THE ENEMY aka AJ aka Ashley Jones (left)
I was born in Oklahoma and lived there chasing tornadoes, eating cattle and admiring the Great Plains until I moved to Atlanta in 2002. With no tornadoes to chase, my new hobby became drinking sweet iced tea in Nick’s basement.
I picked up guitar from my dad at a very young age, then saxophone in 5th grade and quickly moved on to percussion for middle school and high school marching band. I also started making hip-hop beats in middle school and then pulled a big switch, got really into punk/hardcore and played in a few bands. I took a couple years of piano during high school, but no other formal training past that. I usually just pick up an instrument or piece of equipment, apply basic music theory, and mess around with it until I figure it out. I also made a solo rap album when I was 13, no joke! All the beats were off a Yamaha QY10 sequencer, and recorded into a cheap 4-track with an even cheaper microphone. I remember one of the stand-out tracks was ‘Bounce Them Basketball Bootys.”
My high school music phase started out with a split between gangsta rap and hardcore punk, and ended with experimental electronic and drum & bass.
I was always drawn to different stuff so when I first heard the drum programming and production style of trip hop and older jungle, I was hooked. I was a really big Tricky fan when he first came out. Portishead, Massive Attack, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, were all pretty influential to me in my teens.
I think I’ve attempted almost everything under the sun. I’ve had some good opportunities to produce commercial music for advertising agencies, so whatever they would request, I would make it. My main focus is, of course, drum & bass, IDM, hip-hop, and funky electro house.
GIGANTOR aka Michael Diasio (center)
Many moons ago I was born in Richmond, Virginia. I pretty much grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, since my family moved there when I was six. I currently live in Birmingham, in between living in Atlanta and my quest to move out west.
I played in a couple punk and rock bands. Mostly I played bass and guitar, but I can also sing, play keyboards and program a mean sampler.
I listened to a lot of industrial, punk, and rap in high school. In college I was more of an indie rock guy, but as time went on I started getting more and more into electronic music, starting with more experimental styles (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, etc.). I had liked electronic dance music since high school, but didn’t really dive into it until I started DJ’ing.
The itch to start making it came when I went to college and started getting into the experimental stuff. Since I was into industrial since I first heard it, I had often goofed off with making electronic music, but back in those days there were no software options to do really cool sampling/virtual instruments, so you had to have racks of expensive gear to get what are basic tasks today completed. I started buying keyboards and audio equipment, pretty much whatever I could get my hands on, and dug deep into MIDI…those times were interesting. Fruity Loops pretty much just made loops and Cakewalk 9 was the rage for MIDI and basic audio. :P
I like to think I could engineer just about anything, but I have produced hip-hop, rock, electro-house, and of course drum and bass professionally. I have made a few really, REALLY bad trance songs, but not many have heard them…YET. :P
KNICK aka Nick Weiller (right)
I was born in 1979 in Italy. My family had been there a while but we packed up and moved to Atlanta before I was a year old. I spent 18 years there, then moved off for college. I returned to Atlanta in 2001 and moved out to Los Angeles in early 2007. I’ve been here since then, naked.
My mom put me in a piano class when I was really young. I hardly remember that, but then in elementary school I picked up a viola and eventually a guitar. Thanks to my sister, I got into punk music at an early age. I started taking my guitar playing more seriously, putting together little garage bands in middle school, punk, metal and whatnot. Then in high school I started playing in a few bands, mostly playing punk, ska and fun music in general, and then I had a big hip-hop phase. Somewhere along the line I picked up the drums as well, although I’m a bit rusty these days.
I started broadening my horizons in high school, but I still had a love for aggressive music, so by then I had a really nice collection of music, current and older. Once I got to college I discovered genres like drum & bass and IDM, and re-discovered Radiohead. I’m a huge Radiohead fan.
When I moved to college I was a real introvert and had a hard time meeting musicians that I could get along with and play in bands with. It was going slow and I eventually went to a rave. I heard some really hard drum & bass and it just blew my mind. I liked the idea that I could learn to DJ this crazy music and start performing music again. I really just got deep into it after that for the next five years or so. I practiced DJ’ing all the time and then I met Gigantor. He had a firm grasp on production and he got me started with simple music programs and I just kept pushing myself hard ever since then.
I’ve experimented with a lot of different stuff. I started out with drum & bass and then got into IDM pretty heavily. I really enjoy doing edits, and obviously the other guys feel the same way. I don’t know if it’s A.D.D. [Attention Deficit Disorder] or what, but I just love the details that go into making a song. Anyhow, I still play my guitar so I’ve done a lot of music where I incorporate live instrumentation into an electronic environment. I’ve done my share of musical doodling.
Links:
www.evolintent.com
www.myspace.com/evolintent
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