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pounding away on his Roland Octopad-8, Mark De La Fuente is no stranger to scary and indimidating drum tech from the eighties. purchased with a small but sufficient tax return, the Octopad is the eight pad trigger system that replaced the early days of keyboard drumming... that is he used to drum on his Radioshack brand OPTIMUS when the band was scarcely a band.  strangely enough, the band fell in love with the faux-electronic drum sound of the OPTIMUS and chose to stay with it over the bass heavy electronica sound of the Roland MC-303 as a slave device, and rejected the Alesis SR-16. unsurprisingly enough, Mark had never picked up anything related to drumming prior to his role in MOTHER II.  But perhaps this is consistent with his belief in just about everything: if he can't look bitching doing it, then why the hell bother?

UNFORTUNATELY, photography and honest friends have proved to Mark that never at anytime does he look even fairly cool drumming.  after all, the best two photos of friday practice with Mark are here, one featuring only his hand and the other his mostly blank face. think of it as a trade-off: you get fun industrial drumming and he gets a look on his face that screams of "what's that guy doing outside with the flash light?" the answer to that question is "telling us to shut-up on a Monday night", and he sucked, but we nailed that multitrack recording of North American nonetheless.. he shoved off when we finished it anyway, that jerk.