born and raised in rural massachusetts, usa. drums, all-ages shows, longing.
moved to new york city, studied music technology, bought two technics 1200 mk2 turntables, matte black. practiced. made music in lower east side basements, orb and orange. eno and rats. played a fourteen-hour ambient dj set on coffee and granola bars, opposite infected mushroom. tompkins square park mayday. work. more longing. fuck it.
moved to berlin & started making music full-time. approached it like a band, play anywhere. played everywhere. squats in east germany, bomb shelters in ukraine, bulgaria, bucharest. very familiar with the night train to krakow. spain, netherlands. wood crew belgium. life-changing trip to beirut, lebanon's first outdoor illegal party in an abandoned train yard, rusting 1940s steam engines and hundreds of us kicking up dust in the morning light. uk bristol toxic dancehall black swan. built up a hardcore dedicated following the hard way, the only way.
started playing nice places. lowlands festival, dour festival, glade festival, sxsw. won award of distinction at austria's prix ars electronica, a prestigious yearly prize which has also been won by the likes of chris cunningham, aphex twin, and peter gabriel, woah. new zealand rainforest, sydney, brisbane, japan. absolutely ridiculous sound systems with massive earth-rumbling bassbins. happiness. overkill london, norway, taiwan hotpot champions, st petersburg, moscow, barcelona i love you. paris dijon jura marseille zurich. bang face hard crew best rave on the planet. san francisco seattle detroit los angeles denver toronto kansas city pittsburgh milwaukee minneapolis nyc sxsw new brunswick nj is the reason. geneva l'usine you have my heart always. beirut again, yalla.
released eight vinyls and two full albums, every single copy sold out. logged 350,000 miles of travel on four continents. met idols one by one on equal ground, feeling grateful and stoked. another berlin winter. mnml techno. techno techno techno. where is the vibe? japan again. bought a guitar. uhoh.
moved to boston, sold turntables. moved computer into cavernous band practice space deep beneath the lowest recesses of rock city. elbows deep in tube amps. speaker cabinets and a fine coating of ash. lovely distortion that makes your eyes tear with its raw beauty. chords that open the abyss. the vibe lives here. press record.
moved to geneva, kept guitars. old town ramblings, cobblestones, flowing water, and the weight of the world's dark money. the fate of nations walking by in that briefcase. mountains and clouds. life things. heartbreak & heartmake. moved distortion pedals and hard drives full of vibe into proper soundproof bunker of a studio. time to get to work.
spent time down there, learning. making lots of noise. learning to scream and shout, unleashing the driven / intent / conscious / sharply articulate thing that's been waiting patiently this whole time. recording, mixing the tones & transients, new ways.
met with some good people who contributed live drums & recording in massachusetts and vocals and more live drums and then viola, finished the second drumcorps album, the mix of vibe & soul which i'd been searching for, for years. thank you to the fine folks who helped make this a reality.
designed some art & made vinyl and released it. into the first consciously realized years of digital dystopia. to make matters worse, chose an absolute disaster of a record label which folded mere weeks before the vinyl came back from the factory. learned some more things the hard way. took years and action to rescue the vinyl & CDs from their moribund warehouse, graveyard to a former cultural nexus, as label guy ghosted everyone. another modern phenomenon. depression / climbing out / new work / finally reclaimed all the physical discs, and ownership of all the back catalog. onward.
let's consciously state what ad noiseam didn't realize until it was too late: this thing doesn't work for us anymore. it works for them, and our heart & souls are the capital. marx's revenge, yes. but underneath all this post-millenium tension is the big thing: the planet is dying. the score is quite simple: it's capitalism versus all living things. sorry, that's what it is. anyone who does not know this yet is not in full possession of the facts. please educate them.
this puts electronic music into an ethical quandry once you realize it, as the tools of our work are its own undoing, and indeed the undoing of the entire ecology of the planet upon which we depend. if our current path leads to death, the electronic music futurism co-opted by commerce paradigm of the past three decades surely represents the fastest reaper. the end of spaceship earth for all we know. sure, we also do plenty of other things that are horrendous in modern life, but we're making art here - the methods matter. indeed the methods are the very root of the artistic message, so better make it all line up. the same logic that got us to this place is not going to get us out of it. a new thing is required. what could it be? time to get to work.
made a glitchy drum & bass concept EP and released it on USB stick for added digital chaos. made a cassette with shade, guitarist of usa hardcore band code orange. discovered that analog is the love, analog is the way that we forgot somewhere in there. time to get back to the place we lost, the place we willingly gave up, back when they promised us the world. the modular synth folks are right on. released two more jungle vinyl records, mixing up punk rock with bass-driven white label remixes. some more analog please.
found an original 1989 nintendo gameboy and modified it for music, learned LSDJ, started writing tunes this way. freedom again. distortion pedals, feedback loops, wires. got out the soldering iron. that toasty smell. tape over that webcam and pretend you still trust your computer.
see, maybe the way forward is without more of these digital things which snitch on you, and whose planned obsolescence makes toxic rivers elsewhere in the world, things built to die and be repurchased shortly to the tune of shareholder satisfaction and ecological destruction. let's realize that technology is fragile, that nature is strength, and let's use the things we already have to create a space for humanity, empathy, connection, and a good ol' high volume battle against unsurmountable odds, so that the creatures we love might have a chance to survive. who's in?
william gibson was right, and there are now a bunch of us working this new / old edge like chiba scrap collectors, taking the cast-off technologies of yesterday which society says are junk, and repurposing them to our work. gomi. chiptune, techno-trash, analog video, modular, and modern equipment, but we are not purists to any method, for everything is just a tool. in this case it's not about cyberpunk / retrowave blade runner worship, which is the future of the past, nor bad brains & black flag worship, which is the past of the past, but something which references these foundations for the day at hand. energetic as always, our present and our future, using whatever gear we can find. it goes on.
from all these activities, currently compiling the third drumcorps album, which is the thing that unifies all that came before, and keeps doing its own thing, rumbling away. happy if you're along for the adventure, and thanks kindly for your ongoing support over the years. all best wishes.
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