ArtistInfo

Virulent

Dance

The sleeper awakens. Kevin Farabaugh has been writing, releasing, performing and playing electronic music in one form or another for the last decade and a half. Growing up in Northwest Indiana, amidst the desolate ruins of dying steel mills, he took an early interest in electronic music in many forms, ranging from early 90s techno and house sounds being broadcast on the radio waves of nearby Chicago to the darker sounds of industrial artists from that city's Wax Trax! roster. He bought his first drum machine at 14 to work on his own mechanized sound, supplementing these rhythms with emerging music software technology. He later purchased a pair of decks and soon began buying up vinyl at Chicago's Gramaphone Records after diving headfirst into techno via the local Chicago rave scene in 1996. The creation of the Virulent alias happened when relocating to Purdue to study. Once again frustrated with pushing electronic music to a conservative campus, he joined the student-run Purdue Beat Society and worked closely with the likes of fellow students Kyle Geiger and Jeremy "jpls" Jacobs to bring the gospel of techno to the student body. In addition, he was able to reach out to like-minded Indianapolis artists Shiva and Adam Jay who helped guide his studio efforts to produce a series of tracks and remixes that have ended up on the likes of Chromagnon, Azure, Seismic and Beretta. Sharing decks with some of the biggest names in techno such as Christian Smith and Josh Wink, and with collaborations in the pipeline with close friends Brian Kage, Ryski and Dustin Zahn, Kevin was set to bring his vision of techno to the global level. What happened next, of course, was something that no one could have predicted. No one knows exactly what happened that caused Virulent to return to the depths of dark space. Some say it was the onset of the "mnml" style and his refusal to conform to it. Others say it was the lure of online gaming, or the suicide of his closest childhood friend in 2006. The only facts that are known is that he escaped the Midwest to move to the warmer climates and burgeoning IT-industry of North Carolina to settle down and start a family with his fiancee. That is not dead which can eternal lie, however. Local Raleigh techno brothers and New York transplants Justin Kase and Owen Sands, founders of the burgeoning digital techno label Ill Bomb Records, happened upon the echoes of Kevin's return to the studio, the storming, bleepy "Basic Rate." They quickly decided to begin the process of bringing the artist back to life and took it upon themselves to contribute remixes of Basic Rate and the haunting, melodic "Kill Command" to what would be known as the Nine Year Rez Timer EP, a tongue-in-cheek reference to his lengthy hiatus. Now back in the studio with renewed vigor, with a flurry of productions and remixes coming on the likes of 611 Records and Re-Konstrukt as well as more material specially crafted for Ill Bomb, he's met with incredible support and praise from a host of international talents. The only thing that is certain, however, is that there will be no stopping him this time.

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