Chris Strouth

Chris Strouth
Chris Strouth in 2014
Background information
Born July 28, 1968[1]
Origin Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Genres Electronic music, New music, ambient music, indie rock
Occupation(s) Musician, composer, producer, filmmaker, writer, multimedia artist
Years active 1986–present
Labels UltraModern Records, Innova Recordings, Twin/Tone
Associated acts Paris 1919, Future Perfect Sound System

Chris Strouth is a Minneapolis musician, producer, writer and filmmaker who has been active since 1986, most notably as the founder and organizer of 1990s/2000s electronica collective Future Perfect Sound System, and most recently as the bandleader and composer for experimental/electronic band Paris 1919.[2] His behind-the-scenes production work includes Indianapolis multimedia artist Stuart Hyatt's Grammy-nominated album The Clouds.[3] Strouth also gained national attention in 2009 when he received a life-saving kidney transplant from a donor who connected with him on Twitter, which is believed to be the first such transplant arranged entirely through social networking.[4][5][6][7][8]

Music

Strouth has been heavily involved in the Twin Cities arts and music community since 1986. His early work included curating multimedia events incorporating art and electronic music at spaces including Rifle Sport Gallery,[9] Hair Police[10] and Red Eye Collaboration.[11]

As composer/performer

As a performer, Strouth has played in a range of styles including techno, jazz, and punk.[12] He has also worked frequently as an organizer of entire scenes of bands, typified by the electronica collective Future Perfect Sound System, which he founded in 1995. The collective was an important early exponent of electronic music and rave culture in the Midwest, receiving favorable comparisons to Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia events.[13] Future Perfect performed frequently at First Avenue nightclub, the Walker Art Center, Weisman Art Museum,[14] and other galleries, with showcases that sometimes drew more than 30 performers,[15][16] and released two albums, 1997’s Music For Listening[17] and 2001’s The Nature of Time.[18][19][20]

Strouth founded another musical collective, Paris 1919, shortly before his diagnosis with kidney disease in 2009. Strouth's compositions for the band often deal with his illness and recovery. For instance, the short piece "Blood Mountain," is about Strouth's experience on dialysis, and bases its core rhythms on those of dialysis machines.[21] Paris 1919 began as a solo, studio-bound experiment in sonic collages; Strouth has described the music as sounding "weird and chaotic and structureless and purposely off-beat"[2] but notes that it is also created from a painstaking process which may involve more than 1,000 edits.[21] It grew into a semi-improvisational live band with a rotating membership, which has performed a series of multimedia shows combining music, theater and dance in immersive environments, often working with choreographer Deborah Jinza Thayer. 2014’s "Antarctica" used the theme of an ice cave to explore Strouth’s journey through his kidney ailment and recovery.[22] The same year’s "Safe As Houses" placed both performers and audience in a giant dollhouse as a metaphor for the housing crisis and Strouth’s own loss of his home the year before.[23][24]

Paris 1919 has also recorded three albums, Book Of Job, Antarctica and Collected Short Fictions. Book Of Job was released in 2011 on Go Johnny Go Records; the others are still unreleased.[25][26] Strouth has also frequently led Paris 1919 in creating live soundtracks to silent films, including Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog,[2] and the 1930 mystery The Bat Whispers at the 2014 Minneapolis Comic-Con.[27]

In 2011, Strouth was a conductor for the four-act opera Czeslaw’s Loop, performed live on a floating barge on the Mississippe River, which included performers as diverse as classical soprano Maria Jette, techno-pop group Information Society’s Paul Robb, and Tom Hazelmyer of the punk band Halo of Flies.[28][29]

Other projects include The Snaildartha 6's 2004 jazz and spoken-word holiday album Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry the Christmas Snail, which Strouth composed and produced with saxophonist George Cartwright of the jazz group Curlew and co-writer Matt Fugate.[30] Strouth's early band King Paisley and the Pscho-del-ics performed at Rifle Sport[9] and released a nine-song album in 1986, Death Rockin’, which was re-released in 2011 on Go Johnny Go.[25]

As producer

Besides composing and performing music, Strouth founded his own label, UltraModern Records, in 1995,[31] and was the director of artists and product at two other influential Minneapolis labels, Twin/Tone Records (1995-2001)[12][32] and Innova Recordings (2001-2004).[33] At Innova, Strouth worked on albums by dozens of artists including Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, Beat Circus, Matthew Burtner, George Cartwright, Victoria Jordanova, Phillip Johnston, and Hyatt's Grammy-nominated album The Clouds.[3] Twin/Tone, already nationally prominent thanks to a roster including alternative-rock pioneers The Replacements, grew to develop an umbrella relationship with a dozen smaller indie labels, including UltraModern.[34]

UltraModern focused on neo-psychedelic, indie-pop,[11] and noise/electronic rock,[9] releasing albums by musicians including ex-Wall Of Voodoo leader Stan Ridgway, jazz guitarist Skip Heller, Future Perfect Sound System, Ousia, and Savage Aural Hotbed. UltraModern received wider distribution through partnerships with Twin/Tone, Atomic Theory Records, and New West Records.[11] The label's catalog includes:

