John McEntire

Multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and mixer born in Portland (OR, USA) on the 9th of April 1970. He's now living in Chicago (IL, USA). His first instrument was the drums. He did a percussion major at Oberlin College (OH, USA) in 1987 and later Technology in Music and Related Arts at the same school. In 1988 he joined his first band My Dad Is Dead but left in 1989 to join Bastro. In 1991 he relocated to Chicago (IL, USA) together with David Grubbs, another core member of Bastro, where they renamed the band to Gastr Del Sol after some changes in the line-up of the band. After the debut of Gastr Del Sol the band became more of a collaboration with David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. He then shifted focus to his band Mosquito (founded in 1989) which was renamed to Tortoise in 1993. In 1998 Gastr Del Sol came to an end. In 1993 he also founded The Sea And Cake. From the mid-nineties he started to do more engineering work while working with bands like Stereolab, Eleventh Dream Day and Trans Am (2). He built his own studio Soma Electronic Music Studios (Chicago, IL, USA). In 1999 he also started to compose film music.