KEVIN BLECHDOM BIOGRAPHY (last edited January 2008)


Kevin Blechdom is a female originally named Kristin Erickson when she was born in Florida in 1978. Armed with a laptop, self-made computer music programs, piano chops, a 5-string banjo, and songs from the heart, Blechdom brings much needed life into electronic music with her one-man show filled with song, dance, blood and guts.

Initially trained as a classical pianist and composer, Kevin was always looking for new musical structures and patterns. She began recording music with her brother and sister-in-law in an experimental rock band called ADULT RODEO about ten years ago, releasing two albums on the revered Shimmy Disc label and more records on the Adult Rodeo imprint, Four States Fair Records. Later she hooked up with Blevin Blectum (Bevin Kelley) and formed BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM after an accidental collaboration one Halloween night while they were at Mills College in Oakland, California. The duo went on to release music on labels like Tigerbeat6 and Deluxe. "The Messy Jesse Fiesta" won 2nd prize at the prestigious Ars Electronica for digital music in 2001. Blectum from Blechdom was a hyperactive computer and sampler duo priding itself with its own digital confusion, frenetic madness, and psychotic delusions.

After Blectum From Blechdom broke up, Kristin kept her team name Kevin Blechdom and relocated herself to Berlin for five years. She wrote and produced two albums for the Chicks on Speed label: BITCHES WITHOUT BRITCHES (2003) and EAT MY HEART OUT (2005). The albums are a mishmash of styles and production techniques. From Broadway musical and rock opera to electro-smudge and aleatoric blatherings, her albums put a bizarre spin on what pop music can be for an era of attention span deficit. Her most recent record of acoustic pop songs, called GENTLEMANIA, is finished and will be released sometime in 2008, after some business has been taken care of.

For the past nine years, Kevin has been touring around the world playing live shows and collaborating. She has worked with artists such as Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Jad Fair, Kramer, Jamie Lidell, Kid606, Dat Politics, Mocky, John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Zeena Parkins, Cristian Vogel, Safety Scissors, Heidi Mortenson, the Organ Lady, Lumberob, Ching Chong Song, Myrobotfriend, Chicks on Speed, Kim Hiorthoy, Andre Vida, Max Tundra, and Planningtorock. She has played shows in Brazil, Australia, Israel, Moscow, and across Europe and the United States.

Currently, she is living in San Francisco and completing her Masters degree in Computer Music at Mills College. She is touring and recording with Christopher Fleeger in their band, Barnwave. She is doing social media experiments with Evans Hankey called HyperReality Club. Kevin produced the new Ching Chong Song album, LITTLE NAKED GAY ADVENTURE, which has just been released on their own record label.