Artist description Soulful multi-instrumentalist with an unforgettable voice, radical programming skills and a knack for writing catchy, groovalicious avante-pop.

Music Style Exotic-experimental-acoustronica

Musical Influences Perry Farrel, The Orb, Philip Glass,Peter Gabriel, Mille Plateaux, Chemical Bros. DJ Shadow

Similar Artists Peter Gabriel, Beck, Mercy, The Residents, Underworld

Artist History 19 years of singing. 17 years of listening and improvising. 15 years of songwriting. 19 years of gigging. 15 years of recording. 5 years of College-musical, technical and liberal. 12 years MIDI and sound engineer. Released four records with MeRCy (a cyber-art-rock band from Portland) which were released in the early to mid nineties.These self released full length albums included Dr. River Fields(1992), Humans(1993), 01(1994) and META/ morph(1995). -Currently mixing a solo record composed in Mac based ho m e recording studio.8 songs mixed, and nine to go. Two songs are here on mp3.com.-Fungov and Pax Vobiscum. -Currently gigging and recording with smacdada-an electro-acoustic improv ensemble. Todd does vocals, turntables, synth, sampler and djembe. -smac d ada is piecing an album together from live recordings at the Skinny shows they've been executing monthly in Portland. m

Group Members Todd Dadaleares(aka Tdadal) and musician friends. smacdada- Todd Dadaleares and Steve MacLean on electronics, beats, tables, guitars, fx and percussion and Todd Richard on drumkit and space percussion ...plus an alternating ensemble of top notch, wordly soloists.

Instruments Voice, computer, synths, sampler, turntables,guitar,Chapman stick, percussion

Albums MeRCy-Dr. River Fields, Humans, 01 and META/morph

Press Reviews Music on the edge Thanks to a humanities teacher he had in high school, 33-year-old Todd Dadaleares has, he says, "always had a sort of weird, experimental edge." And that turned out to be a good thing. From 1991 to 1995, he sang, played and wrote songs -- together with Steve MacLean -- for the band Mercy (later, after a title search turned up more than 250 bands in the country with the same name, known as MRC). He describes the group's tunes as reflecting a mix of world music influences, "'80s weird synth influences," cyber art rock, pop and hard rock. During that time, Dadaleares, who was working as a MIDI technician at Sound Harbor Studies (now Big Sound) in Westbrook, learned to "write and fully conceptualize a tune from beginning to end." He turned out quirky, creative music that used such instruments as a talking drum, djembe and shakers. Names like "mad strum guitar" were invented, says Dadaleares, to describe the way an instrument was being played. Sometimes he sang through a telephone or through a 6-foot tube. "While everyone was trying to make their songs sound the same," he says, "we were trying to make ours sound different." A press release for one MRC CD described its "earcleansing ambient instrumentals" and lyrics that "tackle spiritual or metaphysical subjects." In 1993, on the strength of MRC's songwriting, Dadaleares' vocals and the band's musicianship, the group was approached by Atlantic Records and MCA. But the advice being handed out by Atlantic's representative (who'd flown in to hear a performance) about the type of songs the band should be doing was not what anyone wanted to hear. "We thought, 'Oh, God, here we go,'" says Dadaleares. "At the time we were doing stuff that was pretty ahead of its time, pretty cyber-dance-oriented, lots of sampling, different vocal sounds." The band held its ground. "We'd been mastering and multitrack recording and writing for half our lives," says Dadaleares. "There was no way we were going to listen to some A&R kid say cut that out there." With friends expressing excitement over the pending national deal, it seemed only proper for the band to be excited, too. "But we were secretly like, it's awesome -- but it kind of sucks too," says Dadaleares. "Now we have to deal with this poppy, cheesy element of the business." It had become clear to MRC that commerce, not art, was the engine that drove the major labels. Knowing this wasn't the way it wanted to go, the group looked to independent labels. But the indies weren't much different from their richer, more powerful brothers. After producing four CDs -- three of them self-published, one put out by the Young American label -- MRC disbanded. Now Dadaleares says, "We could have written a bunch of pop tunes, the best metal anyone's ever heard if we'd wanted to, but it wasn't what our souls were telling us. We weren't that psyched about going out on the road for two years, making no money, for a chance at becoming famous." Dadaleares headed to the University of Southern Maine to study multimedia development. "I have a real problem just doing music the old-fashioned way," he says. "I really wanted to go for more intellectual, technical stuff." During the last year, he's taken time off from his studies to learn the "whole Macintosh sound realm and mastering and multitracking on a computer, trying to make that my main instrument" and to try to force himself to "jump out of any normal way of writing." Now he's working on a new CD ("To Babble On"), which he hopes will be out by late summer on his own label "or a very lenient or forgiving small label." While the songs on it will incorporate pop elements, Dadaleares says, they're influenced more by "ambient, electronic acoustic jams." As for what might have happened in the past, Dadaleares says, "I was ready to be a rock star, and for a few years I was really gung-ho about getting showcases to happen and becoming the next friggin' Porno for Pyros. "I wanted to do it the traditional way, with a major label record deal. I still would love to make a lot of money and be really successful, but I'd like to do it in my own way, no matter how long it takes."

Additional Info TD is also a video artist, and projects his collages in and on lots of various objects and environments.

Location Portland, Maine - USA

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