(Co-founder Stefan Helmreich discusses Structural Fracture’s San Diego roots and national branches.)
Structural Fracture was a psychedelically minded garage-punk trio from San Diego’s North County, active from 1984 to 1986. Stefan Helmreich, Chris Henry and David Derrick played house parties in Encinitas (once with Noise 292) and often offered themselves as guinea pigs to budding recording engineers at Mira Costa College in Oceanside.
In 1985, Structural Fracture won San Dieguito High School’s Battle of the Bands in a performance many remember for the band’s bent rendition of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and for the moment when Stefan used a blender to mangle a microphone.
“Delirium” was recorded in June 1985 at Mira Costa and features Stefan Helmreich on bass and vocals, Chris Henry on guitar and David Derrick on drums. Simon Cheffins, of future Crash Worship fame, engineered the recording.
Stefan and Chris continued as a duo through 1986, in Los Angeles, where both began college after graduating from San Dieguito. They stripped Structural Fracture down to a busking outfit, playing on the Santa Monica pier and Venice Beach boardwalk.
In 1987, Chris moved back to San Diego, where he co-founded a series of bands: Faux Pas; Noise Pie; Loki; and, in 2004, The Screaming YeeHaws.
At UCLA, in 1989, Stefan became drummer for K-Tel Wet Dream, which morphed (without Stefan) into San Francisco-based psycho-pop band Star Pimp. Stefan continued composing — antifolk songs in San Francisco in the late 1990s and, in New York City in the early 2000s, sample-based soundtracks (The Infernal Chrome Gods), which were spun in such venues as SubTonic, the subterranean lounge of the now-defunct Lower East Side music club, Tonic. In 2003, Stefan returned to the sound of structures fracturing with Xerophonics: Copying Machine Music (Seeland).
David Derrick settled in San Francisco, recording as Twelve Tablets and Dream Calendar, creating compositions based on sounds he collected during his several travels around the world. David and Stefan collaborated occasionally in the 1990s as Beet the Meatles.
Structural Fracture plays “Delirium”: Listen now!
— Stefan Helmreich
I remember Faux Pas playing at the Adams Avenue Street Fair many moons ago. Chris Henry owned a bar in the 90’s called Grannys, right?
Rule #1: never let your alcoholic friends have tabs.