nakamichi bx-1 cassette deck
So many of us geeks that grew up in the ’80s and ’90s were moved by Rutger Hauer’s ‘Tears in the Rain’ monologue at the end of the…
So many of us geeks that grew up in the ’80s and ’90s were moved by Rutger Hauer’s ‘Tears in the Rain’ monologue at the end of the…
Several years ago, I wrote about being a Nomadic-Utopist — a true “N-ut” being someone that believes that utopia is not fixed in space…
I customize all my instruments in one way or another, hopefully in artful and subtle ways, but there are always those extreme cases…
“You have to lose that fake British accent.” Stephen Bender had a penchant for calling out any kind of pretension. It was 1995 and he…
Now that my final 4-track effort statik 3 has been uploaded I want to pay homage to the cassette 4-track recorder that liberated the…
[1993] After years of playing ambient jazz and new wave, the alternative folk single Statik 3 released in 1993 remains an anomaly…
In 1990 I took my first photography course under a die-hard disciple of the Bauhaus (not the band, but the art school in germany ;-) On the…
Before there were light-hearted Hollywood ‘bromances’ there was the much more serious bond of ‘blood brothers.’ A blood brother…
Maybe the new year isn’t the best time to breach the topic of suicide. Then again if Robin Williams’s tragic death taught us something it’s that…
Houses can be haunted but what about musical gear? Could it be that there are ghosts in the circuitry, the after-image of sonic experiments…
[1992] My musical mentor from my teenage years, the late George Horan taught me that navigating the elusive difference between…
“Someone please turn that s*** off!” I could barely stand it. It was the summertime in the early ’90s and there was only one beat on the airwaves. Even if you didn’t listen to the radio you’d hear it spilling out of the car next to you or blaring at the party you just […]
Under the collective roof of 1616, my private bedroom was right off the public living room: its door revealed a still-life of the late-night: dreams and insomnia, insecurity and creativity…
The soprano sax made me promiscuous. No, not in that sense (or maybe in that sense). What I mean is musically free. After abandoning my alto the masterplan was to switch to B-flat horns (like Coltrane) first with a soprano then a tenor. Carrying around the soprano was too easy: no bigger than a violin […]
Some of these songs go too deep into ’90’s New Wave territory, but like a rescued cat, I love them anyway. I don’t know if it’s possible to write tunes like this today without being retro, ironic, or both. But back then they were honest New Wave. When Erik Carlson (aka Area C) and I […]
16:16 is a collaborative EP by area C X jh0st originally released in 1991. It is also a place in time. As a shared address it housed a cadre of…
Before there was the 1616 house there was 516. Sandwiched between neighbors (and our forgiving housemates) this is where Erik Carlson (aka AREA C) and I learned the basics of sonic-psychology: That ‘volume’ and actual decibels can be separate aspects of sound. While we didn’t crank it up to fill the space, our tools of […]
“See it’s fine,” Erik Carlson (aka AREA C) stated matter of factly as he punched the side of his small vintage fender amp to stop it from crackling. We had just walked half a mile with our guitars and gear to plug into the flickering street light at our favorite abandoned intersection in downtown Charlottesville… I […]
I’ve gone on about giving up reverb. But like other mind altering substances it’s hard to shake. Even when you’ve sworn off the addiction, the enveloping space sneaks back into your life with a vengeance… NewWave and reverb are too intertwined: Sometimes I wonder – did the invention of digital reverb give birth to an entire generation of […]
The fretless electric bass is a transcendently expressive instrument all to itself. It’s also a bastard instrument: born from the electric guitar (not the double bass) in the 1930’s it was only later ‘defretted’ for the first time in 1961 by Rolling Stone legend Bill Wyman who merely yanked the frets out on his existing […]