PERSONAL BANDANA “[sic]” (Hibernator Gigs)


As you all know, [sic] implies that an error in something you’re quoting was there to begin with, and you had nothing to do with it. You just reprinted it as you found it, but you don’t want anybody to think you’re stupid. Not an incomprehensible reaction – I don’t want anybody to think I’m stupid either, and I use [sic] all the time. Nobody ever has to use [sic] when they’re quoting me.

Personal Bandana, the Casio-wielding duo of Dave Gibson and Travis Thatcher, doesn’t make any errors. Armed with only their keyboards of choice, Gibson and Thatcher whip up righteous synth-prog epics with a seeming ease totally in sync with one of them wearing a Soft Machine shirt in their press photo. In fact, that press photo may be telling – Personal Bandana looks like a couple of me’s (apostrophe intentional for ease of reading, no [sic] needed!), me being just a bespectacled chowderhead who loves computer music and science fiction. Personal Bandana and I would get along swimmingly.

Circuits bent in all the proper 1980s fantasy film ways, flange applied appropriately, and crates full of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder records in their practice space, Gibson and Thatcher add to the canon, injecting some much-needed energy and imagination into the genre. Actually, wait – does the genre need that kind of injecting? Maybe it’s doing OK after all – there’s some good stuff coming out of Holodeck and Terry Tapes and stuff like that. Personal Bandana just fits right in, period, no typos or fukcups.




--Ryan