STS9 Biography

STS9, or Sound Tribe Sector 9 is made up of five members; Hunter Brown who plays the guitar, Alana Rocklin who plays the bass guitar, Jeff Lerner who plays the percussion and hand sonic, David Phipps who plays the keyboards and Zach Velmer on the drums. This band has been around since the late 1990s and focuses mainly on hip-hop, electronic music. STS9 always tends to add a good amount of jazz, funk, drum and bass to their pieces as well, making them unique.

Originally from California and Georgia, STS9 has made their way around the United States as well as internationally due to their constant success. STS9 has created a total of eleven albums of their own music along with two albums consisting of remixes. Another milestone in STS9’s career was being able to perform live at multiple music festivals. Some festivals they made appearance at include Bonnaroo, Electric Forest and Wakarusa. With these live performances, STS9 was able to play acoustically in opera houses and electronically in amphitheaters.

Along with the larger music festivals, STS9 worked hard to raise money for charitable organizations like the Make it Right Foundation which helped to rebuild houses in New Orleans, Louisana. With their talent, STS9 created their own record label called 1320 Records. This label helps produce STS9’s music and other artists like Big Gigantic, Pretty Lights and Glitch Mob.

STS9 also performed a ton of social work throughout their careers. Working with non-profit organizations to increase awareness for certain causes made STS9 stand out amongst the other musicians in their industry. For example, if you were attending a concert for STS9 it was encouraged that you brought canned foods to be donated to Conscious Alliance, an organization that STS9 teamed up with to host successful food drives.

Another way STS9 contributed to their social work was using an environmentally friendly tour bus that used renewable energy only. This was made a reality by the help of the organization Renewable Energy Credits.

Back on the music aspect of STS9’s career, they were topping the Billboard charts with their albums in 2005. After this review, STS9 was performing in cities for multiple nights in a row. Their songs were sure to be crowd pleasers! Some notable performances to date were STS9’s performance in San Francisco, California at The Fillmore. California being their home state, STS9 kept their performances going strong and held more concerts in Santa Cruz at Palookaville and the Santa Cruz Civic Center.

As previously stated, STS9 has traveled throughout the United States and created large fan bases in each city they visited. Chicago and Denver were two cities to remember for STS9. Performing for New Years Eve in 2009 and Denver and Lollapalooza, a huge music festival in Chicago, STS9 was able to grow more than they could have ever imagined.

The Earthdance Festival was another huge venue that STS9 got to perform at for multiple years in a row. Every year, this festival took place at different locations throughout California.