illium
illium@unsuave.com
illium,
aka. troy howard, is the evil music mastermind behind
the higher
the fewer. he plays guitar, and writes all the electronic tracks
(bass,
drums, synth keys).
troy was born in little rock, ak, but didn't stay there long. less than
three months after he was born, his mother left his father (who besides
being a (un)professional jazz guitarist was a violent and frequent
drunk) and moved
the family to st. louis, mo. troy has lived there since.
troy started his music career early, performing in school choirs and
ensemble acts. at around age 14 troy joined his first band the obscene
pineapples as a drummer. they were a sloppy punk band. the highlight
of thier performances was the violent destruction of a commodore 64. after
a year or so
this band broke up and troy decided to learn to play guitar. he formed the
band the flaming
squirrels
with long time friend mike dinkela. this
only
lasted for about a year.. troy played in many other punk bands during that
time, notably the homocidal beggars, the vanderbilts,
pimp daddy and
the fuzz, and fuzzy bunny kult. the flaming squirrels
continued to
reform and break up regularly with many changes in line up and styles of
music. in the last and most recent incarnation to that band, phaedrus (tom cantrell)
joined the band as bassist which began the on going partnership between
those two.
in the early days of his punk rock bands troy learned how to program
sequencers and gradually mixed more and more electronic music into the
bands. the last incarnation of the flaming squirrels was downright
synth-pop. seperate from all his live music, was the completely electronic
side project seals of
similar size which ranges from industrial to
ambient and touches on every other style at some point.
he has also performed extensively with tom cantrell as major tom, billy
reuben, and somewhere heaven
is telling them yes. as well as a
recording project called jennifer won't go out with me. there also
a
project called F.U.N. (fucking unbelievable noise) which is a
collaboration between troy and ex-flaming squirrels manager duffy.
most of these projects are still going on and can be found releasing
tracks and performing at random.
here are some more pictures of troy..