  • Vinnie & The Stardüsters, "The Girl From Ipanema Wants To Kill Me" b/w "Quesadilla, Walk Around Naked" (7" vinyl single) (1995)[35]
  • Savage Aural Hotbed, Cold is the Absence of Heat (1996)[36]
  • The Vibro Champs, Stranger Than You Think (1996)[37]
  • Mindphaseone, A Wave Length Away (1997)[38]
  • Ousia, Why Is That A Four? (1997)[39]
  • Savage Aural Hotbed, Pressure of Silence (1997)[40]
  • Skip Heller, Lonely Town (1997)[41]
  • Skip Heller, St. Christopher's Arms (1998)[42]
  • Various Artists, Future Perfect Sound System: Music For Listening (1998)[43]
  • Skip Heller, Couch, Los Angeles (1999)[44]
  • Stan Ridgway, Anatomy (1999)[45]
  • Stan Ridgway, Holiday in Dirt (2002)[46]

Film and television

Strouth's documentary Unconvention: A Mix-Tape from St. Paul, RNC '08, filmed in 2008 and released in 2009, covered the contentious 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.[47] The film edits together a wide variety of film and video shot by dozens of independent journalists and citizen videographers with divergent political viewpoints, compiling a mosaic of perspectives on the four days of the convention.[48] Unconvention was one of eight full-length features chosen to debut as part of the "Minnesota Made" series at the 2009 Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival.[49]

Strouth and Minneapolis filmmaker Rick Fuller also co-produced a DVD companion to Stan Ridgway's Holiday in Dirt album featuring 14 short films based on Ridgway's songs, which was released in 2005.[50] In 2006, they co-produced the documentary The M-80 Project, which chronicled a 1979 New Wave music festival at the Walker Art Center.[51]

From 1994 to 1996, Strouth produced the documentary series What, which covered the Minneapolis pop and rock scene, for Twin Cities public television station KTCA.[20]

Kidney transplant

In 2009, Strouth learned that he would need a kidney transplant due to the effects of IgA nephropathy[52] (which he nicknamed "Harold" as a way of coping with the disease).[12] He found a matching donor, Scott Pakudaitis, after sharing the news with his followers on Twitter and Facebook, and underwent a successful transplant at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in December 2009. The two men never met in person until the day of the surgery.[53][54] It is believed to be the first such transplant arranged entirely through social networking.[4] The story received nationwide media attention on ABC News,[7] Readers Digest,[8] MTV,[6] and The Ricki Lake Show.[5] Following his recovery, Strouth has been a board member of the Minnesota chapter of the National Kidney Foundation since 2010.

Writing

Strouth writes and illustrates the column "Makes No Sense At All" for the Minneapolis alt-weekly City Pages.[55] He has also written for publications such as The Growler[56] and America Online's Digital City.[57]

