HISTORY

Conscious Structure began in 1998 as a few musical ideas, a fusion of styles
not commonly heard together in music at the time. Dave Belazis, then in
Richmond, VA ambient art band Tangier Spacedraft had begun writting
material that would become Conscious Structure's 'Field of Radiance'
and "Malsituation'.

Dave wanted to fuse the styles of industrial music with trip hop and ambient rock
and integrate the sounds of his primary instrument the cello. He was studying
composition and music technology at a Virginia Commonwealth University and
most of his time was devoted to school work and his band.

This music sat dormant for a long time, but when Dave returned to his hometown
outside Washington, DC, he started to turn them into full realized songs. Having
recorded a side project EP a few years earlier, Dave realized the massive costs
of such an ambitious production. He decided to study audio engineering at a
local school and emerged a year later with extensive training in production and
Digidesign Pro Tools. During his training, he built the first version of Conscious
Studios: a Macintosh G4 and a basic Pro Tools rig, along with a collection of
condenser microphones, German virtual analog synthesizers, samplers, preamplifiers, plugins and effects processors.

In 2001 Dave began recording with operatic vocalist Sarah Van der vate and the first two live performances were realized with guitarist Mark Sloan at Pittsburg's Bee Hive and Washington DC's Bar Nun. At Bar Nun, they were introduced to vocalist, keyboardist and violinist Tenoya Bennett who was in search of a new band. She enlisted a week later and performed several shows singing alongside Sarah as well as playing keyboards and violin.
Soon after Sarah announced she was moving to study opera further, and Tenoya became the sole female vocalist of the group. Mark Sloan, with much time invested in another band retired leading the way for the enlistment of Matt DiBenneditto. Matt performed on several tracks of 2002 release 'Non-Human Figure' which after much anticipation was released.
in April of 2002. The album featured 14 original songs including fan favourites 'Frozen' and 'Every Time'. 'Non-Human Figure' went on to sell over 400 copies over the next several years. A large number for a modest self release.

A year passed and Matt decided to move on from Conscious Structure. Dave and Tenoya had befriended guitarist Eric Anderton. Needing a new guitarist and deciding to fill out the live sound further, Conscious Structure hired Eric on guitar and also brought in cellist Bill Lippert to increase the richness of the band's ornate cello passages live. Bill performed with the band for a short period of time before discovering that he had gotten his dream job in France. Dave came across
cellist and multi instrumentalist Kate Rears a week later and asked her to come in for an audition. A few months later, Eric took a hiatus due to schedule conflicts and Dave's long time friend Gavin Dunaway came to fill in. What was to be a short term position ended up actually being a much longer tenure as Gavin stayed on in Eric's place.

Before long, 2004 had rolled around. Conscious Structure was doing well, but they knew they should begin working on their second album. A few songs had been written, but the task that was to follow would be much more extensive. With the addition of Gavin and Kate, Conscious Structure began to function much more like a conventional rock band than it ever had before and the style of the new material took a turn towards a focus on the songwriting rather than technical and production aspect. Less techno, more rock.

The band began crafting what was to become 'Universal Antithesis' with this mindset. Early version of 'It's All In Vain' and 'I'm Never Coming Home Again' were performed live in late 2004 and things began to come together. Kate, longing to play more bass guitar, began jamming with Gavin on a side project. It was a Smashing Pumpkins, Sunny Day Real Estate and Hum influenced rock project featuring original music from Gavin and Kate. Soon, they met drummer Ben Reynolds, an acquaintance of Dave's and they named themselves The Alphabetical Order. Good things started to happen to the Order and soon they were playing venues like The State Theater and 9:30 Club. In 2005, Gavin and
Kate left to pursue their new band full time and Conscious Structure enlisted cellist Heather Spence to fulfil Kate's role.

Conscious Structure played a handful of shows in 2005 including making quarter finals in a band competition just to keep up their live music chops playing as a three piece with just Tenoya, Dave and Heather. Dave played guitar during these shows to cover the parts that would have been played by Gavin. Eventually Heather left to pursue a Master's degree. Dave and Tenoya continued onward and brought the album closer to completion. For many years, fans had been telling Conscious Structure to enlist a drummer. Early 2006 brought around just that. Ernesto Perez joined as Conscious Structure's first drummer. Just as it seemed Universal Antithesis was almost finished, the new sounds of a drummer added intriguing texture to the music. Over the next 7 months, nearly all of the rhythm tracks were completely re-tracked and two songs were added to the album. The album was mastered in September 2006 by legendary mastering engineer Tom Baker (NIN, Deftones, Beastie Boys, BT). In late 2006 cellist David Thomas and guitarist Zach Davis joined Conscious Structure.

Universal Antithesis is now available at CDbaby, Strangeland Records, our myspace music store, iTunes, Rhapsody, SonyDirect & more.