ELECTRIC PRESIDENT

Electric President first officially formed in 2004, but we’d been recording together for years before giving the project a name. It was just two members — myself and Alex Kane — and we initially met in another band. After losing my novels in a harddrive crash (see the “bio” page for more info there), I reached out to Alex about starting a recording-focused project. We recorded once a week for the next few years, laying down around 50 tracks before we decided to make it an official band.

The name came from a miscommunication. I was at a get-together and the room was loud, and I thought the person said “Electric President” and I asked them what that meant. They laughed and corrected me, but I later wrote down what I thought I’d heard in my pocket notebook. When trying to come up with a project name, I just flipped through that book and we chose it on a lark. It has no deeper meaning of any kind.

ALBUMS

S/T (2006)

Originally recorded between winter of 2004 through the summer of 2005, this was our first attempt at what felt like a complete album, instead of just a collection of recordings. The theme was “dystopian futures”, and each song covers a different idea of how that might play out. It was released in early 2006 on the German label, Morr Music.

SLEEP WELL (2008)

The original concept for this album was to really into synthesizers instead of guitars. I personally wanted to get better at writing with synths, so I treated the guitar as a secondary song-writing tool instead the primary one. For subject matter, it’s an album about nightmares. I used to have lots of nightmares, all growing up, and for a few years I found it interesting to keep a journal of them. Each song is based on one of those entries.

The Violent Blue (2010)

The last record we made began from the B-Sides of Sleep Well. The songs started as a handful of unfinished demos, but in developing them, some new ideas formed and it turned into another album. The title comes from my nickname for the ocean, as I wrote all the lyrics for the album on the shore — mostly at night, with a notebook and a headlamp. I was curious how using a theme I could physically sit next to would influence what I wrote.

EPs and Singles

You Have the Right to Remain Awesome (Vol. 1 and 2)

These were two seven inches of songs that were written and recorded before S/T, in the summer of 2004. They were selected from a batch of recording experiments for a limited run pressing of some 7 inches.

“White Noise” and “You Forget”

A pair of singles recorded for various Morr Music compilations. The first, “White Noise”, is an original song, and “You Forget” is a cover of the New Zealand band “The Tall Dwarves”.