Alone Again, Electronically

At a few ticks before noon, Brian Natonski opens the door of a plush, barely furnished house in Mission Viejo.

He has just awakened--late for an appointed interview--as attested to by his red-rimmed eyes, the tangle of his dark blond hair, a not-quite-there fogginess in his responses, and the stubble on a face that’s reminiscent of Sting’s.

It’s a fitting introduction to a musician who owes his life’s direction to chronic insomnia.

Natonski, 31, has gone from twiddling knobs on shortwave radios to passing sleepless nights during his Chicago childhood, to a potentially prominent perch in the world of electronic dance music.

Under the performing name Gearwhore (explanation forthcoming), Natonski last summer released his first album, “Drive,” on Astralwerks, the New York City label that’s home to the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, two of the small handful of techno figures who have crossed over from the club world to hit-maker status on modern-rock radio.

“Drive” is impressive for its variety and its engaging, sometimes surprising flow. Natonski and his collaborators give computer-based sound the organic breath of “real” instruments such as drums, guitars and piano as well as the human voice chanting or singing wordless melodies.

A new single, “The Picture,” has the surging rhythm and valedictory sweep of anthem-rock, calling to mind the mid-’80s nugget “Rise” by Public Image Ltd. Gearwhore plays one of its rare concerts Sunday in a benefit for Planned Parenthood at the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana.

Natonski begs a few minutes to shower and emerges with his slender frame clad in black.

He is coming off a 16-hour workday in which he wrestled until 6 a.m. with a funky revamping of the “James Bond” movie theme he’s contributing to a compilation of lounge and electronic music. Then he called it a night, or a morning, and crawled off to sleep in the closet of his upstairs-bedroom studio.

Natonski has deadlines looming for the Bond piece, and for remixes of “Drive” tracks for an upcoming half-hour BBC program that will introduce him to the public in Britain and Europe, where “Drive” will be released shortly on Virgin Records.

Getting his album out in Europe will complete a circle for Natonski. His introduction to electronic music came in the 1970s when his shortwave radio pulled in broadcasts of the nascent pop form from Germany and London.

Natonski also got a firm grounding in more traditional forms of pop music during his preteen years by habitually spending his lunch money on used LPs.

“By the time I was 12,” he said, “I had the classic ‘70s record collection.” He started playing drums in teen bands covering AC/DC and Judas Priest songs. At 14, he acquired his first electronic instrument--a set of synthesizer drums that became the first building block in a digital home-recording setup that he values at $80,000.

Through high school and his college years at Eastern Illinois University, Natonski slowly pieced together his gear, raising cash from odd jobs such as mowing lawns, caddying and working as a disc jockey with a mobile sound system for parties.

His jones for the ideal electronic music setup led to his performing alias: “I got the name Gearwhore because I’d do anything to get equipment. I was trying to sell my bicycle, a nice BMX, so I could get a new mixing console. Somebody walked in and said, ‘Dude, you’re just a whore for gear.’ I built the system so everything would be compatible. The great thing is there’s nothing I can’t do here. I’ve never sat here and wished I had more recording equipment.”

During the early ‘90s, Natonski built a reputation in Chicago as a dance-club deejay. He became an associate of Ministry and KMFDM, acts on Wax Trax Records, an influential, Chicago-based source of industrial rock and electronic music. Natonski made his recording debut singing backup vocals on a 1991 album by LARD, a collaboration between Ministry’s leader, Al Jourgensen, and punk-rock hero Jello Biafra.

Natonski passed some of his sleepless nights at his college’s music conservatory, teaching himself piano by banging on baby grands in soundproof cubicles. He came within hailing distance of a finance degree, but an internship as a number cruncher for a medical corporation convinced him that a business career wasn’t for him: Among other things, he just couldn’t function in the mornings.

He devoted his energy to his industrial-rock band, Wretched Excess, which played clubs in Chicago, often sharing bills with Smashing Pumpkins.

Natonski moved to Orange County in 1994 after concluding that he wasn’t going to progress as a small fish in Chicago’s big techno pond. Biafra, who runs the Bay Area independent label Alternative Tentacles, was one of those who passed on Wretched Excess. But Natonski took to heart some advice Biafra passed on in a rejection letter that now hangs outside his bedroom: Don’t wait around for a deal; start your own label.

Natonski called his company Fataldata, and used it to expose his own work and that of a bevy of Orange County electronica acts he met at dance clubs and underground parties. Fataldata released two compilation CDs and four singles from 1995 to 1997; for a time, Natonski ran the label from Bangkok, Thailand, where he moved with his then-girlfriend, a Thai who had been studying in the United States.

In Thailand, Natonski began to miss full-time music-making. He returned to Orange County, put Fataldata on hold, and, after two rejections from Astralwerks, landed a deal on the strength of “Love,” an ambitious track fueled by a hip-hop groove, a funky bass, Eno-like distorted guitar textures and a piano figure that gives the song its romantic gleam.

“The problem with a lot of electronic music,” Natonski said, “is that people are making great beats and special effects, but they’re forgetting about melody and structure. I wanted to throw something down that was a little more musically oriented.”

Natonski’s affinity for live instrumentation gives him the colors to sound different. In his den are both an acoustic guitar and a copy of “Sound Reinforcement Handbook,” a text he regards as his bible for the musical manipulation of electronic gear.

Rather than cultivate the stereotypic techno image of the lone, mad alchemist concocting sound potions in a studio lab--though he picked up guitar and bass along the way so he could be a studio do-it-yourselfer--Natonski said he relishes music-as-collaboration.

In Gearwhore’s infrequent live performances, he is joined by drummer Lavar Boutte and bassist Brian Ebert. In the studio and on stage, Natonski aims for a free-flowing, spontaneous jam built on programmed beats.

“I always try to bring other musicians in whenever possible. It’s a lot more fun doing stuff that’s interactive,” he said, noting that his idea of a relaxing good time is to get together with friends, pick up acoustic guitars and “play old Stones songs, just sit there, sing and get drunk.”

Natonski sees electronic music as an evolution from rock, rather than a revolution seeking to eclipse the old order.

“When Led Zeppelin came out, they used tons of blues licks and that turned a lot of people on to blues. Instead of trying to bury rock, we move on to the next form of music, but we still pay tribute to the people we learned from. I was doing a dance set [as a deejay] and I broke into ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ and people went nuts.”

Natonski titled Gearwhore’s album “Drive” partly because it’s full of propulsive or coursing rhythms he likes to listen to on car trips, but also in recognition of the effort it has taken to learn music, run a do-it-yourself label, garner attention and get signed.

“Nothing came naturally to me at all,” he said of his self-taught grappling with enough “real” instruments to let him function as a one-man band if he so desired, even without the aid of electronics. “I’m still working out what to do with the guitar. Trying to learn syncopation and rhythm was just terrible for me, but I stuck to it. Some people are just born gifted. I wasn’t one of those people at all.”

* Gearwhore, Spahn Ranch, Pseudocipher and Channel play Sunday in a benefit concert for Planned Parenthood at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $15-$17. (714) 957-0600.

*