steve marsh

Steve Marsh is dedicated to pushing boundaries and breaking rules in the pursuit of creating compelling, provocative, transformative works and enhanced, altered reality. He has been a founding member and leader of Terminal Mind, Miracle Room, and Wisdom Tooth, and is currently in Evil Triplet and performing solo as Radarcave, Life Skills Department, and TelepathiX. He also is a video artist and experimental artist/photographer.

Marsh was born in Ft Worth, TX and spent his junior high and high school years there. After high school, he made his way to Austin to study art at the University of Texas in 1977, where he met twins who played guitar and drums and were interested in forming a band. Marsh was a fan of John Cale, Patti Smith, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop, and was aware of the global Punk phenomenon and its local incarnation at Raul’s Club on the Drag. He formed Terminal Mind, which quickly became a local favorite, releasing a self-titled EP, having two songs included on the first Live At Raul’s LP and opening for Iggy at the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1980.

Marsh had begun creating ever-more-elaborate stage sets for Terminal Mind and, when the band broke up, he built on this interest in his next offerings: a series of collaborative multimedia events and the electronic No Wave group Life On Earth, which once performed at Club Foot on the catwalk above the stage.

After a brief stint working with God Of Hellfire Arthur Brown, Marsh put together the psycho-industrial noise rock band Miracle Room. Talk about elaborate stage sets: they literally brought the kitchen sink! Miracle Room became a go-to experience in the developing psychedelic underground scene in Austin, sharing the stage with the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, and Snakefinger. After a tour to the Northeast, Miracle Room found favor with the Knitting Factory club in New York, and in 1988 they moved there. By 1990, they had a self-titled EP out on Bar/None Records and were asked to tour Europe in support of Sonny Sharrock Band on the first Knitting Factory tour.

Miracle Room gave way to Wisdom Tooth, which performed exclusively on homemade instruments and made use a self-controlled light show of Marsh’s design. Wisdom Tooth played their second show at Lollapalooza on the Second Stage at Jones Beach, NY in 1992. They also performed at La Mama Theater and The Whitney Museum of American Art, and released a CD called Mental Floss on Knitting Factory Works.

Meanwhile, Marsh was making art: painting huge unstretched canvases, working with the new technology of cd-roms, and creating videos using a Fisher-Price pixelcam. He followed Wisdom Tooth with other short-lived bands and solo projects: Buddha Pest, Fortune Teller, Spelunker. And he worked at his “day job”: electric zither player in the backing band for the Blue Man Group.

Marsh also contributed an atmospheric music piece to the soundtrack of indie film Chicago Cab, during a scene with John Cusack.

In 2004, after a show-closing appearance with the Raul’s All-Star Punk lineup at the Austin Music Awards, Marsh moved back to Austin and began building electronic music instruments and pedals. He performed solo as Radarcave and in collaborations with O.U.C.H. and Book Of Shadows.

Marsh was inspired by the early Psych Fests in Austin, and formed Evil Triplet to continue his love of psychedelic music. He also began performing and recording regularly with renowned SpaceFolk avatar Ralph White and, when Sonic Surgery Records offered to release a reissue/ retrospective LP of Terminal Mind music, put together a new version of that group in order to play at the record release party (the overwhelmingly positive response kept the band going for several more shows).

Marsh currently performs and records solo as Radarcave, an electronic/ ambient/ experimental/ noise project with immersive projected video, as well as Life Skills Department, a cathartic noise guitar solo project. He has also begun an electronic trance recording project as TelepathiX (all of the above are on the Emergency Hearts label), and he also continues to record as Evil Triplet.