{"about":"## Welcome to Ultravillage\nUltravillage is a (work-in-progress) guide to underground ambient, minimal, progressive electronic, and new age releases from approximately 1975 to 1995, covering primarily vinyl and cassette releases from the U.S. scene.  The writers for this site are collectors and the material is geared to that community. \n\nThe long term goal is to include album reviews and bios for every artist that fits the above description. Some major label and higher profile acts will be included, but only when there is collector interest or genre significance. We only cover instrumental music, so any vocal-based music or guided meditation/self-help material will generally not be listed or reviewed. If a guided meditation tape has an instrumental side, that may be included.\n\nThe discographies are not always complete since they will reflect the time frame described above. Also, only first pressings are listed. Compilations, alternate versions, or reissues may be addressed in individual album reviews, but won't be listed.\n\nFor mixtapes of the music featured here, check out the Ultravillage [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/mark-griffey-489166075) page. For sound clips, photos, and more ephemera, check the Instagram page [here](https://www.instagram.com/ultravillage).\n\nIf you are interested in writing artist bios or album reviews, please reach out to site editor Mark Griffey at [ultravillagers@gmail.com](mailto:ultravillagers@gmail.com). \n\n### Sources\nNearly all the information on this site comes from primary sources such as interviews with artists or those who knew them, as well as label owners, music writers, and other music biz types. In some instances we have used online or print interviews from regional newspapers or music magazines of the era such as *Option*, *Sound Choice*, *Keyboard*, *Electronic Musician*, *OP*, and *SYNE*.\n\n### Site Credits\n- The cover image is by [Jonathan Meader](https://www.jmeader.com/). Used with permission. \n- All bios and reviews written by Mark Griffey unless otherwise attributed within.\n- Site built and maintained by [Chris Gullian]( https://chrisgullian.com)","artists":{"a-produce":{"artist_name":"A Produce","body":"A Produce was the musical project of Barry Craig, a quiet Midwesterner who carved out a niche in the LA music scene with a series of electronic compilations and solo albums on his own Trance Port label. Craig had a prolific stretch in the '90s, refining his contemplative, ambient sound that could be compared to Brian Eno, [Steve Roach](/steve-roach), or [Kerry Leimer](/kerry-leimer). His debut was reissued on vinyl in 2019 and his longtime friend and collaborator Bruce Licher put out a deluxe CD reissue in 2023. Craig passed away in 2011.\n\nBorn in 1952, Barry Craig grew up in Rockford, Illinois and attended college at the University of Iowa. He moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and soon hooked up with the rhythm section of Rich Evac on bass and Holland de Nuzzio on drums, plus his friend Daniel Voznick (aka Alec Tension) to form the band Afterimage. They put out a few singles on their own label and played live shows in the area over the next few years, supporting bands such as Savage Republic and Suburban Lawns.\n\nCraig left his band in the mid-'80s and began focusing his attention on ambient music, after finding some success with two compilations on his own label Trance Port Tapes. The comps included many artists he would maintain relationships with later, including [Ruben Garcia](/repetition-repetition) (Repetition Repetition), [Scott Fraser](/scott-fraser), and Bruce Licher (Savage Republic, Independent Project Press). Fraser, who lived close to Craig in the Silverlake neighborhood, would go on to help record Craig's debut album.\n\nFor his solo music, Craig used the name A Produce, a nickname given to him by a musical friend who said he was “a producer” which eventually was shortened to “produce\" by his friends. For his first solo album in 1988, Craig was clearing his plate in a sense, leaving behind his cassette label and band to start anew, hence the album title *The Clearing*. Craig designed six variations of the album cover and designer Bruce Licher printed them on plain white album sleeves.\n\nIn the ‘90s, Craig’s sound moved further away from the post-punk and dub elements of his debut for a purely textural, atmospheric sound. He recorded several albums in the ‘90s on Trance Port before eventually moving to the Hypnos label for 1999's collaboration with Michael Griffin. Craig married in 1997 and moved to Eagle Rock in Los Angeles, spending his later years mostly curating his back catalog instead of working on anything new. Craig struggled with alcoholism and passed away in 2011.","discography":{"a-produce":{"albums":{"in-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Trance Port","review":"An undefinable blend of new age/electronic/space music, this blend of modern-day trance music reminds one of shamanic ritual. Not sweet or light, this takes us into deep caverns and dark corners of the psyche. The first cut, \"Reflect Like a Mirror, Respond Like an Echo\" (title drawn from a poem on the insert) is all floating air; pulsing voice loop like a distant chant underneath an electric piano’s random bursts of notes, like sudden thunder or scattered showers.  \"Healing Touch\" takes an entirely different direction with a pattering percussive foreground, including lots of little quirky sounds like snaps and clicks of small animals, with swishing space synth and a slow progression of minor chords worthy of the Addams Family.\n\n\"Opening\" begins slowly with deep, tremulous, sustained organ chords, with jazz harp strumming random bursts of sound. Overall, this creation is haunting, almost unsettling, probing hidden mysteries of the soul. Many cuts are very long, and very hypnotic, with an organic shimmering sound like random molecular movement. Its otherworldly ambiance brings to mind the devic kingdom. Great for deep journeying, creative movement, ritual.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* #13, Fall 1992)","title":"Reflect Like a Mirror, Respond Like an Echo","year":"1992"},"lakes-and-streams":{"image":"","label":"Trance Port","review":"","title":"Land of a Thousand Trances","year":"1994"},"listening-to-evening":{"image":"","label":"Trance Port","review":"","title":"White Sands","year":"1995"},"streaming-wisdom":{"image":"","label":"Trance Port","review":"","title":"Inscape & Landscape","year":"1996"},"the-clearing":{"image":"","label":"Trance Port","review":"","title":"The Clearing","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":340,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/barry2.jpeg?alt=media&token=fd5846d6-5370-47aa-9bef-b71088896dc0","last_name":"A Produce"},"adam-martin-geiger":{"artist_name":"Adam Martin Geiger","body":"Adam Martin Geiger was a new age musician who released many cassettes of solo piano music in the vein of Arden Wilken or Jim Oliver. Many of his tapes were in collaboration with his mother, Lura Jane Geiger, who started the Lura Media label to release her own books and guided imagery tapes. \n\nGeiger was born in 1950 and grew up alongside three siblings in Kansas. His parents started a successful concrete business called Geiger Ready-Mix that ran for decades until his mother changed course to become an author. By all accounts, his mother Lura was an energetic and determined woman who was active in her community and taught Sunday school to children and adults.\n\nGeiger was an accomplished pianist, but chose a more traditional career path, working as an executive in the insurance industry. During a trip to San Francisco for a conference, Geiger met Paul Attinello, and stayed with him off and on for a time. \"Adam was a handsome man on a motorcycle when I first met him,\" Attinello recalled. \"He was a big, cheerful, kind, and smart guy. He didn't hang around in bars.\" Attinello and others encouraged Geiger to do something with his musical abilities, and a few years later he did.\n\nAround 1981, Geiger moved to San Diego where his mother was attending International College (now known as Alliant International). While she was getting her Ph.D. in psychology, Lura Jane and her son created a company called Lura Media to release books and cassettes.  Many of the tapes featured one side of guided imagery and one side of instrumental music, though music-only tapes were also issued.  Often the cassettes were grouped into thematic units such as *The Journey Series*, *The Growth Series*, *The Spirit Series* and the *Music Series*. Most of Geiger's music was created with piano and synthesizer and owed an obvious debt to George Winston and Steven Halpern.  Much of his work could also be described as neo-classical new age, with romantic and lyrical undertones. \n\nIn 1991, Geiger died from AIDS, though just before he passed away he put together a retrospective of some of his favorite pieces titled *Personal Selections.*","discography":{"adam-martin-geiger":{"albums":{"autumn-winds":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Autumn Winds","year":"1989"},"evening-songs":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Evening Songs","year":"1985"},"images-of-hope":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Images of Hope","year":"1987"},"impressions-a-new-day":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"Subtitled “A New Day,” Impressions evokes the transcendent quality of the dawn. Using synthesizer and piano keyboardist Geiger conjures up a wide variety of colors and moods, from peace and calm to majesty and splendor. The feeling is warm, rather than spacey, intimate and romantic.\n\n(Patti Jean Birosik, *New Age Music Guide*, 1989)","title":"Impressions: A New Day","year":"1986"},"island-cathedral":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Island Cathedral","year":"1989"},"patterns":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":" Simplistic lullabies played solo on a Moog Source and Univox Stringman. Some additional instrumentation would have gone a long way here. As it is, this is like listening to Adam Martin Geiger trying out a new synth at a music store.","title":"Patterns","year":"1982"},"personal-selections":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Personal Selections (compilation)","year":"1991"},"reflections":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Reflections","year":"1984"},"sanctuary-suite":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Sanctuary Suite","year":"1982"},"sky-view":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Sky View","year":"1985"},"song-of-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Song of the Wind","year":"1983"},"valley-mist":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"Wistful, neo-romantic solo piano pieces that seem informed by George Winston and maybe even '70s Broadway musicals.\n","title":"Valley Mist","year":"1982"},"woodland":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"Inspired by a country farm, these warm quiet pieces blend synthesizer, piano, and guitar, conjuring images of sunny days and open fields. Very comforting, slow and easy-going, melodic, and nicely performed.\n\n(*Heartsong Review*, No. 5, Fall/Winter 1988)","title":"Woodlyn","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Adam Martin Geiger","entry_number":1},"adam-martin-geiger-and-lura-jane-geiger":{"albums":{"circling-in-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Circling in the Sun","year":"1984"},"dancing-waters":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Dancing Waters","year":"1983"},"energy-of-creation":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Energy of Creation","year":"1986"},"go-in-peace":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Go In Peace","year":"1984"},"journey-on-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Journey on the Wind","year":"1982"},"journey-to-sanctuary":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Journey to Sanctuary","year":"1982"},"like-a-river":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Like a River","year":"1984"},"mountain-journey":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Mountain Journey","year":"1982"},"secret-garden":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Secret Garden","year":"1982"},"soul-room":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Soul Room","year":"1983"},"tree-roots":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Tree Roots","year":"1985"},"wings-of-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Lura Media","review":"","title":"Wings of the Wind","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Adam Martin Geiger and Lura Jane Geiger","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":136,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Adam-Martin-Geiger-600.jpg?alt=media&token=c1cd2c12-abb8-4ab4-898a-094d2e482e3f","last_name":"Geiger"},"aeoliah":{"artist_name":"Aeoliah","body":"Aeoliah, born Jonathan Fairchild, embodies the new age ethos like few others. His name, his album titles, his paintings, his music, even his origin story - all epitomize a movement that evolved from the expanding consciousness of the late ‘60s.  Even his eventual triumph, the gold-selling *Angel Love* album from 1985, showed the depth of commercial bounty waiting to be unlocked by marketing this movement to the Boomer generation at the height of their earning powers.\n\nAeoliah lived a charmed life, but you might not have guessed it in 1980 when he was a single father selling airbrushed t-shirts to make ends meet.  Coming off a tough divorce after the birth of his daughter, Aeoliah moved from Hawaii to LA in search of something to soothe his soul.  His salvation would come from music, something he had previously only attempted halfheartedly as a child.\n\nAt the age of 10, Aeoliah's family emigrated from Germany to Chicago.  Aeoliah recalls playing \"some screechy violin\" for a few years, but he never took music seriously.  His real passion and talent lay in art. After attending college for a few years in Chicago, Aeoliah decided he couldn't take the urban life any longer and transferred to the University of New Mexico.  There he majored in fine art, and he came to view his work as a source of therapy and expression. \n\nOne of his paintings, *Music of the Spheres*, depicted a harp with surrounding spheres and it made Aeoliah wonder if he could achieve a similar effect with sound.  Inspired by this and an astrology reading from years before predicting a career in music, Aeoliah boldly decided to record an album with little musical training. \n\nThrough some friends, Aeoliah recruited flutist [Larkin](/larkin), vocalist Sarah Light and engineer [Don Robertson](/don-robertson) to help him record his debut album *Inner Sanctum*.  All the songs were free improvisation, with Aeoliah playing the synthesizer and a harp on loan from friends Carena and Athena. \n\n\"I had no idea what I was doing,\" Aeoliah says. \"I was just so inspired by my friends' harp, and they encouraged me to use it to make my own music.  And what I wanted to do was make music in the spirit of compassion and forgiveness to heal myself from my current breakup and separation.\"\n\nAeoliah's second album *The Light of Tao* album was similar to the first, with Aeoliah improvising the basic tracks with musical support from friends, this time including [Kip Setchko](/kip-kevin-setchko) on flute, Jean St. Laurent on harp, Dallas Smith on lyricon and Donny Smith on guitar.  \"That album was all about east meets west,\" Aeoliah recalled. \"I  loved collaborating with friends on my records, but the truth is that I just didn't have the confidence to do it all myself.\" Like the first cassette, it was originally issued on Aeoliah's Celestial Octaves label.\n\nTo help distribute his first two albums, Aeoliah's friend [Iasos](/iasos) helped to set him up with companies like New Leaf and Fortuna to get the albums into stores. To Aeoliah's delight, the cassettes found an audience quickly. John Morey from Narada wooed Aeoliah, flying him to their offices in Milwaukee and signing an exclusive licensing deal that Aeoliah would ultimately come to regret. \n\nNarada reissued Aeoliah's first two albums on their Sona Gaia imprint, followed by two new albums *Angel Love* in 1985  and *Majesty* in 1986.  Aeoliah saw that the former seemed to be getting popular, but he wasn't seeing any royalties. Frustrated, he sought to break ties with Narada. It was not easy. By the time the dust settled and Aeoliah was free from the contract, the money began to pour in.\n\nFinally having control of his music, Aeoliah reissued his back catalog on a new label called Helios, named after the sun god.  *Angel Love* continued to sell briskly, and the years 1986 to 1995 were very good for him.  Aeoliah has continued to release music through the ensuing decades and is still active.","discography":{"aeoliah":{"albums":{"anchoring-your-light-body":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Anchoring Your Light Body: Through the 8 Rays","year":"1992"},"angel-love":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"German new age instrumentalist Aeoliah’s last offering features a more emotional production, but the music remains rather simplistic and dedicated to the laid back formula. There are plaintive piano doodles and lush, swirling sounds that gently weave in and out. The structure is basically two major chords in a rise and fall refrain for the two side-long tone poems. The mood is warm and the music has a majesty to it, making up for its [lack of] innovation by successfully stimulating alpha. This and Aeoliah’s previous works are very relaxing compositions with quality production values. I found a touch more diversity in this one, though.