Skoanic

Skoanic was an electronic music trio from California, comprising Haru Tokonaga ("The Jap"), Zhe "Johnny" Chan ("The Chinaman") and Clark Bohmont ("The Engineer"). The three met while attending graduate school at UCLA and formed the band in the late 1980s. Theorigin of the band's name was the meshing of the words "sonic" with "koan", the latter a term used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening. Tokunaga, an accomplished keyboard player, and Chan, bassist, had been making music together for a few years before recruiting Bohmont, a self taught drummer and a computer and electronics expert.

Skoanic's early works were an innovative blend of real instruments, samples, and electronically engineered sounds. Skoanic was popular in Southern California's club scene but remained fairly unknown outside the area until 1988. In that year, the band was invited to play at an electronia festival in Ibiza which launched a large European cult following. Later in the same year, Skoanic played at a few venues in Tokyo which garnered a significant Asian fan base after the release of a live recording of one of their shows.

koanic's significance

Although the band was not a big commercial success, the contribution to the music industry by the band's members was quite significant. Skoanic was one of the first bands to perform electronica live long before it became more mainstream with acts like The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and Daft Punk. The live shows also included visual components, designed by Chan, parametrically synchronized with the music. Bohmont developed several electronic innovations in beat matching, sequencers, and a realtime effects processor called SonicShaper. Skoanic eschewed several offers from major record labels opting to form their own independent label called Zensei Music. All of the band's members had a contrarian view that music should essentially be free and bands should make their living from live shows. In the same vein, Bohmont released the schematicsto all of the electronic gear he developed into the public domain under a right to use license authored by Tokunaga, a lawyer.

Current status

The members of Skoanic quit making music together in 1991. Tokonaga went on to a successful career as a music industry lawyer and music producer. Chan became an influential music producer in Asia and died in a car accident in the Philippines in 2003. Bohmont has continued to make ambient music released under several aliases as well as licensing his samples and lyrics to several groups.