Rus Stewart

Stewart, Rus, an original internationally-recognised recording artist, composer, actor, model, inventor, remixer, and DJ.

(See this link for verifiable sources!)

Mr. Stewart was the founding member of '80s New Wave project, The Fashion Police, and in 1988, the founder of indie label Robotique Records, also involved with projects and bands such as At This Remove, Dystopia, and Nocturnal Waveforms, composing original music ranging from Alternative, and Ambient, to House, to Trance, to Electro and New Wave and Post-Punk underground music.

He has been featured in magazines such as DMA, EQ, Quote Unquote, and Future Music, UK, and his music has seen international radio and club play, and some of his early '90s concerts were televised on national network television.

Rus Stewart plays synthesizer in these bands and solo projects, and his music is in a similar genre to bands such as New Order, Depeche Mode, and Red Flag, a few of the bands that he also remixed. In addition to a recording artist, remixer and producer, Mr. Stewart was a radio DJ, having a mix show on Underground Groove Radio 88.1 FM for over a decade, until going off-air in early 2007.

As a remixer, he has remixed artists such as New Order, Depeche Mode, Red Flag, Source of Gravity, The Cure, Anything Box, Xymox, and The Psychedelic Furs, to name but a few, for exclusive extended versions for airplay on UGR and for club play.

Mr. Stewart also has written reviews for artists who had send in promos and demos from around the globe. He also invented a small studio monitor, the "Record Monitor" which is made from recycled vinyl records, and has invented a synthesizer module called the "Trancemogrifier" and a solar power supply to run studio kit.

Mr. Stewart has also delved into modeling and acting, having made an appearance on a CBS series in 2006, and featured in advertisements for Tedi of Samoa in 1991.

The following is a portion of a Bio from a third-party site, given by permission:

"There are alot of artists who follow a particular genre, and try to follow current trends. (And these usually end up becoming the "flavour of the month" those acts that burn brightly for a short while, but also those that have a short shelf-life, to ultimately fade into obscurity.)

Others may try to be "a little of this, a little of that" and try to please everyone. (And usually these end up being nothing at all.)

Every now and then, an artist comes along who defines their own genre, and invents their own sound, maintaining their own niche.

The Fashion Police are one of those rare breed of bands and artists who do just that, defining a genre, inventing a sound that is their own, setting their own trends, creating timeless art, forever capturing unforgettable moments, transending time and space.
While "The Fashion Police" have been an artist of international renown for quite some time, having played concerts as large as several thousands, their beginnings, as most artists, were of a humble sort.

Rus Stewart began playing synthesizer at an early age, as it was his favourite instrument.
Since he did not yet own his own keyboards in the early '80s, he would go to music shoppes, and jam on whatever synthesizer they had set up in the various stores he haunted, (often gathering some fans by this method) and perhaps recording an experimental instrumental track from time to time on borrowed kit.

New Wave music was his favourite sound, as was Ambient, and at that time, he was desiring to create his own sort of tracks after first becoming acquainted with hearing various artists of the New Wave sort since the day he first heard them.
As the '80s went on, the likes of Depeche Mode, New Order, OMD, Clan of Xymox, Joy Division, Kraftwerk, The Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, Anything Box, and Book of Love, and many others would be what Rus listened to.

(The artist was very advanced for his age in musical tastes, snubbing the more pedestrian pop music, to favour the more innovative underground music scene of the time, listening to college radio from a station broadcasting from Bethany College in West Virginia when he was at that time, still living in Ohio.)
However, he had sorted out his own sound (maybe one could say it was something like Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze -vs- New Order) actually BEFORE he had even heard New Wave music.

"It is a strange coincidence, this. Before I had first heard any sort of New Wave music, I was already coming up with exactly that sound when I would play various keyboards as opportunities would allow. I had my sound all sorted out, but did not really know what I should do with it at that time. When I by chance came across the right radio stations as I was messing about, and discovered this music, (The Psychedelic Furs were the first New Wave band I had heard) probably in the very early eighties, when I was yet quite small, I was shocked to hear that it was real, and that other artists were making a living from this, and that was the moment when I began to seriously consider that I should become a recording artist as soon as it would be possible."

A conversation with Jerry Seinfeld around that time -before he was really famous, after he did a standup set at Mr. Stewart's school, also helped encourage him to have a go with doing something he loved to do:

"Jerry had us all laughing hysterically. After his show, I had a conversation with him about what he was doing. We instantly had a good rapport. He asked me what I wanted to do when I came of age. I told him I was not yet sure if I could actually do it, but that music was something I wanted to get into. He offered some encouragement, which remained in my mind, and helped me to become more determined regarding this decision later on."

By the mid '80s he finally got his hands on a keyboard of his own, and since then the artist did not look back, and quickly further refined a dark, gothic, yet dreamy sound of his own, and began to record his own projects on cassette and reel-to-reel machines.

By 1985 he began his first ventures into remixing, and later on, Rus began experimenting with creating what would be known as the Fashion Police sound, pioneering a new mixture of Ambient, House, Trance, and New Wave.