\n\n(Jim Finch, *Syne*, Fall 1985)","title":"Angel Love","year":"1985"},"crystal-illumination":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Crystal Illumination","year":"1988"},"inner-sanctum":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Octaves","review":"Aeoliah estalishes his signature dreamy sound on Inner Sanctum: gentle and slow synthscapes adorned with soothing piano and flute improvisations. The production quality would improve on later releases, but the magic is undeniable.","title":"Inner Sanctum","year":"1981"},"light-at-mt-fuji":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Light at Mt. Fuji","year":"1992"},"light-of-tao":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Octaves","review":"Top tier, dreamy new age bliss outs. The first side features slow swells of synth and zither with tasteful, silky guitar leads. The second side is similar, though with a bit more texture, most notably [Kip Setchko](/kip-kevin-setchko) on flute who nearly steals the show with his colorful improvisations.","title":"Light of Tao","year":"1984"},"love-in-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Love in the Wind","year":"1990"},"majesty":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"Music that encompasses the listener with pure warmth and loveliness in this new release from celestial musician and visionary artist Aeoliah. Four long pieces with slow, full synthesizer chords ascending and spreading like angel's wings. Images of shifting pastels rising with reverence and the majesty of stillness and space.\n\n(*Heartbeats* Catalog, Summer 1987)","title":"Majesty","year":"1986"},"the-journey-home-on-wings-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"The Journey Home On Wings of Light","year":"1991"},"the-other-side-of-the-rainbow":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"The Other Side of the Rainbow","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"divino-with-aeoliah":{"albums":{"circling-in-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"The Magic Presence","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Divino with Aeoliah","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":68,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/aeoliah.jpg?alt=media&token=8a446e24-536a-4425-a41e-ff3bc3ccc913","last_name":"Aeoliah"},"alana-woods":{"artist_name":"Alana Woods","body":"Alana Woods is a new age harpist who started a decades-long career with *Mountain Whispers*, an album of solo harp improvisations recorded in the Blue Ridge Mountains (later renamed *Endless Crystal Waters* when she rereleased it on CD with added nature sounds). Although this was her only solo album during the time frame of this site, her music appeared on several guided meditation and self-help tapes, such as *Mindpartner* (1987) with Neale Walsch and *Bonding with Baby* (1994) with Rosemarie Schoenenberger. She also released *Serenity* in 1987  with Gary Schwartz, which is billed as a subliminal album but the only audible sounds are her harp and a flowing stream.\n\nBorn in 1936, Alana Woods is a classically trained pianist who first took up the harp at the age of 45. Her mother died during childbirth and willed her family a large farm in Kansas where Alana grew up and became fascinated by the sounds of nature. Woods studied art in college, and then spent time in Dallas and North Dakota with her husband before divorcing in the ‘70s. Woods’ music career blossomed in Asheville, NC where she began playing harp for sound healing and guided meditations, as well as at school events and weddings. She remained dedicated to creating healing music throughout her life.\n\nWoods remained active through the 2010s, selling music on her site [SoundVistas.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20050211234535/http://www.soundvistas.com/) (now defunct) and via CDBaby. She also authored two books, one a memoir about her life (*The Songs I Hear*) and another about the healing properties of music (*The Healing Touch of Music*).","discography":{"Rosemarie-Schoenenberger":{"albums":{"bonding-with-baby":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Bonding with Baby","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Rosemarie Schoenenberger with Alana Woods","entry_number":4},"alana-woods":{"albums":{"songaia-sound-medicine":{"image":"","label":"Dimensions in Music","review":"","title":"Mountain Whispers","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Alana Woods","entry_number":1},"gary-schwartz-alana-woods":{"albums":{"children-of-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Yes! Technologies","review":"","title":"Serenity","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Gary Schwartz and Alana Woods","entry_number":3},"neale-walsch-With Alana Woods":{"albums":{"mindpartner":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mindpartner","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Neale Walsch With Alana Woods","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":437,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/alana-woods-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b6ff015c-8bc9-4a85-b406-4273b8754ab0","last_name":"Woods"},"alexander-mcfee":{"artist_name":"Alexander McFee","body":"Alexander (full name Alexander McFee) was a new age musician based in Sedona, Arizona for most of his career, though he'd previously lived in San Luis Obispo during the '80s. He worked some odd jobs and drew portraits early on to make money, but creating music was the driving passion of his life. It wasn't until his forties that he started to issue some of his music on cassette, adopting the label name No Categories because he didn't want to be contained by one genre or style. While his first few tapes got occasional recognition in the underground press, it wasn't until he began composing electronic new age pieces under the name Alexander that he found success. His first widely distributed album was *New Visions in Sedona* in 1994 and that set the stage for a series of new age albums, all released on his own Futurewave imprint. McFee passed away in 2017.\n\nAlexander McFee was born 1942 and grew up in Chicago. He started playing music in his teens, playing various instruments including the saxophone, guitar, and piano. He briefly attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music before dropping out and moving to New York. McFee, who was a skilled artist, worked as a portrait painter in Greenwich Village and Chicago off and on throughout his early life. One day while working in Atlantic City he met Irene and they were married in 1964 and had their first son Leo the same year. \n\nEventually, the couple moved out west to live off the grid in a mountain cabin near Banning, California. McFee bought an upright piano and a custom acoustic guitar, after moving into the cabin. They had another son, Cozy, in 1971 and lived a simple existence, occasionally taking cleaning jobs or selling bootlegs of live music to make some money.\n\nAfter a decade, the couple returned to a more populated area, living in San Luis Obispo for much of the '80s. McFee continued to write songs during this time and he began issuing cassettes of his music starting with *Wish Chant* in 1985, a collection of singer/songwriter material. The next year he released *Moon on a Cloud* a collection of piano instrumentals that seems to have sold somewhat better, though both are now hard to find. McFee's first two tapes both were reviewed in *Sound Choice* which called Wish Chant \"psychological folk-pop\" and *Moon on a Cloud* \"melancholy and introspective.\"\n\nMcFee put out several more tapes before changing adopting the stage name of Alexander in the early '90s after his sister dreamt he was using that name. By then, he and the family had moved to Sedona, Arizona, and McFee's music became more electronic and ambient. This was due, in part, to his wife needing relaxing music for her ear-candling patients. (Ear candling is a form of alternative medicine that involves placing a cone-shaped candle into the ear).\n\nBy this time, McFee had gone over four years without putting out any new music, and he had many unfinished albums including *Music from the Planet Essani*, *Floating* and *New Dances*, all in his new electronic style. He decided to put out a sampler called *New Visions* in 1992, now using the label name Futurewave. At the time, McFee's son Cozy worked at the Enchantment Resort in Sedona and he would often play *New Visions* at work over the speakers, along with other similar music from the hotel's collection. Customers started asking about it and they eventually sold copies in the gift shop, selling hundreds of copies that way.  \n\nWith his music garnering interest, McFee made a bigger budget version of the tape in 1994, including some new material. The album, *New Visions in Sedona*, got good distribution and kicked off his career in the new age world. He went on to issue a few more cassettes, including a follow-up, *Dreams of Sedona*, in 1996 and a collaboration with flutist Jesse Kalu in the same year. \n\nMcFee released many more CDs in the ensuing years that fall outside of the scope of this guide, including *Something Like Jazz *A Space Serene*, *Moonlight on Water*, and *Tour of the Galaxies*, Although McFee passed away in 2017, his son Cozy has been working to archive and make some of his earlier music available on Bandcamp. Most of his albums from 1994 onward are on Spotify or other streaming sites.","discography":{"alex-mcfee":{"albums":{"journeys":{"image":"","label":"No Categories","review":"","title":"Journeys","year":"1988"},"moon-on-a-cloud":{"image":"","label":"No Categories","review":"","title":"Moon on a Cloud","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Alex McFee","entry_number":1},"alexander":{"albums":{"dreams-of-sedona":{"image":"","label":"Futurewave","review":"","title":"Dreams of Sedona","year":"1996"},"new-visions":{"image":"","label":"Futurewave","review":"","title":"New Visions","year":"1992"},"new-visions-in-sedona":{"image":"","label":"Futurewave","review":"The goofy tone of the dated synthesized horn and harp sounds used for the primary melodic lines won’t convert any skeptics to this 1994 album, but there’s a lot to like here: careful, deceptively layered compositions, minimalist repetition, skittering percussion / bell tones / synth stabs playing across the stereo field, a general sense of gentle melancholy. I will never not like field recordings of water and shit layered into electronic music and the synthesized strings are deployed more for tension than for, like, communing with your guardian angel, a compositional decision for which I’m grateful. Bonus points for references to aliens, inter-dimensional portals, and tree energy in the song titles. Tree energy!\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"New Visions in Sedona","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Alexander","entry_number":2},"jesse-kalu-with-alexander":{"albums":{"love-and-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Love and Light to Your Path","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Jesse Kalu with Alexander","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":332,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/alexander-mcfee-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b4309a56-29ed-46ae-b0a6-ab62927bee96","last_name":"McFee"},"alexandros":{"artist_name":"Alexandros","body":"Alexandros is a Greek-born electronic composer who was based in New York between 1980 and 2002. After completing a BA in music composition at the Aaron Copland School of Music, he began producing progressive electronic music using the Oberheim Performance System and a four track, putting out his first album *Antithesis* in 1986. He initially released it as a cassette, though it was issued two years later on CD. Alexandros went on to release two more electronic albums in the timespan covered on this site: *Parallel Universe* in 1988, and *Forbidden Memories* in 1994.\n\nAlexandros Hahalis was born in Greece in 1960. He loved music and had an older brother who was a deejay and musician that influenced him to take a similar path. Alexandros deejayed his first children's party at nine and by 13 was working professionally as a deejay in Greece. He also taught himself guitar and formed a cover band. Some of his favorite genres were soul, jazz, funk and prog rock.\n\nIn 1980, Alexandros moved to New York for college. During this time, he got into electronic music and put together his own small studio with a four track, synths and drum machines. \"I bought an Oberheim Performance System and got into doing my thing. I'm an Aries: very independent. I wanted it to sound orchestral,\" Alexandros said. \"Vangelis was my hero, but I was also listening to Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Larry Fast and Tomita. But Vangelis was Greek and he was a superstar in Europe. I went to his studio in 1983 and I played for him my first two electronic pieces inspired by him. I was so thrilled.\"\n\nAt the time, Alexandros was a regular listener of John Schaefer's New York syndicated radio show *New Sounds* and he recalls wanting to get his music played on the show. After finishing some early demos, Alexandros sent them in. \"He called me back and said, 'This is great music.' I'm gonna play this with Vangelis back to back,\" Alexandros recalled. \"I recorded that show and I still have it on cassette.\" While the early demos were recorded on four-track, Alexandros re-recorded his pieces in higher fidelity for the eventual release of his debut *Antithesis* in 1986, self-released on his own label, AVR (Alexandros Audio-Visual Research).\n\nAlexandros followed up his debut two year later with *Parallel Universe* which explored themes of space and added percussionist Steven Thornton.  In the early '90s, he and Thornton formed the free jazz group Earthbound with some other musicians, putting out two albums. Alexandros continued to compose electronic music as well and began a long relationship with the Le Mama Experimental theater in New York. He also composed many soundtracks for theater productions between 1995 and 2002.\n\nAfter moving back to Greece in 2002, Alexandros began using his full name Alexandros Hahalis. He maintains a website [here](https://www.alexandroshahalis.com) that details many of his accomplishments since then, such as performing his astronomy work \"Pyraeizoon\" at the Starmus Festival, a venue for science and music, in Spain in 2014, in honor of the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Alexei Leonov.","discography":{"alexandros":{"albums":{"antithesis":{"image":"","label":"AVR","review":"","title":"Antithesis","year":"1986"},"forbidden-memories":{"image":"","label":"AVR","review":"","title":"Forbidden Memories","year":"1994"},"parallel-universe":{"image":"","label":"AVR","review":"","title":"Parallel Universe","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":297,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/alexandros-studio-crop-640.jpg?alt=media&token=bd31fb69-750c-48a7-99bb-322ec48b82c4","last_name":"Alexandros"},"alien-planetscapes":{"artist_name":"Alien Planetscapes","body":"Founded by Doug Walker in 1980, Alien Planetscapes was a prolific NY-based project with a rotating cast capable of anything from ambient soundscapes to free-jazz space rock played at maximum volume. Walker's discography is so large and confusing that it's nearly impossible to assemble something truly definitive. Many of the cassettes were self-released and traded with friends, but Walker's nonstop networking in the tape underground did result in some relatively higher profile and better distributed tapes on Audiofile and Sound of Pig. Walker passed away suddenly in 2006.\n\nWalker's first instrument was the flute, which he started at the age of seven. He took up saxophone in junior high and formed his first band Third Sun with friends from high school in Brooklyn. The band played a jazzy, funky mix with distinct prog influences.  Walker was an avid music lover who read Melody Maker and has cited numerous bands as inspiration including King Crimson, Hawkwind, Soft Machine, and Van Der Graaf Generator. As would be a recurring theme in his career, the band lineup was never stable.  Walker eventually left Third Sun in 1977 and joined the Electric Cecil Taylor Band for a few years, sharing bills with punk bands like Television and the Heartbreakers.\n\nWalker first encountered synthesizers in 1967 at the Montreal World's Fair. In an interview with [Aural Innovations](http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue5/alienp02.html), he said:  “I remember walking in and seeing this thing and falling in love with it immediately because it made sounds that I couldn't make on conventional instruments\" Walker got his first synth, an Arp Odyssey that was his go-to synth for decades.  He began experimenting with an ambient sound that he called \"floating music\" because of its lack of a rhythmic foundation and extended durations. After some time spent mastering his equipment, Walker released his first cassette *Solista* under the name Alien Planetscapes in late 1981.