Just a normal jam session with Tetrix and good friend Keyboard Cat.
Tetrix make music to help androids dream of electric sheep
As 2009 draws to a close and the end of the decade looms many are inspired to take stock of their personal accomplishments over the past 10 years. Flipping through their diaries and towering record collections the local psych-rockers in Tetrix surmise that they should be proud. Whereas most long-running bands struggle to stay in the public consciousness by producing a solid studio album every couple of years the trio behind Tetrix has generated a staggering 10 albums since the foundation of its Odin Audio record label in 2001.
Singer-songwriter Neil Stanley Pockett leads the charge of this improvisational electronic laser-light brigade dictating changes in mood and tempo with his flow-of-consciousness slam poetry. Brothers Kristjan “K-rad” and Connor “Conman” Gottfried are the techno-wizards behind the dirge of electronic noise and the accompanying visuals that are essential to a typical Tetrix “happening.” Known to equip its audiences with pixelated 3-D glasses Tetrix aims to stimulate the senses and the spirit with the flick of a switch.
Belgians developed a taste for Tetrix some years back when the MeWe Le Disc label encouraged the trendsetting friends to release a 12-inch vinyl recording in 2005. The band was then approached to lend its freaky single “Jesus Put the Purple Haze in My Brain” to an independent movie which premiered at the Brussels film festival. Upon celebrating the release of its 10th album and a bonus “Classics” compilation the close-knit group took a break from its acoustic experiments for an album-by-album reflection on an output that melds technology and fantasy into a free-flowing soundscape.
• Tetrix 1 : “Our first album is glistening with its own style and sound sweeping through thick bass-fuzzle mixed with atmospherics and beautifully arranged words. It really reaches out to a wide audience as a new kind of science. As the music technology changed within our life we had to fuel our energy and passion to be creative. Tetrix was born.” (Neil Stanley Pockett)
• Tetrix 2 : “I remember the day K-rad brought home the Lowrey Genie 44 [organ]. We had no idea how influential the distorted sound of a Lowrey Genie would be to Tetrix! It’s all about the swell pedal and some good distortion.” (Connor Gottfried)
• Tetrix 3 : “The conventions of normal music begin to crumble away with Tetrix 3 . Measures add in extra beats at random tempos change for even less of a good reason. Pure emotion raw instruments ultra cut-up fractured reality.” (Kristian Gottfried)
• Tetrix 4 : “The summer of love rich sitar vocals that spin a melody of day-tripping and space jamming. Experimental music with an edge. Its folky grooviness will have you drifting forward as the times change around you. Fractal visions melting wallpaper.” (Neil Stanley Pockett)
• Tetrix 5 : “Bring the Rock! Tetrix 5 with the classic Nintendo box and video game included! The game characters even looked like us…. On this album we began to return to a more accessible sound bringing with us the things we’d learned on our long journey through the wastelands of the broken sun.” (Kristian Gottfried)
• Tetrix 6 : “This was the first album where we used the vintage synthesizers that K-rad ordered off the Internet. In that sense it was an important time in the development of our sound and this is a cool record of that transition. The vintage 5 1/4-inch diskette sleeve was a tribute to our youths spent with an Apple II+.” (Connor Gottfried)
• Tetrix 7 : “This whole album is synthesizer- and drum machine-based. However we did develop a technique to allow live drums to be synched with the TR-606 drum machine which really added a lot of depth to the rhythm section. The album cover was designed to look like the plaques sent to aliens via the Pioneer and Voyager probes.” (Kristian Gottfried)
• Tetrix 8 : “Very addicting album tells the stories of being lost on the Prairies in the new world. Inspired by our travels throughout Europe we created new music that is way ahead of its time; Tetrix 8 is made with gold-plated CDs — they have a shelf life of over 300 years.”?(Neil Stanley Pockett)
• Tetrix 9 : “This is one of my favourite Tetrix albums. A huge variety of styles and sounds with lots of complex overlapping time-stretched elements. We upgraded our studio and moving away from the 4-track opened up a lot of new digital editing options. The cover was a full-colour digital print with two silk-screened layers — fluorescent pink and glow-in-the-dark.” (Connor Gottfried)
• Tetrix 10 : “Ten albums deep in this game the future looks as bright and colourful as our new cover art. Don’t worry fans of the world we are still recording songs like crazy for our next album; we have no intention of slowing down. (Neil Stanley Pockett)
