Jason Urick

A fixture on the Baltimore experimental scene, Jason Urick began performing solo ambient dronescapes under the name themoonstealingproject in the late 1990s. In the mid-2000s, he joined noise-pop improvisers Wzt Hearts (pronounced "Wet Hearts"), adding live processing and laptop manipulation to the group's open-ended post-rock wanderings. When Wzt Hearts disbanded in 2008, Urick reverted to solo mode, crafting glacially slow compositions inspired by minimal techno pioneers like Pan Sonic, Ryoji Ikeda, and Fennesz. The result was his 2009 debut album for Thrill Jockey, a collection of four slowly unfolding electronic drone pieces entitled Husbands. The cover art for Husbands (Urick's first release issued under his given name) was an appropriation of John Lennon & Yoko Ono's notorious Two Virgins album art, with Urick's face superimposed onto the naked bodies of both John & Yoko. In 2010, he followed with Fussing & Fighting, an album inspired by an ongoing obsession with dub reggae and the marriage of dub and minimal techno by acts like Rhythm & Sound. Urick's take on this hybrid sound was characteristically slow-paced. The dub obsession continued on 2011's Title King, a collaboration between Urick and Cex released on cassette only. After years of residence in Baltimore, having become a key figure on the local music scene and organizing the performance space Floristree, Urick packed up and moved locale to Portland, Oregon. This transitional period was said to be the inspiration for his eerie and displaced, 2012 full-length I Love You.