MySpace Trawl - Thomas Truax
July 6th, 2006 at 15:30 by Matthew Laidlow

It's that time of the week that you all know and love! That’s right; it’s our MySpace Trawl – delivering you the best music that we’ve found after painstakingly sifting through all of the rubbish stuff that’s plaguing MySpace. 
This week we’re heading back over to New York where singer/songwriter Thomas Truax can be found. We can honestly say that this man produces sounds and a show that will both shock and amaze you.
So what’s so different about this guy we hear you ask? Well, Thomas
Truax isn't the traditional singer/songwriter who’ll turn up and strum
away on a guitar for a bit. OK, so he still does this, but he uses other
instruments as well. Ever heard of a Hornicator, a Sister Spinster or a Beatspinner Wheel? No? We didn’t think so.

If you take a listen to the two tracks available on the Thomas Truax MySpace site - especially on the track Prove It To My Daughter - the drums and accompanying sounds just don’t sound like the ones played by traditionalists. All of these instruments were designed and built by Thomas Truax himself in his studio, which he has dubbed The Laboratory. Truax's music has a somewhat mystic feel to it, and lyrically - although his tracks may seem confusing and strange - it’s refreshing to see someone singing about something different. Think about it; how many rappers have we heard rapping about their ghetto upbringing? To our knowledge - lots. So why not explore other avenues?

Hecklerspray first discovered this fine musician while he was on his travels. We were actually hanging around to see another artist but Thomas Truax came on first to wow and amaze us with his mindblowing show. As he slowly wandered onto the stage, the crowd were unsure of what to make of him. What was this man doing with some kind of mechanical contraption? Surely it couldn’t make any kind of noise.
Once again, we were proved wrong as he started to sing songs with subjects ranging from pancakes to the internet. What made the performance even more peculiar was when Thomas Truax performed a track off his latest album Audio Addiction called The Fish (I’m Coming Home). This involved him hopping off the stage and wandering around the amazed crowd with his unplugged guitar in one hand whilst the Sister Spinster provided the beats on stage. Nowhere in the venue was safe from a Truax invasion. Not even the bar. So how does this man work? We asked Thomas Truax a few questions to try and find out. 

You've created your own instruments to perform with, how long did this take to do?
Well, it always took more time than I care to remember. As humans, I think we have a built-in mechanism to make us forget the worries of the past as we thrive on the victories. Unfortunately my worries are more sticky than would normally be considered healthy. It took me hundreds of years to perfect the Hornicator and Sister Spinster, (and they are always works in progress) but thankfully the trouble this might have caused was alleviated by the use of one of my earliest successful inventions - a time machine called the Swift Back Attack, which helps me to get back far enough to get started on an instrument and hopefully get it close to finished before slip back into the present, and before I get too drastically old.

What made you abandon traditional instruments?
I do still play the guitar, as you've seen, and the voice which is as old as prostitution if not older, so I've not so much abandoned traditional instruments as traditional 'human' players, which I've had a lot of good experience with, but found lots of frustration with.

Do you feel that when you perform in front of an unknown audience, they don't know what to make of you?
I find that even when playing with a known audience they don't know what to make of me.

Where are you in the world at the minute?
I'm in a free wi-fi bar in my latest area of residence, East Dulwich, London, UK

Who is your musical influence?
If there were only one it'd be so easy, and boring I reckon. Just about everything influences me musically. When I check the mailbox in the morning, the bills make me scream and the lingerie catalogues make me whistle pleasantly, and that's just the beginning. By the time the evening news rolls around I've got a whole symphony going.

What’s the easiest way to pronounce your surname?
Certainly not with your nose alone! It’s TROOOOO-AKS, nothing fancy, don't roll your R's or OW your OOOOs. It's really not as difficult as some people assume it must be. 

So that’s you lot. We urge you to check him out as he is one of the most unique artists we’ve come across and it is a shame that such awesome showmanship and distinctive song writing are being ignored by the mainstream, who’d rather you listen to Will Young instead. Just because someone dares to do something different shouldn’t mean he gets knocked back. Tossers.