Rhys Fulber was born in Vancouver, Canada on October 10, 1970. His father was born in Germany and his mother was from Great Britain. He was exposed to the music of Led Zeppelin and Kraftwerk through his musician father and with instruments always in the house, started drumming at a very early age. His father later built and ran a recording studio, catering toward the localpunk rock scene where Rhys spent a lot of time. In 1984 Rhys started becoming more interested in electronic music and got his first synthesizer. In 1986, he became friends with Bill Leeb who had just left his former band Skinny Puppy. Fulber is the first cousin of Shawn Atleo, a Canadian First Nations activist and former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
Fulber's first involvements in Front Line Assembly were one song on their second cassette release Total Terror, and then three songs on The Initial Command. He also contributed to Delerium's debut album, Faces, Forms & Illusions. During this time he started the bandWill together with Chris Peterson, John McRae and Jeff Stoddard, which lasted from 1987 to 1992. He joined Front Line Assembly for their first tour, Gashed Senses & Crossfire in 1989. He then joined Delerium full-time when Michael Balch left. 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. Leeb and Fulber released several albums as Synæsthesia, including Embody, Desideratum 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.
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 bandEconoline 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 inVan Nuys.
Selected production credits
Key: P = Produced, Prg = Programming, K = Keyboards, Rmx = Remix, M = Mixed, E = Engineered, CoW = Co Writer, AddP = Additional Production
