Artist description Cynyc. Know your drugs/know your doses

Music Style industrial, illbient

Musical Influences NIN, Amon Tobin, Ministry, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing, Stabbing Westward

Similar Artists Cynyc. Know your drugs/know your doses

Artist History I Started with a 4-track, hardware store percussion and homemade "synths" in August 1998. The sound has evolved into an ambient, slow-grinding and melodic blend of trance and industrial. If you can�t love yourself, love your ego. I was born on July 2, 1976 and was raised in Fremont, a suburb of San Francisco, CA. It was a standard Mormon home, yet my brothers and I were exposed to a broad range of music and world cultures. Native American folklore and history was a centerpiece of our upbringing. I think it quite clearly shows in the music, with the lack of focus on song structure, in favor of shifting melodies and more ambient instrumentation and percussion. Between the ages of 8-11, I began deliberately moving away from Christianity and religion. The notions of restricted knowledge and unquestioning obedience didn�t square with a basic observation of the world. The world simply isn�t simple enough to be encapsulated in a book of rules. The nature of goodness and the objectives of life are too variable. I began to find the value of ethics versus superstition. I chose to know myself, rather than to know my place. When I was 5, I discovered my father�s stereo. I destroyed records, damaged speakers, took things apart and failed in putting them back together, but I had to know how sound worked. I experimented with spoken word and music, toying with percussion and learning that instruments often sound better when you break them. I studied piano. I was not a popular student, because I preferred to create and improvise, rather than recite the work of others. It has nothing to do with artistic pride. I just never saw the point. If I work with others� material, I always feel compelled to change it. I�d rather remix than cover. When I was 10, I began to discover music that was written after the 1950s and found ways to watch He-Man and R-Rated movies like blade runner. I needed corrupting factors. Dr Seuss simply didn�t cover the scope of human nature and I couldn�t explain my dark side. The religious community I had been cocooned in had nothing to offer, except that I should be good and happy at all times. I was a dork, a pariah among my peers for being Mormon and a disappointment in church for being too wayward and cynical. I was unhappy, because my thoughts were guilty and guilty because my thoughts were unhappy. I was also ugly, stupid and a fat pussy who couldn�t run. I know this, because day after day, the big kids never failed to run me down and righteously kick my sorry ass. By 15, my best friend Ryan and I perfected the art of shoplifting, trespassing, toilet papering and general delinquency. We meant no mischief, we just needed to test the boundaries of courage and understand how society worked, by finding holes in it. We simply needed to know how a stranger would react if they woke to find their house completely wrapped in string. It was never personal. Somehow, I still had never learned to hate anything but my own mind. We were both painfully shy, unpopular to the point of daily abuse and to weird to find girlfriends... thus we were totally free to forge our own fucked up, yet perfectly logical rules of conduct. I was a percussionist and marched with my high school band, and started playing a kit in various garage bands. I switched to bass and guitar and kept making tapes. I could keep a band together and only performed twice in all of my high school years. At 17, I finally sold my drum kit for pot and a few months later, sold my bass amp to buy tickets to a Cracker/Counting Crows concert for my then girlfriend, who dumped me on the night of the show. I was a high school dropout studying to be a DJ at a community college. I figured it was the closest I would get to music. I ceased to give a fuck. The first ray of true sunshine came when the first girl I ever fell in love with told me that I couldn�t write or sing for shit, before she moved away. I�d always been told I sucked as a person, but my dreams were never properly trashed or criticized. Sure, my father told me to give up on music, but I assumed that was his job. By now I was a tall, skinny, irresponsible asshole, destined for nothing, or at least an early death, but I never realized that I was a truly bad musician. This beautiful revelation is one that I keep with me to this day. I bought a $25 guitar, then a four track and some cheap gear, found an old microphone my dad had forgotten in a closet and built some drums out of plumbing supplies from my truck. I�d fix toilets and install urinals, while all the day dreaming up lyrics and melody. I�d work late into the night, recording industrial and blues without the benefit of computers or synthesizers. I knew Tom Waits could make it work, so why not me? I passed my tapes out to friends and started scraping together a band. Erik Smith, Ryan�s little brother, began learning to play the drums and I forced him to join, before he was wasted on another lame high school band. I offered him a chance to be a part of the lamest band of all. I conned another friend, Marcial Vasquez into learning to play the bass for us. We tried a few names, but finally Sand was born. The name is derived from a sandy-gray, foul-smelling substance that builds up in urinal drains. Made up of bacteria and the same chemicals that form kidney stones, it was the single most important reason I had to find a way out of a life as a plumber in my family�s business. In the summer of �99, as we began playing small events and clubs around the Bay area, with the under whelming support of the local scene, I truly felt our journey had begun. We recorded our first demo at our rented studio space and landed on a live compilation, recorded by a local indie label at our first performance, an outdoor 2-day festival. I had served as a writer, intern and A&R rep for the label, earning us the slot. A few months later, I bought my first computer and began writing the same bazaar industrial crap that I had become infamous for in my circle of friends. With better tools at my disposal and basic songwriting experience, it was only a matter of time before my music began to sound like music. I finished a batch of songs and finally named the thing Cynyc. The meaning is simple. It�s what I tend to be. It�s a palindrome. The ends and means are the same. Self-denial leads to self-destruction leads to self-denial. The music is woven first as pure emotion and aesthetic. The lyrics and vocals are nothing more than the reason and need for reason behind the feeling. To emote is animal, but to seek to know emotion is nothing less than human. I'm a music journalist and have recently started recording sound for video games and short cartoons. I write for Zero Magazine, theorangespot.com, Vial Magazine and for a short time wrote for Spectator, a weekly pornographic newspaper. I might consider it my crowning achievement, as it opened the door to credibility as a serious writer. This is all shit. Why did you read this?

Group Members Michael Peaslee

Instruments guitar, bass, drums, improvised percussion, sequencing and sampling, flutes, vocals. Live band: Josh Smith - guitar, tenor sax. Eryk Bateman - keyboards. Erik Smith - Drums

Albums Iconoclast

Press Reviews www.bitemezine.net - This split CD features the creative talents of Spacewalkers and Cynyc. Spacewalkers is comprised of R. James and E.J., and together they create some tantalizing dance floor treats that will delight rave regulars everywhere. Their sound is a melding of trance, house, dance, drum & bass, and straight-up electronica with splashings of space age blips and bleeps that add a futuristic feel to the compositions. “Blue Shift” is by far Spacewalkers most creative and inventive piece, which proves that this inventive duo knows no boundaries. Cynyc is the brainchild of Mike Peaslee. Cynyc’s sound is more experimental than traditional ambient-electronic offerings mainly because Peaslee throws in elements of synth-pop, techno, and a little drum & bass to liven things up. Vocals are also added to give the tunes a more personal feel and enhance the overall atmosphere of the compositions. Both groups are very talented and worth checking out. -NIN

Additional Info http://www.acidplanet.com/Lounge/ArtistDetail.asp?ArtistName=Cynyc

Location Fremont, CA - USA

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