Back in the early 90's, three science students from the national university in Mexico City, Andres Aullet, Ricardo Gomez and Luis Nasser got together to form a band called RADIO SILENCE. From 1991 to 1994, the band played on, gaining a large cult following and a reputation for intense, unpredictable live performances. Inevitably, the band broke up, but the music and the meme lingered on.
In 1995, Nasser and Gomez moved to the East Coast under the pretense of pursuing scientific doctoral degrees, but all they really wanted was to find other players and continue what RADIO SILENCE had started. Two fruitless years later the search was abandoned and the two drifted apart; Nasser sulked in his apartment and alternated between writing songs and working on his dissertation, while Gomez jammed and played with a number of different bands, ranging from punk rock to Spanish baroque troupes (which included the stretchy pants and full peacock garb).
In 1997, Nasser auditioned for a Baltimore-based band KURGAN'S BANE, led by guitarist Pete Laramee and his brother, drummer Jeff Laramee; a crisp, crunchy hard rock band of exceptional musicianship that had parted ways with their bassist and were on the eve of recording their debut album "Search from Sea to Sea". These sessions resulted in a a good frienship between Nasser and John Grant of Secret Sound studios in Baltimore, and the later discovery of a vast network of websites promoting underground progressive rock made him curious to find out what the internet progheads might think of the material performed by RADIO SILENCE, back in the smoggy, boozy daze of Mexico City.
Nasser and Grant set upon the task of embellishing a demo of original material recorded on 8-track tascam tape machine for release. During the course of this project, Nasser invited Gomez and Aullet back to the fold, and the end result was a disc called "Laughter In The Dark" which, to everyone's astonishment, earned rave reviews, sold out in months, and inked the band a record deal with the now defunct indie label "Moonchild Records".
Nasser's musical chemistry with Jeff Laramee made his addition to the band as a full member in 1998 inevitable, and certain unfortunate legalities forced the band to re-name itself as SONUS UMBRA, which roughly means "Shadows Made Of Sound". Since then, they have released three more critically acclaimed albums: "Snapshots From Limbo" in 2000, "Spiritual Vertigo" in 2003 and "Digging For Zeros" in 2005, and SONUS UMBRA continues to work on new music in spite of vast geographical limitations: Gomez returned to Mexico City in 2000 where he is professor of mathematics at the National University, Nasser is a freelance writer and physics lecturer living in Chicago and Laramee remains steadfast in Baltimore, drumming with Kurgan's Bane and running a warehouse with his unusual gifts as a stunt fork-lift driver and a master of depraved English.
Seeing the band live is like spotting a UFO; doesn't happen all the time, and who knows when it might happen again. All we know for sure is that "The March Of Folly Rages On!"