Aaron Turner

Aaron Turner (born November 5, 1977) is an American musician, singer, graphic artist, and founder of label Hydra Head Records.

Turner was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on November 5, 1977.

At an early age, his family moved to New Mexico, where he was raised.

His mother was a teacher "who taught a progressive curriculum" and his father an author, "mainly [of] non-fiction".

Turner describes his upbringing, surrounded by his parents' writer, artist and photographer friends, as "creatively nurturing".

At age 17, he started a company that sold rare punk rock records via mail-order.

He later moved to Boston to attend art school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and in 1995 began releasing music.

By 1997, the Hydra Head label was becoming a respectable small record label.

Turner describes his early industriousness as being motivated in part by boredom:

"I grew up in New Mexico, and there wasn't a whole lot as far as youth culture is concerned. Especially when I started to get interested in straight edge and wasn't doing drugs anymore, there was really nothing for me to do. So that was like a big reason for me, I suppose, to become really productive. Also, I've never been a really social person. So there's not a lot of time taken up by my social life. And music has always been a very very big part of my life. I guess just a combination of those factors is why everything got started so early."

Around 1997–99, Turner was living with future Isis bassist and co-founder Jeff Caxide; until this point, he had been a member of the bands Union Suit and Hollomen.

Isis was formed in 1997 out of a dissatisfaction with said bands' musical direction and Turner and Caxide's respective degrees of creative control.

In June 2003, Turner moved operations of both the band and label to Los Angeles, California.

Turner now resides in Vashon, WA which is also the base of operations for Hydra Head and his various other activities.

Touring with Isis in 2007, Turner used two different guitars: a 1976 Fender Telecaster Custom (black), and a 1975 Fender Telecaster Deluxe (brown), played through various effects (his pedalboard layout changed every gig depending on what songs the band decided to play that night), a VHT/Fryette Pitbull Ultra Lead, and two 4x12 Sunn cabinets.

He has also acquired a custom guitar from the Electrical Guitar Company (as did fellow Isis guitarist Michael Gallagher).

In the past, Turner has also used a Gibson Les Paul Standard, PRS CE24, and has played through Sunn, Mesa Boogie, and Mackie amplifiers.

When playing with Isis, Turner and his fellow guitarists usually tuned their instruments (low to high) B-F#-B-E-G#-B, to achieve a heavier sound.

They also used other tunings, though less frequently, such as F# (octave below)-F#-B-E-G#-B.

He is most widely known for his role as guitarist and vocalist for the post-metal bands SUMAC and Isis, while also participating in several other bands and projects such as Old Man Gloom, Lotus Eaters and Split Cranium, a collaboration with Jussi Lehtisalo of Finnish band Circle who toured with Isis in 2009.

Raised in New Mexico, Turner moved to the Boston area, where he attended art school and formed Isis and Hydra Head.

In mid-2009, Turner moved from Los Angeles, where both Isis and Hydra Head Records were based at the time, to Seattle with his then-girlfriend, Faith Coloccia; they went on to wed in September of the same year.

In partnership with his wife Faith Coloccia, Turner founded another record label, SIGE, in March 2011.

It has gone on to release material from his musical collaboration with Coloccia, Mamiffer.

SIGE is distributed by The Business.

In 2016, Turner described the live rig he used with SUMAC as consisting of two custom-built guitars from the Electrical Guitar Company.

Both have lucite bodies and aluminum necks, and custom-wound wide frequency range pickups.

The newer of the two—a prototype for a signature model—has a slightly flatter fingerboard radius than the older instrument.

On a tour of the Eastern US, Turner was using an Orange Dual Dark 100 amplifier head with a slaved Fryette Two/Ninety/Two power amp.

Both heads drove Orange and Marshall cabinets, though Turner claimed to have no strong preferences for particular speaker cabinets.

While recording, Turner prefers to use a Fryette Pitbull Ultra Lead, an amp model he's used consistently since his work in Isis.

Turner described using a variety of effects pedals in his live rig.

Specifically, he runs a BOSS TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, a Death By Audio Apocalypse fuzz, a MASF fuzz, a Strymon BlueSky reverb (which he described as the one essential pedal in his rig), a TC Electronics Ditto Looper X2, and an EHX Forty-Five Thousand sampler (used to trigger preset samples during performance).

Turner prefers a Heil PR20 vocal microphone.

When playing with Sumac he uses two distinct tunings being A-F#-B-D-F#-B and A#-F-A#-D-F#-A#.

Turner cites Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Godflesh, Neurosis, and Led Zeppelin as influences on Isis' sound.

However, he points to the electronica, krautrock and hip hop genres as shaping the group's rhythmic focus and use of sampling, as well as their occasional digressions into ambient passages.

He has also listed Melvins, Jimi Hendrix, Swans, Keiji Haino, Oxbow, Earth, and Coil as among his favorite artists, and has noted that Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer were important to his early interests in the guitar.

In addition, he has noted Black Sabbath as an influence during his formative years.

Turner's artwork tends toward the abstract or surreal, often depicting strange or fantastic landscapes and structures.