\n\nAfter putting out several cassettes on his own, Walker began working with Louis Boone from 1982 to 1983. In an [interview](http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue5/alienp02.html) with Aural Communications, Walker said, \"I felt at the time electronic music was getting away from one of the elements which had helped it grow so well which was the free jazz movement and it's conceptions in terms of free improvisation. We tried to bring that approach to electronic music so almost all the music was improvised.\"\n\nBoone departed in 1983 and the next year Walker began collaborating with [Arnold Mathes](/arnold-mathes) who he'd been trading tapes with for the past year. They partnered on albums such as *Gleepsite* and *Target: Earth*. Walker also sometimes collaborated with [David Prescott](/David-prescott), as on *Bio Machine/Techno Machine*. Prescott and Walker had met through the IEMA, a collective run by James Finch that put out tape compilations and a magazine called *SYNE*. They also organized live showcases featuring electronic music.  Alien Planetscapes never mounted a full-fledged tour, but they did play some one-off shows during this period, including a 1985 New Year's show with Mathes, Prescott and Guy Taieb. They also played some IEMA showcases in Ohio and Rhode Island.\n\nAlthough he was getting the word out about his music, Walker remembered this as a rough time. He worked as a social worker and never had a ton of extra spending money. He also suffered from diabetes since childhood. \"I began living in a storefront in Brooklyn. The 1/84-1/86 period featured a lot of hardship, [including] a robbery in which a great deal of stuff was stolen, relationship woes and three moves in two years.\" Walker had indeed amassed a large amount of gear, a fact that would make live shows a burdensome experience for him. Yet he persisted on, releasing 14 cassettes during this period, many including his new collaborators, as well as a few with guitarist John Likides.\n\nIn 1986, the band lineup stabilized for a few years with the addition of new member Carl Howard. Like Walker, Howard played synth and shared an interest in the outer reaches of experimental music. Howard had a similar drive and work ethic too, running his label Audiofile and publishing the music magazine Artitude which Walker occasionally contributed to. Together they released close to 50 cassettes (by Walker's estimation.) Many of the master tapes have been lost so a true count may be impossible.\n\nIn 1987,  Doug married longtime girlfriend Fran Tatz and moved from Brooklyn to Queens. By 1989, he was ready to move on to a group-based sound with more of a rhythmic foundation.  Walker put together several bands during the '90s, with one lineup ballooning to nine members, and convening every Saturday for rehearsals and epic jam sessions at his house in Queens.  \n\nAfter fifteen years of putting out cassettes, Walker finally released his first CD in 1997, *Life on Earth*, more professionally recorded and better distributed than probably anything else in his catalog.  Still, Walker was frustrated by his lack of wider success and was never able to follow that up with another CD.  Walker continued to play shows in the NY area whenever he could, and never let go of his dream. However, the later years of Walker's life were marked by tragedy, as first his wife died in a car accident and then he was struck by a heart attack a few years later in 2006.\n\nAlien Planetscapes has a Facebook group [here](https://www.facebook.com/groups/58315537640/).","discography":{"alien-planetscapes":{"albums":{"afroelectronica":{"image":"","label":"Ejaz","review":"","title":"Afroelectronica","year":"1987"},"alien-karcasscapes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Alien Karcasscapes - Victims of the Flame","year":"1987"},"an-act-of-reason":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"Soundtrack for the impending nuclear winter? Dawn of sub-man? Crack the shades and watch the pavement blossom. It's above-average space music, at any rate —and my rate of exchange just doesn’t happen to be very high at the moment. Carl has great liner notes, as always; but the question that most intrigues me concerning this is what time does the watch that Ronald Reagan's wearing on the cover read? Or is he winding it forward 30 years? Or what?\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #4, 1989)","title":"An Act of Reason","year":"1988"},"atomsville":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Atomsville","year":"1982"},"bio-machine-techno-machine":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Bio Machine/Techno Machine","year":"1986"},"brooklyn-boston-beyond":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Brooklyn Boston Beyond","year":"1988"},"casual-users":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"","title":"Casual Users","year":"1989"},"celestial-dance-hits":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"With song titles like \"Amon Duul II\" and \"Two Excerpts from the Gong Session\", Walker and a full band of cohorts pay tribute to their '70s space rock heroes as they bash through a series of heavy, chaotic jams that sound like they were recorded on a dictation machine. A Sound Choice review in 1992 called it a \"high quality ambient environmental tape\" but this is closer to Royal Trux levels of scuzzy noise than something like Brian Eno. The intensity, especially from drummer Len Pace,  is impressive, but unrelenting. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Celestial Dance Hits","year":"1989"},"children-of-slaves":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"Mid-'70s like synth exploration, with guitar, sequencers, tapes, and other keyboards added. Staccato steam train/helicopter patterns, percolating synth noises, long buzzes, digital bleeping. Occasionally a sax blows its way in. The semi-low recording quality gives it its other worldly feel. The tone doesn't vary much, which makes the side-long pieces seem longer than they are. The tape does pull you in, but keeping you there is the real job. They seem to be more interested in making soundscapes than melodic constructions.\n\n(Christopher Carstens, *Sound Choice* No. 9, 1987)","title":"Children of Slaves","year":"1986"},"code-name-jesus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Code Name Jesus","year":"1988"},"could-be-today":{"image":"","label":"BBP","review":"","title":"Could be Today","year":"1987"},"equinox":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Equinox","year":"1982"},"equinox-astral-vacation":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Equinox/Astral Vacation","year":"1988"},"everybody's-mad-at-amerikkka":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Everybody's Mad at Amerikkka","year":"1986"},"freedom-riders":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Freedom Riders","year":"1989"},"gleepsite":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gleepsite","year":"1984"},"infinite-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Infinite Music","year":"1987"},"interstellar-new-year-vol-1-and-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Interstellar New Year Vol. 1 and 2","year":"1986"},"is-it-this-that's-that":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Is It This That's That?","year":"1988"},"low-earth-orbit":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Low Earth Orbit","year":"1985"},"martian-inventories":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Slowly churning electronic landscapes. Each of the four pieces sets up a dark little groove and then explores it, covering the entire length of this C90. Doug Walker plays all the instruments and lands himself somewhere in the area of *Phaedra*-era Tangerine Dream, with more sounds and less harmony. Often you find yourself drifting off, with the music creating a pulsating backdrop for whatever you are doing. If you desire \"leads\" or \"excitement\"...this is NOT for you. If you can lose yourself and imagine that you have woken in the heart of a machine, look no further.\n\n([Sam Rosenthal](/projekt-electronic-amerika), *Option* Sep/Oct., 1986)\n","title":"Martian Inventories","year":"1986"},"message-from-space":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"","title":"Message from Space","year":"1986"},"midwinter-daydream":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Midwinter Daydream","year":"1982"},"mysterious-black-dots":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"This music reminds me of an astral experience, capable of being brought to Earth out of that upper dimension only by those intrepid travelers who, once having been there, also possess the skill to translate these celestial harmonies down to us. A combination of tasteful (in tune) variety of improvisational jazz rhythms, jazz rock fusion instrumentals, with a healthy dose of space age technology to give it that ultra-electronic texture. The music of the future? Or are these guys really aliens?\n\n(Daniel West, *Sound Choice* No. 17, 1992)","title":"Mysterious Black Dots","year":"1989"},"nuclear-pile-meltdown":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Nuclear Pile Meltdown","year":"1984"},"old-bottles":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"Sprawling, lo-fi jam session in a proggy/space rock zone. The rhythm section is tight and funky, but the various synths and guitars swirl angrily with chaotic abandon.","title":"Old Bottles","year":"1991"},"ping-pong":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ping Pong","year":"1989"},"plan-9-from-outerspace":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Plan 9...from Outerspace","year":"1985"},"rap":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"","title":"Rap","year":"1989"},"skylore":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"With a grainy, black and white shot of a UFO on the cover, *Skylore* signals a deep sci-fi paranoia within. Recorded mostly in July 1986, the album oozes with heat and intensity as Doug Walker and his collaborators careen through moments of terror and bliss in a series of long, synth-based improvisations that stretch across 90 minutes of tape.\n\n*Skylore* eases the listener in with \"Rodan Parts 1 & 2,\" sounding almost peaceful at first.  Featuring a trio lineup of Walker, Louis Boone and Guy Taieb, the Nightcrawlers-like song slowly builds to a tense, gripping climax, as if to echo the ferocity of its titular Godzilla character.  \"Airships\", recorded by Walker solo, takes the listener into a more blissful zone with a helicopter-like pulses underpinning Walker's glissando guitar explorations. \n\n\"Airships\" continues onto side two, where it morphs into something more pastoral with twilight animal sounds warping into the ether. \"Saucers\" is more of an FX trip than a journey, but is effective in its unsettling aims nonetheless. For album closer \"Icarus,\" Walker brings in Dave Prescott to contribute on synth. Like \"Rodan,\" the song paints a dark, trippy image of a cyborg Icarus exploring the outer reaches.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2018)","title":"Skylore","year":"1986"},"solista":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Solista","year":"1981"},"space-rock-nothing-special":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Space Rock...? Nothing Special","year":"1987"},"spacerock-3":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Spacerock 3","year":"1988"},"spacerock-88":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"Spacerock '88","year":"1988"},"spacerock-usa":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spacerock USA","year":"1986"},"stop-light-pollution":{"image":"","label":"Acid Tapes","review":"","title":"Stop Light Pollution","year":"1987"},"straight-dope-no-guesswork":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Straight Dope...No Guesswork","year":"1986"},"survival-in-the-nuclear-age":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Rich and suspenseful sound-sketches that are very easy to add your mental '60s science fiction film to. Not background, though--this is assertive and articulate electronics, without any assault and battery. No drums, so the rhythms are either unpunctuated wave-like repetitions or calm tape-loop replications. This tape enhances the changing light in your living room on a breezy, partly cloudy summer day. Along the way, some reminiscence of Eno's *On Land*, but more alien, less soothing and pictorial. \n\nThe following note was slipped into the box: 'This work is dedicated to the Lockshin family, forced to leave the USA due to harassment by the Reagan administration...We will also fight against the neo-nazi attitudes that have driven these people away, and will help protect others that speak out against this racist imperialistic and anti-human society...Venceramos...We will win!' This is degree-zero, zone-neutral, earwax-of-the-soul removing stuff to have future fantasies by. Program music with the program removed, or in another language. Nicely layered. Dramatic but never symphonic.\n\n(Thomas Frick, *Sound Choice* No. 9, 1987)","title":"Survival in the Nuclear Age","year":"1986"},"systems-and-controls":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Systems and Controls","year":"1983"},"target-earth":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Target Earth","year":"1985"},"the-greenhouse-effect":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"The Greenhouse Effect","year":"1989"},"the-morton-feldman-landspeed-record":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Morton Feldman Landspeed Record","year":"1987"},"the-right-stuff-galactic-evolution":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"The Right Stuff/Galactic Evolution","year":"1982"},"too-young-to-have-a-tape-recorder":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Too Young to Have a Tape Recorder, Too Old to Get a Drink","year":"1986"},"voodoo-economics":{"image":"","label":"Galactus","review":"","title":"Voodoo Economics","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":74,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/dougflute.jpg?alt=media&token=73ce1bc9-3c46-4af0-aa12-008ba48d0000","last_name":"Alien Planetscapes"},"allaudin-mathieu":{"artist_name":"Allaudin Mathieu","body":"William Allaudin Mathieu is a pianist, composer, and author with a knack for tapping into the zeitgeist, whether it was writing jazz for Stan Kenton, giving a musical voice to the Second City improv troupe, establishing the Sufi Choir in San Francisco, or playing new age for Windham Hill in the ‘80s.  His deep musical vocabulary and exhaustive training helped to make his innovations possible, but his curious mind and can-do attitude gave him the wherewithal to make it happen.  His most relevant work for this site would be his early '80s piano works on Cold Mountain which have started to become collectible in recent years, though his entire catalog is worth exploring for any musical adventurer.\n\nBorn in 1937, Mathieu showed early talent on the piano, beginning at age six and quickly becoming one of the best at his school.  By the age of 12 he was listening to his parents’ swing collection, including Bobby Hackett and Harry James. Mathieu’s father worked in publishing, had a sensitivity for the arts, and had the foresight to connect his son with Walter “Buddy\" Hiles, a local jazz teacher in Cincinnati where they lived. Hiles taught Mathieu to compose and arrange big band jazz, coached him on trumpet, and took him to jazz clubs in the black neighborhoods.  \n\nAfter his junior year of high school, Mathieu entered the College at the University of Chicago and earned a BA in Humanities in 1958. During that same time, he studied jazz theory and composition privately with Bill Russo, who had spent five years as staff arranger/composer for the Stan Kenton band. After graduation from the University, Mathieu sent his latest compositions to Stan Kenton, who liked what he heard and invited Mathieu to compose and arrange for the band. \n\nMathieu’s first full album as an arranger was Kenton’s *Standards in Silhouette*, released to critical acclaim in 1959. However, after Mathieu had been on the road with the Kenton band for a year, he didn't feel like he fit in. \"While they were drinking Scotch and reading Playboy Magazine in the front of the bus,\" he recalls, \"I was huddled in the back reading Aldous Huxley, stone-cold sober.\" Mathieu next approached Duke Ellington who was interested in Mathieu's original compositions. That didn’t ultimately work out, but Ellington loved Mathieu's arrangements and ended up using two of them for his *Piano in the Background* album in 1961.\n\nSoon after, Mathieu joined the now legendary improvisational comedy troupe Second City in Chicago. They had been looking for someone to compose songs and add musical elements to their sketches, and Mathieu's skills in arranging and improv proved to be a perfect fit. He was the pianist for the performing company for seven years, for their touring Broadway show, and for a series of albums on the Mercury label. \n \nWhile serving as musical director of the Second City, Mathieu studied the classical canon with composer and piano virtuoso Easley Blackwood Jr. who was a favored student of Nadia Boulanger. Mathieu practiced and composed eight hours a day, but also honed his improv skills with The Chicago Improvising Players (CIP). \"I believe we were the first group to improvise every note of our concerts based on the trust-based game structures that are so common today,\" Mathieu said.\n \nBy 1963, some members of the Second City had joined with various San Francisco actors to create The Committee Theater, and Mathieu accepted an invitation to become its musical director. \"I arrived in California in January 1967 and was spellbound not only by the theatrical courage of the company, but by the ideals and aspirations of the young arts communities in San Francisco. I felt like I was facing the future.