It would be impossible to give a biography of KITSCHMAS without all this history. So if you really want to learn about this, get comfortable, make some tea, grab a snack and read this story!

Alex Dougherty and I, Adel Bengo, have been friends and music collaborators since 2006. I guess it began when I was 17. We met in Jacksonville, FL and were in bands together such as FIRE ENGINE RED, THIS HERE GIRAFFE, AC DEATHSTRIKE, and XMAS. Over the years, the two of us would play in bands, yet as other members would come and go, we each pushed the other to continue musically to the present day, and have also helped each other bring our music out of the recording sessions and into live performances.

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Alex and I would find each other through *mYsPaCe* because of my high school band's profile, MY TOY HEART, which consisted of my friends Brittany Briley, Edsel Garcia, and Jessica Newman. Alex would find our 7” HOPING THAT YOU'RE LONELY through the Jax label DISCOS MARISCOS on the featured shelf in the local record store MOON COLONY RAZORBLADE, thanks to my friend Max Wood who helped release my earliest music. I would then find Alex's music, particularly a song called “Nicolette” which I told him I liked very much. He would ask to hang out for the first time to record me singing on it. The first hang out ever in Alex-Adel history was at Alex’s house, along with Amanda Plummer. We would record a very wacky country song together, laugh a bunch, and eventually go to the nearby *~WaLmArT ~* to buy a Garfield DVD together. Instead of some creepy internet meeting, which we both secretly anticipated, we were both relieved to find a new, awesome, music making friend that lived in the same town.

Alex would eventually invite me to play in his full band, FIRE ENGINE RED. I would add keyboards and guitars, alongside fellow members Jon Hernandez and Kevin Miller. Alex played the bass and wrote all the songs. It was a year or so of jamming in that one super hot garage on Marsh Cove Drive, or at Kevin’s house where his mom would always have some amazing meal prepared. I remember getting to play at cool spots around town such as Thee Imperial, Fuel, TSI, and Yesterdays. After recording a studio EP, Kevin left the band. Other drummers came to help with upcoming gigs, but none ever committed, and FIRE ENGINE RED was beginning to lose momentum.

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There was one last show that the remaining three of us were too excited to pass up... it would be opening for OZMA at Jackrabbits! FIRE ENGINE RED was still drummer-less, but would do anything to not cancel the gig. So I sat in on the drums, for the first time in any band, just so we wouldn’t miss out playing alongside some of our musical heroes. This would foreshadow the future of our musical legacy in the years to come.

FIRE ENGINE RED would have to come to a close during that time in our lives. Alex and I would record a final EP of that 2005-2007 era as a two-piece, under the moniker THIS HERE GIRAFFE, now both contributing the songwriting, realizing we could keep playing together since we could switch up on instruments. Those recordings would then be lost and scattered in the following years as we had a fight and falling out. Through those years apart, Alex and I still worked independently on our music and creative projects to be able to show one another later!

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After the break up of FIRE ENGINE RED and THIS HERE GIRAFFE, Alex would self release two albums ORGANIC COMPOSITIONS and MY, MY, MY (which features that one version of “Nicolette” with my harmonies and piano part.) Alex would record these albums all by himself. After injurious experiences of studio recording, these two albums really commemorate a significant time in which Alex committed to saving up and collecting all his own personal recording equipment, which would shape all the music to come. These albums would eventually lead up to Alex’s brand new project, AC DEATHSTRIKE, which involved members of the Skinny Records family in Jacksonville, FL, most notably Daisy Miller, Andrew Wood, and Tom Essex.

During that time, I had been collecting home recordings on the side, self releasing an album 630AM, and also released a cassette through DISCOS MARISCOS, SLEEPING DREAMING ALL DAY/IN YOUR ROOM IN YOUR BRAIN. I would jam my music with my sister April Bengo on the drums! But we would never play outside of our house. One day, after a year or so of not speaking to one another, Alex invited me to play on his new album, a particular guitar part that I wrote for THIS HERE GIRAFFE. He really only wanted me to be the one to play it, and that’s what broke our year long silence.

