The Philadelphia Ambient Consortium: Unsound : Jim Speer and Mike Ciul

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Unsound : Mike Ciul (aka Capitan Mikee) and Jim Speer
http://eyeballsun.org
Unsound is Mike Ciul (effects devices, samplers, thumb-piano, vocals) and Jim Speer (MIDI Chapman Stick, loops, crumhorn, shahnai). Mike Ciul gave me a demo tape at Stupid Robot back in 1998 and we've been friends ever since. Unsound played at Sonic Logos (Feb 1999) and were incredible. Dave Champion wrote thusly about their opening performance at the first Gate To Moonbase Alpha (October 1999):
what a great way to spend an autumn evening. good vibes, good food, good music. i finally got a chance to see UNSOUND perform. wonderful stuff from Mike and Jim. primordial, mysterious, primitive and transcendent. the choir and the tympanum. screaming electrodes and terrible cannon. all in wondrous stereo action. AND topped off with the juxtaposition of Cap'n Mikee's neandrathal-superhero-fertilitydance and Jim's nouveauwave-robotic-fertilitydance.
Unsound history from eyeballsun.org:
Unsound formed in late 1995 when Jim Speer of folk-rock band Broadside Electric joined Mike Ciul to do something more experimental. The two started playing feedback-drenched improvs with complex MIDI and audio interconnections.
Then Jim had a dream.
He dreamed that Mike was dressed up like a sailor, steering a captain's wheel onstage, while Jim wore a giraffe costume. The band took this to be a sign; Mike adopted the title Cap'n Mikee and bought himself a yellow raincoat, galoshes, and a captain's hat. Jim hasn't gotten a giraffe suit, yet.
Helene Zisook, the fiddler for Broadside Electric, joined Unsound for about a year. The trio extended their stage show to include more costumes and short vignettes of "low-budget performance art" designed to terrify and amuse.
After Helene left, Mike and Jim began work on a A Nautical Tale. As the Tale's scope expanded, they invited Mike Benedetti (of industrial zydeco band Stale Urine) and vocalists Heather Batson and Jessie Bennett to take part in the project. In the summer of 1998, A Nautical Tale was performed for the first time in Philadelphia. The audience was so stunned by the combination of story, slides, music, food, and mind control that the ensemble presented the play twice more during the following year, in Princeton and Baltimore.
Unsound are working on a sequel to A Nautical Tale