Roland MC-303, a good all-in-one box which taught me a lot about non-sample based music production. I then bought a Quasimidi QM-309, a powerful drum machine and mono synth. Then I bought an Akai MPC-2000, one of the most powerful sampling sequencers out there. I also have some other equipment including a rack mounted version of the Roland R-8 drum machine, an E-mu Vintage Keys, a Proteus 1, and my old Yamaha FB-01, and some effects boards and compressors. I'm always getting new equipment. Now my objective is to create a fully interactive live music experience. I don't want to be a studio musician, I want to be a live musician. When I play live, the music is all sequenced patterns that I am adjusting, filtering, and turning on/off live. What I do is not easy; I do not have pre-sequenced songs, just patterns. I program every beat you hear and create every noise. I mix it all together live. I am influenced by jazz improvisers who don't have a strict set of music, but end up playing something new every time. Also, It really bugs me when people call me "not a real musician," since what I do takes 1000% the brain power of playing generic guitar chords, hitting piano keys, or blowing on a curved piece of metal. It is also more original. I eventually want to have the audience participate in changing and making the music I am playing, whether it be from knobs mounted on the outside my rack case, or from light, motion, and even heat sensors that play and adjust sounds depending on the audience. Anything is possible.

Group Members john berman

Instruments roland tr-909, yamaha an1-x, akai mpc-2000, roland r-8, roland mc-303, quasimidi qm-309, yamaha ry-10, roland tr-505 :), moog mf-101 lowpass filter, e-mu vintage keys, amiga 3000, amd k-6, iomega zip drive, samson mix-pad 9, odyssey SS-1302 case, 2 surge protectors.

Albums various mix tapes over the years, "set one" being the latest

Press Reviews none

Location cincinnati, ohio - USA

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