> Biography
Kevin Blechdom is a female originally named Kristin Erickson when she was born in Florida in 1978. With a laptop, self-made computer music programs, piano chops, a 5-string banjo, Blechdom sings from from the heart.
Kevin Blechdom’s newest solo album, GENTLEMANIA, is being released on Sonig Records. Expected in March 2009, the album is an acoustic pop record co-produced by Kevin and Mocky in Berlin.
Initially trained as a classical pianist and composer, Kevin was always looking for new musical structures and patterns. She began recording music with her brother and sister-in-law in an experimental rock band called ADULT RODEO about ten years ago, releasing two albums on the revered Shimmy Disc label and more records on the Adult Rodeo imprint, Four States Fair Records. Later she hooked up with Blevin Blectum (Bevin Kelley) and formed BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM after an accidental collaboration one Halloween night while they were at Mills College in Oakland, California. The duo went on to release music on labels like Tigerbeat6 and Deluxe. “The Messy Jesse Fiesta” won 2nd prize at the prestigious Ars Electronica for digital music in 2001, and soon after broke up. Blectum from Blechdom was a hyperactive computer and sampler duo priding itself with its own digital confusion, frenetic madness, and psychotic delusions. In 2006 Blectum from Blechdom reuinited by pie-ing each other in the face, and have since been recording and touring together.
After Blectum From Blechdom broke up, Kristin kept her team name Kevin Blechdom and relocated herself to Berlin for five years. She wrote and produced two albums for the Chicks on Speed label: BITCHES WITHOUT BRITCHES (2003) and EAT MY HEART OUT (2005). The albums are a mishmash of styles and production techniques. From Broadway musical to General MIDI rock opera to electro-smudge to aleatoric blatherings, her albums put a bizarre spin on what pop music can be for an era of attention span deficit.
For the past ten years, Kevin has been touring around the world playing live shows and collaborating. She has worked with artists such as Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Jad Fair, Kramer, Jamie Lidell, Kid606, Dat Politics, Mocky, John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Zeena Parkins, Cristian Vogel, Safety Scissors, Heidi Mortenson, the Organ Lady, Lumberob, Ching Chong Song, Irene Moon, Myrobotfriend, Charlie Engstrom, Christopher Fleeger, Chicks on Speed, Kim Hiorthoy, Andre Vida, Max Tundra, and Planningtorock. She has played shows in Brazil, Australia, Israel, Moscow, and across Europe and the United States.
Kevin has worked on two musical theater pieces. She wrote a forty minute opera called Recantata, which musically retold the story about her preschool teachers who were wrongfully imprisoned for satanic ritual abuse because of the misguidance of some child-hypnotizing psychologists. More recently, she spent the 2009 summer in Lisbon co-writing a musical called DEMO with the Teatro Praga company. An original cast recording was made and will be released on vinyl later this year.
Kevin produced the self-released Ching Chong Song album, LITTLE NAKED GAY ADVENTURE and has started working on their next release, FOR THE BABIES.
Currently, Blechdom is on tour as a duo in her hi-tech country and ragtime band with Christopher Fleeger called BARNWAVE.