Rus Stewart

Who is Rus Stewart?
I started my interest in the synthesizer when I was quite small. My family had some electric organs and an old piano that I would jam on in rare moments when nobody was around to bother me.
They weren't synthesizers, but I was able to experiment quite a bit with them, and i was able to sort out my basic sound, in a way.
At first, I never really took it seriously....I was just a kid having fun, finding something creative to do to escape boredom. Also, when I could, I would jam on keyboards and synthesizers set up in music shoppes, and it was there, where I got my first fans, as people would gather around and listen to this kid as he improvised with ethereal sounds and beats. Doing that, made it even more fun, and I began to think that I could be onto something with it.
I did not yet realise that I would soon be playing my music for thousands of fans, however.
What I find was most strange, was how I sorted out my sound before I had first listened to what would become my favourite bands and artists. Most artists sort this out after listening to their favourite records for a few years. I did it backwards, in a way, but ended up in the same place.
When I was small, I did not own a radio, and while I liked some of what my siblings listened to on their records and radios, it was nothing like what I did or anything that I really wanted to listen to, aside from perhaps one or two songs from their records that I enjoyed listening with them.
Later, when I did get my own hi fi set, I discovered the local college radio station, and would listen to mostly underground New Wave and Ambient music. It was then, that I was surprised to hear the similarity as per what they were doing, was to what I had been doing, for all those years. While listening to what they were doing, and how they were being played on the radio, I started thinking "I can do this." and I started to look at it in a different perspective.
I would also mess about with tape machines and experiment with turntables and I started having a go at remixing. It was then, when the idea to set up my own kit and record my own sounds, and have a real go at it, began.
I would borrow keyboards to use, and later on, I got my first keyboards, and some other bits of kit, and began to record.
In 1988, I mailed some of my first recordings to college radio stations. The disc jockeys and listeners swarmed upon it, and it would be played alongside of artists such as Depeche Mode, Blue Clocks Green, Red Flag, The Cure, New Order, and Clan of Xymox....Some soon had me on air as a guest artist and I also started playing more live shows and getting more fans, and had the help of a fantastic agent....and by 1990, the radio airplay that I could get out of these early recordings, expanded to be international, and included some commercial stations, as I kept mailing out those promos.
Anyway, you've heard of The Fashion Police.
You've heard the music on the radio...that was usually the name attached to the music that was played.
The Fashion Police, the name, as pertaining to some of my first music, began as a joke, because I could not think of what to call it. The name just randomly popped into my mind, I thought it was funny, and my friends who were present, had a nice laugh out of it. It ended up that the name fit the identity of the music quite well, and by 1986, that was what I thought I should name the project, and it was official in 1988 when it started getting airplay. It was sort of unique mixture of New Wave/Ambient Electro-Synthpop-ish abstract music, often with extended, quasi-orchestral instrumental synthesizer breaks, known for a "wall of sound" type of production, built up around synthesizers and drum machines, with minimalistic spoken-word lyrics such as the following example you have heard before:
"your vogue...you ring my bell....your money talks....in walls of words...there is an army on the dance floor...."
That was me.
I tried to collaborate with other artists on that project over the years, but The Fashion Police, as a project, has ended, at least for now. It became apparent that it would not work as a band, due to everyone's perpetually conflicting schedules and time and distance and life's twists and turns happening when trying to record and book shows with other artists, and I just knew then, in 2008, that it was time to let it go out on a high note, with the final recordings on that project to be left with great artists such as Shadi Ziaei, Patrick Gadola, and Jason Gearin having been present, however short the time they were with me on it. I am focusing more these days, as my solo project, which overlaps with much of the music from The Fashion Police and my other projects anyway.
And, yes, my other projects, including The Fashion Police, all have their own MySpace, Reverbnation, and iLike.com pages, perhaps hundreds of tracks with my name on them...so, I also recommend visiting those. ;) add yourself to the fan lists if you may as well.
