THOMAS TRUAX
plus support
Ten Feet Tall, Cardiff
Wednesday 8th February 2012
8.00pm
£6 adv from
| www.swnpresents.com |
| www.seetickets.com |
| www.wegottickets.com |
| www.ticketlineuk.com |
| Spillers Records |
New York City's Thomas Truax (pronounced troo-aks) is a left field troubadour and inventor/player of strange self-made instruments like his now legendary 'Hornicator' and a motorized mechanical drum machine called 'Sister Spinster'. He employs these and other contraptions as well as traditional instruments in exceptionally crafted, witty and often touching songs. Splendid magazine recently called him "one of the five or ten best singer/songwriters in the world that you've never heard of...an exceptional talent, unique and resistant to comparison, yet fairly accessible even to casual listeners."
Thomas has toured nearly constantly for the past seven years, mostly as a headliner but also doing large scale support tours with the Dresden Dolls and Duke Special amongst others. He's played Glastonbury, the Edinburgh Fringe festival, at Lincoln Center in New York and appeared on MTV.
Thomas's 'Hornicator' is constructed on the shell of an old gramophone horn. It resembles something that might have been dreamt up by Dr. Seuss. He taps out rhythm loops recording them live into his looping machine,then adds layers of plucked strings, springs and noisemakers, building a backdrop of hypnotic sounds on top of which he delivers striking stories about clones and prostitutes.
Born an illigitimate son of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, as a young man Thomas attempted to build a synthesizer out of an old radio. He put on magic shows and made stop-motion animated films with a Super 8 camera. He has done mandatory day-job time as an animator on MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch and Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken. Time travelling with the Toby Tyler Circus inspired him towards a career in show business. His acclaimed rock noir trio Like Wow toured and released several CDs, but Thomas grew frustrated with a seemingly endless line of drummers with expensive appetites often resulting in stomach aches before gigs, forcing their cancellations. He finally decided to build his own motorized mechanical drummer and 'go solo'.
'Sister Spinster' is a variable speed, proudly pre-digital 'Flintstones-era drum machine' that features spoked wheels and percussive parts which can be readjusted between songs to create different rhythms. Newer instruments include 'The Stringaling' and the 'Backbeater', a rhythm wheel made to be worn on the back, which Thomas promises will eventually also double as a mechanism for flight. He has no engineering background and while constructing these inventions has repeatedly subjected himself to inadvertent electrical shocks which he claims have stimulated his creativity and expanded his vocal range.
A stubborn DIY enthusiast, Truax self-released his debut full-length solo CD 'Full Moon Over Wowtown' on his own label in late 2003. It was quickly snatched up by London-based Breakin' Beats for release in the UK and Europe, who also released his second album 'Audio Addiction' (2005). Truax's third album is 'Why Dogs Howl at the Moon' (SL Records, 2007) and his fourth, 'Songs From The Films Of David Lynch'(SL/Psycho Teddy records 2009), is his first all-covers album. A three-song 'Singles Club' cd has also been released internationally on the Italian label Homesleep, and a 7" vinyl single, 'Have We Been Left Behind'(2006), was released by Akoustik Anarkhy records of Manchester.
Truax has been featured in two feature-length films: 'Instrumental', from director Gabe Shalom (US, 2005) documenting the lives of for artists who make their own instruments, and Adam Clitheroe 'One Man In The Band' (UK, 2008).
Wowtown is a surreal place from which some of the characters and events in Thomas's songs originate. He's been writing The Wowtown News, an email newsletter that he sends to a long list of faithful subscribers, for over five years. His own radio serial version of The Wowtown News, broadcasts on Resonance FM in London, where Thomas is currently residing.
"Inventive and Romantic" -TimeOut
"Beguilingly Bizarre" -Uncut
"Genius." -NME
www.thomastruax.com
www.myspace.com/thomastruax
