Biography 

Born Chris Rigby in 1981 in Birmingham, England. Raised and lived there until the age of 18. Now an experimental electronic artist, his beginnings stem from a different medium: that of fine art, painting and sculpture. After obtaining a Fine Art degree from Coventry University in 2003, Chris played the keys in a Romford based experimental indie band, ‘Happycasio!’. Shortly after recording their first EP, Chris left the band to pursue his solo interests, to create and produce under the monicker as ‘vagrantgenius’ at Harvington Priory Studios (based in Birmingham). Although vagrantgenius started as very much a solo project, tracks contain guitar samples provided from fellow muso ‘Caddyboy’, who works closely with Chris producing under the Harvington Priory Studios banner (they have a side project, ‘Pyre of Positive Thinking’. He also draws influence from, and is in constant intellectual collaboration with very close friend Hector Osbert. There is rumoured to be an avant-garde sound collage project underway at time of writing, yet neither would confirm nor deny the venture. When it boils down to influences, there is none greater present than the Dadist movement - in recent years vagrantgenius has created a number of EP’s ranging from downtempo electronica to ambient noise. His live sets were very laptronic, assisted with his Kawai MR240, Casio WK-3500, Novation Remote25, Korg PadKontrol and Maya1010, amongst his ever growing number of keyboards where the only thing louder (and more disturbing!) than his music is perhaps his choice of hawaiian shirt for the event.
Hector Osbert, May 2009;