Biography
Sonic Death Rabbit is a duo formed in early 2004 by musicians Derrick Estrada (aka Baseck)) from the Los Angeles, California area and Cristina Fuentes (aka Wet Mango and Tree Skeleton), originally from Miami, Florida.
Both of them wanted to create a project that was first of all fun and even poking fun at themselves for their own primitive electronic guilty pleasures. Every song focuses on a different combination of genres. For example, “Happy to Be Hardcore” has fast, gritty, and aggressive beats with amazingly uplifting synth melodies, and “Milwaukee IDMetal Fest” is their own 8-bit rendition of black metal complete with operatic keyboards and vocals.
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Almost every song starts off with the basic structure laid down by beats Baseck makes on his Game Boy using LSDJ and the melodies that Cristina creates on her Korg MS2000B synthesizer. Layers of scratching, real and kids’ electronic guitars, screaming, spoken word, singing, and whatever other instrument they see fit by both members complete the songs with an arsenal of mismatched sound. Together they have played in Holland, Belgium, Canada, and Mexico, as well as numerous shows in Wisconsin and the West Coast of the USA.
Cristina's background has ranged from lo-fi, simplistic 80’s fantasy- and video-game-inspired kids’ keyboard creations, where she played locally around Charlotte, North Carolina, under the names Casio Empire and Cartoon Violence. Later on in the same state, she played for three years in a DIY-powered metallic hardcore band called Choke Their Rivers With Our Dead, where she did abrasive screaming vocals and basslines through keyboards.
Cristina believes that her music and live performances should be as raw and personal as she can possibly create. She has toured four times on the East Coast of the U.S. and has shared the stage with bands like High on Fire, Floor, Pg. 99, Majority Rule, Hopesfall, Between the Buries and Me, and many others.
Baseck's turntablist style is made up of breakcore, broken beats, IDM, droning atmosphere, and noise to create a beautifully slaughtered collage of sound. In his live acts, his goal is to “expose people to a more visual act” with experimental electronic music. His audience seems to levitate forward to watch his hands, although he believes that playing out doesn’t have to be limited to the space between his equipment, himself, and the crowd as in most public “zombie e-mail coffee shop laptop sessions,” as he puts it.
In the last two decades, Baseck has toured countless times around the world with artists such as Milwaukee’s Doormouse and Miami’s Otto Von Schirach. He has collaborated on tracks with Hecate on Zhark Records in Switzerland and is currently on both Schematic Records in Miami, FL, and Addict Records from Milwaukee, WI. Releases include a remix for Otto Van Schirach on Schematic Records and compilations released on Addict Records, as well as several self-released mixes. He has also shared the stage with artists Richard Devine, Venetian Snares, Kid 606, Soft Pink Truth, Daedelus, Phoenicia, The Berzerker, Dabrye, Busdriver, Awol One, and many more.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.