Bruce Zalcer’s music embraces the darker elements of humanity, the complexities of psyche, and the uplifting momentum of both the individual in flux and our collective evolution.   Inspired by artists, like Spektre, Umek, Richie Hawtin, Thomas Schumacher, and Enrico Sangiuliano, Bruce Zalcer cultivated his own sound through a process of musical evolution and personal metamorphosis.

Bruce was a musician since childhood (and a believer in the bold, rockstar ethos of being one’s own self since his first listen to Metallica and Guns and Roses at age 10).  But, after he earned a B.A. / B.S. in Economics and History from the University of Pennsylvania, he dutifully pivoted toward the path of convention.  Family pressures, and the overall pull toward cultural norms leftover from a world passing too slowly from our parents’ ideals, led Bruce toward the corporate life as an insurance executive at his family’s firm.  He moved back to Panama and music moved to the fringes of daily life.  Bruce met the love of his life, married her in 2013, and gained a beautiful family– but he also lost himself as a musician.

 

“By early 2017, I had what you might call a crisis of identity.” So Bruce started over.  And, that moment now fuels his creative voice.

 

In May of 2018, while on vacation in LA, he bought new gear in the same store where his father bought his first bass in 1995 and started creating again.  Less than a year later, Filmmaker Thais Drassinower selected two of Bruce’s Latin Dance tracks to score her award winning short independent film “Baby” (2019).  Title track “Baby” and “Tu Miranda” helped to tell this coming of age story about Lia (19), who experiences a series of disturbing events one night that force her to understand that the only person who can take care of her is herself.  (https://www.thaisdrassinower.com/baby)

Bruce now produces exclusively Techno.  His sound is hallmarked by pumping rhythms and dark, ambient sounds that backdrop a range of electronic improvisations.  It honors an evolution from his Latin Dance roots, to early obsession with Hard Rock and distorted guitar, to the expressive freedom of electronica.  Often impregnated with emotive messaging that captures the experience of “shifting.”  Each song embraces the element of change in some way, grappling with the complexities of a world — and an individual — in the throes of flux, and driving momentum toward concepts of authentic destiny and a journey toward true self.

 

SELECTED WORKS

In “Pulsar” a driving beat is percolated by fluttering staccato notes which seem to awaken amid a rushing wind of ambient sounds.  Brassy, percussive details spring and spiral into a melody across a dark, whooshing backdrop as if the listener is being carried by the winds of change to the rhythm of destiny.  

“Get Up (Awaken Now)” begins with the sounds of neurons awakening. Firing, one then another, activating one another until they work themselves into a harmony that propels the listener through a stream of electric thought into a deep and raspy whispered command: “Get Up.” 

In “Come Back” a perky melody of echoes carry the listener through the dominance of beat with mounting ambiance and increasing fullness before springing into layers that seem to build energy from within and hold it there.  A single voice, spoken as many dark and low whispers, beckons — but not as temptation would — persistently but gently, as if to offer both action and choice known only to the listener.

“Savior” begins from a darker place, with mechanical sounds echoing as if against corners in rectangles and triangles. A fast heartbeat and mind in motion – on a mission – climbing and reaching toward something forged in iron to move to higher levels of complexity.  It eventually settles into a comfortable but energetic melody that conjures a surety of vision and finishes with a soft and ambient gong.