AC DEATHSTRIKE made their first release in 2009, titled LAST PICTURE SHOW. This album would be sort of like Alex’s episode 4: A New Hope. It was really exciting, loud and rocking, and the combination of his home recording style with this refined, studio touch. It was a new start. The band would play the album on an East Coast tour.

After that tour, Daisy and Tom had to leave the band. Alex had already begun recording a second album for AC DEATHSTRIKE that he sought to finish, an album whose title and artwork and music was heavily inspired by pictures his aunt gave him of the snow in Russia, where the snow was stacked high as cars, and filling up the insides of cars. It was a cold album. He invited me and Jon into the Skinny Records studio to play together again and to try filling in the missing parts.

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We enjoyed playing the songs so much, and this eventually turned into weekly jam sessions and hang outs reminiscent of the times of FIRE ENGINE RED, with Andrew Wood now a strong part of the mix. AC DEATHSTRIKE would complete a second release in 2011, WINTER IN RUSSIA! I would be, from around 2009-2013, the official drummer for AC DEATHSTRIKE!

The first show with this lineup after that album release was a DISASTER. As soon as we began, we were asked to be quiet, or to stop. We were threatened that the cops would show up and it would be our fault for playing too loud. People seemed to really hate us. The future and prospect of music making in Jacksonville seemed bleak after that one night, enough to make us second guess ourselves about sharing our musical creations with our hometown, which we had so much fun playing for one another. Luckily, there was already a second gig lined up, much thanks to Andrew. The band had no choice but to try playing the set out again.

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 .....This second show was the first show we'd ever play in DELAND, FL!
(And the rest is history! But read on!...)

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The first Deland show took place in a carport. The people there, never having heard the songs before, danced and jumped and crowdsurfed up into the rafters. The show would prove to be life changing for both Alex and myself, many ties were made because of that one night! One of the local acts, then a two-piece band by the name of CRITTER, would fall in love with AC DEATHSTRIKE and invite us on a tour to launch the year of 2012. I remember spending that winter playing and making new music friends all along the way, becoming immersed into the Deland and St Augustine and DIY Florida music community of that era, doing the rounds in such memorable spots as THE JUNKYARD SALOON, NOBBY'S, SHANTYTOWN , TSI and BURRO BAR, and among many new friends' festivals and backyards and living rooms.

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On top of all the excitement of AC DEATHSTRIKE, I would release a second collection of solo home recordings in the winter of 2011 called WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG, adopting the new moniker, XMAS. I played those songs out for the very first time in BURRO BAR by myself. Strangers recognized me as "that drummer from AC DEATHSTRIKE," some among them were notable artists, Noah Eagle and Jade Tcimpidis, who would change my life forever. Soon after AC DEATHSTRIKE got back from the CRITTER tour, I could no longer stay still in Florida and I booked a tour to the Southwest, sending the new XMAS album out to venues and artists from Florida to Arizona. Dawson Bass from CRITTER, and Alex, both also having the itch to keep on moving, hopped in the car with me for that tour. Alex would play the drums for XMAS songs, and between 2012-2013, XMAS was a rocking two-piece. We would revisit many of the old songs I composed for 630AM, songs written during our time apart.

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Upon our return to Florida, Jon and Andrew and I moved to Orlando in search of other things. (Andrew became a DOCTOR!)

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In that time AC DEATHSTRIKE rearranged into a solo act, or sometimes a two piece with me on the drums again (this two-piece performance at NOBBY’S landed AC DEATHSTRIKE a slot in Gainesville's annual FEST in the year 2013!)

 

Alex would again shift his interests into writing and recording. In 2012 he released SPACE FLYER, a fantasy themed album, and more notably, Alex’s very first DOUBLE ALBUM! He recorded everything by himself, with me singing on a couple tracks. The end of SPACE FLYER consisted of a collection of 8-bit compositions, all of the songs had made up titles of imaginary video games.

This particular shift in AC DEATHSTRIKE would be the precursor to the solo, over-stimulating dance project, SLEEPY TREE. For SLEEPY TREE, Alex would lug around his retro hardshell suitcase, which was formerly used to sell all his old beloved video games at the flea market. Now empty of games, and carrying his mixers and various sound machines, he would play a slew of solo shows and tours throughout 2012 up to the present day.

