Blevin Blectum


Blevin Blectum is an American electronic musician and multimedia composer. She is celebrated as an "icon of deviant and cerebral electronic music".

Early life and education

She was born Bevin Kelley in 1971. Her younger brother is musician Kelley Polar and her cousin is musician Gavin Russom. Blectum studied the violin during her youth.
At Oberlin College she began making electronic music at the WOBC-FM studios. At Mills College, she partnered with Kevin Blechdom to form Blectum from Blechdom, an electronica and performance art duo. In 2001, Blectum from Blechdom won an Award of Distinction for digital music at the Prix Ars Electronica.
In May 2014, she graduated with a PhD in Computer Music and Multimedia from Brown University's Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments department. Her dissertation committee included writer Brian Evenson and playwright Erik Ehn. While at Brown University she created sound and music for several of playwright Theo Goodell's works.

Career

Blectum has released many solo albums, and released a CD/DVD Unseen Forces on Matmos's Vague Terrain label as part of multimedia band Sagan with J Lesser, video producer Ryan Junell, and Wobbly. In 1998 she worked at Orban testing radio processing units, in 1999 worked at Thomas Dolby's Headspace and Beatnik Inc. as a beta-tester, and in 2000 to 2004 worked as a sound designer at LeapFrog Enterprises and several smaller sound design companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She has commonly worked with the software Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Max/MSP/Jitter, Apogee Duet.
An avid bird enthusiast, Blectum quit music for several years and worked as a registered veterinary technician at the Medical Center for Birds in Northern California, before moving to Providence, Rhode Island in 2007.
In 2013, she co-founded theatrical-electro-acoustic-chamber-ensemble The Traveling Bubble Ensemble with Michael Kelley, Elise Kuder, and Marjorie Gere.
In 2011 she was artist-in-residence at WORM, a Rotterdam-based institute for avant-garde music and art.
Her fifth solo LP/CD, Emblem Album, was released on Aagoo records on December 5, 2013.

Discography