Torii MacAdams only drinks the galaxy’s finest malt liquors
Who’s the anonymous man in a coat made of Opium den curtains, with leather-clad digits gripping a talk box? Very privately, a special education teacher, who, after the collapse of his reasonably successful band, was told to pursue his budding interest in outerspace music by friend/en vogue producer Adrian Younge. When he stepped into KPFK’s studios, he was alter-ego Captain Supernova, whose debut EP Visions of the Unknown detailed his early years as an orphan named Hermenius.
The music and mythopoeia of the Captain Supernova character conjures images of grainy sci-fi space exploration, a very intentional move by its creator. Visions of the Unknown is a retro-futurist look at music; in the Captain Supernova canon, it’s a 1979 jazz and boogie-influenced EP, with “predictive” elements of musics to come, namely rap and house. Supernova’s live KPFK set includes “The Captain’s Theme,” a piece of dark library music made by an obsessive indebted (knowingly, I think) to Wendy Carlos’ maladroit synths and angst-through-minimalism ethos. Captain Supernova’s created a universe for himself, and he’s going to soundtrack it, too.