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SLEEPY TREE music was released in short volumes, EXTENDED PLAY (1 thru 8). He would also release two albums, SALLY AIR and STAIRS as these sort of musical stretches and exercises for himself, attempting to record and finish an album through the course of a single night.

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During this SLEEPY TREE era, I was living in Orlando, FL because I needed a job and the only place that called me back was a small kitchen at Orlando International Airport. I had just adopted my dog, Jack. Somewhere in there I released a split with Noah Eagle, A SPLIT TO REMEMBER which features Alex and Noah singing on some of the XMAS songs. I lived on my best friend Danny Cooledge’s balcony/patio, through, I believe, an entire summer. Then I lived in a Florida room of a tiny pink duplex. In my time there, I started a noisy two piece band with my roommate Chris Mark (Wednesday with Chris Mark), called LEGS. I also had a band with Andrew called Pumpkin Seeds which we never recorded. I also met one of my best friend's, Sean Canfield (Ducklins, The Weather), who happened to live there at the same time, who has collaborated with me on many various and directionless yet important endeavors such as finding ways to the rooftops of buildings, collaging anything and everything, starting a sci-fi zine ALL THE FUTURES, and acting in and filming a silent movie with me, which became an XMAS music video. We also had a band nobody’s ever heard of called THE WEATHER CHANNEL. Sean also made the album art for my split with Noah. I also collected songs that I recorded quietly and sporadically throughout that year alone, usually in the middle of the night in between work shifts, these little whispering tunes of weariness would become the second XMAS album, PRAYERS. One lucky day Dawson visited the duplex to show everyone his new cigar box guitar, I asked him to try playing it on these songs I’d been sitting on, and within the hour that album was complete. It would be this album that helped support my travels and Jack's travels between 2012-2014, as we made a big move from Florida to New Mexico.

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When our lease ended I put all my things in my car, and I didn't want to stay in Orlando or go back to my hometown. I did trips going back and forth, before I finally drove to Santa Fe, NM to spend Christmas with my dad who had just moved there. After living on the floor of his studio for two months, I sent music out along the West Coast and booked a tour through Arizona, California, and up to Washington in the spring of 2014.

Around this time, Alex would break from electronic music for just a minute, to release a brand new AC DEATHSTRIKE album, COUNTDOWN TO THE SUN. This was a breezy pop rock album, the Return of the Jedi of the AC DEATHSTRIKE saga... like the ease of having ewoks fight at your side.. countdown to the sun meant staying up all night counting the hours and waiting for the darkness to dissipate, and the relaxing feeling of the sun. That’s what the album was trying feel like, after dealing with the uncertainty of the fate of AC DEATHSTRIKE, the departure of band members such as myself. Alex played and recorded everything at home, and then recorded his drum parts at Jay Stamper’s studio, who would guest-drum on one of the tracks. AC DEATHSTRIKE was going to be ok and continue forever into the stars no matter the circumstances of time or space.

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In the spring of 2014 I landed in Seattle, I ended up playing in two bands, GOOD ORBIT with Mike Walker, and COMME SI COMME CA, where I was reunited with old best friend and artist, Jade Tcimpidis, as well as new best friends Harmony Shenk and Nina Ingram. The art community welcomed me so greatly that I ended up staying for 5+ months accidentally, sleeping in my car, or at friends' houses. I would find work at the Ballard farmer's market and do face painting gigs. The final month there, I subletted Harmony's living room and recorded poetry in her kitchen, the latest XMAS release titled WHERE I SLEPT IN TWENTY TWELVE which features flip-phone recordings of THE WEATHER CHANNEL underneath the words. I would eventually leave and do another cross country trip with members of COMME SI COMME CA. We would end up in Florida for a small tour with SECRET TREE HOUSE, Sean's band at the time. When we returned to New Mexico in the fall of 2014, I stayed behind with my dad in Rio Rancho as my friends traveled on.

