In another lifetime, Bruno Pronsato (Seattle producer Steven Ford) drummed for Texas speed-metal/punks Voice Of Reason.
But then he had his head split open by My Bloody Valentine, Gang Of Four, Electric Company, death-metal titans like Venom,
Slayer, and Napalm Death. “My childhood was filled with music, but [Slayer’s] Haunting the Chapel and Hell Awaits just
somehow transported me to some weirder level,” Ford recounts. “It somehow made it okay to just be as free as possible with
music. And from the time I was 14 or 15, it was a steady process of finding out and getting deeper and deeper into people
who were, in my opinion, really shaping the future of music.”
After Voice Of Reason split, there followed a period of musical disenchantment, during which Ford moved to Seattle in 1998.
There he commenced making computer-based music. Incorporating the above influences along with inspiration from
European atonalists like Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg, Ford gravitated toward microsound, taking the name Bobby
Karate to chop out intricately designed glitchscapes that unpredictably fizz and crackle like the best output from the Raster-
Noton and Mille Plateaux labels.
While establishing his rep as Seattle’s foremost sculptor of powerful, electronic abstractions, Ford dabbled with dance music
production under the Bruno Pronsato moniker. What began as a lubricious lark to get the ladies bumpin’ and grindin’ became
Ford’s primary obsession. Over the last year, Bruno’s live sets emerged as fist-pumping demonstrations of heady sound
design and hedonism.
“One of the reasons techno or minimal techno is such a force in my life,” Ford says, “is because it is music that is working
with a predefined set of rules, namely 4/4 time. Much like the 12-tone composers who had to work within their tone rows,
techno producers are also working within a set of boundaries. I think it's quite a challenge to come up with something
creative within a set of pre-established rules. It makes me think a little harder about what I can do.”
His debut full-length, Silver Cities, offers irrefutable proof of what Bruno Pronsato can do. In this album’s wake, tech-house’s
tried-and-true formulas suddenly seem under-cooked.
–Dave Segal