The Innerds are San Diego’s OG post-prog skronk space tropicalia math lounge power duo, featuring the stylations of Bobby Bray (the Locust, Henk, Holy Molar) and drummer Brandon Relf (Sleeping People). The act sees Bray on vocals and mostly finger-tapped guitar, triggering piano samples via a MIDI controller.
“We decided we wanted something that doesn’t exist,” says Bray, a student of interdisciplinary computing and the arts at UCSD. “So we rolled up our sleeves and made it ourselves.”
The Pure Data Machine, a collaboration with Bryan Oczkowski of Batwings, is a customizable effects controller based on an open-source program called Pure Data. The box of knobs, switches, lights, photocells, and a joystick runs off of a thumb drive, so data is easily exchanged and modified. The apparatus was unveiled during the early 2011 Experimental Guitar Show at Soda Bar.
“It can be argued that sound and timbre metaphorically symbolize thoughts and feelings that cannot be explained otherwise via language,” Bray says. “If you believe that to be true, then you are going to become reliant upon effect companies to define what you can communicate.”
The title of their album, Western Spaghettification, is a play on words intertwining Stephen Hawking’s concept of spaghettification (what theoretically happens when you cross the event horizon of a black hole) and Spaghetti Westerns, which were filmed in Italy, with Italians portraying Mexicans, to save money.
The cover art was designed by Bray’s girlfriend, Monsterpussy (Heather Brosche). Innerds self-recorded the album at UCSD’s Conrad Prebys Music Center, where Bray made use of the studio’s Yamaha Disklavier MIDI-controlled piano, which, unlike guitar samples, registers sympathetic vibrations from the acoustics of the piano.
As of 2016, the band was calling itself INUS.