Rocker adopts a new posture
By Brandon Judeh
Youngstown
Both synth and punk rock took the world by storm in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the former’s dark, danceable beats and the latter’s in-your-face ideology.
North Jackson native Jon Erich Booth will bring both of those genres together as he brings his Bloomington, Ind., band Ray Creature to Cedars on Friday.
Booth, a 2003 graduate of Jackson-Milton high school, is no stranger to the Youngstown music scene, as his former band, Posture Coach, played area bars from 2003-07.
An instructor and grad student at Indiana University, Booth formed Ray Creature in 2012 after he started deconstructing old Posture Coach recordings to make drum and noise samples.
“After doing that for a while, I decided it sounded too much like a band,” he said. “I wanted it to sound like it was impossibly hanging together. The focus is now primarily on digital synthesizers and drum machines. When I write for the band, I think in terms of the music’s visceral effect. I value atmosphere and pulse over lyrics and hooks. To varying degrees, Ray Creature is dance music.”
The band is in the middle of an eight-city tour that also includes stops in Philadelphia, Detroit and Brooklyn.
After being a part of the once-vibrant and corroborating Youngstown scene, Booth says that Bloomington is much different because of the atmosphere and abundance of musicians.
“You could safely call it a music town,” he said. “There are so many bands and shows, and so many of them are good. The atmosphere is immediate. You end up playing face to face to a guy holding a bag of beer, and I like that.”
Still, Booth is looking forward to returning to Youngstown.
“I’ve always loved playing in Youngstown,” he said. “It’s always an interesting crowd. You get family members, friends who would show up even if you were painting self portraits to industrial noise music, and you get people who have liked what you’ve done in the past,” Booth said. “It feels like a party, and you’re the guest of honor.”