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 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…
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…
I could barely stand it. It was the summertime in the early ’90s and there was only one beat on the airwaves. Even…
half asleep
Certain rooms, whether they be childhood bedrooms or sunlit kitchens, attach themselves so strongly to events in the…
promiscuous sax
The soprano sax made me promiscuous. No, not in that sense, What I mean is musically free. After abandoning…
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…
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…
the art of ambience: volume not decibels
I learned the basics of sonic-psychology: That ‘volume’ and actual decibels can be separate aspects of sound…
the art of portability
I used to think travelling light, whether in a musical or any other sense, was about shrinking to fit…
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…
being judged
Ever been stuck in a relationship where judgment hangs over every move? The beauty of ’90s New Wave is…
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
as Wept fell apart as all bands do, this song became a metaphor for distance – for that mad and meditative…
going dry
Many failed attempts at writing a ‘dry’ song on guitar and voice revealed my bad technique. So I…