Tribrix, the Tale of an Accidental Musician
"I never thought I'd be heading up a music operation"
That's Lenny Timons, the man behind Tribrix, the up and coming Rocktronica act from New York. “I began making music in 1989 with a drum machine, a casio synth, two tape decks and a cheap mixer that a friend of mine lent me. It was crude, and the sound was terrible. Soon I got an electric guitar, a 4-track and later a PC based midi setup. I took each technology to the limits of my talent, and always found the results lacking. My instrumental music at that time was interesting, for sure, but it wasn't mainstream and I didn't pursue or expect it to find an audience."
Building on a love of metal, punk, classical, and dance music, Lenny began to develop the musical idea that would become Tribrix and even began the painstaking work of building the first tracks in that style. But he got frustrated with myriad difficulties in realizing his intentions and the project lay dormant for a few years.
In 2005, he took it back up. By then, technological advances had streamlined the process of recording, and the first demo of TechNoel, a Rocktronica Christmas album, was completed in a few months. It was a personal project, an album he made purely because he wanted to listen to it. Once the demo was complete, though, it seemed silly not to share it with others so he passed a few copies out to friends. They played it at Christmas parties that year and word came back that people really liked what they heard.
Lenny's hobby had an audience!
With the TechNoel demo finished, Lenny went back into his audio lab and began to record other material—some based on Beethoven's work, some completely original, but all instrumental. He shared this with his sister, who has no idea what to make of instrumental music. Figuring she probably represented a lot of people, given the popularity of songs with words, Lenny thought to take a stab at making some music with lyrics. It was just about then that some muse decided to reach out to him and before he really knew it, a song called "I Don't Wanna' Fight" sprang into his head—words and music, all at once. He rushed into the studio to record a demo version.
At that moment, laying down the vocal tracks, things took a turn. Almost without realizing it, Lenny's hobby morphed into a calling. What had been an amusement was suddenly a passion. Soon, other musicians were hiring him to produce, provide vocals, and re-master their songs and Lenny found himself very busy making music with lots of people.
“It never occurred to me I'd be making a career of my love of music,” Lenny says, thinking about all that’s happened since he first began his little analog sound experiments. "But I think I bring a fanboy's perspective to the music- making process, which isn't such a common thing."
Even though this started as a solo project, Lenny wanted to keep alive the possibility of making it an ensemble effort, so some sort of “group” name was needed. He also wanted a fairly unique Google term and came up with Tribrix. Taken from the inherent aesthetic beauty of things in threes and a misspelling of common red building blocks, it seemed to him to encompass his musical ideas and working style.
Meanwhile, TechNoel, in demo form, remained unfinished so Lenny then began the painstaking job of finishing each track on TechNoel and mastering all the recordings. It was released in time for Christmas 2007 and has been purchased and enjoyed on at least three continents so far and new listeners continue to discover it around the holidays.
2008 saw the release of Lo Rez Preview, a collection of demos and songs from the first three Tribrix albums TechNoel, BeatHoven (an unreleased demo of Beethoven interpretations), and Rocktronica Rules.
The all original album Rocktronica Rules is in production and Lenny is also hard at work developing a live Tribrix show.
Keep your eyes open.
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