\"\n \nIn addition to his music studies and work with the Second City, Mathieu had also been working as a freelance jazz critic for Downbeat Magazine since 1962. Shortly after arriving in California, he was tasked with reviewing a new string quartet by one of his heroes, Ornette Coleman. Mathieu felt that the music was well below Ornette’s standards and wrote the review, but then resigned from writing any further published criticism. Decades later he would return to writing again, this time for a series of instructive and entertaining books on how to listen to and make music. \n \nLiving in San Francisco with his wife and children during the Summer of Love, Mathieu dove into the blossoming hippie culture, enjoying the camaraderie, idealism, and the drugs. He'd already fallen hard for North Indian music, and began studying it more deeply, encouraged by Terry Riley and others around Pandit Pran Nath, a North Indian vocal master. At the same time, Mathieu took an interest in a branch of Sufism that had been brought to the west by Inayat Khan and carried forward by his disciple Samuel Lewis.\n\nLewis was a Californian Zen master who created mantric dance circles in San Francisco that attracted spiritually inclined people, some of whom were musically gifted. \"I started going to their gatherings around 1968,\" Mathieu remembers, \"and the people would sing these chants with layered polyphony. It was all lovely and inspiring, but I thought I could come up with something even more engaging. I asked Murshid Lewis if we could form a choir and he was all for it.  As we went along I was amazed at a vocal quality I had rarely if ever heard in classical music—a deep love of the sacred carried on the sound. It was a kind of suburban gospel, one might say, open and deeply sincere.\" In 1969, Lewis gave Mathieu the spiritual name Allaudin, by which he is commonly known today.\n \nMathieu got to work composing for the Sufi Choir and they soon had a high profile on the West Coast, aided substantially by a well-publicized appearance with the Grateful Dead in 1971. Two years later, the choir released their first self-titled album on Mathieu's own Cold Mountain Music label. The choir lasted until 1982, releasing six albums along the way.  \n \nFrom 1967 through 1974, Mathieu taught music improvisation, theory, counterpoint and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. (The composer John Adams was a colleague and they audited each other's classes.) Mathieu gathered together his most adept students and founded The Ghost Opera Company which recorded an album in 1971. Mathieu later served on the full-time faculty of Mills College in Oakland CA from 1974 to 1980, along with Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath, and Robert Ashley.\n\nAfter leaving Mills College in 1980, Mathieu began working on a series of solo piano albums featuring acoustic piano multi-tracking, with several titles in just intonation. His style was hard to categorize -- too cerebral for background listening, but with elements of minimalism, Indian classical, and jazz that made for pleasant, harmonious listening. His first two cassettes only sold only modestly, but his third album *Second Nature* was picked up by Jeff Charno’s Vital Body Marketing label and was more widely circulated.  To this day, Mathieu says it is his most popular album. \n\nMathieu's fourth album *Listening to Evening* on Sona Gaia helped to raise his profile more and led to Will Ackerman of Windham Hill setting Mathieu up with a one-album deal. \"At the time I was in debt from putting out albums on Cold Mountain, I had just gotten divorced, and was in dire straits economically,\" Mathieu recalls. \"I thought, I can do what George Winston does. The problem is that George Winston believed in it. I was just trying to make a killing.\"\n \nAs Mathieu prepped his solo album for Windham Hill (*Available Light*) he had doubts that he could stay true to the style. Earlier, Ackerman had told Mathieu his three rules for success at the label: \"The first rule was to make music that sounds good when you listen to it,\" Matthieu recalled. \"I thought, I can do that.  The second rule was to make music that sounds good when you don't listen to it. I thought, I can do that too. Then I asked him, 'What's the third rule?' And Will said, 'Never challenge the listener.' That's when the Gong of Doom went off in my mind.\"\n \nMathieu's gong proved prescient. The album didn't sell well compared to others on Windham Hill (about 10,000 copies) and he never recorded another album for them. However, he did create some new tracks for their sampler albums that sold much better, enabling him to get out of debt and travel to Bali with his new wife, Devi. There, he wrote *The Listening Book*, a best-seller published by Shambhala in 1991.\n\nThe Windham Hill episode was a kind of turning point for Mathieu who decided that moving forward he would follow his own muse rather than forcing his sound into a certain mold. Of course, that’s not to say that he wasn’t proud of the music he made during this period. \"I listen to tracks from *Available Light* from time to time, and you know what? They're nice. There's even some – well – challenging music in there,\" Mathieu said.  \n\nAfter a five-year wait, Mathieu finally released the follow-up to *Available Light* in 1992.  The album was mostly material he’d composed for his next album on Windham Hill, but when that fell through, Jeff Charno released it on his Relaxation Company label. Since then, Matthieu has stayed busy, releasing over twenty albums, including seven song cycles featuring the mezzo-soprano of his wife, Devi.  There were also four albums of improvisations with George Marsh and Jennifer Wilsey, five albums of original piano compositions, two albums of chamber music, two albums of big band music redux, and four solo piano improvisations.\n\nAfter the success of *The Listening Book*, Mathieu wrote two more books, *The Musical Life* (1997) and *Bridge of Waves* (2010). In addition, he authored a 600-page tome on music theory called *Harmonic Experience*, published by Inner Traditions in 1997. A discography with descriptions of the albums and books can be found [here](http://www.ColdMountainMusic.com). \n\nMathieu currently lives in Sebastopol, California with his wife Devi and composes music, writes books, performs, and teaches privately.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"allaudin-mathieu":{"albums":{"available-light":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Available Light","year":"1987"},"in-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Cold Mountain","review":"","title":"In the Wind","year":"1983"},"lakes-and-streams":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Lakes and Streams","year":"1992"},"listening-to-evening":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"Tranquil piano music  reflecting solitude and simplicity of lifestyle. The six pieces are invocative, hypnotic, and lilting. Music at peace. The pieces do not pry or prove at deep truths, rather they reflect the placidness and contentment of just being. \n\n(Mark Dickson, *Music Choice* #5, 1986)","title":"Listening to Evening","year":"1985"},"second-nature":{"image":"","label":"Vital Body Marketing","review":"Continuing in the style of his first two tapes, *Second Nature* features harmonically adventurous, multi-layered piano improvisations that flow in a stream-of-consciousness style. Some sections stroll leisurely while others probe inward – often multiple times within the same track. Intellectually stimulating and beautiful, Mathieu occupies his own unique space in the overcrowded field of '80s solo piano albums.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Second Nature","year":"1985"},"streaming-wisdom":{"image":"","label":"Cold Mountain","review":"","title":"Streaming Wisdom","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":75,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Allaudin-Mathieu.jpg?alt=media&token=ecf05848-b291-4a02-9cc4-37bfcd2666d5","last_name":"Mathieu"},"allen-green":{"artist_name":"Allen Green","body":"Allen Green was a composer for experimental theater and dance who was based in Nashville during the '80s and Atlanta after that. He was also a prolific writer and regular contributor to the *Nashville Intelligence Report*, *Sound Choice* and *Option*. While most of his music could only be heard in live performances, Green occasionally released albums of his work such as *Gnosis* in 1987 and *Dancing About Architecture* in 1989. There is also a scarce demo called *Selected Dance Scores.*\n\nAllen Green was born in Washington D.C. in 1958 and mostly grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. His father was a journalist who worked as a United Press International correspondent and then went on to be the radio news director for WSM in Nashville.\n\nIn high school, Green was transfixed by Rick Wakeman's *The Six Wives of Henry VIII* album and started teaching himself the keyboards on an Acetone combo organ. By 1977. he had upgraded to a Yamaha electric piano, string synth, and a Micromooog, and formed a progressive art rock band called Paradox with friends from school. That band sputtered out a few years later when Green started to get more into the nascent punk and new wave movements. \n\nGreen channeled his excitement for independent new music into a 'zine called *Grab* but only published three issues before moving on to the better established [*Nashville Intelligence Report*](http://www.nashville80srock.net/fanzines.htm). That publication would last until 1985 and go through many issues, with Green frequently reviewing local live shows.  When *Trouser Press* decided to do a scene report on Nashville, they tapped Green to write it. \n\nDuring this time, Green formed a new band called Suburban Baroque influenced by Ultravox and Talking Heads, among others. They put out two cassettes in the early '80s, and were interviewed by [Tony Gerber](/tony-gerber) who was an early fan and fellow Nashville synth enthusiast. \n\nIn the mid-'80s, Green had an epiphany when he saw Twyla Tharp’s *Catherine Wheel* dance performance on PBS, featuring a score by David Byrne. \"I felt like that was my calling,\" Green said. \"I wanted to create music for dance and theater. I tried to get Suburban Baroque interested but the band disintegrated as I was moving in a different direction.\" Green looked for collaborators around town, but ultimately decided to put on his first show himself. \"I saw that a local theater was open for independent producers,\" Green said. \"I told them my crazy ideas and they gave me a date nine months out. I had to find performers, create a concept.\" The event was called *Fringe Dances*, and included the dance/performance piece called \"In the Country of the Blind, a One Eyed Man is King\".\n\nAfter successfully directing his debut show, Green and Jason Litchford, one of the show's performers, created a performance art company called Minds Eye. They began producing other shows and performing at colleges in southeast, making decent money and giving Green plenty of composing experience.  Looking back, Green characterized their work as \"a garage band version of Cirque de Soleil.\" During this same time, Green was still actively writing music reviews too, though by then he’d moved on from *Nashville Intelligence Report* to *Option*, one of the premiere independent magazines.\n\nOver several years, Green built up a robust body of work. He cataloged the highlights on albums like *Dancing About Architecture* as well as a demo tape called *Selected Dance Scores.” The tapes showcased Green's lively style, relying heavily on MIDI and the Ensoniq Mirage sampler. \n\nBy the early ‘90s, Litchford had a personal crisis and wanted to call things off, so Green decided to try a change of scenery and moved to Atlanta. There, Green pivoted to a career as a graphic designer while also creating a new performance art company called Gnosis. His partner in Gnosis was the dancer/performance artist L.E. Udaykee Trapkin. However, he didn't release much recorded music during this time, in part due to the demands of his new career and his marriage in 1997 to an art therapist. (After getting married he changed his surname to Welty-Green.)\n\nWelty-Green has more recently re-invented himself again as a therapist, though he has always stayed connected to new and independent music. He has continued to write, record, and perform original material with the band, Z Axis. In 2008, after catching a live show by Medeski, Martin and Wood, he formed his own improvised music ensemble called Zentropy. And for six years starting in 2006 he booked music and helped manage an alternative art space called Eyedrum, booking shows by Robert Rich, Faun Fables, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, and many others. And lately, Welty-Green has been playing with a David Bowie tribute band called Jerome Newton and the Band Who Fell to Earth, as well as sitting in with a handful of other classic rock tribute projects. \n\nStill based in Atlanta, Welty-Green is currently working on a new Zentropy release and is in the pre-production stages of a new dance/film project.","discography":{"allen-green":{"albums":{"dancing-about-architecture":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dancing About Architecture","year":"1989"},"gnosis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Green plays a wide variety of keyboards, mostly electric, but occasionally some very melodic acoustic piano as well. At times a guitarist and bassist are added, and along with Allen's tastefully sparse use of drum machines, make a more rock-like music that on one level appeals to me in the way Pell Mell does in that it's straightforward, simple but balanced, and well-conceived.  On top of a couple of these parts the found voices of fundamentalist radio evangelists or Dorothy from *Wizard of Oz* are used, the latter in a piece about a recent case in Tennessee where fundamentalist parents successfully had textbooks they found objectionable, including *The Wizard of Oz*, removed from their children's curriculum.\n\n(Bryan Sale, *Option*, May/June 1987)","title":"Gnosis","year":"1987"},"selected-dance-scores":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Selected Dance Scores","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":121,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Allen-Green-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fac280d0-8916-4896-b3fb-d9396a6f4268","image_credit":"Rick Lucas","last_name":"Green"},"almblade-caruso":{"artist_name":"Robert Almblade and Carolyn Caruso","body":"Carolyn Cruso and Robert Almblade were a couple who met in Seattle in 1985 and went on to release five albums that mixed new age, smooth jazz, Celtic, and Appalachian dulcimer music. They released all their albums themselves, recording the first two while they were busking and traveling around Europe from 1987 to 1990. Upon returning to the US, they put out *The Fifth Element* and began touring the craft fair circuit and renaissance fairs in a converted bus, making a living performing and selling their music. However, Almblade passed away of congestive heart failure in 1997 at 41, and Caruso left the craft fair circuit behind.","discography":{"almblade-caruso":{"albums":{"callincheol":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ballincheol","year":"1993"},"great-blue":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Great Blue","year":"1995"},"modern-day-minstrels":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Modern Day Minstrels","year":"1987"},"the-fifth-element":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Fifth Element","year":"1991"},"tone-poems":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tone Poems","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Robert Almblade and Carolyn Cruso","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":307,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/almblade-cruso-edit.jpg?alt=media&token=06968a09-c1c1-4266-a60a-cff6fb593067","last_name":"Almblade"},"alpha-wave-movement":{"artist_name":"Alpha Wave Movement","body":"The project of Gregory Kyryluk, Alpha Wave Movement shows how progressive electronic and ambient styles of the '80s evolved to include more prominent beats and rhythms in the '90s, paving the way for trance and ambient house. Born in 1969, Kyryluk mostly grew up in Miami where he got into electronic and new age artists such as Kitaro and Jean-Michel Jarre. He recorded a cassette demo in the late '80s under his own name before adopting the name Alpha Wave Movement in the early '90s for a new group of demos. Those helped him get the attention of Silent Records who included \"Lucid Recollection of an Aquamarine World\" on *From Here to Tranquility* Vol. 4. Kyryluk's first official album was *Transcendence*, issued on his own label Harmonic Resonance in 1996. That helped kicked off a prolific career that has yielded over twenty albums on his own label and others such as Periphery and Groove Unlimited.","discography":{"alpha-wave-movement":{"albums":{"alpha-wave-movement":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Alpha Wave Movement","year":"1993"},"alpha-wave-movement-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Alpha Wave Movement","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Alpha Wave Movement","entry_number":2},"gregory-kyryluk":{"albums":{"gregory-kyryluk":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gregory Kyryluk","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Gregory Kyryluk","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":329,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/alpha-wave-movement-640.jpg?alt=media&token=aab85f3a-d4a3-413c-b99f-677dfded66b9","last_name":"Alpha"},"alston-neal":{"artist_name":"Alston Neal","body":"Alston Neal (born 1965) was a synthesist based in Scottsdale, Arizona. He started out on clarinet and drums and then moved on to synthesizer, composing progressive electronic pieces in the vein of early '80s Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze. He got some work playing musical accompaniment for dancers at the University of Arizona and also performed electronic music at art galleries and events around town. At one of his shows, Ed Van Fleet discovered Neal and invited him up to Maine to record his debut album *Kinetic* which Van Fleet released on his Elfin Music label. The album sold pretty well and got airplay on Musical Starstreams, but Neal felt his royalties weren't accurate and he and Van Fleet parted ways. He couldn't find a label for his second album and eventually decided to sell his gear and retire from music in 1991. Three years later,  he and his wife took over his family's Native American art gallery in Scottsdale which they still run today.","discography":{"alston-neal":{"albums":{"oasis":{"image":"","label":"Elfin Music Company","review":"","title":"Kinetic","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":312,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/alston-neal640.jpg?alt=media&token=466c5e79-cfc7-4aa5-90ab-1714a498dec2","last_name":"Neal"},"andrew-hosch":{"artist_name":"Andrew Hosch","body":"Based in Portland, Oregon, Andrew Hosch put out a run of cassettes from 1988 to 1989 that drew on 20th-century minimalism, African music, gamelan, and free jazz. His first cassette got favorable reviews and some local airplay, leading to two more cassettes the following year that explored further permutations of his sound.