Free Moral Agents

Free Moral Agents were a collective of musicians brought together by Isaiah "Ikey" Owens (keyboardist from The Mars Volta) as a means to expand the sounds of what started as a solo recording project. In the spring of 2006 the band started playing shows around Long Beach and Los Angeles. There was a time, before I put the record out, that I wasn't playing in Mars Volta anymore, and I had just bought a bunch of recording instruments. I'd always wanted to record my own record but never did, so [Free Moral Agents] really started with just me. I knew J, who was actually my girlfriend at the time's brother-in-law, who did poetry and sang and stuff, so I got together with him. This is before the vinyl. I was working at this record store and started talking to my friend Jeff Harris, who it turns out, was really good with Pro Tools, so I added him to the group. He's really a producer and doesn't really play with us live, but he's very much responsible for the sound of the record. I knew Mendee [Ichikawa] for several years, and we had worked on and off, but I knew we needed a female element to the group, so that's basically what Free Moral Agents is right there. As far as the music goes, it started as my project, but these people who I know I can trust, really bring it together. In April 2009, Owens released two live tracks for free. In 2010, the group released its 2nd full-length album entitled Control This for Gold Standard Laboratories.