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Dead Seal
n/a

7 Releases

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Biography

San Francisco producer Derrick Boyd aka Dead Seal has been making music for most of his life, one of those special individuals possessed with the gift of perfect pitch. He brings a glimpse of real musicality to the underground techno scene, something rarely experienced on the dance floor. In the studio as Dead Seal he's carved an austere path of "Nuclear Winter" atonality and Skinny Puppy theatrics to create, what could be best described as, "shoegazer techno". He also sings, plays clarinet, guitar and bass, and live this vast sea of musical expression creates a sense of a Grand-Guignol cabaret for rivetheads. It is this sense of bravado and daring that blurs the line between traditional live performance and the microprocessor obsessed futurism of the techno scene. Dead Seal's powerful stage presense drawn from old school cats like Iggy Pop also helps to partially define the originality of his music. He himself describes these new direction in sound as discovering the infinite within his mortal remains and posits that this is the dichotomy of existence. Even the alias Dead Seal is part of his philosophy acting as "a symbol of my past, present, and future lives- reminding me that I am more than just a man." Boyd has been a recording junkie since his teens and has created a volume of more than a hundred techno tracks which he jokingly refers to as his "Dead Seal Scrolls" . In addition to creating his own music, he also divides time between playing bass in the band Landshark along with noted San Francisco DJ/producers Lance DeSardi and Tasho as well as his latest project- the Machine Forest- with his girlfriend Zoe Presnic. In the midst of all of that activity, Dead Seal's debut album Corpus Animus drops this fall on maverick San Francisco techno label Auralism Records-a natural fit. The only question that now remains about the enigmatic Dead Seal is why a guy so clearly talented has to date only released an amount of singles that can be easily counted on one's hands? Boyd responds in his own inimitable style, "I am really hard on myself and demand a lot of myself before I die. I have kept my music a secret for so long that it is too early for me to have any real accomplishments. But I assure everyone that the best has yet to come, I'm just getting warmed up. 'Bout time after a hundred songs... and twenty five years. Music takes a lifetime, you are never retired, and if you are you better have no fingers or lips." To back this talk up he's promised 18 new tracks this year including Corpus Animus, which is being released as a digital album and limited run CD by Auralism, as well as tracks for Nightlight Music, Untitled & After, and Whiskey Pickle to help make up for all that slack and appease the growing hoards of hungry fans. One thing is for sure, few in the world of dance music are making music like Dead Seal- his rigorous determination and penchant for daring experiments in noise and sound are certain to make him one of the big breakthrough acts of 2009.
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