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***I don't know how to fully describe the significance of KITSCHMAS without unveiling this part of my story--- I spent most of 2015 in my bed, having given up on music, writing, art, friends, and family, because of a depression and the circumstances that brought me back to New Mexico. All my energy was in putting as many days behind me as I could. I'd spend 5 days a week working an isolating courier job that began sending me out on deliveries in the middle of the night to Carlsbad, Alamogordo, Roswell, El Paso, Amarillo, and Silver City... all these places were about four hours away, or 8+ hour round trips. Every day was this nonstop, pitch black car ride through desert that would always end in a sunrise. I would be lost and sad every single morning in some strange new place. I had no future plans other than to save up enough money to leave town again, but I couldn't think of anywhere else I could run to for help. So for my health, I thought I'd try something other than traveling as a cure --- I moved into a small place in Albuquerque and made a cushion for myself, and for Jack, and for Buster, my smaller dog, who I found in Rio Rancho. We still reside here today, and I am feeling much better.......!

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In 2015, Alex had gotten a job editing videos for a local tv station in Jacksonville, FL. Still doing SLEEPY TREE, and with a growing love for electronic music, Alex’s friend, Matt Jaffe, gave Alex an AKAI MPD26, a keyboard/drum machine pad.  This little machine inspired Alex to get an ELECTRIBE, and he began composing hundreds of instrumental tracks on it, eventually releasing the instrumentals under the moniker, KITSCHBOT. The tv station called on all those within the company to submit new independent music for review to be purchased for their programs. Specifically they were searching for "electronic music with female vocals." Alex, on a whim, contacted me after so long, with a proposal to send me all the KITSCHBOT music and to turn them into whatever I wanted, in the innocent hopes of selling the music to the station.

I listened to the tracks and was reminded of old video games, most notably pokemon -- how you travel from town to town, and each town has its own familiar tune. ​Now I had this reason to try writing poems and melodies again, which I didn't for so long. I would sing about all I really knew of that time ---my sad, dark traveling back and forth, but, in this caricatured way as if it were a video game, my ever day unreality. Those night work trips became me heroically bolting "into the night… just like I was a light, myself." I would write about my pipe dreams of unbreakable friendship and love and loyalty and duty and adventure, which all really seemed absent from my life at the time. "A frontier land we'll leave with no claim / we'll make footprints where no footprints have been made!"

I was singing these things to myself or to my dogs, I would be alone 24/7 in my room, or at my job. Where were all my best friends? What was our adventure now? --I'd come to realize it was that we all had to go through dark times and spaces, each on our own, and that there was nothing I could do to help anybody / no one needed my help.

KITSCHMAS encouraged me to write, and it wasn't until I put it all down that I'd realized some of the worst things about myself. There was my dangerous desire to be needed by somebody, to be needed by some place, to be a hero and to take all my loved ones on an adventure, to be the one to find and save them all... but could I save them from myself?

KITSCHMAS was one cure I'd found while living in New Mexico. After I returned five revised KITSCHBOT songs to Alex, now with vocals and instrumentation, we decided we couldn't hand them over to anybody, and instead wanted to release the new music ourselves and start this small records records label for distribution. The music also inspired the making of a video game, also being made independently, and very slowly (I’m figuring it out!) It’s an RPG that will be released later in 2017 also titled KITSCHMAS, in which the game-play mirrors the lyrics and features the five original KITSCHBOT tracks as the music for each level or town.

Alex, currently based in Jacksonville, FL, sequences and arranges the music and sounds, sends them across far lands to Albuquerque, NM, where I listen and add words and instrumentation. We recorded the CLOSER EP over a year ago. Alex visited me in 2015 and lived on my couch for two months while trying to mix and master the EP. The CLOSER music video is made of home videos he took during his visit, alongside clips I took in Florida when I visited in October 2016. We already have more music in the works!

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So thus begins the newest Alex-Adel collaboration, grown from, and ever fruitful of the ten year-long friendship, full of ups and downs, distance, break ups, life, and reunions over time. This is the merging of two forces, Alex Dougherty, KITSCHBOT, and myself, Adel Bengo, XMAS, to form this new project that carries the weight of all the empty space between Florida to New Mexico  - KITSCHMAS!