\n\nBorn in 1954 in Chicago, Hosch was a self-taught musician who started playing guitar at 10 but preferred the comforts of composing at home to performing live. He and his high school girlfriend moved to Portland, Oregon in 1973 (while she attended Reed College) and he has remained there since. Hosch worked odd jobs throughout the ‘70s and taught himself how to record music with a reel-to-reel recorder, playing mostly free improv. He gradually taught himself other instruments such as percussion, alto sax, and keyboards as well. \n\nAfter putting off college for most of his twenties, Hosch enrolled at Portland State, graduating with a degree in African Studies in 1985. While there, he developed a strong interest in World music, especially from Africa and Indonesia. These sounds, along with an influence from minimalist composers like Phillip Glass and Terry Riley, informed his first album *In the Dreamtime* which he self-released on cassette. Using a computer, a sequencer, some synths, and drum machines, Hosch created a heady sound that ranged from hypnotic to tense and chaotic.\n\nHosch got a nice review of his debut in Option, with writer Bill Tilland calling the album “a confident, listenable set of pieces with good variety and a few surprises.” The tape got radio play on Portland radio station KBOO as well, leading Hosch to put out two more albums the following year. Hosch sold his tapes locally or through magazines, selling a few hundred copies in his estimation.\n\nAfter a hiatus in the ‘90s, Hosch began releasing a flurry of new music again in the early 2000s on CD, much of it archival. He has retained his love of international music, even running a record store called Timbuktunes for a decade, and hosting an African radio show for eleven years until 2021. His last album was *Through the Persian Night* in 2006, recorded with flutist Jessie Isaac. Some info can be found [here](http://www.northpacificmusic.com/zabol.html).\n","discography":{"andrew-hosch":{"albums":{"in-the-dreamtime":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Hosch plays digital synthesizers, electric guitar, kalimba and a little alto sax. On this cassette, he borrows frequently from the scales, rhythms, and timbres of Javanese gamelan tradition. But the gamelan sound is actually employed in the service of a larger and more diffuse percussive/minimalist style, which also includes some abstract, and even atonal jazz elements. The result is a confident, listenable set of pieces with good variety and a few surprises. There are no clinkers here, but my personal faves are the title piece, a Phillip Glass soundalike, but with more power and emotional depth; “Kotabaru”, a Javense style workout with good polyrhythmic action; and “Buzzard Dance,” dissonant keyboard minimalism which suggests a bizarre collaboration between Steve Reich and Cecil Taylor.\n\n(Bill Tilland, *Option*, March/April 1989)","title":"In the Dreamtime","year":"1988"},"inner":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"On the first side, Hosch expands on the hypnotic sound of his debut, creating a sort of microtonal computer music that sounds like the Sun City Girls soundtrack to a late-'80s Mortal Kombat game. However, Side 2 ventures into new territory, with Hosch trying prog-inspired sequencer pieces alongside a Pink-Floyd style freakout with the descriptive title “Intergalactic Insect Zoo.” Randomly, the cassette cover is a close-up of a cute cat.\n\n(MG, 2025)","title":"Inner Turmoil","year":"1989"},"surinam-toad":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"While Gamelan, African music and minimalism were the primary touchpoints on Hosch’s other albums, there were usually hints of chaos and atonality on the fringes. On *Surinam Toad*, those elements take center stage for his most unsettling and challenging album. The first side is made up of only three songs, with the 9-minute title track sounding like Danny Elfman at a drum circle, while “Encroachment of the Urban Sprawl” is tightly wound and anxiety-inducing for a full 12 minutes. The only respite is the 2-minute “Forest People,” a return to the more trancelike mood of his debut. Hosch sustains the tense mood on side two, with dissonant shards of counterpoint and free improv noodling that never cohere into anything substantial.\n\n(MG, 2025)","title":"Surinam Toad","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":410,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/andrew-hosch-640.jpg?alt=media&token=80a93b92-6a3d-4c35-9fe0-9c61c6c14f26","last_name":"Hosch"},"andy-boggs":{"artist_name":"Andy Boggs","body":"Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in his early twenties, Andy Boggs survived for a few more years, determined to finish his college education and release an album, achieving both goals right before his death in 1987 at the age of 23. He'd only started studying piano and composition as a senior in high school, and went on to attend Beloit College to continue his music studies there. When he became paralyzed on his left side, he adapted by getting a computer and sampling keyboard, putting together an album of mostly low-key synth instrumentals. He was able to get his music heard by one of his favorite musicians, George Winston, who suggested Boggs put out an album, which he did with the help of the MACC (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer) fund. [Musique Plastique](https://musiqueplastique.bigcartel.com/product/andy-boggs-go-with-the-flow-lp) recently acquired stock of the title and helped spread the word on this previously little known title.","discography":{"andy-boggs":{"albums":{"go-with-the-flow":{"image":"","label":"Turtle Creek Records","review":"","title":"Go With The Flow","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":251,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/andy-boggs-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f37495c5-3c16-4eea-b1b6-2950eb4f1d1a","last_name":"Boggs"},"andy-shapiro":{"artist_name":"Andy Shapiro","body":"Based in Vermont, Andy Shapiro was a tenured professor at Johnson State College where he taught music and founded the Commercial Music Program. He was a lifelong jazz and fusion fan who dabbled in new age in the mid-'80s, starting with two releases on his own Inner Wings label. These attracted the interest of Trine Wilcox's New World Productions label who issued two more albums, the progressive-electronic *Journey* and the more trad-jazz *Breakaway* which probably won't interest readers here. Wilcox also reissued his first two albums on cassette. Shapiro passed away at 50 from brain cancer, receiving an outpouring of support from many of his past students who remembered him fondly.\n\nShapiro was born in 1947 and grew up in New York City. He spent a few years studying music in college before dropping out and moving to Vermont. There, he and some friends bought an 80 acre piece of land and lived communally, building their own houses. Shapiro had a son Adam during this time, but the marriage didn't last and he left the commune in 1975. \n\nTo make money, Shapiro played in a jazz trio, performing regularly around Vermont at weddings, bars, or any gigs for hire. He eventually went back to school, earning a BA in Music Education at Johnson State in 1983 followed by a master's degree in Ethnomusicology at Norwich University in 1986. Even as he became a tenured professor, he continued to play jazz, his biggest passion.\n\nShapiro's run of electronic music didn't last long, as he became a Christian in the late-'80s and pivoted to Christian singer-songwriter music for a batch of releases in the early '90s. He also began to encounter health problems at this time, and died from brain cancer when he was only 50 years old. These days, one of his main claims to fame is having played on Bernie Sanders cassette *We Shall Overcome* from 1987.\n\n(Source: Author interview with Adam Shapiro, January 2024)","discography":{"andy-shapiro":{"albums":{"breakaway":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Breakaway","year":"1988"},"inner-wings":{"image":"","label":"Inner Wings","review":"","title":"Inner Wings","year":"1986"},"journey":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Journey","year":"1988"},"thoughts-and-harmony":{"image":"","label":"Inner Wings","review":"","title":"Thoughts and Harmony","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":383,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/andy-shapiro-640.jpg?alt=media&token=86afe45f-88b0-4d47-aa54-ca3cbc626b01","last_name":"Shapiro"},"ani-williams":{"artist_name":"Ani Williams","body":"Harpist Ani Williams (formerly Anne Williams) has enjoyed a successful career starting with the release of her dreamy psych folk album *Lotus Returning* in 1981. Her follow-up *Summer Rose* was a surprise hit with new age retailers and she was soon able to quit her job and focus on music full time. Later releases explored renaissance music, chants, music for yoga, and more throughout four decades of music-making, mostly while based in Sedona, Arizona.\n\nAnne Williams was born in Los Angeles and grew up on the West Coast, mostly in Newport Beach. Her father loved outdoor adventure and the family spent many weekends skiing, fishing, boating, and camping. Anne's father was an amateur pianist and gave her lessons as a child. When she was 15, she took up the guitar, inspired by folk artists like Joan Baez and the Incredible String Band. She taught herself how to play, discarding typical chords and song structures in the pursuit of something more original.\n\nAfter high school, Williams spent a few years in college but never graduated. Instead, she spent her winters in the mid-'60s hitting the slopes in Sun Valley Idaho. \"I wanted to be a ski bum,\" she recalls. \"I made guacamole at a local Mexican restaurant for an hour a day. In return, I got room and board and a ski lift pass.\" \n\nIn the early '70s, Williams joined a family to run a raw food vegan restaurant near Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship north of San Diego. The same group bought a hot springs property near Eden, Arizona, and moved there to start a retreat center. Williams moved there in 1975 to help get the project off the ground, and she decided to stay. Eventually, she settled in Sedona, which she thought was both beautiful and strongly spiritual. \"I just fell in love with the landscape,\" she said. \"I was there for 40 years.\"\n\nIn 1975, a friend gave Williams a harp and it quickly became her primary instrument. She took some lessons and began composing her own material right away. During a trip to Mexico in 1981, she met a woman who ran a new age magazine in Indiana and encouraged her to put out an album of harp music. When she got back to Arizona, Williams did just that – booking some studio time and getting help from David Hawkins to make an ad to sell the tape. The album, *Lotus Returning*, combined harp and Williams' delicate vocals to create an ethereal, folky sound that was like a new age version of Pentangle.\n\n*Lotus Returning* was picked up for distribution by Music Design, and Williams followed it up with *Summer Rose*, an instrumental harp alum that sold well and earned a rave from New Age Journal that called it \"the best music program of music for meditation I’ve heard in the last five years.\" By the time of her third album, *Violets in Spring* (the third in a flower trilogy), Williams quit her day job in an art gallery to focus on music full time. Some of her influences at the time included Andreas Vollenweider, [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews), [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly), and the duo [Bearns and Dexter](/robert-bearns-and-ron-dexter).\n\nAfter that, Williams started to collaborate more on future releases as she expanded her sonic palette. On *Sky Dance*, commissioned for yoga stretching, she recorded with keyboardist Joel Harrison from San Francisco. On the fusion-influenced album *Wind Spirit* she worked with several new players including Claudia Tulip on flute, Richard Hardy on winds, Fitzhugh Jenkins on bass and Michael Bower on percussion. After appearing on an album of native-inspired chants with Jim Berenholtz (*Turquoise Waters*), she began a series of collaborations with flute player and percussionist Mazatl Galindo including *Song of the Jaguar*,  *Children of the Sun* and *Luna Trece*.\n\nSince she'd been a teenager, Williams loved to play guitar and sing, but she rarely played live. But as took up the harp and joined the  Sedona music scene, this began to change, in part to the urging of Berenholtz. \"He saw that I had potential even though I didn't have confidence,\" Williams said. \"He brought me on journeys to South America and Egypt. On a trip to visit the pyramids, I brought a small harp and a Sony DAT recorder. That was back when you could go in the pyramids and not be disturbed. I sat in there and recorded a whole album, *Song of Isis*, on location.\"\n\nWhen she got back, Williams also had a new name: Ani. \"While I was in Egypt I noticed that people pronounced my name Ani.  And other people started calling me that back home too. It just stuck.\" Starting in 1990, all of her albums were credited to Ani Williams.\n\nWilliams continued to collaborate closely with her \"muses\" in the ensuing years, including several albums with Lisa Thiel and Galindo. In 1994, she put out an ambitious three-album set called *Songaia Sound Medicine* that included sound therapy for 12 different tones. In the early 2000s she put out two chant albums, followed by at least ten more that fall outside the scope of this guide. More recently Williams has relocated to France though she still plays and records with old friends in Sedona like Claudia Tulip whenever she visits. \"France is more inspiring to write new music,\" Williams said. \"But I'm still working and composing. I've never stopped.\"","discography":{"ani-williams":{"albums":{"songaia-sound-medicine":{"image":"","label":"Songaia Sound Productions","review":"","title":"Songaia Sound Medicine","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Ani Williams","entry_number":5},"ani-williams-and-lisa-thiel":{"albums":{"sisters-of-the-dream":{"image":"","label":"White Wing Visions","review":"","title":"Sisters of the Dream","year":"1992"},"song-for-my-ancestors":{"image":"","label":"White Wing Visions","review":"","title":"Song for My Ancestors","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Ani Williams and Lisa Thiel","entry_number":4},"ani-williams-and-mazatl-galindo":{"albums":{"children-of-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"","title":"Children of the Sun","year":"1990"},"luna-trece-13-moons":{"image":"","label":"White Wing Visions","review":"","title":"Luna Trece - 13 Moons","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Ani Williams and Mazatl Galindo","entry_number":3},"anne-williams":{"albums":{"lotus-returning":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"With folk harps, autoharp, dulcimer, flute, bells and voice, Anne's original songs celebrate the joy of remembering ancient wisdom. The interweaving of the instruments, all performed by her, seems to touch upon the crystalline center of the listener-beautiful! \n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Lotus Returning","year":"1981"},"sky-dance":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"Although it was intended for yoga, *Sky Dance* retains Williams' signature sound, a mix of minor-key harp melodies and an introspective, Baroque vibe. For extra color, she brings in synthesist Joel Harrison who contributes two compositions of his own, \"Fall-Snow on the Mountain\" and \"Sky Circles.