Interview with Gabriel Starwood — cyborg, singer and potential savior of the planet Vitrus
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"It is the machine-driven nature of machine men making music for men by machine."
The time traveling Philly band prepares to play Boot & Saddle and/or destroy us all.
Time travel sucks. If you don’t go back in time to kill Hitler, then what’s the point? But if you do kill him, you run the risk creating something worse, like Robot Hitler. These kinds of things never end well, not even for intergalactic travelers sent back in time to save dying planets.
Such is the case of Gabriel Starwood, potential savior of doomed planet Vitrus and cyborg singer for the time-sliding S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D.
“I know nothing of why or how we passed through [time], but I can tell you one thing for certain; when charging a wall of unfathomable size in the throes of desperation, full speed is the only speed,” says Starwood from behind a giant, shiny orb-shaped helmet. “Anything slower might leave you alive to die at the hands of your enemies.”
Those enemies?
Us.
Gabriel comes from Vitrus, a cosmic gathering of species genetically-engineered to survive, or a “world-sized petri dish,” as he puts it in his cold machine logic, a planet humanity is destined to destroy.
“Following the overpopulation of Planet Earth in the year 2417, the parasitic entity known as mankind was in desperate need of a suitable host,” he explains. “Once a semi-intelligent species, it quickly became the equivalent of a cosmic virus that colonized, consumed, and ultimately destroyed any life-sustaining planet it discovered.”
Among those planets was Vitrus. According to Starwood, humanity arrives in the year 2776, before consuming and ultimately discarding his home world. Created and sent back in time moments before its destruction for the sole purpose of altering the time continuum, Starwood first inhabited the bodies of what Vitrus deemed to be the most influential members of the human race, including Jesus Christ, Montezuma, Nikola Tesla and Brendan Fraser, with the purpose of “sharing new ideas and guiding every aspect of your evolutionary and cultural growth closer to that of the Vitruvian Way.”
Unfortunately, humanity proved incapable of accepting Starwood’s message at the speed he needed so he was forced to seek out a more potent vessel through which to educate the masses. He found it in rock ’n’ roll… or rather, cyber rock.
What is cyber rock?
“It is the machine-driven nature of machine men making music for men by machine,” Starwood says.
“It should also be noted that, as the only actual cyborgs in known existence, we are the only true cyber rock band. Any human musician making music using machines is no more a cyborg than an airline pilot is a bird.”
Utilizing primitive Earth instruments, but souped up with Vitruvian nanotechnology, Starwood created S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D. to act as a cosmic harbinger of humanity’s destructive ways even as it entertains us with psychedelic journeys into electronic soundscapes. Recorded live in an undisclosed location in West Philadelphia known only as the Sex Dungeon, S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D.’s TRANSMISSION was self-released in the fall of 2012.
It contains a mind-altering array of techno-organic tones, ranging from the ascending electronic theatricality of “The Rope” to distorted dirge “Abomination” and spacey freak-out “Love Your Lawnmower.”
When asked about specific meanings behind each song, Starwood only offers vague warnings. “Our mission is simple; to stop humankind from destroying the multi-verse, by any means necessary. Raising your awareness is the least destructive of those means.”
This isn’t to say Starwood would be above destroying humanity if the opportunity presented itself. “In the event that this approach is unsuccessful, I have a multitude of fail-safes in place that will eviscerate your entire race and obliterate your planet in more ways than your extraordinarily inferior brain could imagine.”
For now, though, Starwood seems content to educate inferior human intellects while expanding his own knowledge of our world. “The S.T.A.R.W.O.O.D. Mission is not unlike exploring the universe as a whole; it has no definitive ‘endpoint,’ only a ‘somepoint’ at which we stop exploring its possibilities.”
When asked to speculate where that somepoint might be, Starwood is blunt: “The most logical outcome is the destruction of the human race.”
Starwood plays Sat., June 14, 8:30 p.m., $10, with Tea Club and Drone Ranger, Boot & Saddle, 1131 S. Broad St., bootandsaddlephilly.com.
