| Voltaire | |
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Voltaire performing at the DNA Lounge, San Francisco, on October 23, 2005 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Aurelio Voltaire Hernández[1] |
| Born | January 25, 1967 |
| Origin | Havana, Cuba |
| Genres | Dark cabaret, Dark Wave, folk music, country music, soft rock, gothic rock, symphonic rock |
| Occupations | Singer-songwriter, writer, cartoonist, animator, television director, teacher |
| Instruments | Singing, steel-string guitar |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Labels | Projekt Records, Mars Needs Music and Dancing Ferret Discs |
| Associated acts | The Oddz Unto Ashes Amanda Palmer Julia Marcell |
| Website | www.voltaire.net |
Voltaire (legal name Aurelio Voltaire Hernández[2][3]) (born January 25, 1967, in Havana, Cuba[4]), is a popular dark cabaret Cuban-American musician. His stage name is his given middle name, which he shares with the famous French Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet.
Voltaire is also an experienced animator and comic artist, and is a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York.[5]
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In the past, when asked about his real name, Voltaire avoided the question or implied that his real name is in fact Voltaire.[6]
According to the School of Visual Arts where he is employed as a professor, Voltaire's real name is Aurelio Voltaire Hernández.[1] Voltaire attributes "Acoustic Guitar and Vocals" on Ooky Spooky to Aurelio Voltaire Hernández, confirming that is his real name. Since then he has signed his name as Aurelio Voltaire, and is more open about it in public appearances.
Voltaire chose to use his middle name as his performance name because his namesake "saw through the hypocrisies of humanity and commented on them through satire. In essence, he was able to educate people about the world around them by making them laugh."[7]
As a child, Voltaire immigrated to New Jersey with his family. However, he states that he did not enjoy residing there.[4] At the age of ten, Voltaire was inspired by the films of Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), and began animating on a super 8 camera. By piecing together snippets of information from fanzines, he eventually was able to teach himself how to make foam rubber animation models and animate them. At the age of 17, he moved to New York and got his first job as an animator with Parker Brothers.[5] Voltaire says that he loves New York, and that the only other place he would be happy living is Tokyo.[7]
Voltaire's music has strong roots and connections to European folk as well as other influences such as the goth scene.[5] However, many listeners find his music hard to classify. Although it has a sound reminiscent of European folk music,[5] many people claim it to be Dark Wave; perhaps as this is a label often given to many other artists from Projekt Records, and a word often used to mean many things by the label themselves.[8] His music has also been linked to cabaret, with Lexicon Magazine using the term "goth cabaret", possibly referring to dark cabaret, a term often used to describe some bands Voltaire cites as his influences. Voltaire has also been linked to the steampunk scene with Victorian-era horror related subjects, and some of his visual and music styling. New Wave has also been used to describe Voltaire's music by some reviewers.[9] Voltaire describes his own music as "Music for a parallel universe where electricity was never invented and Morrissey is the queen of England". He claims that bands and artists who influenced his music are Rasputina, Morrissey, Tom Waits, Cab Calloway and Danny Elfman.[10]
The first band that Voltaire played in was called First Degree which he participated in during junior high school. At this age, he was a fan of Duran Duran, but then began listening to gothic music, most notably bands such as Bauhaus and The Cure. It wasn't until later that he began participating in the goth scene; it did not at first occur to him that there was a goth scene at all.[7]
As an adult, Voltaire formed a band which included a violin, a cello, drums, and himself as the vocalist and the acoustic guitar player. Within a year, Projekt Records signed them and by June of 1998 they released their first album called The Devil's Bris. Two years later their second album, Almost Human was released.[7]
One of Voltaire's popular hits is "BRAINS!", a song written for the Cartoon Network show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, aired in the episode "Little Rock of Horrors". He also wrote "Land of the Dead" for Billy and Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure, which plays in the opening sequence.[11]
As an avid fan of Star Trek, Voltaire frequently attends science fiction conventions (such as I-CON and Dragon Con) and released a four track EP called Banned on Vulcan. It was a set of comedy recordings poking fun at characters from the show.[11]
On the side, Voltaire is also the lead vocalist of a New York City based New Wave quintet known as The Oddz.[12]
Voltaire also performed a musical special for Artix Entertainment in their MMO game AdventureQuest Worlds, altering some of his songs in To the Bottom of the Sea to suit their standards. Over 32,000 players attended. It was released on Friday 8:00PM Friday the Thirteenth of March, 2009. He has done other things with the team before the event, though.
