When Adam Rupert Fisher moved to Long Beach from Colorado last year, the 28 year-old musician brought with him a completed solo album and zero expectations. He had only been in the city once before and didn’t know anyone aside from a few friends he met through the last ten years of off-and-on world tours with his successful post-hardcore/experimental/whatever band, Fear Before the March of Flames.
“The opportunity to move here arose at a time hen I was willing to go just about anywhere,” says Fisher, whose project All Human is having its record release show at the Prospector tonight. “I just needed a change. Things got a little too comfortable and I felt like I needed to grow up.”
Through the few people he knew here, Fisher quickly found a job at local wine bar 4th St. Vine and the owner Jim Ritson (a huge arts supporter) helped him get involved in Long Beach’s diverse music community. Though often too modest to tell anyone about his semi-rockstar history—or even the fact that he was a musician—Fisher knew that at some point he wanted to do something more with All Human, the project of technical-yet-mellow songs he had recorded back home.
Having a four-piece band and actual CD versions of his once solo endeavor as he does now, however, was not something Fisher had planned.
“I didn’t know I was ever going to get to play this album live much less hold a copy of it in my hand” he says of All Human’s debut release, Catholic Guilt or the Queerest of Human Thoughts. “I knew I wanted to put it out, but I didn’t know if it was going to happen. I definitely didn’t know I was going to have a band and that we would become such close friends.”
Though All Human as a band has only existed for a few months, the group of Long Beach transplants (one of whom Fisher approached at a bar because of his Doomriders jacket) are quickly making up for lost time, converting Fisher’s bedroom recordings into stage-ready numbers and writing new songs with the whole band in mind.
After its first-ever live show last month at the Slidebar in Fullerton—in which most of the atmospheric sounds were played on a set track—Fisher and his crew realized some things that needed to change and so they holed themselves up to figure out what went wrong and what they could do better. All Human’s second set ever (and first in Long Beach) will be the album release show and this time, the band is prepared to tackle its layered soundscapes with new synth pads, midi keyboards and basic samplers that the members can trigger themselves.
“[Catholic Guilt] was this record I made kind of by myself with songs I wrote alone,” he says. “And it’s really extended beyond that now into a totally new place, which is something I never thought would happen. It’s crazy that it’s a Long Beach project now.”
Fisher isn’t sure how long he’ll stay in Long Beach (he considers himself more of a forest person), but he is thankful for the time he has spent here and the unexpected support he’s received for his music. He doesn’t think he’s been here long enough to officially become a member of the local music scene, but with a diverse range of influences and an urge to keep playing and writing no matter what, he easily fits in with other driven hometown heroes like Wild Pack of Canaries and Avi Buffalo.
“Long Beach is the place where I finally feel—I don’t want to say home because I don’t ever really know where home is—but it’s the place I’ve been accepted into over the last year,” he says. “As far as the last year of my life, being here has been so important.”
All Human performs at the Prospector (2400 E. 7th St.) Thursday September 27 with Forest of Tongues and In Transmission at 8PM. Entrance is $5. Catholic Guilt or the Queerest of Thoughts can be purchased through All Human’s Bandcamp page.