- Christopher Willits
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Christopher Willits 
Background information Born April 8, 1978 Origin Kansas City, Missouri, United States Genres Electronic music, glitch, pop, ambient, electroacoustic, experimental, noise Occupations Musician, artist, record producer Instruments Guitar, computer, electronic musical instruments, vocals, percussion, synthesizer Years active 1993–present Labels Ghostly International, 12k, Overlap Associated acts Flössin
The North Valley Subconscious Orchestra
Taylor Deupree
Ryuichi SakamotoWebsite www.christopherwillits.com Christopher Willits is a musician and multimedia artist located in San Francisco. His musical focus is characterized by guitar with computer software processing and improvisation, which generates a large palette of possible sounds including; melodic rhythms, grainy textures, and smooth undulating ambient layers. Willits' music is electroacoustic in nature, in that both analogue and digital worlds are meshed into one. Willits' guitar lines and harmonies are folded into each other using custom-designed software (Willits uses the term "folding" to describe the non-linear, real-time indexing, cutting and re-sampling of guitar and voice).
Willits, in an interview, further expanded on the term 'folding,' "It has a lot to do with time. I actually wrote a whole thesis about this, if you want to go to the Mills library and check it out [laughs]. It’s a very simple process of recording something to memory and then indexing at different points. But instead of it being a granular process [a form of synthesis in which a sample is separated into ‘grains’], I’m actually skating to different locations within this memory. So there’s this continuous rupture of time that creates these rhythmic patterns, so these melodic patterns start to emerge out of this time processing technique."[1]
Contents
Biography
Willits completed a master's degree in electronic music at Mills College, where he studied with Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith and John Bischoff. At Mills he explored structure-generating processes in music; a focus not unfamiliar to former Mills affiliates John Cage and Steve Reich. Prior to Mills, Willits received visual arts training in painting, sculpture, photography and film/video/new media art at the Kansas City Art Institute under the direction of Patrick Clancy.[2]
Willits, as a solo artist or in collaboration, has released music on the following record labels: 12k (USA), Ghostly International (USA), Fällt (Ireland), Sub Rosa (Belgium), Nibble Records (USA), Ache Records (Canada), Yacca (Japan) and Plop (Japan). He has toured throughout Europe, America, China and Japan.
Willits has participated in numerous collaborative projects. These projects include collaborations with Zach Hill (drummer from the band Hella), Miguel Depedro (Kid606), Brad Laner (Medicine), Nate Boyce, Latrice Barnett (singer/songwriter and bassist for Handsome Boy Modeling School), Taylor Deupree (12k record label founder),Scott Pagano (visual artist and motion graphics designer), and Matmos. Flössin, a project featuring many of these friends (and organized/produced by Willits) had its first release on Ache Records in fall 2004, "Lead Singer". Willits has released four full-length CDs with Taylor Deupree, and one with legendary Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. He is also the founder and director of the record label and community building organization Overlap [3].
His music has received much press from a diverse range of media outlets- The Wire, Grooves magazine, the BBC, XLR8R, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, where Willits was named one of the "Class of 2004", and URB magazine, in which Willits was nominated as one of URB's next 100 artists [4]
Discography
- Live On Earth – Vol. 3 (self-released) - 2011
- Tiger Flower Circle Sun (Ghostly International) - 2010
- Live On Earth – Vol. 2 (self-released) - 2009
- Live On Earth – Vol. 1 (self-released) - 2009
- Plants and Hearts (Room40) - 2007
- Surf Boundaries (Ghostly International) – 2006
- Little Edo (Nibble) – 2004
- Pollen (Fallt) – 2003
- Folding, and the Tea (12k) – 2002
- :plateaus, centers, stoma... (self-released CDR) – 2001
- storks and wires (self-released CDR) – 2000
Compilations
- Various artists – Idol Tryouts (Ghostly International) – 2006
- Various artists – SMM vol.2 (Ghostly International) – 2004
- Various artists – E*A*D*G*B*E (12k) – 2003
Collaborations and Band Projects
- Willits + Sakamoto (Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto) - "Ocean Fire" (Commmons/12k) - 2008
- Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Listening Garden (Line) – 2007
- The North Valley Subconscious Orchestra – The Right Kind of Nothing (Ghostly International) – 2006
- Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Live In Japan 2004 (12k) – 2005
- Flössin – Lead Singer (Ache Records, Yacca) – 2004
- Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Mujo (Plop) – 2004
- Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – AS08 (Sub Rosa, Audiosphere) – 2003
- Saturn 138 (HWTBL) – 1998
References
External links
Categories:- American electronic musicians
- American guitarists
- American experimental musicians
- Living people
- American artists
- People from San Francisco, California
- Ableton Live users
- 1978 births
- Kansas City Art Institute alumni
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