Biography
Based in Chicago, producer Beau Wanzer crafts shadowy and abrasive electronic music shaped by 1970s and 1980s industrial and minimal synth traditions along with low-budget horror films from that era. His pieces frequently layer guttural, undead-sounding vocals atop pulsing mechanical beats, yielding an atmosphere that feels unsettling, visceral, and faintly sordid while always embedding a streak of ghoulish, ironic wit. Although certain tracks suit dancefloors and he is frequently linked to techno, Wanzer does not view his work as belonging to that style.
Raised across the American Midwest, Wanzer experienced frequent family moves that kept him from remaining in any single location longer than a year. As a teenager he immersed himself in industrial and EBM, finding strong influence in acts such as Absolute Body Control and Front 242. He later gravitated toward power electronics and noise, especially through imprints including Cold Meat Industry and Ant-Zen. Wanzer began producing music at age 18; after relocating to Chicago near the start of the millennium he took a position at Weekend Records & Soap, the store operated by Magas, where he encountered the more obscure reaches of electro and techno. He kept generating unpolished, single-pass minimal electronic works, gradually building an extensive archive of recordings. He formed a friendship with Melvin Oliphant, known as Traxx, and together they created house music as Mutant Beat Dance, with releases appearing on labels such as Rong Music and Rush Hour. Wanzer also produced hypnotic electropop alongside Elon Katz of White Car under the name Streetwalker, and partnered with Shawn O'Sullivan of Led Er Est and Further Reductions on the techno project Civil Duty.
Wanzer launched his solo output in 2013 via a self-titled EP on Ron Morelli’s L.I.E.S. (Long Island Electrical Systems) plus two 12-inch records on the label’s Russian Torrent Versions sub-imprint. His Power Outage 10-inch EP appeared on Oliphant’s Nation label in 2014. Since then he has issued several limited-edition, untitled LPs and singles on his own, among them a 2015 collaboration with Corporate Park. He also worked with Maoupa Mazzocchetti as De-Bons-en-Pierre; their first EP, Crepes, came out on Dark Entries in 2017.
Raised across the American Midwest, Wanzer experienced frequent family moves that kept him from remaining in any single location longer than a year. As a teenager he immersed himself in industrial and EBM, finding strong influence in acts such as Absolute Body Control and Front 242. He later gravitated toward power electronics and noise, especially through imprints including Cold Meat Industry and Ant-Zen. Wanzer began producing music at age 18; after relocating to Chicago near the start of the millennium he took a position at Weekend Records & Soap, the store operated by Magas, where he encountered the more obscure reaches of electro and techno. He kept generating unpolished, single-pass minimal electronic works, gradually building an extensive archive of recordings. He formed a friendship with Melvin Oliphant, known as Traxx, and together they created house music as Mutant Beat Dance, with releases appearing on labels such as Rong Music and Rush Hour. Wanzer also produced hypnotic electropop alongside Elon Katz of White Car under the name Streetwalker, and partnered with Shawn O'Sullivan of Led Er Est and Further Reductions on the techno project Civil Duty.
Wanzer launched his solo output in 2013 via a self-titled EP on Ron Morelli’s L.I.E.S. (Long Island Electrical Systems) plus two 12-inch records on the label’s Russian Torrent Versions sub-imprint. His Power Outage 10-inch EP appeared on Oliphant’s Nation label in 2014. Since then he has issued several limited-edition, untitled LPs and singles on his own, among them a 2015 collaboration with Corporate Park. He also worked with Maoupa Mazzocchetti as De-Bons-en-Pierre; their first EP, Crepes, came out on Dark Entries in 2017.
Albums
Singles
