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Boy Eats Drum Machine / About This Artist

Artist Details and Stats:

Hometown: Portland, OR

Label: Tender Loving Empire, Tender Loving Empire

Management: Jon Ragel

Website: www.boyeatsdrummachine.com

Genre: Other

#-
Other charts for Portland, OR
  • 142
    Total Fans
  • 1,053
    Profile Views
  • 3,216
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Biography:

Boy Eats Drum Machine is a singular figure of the West. He does things his own way, thank you very much, and does those things well enough to run his own one-man gang. Sometimes his voice is low and dry like the great Oregon deserts. Other times it resonates warmly, as though reflecting off the hills. He’s a turntablist’s turntablist, robbing breaks and sound textures from vinyl even after most of his contemporaries switched to laptops. He often mixes together twangy guitars, soulful blasts of tenor saxophone, and bassy, soundtrack worthy, analog synth. He’s an artist-outlaw.

His shows feature a mixture of multi-instrumental-turntable-wizardry and performance art, as he moves effortlessly from sax, to drum, to dj station. BEDM audiences are comprised of ferociously moving bodies, curious onlookers, and shining faces nodding in time to expertly placed beats. His songs are succinct, interesting, and strut into jammy terrain only on such occasions that call for it. Though Boy Eats Drum Machine has his finger on the sample button, his sound remains distinctively organic. His home-spun compositions set a cozy table, with tales of escape nibbling at your heart strings.

Press:

“It’s awesome.”
David B. - Music For Robots

“one of my favorite DIY albums this year”
Pablo - The Yellow Stereo

“Jon Ragel, as Boy Eats Drum Machine, has made a masterfully bizarre crate digging, sampledelic masterpiece.”
Paul POP! - Firstcoastnews.com

“performance saturates booomboxxx, especially on the grandiose opening title track and through Ragel’s finest moment of offbeat percussion and contemplative lyrics, the gorgeous and sincere “la la la la LA!”
Ezra Ace Caraeff - Portland Mercury

“Booomboxxx is so stuffed with sound and form that it’s hard not to find something to like”
Michael Mannheimer - Willamette Week

“fresh and unexpected”
Tamara Vallejos - NPR music

“His sound, a fusion of vinyl manipulation, cut-n-paste pastiche, baroque embellishment, arty experimentalism and laptop glitch, is aesthetically unique”
El Keter - okayplayer.com

"grievously underrated"
Allison Stewart - The Washington Post