Klayton
| Klayton | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Celldweller, Circle of Dust, Scandroid, Dred, Deathwish, Tox, Red |
| Born | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | Electronic rock, industrial rock, industrial metal, nu metal |
| Occupation(s) | Multi-instrumentalist, record producer, songwriter, performer, programming (music), remixer |
| Instruments | Electric guitar, synthesizer, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion, drums, turntables |
| Years active | 1988 – present |
| Labels |
FiXT Music R.E.X. Records Tooth & Nail Records |
| Associated acts | Celldweller Chatterbox Criss Angel Circle of Dust Angeldust Argyle Park Scandroid AP2 |
| Website | www |
Klayton is a multi-instrumentalist musician formerly of New York City and currently of Detroit, Michigan who has led several cult status underground bands and has performed under a variety of stage names since the early 1990s. He is best known for his current project, Celldweller, which has been widely successful.
Klayton grew up in a conservative Christian household in New York and went to church with his younger brother, Dan (now a solo musician going by the band LVL) and friends Buka and Klank, who would both collaborate with him on a number of future music projects. He never had any formal training on an instrument, instead picking up whatever his latest fancy was and learning it himself. He studied music theory for one semester in college, but dropped out, because "all they wanted to tell [him] is what [he] could and couldn’t do according to the laws of music and [he] couldn’t have cared less." This eventually led to Klayton characterizing himself as being a "jack of all trades, master of none" when it came to musical instruments. The first of these instruments was the flute.
As a teenager, Klayton listened to a lot of metal, only later being introduced to electronic music through bands such as Depeche Mode and Skinny Puppy. All of these would influence Klayton's musical output in the early and mid 1990s, as he melded heavy guitars with layered samples and synths in the handful of industrial metal bands that he formed. In later years, Klayton has referenced European drum'n'bass and Goa/psychedelic trance as influential on the sound of his project Celldweller.
Though Klayton's numerous projects in the early and mid 1990s were signed to Christian record labels and are generally considered Christian bands, Klayton took great pains to distance himself from that distinction and that subculture in the later 1990s by splitting from the CCM industry and forgoing any further performances at Christian venues. He described this move and the reasoning behind it to great length in a 1998 interview with Christian metal publication HM Magazine and has reiterated his stance in more recent Celldweller interviews.
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