AHKA began in 1996 when Matt Stein crawled out from under a slimy rock with male pattern baldness and a swollen liver. Matt charged a Theremin to his credit card, borrowed a Rat pedal and a four track recorder and commenced to putting his own personal brand of filth to tape. After self releasing two cassette tapes of Ape material Matt assembled a band to perform the material live. Since its inception the live line-up has had a revolving door policy that could rival Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Uriah Heep. Rumors report that Matt has fired musicians for simply having “a bigger aura” than his.
By 2000 AHKA released its debut album MATTRICIDE, even though this was not the first time that someone pissed and moaned through distortion backed by god awful noise, local hipsters bought the hype. The Los Angeles New Times even picked “Electronically Poisoning Pete” in its Top 10 songs of 2000, referring to it as “Utter genius”. AHKA was instantly thrust into L.A.'s limelight, playing trendy night spots, name dropping obscure noise bands and doing "goofballs" with Silver Lake’s middle-aged hip elite. The bands live shows at this point featured Bill Blake in full Planet Of The Apes costume delivering movie dialogue as well as Apes movie actress Natalie Trundy playing maracas and a surplus of drummers and percussionists.
After the smoke cleared and all the Hollywood bullshit hype faded, the only direction left for this project to go was down. Matt Stein steered the project straight in that direction by releasing ACID REFLUX in 2003. The CD peaked out at #27 on the CMJ Top 200 and has forever cemented AHKA's reputation as the Anti-Steely Dan in a scene that could hardly care less.
The same year AHKA also self released the ANOTHER FRAUDULENT HOAX EP.
The verdict was in and people either loved or HATED this discount brand of noise Stein was shilling to a small community of freaks and left fielders. SNIDE RANTS AND CHEAP GIMMICKRY and A PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF METALLURGY followed in 2005 and .DISTORTION CLINIC in 2006.
After a 10 year rise to the bottom of the L.A. shit pile and 6 CD releases, AHKA has no label affiliation and continues to self release their recordings and play random shows if they feel like it, usually at Mr. T’s Bowl.
The current line up of Ape Has Killed Ape is:
Matt Stein -vocals, theremin, guitar, steel guitar, percussion and samples.
Mike "the Serpent" Sirkin on synth, sax and flute.
Kurt Kasinoff- lead bass, guitar skankage and drums (Kurt is still lost somewhere in the horrifying future and performs with the band only when summoned by a team of psychic advisors).
Ian Dye-Voodoo drums and whatever else needs to be played
The Birth of Ape Has Killed Ape