In 2010 Voltaire released an "Alt Country" CD called Hate Lives in a Small Town. He also released a children's CD, Spooky Songs for Creepy Kids, which features his previous works for Cartoon Network, as well as other age-appropriate songs.
In September 2, 2011, Voltaire released his eighth studio album: Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children!, or Riding a Black Unicorn... for short. It counts with the participation of Rasputina frontwoman Melora Creager on cellos, Brian Viglione on drums, former Bauhaus bassist David J on bass and Franz Nicolay on accordion.
Although often credited and pictured as a soloist,[11] Voltaire has a band. His band occasionally features in live acts,[13] but does not feature on his live album, Live!.[14] The current lineup is:
Voltaire was able to land his first directing job in 1988 with MTV, creating the classic "MTV-Bosch" station ID in the style of Hieronymus Bosch. The stop motion tour of the hellish Garden of Earthly Delights won several awards including a Broadcast Design Award. He has also made morbid station IDs for clients such as Cartoon Network and Syfy.
Besides his work with commercials, he has made short films and series such as Rakthavira and Chi-Chian. Chi-Chian is now a 14 episode flash animated series on Syfy's website.[15] Before that, Chi-Chian started out as a graphic novel series that included 6 issues (published by Sirius Entertainment), which eventually evolved into the Flash-animated series.
He currently teaches stop motion animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, as well as animating, directing and singing.[4][5]
Voltaire has written two of his songs especially for the TV show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: "BRAINS!" and "Land of the Dead".
Voltaire has appeared four times on the online MMO AdventureQuest Worlds. His first appearance was on the first Friday the 13th of the game's first year to the public, where an avatar of himself quested with players to find the cursed guitar of Skullpunch Island. The second was on November 13, 2009, another Friday the 13th, where he performed a concert in the middle of the game's main town of Battleon. That year, the quest had been to find his cursed hat with an "ebil" (aka, cute and evil) bear named Deady. In both appearances, he has written AQW versions of his songs that play in the backgrounds of his quests. He performed the original song "Goodnight Demonslayer" for the Friday the 13th event in August 2010, featuring George Lowe and One Eyed Doll. May 13, 2011, The first Friday the Thirteenth on that year, Voltaire appeared again, needing the player's help to retrieve the Vorutanian Key, which is wanted by an Evil Alien Emperor. Songs from "Hate Lives In a Small Town" were altered and played in the event. There was also a spoken appearance of the comic book - "Deady: Big in Japan."
In addition to Chi-Chian, Voltaire has also produced a comic book series called Oh My Goth!, also known as OMG!, which started out as his own eight-page religious tracts inspired by Jack Chick. Stories included him being chased by minions of Satan as they would try to prevent him from playing his next show. These short pieces would often lead to information about his next show. After two issues of the Chi-Chian series were published, he convinced Sirius Entertainment to publish his Oh My Goth! series, which included four issues that were later collected into a trade paperback. Voltaire has also made a sequel to the OMG series called Oh My Goth! Humans Suck![16]
In addition to those, Voltaire has also produced a DEADY series as well as releasing books such as What is Goth? and Paint it Black.[16]
In early 2004, for his DEADY comic book, Voltaire signed a deal with Toy2R. The first toy that was created was a 2-inch posable DEADY key chain for the company's "Qee Bear". It was released at San Diego Comic Con. The figure ended up selling out at the Con and because it did so well, the second figure was created in January 2005 which was an 8-inch DEADY deady figure (it could be redeemed on aqworlds for a rare non-member only digital pet).[17] In June 2007 the Deady Minigame was released on ebilgames.com, a site hosting various minigames created by Artix Entertainment. AE's Massively multiplayer online game AQWorlds also featured a Friday the 13th event featuring songs by Voltaire. Voltaire voiced his in-game persona for the occasion. In 2008, Voltaire shot the Animation short film X-Mess Detritus.[18] The movie was the third film of his directorial career; the others are Transrexia (1993), Rakthavira (1994) and Transrexia II (2008).
Voltaire married his long-time girlfriend, Jayme, on October 1, 2009 at the Angel Orensanz Center in New York City.[19] Voltaire has a son from a previous relationship, Mars, born in 1998.[7] Mars can be seen in the background of a video on YouTube at the New York Anime Festival in 2007. In the video he only passes Voltaire a pocket goth, however.
Tracks by Voltaire also appeared on these compilation albums, sorted by year.
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