Rubber Band Banjo is a sci-fi soundtrack composer, homemade instrument maker, multi-instrumentalist, and biology geek. Five full-length albums and one EP have been recorded to date: Hybrid Musical Organisms (2002), Gather Your Junk Together (2002), Hypermutator (2005), Repeating Elements EP (2005), The Circlemaker (2007), and Synthetic Biology (2010). Musical styles are all over the map and include electronic, jazz, avant rock, krautrock, IDM, video game music, cut-ups, drums 'n' bass, dub, no-wave, and musical collages. Compositions involve MIDI programming, manipulating electronic sounds, and playing multiple musical instruments. These instruments include homemade 3-stringed and rubber band zithers, synthesizers such as the Kaoss Pad or Moog, percussive instruments and objects amplified with contact mics, the Mandala drum, treated guitar, Buddha Machine, sampler, electronic drums, voice, and natural recordings.

Being a scientist, the musical making process often involves the direct application of scientific and science fiction concepts.  For example, the Hypermutator album was inspired by mechanisms of evolutionary change in bacteria with high mutation rates.  Certain tracks on the album have waveforms that are non-randomly duplicated, inverted, and involve transpositions of audio from one location to another, similar to DNA sequence mutations.  Another example is the Synthetic Biology album that purposely juxtaposes natural sounds that travel through the air with more artificial sounds that are captured with contact mics that travel as vibrations through objects.  Since the scientific field of synthetic biology involves the artificial introduction of DNA into a host organism to program cells for a particular function, this album illustrates the competition between these natural and artificial elements. 

Rubber Band Banjo's albums have been released on Weirdomusic Recordings and Fringe Biology Recordings. One track was the theme song for an award winning sci-fi podcast (Billibub Baddings) and also made into a ninja video by a Japanese artist. Several tracks have been played on radio stations, podcasts, and Warren Ellis mixtapes. All Rubber Band Banjo releases can be purchased from Fringe Biology Recordings and most can be found on CD Baby, iTunes, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, and other digital distributors.

Fringe Biology Recordings is a Seattle-based record label of outsider musicians specializing in experimental rock, avant electronic music, sci-fi soundtracks, krautrock, and science music (direct application of scientific concepts into music creation). Subcategories include space rock, post punk, jazz, avant rock, early industrial, black and avant-garde metal, progressive rock, psychedelic, cut-ups, soundscapes, pop, and dub. The music is inspired by diverse and esoteric topics such as ancient technology, wave genetics, synthetic and evolutionary biology, urban decay, space travel, science run amok, the films of David Cronenberg, Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Fritz Lang, and the literature of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Brion Gysin, and Jorge Luis Borges. Music videos are also released on DVD. We still believe in the full-length album with artwork that should be heard and felt as an entire work of art and not fragmented into individual downloads.

Current FB Recordings artists include Von Sleight, Rubber Band Banjo, Revolutionary Cells, Machines For Hire, Borg and the Ultimate Seeds, Bocinas, and Mutant Microbes. Older recordings from Rubber Band Banjo, Bocinas, and Brickburner are also available at the FBR website. Tracks from FBR artists have been played on KEXP, Warren Ellis mixtapes, Hollow Earth Radio, Don Campau's No Pigeonholes show and Weirdsville! Web Radio, made into Ninja videos, and have been the theme song for the sci-fi podcast Billibub Baddings. Several FBR releases are available on CD Baby, iTunes, Napster, eMusic, Amazon, and other digital distribution sites. Selected releases are available at Wall of Sound, Dissonant Plane, and Sonic Boom record shops in Seattle, WA.

Currently we are looking to expand our audio and video releases from like-minded artists. We will help you release your CD here, get it out to the masses through digital distributors such as iTunes, and market your release for review and radio play. See the demo policy if interested.

Some of our influences include Neu!, Can, Faust, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Heldon, Hawkwind, Keuhkot, Circle, Cleaning Women, Einsturzende Neubauten, Coil, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Residents, Idiot Flesh, Moe!kestra, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Tuxedomoon, Wire, Gang of Four, Devo, Joy Division, Pere Ubu, La Dusseldorf, Bogus Blimp, When, Ulver, Arcturus, Solefald, Shining, Magyar Posse, Alamaailman Vasarat, Aavikko, Messer Chups, Henry Cow, Art Bears, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, King Crimson, Brian Eno, DNA, Der Plan, Palais Schaumburg, and many more.

Revolutionary Cells is a Seattle-based experimental rock/metal band combining disparate musical elements from progressive rock, post punk, black metal, noise, hip hop, krautrock, and dub. Press release:

In the spring of 2010, Revolutionary Cells began a series of recording sessions that would become the Barium/Buenos Aires ("Ba") album, a two-part, ten-song collection of songs ranging from spacious ambient tracks driven by tremolo guitar, insistent synthesizers and hypnotic bass lines to propulsive black metal/noise rock, to post punk grooves augmented with krautrock-style rhythms, to machine-like marches, to dissonant soundscapes. Thematically, Barium/Buenos Aires draws inspiration from Cold War geopolitics, the history of 1970s terrorist organizations, the speculative literature of J.G. Ballard and Jorge Luis Borges, urban decay and science run amok-this reflects their backgrounds in biology and the humanities. The overall mood of the recording is laid back paranoia.

Von Sleight formed in June 2005 in an attempt to merge analog synthesizers, homemade instruments, electrified
household objects, and other strange percussive devices. We are influenced by many types of music including
krautrock (Neu!, Can, Faust, Cluster, early Kraftwerk), space rock (Heldon, Hawkwind), Finnish avant-garde and
krautrock (Keuhkot, Circle, Cleaning Women), early industrial (Einsturzende Neubauten, Coil), and San Francisco
Bay Area avant weirdness (The Residents, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Idiot Flesh, Secret
Chiefs 3, Moe!kestra).

The first album, Fringe Biology, is mostly a one-take experimental space rock session cut into multiple tracks and
was completed in 2005. The second album, Signs of Life, was completed in 2006 and is a more structured and
eclectic mix of styles than the first, varying from ambient krautrock to Joy Division meets Tiki exotica to early
industrial with tinges of jazz. Scandinavia Darkly, the third full-length release from 2007, was inspired by adventures
in Scandinavia and mixes MIDI instruments with homemade instruments/objects/devices and analog synthesizers. 
Styles include the Residents meet Kraftwerk "Radiation in the Eyeball", Finnish painter/graphic artist Hugo Simberg 
inspired "Symphony For Simberg", and Charles Mingus / African Head Charge hybrid "Sibelius and Salmiakki". 
The fourth album, Sieves & Cyphers, was completed in 2008 and will be released with a companion EP. Both of 
these releases emphasize the use of the Kaoss Pad, mixed with rhythmic freakouts, jazz, and Der Plan-like percussion.

New Kraut, the fifth album, will be release on Fringe Biology Recordings on 10/10/10 for their 10th release. 
This album takes the avant-electronic, jazz, space rock, and warped pop styles from previous albums and infuses these 
sounds with Krautrock and dub. The result is something like the analog tape recordings of Neu! being accidentally spliced 
together with Hawkwind, Cluster, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Miles Davis, and The Residents. The instruments used on this album 
include the Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer, fretless bass, Electribe, trumpet, electronic and analog drums, Kaossilator, and 
MIDI instruments. The video for the title track follows a UFO that delivers New Kraut to the good people of earth. Like a virus 
from outer space, the New Kraut is discovered and gets propagated into supermarkets for mass commercialization. New Kraut 
is not a sandwich, it's a casserole.

New album "Things Are Great" out now!
https://linktr.ee/bandofhorses

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