Paul D. Millar, alias SLUGBUG, is a New York-based musician and producer. His music is idiosyncratic, drawing from influences in new wave, prog rock, post-punk, and electronic music; he's characterized his music as "micro-prog," "synth-prog-punk," and "nervous man music." It tends towards brief, intricate songs dense with event. Born in Waco, Texas in 1989, Millar grew up in a musical household; his mother taught music theory at a local university.
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Paul D. Millar, alias SLUGBUG, is a New York-based musician and producer. His music is idiosyncratic, drawing from influences in new wave, prog rock, post-punk, and electronic music; he's characterized his music as "micro-prog," "synth-prog-punk," and "nervous man music." It tends towards brief, intricate songs dense with event. Born in Waco, Texas in 1989, Millar grew up in a musical household; his mother taught music theory at a local university. Interested in music and technology, he began to prolifically write and record his own music as a teenager, and self-distributed it online. Much of this early, immature output is now lost to the sands of time; the later retrospective release "BUG STORY 2003-2007" (2013) collects the cream of it. As an adult, Millar moved to Austin in 2010, keen to escape the small-town atmosphere of Waco, and to engage with the more vibrant cultural life of the capital city. As a teenage amateur musician, Millar had necessarily become skillful at repairing broken tape machines, synthesizers, and the like, and he put this experience to use, securing a job as a repairman in a shop specializing in vintage synthesizers. He established his own semi-professional analog recording studio in Austin, Bug Sound (West), where he recorded his own material, and engineered/produced recordings for other artists as well. While living in Austin, Millar was fleetingly a member of the local band Pataphysics, and later a member of the related band Tucker A&M Perry Foundation; he also performed in one of Gary Wilson's regional backing bands, the Austin Blind Dates. Millar's move to Austin marks the beginning of his mature period as an artist, as he became more professional and perfectionist; from 2010 on, his music is also more individualized, and less beholden to his influences. His Austin period produced four EPs, an LP (2012's "Truck Month"), and the aforementioned "BUG STORY" compilation. Millar met Ariel Pink after a concert in November 2017; Pink hired Millar as a touring band member. In addition to playing guitar and keyboards in Pink's band on tour, Millar also worked on archiving and remastering Pink's back catalog for a series of reissues and compilations on the Mexican Summer label. His employment by Ariel Pink ended some time in 2019 or 2020, with the conclusion of his work on the reissue campaign. Millar moved to New York City in 2018, and has lived there since. He has set up a new studio in New York (Bug Sound East), and continues to do engineering and production work for other artists, in addition to working on his own music. His latest LP, "0xBAADF00D," was released in 2020.
