I grew up in Petaluma, the cow infested town of Petaluma California where kids like dirt bikes, demolition derby, and playing imaginary gangster. I bonded with very few classmates because I was uninterested. The average amount of time a human spends in trees throughout their entire lifetime is 8.5 hours. Nearly 167 full days my childhood was spent in trees. Not consecutively. I averaged an hour or 2 a day over the course of maybe 10 years where I was climbing heavily. With age, I have developed restraint with my climbing. Sometimes, I study buildings and figure out the best way to get on the roof. When nobody is around, I sometimes go for it. I have found that the body remembers these early-life skills remarkably well, and I can be quite agile at scaling a wall. At Target I was disciplined for climbing to the roof during a shift. I was not a musically inclined child. I would sing often. Usually I would sing dramatic soundtracks to disasters I was enacting on Lego cities. I wanted to have a 100 piece orchestra playing the soundtrack, but I couldn't get them to do it, so I aproximated as best I could. I briefly studied piano in my childhood. My passion for music and my self-esteem were crushed on a weekly basis by the organist from The Church of Christian Science. I was unable to keep rhythm, and I couldn't hit the right notes without looking at my hands. Funny. I still have to look at my hands when I type. That whole thing with the no hands looking is something I don't do. I type pretty fast. Sometimes I watch my hands and study their movements as they type. We are pretty smart animals, us humans. We really go for it. Think about typing classes you may have taken. What if you never were able to finish those speed excercises. Like you hit some sort of wall, and just couldn't get through to the next level. That's where I was with the piano. Just banging my head against this wall on a weekly basis. I watch my hands as I type now, and I realize I am typing well over forty words per minute. If I was given some typing test, I would probably score like 2o maybe 25 WPM. I guess when you have something to say, it just pours out. I must be the same way with music. Reading music and playing it back is almost like those typing tests. It's all good clean fun, but if you know what you're going to play, you don't need sheet music. I listened to lots of Beach Boys and MC Hammer. Then Nirvana mix tapes, and The Doors and Pink Floyd and Dead Milkmen. I watched Wayn's World too many times, and something about that movie made me want to shred. I put in the time to learn a few cords, and I was off and running. My first serious musical project started in 1996 when I got together with my

Nirvana 2 soon became a distant memory, and I played in a few bands, all of which just cloning the sounds of whatever rock band was in the top 40 that week. I was disenfranchised with live music, and began to experiment with midi sequencers and sound editing. It is a lucky day when 2 musicians in the same and see eye to eye. I had that experience less and less in my musical collaborations. Cakewalk, Goldwave, and Yamaha CS1-X was my bread and butter for a good long time. I discovered I could get really anal about writing and mixing recording on the computer. And I didn't need a drummer, because so many good recordings already existed of drums. That was where the Baboon Torture Division really came out of.

Once I was recording on a regular basis, I started tracking down interesting things to record. I became a regular at local junkyards, collecting objects with unusual acoustic qualities. We used to drive to the middle of the country with cars full of metal canisters, PVC pipes, refrigerator boxes, rebar, and have epic, foggy night barnyard jam sessions. We never called it a band, and few recordings still survive. It was just good, clean fun.

In 2000 I left Petaluma to study Film at Cal State Long Beach. I found very few like-minded musicians in the LBC. Plenty of OC punk rockers and white rappers, and DJ's with clothes that were extra large so you could hide forties in the pockets and get fucked up. I did my share of getting fucked up, but only once or twice with DJ's. I built a junk drum kit in the oil fields outside of town. I would bike out there at night to get drunk and play drums till I hallucinated. Ancient spirits would talk to me there. I found out later that the natives considered that spot to be sacred ground, and the birthplace of God. I kicked it with the Indians, climbed every building on campus, played accordion with a band in the insane asylum, explored the local storm drains, and got heavily into animation and photography. I ended up letting my punk rock roommates borrow my electric guitar because I didn't play it much. It occurred to me one day that in the frenzy of college life, I had recorded no music in a year. I had written Sweet Donkey Love, but never put it to tape. I wanted to do that at least. I was exposed to hi-fi recording technology through my film education, and considered it a waste to compromise the quality of Sweet Donkey Love by using my sound card inputs to record. I volunteered as a sound guy on student films to learn the how to make all the gear work. Then I started getting into the school's Pro Tools lab. I started helping students with sound on their films. If I am a sucker for anything, it is this; being the dude who everyone respects because he knows how the fuck shit works. So when people begged me to record sound on their projects because I was the sound guy who knew how to run the NAGRA, my ego pulled me in. I became so swamped with student films, and producing my own films that I only had a chance to do some serious fieldwork on a few occasions. A memorable one was trekking a half mile through the Long Beach storm drains with 2 metal shelves, a circuit bent SK-1, a megaphone, a dremmell, some fireworks, and a DAT machine. It was disgusting, dirty, and fucking awesome.

Around the time I was wrapping up my degree at CSULB, I was introduced to the Infinite Complexity crowd in Los Angeles. Inspired by artists like 8 Frozen Modules, Daedelus, and Phthalocyanine, Venetian Snares, and Books On Tape, I went into frenzied spurt of creativity and learning. My last semester of college was devoted to Use Your Illusion 3, Total Remix, and Space Pirates Versus Robot Ninjas On Dinosaurs Planet.

Soon after Illusion 3, I did my first legitimate film score for Le Histoire Du Billy Matter, which gave me a chance to turn off the computers and distortion pedals bust out the accordion.

While I was supporting myself working the night shift at Target, I met my wife, Pockets, on a Santa rampage, who would become the first serious musical collaborator I had played with in years. We formed a band called The Animal Lovers, and would invade open mic nights with all kinds of electronic gizmos and do really fucked up cover songs, and even a few Baboon Torture Division acoustic sets. German Electronica thing, playing low-fi BTD covers. We also started doing puppet shows together, just as a joke for hardcore BTD fans. Audience response was so overwhelming, that we continued with the puppet shtick, which has now become somewhat of a staple Baboon Torture Division feature.

I now work as a freelance boom operator and sound guy on stupid movies. I am relocating to Vancouver to get away from American beer and GW Bush. Maybe away from the speed and chaos of LA I will be able to finally finish some new albums.

-Chris Hixon A.K.A. Steve Biloba