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Captive Audience
by J Mundok
"...I gave up my dreaded day job about 2 years ago to dedicate myself to my art, since I realized that inspiration can't be relegated to one's off-hours." Craig Conley
Captive Audience was born a little over a year ago upon the realization that a parrot and a microwave oven had fallen into a bio-mechanical feedback loop. They were indeed communicating. The microwave emitted a beep ever thirty seconds to let you know the coffee was finished re-heating...the parrot mimicked. Back and forth for hours they communicated, perhaps only to acknowledge existence. "I immediately formed my band to try to replicate that uncanny coupling of technological and biological intelligence," Craig Conley said in a recent e-mail interview.
Conley along with his partner, Mikey Warwick, have spent the past year under the flag of Captive Audience striving "...to follow that formula by combining sophisticated electronics with media sound bytes." They started their own label called Pivotal Records to produce their own brand of "techno-kinetic" electronic dance music and have two full length CD's, Pivotal and the brand new "We Are Each Others Baby".
Early exposure to electronic music by bands like Kraftwerk and later Depeche Mode and Erasure, Captive Audience are quite comfortable with the idea of electronic music. Producing the tracks on a Mac, sequencing rhythm machines and Roland synthesizers, Conley handles arrangement and sampling while Warwick takes care of the keys and programming.
As well as recording with Captive Audience and occasional remix and production work, both Audience members stay busy with other projects. Conley produces and lays out camera ready layouts for publishers of college text materials while Warwick is an accomplished mathematician, web content provider and graphic designer.
From a parrot chatting with a microwave to two full length CD's, a couple e.p.'s and an ever growing collection of compilation appearances, Captive Audience are taking their brand of electronic music to the masses with no lack of pure energy. This is music that makes you move...and there won't be rest anytime soon since "...both [Audience members] consider sleep to be the best of both worlds, because you are alive and unconscious at the same time."