|
|
         |
 Jake Woods, also known as Redcat,
Benjamin Bear, and Indicashadow, has been making music since the age of
eight. Now, notice I didn't say he was making good music at
eight, but it was music. He gave up trying to form a grunge band
when he noticed a severe lack of drummers in the area, but it didn't
stop him from writing such "classic" tunes as "Forcefeed," "Plant
Life," and "Don't Ask Why." When the bass player drifted
off to do other things, like work a real job, he finally figured out
how to work the keyboard he received at an early graduation present,
and Akainekora was born.At first, it was all instrumental music, like the early recording 94, which he annoyed his friends with and got responses like, "It needs words." So, he got down to writing some words... He released Subliminal in 1999, on his home-built Butthole Records label. Aside from a few stand out tracks like "Confessions of Love" and "Psychedelic Whore," it was mostly experimental, as was his next release, the Mental Realm. In an attempt to release a good project, he squeezed the best tracks from both onto his first "official" release, Acidic, which was released in 2001. Later that year, he released an even better CD, Surrogate Reality, which contained such fan favorites as "Oblivion" and "The Ballad of Dimension B." Shortly thereafter, he moved to North Dakota and began writing his two-disc album, Neverwhere, named after the Neil Gaiman book. Neverwhere was the first album released on the renamed Butthole Records outfit, Psychedelic Fidelity Records (or as we like to call it, Psy-fi Records). A lack of studio equipment attributed to its length, which some said was just too long, and an edited one-disc version was released shortly thereafter. During the recording of Neverwhere, Jake decided to try something new...he decided to rap. Unsatisfied with his own voice, he raised the pitch a little bit, and created Benjamin Bear, his stuffed alter-ego. Under the guise of Benjamin Bear, he crafted such hits as "Butt-shaped Butt," "Bear Song," and the seminal "Bowling," which describes life as bowlers in the ghetto. Thug bowlers in the ghetto. Realizing that Akainekora was hard to pronounce for most people he knew, he englishified it to Redcat, and began work on his next CD, which will be called Morningstar. He is currently working on three CDs at the same time, a full length Benjamin Bear CD, Thug Fluff, and a new Indicashadow CD, Non-Eventful Horizons. All three of these CDs are due out in 2005, unless he drops dead from an aneurysm or something. |