\" His layered textures and minimalist melodies provide a nice contrast to Williams' more courtly airs.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Sky Dance","year":"1986"},"song-of-isis":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"","title":"Song of Isis","year":"1988"},"song-of-the-jaguar":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"","title":"Song of the Jaguar","year":"1989"},"summer-rose":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"Outstanding! Even more beautiful than her first, in this reviewer's humble opinion; this cassette is pure musical imagery-voice without words-which, with harp, autoharp, cello, flute and bells becomes a sound that is felt rather than heard. Again, all original and all performed by the artists, with innovative use of harmonies and rhythms. An emotional richness, an audio massage, celestial seasonings for the spirit! Highly recommended. \n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Summer Rose","year":"1983"},"violets-in-spring":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"","title":"Violets in Spring","year":"1985"},"wind-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Earthsong Productions","review":"Channeling the Arizona landscape and its cultural history, Williams collaborates with flutists [Claudia Tulip](/claudia-tulip) and Tricia Herold to embody the \"Wind Spirit\" evoked by Native American artist Peter Ray James who painted the album cover. Other guests include  Fitzhugh Jenkins on fretless bass and Monty Perrault on synth, though their subtle shadings take a back seat to the flute and harp. The overall mood is less introspective than Williams' usual tone, at times striking a sunnier vibe that brings to mind David Michael and Randy Mead's work of the same era.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Wind Spirit","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Anne Williams","entry_number":1},"jim-berenholtz-with-anne-williams-mazatl-galindo":{"albums":{"turquoise-waters":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"An album of  chants, some in English and some in \"Ra-Ali-Lea-Hu,\" an invented language modeled on Polynesian or Hawaiian that is intended to evoke a primal, ancient universality. Some tracks are a cappella and some are backed with percussion and flute. Berenholtz's voice is a bit grating and strident; I'm not sure there is much of an audience for this sort of thing anymore.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Turquoise Waters","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Jim Berenholtz with Anne Williams and Mazatl Galindo","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":245,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ani-williams-1983-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=0ec0b553-899c-4001-8e0a-efb5b0179429","last_name":"Williams"},"apurvo":{"artist_name":"Ma Puja Apurvo","body":"Ma Puja Apurvo was a Rajneesh devotee and classically trained pianist based in Boulder, Colorado during the mid-'80s. During this time, she  released four new age cassettes that were reviewed in Heartsong Journal and distributed by Ladyslipper, but she has since disappeared from the public eye and no details have emerged of her current whereabouts or status.\n\nBorn in 1954, Apurvo attended Brown University in the early '70s and went on to work as a music director at various theater companies in New York City from 1975 to 1980. She also played children's music and taught private music lessons. In 1981, she joined a Satsang and began following the teachings of Rajneesh, a charismatic and popular guru at the time who gave her the name Ma Puja Apurvo.\n\nIn the mid-80s, Apurvo moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she started a duo called Heart to Heart and began crafting her own synth-based music. In a burst of inspiration, she released three cassettes in 1986 on her own Soundless Sound label. Her first album featured her playing mostly electric piano and synth in a style similar to Steven Halpern, while her second album utilized acoustic piano and a more playful, active sound. Apurvo's third album featured a more symphonic style, with Ladyslipper calling it \"majestic\" and \"beautiful.\" The next year, Apurvo released one more album on New World Productions, but it would be her last. According to most reports, she left Boulder around 1988 and hasn't released any new music since.","discography":{"apurvo":{"albums":{"journey-home":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Journey Home","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Apurvo","entry_number":2},"ma-puja-apurvo":{"albums":{"1-soundless-sound":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Soundless Sound","year":"1986"},"2-love-live-from-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Soundless Sound","review":"","title":"Love Live From the Heart","year":"1986"},"3-inside-the-cathedral-of-life":{"image":"","label":"Soundless Sound","review":"Third tape from this free-spirited woman now living in Boulder, CO. Her keyboard/synthesizer compositions are an expression of light and love, flowing and absorbing. The four pieces on this tape form a symphonic suite, \"a meeting of hearts in the silence of sound.\"\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Inside the Cathedral of Life","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Ma Puja Apurvo","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":276,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Apurvo-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=45015932-7c7a-4ffd-887c-e9c1b4bd991f","image_credit":"","last_name":"Apurvo"},"arch-thomas":{"artist_name":"Arch Thomas","body":"Arch Thomas is an audio engineer and musician who has been based in Tampa, Florida since the early '90s. Born in 1954, he grew up in Memphis and fell in love with rock music in his teen years. He spent the '70s hanging out at Ardent Studios where he learned the art of recording, but years of hard drinking led him to enter a 12-step program. After that, he got into healing, became a Reiki master and taught meditation at a Unity church. Around this time, he released two cassettes *Elestial Waters* and *Light of Luxor* that he initially sold through word of mouth and later distributed through New Leaf. Since then, Thomas has stayed busy doing freelance audio work for film and TV.","discography":{"arch-thomas":{"albums":{"elestial-waters":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Channeled music intended for aligning the chakra energy centers, this is continually drifting, seamless sound on each side without titles or separation. A single repeated theme on pianos, keyboards, and orchestral strings with distant surf rhythm, it includes a constantly repeated vague synth melody. Acoustic guitar segments surface like whales, also a flute hovers like a floating seabird. Same on each side. Pleasant, gently rhythmic, sweet sound. Lulling rhythm without interruption is quite mesmerizing and euphoric. Definitely not interesting, but who needs interest for zoning out? Valuable for relaxing, massage, sleeptime. I like the successful sense of rocking on ocean waves and constant subtle surf sounds.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review*, Fall ‘92/ Winter ’93)","title":"Elestial Waters","year":"1991"},"light-of-luxor":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Light of Luxor","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":368,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/arch-thomas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f0a17732-3ecb-45c8-8917-35ed16ec0e1a","last_name":"Thomas"},"arden-wilken":{"artist_name":"Arden Wilken","body":"Arden Wilken is a sound therapist and pianist who got her start self-releasing cassettes with her husband Jack in 1982. At the time, the American couple lived on a boat and traveled around Europe where they promoted their music and personalized tapes at health expos and other events.  This led to a deal with Colin Wilcox's New World Cassettes where they issued eight albums, followed by more on the US outpost New World Productions. By the end of the decade, the couple settled in Spain where they set up Inner Sound to release new music and develop sound therapy courses, voice workshops, and more.\n\nBorn in 1950, Arden Wilken grew up in Santa Rosa, California. The family had a big grand piano that collected dust until she started taking lessons at the age of eight. Arden loved the instrument and went on to earn a degree in music theory at the University of Washington in 1972. After graduation, she worked for six years as a shorthand reporter in court before meditation took her life on a very different course.\n\n\"I knew that I had music inside of me, but with my classical structure, I couldn't access it. I was looking for something more,\" Arden said. \"So, I walked in the door of this meditation institute in Seattle. And by using their techniques, I started to be able to let the music out. One day the director said that I should play my energy, so I went, 'How am I going to do that? I sat down and I went into a meditative state. I took some of his energy, spread it on the keyboard, and then I started to play. And that was the start of Inner Sound.\"\n\nSix months later Arden was now teaching at the institute where she had a whirlwind romance with a student named Jack. After three days they were engaged to be married. Jack had gone to school for Oceanography and was very interested in traveling, and the couple first spent a year in Taiwan before deciding to live on a sailboat, which they ended up doing for the next ten years.\n\nThe couple had their first child, a son, in 1981. They generally docked their boat around Europe, and it was there that Arden recorded her first album. \"We set up the keyboard in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, and I played it with my little son next to me,\" she recalled. Arden went on to record two more in a similar fashion and Jack helped market them at expos and other events where the couple set up a booth. Often, Arden would create personalized tapes for people that she met at the events. Each was 15 minutes long and included a stock Inner Sound cover with the person's name handwritten on it. Over the next two decades, Arden would go on to make thousands of these, often recording the music live with the person sitting in front of her. \n\nBy 1984, Arden and Jack got their first record deal with New World Cassettes.  Colin Wilcox, who ran the label, met them at a health expo in London and commissioned three titles from them. This would eventually lead to five more titles with him, including two big sellers *The Brain Tape* and *Magical Garden*.  According to Arden, they ended up re-recording three of the titles which they felt were too low-fi. Jack, who served as the engineer for the albums, used his background in science to get increasingly high-fidelity recordings as the years progressed, even in remote settings such as their boat.\n\nAround 1987, many of Arden's titles now appeared on New World Productions, the US outpost for Wilcox's label which was being run by his sister Trine. Arden issued four more titles there, with the best-selling being *Floating in the Sea*. By then, Arden and Jack were living in Spain and were able to secure a deal with a label there called Lilah to reissue some of their titles. Lilah also put out four cassettes geared to various types of healing such as *Pain* and * Fatigue*. \"Those cassettes were originally commissioned for a sound and light machine in the US, but the FDA shut the company down completely because of healing claims,\" Arden said. \"They were really going great guns, then wham. This was quite a bit setback for us as they were very mainstream at that time. So we were able to publish them with Infinitum (Lilah).\"\n\nIn 1989, the couple officially launched Inner Sound as a record label, mostly run from Barcelona at the time. Working with a clinical psychologist there named Marc Costa, they created a sound therapy program designed for psychotherapists, students, and psychologists. With the help of Costa, they were able to quantify the effects of their music that they'd been exploring intuitively for the previous decade.\n\nArden went on to reissue many older titles on Inner Sun throughout the '90s, transitioning into CDs early in the decade. Inner Sound would go on to be much more than a record label too, as the couple added more therapeutic offerings over the years. Eventually, they branched out to develop voice workshops, postural integration, introduction to sound therapy, massage therapy, and more. Much of their music has not been available on streaming due to the low sound quality of mp3's, but they recently launched a new [website](https://innersoundonline.com/) that allows CD-quality downloads of their music.","discography":{"arden-wilken":{"albums":{"1-energize-your-life":{"image":"","label":"Inner Sound","review":"","title":"Energize Your Life","year":"1992"},"1-music-for-healing":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"With a background as a musician and counselor, Arden has evolved a unique understanding of the curative powers of music. From her home, a boat in the Mediterranean, she writes her compositions for synthesizer in a meditative state. This tape is for relaxing and balancing the body, mind and spirit, and renewal in times of stress. \n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Music for Healing","year":"1985"},"2-heart-music":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"","title":"Heart Music","year":"1985"},"3-inner-harmony":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"","title":"Inner Harmony","year":"1985"},"4-the-brain-tape":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"A unique presentation designed to exercise the brain. Side 1 takes the listener on an inward journey through the 4 brain-wave states: beta, alpha, theta and delta, and teaches one how to have more control over them. Side 2 focuses on balancing the left and right hemispheres of the brain, integrating the intuitive with the analytical. \n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"The Brain Tape","year":"1985"},"5-inner-focus":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"Arden's synthesizer here is specifically designed to focus the mind...first by helping the brain to release the accumulated stresses of the day, then by providing an environment for calm inner focus. Some very unusual tones and pulsating rhythms here; sounds like alpha waves!\n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Inner Focus","year":"1985"},"6-magical-garden":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"","title":"Magical Garden","year":"1985"},"7-music-for-children":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"","title":"Music for Children","year":"1986"},"day-in-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Day in the Sun","year":"1982"},"deep-touch":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"Mesmerizing and almost eerie ambient music stretched across two long tracks, pieced together in a tapestry of synths and electric piano.","title":"Deep Touch","year":"1987"},"depression":{"image":"","label":"Lilah","review":"","title":"Depression","year":"1992"},"dreamtime":{"image":"","label":"New World Cassettes","review":"Each side is one long piece performed on synthesizer: first side for calming the mind into a state of stillness, second side to lull you into sleep, so that as the mind finds rest, so will the body.\n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Dreamtime","year":"1986"},"fatigue":{"image":"","label":"Lilah","review":"","title":"Fatigue","year":"1993"},"floating-in-the-sea":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Floating in the Sea","year":"1988"},"gardens-and-fountains":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gardens and Fountains of Paris","year":"1982"},"nature-serenade":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Nature's Serenade","year":"1988"},"night-with-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Night With the Moon","year":"1982"},"pain":{"image":"","label":"Lilah","review":"","title":"Pain","year":"1992"},"radiant-body":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Radiant Body","year":"1989"},"stress":{"image":"","label":"Lilah","review":"","title":"Stress","year":"1993"},"z-inner-sun":{"image":"","label":"Inner Sound","review":"","title":"Inner Sun","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":235,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/arden-wilken-640rev.jpg?alt=media&token=3a15e374-d43b-4fc6-a188-e3e1b15e4d54","last_name":"Wilken"},"arnold-mathes":{"artist_name":"Arnold Mathes","body":"Arnold Mathes was a self-taught synthesist from Brooklyn whose work was once characterized by *Music Technology* as \"ambient music for experimental synth freaks.\" He ranks among the most prolific of the decade, releasing over 35 cassettes in the '80s, and nearly as many in the '90s. Mathes networked regularly in the experimental music underground and was especially close with Doug Walker of [Alien Planetscapes](/alien-planetscapes). His tapes were never big sellers--most sold no more than 10-20 each--but his work was well-covered in outlets like *CLEM*, *Synthetic Pleasure*, *OP*, and *Electronic Musician*.