blogTO | Toronto Blog

Deastro :
Randolph Chabot Jr. started to make electronic music when he was 13 at his home in Sterling Heights, MI. He finished his first album that year despite the ecstatic, aural trauma it caused his mother. He studied youth development in college with the intent of becoming a social worker, dropping out to pursue music full time. He formed an electro band called Veleciraptor, which inspired the ideas for his current synthesized projects: Our Brother The Megazord and Deastro, which try to blur the lines between electronic and acoustic music. All the music is made in Randolph’s Detroit basement with the help of sampled children’s toys and synthesizers.



Max Tundra:

Max Tundra, real name Ben Jacobs, is an English multi-instrumental musician, singer and music producer. His work is predominantly electronic music but incorporates non-electronic styles and instruments.

Jacobs was born in the United Kingdom and grew up taking piano lessons, but mostly enjoyed playing television theme songs and music from adverts. As a teenager, he bought a Commodore Amiga 500 and began exploring electronic music with it. He still uses this 1985 computer to this day, but only for sequencing. The sounds on Max Tundra’s records come from a wide variety of sources, including real and synthetic musical instruments, arranged in dense, complex ways. Warp received one song he recorded titled “Children at Play” and released it as a single in 1998.

He has released three well-received albums for Domino Records: “Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be” (completely instrumental) released in 2000, “Mastered By Guy At The Exchange” (featuring vocals from Ben and sister Becky from the band Tunng) released in 2002 and “Parallax Error Beheads You” (just Ben on vocal duties), was released in October 2008.

Other than his full length albums, he has also done remix work for bands of varying genres including Franz Ferdinand, Architecture in Helsinki, Kid606 and the Pet Shop Boys. Tundra also hosts a weekly radio show on Resonance FM, called Max Tundra’s Rotogravure. He was one of the last ever musicians to record a John Peel Session.