Kasson Crooker is an American electronic musician, composer, and audio technologist. He has composed and produced music for bands, video games, websites, films, and virtual reality experiences. Crooker's audio technology career has been focused on spatial audio technology, video game development, and interactive music experiences.

Music career

Crooker's music career spans several decades, beginning with his synthpop band Disjointed Images in 1989. His main solo project is Symbion Project which was formed in 1993 and has released eleven full-length albums: ''Red'' (1998), ''Immortal Game'' (2003), ''Wound Up by God or the Devil'' (2006), ''Misery in Soliloquy'' (2009), ''Contrapasso'' (2011), ''Semiotic'' (2015), ''Arcadian'' (2016), ''Gishiki'' (2017), ''Backscatter'' (2019), ''Saturnine'' (2022), and ''Tryptych'' (2025). In April 2017, Crooker teamed with Micah Knapp and Avielle Heath to create a 360 Virtual Reality music video for a single off of "Arcadian". In 1999, Crooker formed the

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s ...

group

Freezepop Freezepop is an American electronic band from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, formed in 1999 by Liz Enthusiasm, Sean T. Drinkwater, and The Duke of Pannekoeken (an alias for Kasson Crooker). Since December 2009, the current lineup inclu ...

with

Liz Enthusiasm Justinne "Jussi" Gamache, also known by her pseudonym Liz Enthusiasm, is the lead singer of indie synthpop band Freezepop. She lives in Massachusetts. Gamache also works in graphic design, and has done design work on Freezepop's website, albums ...

and Sean T. Drinkwater. While in the band he went by various aliases, starting as The Duke of Candied Apples, then briefly being known as The Duke of Belgian Waffles, and finally The Duke of Pannekoeken. In September 2009, Crooker retired from Freezepop to focus his efforts on his work at

Harmonix Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., doing business as Harmonix, is an American video game developer company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was established in May 1995 by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. Harmonix is perhaps best known as bein ...

. He has made several guest appearances at Freezepop concerts since then, often also playing a Symbion Project set. Other active bands include ELYXR, Rocococo, Dispak, and Black House Triangle. DJ HMX, Komputer Kontroller, and Cosmonaut Zero were alias monikers used only for the videogames ''

FreQuency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. Frequency is an important parameter used in science and engineering to specify the rate of oscillatory and vibratory phenomena, such as mechanical vibrations, audio ...

'' (2001) and ''

Amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...

'' (2003). Several of his songs are featured in

Johannes Grenzfurthner Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of ''monochrom'', an international ar ...

's films '' Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl'', ''

Traceroute In computing, traceroute and tracert are diagnostic command-line interface commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The command reports the round-trip times of ...

'' and ''

Glossary of Broken Dreams ''Glossary of Broken Dreams'' is a 2018 Austrian/American documentary film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner. The essayistic feature film tries to present an overview of political concepts such as freedom, privacy, identity, resistance, etc. Gren ...

''. His other former bands include the dreampop band Sirensong and the more well-known

Splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with th ...

, whose albums include ''Stars and Garters'', ''Halfworld'' (EP), ''Redshift'' (EP), and the unreleased full-length albums ''Blueshift'' (which was completed but never released by

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...

) and ''Possibilities'' (an album of remixes and demos). Other past bands include Larkspur, Khems, and The Planets Won’t Let You Sleep Tonight.

Video game development

Crooker was also a project director at video game developer

and was the project lead on ''Phase'', ''

Rock Band 2 ''Rock Band 2'' is a 2008 rhythm game developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to ''Rock Band (video game), Rock Band'' (2007) and the second installment in the Rock Band, ''Rock Band ' ...

'', ''

Dance Central ''Dance Central'' is a series of rhythm games developed by Harmonix, creators of the ''Guitar Hero'' and ''Rock Band'' video game series. Series ''Dance Central'' (2010) ''Dance Central'' was released exclusively for the Xbox 360 and was a l ...

'', and ''

Dance Central 2 ''Dance Central 2'' is a 2011 rhythm game developed by Harmonix and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360 Kinect. It is the sequel to ''Dance Central (2010 video game), Dance Central'' (2010) and the second installment in the ''Dance Ce ...

'' for Kinect/Xbox360. The music of Symbion Project and Freezepop has been featured in the Harmonix

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

games ''FreQuency'', ''Amplitude'', the ''

Karaoke Revolution ''Karaoke Revolution'' and its sequels are music video games for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, GameCube, Wii, Xbox, and Xbox 360, developed by Harmonix and Blitz Games and published by Konami in its Bemani line of music games. The original c ...

'' series, ''

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead guitar, lead, bass guitar, bass, and rhythm guitar across numerous songs. Players match ...

'', ''

Guitar Hero 2 ''Guitar Hero II'' is a 2006 rhythm game developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane for the PlayStation 2 and Activision for the Xbox 360. It is the sequel to ''Guitar Hero'' (2005) and the second installment in the ''Guitar Hero'' series ...

'', ''

Phase Phase or phases may refer to: Science *State of matter, or phase, one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist *Phase (matter), a region of space throughout which all physical properties are essentially uniform *Phase space, a mathematica ...

'', ''

Rock Band ''Rock Band'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero, ''Guitar Hero'' series, the main ''Rock Band'' games have players use game controllers mod ...

''; the InCog-developed ''Downhill Domination''; and one of the North American ''

Dance Dance Revolution (''DDR'') is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, ''Dance Dance Revolution'' is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance ...

'' games developed by

Konami , commonly known as Konami, , is a Japanese multinational entertainment company and video game developer and video game publisher, publisher headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo. The company also produces and distributes trading card ...

, which publishes ''

''. He and

Eric Brosius Eric Brosius is a musician and video game developer, and a former employee of Looking Glass Studios. He is a former member of the band Tribe (band), Tribe and is married to Terri Brosius. He is currently a member of the bands Eddie Japan and Dark ...

took home the 2006

Game Developers Choice Award The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were ...

for Best Audio for their work on ''

''.

References

External links

Symbion Project Official Website

Facebook

Twitter

Soundcloud

Bandcamp (CD Store)

Official website of Freezepop

Nashville Review interview with Kasson Crooker
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crooker, Kasson American electronic musicians Living people Freezepop members Keytarists Year of birth missing (living people)