Gino Robair’s Unpopular Electronics
with Ashley M Puente and Joker Nies

Gino Robair’s Unpopular Electronics
with Ashley M Puente and Joker Nies

Gino Robair has created music for dance, theater, radio, television, silent film, and gamelan orchestra, and his works have been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. He was composer in residence with the California Shakespeare Festival for five seasons and served as music director for the CBS animated series The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. His commercial work includes themes for the MTV and Comedy Central cable networks.

Robair is also one of the "25 innovative percussionists" included in the book Percussion Profiles (SoundWorld, 2001).

He is a founding member of the Splatter Trio and the heavy-metal band, Pink Mountain. In addition, he runs Rastascan Records, a label devoted to creative music.

As a writer about music technology, Robair has contributed to Mix, Remix, Guitar Player, and Electronic Musician (EM) magazine, where he was an editor for 10 years. He is the author of two books, including The Ultimate Personal Recording Studio (Thompson; 2006).

Perpetual Ash / Ashley M Puente is a performer, improviser, and visual artist playing on Eurorack modular and other electronics currently residing in Berlin. Her music and visual artwork are both inspired by the 60's and 70's light and space movement that emerged in California. She records with the intent to capture the active nature of light and atmosphere by creating a soundscape of noise, bass, and rhythmic feedback patterns. 

Joker Nies lives and works in Cologne, Germany, as a musician, sound-designer, sound-engineer, photographer and technical editor for the German magazines Sound&Recording and Keyboards.

Since the early 80´s, Nies experiments with all kinds of electronic sound-sources, like modular-analog synthesizers, individually designed electronic devices, DSP-based systems (like Kyma/Capybara) and software based sound-sources. During the early 90´s, modifying the Omnichord became his initiation to what is known as circuit-bending. Since that time a steadily growing number of devices has been converted from simple toys into alien sound devices.

For his live-performances the focus has completely moved away from computer hosted sound enviroments and shifted to analog electronics instead. His instruments, beneath the Omnichord, are carefully selected and modified electronics, and the outstanding instruments Rob Hordijk has built for him.