\n\nBorn in 1957, Mathes grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey. His parents were French immigrants who first met in Paris and then reconnected in New York after the second world war. The marriage lasted until he was seven and then his parents divorced. A few years later, he and his sister moved with their mother to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. Though his parents weren't into music, Mathes developed an interest in harmonicas and had a small collection by the age of 15.\n\nIn high school, Mathes became a fan of Alison Steele's late-night radio show where he first heard electronic music like Tangerine Dream and Tonto's Expanding Head Band. This inspired him to buy his first synth, the entry-level Moog Satellite. While Mathes learned how to play, he decided to skip college and entered the workforce as a locksmith.\n\nDuring any downtime from his day job, Mathes began recording synth experiments at home, slowly acquiring new gear such as a Crumar DS2 and then a Mini Moog. 1982 he began releasing the best of this material on cassette, naming the first eight in a similar generic fashion: *1AM*, *2AM*, *3AM*, etc. Mathes sent many of his early tapes for review to magazines like *OP* and *CLEM*, both of whom weighed in with complimentary reviews in early 1984 for his releases *Cateclipse* and *Technical Ancestors.*\n \nThe mid-'80s was a high point for Mathes, who solidified relationships with many key players in the northeast scene, including [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), Doug Walker, and [David Prescott](/david-prescott). All collaborated in various ways, with Mathes appearing on two of Walker’s cassettes, Paisley creating art for two of Mathes cassette covers (*Cateclipse* and *Riding Waves of Disaster*), and Prescott joining Mathes in an epic New Year's Eve performance in 1985. \n\nMathes continued to get reviews and found a big fan in [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), a fellow musician who was a part of the Eugene Electronic Music Collective. Griffiths praised *Monitoring* in an issue of *Sound Choice* as well as Mathes' 1985 more aggressive and experimental release *Stranger from the Depths* where he called Mathes \"a true genius madman.\" The latter also garnered a review in the widely circulated magazine *Electronic Musician*. Although it was full of backhanded compliments, Robert Carlberg's review concluded that Mathes \"never fails to confound expectations.\" This bit of press raised Mathes' profile and he sold more copies of that tape than any of the others (though still a scant 45 copies).\n\nMathes continued to release numerous tapes throughout the '80s, picking up stray reviews in the UK magazine *Music Technology* and a few others. However, the scene that supported underground electronic musicians began to wither in the early ‘90s as the old guard moved on to conventional careers and a younger crop of house and techno artists took over the genre. Nevertheless, Mathes kept releasing cassettes on his old analog gear throughout the ‘90s, finally switching over to CDs around 1998. Still living in Brooklyn and working as a locksmith, Mathes is still at it today, though his pace has slowed considerably.","discography":{"arnold-mathes":{"albums":{"0":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"0","year":"1996"},"2am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"2AM","year":"1983"},"3am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"3AM","year":"1983"},"4am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"4AM","year":"1983"},"5am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"5AM","year":"1983"},"6am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"6AM","year":"1983"},"7am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"7AM","year":"1983"},"8am":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"8AM","year":"1983"},"alien-bug-machine":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Alien Bug Machine","year":"1989"},"amtek":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Amtek","year":"1995"},"any-concept-will-do":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Any Concept Will Do","year":"1986"},"arnold-mathes":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Arnold Mathes (1AM)","year":"1982"},"audioshim":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Audioshim","year":"1989"},"avenue-of-the-gods":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Avenue of the Gods","year":"1992"},"blindspot":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Mostly a series of long, brooding pieces that creep forward like primordial ooze. A case in point is \"Brainscan\" which features a ring modulated drum machine moored in place for 13 minutes while Mathes trawls his subconscious in abstract swirls of electronics. The rest of the side is made up of shorter pieces that stay in the same gray zone of early Chris and Cosey with a more cut and paste aesthetic. The second side includes two long tracks of similar length and mood with closer \"The Beholder of the Eye\" adding some comical dialogue from sci-fi B-movie *Yor, the Hunter from the Future.* The one exception to the ominous atmosphere is \"Mentalhibernation,\" an almost glossy trance piece with a lightning fast BPM and a shimmering beauty at odds with the rest of the tape.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Blindspot","year":"1986"},"cateclipse":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Cateclipse* has one of Mathes' best tape covers -- a drawing by [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley) of a cat observing an eclipse. The cat theme extends to the song titles here (\"Catalysis,\" \"Cat's Pause,\" \"Cat’s Tail,\" etc.) and there is even some electronically modified cat purring within. However, this set of music is anything but cute and cozy, with Mathes turning in some of his most claustrophobic, tense material, with a few fleeting moments of characteristic playfulness. \"Catwalk,\" for example, plays out like a tightly wound Berlin-school space jam until Mathes abruptly shifts tonalities mid-stream and then ramps up the rhythm until it approaches frantic bluegrass speeds. Other tracks like \"Cataract\" and \"Pyramidland\" are better focused, but overall this is a very dark trip.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Cateclipse","year":"1984"},"censored":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Censored","year":"1986"},"coam":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"COAM","year":"1986"},"concentrated-void":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Concentrated Void","year":"1984"},"destination-studio":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A true analog synth freak can make anything sound analog (in this case, an Ensoniq SC80 and Crumar DS2, along with a truly analog Roland SH101). Mathes' tape is in the style of the semi-underground/semi-mainstream/semi-Avant Garde/always experimental and loose electronic music of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.\n\n\"This tape is more controlled than *Taboo*,\" [Mathes wrote]. \"I like using found sounds, but sometimes am too lazy to look for them. This is the case with this tape.\"\n\nArnold’s 28th tape (featuring 20 songs), *Destination: Studio* is indeed more rhythmic and less varied, but still considerably different than most new age you'll hear. Those who have been doing this for a while with old equipment will find Mathes' efforts happily nostalgic.\n\n(*Music Technology*, November 1989)\n","title":"Destination Studio","year":"1988"},"galaxy-agogo":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Galaxyagogo!","year":"1994"},"gargoyles-on-main-street":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gargoyles on Main Street","year":"1986"},"human-experiment":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"\n12 electronic pieces recorded by Mathes during one week last February, and it must've been a real hectic week. Brandishing an arsenal of synths and processors that could level Britain, Mathes touches base on a wide assortment of synthetic moods with a welcome avoidance of reefer-madness space-o-rama. I especially enjoyed the kinetic strutting of \"Ariel Disfigurement,\" the Royal Fireworks celebration in \"Latitude Zero,\" and the out of control jitterbugging of \"You Could Doo That!\" The title cut is a bracing scratch'n'sampled loopfest that is  in no way human, followed by the insistent \"Gods of Titan,\" a bugle call for the War of the Keith Emerson Cones. An intense and satisfying package.\n\n(Dino DiMuro *Option*, July/August 1988)","title":"Human Experiment","year":"1988"},"infinite-room":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Synthesizers (approx. 20 synths including an electric guitar and gizmos) used to create 90 minutes (13 songs) of electronic music. The mood is neon grey rather than either dark or light and moderate (not dominantly fast or slow) in pace. Metal pacing with hovering color-craft leading the way. Flip it over to find conflicting little alien bands heard in a tube that sort of plays with losing some of the beat in reverb. Rare interruptions to the electronics include some discussion of drilling. Some titles: \"Megazoid,\" \"I Remember Earth,\" \"Slow Missiles,\" \"Did the Dig,\" \"Alinoid,\" \"Deadly Men,\" \"Steam,\" \"Stumble Into the Light.\" It's a lot of interesting tones happening at once with an almost concealed rhythm.\n\n(Robin James, *Sound Choice* No. 7, April 1987)\n","title":"Infinite Room","year":"1986"},"into-the-archives":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Into the Archives","year":"1985"},"into-the-vault-of-time":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Into the Vault of Time (1967-1993)","year":"1993"},"isolated-laboratory-pods":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Isolated Laboratory Pods","year":"1988"},"jungle-concrete":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Jungle Concrete","year":"1993"},"machine-dream":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Machine Dream","year":"1983"},"monitoring":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"My only complaint is that the best pieces were just too short. This guy is hot.  Mathes runs the gamut of electronic music from '50s sci-fi to Klaus Schulze, and then into the quirky world of Chris and Cosey. But he is an innovator, molding the essence of these types into a very personal vision. The music is not usually pleasant and cannot be put on and forgotten. It demands attention. On the technical side, the vast array of equipment that he uses and the addition of some interesting found vocals keep things very fresh and interesting. The production is tight, well produced and recorded. And aside from this work, Mathes has a whole catalog of other works to choose from.\n\n[Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Sound Choice* #4, Spring, 1986)\n","title":"Monitoring","year":"1985"},"nyc97":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"NYC97","year":"1997"},"riding-waves-of-disaster":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is a very interesting tape! As I told Arnold, the title piece (side 1, cut 1) describes exactly how I feel when I first wake up in the morning (MORNING??). Side 1 has four pieces all told. Two of them, specifically \"Use & Effects\" and \"Rise and Fall\" are simple and melodic…nice to drive a car too. I liked these pieces best until I got into Side 2 which consists of one long (30:39) piece called \"Audiosect (The Dissection of Sound).\" This piece is many sound collages interspersed with dialogue (some of which is just plain funny, some intensely thought provoking.) The sound sources range from synthesizers, voices, and guitars to water, telephone, records, and metal pipe (!) among others. Lots of fun!\n\n([Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), *SYNE*, Sept 1984)","title":"Riding Waves of Disaster","year":"1984"},"rinzahn":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rinzahn","year":"1988"},"sonic-saucers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sonic Saucers","year":"1989"},"stranger-from-the-depths":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Another menagerie of electronic mayhem from a true genius madman with knobs. Unlike Mathes' previous cassette *Monitoring*, this one has a coherent theme that extends from beginning to the end, and you can even understand these concepts as the music moves on. As it does, we are told the story of a stranger in a strange land (a metaphor, to be sure, perhaps for Arnold himself), and this stranger finding himself in unfavorable conditions, spends the duration of the experience attempting to understand and finally escape them. \n\nMathes' musical style seems here less reminiscent of definable influence and more, his own brand of crazy, yet musically coherent sound vignettes. It is often driving and percussively rhythmic, and his choice of timbre combinations has little in common with the smooth and flowing electronics so prevalent today. In that respect certain connections can be made to people such as Chris and Cosey, or Severed Heads, but their brand of sinister tone is replaced with an eclectic, upbeat mood, as well as the addition of some of the best found vocals around (too much educational TV I would suspect). Overall, another trip to Arnold’s world finds us educated and alone, but happy just the same.\n\n([Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Sound Choice* No. 6, Jan/Feb 1987)","title":"Stranger from the Depths","year":"1985"},"switch":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Switch","year":"1989"},"taboo":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Taboo","year":"1987"},"technical-ancestors":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Well-recorded electronic jams heavy on analog synths and extended improvisation. The first side is more successful, with Mathes using driving synth patterns to underpin his cerebral solo lines. At times, tracks like \"Isolation\" and \"Kollagekaptive\" seem to presage '90s trance music with their high bpm and subtle textural layering.\n\nSide two makes extensive use of tinny Casio beats and spiraling arpeggios over three long tracks that approximate what Klaus Schulze might sound like if played on children's toys. The first track \"Computune\" goes on so long that it nearly transcends its rinky dink aesthetic, only to suddenly end with a giant explosion. \"Terminal Tango\" and the title track are similar efforts, with the former adding found sound elements and the latter incorporating elements of dissonance.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Technical Ancestors","year":"1983"},"the-inductor":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Mathes has always had a kind of lurid fascination with the sounds and textures which usually come to mind with the word \"electronics,\" i.e. the pulsing, buzzing, crashing, bubbling, droning and such that were the hallmarks of 1950-'60s electronics. This timbral preoccupation is coupled with a style that is at once primitive and advanced, presenting a number of pieces which are mostly textural soundscapes with touches of aforementioned \"electronic\" colors. Electric guitar and drum machine provide the occasional rock-styled framework, and the overall mood is understated and sparse. Perhaps yesterday's high-tech is today's nostalgic primitivism?\n\n(Tom Furgas, *Option*, Jan/Feb 1988) ","title":"The Inductor","year":"1987"},"the-obsolete-man":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"Space music that, while hardly minimalistic, is strong enough to remain relatively unadorned, as opposed to succumbing to a mishmash of improvisational meanderings like so many others. Strong synth lines with warm bass grooves and succinct, dynamic percussion tracks are the rule for the more complete pieces that make up the meat of this tape. Mathes also employs other techniques to round out the edges in a thematic fashion, such as found texts and electronically manipulated voice. This adds to the whole and helps make it more of a cohesive piece of work. Highly recommended.\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #7, 1991)","title":"The Obsolete Man","year":"1990"},"the-prime-directive":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Prime Directive","year":"1988"},"the-recreation-of-humanoids":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Recreation of Humanoids","year":"1989"},"thrust":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Thrust","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Arnold Mathes","entry_number":1},"the-order-of-flesh-and-blood":{"albums":{"slightly-mutated":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Slightly Mutated","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"The Order of Flesh and Blood","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":135,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Arnold-Mathes-640.jpg?alt=media&token=cb69cd4f-53c9-4315-adbb-6c9f35d585b1","last_name":"Mathes"},"arthur-durkee":{"artist_name":"Arthur Durkee","body":"Arthur Durkee was a graphic designer and musician based in Ann Arbor, Michigan when he started self-releasing cassettes in the early '80s. His work ran the gamut from rock to experimental synth noise and ambient. After a trip to Indonesia and then a move to Madison, Wisconsin, Durkee put out *The Western Lands* which shows the range of his talents and earned some good reviews at the time, though it's now rare.