Farewell (for now) Brian Johnston {1969 – 2021}
“Human solidarity is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers…” Farewell (for now) my dear friend.
4-track
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…
tascam 234 4-track
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…
statik 3
[1993] After years of playing ambient jazz and new wave, the alternative folk single Statik 3 released in 1993 remains an anomaly…
Stone’s Throw: Bromances vs. Blood Brothers
Before there were light-hearted Hollywood ‘bromances’ there was the much more serious bond of ‘blood brothers.’ A blood brother…
40 Days: Songs and Suicide
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…
boss bx-800 mixer
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…
statik 2
[1992] My musical mentor from my teenage years, the late George Horan taught me that navigating the elusive difference between…
valentine: there’s no escape from the beat…
“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 […]
half asleep
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…
promiscuous sax
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 […]
16:16 an imaginary intersection
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
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…
the art of ambience: volume not decibels
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 […]
the art of portability
“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 […]
new wave and reverb: forever together
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 […]
being judged
Ever been in a relationship where you constantly felt like you were being judged? The great thing about 90’s new wave is that it can get all emo and go there! Although the vignette captured in this little tune could very well be about one’s boy/girlfriend it’s actually a scene I witnessed between mother and […]
statik 1
[1989] “I’m dead” proclaimed my old friend Brian Johnston aka Ireverend Brainskan. It was the summer of 1988 after one of his last…
tired of strawberry leaves
And as Wept fell apart as all bands do, this song became a metaphor for distance – for that mad and meditative commute between two vastly different…
going dry
Many failed attempts at writing a ‘dry’ song on guitar and voice revealed my bad technique. So I turned my back on the gilded god of reverb, bowed and gazed at my shoes like any…