Biography
Jason Urick established himself as a regular presence within Baltimore’s experimental music community by launching solo ambient dronescapes under the project name themoonstealingproject during the late 1990s. By the middle of the following decade he had become a member of the noise-pop improvisers Wzt Hearts (pronounced “Wet Hearts”), where he contributed live processing and laptop manipulation to the band’s expansive post-rock explorations. Following the group’s dissolution in 2008, Urick returned to working alone and began shaping extremely gradual pieces influenced by minimal techno forerunners such as Pan Sonic, Ryoji Ikeda, and Fennesz. These efforts yielded his first Thrill Jockey release, the 2009 album Husbands, which comprised four slowly developing electronic drone compositions. The artwork for Husbands—Urick’s debut issued under his own name—appropriated the infamous cover of John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Virgins by overlaying Urick’s face on the unclothed figures of both John and Yoko. In 2010 he issued Fussing & Fighting, an album shaped by his sustained fascination with dub reggae and the fusion of dub with minimal techno exemplified by Rhythm & Sound; the resulting hybrid retained his characteristically deliberate pacing. That same preoccupation informed the 2011 cassette-only collaboration Title King with Cex. After spending years in Baltimore as a central participant in the city’s music community and running the Floristree performance space, Urick relocated to Portland, Oregon; the period of transition supplied the atmosphere for his 2012 full-length I Love You.
Albums
