This Is Where the Fish Lives is the brain-child of Rowan Alpha Zeta and for some reason has been encouraged by his room-mate Scott A Manthing.

According to legend, This Is Where The Fish Lives (or simply TIWtFL) began with three dweebs on a gold couch watching MST3K. Then one of them got a bass flute. Then another got an electric viola. Then a third threatened to get a theremin, but instead decided to build a Super Sexy Blue-Light Computer with a Super Computer Brain that he could use for making Magical Musical Crap. Seeing as the Viola had been threatening to start a religion around Colombus, Ohio’s Evolution Control Committee, the Viola and the Magical Musical Man decided that whatever musical project comes of this must include sound collage. The outcome is destined to be stupid and art-faggy and “avant-garde” and will probably be quickly forgotten about, but it’s fun and that’s why it exists.

Rowan Alpha Zeta (aka, Ruadhán M^cElroy) was raised in an Anglo-Irish Amerikan household and trained as a classical singer from the age of three to the age of eighteen. He trained in classical viola from ages eight to fourteen. He taught himself sampling using Cakewalk Pyro, downloaded mp3’s and the default voice-recorder on an iPaq Pocket PC after immersing himself in the works of Evolution Control Committee and The Tape Beatles. His primary musical influences include Velvet Underground/John Cale, Roxy Music/Brian Eno, Virgin Prunes/Gavin Friday/Dave-iD Busaras, DEVO, Evolution Control Committee and The Tape Beatles. He’s also been actively looking to form a “classic” Glam/Art-Rock band, but This Is Where the Fish Lives serves as a more immediate outlet for his pent-up creativity. Rowan is originally from Toledo, Ohio, which is important because he takes this as a “sign” of some sort, seeing as Mark Gunderson (the ECC) is from Columbus and Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) is from Akron. Of course, his name isn’t “Mark,” and he hasn’t lived in Ohio since he was about twelve, so maybe it’s not a sign of what he suspects it may be.

Scott A Manthing is Scottish, German and Ojibwa in descent, his mother a devout Liberal Catholic and he took violin for about three years in Junior High/High School. His favourite band is VNV Nation, but please, don’t hold that against him. Unlike Rowan, he’s not classically trained in any instrument, outside three years playing violin in the school orchestra, but like Rowan, he’s self-taught as an electronic musician. He’s also notably better at making electronic music than Rowan, specialising in EBM and the Kraftwerk/Art of Noice school of techno rather than Sound Collage. He can also actually make music using various Synth programs, wheras Rowan just makes a bunch of noises. It should also be noted that he’s mostly just getting involved in this for something to do with his spare time besides playing video games; in other words, this is not something he’s taking as seriously as Rowan probably is.