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.
archives
B3ND3R: starting over again
I’ve gone on about being addicted to Reverb, my drug of choice. My previous recordings and collaborations were drenched with…
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…
statik 3
[1993] After years of playing ambient jazz and new wave, the alternative folk single Statik 3 released in 1993 remains an anomaly…
c’ville box
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…
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…
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 […]
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 […]
#ThrowbackThursday: New Waves
Whether you’re 15 or 50, New Wave is always about adolescence. Adolescence in its most raw, awkward, and optimistic state. New Wave is also a moving target (otherwise it wouldn’t be new). It’s the transitional moment before a band goes ‘pop,’ the shiny day before you graduate from high school, college, your job… and the […]
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…
Backwards and Forwards
My architect alter-ego shared an interesting story with me recently: Usually during the holidays he receives bajillions of effusive cards from colleagues claiming how amazing the last year was and how the next year will be even better. This year the cards were a mere handful, literally a 10th of what usually arrives. Most sneaking […]
resonance
[1987] Resonance extends the direction of Animus with improvisation-based compositions that explore external themes of nature and industrialization…
animus
[1986] One of the original albums on the then all home-grown, all-cassette label Xarrier, Animus was an early foray into the creative limits…
recycle bin
Sometimes the extra songs and sounds that were never placed within an album become like stray cats. They wander through the…