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Cult of Jester

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Project Members

Ed Finkler (1995-present - instrumentation and vocals)

Project History

Sent in an e-mail from Ed Finkler to Flaming Fish Music in 1995:

Cult of Jester is my current project. Utilizing a K-2000, a DR-660 drum machine, and anything else I can get my hands on, I try to create music that combines many different styles.

I didn't want to create several different projects for my various areas of musical interest. I can understand why people do it, but I'd rather folks took me as a whole. This is me, and this is my music. So you're likely to hear everything from the new Scorn stuff to dancefloor 303 acid to Sister Machine Gun all in the same song, or at least right next to each other on the tape.

I started off playing guitar in high school (circa 1992), dinking around in a couple crappy alterna-rock projects that never went anywhere; we never even played live. I got real sick of playing with other people; I never felt like what I really wanted to do came through. So sometime in 1993 I bought a drum machine, the Boss DR-660. Actually, a friend of mine and I split the cost, thinking we were gonna use it in a band project - it's tough to find drummers around here! I ended up using it a lot more, tho, and eventually I bought it off of him.

I was getting more and more into electronic music; mostly NIN and Ministry, since that's about it in terms of easy-to-find stuff around here. There weren't many other folks into that stuff, and those who were tended to be more into Skinny Puppy, of whom I'm not a big fan. Pretty Hate Machine introduced me to the notion that dance music can be powerful, and Broken was in my tape deck almost nonstop for about 4 months. I picked up Sister Machine Gun's Sins of the Flesh album while I was a senior in high school, but that was about it.

I actually composed a couple tracks with just the DR-660. It's a nice meat-and-potatoes unit with a fair amount flexibility in sounds manipulation and some good effects. It's also got a killer synth bass sound; kinda "knobby" sounding like Front By Front-era 242.

I went to college in fall 93, and I started learning a lot more about what kind of bands were out there. rec.music.industrial introduced me to a lot of stuff that I never would have heard of otherwise. I was also introduced to Ken Holewczynski at this time, and I started helping him out with Arts Industria and Arc Magazine. Being a reviewer for Arc has multiplied my CD collection drastically.

I worked for a while with Paul Seegers on a project called Manhole Vortex... you can hear a track of ours on the Arts Industria CD The Art Of Brutality. I did a lot of the programming (mostly drums) and the vocals on the MV stuff. Paul, however, had the heavy hitter in his EPS-16 sampler. The project is not officially dead now, but we both have moved on to other stuff.

There's only so much you can squeeze out of a drum machine, so in early 1994 I picked up a Gravis Ultrasound card for my PC. It's really a great little card. For $120, I basically got a sampler with 1 meg. No effects, not the greatest in terms of flexibility, but it taught me a lot about working with limited technology. I fooled a lot of folks into thinking that I had a much better setup.

All of the stuff I did at this time was instrumental. I was kinda turned off of singing from the MV project; I was never very happy with my voice. I learned a lot about songwriting and midi composition here. The one-man nature of the project allowed me to experiment a lot with different ideas.

The first demo I sent out was under the name Bubblegum Crisis, and featured three songs: "Corpus", "MJ12" (something which I worked on with Paul Seegers), and "Silent". I sent it out to a few labels I liked, including Fifth Colvmn, C.O.P. Intl., Re-Constriction, and 21st Circuitry. Basically everybody said that they thought it was pretty good, but that didn't know what to do with it. To paraphrase Kim at C.O.P., if you don't have vocals you get put in ambient, and those labels don't market to that genre (mebbe excepting some FCR releases). You can read the review for it in the Sonic-Boom! review archive, under "Independent Artists".

Jared at FCR encouraged me to do some vocals for it, and also told me to get a new name. Being the pawn that I am, I did both, although it took me longer to get the vocals done. I took the name from my friend Jester, who does all the Sonic-Boom! stuff.

In fact, that didn't happen until I bought a Kurzweil K-2000. I was doing drum programming for a death metal group called Adversary, and we were talking a lot about incorporating some keyboards and such into the sound. So my dad helped me get a loan, and I got the big k2k. I sample my vocals with my SoundBlaster 16 card, and then pop them on a disk and load them into the k2k. Works great. That's how I've done all my vocals so far.

