Weirdo Since Day One: Brian Graupner on Creating Without a Safety Net

Brian Graupner doesn’t know how to kneel.

The moment he tried, his body rejected it. “Instant nausea,” he calls it. A reflex. Something deeper than choice.

“I think true creativity comes from not only being on the fringe, but coming to that edge honestly. Not voluntarily strapping on a mental harness for the sake of safety.”

The Reboot

Two years ago, Brian got canceled. Brutally. Categorically.

“The Gothsicles, the erstwhile main project, requires a substrate of joy and a certain Mr. Rogers-ness to perform honestly.” After the backlash, after being forced to scrap a 25+ year career and reboot from zero, the joy wasn’t there anymore.

Gasoline Invertebrate became the new center. Bitter, direct, politically charged. What started as inward-focused aggrotech evolved into a platform for outward expression — the kind that makes people “intensely incensed.”

He lost everything. Festival gigs. Video game soundtrack contracts. Bandcamp flagged him for hate speech. A tour got shut down by “bizarrely obsessive shitheads.”

He didn’t apologize.

“I’m definitely not going to let that dictate a single fucking syllable of any future lyrics. Maybe that’s reckless, but there’s a certain freedom in being hyper-canceled ’cause it’s not like I’m losing out on anything they already took.”

The Amorphousness

Brian runs multiple projects — Gasoline Invertebrate, Space Couch, The Gothsicles, Serpadeuce, Ligerhawk Records. Different names, different tones, same truth.

“Conceptually, all the various projects serve the same purpose of exploring strange new sonic worlds.” Individually, they vary wildly. Some are playful. Some are confrontational. All of them refuse to be contained in one identity.

“My own incorrigible amorphousness probably works against me from dividing my energy all over the place.” But electronic music demands this kind of fragmentation. “Because audio can be edited piecemeal, along with the general precept of ‘remix culture,’ the groundwork is already laid to work with another mind and create something that’s more than the sum of its parts.”

When asked when independence became the obvious path:

“Weirdo since Day 1.”

Four words. No explanation needed.

The Origin

Before Gasoline Invertebrate, there was Gasoline Animal. He changed it because 1) he digs squids and stuff, and 2) “Gasoline Invertebrate” has a similar rhythm to “Nemesis Enforcer” from G.I. Joe.

If he could time travel anywhere, he’d sample wooly mammoth noises.

Brian’s love of 3D printing — another form of creation without permission.

These details matter. They’re the reminder that underneath the refusal, the cancellation, the political fire — there’s a person who finds joy in absurdity. Who names projects after cartoon villains. Who thinks sampling extinct mammals would be “sick af.”

The Fugue State

When Brian first started making music, it was conscious effort. “Okay, I’m going to write a song now.”

Now it’s different. An “ever-present milieu” where he’ll go into fugue state and wake up knee-deep in Cubase.

The work isn’t controlled anymore. It unfolds. He’s the vessel.

The Collaboration

“…Meeting someone else halfway on a collab always pulls me in ways I could have never foreseen.”

He didn’t think he’d ever be in a post-punk grunge band — now there’s Crudmouth. He never had a Skinny Puppy-ish sound — now there’s Serpadeuce.

Remixes that present the biggest challenge end up being his favorites. “Dude, I have no idea how I’m going to remix this.”

The Pendulum

Jung said the pendulum swings between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. What swung far enough for Brian that he had to make it real?

“For much of the genre’s history, the idea of right-wing or conservative-coded industrial was basically a contradiction in terms. The lies, hypocrisy, and forced ‘Scientology smiles’ of the left got so extreme, however, it got to a point that I couldn’t let it slide and I speak in industrial music.”

He lost everything. But it’s worth it if he can be a light.

“That’s some pretty self-aggrandizing horse puckey, but it’s the notion on to which I hold to get through this current mega-isolation.”

The Signal

Brian Graupner doesn’t create for applause. He creates because the alternative — going along with the lie so people will continue to like him — triggers instant nausea.

Mind Pendulum thrives where voices like his emerge — artists who refuse the script, disrupt the narrative, and create without permission. We are building a collective where truth, art, and rebellion feed each other.

Music for the Subconscious.

Support the Work

Gasoline Invertebrate is running a Kickstarter right now. Not for merch. Not for a vinyl repress. For the actual work — the thing that makes people “intensely incensed.”

Support the Gasoline Invertebrate Kickstarter →

If you’ve been waiting for proof that some artists won’t bend, this is it.

Follow Brian:

Mind Pendulum — Music for the Subconscious