Grain Shifter

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Grain Shifter
Origin	Charlottesville, Virginia
Genre(s)	Experimental Noise
Years active	2004 — Present
Label(s)	Slug Salt, Death:Laugh
Website	Grain Shifter on MySpace
Members
John Cross (2004–)

Grain Shifter is a noise project created by John Cross. Grain Shifter's instrument set is primarily composed of computers, hardware synths such as KORG's Electribe MX-1, effect pedals and instruments created by circuit bending - his music ranges from extreme noise, ambient, industrial, to the downright sloppy and comedic.

Grain Shifter started around 2004 as Or-Gun Harv-Ester, a comedic Grindcore/Electronica group. The group disbanded one year later in 2005 and Grain Shifter became a solo act.

Known mainly for his outrageous live performances, Grain Shifter has achieved a small underground following, spanning from North America to Japan. During his shows he has thrown buckets of blood (pig's and fake), lit audience member's possessions on fire and even screamed in such a way to cause himself to vomit. He has been known to ridicule attendees at shows and online (via his homepage [1]), yet he claims a strong love for his fan.

The majority of Grain Shifter's music was created in late 2006/early 2007 and was released very quickly. With his other project, Ink-Eyez, he was known for having either quick bursts of inspiration with quick releases, or long periods of time without even a teaser. The quality of some songs can reflect this, although whether or not this is intentional remains unknown.

When asked what the purpose of his music was, he simply responded "to test what the human mind, body, and spirit could withstand." More recently he has claimed "to create through destruction".

1 Art
2 Future
3 Discography
4 External links

[edit] Art

In April 2007, Grain Shifter's MySpace page was revamped. The only things left where a Discography and pieces of art from Grain Shifter's downloadable art book; "Prison Paintings -01-. The book was made available for free download and included 30 images created by Grain Shifter himself.

The images where listed in the following order: Image 000, Hope 001, Hate 005, Whore 010, Wish 020, Pain 023, Kill 029, Anger 067, Cruelty 099, Death 102, Sleep 173, Fear 197, Ears 221, Virtue 291, Tears 302, Desire 400, Force 424, Sperm 461, Torment 511, Abyss 527, Hell 556, Blood 584, Soul 600, Sex 662, Eyes 717, Life 725, Flesh 813, Love 908, Coma 940, Image 999.

[edit] Future

On March 12th, following an obscure blog on March 2nd, Grain Shifter announced "100 Murders Over the Course of 2 Years", the world's first 100 song "Digital Box Set". The collection will contain the aforementioned 100 tracks and will also include artwork, a short film directed by Grain Shifter, a music video and personal messages. A release date has not been announced other than "sometime in 2007".

After the digital box set was pushed back, the "100 Murders Over the Course of 2 Years" title was changed to "Era of Error" and will include over 100 tracks, with the addition of several unreleased albums. The date has not yet been announced.

There will be a "Prison Paintings -02-" and a book; "The Evolution of Paranoia" according to the Grain Shifter MySpace page.