I'm a lot happier with what I've been doing lately in terms of singing. I think I've come upon something which is both distinctive and fairly comfortable - I don't feel like a total fool listening to myself. I guess I kinda combined the rap-style of some Sister Machine Gun with the death metal stuff I'm hearing through Adversary. I like nice chant-style words and phrases, kinda like early Nitzer Ebb (although not quite THAT much) and some Cubanate, and that comes through in my lyrics.

I haven't really discussed my spiritual beliefs here, and since this is a site for Christian industrial bands, I guess I should talk a little about this stuff.

I definitely am not using my music to evangelize anyone in the traditional sense. I have no interest in acting as a ministry for my personal beliefs about God and Jesus Christ. Such things have never convinced me to follow Christ... it has been a personal journey, a one-on-one relationship with God. I guess you could describe me as an existentialist Christian.

What I have always found most moving is not the loud and obvious displays of "belief". It's been the quiet examples set by people in tough situations, demonstrating their spirituality not with words but with actions. I simply try to live as best I can; as loving as I can; as kind as I can; as strong as I can. If someone wants to learn about my motivations, I will tell them. Hopefully they will take some of that with them on their own spiritual journey. Many don't, but I find that people are more willing to listen when you're not just shoving stuff out to them as a group. The preacher in the pulpit may be able to psyche up the congregation for a while, but the feelings of faith are usually superficial. It is personal, individual spiritual journeying and questioning that builds the foundation of faith. That faith may take many forms and many different belief systems, but as long as he or she is always searching for the truth, a person is "saved" as far as I'm concerned.

[edit] Flaming Fish Ascendancy

Finkler first attracted the attention of the Christian industrial music scene following the inclusion of the song Master V2 on the Electro-Shock Therapy compilation released on R.E.X. Music in late 1995.

Canadian Christian electronic music guru Carson Pierce used Electro-Shock Therapy as the launching pad for Flaming Fish Music and signed Cult of Jester as one of the first artists on the fledgling indie label a short time later.

Finkler next recorded a new version of the electro/hip hop opus Gana, originally featured on an early cassette demo, for the label's follow-up to Electro-Shock Therapy, Full Frontal Lobotomy. He also released another cassette demo on the label, Winky Dink and You, in the summer of 1997. Another track, Funkatron, was included on the Lethal Injection compilation and would become the title track to the Cult of Jester full-length debut album, released in early 1999.

[edit] Full-lengths and Side Projects

Funkatron included upgraded versions of several numbers from the earlier demos and compilations, as well as a few new tracks and remixes. The music consisted primarily of Finkler's signature futuristic electro-industrial and hip hop sounds, but also included ripping and crunchy guitar riffs. Vocals, meanwhile, were growled in a fashion more typically found in death metal than electro-industrial, giving the music a unique twist.

Finkler experimented with even more diverse sounds on two side projects; the dark ambient Skotoma and experimental electronica Dead Agent. Songs from both projects were included on numerous compilations, and Finkler remixed a few songs by other artists under the moniker Dead Agent, but no full-length releases ever materialized.

Finkler instead recorded a second Cult of Jester CD, Golgo 13. The album was a bit of a departure from previous Cult of Jester material and added heavy guitar riffs and rapcore vocals over the synthesizers to create a danceable industrial rock sound best described as a hybrid of Korn or P.O.D. and Deitiphobia's "Clean" album. The vocals were also more intelligible and lyrics dealt with social issues like racism, xenophobia and urban violence, as well as spiritual themes. Guest vocals on "Harvester" were provided by Josh Pyle of Audio Paradox.

Finkler kept low profile since the release of Golgo 13, spending time with his partner and child and uses what little spare time he has for programming open-source software.

In May 2007, Finkler re-launched the Cult of Jester web site, and began releasing COJ material in digital download form. He also plans to release a collection of Dead Agent tracks in the summer of 2007, and start work on a new Cult of Jester album after that.

Current Status

active

Discography