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Cell - 773-495-5940
Office - 312-933-9295
K-rAd lives in Chicago at pAdK-rAd, an establishment housing their huge backlog of music and a tangle of computers, instruments, cables, records, an Atari 2600, and fishy. K-rAd are the illimitable and masticatory machine of high-lo-fi electronic music. Their video-game/late night re-run/hiphop-inspired beat driven electronics are fun and memorable and cool. Theirs is a music that effortlessly criss-crosses the grid of sub genres. Using computer software originally designed to score 16-bit video games for the Commodore 64 descended Amiga computers, K-rAd has blatantly shunned the non-human and sterile world of laptop IDM in favor of a more raw and real "electronica" where everything is from a line input only after the food processor and the blender set on washing machine. Their music (including the release "Deli Mood Spot" (SOPR 005)) is an amalgamation of news room techno, animated idm chases, late-night sitcom trip hop and Ben and Jerry's long-form ambience. Repressed jingles tickle your braincells as they pass through your stereo realm, teetering on the fence of (non)recognition. Their dark, funky music is inventive in that each track while having a crunchy spaced-out thread somehow has its own special place on any dance floor.
K-rAd has had an impressive list of credentials and accomplishments since their formation in July 1996. "Deli Mood Spot" was released in 2002 after the release of their first vinyl pressing "K1201-Textures for DJ's" and that isn't even saying anything about the countless mp3s that are available from their website www.pAdK-rAd.com (where it is possible to special order cdr's or download mp3s of your favorites and unreleased material). They have played countless shows mostly in the Chicago area at venues like the Empty Bottle, Smart Bar, Schuba's, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Big Wig, Karma with other acts such as TRS-80, Salvo Beta, DAT Politics, Digital Underground, Jah Wobble, Sutekh, and Hrvlatski. They have the distinction of garnering three critic's choices from the Chicago Reader and were featured in URB magazine as being one of the "top artists to watch" in 2003. They played the Winter Music Conference in Miami, Florida, sharing the stage with DJ Spooky, Soul Slinger, Danny the Wildchild, Alec Empire and DJ Q-Bert and have been featured on compilations such as Select, Tarpop, Lumptronica, the Salvo Beta Remix Project, and Illuminance Records. K-rAd have been featured by renowned artist James Patterson of www.presstube.com in his work as well as commissions from Burton Snowboards, General Motors, Nike, and VH1.
For performances K-rAd uses 2 or 3 Desktop Computers, 16channel Mixer, Turntable, Dj mixer and outboard effects, moog synthesizer, digital synthesizer...toys. K-rAd brings one large 3x6 foot table on which everything fits. There may also be an auxillary keyboard and computer rack for a third performer. K-rAd is completely self-contained and all that we require in terms of sound maintenance is a PA to plug into that has full dynamic range capability (lows-mids-highs = subwoofers-midwoofers-tweeters)! K-rAd would give the mixed audio signal to this STEREO PA as a left and right XLR(preferable), 1/4inch, or RCA cable. Or in a MONO PA situation, a dual mono feed will be sent. They will need some AC power outlet to be central to the table. K-rAd either sets up in the middle of the sound system or on stage with personal monitor speakers, it depends on the venue.
K-rAd albums are recorded and mixed at pAdK-rAd.
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* K-rAd appears in URB magazine as part of the "Ninth Annual Next 100."
"Formed in 1996, Chicago producer/programmer collective K-rAd have issued over a dozen homemade CD-Rs of music, as well as creating new tracks for their live performances. Deli Mood Spot (Some Odd Pilot), their first 'real' album, sharpens their focus without compromising their wayward nature, from the drill & bass of '177Jif' to the glitch-dub of '126Bass6'" |
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* This is a pitchfork media review for Deli Mood Spot Rating: 7.8 [This piece reprinted from "An Interview with MegaMan", Nintendo Power Magazine, June 2002] It wasn't easy tracking down Mega Man. His publicist said he would be unreachable until the release of the forthcoming "Mega Man Thugz" in 2003. So we went vigilante. After asking around Mega's usual haunts-- Gutsman's, Bombman's, etc-- with little luck, we finally ran into him outside of Dr Light's facility in Hollis, Queens, sitting on the stoop with a brown paper-sheathed bottle of Old English Steel Reserve in his hand-apparatus, boombox blasting. That's our Mega Man. MEGAMAN: Yeeeeah boy, what you got? NINTENDO POWER: Yo, Meg, Nintendo Power here. Just wondering if we could have a few minutes to catch up with you on your life, get the scoop on any projects you might be involved in, y'know? MM: Nothin' but love for Nintendo Power, 's all I'm sayin. Word is bond. NP: Thanks much. Now, a lot of people are pointing you out today as the first video game character to incorporate a "hip-hop aesthetic", if you will, into your image, predating even Parappa the Rapper. You were the first to use "sampling" technology, borrowing attacks from the enemies you defeated... MM: Yeah, I got shit from Cut Man, Heat Man, Wood Man, Beenie Man, Afro Man, Redman, Method Man... NP: Indeed you did. But that was all quite a while back. What are you into now? For example, what's this you're listening to? MM: You ain't heard K-Rad yet? These kids gonna score my next game, yo. It's a different role for me. I play this robot pimp from the year 20XX who gets sent back to the 80s. NP: Yeah, this does sound like an instrumental homage to that period-- or, as such, a throwback to the mid-90s: the simple beats, the flute samples, the quaint vocal snippets... MM: Forget that. It's all right, but check out this next shit. They did this with some old Amiga software. 16 bits, motherfucker. NP: Ah, yes, well, the sounds are very mechanical, and the style is certainly very harsh, a little closer to hardcore techno now than hip-hop. But the overall effect isn't quite the bland steel-on-silicon grind that sort of thing usually turns out to be, maybe because the structure keeps changing, or maybe because of all those submerged vocal samples... MM: Aww, just listen to this shit! This one's called "Vous"; reminds me of the time I got together with that Metroid chick... NP: Certainly more of a relaxed funk bent on this one, which is unexpected... oh, and I like the way it just dissolves without warning into this gentle outro. But, wait, are you saying this makes you nostalgic? It sounds like they're attempting a decidedly futuristic sound to me. MM: There's no kind of nostalgia like nostalgia for the future. You sure you played Nintendo back in the day, man? NP: Well, I'm mainly wondering whether all of this futurism isn't a little misleading. I mean, there's nothing here that will really advance electronic music, this isn't anything that µ-Ziq hasn't done before. MM: But it ain't predictable, neither. Listen to how that synth leaps like Big Baby Jesus over a rehab center wall. These kids compose a whole new show every time they play, and they ain't even started to repeat themselves yet. NP: All right, so it's moderately intelligent dance music. MM: 'Cept you can actually dance to it. Sometimes, I just wanna dance. So do we all, Mega Man. So do we all. -Brendan Reid, October 9th, 2002 audiogalaxy.com, June 2002 "K-Rad have proven that they can move a dancefloor, but choose to remain challenging yet unpretentious." - |
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| red=musiK. | ©2002 K-rAd [www.pAdK-rAd.com] |