The Same is a one or two person band, depending on who's watching the kids.
Formed in 1983 as a side project for me, Einar Ask, then the guitarist/bassist for "The UltraViolet Catastrophe", The Same has grown and changed, yet produced music relentlessly.
We come under the heading Elektro-Industrial, but sometimes get called techno, pop, punk, ambient, or electronic. I guess everybody's right, but it depends on what they heard! I've played and recorded a lot of music over the years.

Download "The Same".

Right now, today, The Same may be heard on a compilation CD from Cleopatra records called "Electro-Industrial Sounds of the Northwest". (I've seen it in stock at several local record shops - try Tower. Stop reading this and go buy it. It's a good compilation.) People Say is the song of ours that's on it. It's my personal favorite. Of ours, I mean. The rest of the disc has even better material!

Here's The Same's equipment list for those interested in electronic music.

The Same have been reviewed in several publications, local and national, despite few live gigs in recent years. Since the other (better) part of the band is my wife, Juli, and we're raising children (a boy, 5 and a girl, 2 - cute as buttons) we've decided to spend most of our time with the young'uns. Important stuff, this raising humans. To keep musically alive we mostly write songs and record, a habit that I've never been able to get out of my system. However, we can be seen live when the timing is right, visit this page or the NEC page and check the schedule for notices.

When we go live, I tend to be alone, or at best Juli's involvement gets cut back because of them kids in our schedule, so to compensate I try to build objects to fill up the stage and venue. You can read about those on my main page. Lately I've been spending most of my artistic leisure time with Mr. Julius Brown, and we have created "BubbleVision". It's similar to The Same, but with a more ambient theme, with emphasis on interactivity, audience participation, and brilliant projections. For details, see the BubbleVision pages. We've even been on MTV Europe -- I love saying that! (Filmed at the Black Citroen).

Reviews:

LOCAL:
• "The Same are ready for the ReBar" The Rocket
• "If you want an infectious dance beat, call The Same" The Rocket
• "The Same are... trying to create a new experience for the audience." and "The Same are not the same at all." Pandemonium

NATIONAL:
• "The Same... has ascended to interactive darlinghood in Europe" The Alternative Press
• Axcess magazine described our live MIDI controllers and quoted lyrics from our song "I Blame You".
• We've also been positively mentioned in Industrial Nation.

INTERNATIONAL:
• MTV News (Europe) - part of the NWCA piece.
• SOLO (a German music magazine) ran a full page with photos.

See the controller page for more details on the instruments.

Me and Juli on our wedding day back in 1984.
(Thanks to Charles Peterson for taking our wedding photos. What a swell guy.)

All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997

Did someone say BubbleVision?

Einar Ask / einar@einar.com