Going back to the subject of my bio, I ended up headlining some pretty big concerts over the years, and I also opened for and shared stages with some impressive artists from time to time. (More of these concerts, of course, were being played in the earlier years than the later years, partially because of the bad economy and problems in the music industry recently, and also, because there were more venues available back then, and furthermore, due to the help of a good booking agent that I had during the earlier years, that was lacking later on. - I have been trying to find a good agent, for a very long time now, but when I contact them, if they answer the message, they usually tell me that their artist rosters are full.)
Aside from my early solo artist project and The Fashion Police and Nocturnal Waveforms projects, I had other music played internationally as well, especially in Europe and parts of Southeast Asia. Much of that, especially what was played during the later '90s and millennial time, had something to do with Source of Gravity and much to do with the growing dance music scene.
1988 was the year Robotique Records was launched. I tried experimenting with different genres of music, the early to mid '90s saw some experiments with Trip Hop tracks, however, I was most comfortable with experimental Ambient music.
I also launched the Nocturnal Waveforms project (Ambient music) around 1989, and put out that project's first album in 1995, after putting out perhaps a half a dozen or more other releases on my various projects discographies between the beginning of Robotique, and that time.
In mid '91 my agent retired and went out of business, so I went it alone, and the following year, I did not do very much with my music. A few years later, after repeatedly being robbed, I moved back to the states, and started over.
The mid'90s brought forth an MTV video as well, a harder-edged dance music track, which I had done as an experiment, while attending a local community college/technical centre, that I had put together in the college multimedia laboratory.
I also used to DJ in the clubs, and also on the radio, on small underground stations and I played a mixture of Trance, New Wave, and House music, usually extended remixes and rarer stuff.
I started as a DJ back around the time I began to record my own music. When I got my first keyboards, I started mixing my own performances in with that, and I started playing full concerts by then.
In 2002, I stopped being a club disc jockey mainly so I could focus better on recording, and the radio station I was on went off-air in 2007.
Around then, I also used some of my earlier recordings from the pre-Fashion Police era, which I had not really thought to use for anything, to use with the Elektrodroid project that I gave an official launch for in 2007, and put more music on the Internet.
"my music is usually abstract, and mostly built around instrumentals, and when there is vocals, if the vocals are done by myself, they generally are minimal and spoken-word, often with much echo, reverb, vocoder and other effects. the words that i write for them can be generally, abstract mysticism, which allows the listener to interpret them however he or she feels."
"the music i compose is meant to draw the listener in, and allow them to experience the sound somewhat as one would experience a lucid dream or a great movie. it is intended to be listened to in its entire form in order to be fully appreciated. it is best to listen to it in an environment which would allow one to empty one's mind from worldly distractions."
"i don't use computers at all in the compositions. all of my studio kit is hardware based, keyboard/synthesizers, samplers, vocoders, effect processors, sequencers and drum machines. i record to analogue reels and sometimes use high quality cassette machines and minidisc, usually live to two tracks, sometimes to four tracks on the reel machines, and when i do need to multitrack to more than four tracks, i use a stand-alone portable hardware-based multitrack recorder, but i never need more than eight tracks. alot of my kit is one-of-a-kind that i either built myself or modified to fit my specific needs."
"i do not do much editing, if any at all. what you hear, is generally what was played as i composed and performed it. sometimes i compose material on the fly as i improvise the material live in a session. if there are any imperfections, generally i leave them be, to exist as part of the sound, a sort of 'warts and all' approach...i guess this is from my influence of what was played on the local college radio station when i began listening to alternative music, as much of that music had a raw edge to it. i find it refreshing to hear music done that way, especially in an age of over-produced and over-edited 'popstar' recordings. my approach is somewhat the antithesis of the 'popstar' recording in some ways, i suppose. however, regardless of my left-of-centre approach, and experimental and improvised style, my music tends to possess the same mass-appeal to audiences, as does pop music, in general."
Further artist information, as well as info regarding past shows and crowd attendance, may be found within the Reverbnation artist page.
You may find me on Twitter, and Facebook, however , I rarely am on those pages. I don't have much time for social networking, but always answer messages when I can.