Kasson Crooker is an American electronic musician, a composer, and the artist behind Symbion Project, his solo moniker. His past bands are

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 include ...

Splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft by parachute in a body of water. It was used by crewed American space capsules prior to the Space Shuttle program, by SpaceX Dragon and Dragon 2 capsules and by NASA's Orion Multipurpose ...

, Larkspur, and Sirensong. DJ HMX, Komputer Kontroller, and Cosmonaut Zero were alias bands of Crooker used only for the videogames ''

FreQuency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from '' angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is ...

'' 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 a ...

''.

Music career

In 1999, Crooker formed the

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

group

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

Pannenkoeken A pannenkoek (; plural ''pannenkoeken'' ) or Dutch pancake is a style of pancake with origins in the Netherlands. Pannenkoeken are usually larger (up to a foot in diameter) and much thinner than their American or Scotch pancake counterparts, bu ...

. In September 2009, Kasson 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 b ...

. He has made several guest appearances at Freezepop concerts since then, often also playing a Symbion Project set. His main solo project is Symbion Project, with seven releases: ''

Red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a seconda ...

'' (1998), ''

Immortal Game The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The bold sacrifices Anderssen made have made it one of the most famous ches ...

'' (2003), '' Wound Up by God or the Devil'' (2006), '' Misery in Soliloquy'' (2009), ''

Contrapasso In Dante's ''Inferno'', contrapasso (or, in modern Italian,''Encyclopedia Dantesca'', Biblioteca Treccani, 2005, vol. 7, article ''Contrapasso''. ''contrappasso'', from Latin and , meaning "suffer the opposite") is the punishment of souls "by ...

'' (2011), ''

Arcadian Arcadian may refer to: * Arcadian, someone or something from, or related to: ** Arcadia (region), the ancient Greek region ** Arcadia (regional unit), the region in modern Greece ** Accademia degli Arcadi, the Italian literary academy founded in ...

'' (2016), and ''

Saturnine Saturnine can refer to: *Relating to Saturn *Saturnine antshrike, species of bird *The Saturnine, music group *''Saturnine Martial & Lunatic'', a 1996 compilation album by Tears for Fears See also *Saturnin *Saturnina, Christian martyr *Saturni ...

'' (2022). 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 computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as the ...

'' 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

, 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) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...

) and ''Possibilities'' (an album of remixes and demos). 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".

Video game development

Crooker was also a project director at video game developer

and was the project lead on ''Phase'', '' Rock Band 2'', ''

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

'', and ''

Dance Central 2 ''Dance Central 2'' is a music rhythm game for the Xbox 360 and is the sequel to ''Dance Central''. It was released in October 2011. Plot Dr. Tan is monitoring the status of the area in The Airship, laughing while doing so. The player first ...

'' for Kinect/Xbox360. The music of Symbion Project and Freezepop has been featured in the Harmonix PlayStation 2 games ''FreQuency'', ''Amplitude'', the ''

Karaoke Revolution ''Karaoke Revolution'' and its sequels are 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 Conce ...

'' series, ''

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of Music video game, music rhythm game video games first released in November 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead guitar, lead, bass guitar, and rhythm guita ...

'', ''

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

'', ''

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 A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two gui ...

''; 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 g ...

'' games developed by

Konami , is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casi ...

, 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 and is married to Terri Brosius. He is currently a member of the bands Eddie Japan and Dark Wheels. B ...

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)