About this project

"My name is Eric...
and I used to be a scared little kid.
And the older i grew the darker things got ..
'til i just about flipped my lid.
But then I started talking with people about,
and found out they felt the exact same way.
They were just better at ignoring it than me
(or they were just too ashamed to say).
So I recorded an album about it,
but now I'm drowning in debt.
I just want to try and help people feel hopeful,
but to do that, my band needs all the help we can get."

A faulty chromosome is me (with a bunch of help from my friends) trying to make music that brings hope to people (especially ourselves), and encourages thinking and dreaming and smiling and dancing and clapping and singing (joyously off-key) and feeling less lonely and afraid about being alive, because it's really difficult to stay sane in this country when there is so much horn-honking impatience and annoyance at earnest questions, and advertisements tell us that salvation lies in buying their product, but we barely have enough money to survive (let alone pay for luxuries like health care and food that actually nourishes us and hasn't been genetically modified/soaked in poison). So we just get so stressed and depressed and overwhelmed that things start to feel bleak and no amount of drugs or liquor or food or sex or wishful escapes to heaven will makes it go away and.... :::Deeeeeeep Breath:::: sometimes all it takes is the simple fact of hearing someone else say that they feel just as scared silly as you do to make you feel less crazy and everything seems mostly okay again. This is the message I'd like to share through my songs to as many people as I can get to listen to it.

Please help us spread our hopeful message by donating?

We are so close to being done recording, but cannot go any further. You see, my pockets are empty, and my credit cards are not only maxed out, but the APR has been raised to 15% (bank bailouts + stealing money from me = prosperity?!), so I am now forced to waste my time working a shameful job in order to save up enough money to get back on my feet, but the odds are stacked against me, and it could take a very long time before we are able to proceed as a band.

I am asking for $5,678 in order to master, design, and press the album, as well as for the promotional costs for it (also because I find it enjoyable to say "5.6.7.8..." as though it's counting off a song).

Debt has got us worrying & fear, it makes us cry. We're not CRAZY! Its all WRONG! So I sing it in a song (but I really need your help so I can try)

See, I want to make friends and share ideas and push each others' brains to grow bigger and stronger and pull each other up when we feel deflated so that we can work hard together and figure out real solutions to fix this awful mess we're in because we can't do it alone and if we're not talking about it, that's when we start to feel scared again, so I will sing about it until I'm blue in the face (and even then, I will be wheezing until I black out!), but I really need help to keep going.

Now please know this: I do not want to be rich. In fact, I do not want money at all (I would love to make a faulty chromosome a 501c3 non-profit). You see, I feel very dirty putting such a steep price tag on goods and services that I would be glad to do for free, but sadly, time is money, and money is a necessary evil in order to live in this sick economy, so I must sadly tuck my tail between my legs and beg all big-eyed like a hungry puppy.

In reality, I need a whole lot more money to really achieve the goals I have set, but I'm being modest just to get things going again. I would love to be able to have an electric/hybrid/bio-diesel car to tour in so as to not be making such a mess of the air along the way. I would also really like to make the band a non-profit organization and be able to promote our message throughout the country with simple, well-designed booklets to encourage people to think and talk and encourage a bigger community at our shows. I would also like to be able to get a booking agent who can help us play more all-ages shows (which is very hard to do for an unknown indie band because it's mostly marketed to college kids and bars make most of their money selling alcohol) and be able to reach kids stuck in abusive and repressive homes who might not otherwise be able to hear any kind of optimistic words, as well as tour other countries. I would also like to have as close to zero-waste as is possible. Many of the T-shirts have been purchased deadstock from thrift stores, the albums will be in the form of repurposed children's books with recycled paper and vegetable inks on the inside, and promotional copies will use jewel cases and envelopes donated by local radio stations who would have just thrown them in the trash. But for right this very second, $5,678 would be an amazing help, and a very good start.

In any case, thank you very much for your time in reading this ramble (and double-thanks if you donate!).

xoxo~
Eric

(ps. If you'd like to help, but simply cannot afford to, maybe you could think of someone who has money to ask?)

Project location: Austin, TX

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a faulty chromosome

Austin, TX

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A faulty chromosome is what I named my music on account of people asking me "what are you, retarded or something?" all the time. I do things quite differently than most, I suppose, but I don't think I'm retarded. I don't think anyone is retarded, it's just that people have been tricked by the media into believing that there actually is such a thing as "normal" to be achieved that -- when something "abnormal" is presented to them -- they don't quite know how to process it, and make fun of it, or give it abstract labels like "weird" or "quirky" without really thinking about what that implies...

The music is a slopbucket of sing-sung-alongable-songs full of fuzz and tremolo, sock-hop hand-claps, 8-bit blips, water-damaged photographs of your 8th birthday, mashed casio chords, collapsing guitars, and drum machine'd beats all bundled up in a warmish childhood memory of hiding underneath your grandma's kitchen table in 1989 watching an episode of Mister Rogers with her overweight cocker spaniel (what was his name? keebo? keeno?).

People have called it "loser-pop" or "hip-plop" or "jangle-slop" or "lo-fi-college-rock" or "shoegaze-bop." I think those are all very cute names, but I don't know, I just try to make happy and hopeful songs that sound good to me? I guess the point is that -- because there are so many different influences mooshed together in each song (pavement + xtc + freestyle fellowship + buddy holly + nirvana + new kids on the block + new order + sun ra = one song) -- it doesn't fit very nicely in any genre...

We have snuck our way onto bills with acts like: Dan Deacon, Atlas Sound, The Radio Dept, the Vivian Girls, HEALTH, Rose Melberg, Ariel Pink, Half Japanese, and other such-sounding indie heartthrobs (I'm not trying to impress you or anything, because I'm sure none of those bands even took the time to watch us play, but just so you have some sort of frame of reference).

Last year our first album, "as an ex-anorexic's six sicks exit," came out and I tried very hard to get people to know who we were by paying a promotions company money I didn't have to harass people into listening to it, and we toured a lot, and -- though we met a lot of nice, new friends, and many people told me they liked the songs a lot -- I still ended up losing a lot of money, and we still can't make music a full-time career....

If you'd like, you can hear a lot of the older songs at the links below. I think they're pretty good songs, but I was still really afraid and confused then, so sometimes I mumble and you can't even tell what I'm singing about. I tried to do a better job about that for this new album. I hope you will get to hear them soon and tell me what you think?

1. myspace.com
2. afaultychromosome.org
3. last.fm