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Andy Dixon

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Andy Dixon

Andy Dixon is a Canadian artist and musician, who gained notoriety as a member of the North Vancouver punk rock band d.b.s. He founded the record label Ache Records, and later played in The Red Light Sting. Beginning in 2003, during the final months of The Red Light Sting, he began to cut up audio recordings he made himself and compose glitch/IDM music under the alias Secret Mommy, though he used The Epidemic for his first solo release.

The son of two accountants, Dixon began expressing himself creatively at a young age. He grew up in North Vancouver. His parents were supportive of their son's musical endeavors, giving him his first guitar at age 9 or 10, allowing him as a teenager to go on tours with his band for weeks at a time, and often lending him money so he could keep doing so.

Andy Dixon began playing guitar in the band d.b.s. around the age of twelve in 1991 with bandmates Paul Patko (drums), Jesse Gander (vocals), and Dhani Borges (bass), drawing from influences such as Bad Religion and, later, Jawbreaker.[citation needed] The group decided to disband in October 2000[citation needed] after over eight years, five full-length records, and the release of their final EP, Forget Everything You Know, regarded as their most mature effort. Forget Everything You Know was released on Dixon's Ache Records.

Near the end of d.b.s., Dixon, along with future business partner Zoë Verkuylen and friend Gregory Adams of The Self Esteem Project started toying with songs under the name Hooray for Everything. Due to other members leaving the group, the original three took their songs to Paul Patko of d.b.s., who agreed to be their drummer. This change in personnel warranted a change in the band's name to The Red Light Sting.

Their sound was predominantly post-hardcore, with noise core influences. Gregory Adams's vocals ranged from screaming to soft singing. Zoë Verkuylen played a Roland Juno-60 keyboard as a rhythm instrument, often playing off key notes and dissonant riffs. Though Dixon, who played guitar for the band, was the leading creative force behind the group, Adams has been quoted as saying in Discorder that when they were together, "the songs write themselves".

After four years, The Red Light Sting disbanded, holding their last shows in Seattle and Vancouver in early September 2004. In that time, they released two EP's—And Our Love is Soaking in It and Rub 'Em Out—as well as a split LP with Hot Hot Heat. Their final release was Hands Up, Tiger, a ten-song LP which came out less than a month before the band split up.

It was at this time that Dixon realized the potential of his computer as a musical medium, something he had already been doing in his spare time: he produced a record under the moniker of The Epidemic on Ache Records. This solo debut saw Dixon "combining an indie rock sensibility with vague electronic flashes and jilting experimentation with arrangements".

In an interview with Discorder, Dixon explained that he needed to take time off from playing in a band, something which he had been doing since he was twelve. Instead he focused his efforts on his record label, Ache Records, and his solo music project, now called Secret Mommy.

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