Music Monday

OK, fine, so it's Tuesday already... well I'll just fudge the date and you'll never know. :)

Last week I talked about an unsigned singer/songwriter Harry Francis that I've been a fan of for 12 years. Today I want to share another band that I have a personal connection to, although this band is in a VERY differeng genre!

While I was at Penn State, I took an electronic music class as part of my Integrative Arts (aka "the build-your-own-major major") curriculum. The class covered all sorts of electronic music topics but focused mostly on MIDI synthesizers and computer-based sequencing software. Also in my class was a guy named Chris Sevanik. Chris was already an electronic music composer in his own right, and had some techno/electronica songs that he had composed and sequenced on his Ensoniq ESQ-1 that he wanted to record to tape. Since my area of interest was recording, we teamed up for our final project and I helped him mix and record his songs.

Anyway... in addition to his techno stuff, Chris was also in an industrial band with his brother, Jason. The band was called Mindless Faith, and they'd occasionally get airplay on the weekend "local music" show or on the late-night hard rock show. Well believe it or not, 10 years later Mindless Faith is still performing and recording new albums! In fact much many of their songs have been featured on MTV's "Road Rules", and they have appeared on at least 16 international compilation albums!

In addition to their own music, Mindless Faith has also gotten into remixing other artists' songs. Specifically, they recently won a Nine Inch Nails remix contest with their remix of 'Only'. Now THAT's impressive!

Anyway, it's been years since I've seen Chris but I'm thrilled to see that Mindless Faith has enjoyed so much success, both with their original music and with their remixes. Hopefully I will get to see them the next time they are in DC!