Gustavo Lanzas, looking pretty

Every band has "the cute one." In Sun Pop Blue, that would be Gus, of course.

Here is a report I posted on the venerable mailing list Analogue Heaven describing my first meeting of Gus ... so long ago.

Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 15:30:47 -0700
From: Bulbous and Flapping < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
To: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Subject: Spanking the TB-303

Robot, Gus, LxRudis, &  Void all came over to my place in Oakland yesterday ...

We hooked up Robot's 808 (master clock) to the 303 and Void's Korg MS20 & Lx's mini-moog and my serge (NOTE: NO COMPUTERS-NO MIDI - all pulse based clocking) and ran everything thru whatever echo, reverb I have laying around ... sent a voltage control from the 303 sequencer into an oscillator on the serge for pitch ... that made for some weird noise ... those serge osc's are _soooo_ fat ... it took about 4 hours to put everything together

And, with Robin Whittle's ghost hovering and smiling nearby, we then cranked everything up to the edge and delivered the necessary punishment for almost 2 solid hours ... Spanked those modules! ... which screamed for
mercy and begged for more ..

I live in crack city -- people were hovering around on either side of my apartment (they usually hang one block in either direction) last night ... listening to the demented robot spawn of electron apocalypse cascading from
the upstairs window over the sidewalk ... it was wierd ...

About half way thru I asked Robot if we were doing acid or trance or what and he said, "We are doing fucked-UP music ..." and indeed we were ...

So attn: all techno/acid/rave gods & goddesses out there: FUCKED UP music is the next big thing! Brought to you lovingly from the humble crew in Bagdahd by the Bay ...

By controlling the voltages, we control the frequencies, by controlling the frequencies, we can control the human mind. .... but God knows the machines took over our brains last night ... who is controlled and who is controlling?

 *****************

So that was my first meeting with Gus. I remember about half-way through the "jam session" he started do some really cool stuff on the ms-20. It took me a while to figure out where it was coming from, with all those guys in the room - And Lx & Void got really drunk really fast and were making a caca-cacaphonous racket. But I was very impressed with what Gus was doing, cutting through the mix, and that was the beginning of our friendship and on-and-off collaboration over the years.

Gus plays lots of live shows to this day, booking shows as AudioElectronic. He played all over the Bay Area and up and down the west coast for years, occasionally playing Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, NYC, and other cities.

We've assisted each other on a number of pieces over the years, cowriting Ubi Mel IbI Apes (you can see the video in the video section). Gus is currently working on a remix of Hey Little Earthgirl. Gus has been an invaluable source of musical inspiration and, truth be told, competition over the years, as well as knowledge of technique and technology in the ever-evolving realms of electronic music.

Gus is a primarily a drummer, a fantastic drum programmer. So is Andy. So is Shoji.

But I hate drummers. Drummers are the natural enemy of singers. This is the first law of music.

Do you see a pattern here? I am surrounded by drummers and divas! 

Come to think of it, Gus is both.