With her father being a Cuban refugee, twenty-six-year old Free Dominguez was raised as a first generation American in Houston, TX, with a healthy respect for freedom of expression -- political, intellectual, artistic and otherwise. Encouraged in the arts from an early age, she mainly expressed herself through dance but secretly dreamed of being a singer. After a few restless years studying psychology at a Houston college, she moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to pursue her dream.

In February 1996, Free was introduced to sound architect Bruce Somers through an entertainment attorney friend who thought she might appreciate the music Somers was working on. "We just clicked," says Free of the chance meeting. "It was just one of those magical things. We co-wrote our first song just three hours after we met."


"The difficulty in settling on our sound was finding the right way to take a very sexy, feminine voice and put it on top of extremely agitated, aggressive music," says Bruce Somers. Fortunately, the tension created by the interplay of Free's vocals with Bruce's aggro-beats and moody dreamscapes proved to be defining in terms of their future musical direction. Leavening the coolness and precision of Somers' studio concoctions with Free's strong sense of melody, they ventured to craft real songs out of the sonic clamor and in the process, created powerful and affecting vehicles for Free's cryptic lyrical imagery.

Since then, the Warner Bros. label, Extasy, has picked up the band. Their debut EP for the label, Phi in the Sky, is a hard-hitting industrial prelude to their full-length album due out in February. It’s a savvy blend of industrial rock, house beats and ambitious vocal work that places you in a different musical realm and urges you to stay.

The duo that comprises the Kidney Thieves are Bruce Somers and Free Dominguez, and they do more than an adequate job of complementing each other on every level. They are a perfect reflection of the old adage less is more. Dominguez’s Tori Amos-like voice crooning over the skillful manipulation of beats by Bruce Somers leaves you feeling as though any additional musicians would lead to an overproduced album.

DJ Merritt, Astralwerks artist Q-Burns Abstract Message and KMFDM all contribute their turntable skills, resulting in an album that lingers along the border of perfection. It’s a brash, fresh and flavorful sampling of what’s to come from a talented twosome from Los Angeles.

:: Official Kidney Thieves Site ::

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