David Kristian

Based in Montreal, David Kristian has looked far back into electronic music's past to unite his vision of soundtrack music and experimental electronics. Inspired by the first completely electronic film score, 1956's Forbidden Planet by Louis and Bebe Barron, Kristian recorded a 1997 album (Cricklewood) as a tribute to the radical sound experiments that the Barrons used to record it. Kristian's recording career began in the early '80s while working at a cable-television station in New Brunswick. Deciding to produce his own scores to science-fiction/animation shorts aired on the station, he composed soundtracks consisting of tape loops and analogue experiments tied to the heyday of science fiction in the 1950s. Though Kristian continued to record during the 1980s, it wasn't until 1994 that his first album Synaesthesia earned a release, on Discreet/Indiscreet. The straightahead flavor of the album's rhythms belied Kristian's focus on experimental productions. Two EPs, Clubfoot and Ectopic Beat, charted a new-found fascination with drum'n'bass and earned him fans within the techno community. Kristian responded with a change-up, the relatively beatless Cricklewood album released on Alien8. He has also recorded with Toronto's Gregory De Rocher (aka Lowfish), and released the remix work Woodworking. ~ John Bush