|
Yacht
 |
Jonathan Warren Bechtolt (born December 2, 1980), performing under the name Jona Bechtolt, is an electronic musician and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon, United States. He is a former member of The Blow, and has released solo records under the name YACHT since 2003. Nearly all of his recordings have been distributed by both Marriage Records and States Rights Records.
Bechtolt was born in Astoria, Oregon. Bechtolt began playing music as a teenager. He dropped out of high school to play drums in his brother's touring punk band. He started working with electronics in the late 1990s. He has been a vegetarian for most of his life and a vegan since 2000.
In January 2006, YACHT was commissioned for two performances for the New York based art and technology platform Rhizome, as part of their "Crap-tops vs Laptops" show. In February 2006, he performed at the Museum of Modern Art's P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and produced an hour-long internet radio program with Clear Cut Press; a Northwest-based publisher of new literary work.
In 2007, YACHT released I Believe in You, Your Magic Is Real on Marriage Records. For the release party, Bechtolt performed a concert on an actual yacht on the Willamette River in Portland.
His live performances include dancing to the music that he has created as well as elaborate PowerPoint presentations. He documents his professional and sometimes personal life via video, text, and images on his blog.
In 2003, Bechtolt was commissioned to create a full length audio/visual electronic pop opera by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). He performed with his group The Badger King with bandmate M. Ritchey (a Wolf Colonel and Dear Nora alumnus who went on to record alone as Manta, and then Mantar).
In 2006, Bechtolt collaborated with Khaela Maricich as half of the pop group The Blow to release Paper Television. Bechtolt toured extensively with The Blow, providing beats and backup vocals until quitting the band in 2007 in order to focus on his work in YACHT.
He is a co-founder of the Portland-based popular blogging web community Urban Honking as well as the producer, editor, cameraman and a writer of The Ultimate Blogger.
 |
|
