Salvo Beta

Salvo Beta consists of computer noise musician Sean Wolfe and drummer Dan Smith from Chicago. Sean developed a dependency for computers by the time he was 8. The machines that enable his creation process have also failed him the most. These early failures directed him to pioneering records like Front 242's Punish your Machine! Dan's music background was different. He was influenced by loud rock and a tendency toward eroding his possessions, which makes mechanical abuse and misuse natural.

Their music is a hybrid of detailed computer music and bombastic drums resulting in a collision of sounds somewhere between Melt-Banana and Aphex Twin... or Can and Meat Beat Manifesto... or a drum machine driving a tape deck way too hard with unsteady power... or trying to play your favorite Led Zeppelin record in the microwave... forward and backward.

history
Sean Wolfe started Salvo Beta in 199X. Originally titled the Akira Project, Sean used keyboards, hard drives, countless effects pedals and noise generators to create music that represents a future of broken machinery and electronics. After numerous tape releases and a song on an Orb tribute compilation, Sean changed the name to Salvo Beta and released Abrasive Stuttering on SomeOddPilot Records.

Sean wanted the live show to be more than the standard laptop and human combo. He recruited human drummer Dan Smith to add bombastic energy to the grinding noise rhythms. Sean and Dan collaborated on other projects such as Is.U.Is (an improv space-rock trio) and Pointy Teeth (Preston Klik of My Scarlet Life's live techno project). In order to have a tight performance that includes both an ungroovy computer and a human drummer, Sean attempted to develop the first Drummer Control Protocol. A sequence of voiced numbers, commands, grunts, and clicks that signify what the drummer should be doing during his performance, and to keep his upstaging antics to a minimum. Using Dan as his live beta project, The Salvo Beta live performances evolved into an energetic assault that earned them opening slots for Melt-Banana, The Faint, Hrvatski, Themselves, Ulrich Schnauss, Cex, Richard Devine, Fog, The New Deal, Mu-Ziq, EC8OR, Twine, Dykehouse and Joseph Nothing along with shows in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, Japan. The relationships formed throughout these shows led to the remix album Evil Against Evil: The Kids in the Neighborhood Grab Their Bats And Remix Abrasive Stuttering that includes many of the artists listed above.

Sean and Dan have begun working on new tracks that combine elements of the live show with the damaged sounds of Abrasive Stuttering. The results are a struggle between the tweaked-out spacey sounds of Mouse on Mars and the driving rock beats of Futureworld era Trans Am. Pummeling drums, mutated noises, crumbling machinery and faulty electronics.

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