He started out with just a Casio MT-240, a Casio SK-1 and a few other older keyboards, a homemade mixer, a modified recorder, and a flanger and reverb.

This is what brings you around to The Fashion Police, which took off back in the day at a time when he was living on an island in the South Pacific.

The Fashion Police were officially launched in early 1988, with the first recording with lyrics, "New Wave Calling" and the launch of Robotique Records.

(While going through boxes of old tapes brought out from storage in 2007, we came across some reels of instrumentals that he had forgotten about that was dated 1986 and 1987. The ethereal, synth-based, "Over the Airwaves" "Elektromagnetik" and "Moonscape" are among these early previously-unreleased instrumentals. These are to be released on the "Dystopian Visions" series.)

It is primarily a project that took off pretty much in American Samoa, grew internationally from there.

The name "Fashion Police" actually began with some friends and him joking around...Rus actually came up with the idea in the mid '80s but kept it silently in his mind till he could get enough kit together of his own to get started. By then, he began recording the first demos, and an early EP under that name.

The shtick took off and demand for the early demo tapes was quite heavy, and many concert bookings and radio airplay on KSBS and WVUV in Samoa began, as well as more radio play from various stations around the globe, as demos were sent out to them.

It was better days, and times when radio was more receptive and open to new things. The success of The Fashion Police resulted in some spin-off projects under the names "Overblast" and "Nocturnal Waveforms" and "Space Cadet" during the late '80s and early '90s up till present times. Rus collaborated with Dystopia, Corporate Culture and others as well.
These spin-off projects mentioned above, were essentially similar to The Fashion Police, and sometimes used the same tracks, but could also be accompanied by other collaborators or as solo projects.

(The name for Nocturnal Waveforms stems from when Rus was tweaking an analogue synthesizer one evening and exploring its various waveforms, and coming up with ethereal sounds, and thought of starting a side-project with that name.)

Often the spin-off side-projects were more genre-focused toward ambient instrumentals, than much of The Fashion Police music was, but for all practical purposes, regardless of the name he stuck on a particular project, it was all essentially Fashion Police, and all the artist's, as well as any collaborators in those instances, music.

In the beginning, airplay on KTUH, Hawaii, KQMQ, Honolulu, and several college stations across the USA was what made things take off, and it went global. Also, some televised charitable concerts were aired on national TV on PBS and NBC.

"I think the ambient, gothic, new wave, electro sort of sound I had was what brought attention to what I did, as all the other artists in the Islands were doing the sort of typical sound of music that you would expect, and here I was hitting them with something far removed from your typical Island music sound, as sometimes it pays to dare to be different." "My music did not sound like anything else from the areas (Samoa or Ohio, at the time) that I lived in, and many fans thought it sounded more like it came perhaps from Germany, the Netherlands or the UK."

It was also around early '88 when the artist formed his own record label which is called Robotique Records, as a sort of catylist to move things along.

(Robotique had been started in somewhat in the same homebrew do-it-yourself spirit as the mighty Red Flag who formed Plan B around that time, or Source of Gravity, a UK duo who Rus was to form an alliance with in more recent times ten years later, around '98)

The first studio recordings and demo tapes were recorded on homebrew equipment, part of the time, at least, especially by around 1992, until late 1993, were also done in an old vicarage house and in a WWII bunker at the edge of the sea in Leone, American Samoa. Prior to then, from the beginnings in '88 through '91, recordings were sometimes done at other locations, and some early recordings were concert bootlegs of Fashion Police sessions....."

Discography:
(taken from third-party public-domain resources, and album cover information from private record collection, with permission)

(with The Fashion Police)
The Fashion Police "you're vogue" (1988)
New Wave Calling (single, 1988)
High Fashion (single, 1988)
The Fashion Police (single, 1989)
The Outer Limits (live, 1989)
The bootleg concerts (live, 1990)
Demos (1993)
Retro (1998)
Robotique-Electronique vol.1 (compilation, 2004)
Robotique-Electronique vol.2 (compilation, 2005)
The Fashion Police: "Dystopian Visions" (EP series, 2006-onward to present)

(various compilations)
Robotique Records "On the Fritz" series, (compilations 2005)

(with Nocturnal Waveforms)
Astralspace (1995)
Astralspace (special edition re-release, with bonus tracks, 2001)
Concert (material from 1990 concert, released 2003)
The Outer Limits (1989 concert, released 2004)

(with Dystopia)
Dystopia (1995)
Irritating to Everything (1996)

(with Source of Gravity)
Earth to Mars (1997)
Atlantis/Earth to Mars (martian dub remix) (12" single, 2001)
Winter's Discontent (extended chillout rendition, 2001)
Futuristic Visions (part 2 "Doomsday Trudge" rendition, part 3, "Hypersonic Machinery" rendition" 2001)

(under the Overblast experimental side-project name)
Delusions of Grandeur (live CD, 2005)

(with Corporate Culture)
Martini Rock and Roll
(performance on "I meet Girls on AOL" and "Lock Em Up" from the album, 2001)

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