Fulber was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on October 10, 1970. His father, a musician, was born in Germany and his mother was from Great Britain. His father introduced him to the music of Led Zeppelin and Kraftwerk; they both attended a Kraftwerk concert in 1975. Fulber became interested in music and started drumming on his father's instruments at a very early age. Along with Kraftwerk, Fulber's electronic influences included Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Jean-Michel Jarre, SPK, and Pete Shelley's Homosapien (1981). He has cited OMD as his favourite band in his youth.[2]
His father later built and ran a recording studio, catering toward the local punk rock scene. As a youth, Fulber spent a lot of time at the studio. In 1984 he started becoming more interested in electronic music and acquired his first synthesizer.
He joined Front Line Assembly for their first tour, Gashed Senses & Crossfire in 1989. He then joined Delerium full-time when Michael Balch left.[4] Until 1997, Fulber was involved in all Front Line Assembly, Delerium and side projects with Bill Leeb, including the albums Tactical Neural Implant and Hard Wired from Front Line Assembly, and Semantic Spaces and Karma from Delerium.
Rhys Fulber live with Conjure One at the Nocturnal Culture Night festival in Germany, 2015
Leeb and Fulber released several albums as Synæsthesia, including Embody, Desideratum[5] and Ephemeral.
Fulber was nominated for the Jack Richardson Producer Of The Year award at the 2008 Juno Awards and won two Junos with Delerium for Best Dance Recording in 1998 and 2000.
Discography
This section lists only regular full studio albums.
As Front Line Assembly was beginning to peak, their UK label Third Mind was bought out by Roadrunner Records, a predominantly metal label. An up-and-coming band on the label Fear Factory was looking to expand their sound with remixes and new label mates Front Line Assembly were contacted. This led to the influential Fear Is the Mindkiller EP. From this more metal themed work followed while Fulber was contracted to contribute keyboards and de facto additional production to Fear Factory's breakthrough Demanufacture album, defining their signature sound. Fulber had also contributed backing tracks around this same time to new Canadian industrial rock band Econoline Crush, leading to their signing with EMI Canada and eventually his first full length production job handling their debut album Affliction, spawning minor Canadian rock radio hit "Wicked". From there his production career grew and became more varied. The later success of Delerium bringing him into more adult music formats with artists like Josh Groban and Serena Ryder. Based out of Los Angeles since 2000, he currently works out of his own studio, Surplus Sound in Van Nuys.
