Drew Boles is a singer, songwriter, performer, composer, sound designer, programmer and producer. He has been a member of groups ranging from a Javanese gamelan ensemble to the San Diego-based band The Meehoos. In 2005, he formed The Mercurial Gay Beings with Lauren Wooley, and from 2007 to 2009, they curated and hosted a concert series out of their San Francisco flat.
Drew’s other musical endeavors have included his tour-de-force portrayal of Jenny Diver in a production of The Threepenny Opera at the National Pastime Theater in Chicago and singing and dancing with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. He has also scored films for Melanie Masicoli, Jocelyn Jacobs and Raging Stallion Studios.
At heart a singer-songwriter, he is interested in exploring the fusion of conventional pop songs and the experimental tones of sound art. He collects and manipulates sounds from often idiosyncratic sources, digitally manipulating and controlling them, either to stand in for conventional rock instrumentation or to introduce a completely new sonic palette to the mix, at once organic and synthetic.
At the center of it all is his voice and piano, which have been lauded for pushing his sonic abstractions into the emotional realm. Live, he is a “one-woman band” – using a keyboard, laptop, several digital controllers, and a three-octave voice that has been described as “ethereal” and “otherworldly,” he re-creates his recorded work in a dynamic and somewhat improvisational manner.
On days when his passion for music doesn’t pay the bills, Drew is a sound designer and audio artist. While living in San Francisco, he worked at Electronic Arts from 2008 to 2013, making and editing sound for The Sims video game franchise. Now living in Los Angeles, he is a freelance audio artist for games, TV, and film.