References

  1. ↑ Host: Jon Nelson (2002). "Episode 26: 2002 Minnesota theme, with Chris Strouth". Some Assembly Required.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Bahn, Christopher (10 November 2011), "Interview: Chris Strouth of Paris 1919", Onion A.V. Club, archived from the original on 14 November 2011
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Innova Recordings: Stuart Hyatt, The Clouds". Retrieved 2014-08-31.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kiser, Kim (August 2010). "More than Friends and Followers: Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media are connecting organ recipients with donors.". Minnesota Medicine. Retrieved 2014-10-17.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "To Share or Not to Share on Social Media". The Ricki Lake Show. Season 1. Episode 19. 4 October 2014. Event occurs at 29:40. 20th Television. Retrieved 2014-10-17.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Govere, Alexandra (Aug. 9, 2012). "From Poop Strong to Kidney Transplants, How Twitter Has Saved Lives". MTV. Retrieved 2014-10-17. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Ng, Christina (Nov. 2, 2011). "'Twitter Stories': New Site Highlights Action-Inspiring Tweets". ABC News. Retrieved 2014-10-17. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Caporino, Alison (Feb. 7, 2013). "6 Ways Social Media Made the World a Better Place". Readers Digest. Retrieved 2014-10-17. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Scholtes, Peter S. (9 September 1998), "Bring in the Noise - From Wrong’s free-improv chaos to Savage Aural Hotbed's circle-saw precision, a disparate local noise scene maps the sound of modern anxiety", City Pages
  10. ↑ Boyles, Jen (12 May 2004), "Cut Short: Remembering Sonia Peterson, chief of the Hair Police and scenester extraordinaire", City Pages
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Meyer, Jim (4 October 1995), "Mood School", City Pages, retrieved 2014-09-21
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Van Denburg, Hart (2009-11-25), "Twitter may save Chris Strouth's life", City Pages, retrieved 2014-10-17
  13. ↑ Scholtes, Peter S. (27 May 1998), "Yes Future! Ousia breaks up. Ana Voog leaves her bedroom. The mother ship of knob-twiddling electronic music descends", City Pages
  14. ↑ "Future Perfect X Takes The Stand". Sounding Board 27: 23. 2000.
  15. ↑ Groebner, Simon-Peter (2 December 1998), "Swing Backward, Drone Ahead: The Future's Imperfect and the Past Is Always Here", City Pages
  16. ↑ Smith, Rod (1 November 2000), "Hooked on Sonics: Two young curators with strikingly different styles make Sonic Circuits a joltingly diverse electronic-music festival", City Pages, retrieved 2014-09-21
  17. ↑ Schulte, Tom. "Future Perfect Sound System: Music for Listening" at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  18. ↑ Whalley, Ian (Spring 2003). "The Nature of Time (review)". Computer Music Journal 27 (1): 97.
  19. ↑ Couture, François. "Future Perfect: The Nature of Time" at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Loco Nordin, Ingvar (2001). "Future Perfect; The Nature of Time". Sonoloco Record Reviews. Retrieved 2014-08-30.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 "Artist's Statement". Paris 1919. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  22. ↑ Tillotson, Kristin (5 February 2014), "Cold, cold art: Experimental musician Chris Strouth works out his post-kidney transplant alienation with 'Antarctica'", Star Tribune
  23. ↑ Fischer, Reed (6 August 2014), "Welcome to Chris Strouth's giant dollhouse", City Pages
  24. ↑ Fischer, Reed (3 September 2014), "Chris Strouth’s Safe As Houses", City Pages
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 "Go Johnny Go Records: Complete Catalog". Go Johnny Go Records. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  26. ↑ Enright, Anthony (29 March 2012), "Paris 1919: "Book of Job" Release Show @ Ritz Theater", L’Etoile Magazine
  27. ↑ http://voiceofe.com/2014/04/doctor-who-and-shatner-qa-plus-party-all-night-at-minneapolis-comic-con.html
  28. ↑ Swensson, Andrea (27 April 2011), "Czeslaw's Loop unites dozens of local musicians for massive riverside Art-A-Whirl project", City Pages
  29. ↑ Regan, Sheila (18 May 2011), "Czeslaw’s Loop: Where art meets the river meets music", City Pages, retrieved 2015-04-06
  30. ↑ "Snaildartha: Snaildartha: The Story of Jerry the Christmas Snail - A Soul Jazz Extravaganza" at AllMusic. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
  31. ↑ "La vida local: Inside the musical mind of Chris Strouth", Star Tribune, 28 October 1999
  32. ↑ Smith, Rod (4 September 2002), "This is a recording: Local labels are redefining the way to make music", City Pages
  33. ↑ "The Innova label profiled". Gramophone 81 (972): 34. 2003.
  34. ↑ "Artists". Twin/Tone Records. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  35. ↑ http://www.discogs.com/Vinnie-The-Stard%C3%BCsters-The-Girl-From-Ipanema-Wants-To-Kill-Me-/release/4917190
  36. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89311.html
  37. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89306.html
  38. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89347.html
  39. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89365.html
  40. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89314.html
  41. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89351.html
  42. ↑ http://alliedchemical.com/blackops/bands/heller/arms.html
  43. ↑ http://tt.net/trg/projects/89367.html
  44. ↑ http://alliedchemical.com/blackops/bands/heller/couch.html
  45. ↑ http://alliedchemical.com/blackops/ridgway/projects/anatomy.html
  46. ↑ Deming, Mark. "Holiday in Dirt". Allmusic. Retrieved August 31, 2014.
  47. ↑ "Unconvention: A Mix-Tape from St. Paul, RNC '08". Alternavision Films, Inc. Retrieved 2014-09-02.
  48. ↑ Crann, Tom (2009-04-22). "Director describes film as a 'mix tape' of the RNC". All Things Considered (MPR News). Retrieved 2014-09-01.
  49. ↑ McClanahan, Erik (2009-04-16). "MSPIFF's Minndependents". City Pages. Retrieved 2014-09-01.
  50. ↑ "Billboard Bits: NBA All-Star Game, Petra Haden, Ridgway". Billboard. 2005-02-10. Retrieved 2014-10-17.
  51. ↑ http://www.atasite.org/2006/03/the-m-80-project/
  52. ↑ Tillotson, Kristin (10 March 2010), "'Friended' for life: A kidney that made Facebook history", Star Tribune
  53. ↑ Van Denburg, Hart (2009-12-09), "Chris Strouth, Scott Pakudaitis share a Twitter kidney", City Pages, retrieved 2015-04-08
  54. ↑ Van Denburg, Hart (2009-12-09), "Chris Strouth Tweets for a kidney: Twin Cities musician finds new life through social networking", City Pages, retrieved 2015-04-08
  55. ↑ http://blogs.citypages.com/gimmenoise/makes_no_sense/
  56. ↑ http://growlermag.com/bourbon-not-just-for-breakfast-anymore/
  57. ↑ http://www.citypages.com/1997-07-30/music/minnesota-music-online/full/

External links