Tokyo, April 2000
In the heart of Tokyo, amid a packed stadium in Yoyogi, Franz Harary, the world renowned illusionist, magically brought forth the musician Mobius 8 from what appeared to be an empty spinning obelisk.

Positioned behind his instrument dubbed "The Hydra" (after the mythical multi-headed dragon), Mobius 8 began to fill the stadium with a mix of thick techno music. From just off stage, his performance seemed to be more of a magical trick than an actual musical performance. With hands and feet never actually touching anything, it took a curious, and somewhat frightened, audience member to play the Hydra before realizing the instrument worked not by touch, but by the motions being picked up by infrared beams coming from the instrument.

The Hydra, created by Mobius 8 (aka John Laraio), is the first motion-detecting musical instrument of its kind and may very well set a standard for the way live electronic music will be performed. Combining visuals, lighting, and sound, Mobius 8 created the Hydra to allow body movements to control the pattern of music turning a dance of motions into a musical ecstasy.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, John started playing drums but shortly moved over to guitar and keyboards. With early influences in both classical and rock, John played in various bands while elevating his knowledge of the electronic effects side of music. Yearning to go out west, John soon found himself living in Los Angeles working with various rap artists doing backbeats and studio work. When John started seriously getting into programming, one thing led to another and he found himself working with Jon Anderson from the band YES.

"I did some programming for Jon and then went on their 1994 world tour and actually started playing with them. During this time we did all kinds of electronic music, experiments and sampling."

Shortly after John's 1994 tour with YES, he invented the Hydra, though then it was not the incredibly complex instrument of today. I asked John how he actually came up with the Hydra concept:

"After I got off the YES tour, Jon Anderson was telling me about a company that was working with infrared light beams for security systems. Back then I was putting rap and techno beats to Classical music and I was combining the two together. He liked what I was doing and said I had to find a way to perform it live. I didn't want to sit there on a keyboard playing my music. That's not right for electronic music. So I went down and met these people and started talking about creating an instrument with infrared beams. I helped them make a workable effects controller for guitars and in the process I took it further and made something that could generate tones. Then we did a licensing with Roland to put a beam in the 505 and the 808. That was a very basic beam though, kind of a continuous controller that does filters and things like that."

John started building the Hydra in 1995 and as it stands now it controls visible laser beams, lights, projected visuals and robotics as well as music in a concert of sight and sound. Early in his development of the Hydra, John was approached by MGM and was asked to perform at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo).

"That was the first performance I did. Then I did a couple clubs around Hollywood, stuff like that. I did the Street Scene down in San Diego and some theater shows at the Hollywood El Rey and the Mayan Theater. I worked with two choreographers, Bruno "Popin Taco" Falcon and Alex Magno. They choreographed a few performances. Alex brought some great talent in and we did a show at the Mayan Theater with 30 dancers and 15 Brazilian percussionists. It was a Tribal type thing. Like Space meets Earth."

When asked how he ended up working with world-renowned illusionist Franz Harary, John said:

"I met him through Bruno "Popin Taco" Falcon who was working with Michael Jackson. Franz also worked with Michael. "Taco" and I were doing a show at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas and Franz offered to help out with some illusions. That was the first time we worked together. Then he asked me if I wanted to do the Tokyo show with him."

After returning to LA John plans to continue working on his upcoming CD "Electro Jockey" which will later be developed as a DVD.

"A lot of the video footage [for the DVD] we are capturing as we go. I've got stuff from the MTV tour we did with Third Eye Blind and from around Japan. Brett Leonard will direct some of the DVD. He directed Virtualosity and the Lawnmower Man. I like Brett's vision of the future. We see things similarly."

As a relatively unknown artist, John seems to be a ubiquitous figure within the greater entertainment industry.

"I had a great show a month ago with Dick Clark Productions, which Dick Clark hosted. The show was at Raleigh Studios with Stan Lee Media. Stan Lee created Spiderman, Xmen and other Marvel Comics. It was a really fun show."

And when John first debuted his new electronic wonder there was a great deal of interest.

"When I first came out with the instrument we got a lot of press. World News, Peter Jennings, CNN, Discovery channel and Globo Brazil all covered it, but I didn't have a product out at the time. I was just like "Let me finish!" The instrument was finished but I was still learning to play it. I wanted to sit back with it and just get everything together."

In his thoughts for the future, John relates his dreams for new creations and I am compelled to wonder just where his mind will come to rest.

"I would like to create an instrument that will take thoughts from a musician, or anybody, and put those thoughts into music. That's my ideal. That's my dream. There might be someone who's a paraplegic and could also be the most amazing composer in the world. Nobody would ever know it, but the music in his or her head could be amazing with no way to get it out. I think that every musician runs into those shackles as well. You hear things that you can't play or you spend your whole life technically learning how to play one instrument. Then you can't play on the other instruments so you have to communicate it to another musician that can play it on that instrument. Yet it's still not quite what you were hearing or the way you were hearing it. If there could be an instrument that could just get the music from your head out into the open, it would take away the physical via's that we use and then the true music would come out. Malcolm Ceisal did some experiments on people in Alpha states by taking their brain waves and turning them to synthesis. It's just a matter of installing it and writing the programs to make it work. I know how to make it work and I know the people to put it together. It's a matter of money."

One wonders if there is anyone out there willing to call his bluff. Watching John play his "Hydra," I'd have to back John's cards. He is clearly way out ahead of even modern electronic chip heads with his creations. He even has a 100 pound Brazilian crystal perched atop a black metal pyramid which anyone can play simply by caressing the air around the pyramid in much the same way John plays his Hydra, triggering sounds, and lights (which blast magically through the crystal, apparently from inside the Pyramid). And all this on a shoestring budget. Given the resources, his claim for instruments controlled by thought seems by no means a far-fetched idea.

When asked how he could possibly have learned all this, John replied:

"I learn all this stuff from the people I have worked with, the people that have taken the time to be a mentor and a teacher. You learn by just doing it. When you go to a school you are learning from people who are not out there doing it. They are just people teaching it."

When I explained that the average person has no idea about Cybernetics and such technology, he replied simply:

"It is just energy and it's a matter of how you are going to transpose it and translate it. It is what software is, a translator. It's all just digital information. It all translates to zeros and ones in different patterns. It's really that simple. So you just look at this data coming in and say that when it gets here you want to change it so it does this when it goes out. Brainwaves are really just zeros and ones too. You just need to bring the waves down to digital data. Analog data that's converted to digital data and then you can do what you want with it. You just have to find some common ground or area to go off of and come back to while making sense out of it."

Easy for you to say.

Brent Csutoras/Matthew Glass
September Y2K