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Artist
John Fekner
6+ albums
about
A multi-disciplinary artist, John Fekner formed his own band City Squad in 1983. City Squad was comprised of musicians and non-musicians as an extension of Queensites, teenagers from Jackson Heights who assisted with Fekner’s outdoor stencil work. Fekner released his first rap/rock 12” EP on his own Vinyl Gridlock record label. The A-side, “2 4 5 7 9 11” had Kwame Monroe, aka Bear 167, a South Bronx graffiti artist as the guest rapper; and the B-side had Dave Santaniello on rock vocals on “Rock Steady”. Fekner began incoporating computer technology into his art work in 1981. By 1983, Fekner experimented with the Apple II and speech synthesis programs, Votrax and SAM-Software Automatic Mouth as vocal tracks on “2 4 5 7 9 11” and on his Idioblast album in 1984. In addition to playing keyboards, electronic drums and vocals, Fekner wrote the music and lyrics for the eight songs on Idioblast which featured extensive sampling and tape loops of tv, radio, Native American voices, phone and airport transmissions over rock/rap/hip hop beats. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