\n\nBorn in 1959 in Detroit, Durkee's family soon relocated to Southern India where his father worked as a doctor. The family returned to Ann Arbor, Michigan when he was in elementary school and remained there until after college. Durkee came from a musical family: his father was a doctor and opera buff and his mother was a concert pianist and music teacher. In his teens, Durkee discovered John Cage and avant-garde music. The first LP he bought was Wendy Carlos *Switched On Bach*, leading to a lifelong fascination with Moogs.\n\nDurkee's father pushed him to go into the sciences and initially, he studied math, physics, and science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. \"It was killing me not to do music,\" Durkee said. \"So I had to follow my heart on that one. Literally everyone tried to talk me out of it.\" After two years, Durkee transferred to the University of Michigan School of Music where he studied composition and spent plenty of time exploring the electronic music studio.\n\nAs an outlet for his eclectic interests, Durkee started hosting a freeform radio show on WCBN, a local community station. \"We did a lot of crazy stuff, like playing Andy Griffith singing patriotic songs mixed with bombs blowing up,\" he recalled. \"Other times we'd add traffic noise to whatever was playing. But Durkee also developed a taste for the calmer sounds of new age and ambient, inspired by Wendy Carlos' *Sonic Seasonings* and *Callings* by the Paul Winter Group. He also was influenced by his friend [Will Vukin](/will-vukin), a flutist who had a group called Full Circle that played on his radio show a few times. The two of them sometimes jammed together and went to local song circles.\n\nAfter graduating, Durkee began to self-release tapes of his own music starting in 1982. His first album was *A Stone Flute* which was poetry set to electronic music. On his next tape, *Mountains of Light*, Durkee borrowed a friend's Korg synthesizer and improvised a 28-minute piece that he \"manipulated to death\" and originally featured on his radio show.\n\nIn 1985, Durkee got a Fulbright Scholar Grant to study gamelan music in Java, Indonesia. While there, he composed and recorded a gamelan piece called \"NightWaters,\" which included evening insect and frog sounds. That recording is now archived at the American Gamelan Institute and the score was later published in *Blaungan*, the Institute's journal. During this time he also made a field recording of croaking frogs, whose interlocking patterns of sound were said to inspire gamelan music. When he got back to the US, Durkee put it out under the title *Kodok Ngorek*. \n\nAfter that, Durkee relocated to Madison, Wisconsin where he worked as a graphic designer, typographer, and illustrator. He often used his design talents for his own tapes but he also got a lot of work designing albums for other bands too. Durkee continued to work on his own music, as well as playing in bands such as Dangerous Odds and My Dog Ego. He also collaborated with his friend Al Jewer in the improv synth duo Exception Error D1000. That band issued a cassette in 1993 called *Abort, Fail, or Reboot?*. In 1994, Durkee released *Western Lands*, combining ambient and experimental rock in one release.  Like his earlier tapes, it was mostly sold at shows or through word of mouth and is now rare.\n\nIn the ensuing decades, Durkee lived what he calls a \"semi-nomadic\" life, living for a period in Minnesota, New Mexico, and California before returning to Ann Arbor more recently.  He has never stopped playing and recording. Recently he reformed Exception Error D000 and issued two new recordings, which can be heard on his Bandcamp page [here](https://arthurdurkee.bandcamp.com/). He has also archived much of his other work there including *The Western Lands* and his earliest cassettes.","discography":{"arthur-durkee":{"albums":{"a-stone-flute":{"image":"","label":"Black Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"A Stone Flute","year":"1982"},"kodok-ngorek":{"image":"","label":"Black Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"Kodok Ngorek","year":"1986"},"mountains-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Black Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"Mountains of Light","year":"1984"},"the-western-lands":{"image":"","label":"Black Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"The Western Lands","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Arthur Durkee","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":255,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/arthur-durkee-temp.jpeg?alt=media&token=4a47dcb8-a0e4-4967-b81d-253bd248e664","last_name":"Durkee"},"artificial-horizons":{"artist_name":"Artificial Horizons","body":"Artificial Horizons was a one-off electronic release put together by musician and composer Tom Behrens (above left), who was then living in Atlanta, GA. Behrens originally recorded some of the tracks while he was a senior at Ohio State University in the early '70s. After moving to Atlanta and working at a hi-fi store, he assembled the album with old and new tracks in an edition of 1,000 copies. His wife designed the mesmerizing cover, which surely helped it catch the eye of various crate-diggers over the years, including CD-R reissue label Creel Pone who bootlegged it in the mid 2000s. \n\nBorn in 1949, Tom Behrens was a middle child with a younger brother and an older sister. He grew up in Morris Plains, New Jersey, just outside of New York City and remembers his mother playing organ in the house when he was a child. His father was a war hero who worked as a plumber and HVAC technician, as well as a pilot. Behrens loved flying in the plane with his father, and went on to join the civil air patrol when he was older.\n \nIn high school, Behrens loved to surf and one of his favorite bands was naturally the Beach Boys. He also got into folk music, especially Simon and Garfunkel and Leonard Cohen.  He was a part of the school choir, and in his senior year, the choir director offered a music theory course that inspired him to explore music more seriously.\n\nBehrens left New Jersey to attend college at Montreat Anderson, a small school in North Carolina with a two year program at the time. His music tastes expanded to include classical and bluegrass music, and he learned how to play the bass, as well as the dulcimer which he finger-picked in a non-traditional style. After two years there, he transferred to Ohio State on the recommendation of a friend from his days in the civil air patrol. \"At Montreat, there were two choices, voice or piano. I couldn’t play piano so I sang. But when I got to Ohio State, I flunked the juries three times and had to switch to composition.\"\n\nDuring his senior year at Ohio State, Behrens produced some music for his capstone project at the school's electronic music lab that had a Moog and a Scully four track recorder.  He recorded some experiments there, using electronics, dulcimer, harp and flute, and contributed some music as the soundtrack for a grad student's film.  He submitted a piece called \"Scene at 45\" to his adviser, but they asked him to compose something for a large ensemble so he scored his own recital at a Unitarian church nearby.\n\nAfter graduation, Behrens moved down to Atlanta and got a job as a sales rep for the Synthi AKS, a now legendary synthesizer used by Brian Eno and Pink Floyd. Behrens recorded some tracks with the Synthi, and he also built his own phaser. After getting a new job at a hi-fi shop, Behrens decided to release the best of his home recordings on vinyl and pressed 1,000 copies. \"My wife did the album cover,\" Behrens recalled. \"I first met her at Montreat and we got married in 1970. The name Artificial Horizons is actually a piloting term. That is how you keep your wings level. I never sold the release until a few years ago, I just gave them away. It wasn’t a formal release.\"\n\nBehrens never released anything else, though he continued to work on the technical side of the music business for many years. After leaving Atlanta, he spent time in Asheville working for a sound company and then moved on to a series of jobs as a studio engineer and technician in Tennessee. He left the music business in the '90s and worked for a lighting company and then as a software consultant. Behrens currently lives in Florida.","discography":{"artificial-horizons":{"albums":{"artificial-horizons":{"image":"","label":"Horizons Records","review":"In the mid-to-late 70s, there were a surprising number of DIY electronic private LPs that took cues from the experimental vanguard of Stockhausen and early T. Dream. Artificial Horizons slots well into this mini-scene, though compared to other examples like *The Last Question* by [Tim Clark](/tim-clark),  *Journey to the Land of Forgotten Dreams*  by Lorq Damon, or *Intergalactic Fantasy* by[William Hoskins](/william-hoskins), this album is more unfocused and less musical, saved only by occasional flashes of inspiration and an all-time banger of an album cover.","title":"Artificial Horizons","year":"1974"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":186,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/behrens-crop-onleft-640.jpg?alt=media&token=7ee29bc3-0b0d-4720-bb94-1ee4d928d5c4","last_name":"Artificial"},"aziz-paige":{"artist_name":"Aziz Paige","body":"Aziz Paige was a sitar player and songwriter who recorded briefly for Soundings of the Planet during the early years of the label. His now rare cassettes are a mix of meditative sitar instrumentals and more singer/songwriter style fare with new age lyrical concerns.\n\nBorn Robert Paige in 1951, he grew up in Narbeth, Pennsylvania, a small town near Philadelphia with many historic, well-appointed homes. Paige had two brothers growing up and his father was a tenor vocalist who sang at church and in barbershop quartets. His first musical love was Motown, but by the mid-‘60s he started getting more into the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan. Around this time, Paige taught himself to play the bass and joined a garage band called the New Shop Blues Band that played covers of rock and dance hits of the day, including some of his old Motown favorites like Smokey Robinson.\n\nBy the late ‘60s, Paige was a bonified hippie who attended Woodstock and vividly recalls seeing Ravi Shankar’s set amid a backdrop of pouring rain. A few years later he bought his own sitar and started teaching himself to play. He spent the rest of the decade listening mostly to jazz and learning how to record and writing his own material. One of his earliest solo performances was on local radio station WXPN where he did a live interview about the healing power of sound and played his sitar.\n\nIn 1977, Paige got into Sufism, and was given the name Aziz from Inayat Khan during his initiation. A few years later he moved west to Arizona where he attended the spiritually inclined Rainbow Gathering. It was a life changing experience for him, as he met both his soon-to-be wife Kabir, as well as [Dean and Dudley Evenson](https://ultravillage.com/dean-and-dudley-evenson), two entrepreneurs who were starting a record label called Soundings of the Planet. \n\nPaige quickly got to work on his first album *Jewel in the Lotus*, recorded in Evenson's studio in Tucson. The album featured a mix of instrumentals with Paige on sitar, as well as some folk-oriented material with new age lyrical concerns. On the cover he billed the project as Aziz and the Shanti Band to acknowledge the contributions from the extended Soundings family on the tape such as Dean and Dudley Evenson and keyboardist Cyrille Verdeaux. The tape was not a big seller, and is now seldom seen.\n\nIn 1981, Paige relocated to Santa Cruz, California for a few years. There he recorded his second album at a local studio, yielding a higher fidelity sound than his debut. Again the album featured many guests, though this time was credited to Aziz and Friends. Paige initially pressed tape copies himself with a black and white cover but the Evensons re-released it with a full color cover. Paige recorded two more albums intended for release on Soundings of the Planet, but neither saw the light of day. \n\nDuring his time in Santa Cruz, Paige formed a trio with Taressa Angelsong (who'd previously helmed the Angelsong band along with Ramana Das) and Golden Eagle (Larry Mitchell). They released one tape in 1983 called *To the Sky*. The next year, Paige moved again, this time to Hawaii. \"Back when I lived in Philadelphia I got into my head I wanted to move to Hawaii,” Paige said. “It was a personal dream to go there and check it out. I loved Hawaii but I didn’t have access to a studio there and I was interested in upping my music career more. So I moved to LA.\"\n\nOnce in LA, Paige formed a more commercially oriented rock band playing original songs in the vein of Fleetwood Mac or Crosby, Stills and Nash. He initially gigged under his own name and put out a cassette called *Dr. Rock* around 1987. A few years later he solidified a new lineup with two other songwriters and called the band Last Resort. This was during the ultra-competitive \"pay to play era\" on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. With so many bands looking to break out through the club scene, venue owners took advantage of the lopsided supply and demand and made bands pay for the venue and then sell their own tickets. \"We did a showcase for William Morris but they didn't decide to make us the next big thing,\" Paige laughed.\n\nBy the end of the '80s Paige and his partner Mike Dwyer began putting on their own mini-festival called EarthBeat and the Topanga Peace Festival. \"It was a typical So-Cal thing with three to six bands at a beautiful outdoor venue,\" Paige said. \"It ran from 1989 to 1994. We played some of our music, some reggae stuff with sitar, and our most popular song of that period was a cover of 'Tomorrow Never Knows' with sitar.\"\n\nLast Resort eventually called it quits in the mid ‘90s and Paige formed a new project called Shapeshifters with Alain Eskinaski. That group put out three albums, with their second appearing on the Soundings label.\n\n\"I’ve recorded over 95 albums since 1980,\" Paige said. \"I was so busy playing and recording I didn't worry about marketing. But I never stopped recording. My whole thrust was to get the ideas down.\"","discography":{"aziz":{"albums":{"love-will-heal-the-world":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Love Will Heal the World","year":"1992"},"lovesong":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lovesong","year":"1981"},"songwriter":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Songwriter","year":"1993"},"world-citizen":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"World Citizen","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Aziz","entry_number":4},"aziz-and-friends":{"albums":{"doctor-rock":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Doctor Rock","year":"1989"},"new-heaven-new-earth":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A soothing recording, with one piece flowing into the next. Each slowly and deliberately beckons, whether with a mournful cry of a conch or violin or the entrancing notes of a flute. All dramatically build, meandering through inner space, peaking with a cacophony of mind-blinding chaos or a return to nature sounds. The experience is like a soundtrack from a scene that evokes love, compassion, and sorrow. \"Isle of Paradis\"e fills the air with harp strummings and softly wandering piano. \"Rhythm of Life,\" after a bit of contemplation, moves into sitar and drum riffs, very sedate. \"Sun Rise\" is full of fast moving tabla and sitar. \"New Creation\" adds a bit of Native American style chanting, slow and quiet, backed by deep organ tones: \"Where we are is holy / Sacred is the ground / Earth, moon, forest river / Listen to the sound...\"\n\nThis is a multifaceted collection which reflects the influence of many cultures. It is well blended and incorporates sitar, keyboards, flute, Tibetan bells, harp, violin, bamboo flute, tamboura and conch. The music transports and transforms, and can best be used meditatively or as background.\n\n(Kitty Leonard, *Heartsong Review* No. 12, 1992)","title":"New Heaven, New Earth","year":"1991"},"waves-of-peace":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A harmonious blend of East and West is achieved in *Waves of Peace*, a new composition by a group of friends led by world traveler Aziz. The group smoothly mixes a wide variety of acoustic instruments into an exotic musical journey, full of peaceful yet engaging imagery. The recording is a successful example of putting a group of sensitive musicians into a studio together, turning on the recording machine and letting it run. Then, over a few sessions after the appropriate editing, a musical channeling of their collective consciousness has emerged. In this subtle music, one hears zithers, gongs, tambouras, sitars, harp, flute, clarinet, sarangi, hammer dulcimer and dronal sounds. Voices float in and ocean waves break in the distance. \n\n([Ramana Das](/ramana-das), *Yoga Journal*, Sept. 1983)","title":"Waves of Peace","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Aziz and Friends","entry_number":3},"aziz-and-khabira":{"albums":{"becoming-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Heaven and Earth","year":"1981"},"healing-vibration":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Healing Vibration","year":"1993"},"rebirth-in-spirit":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rebirth in Spirit","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Aziz & Khabira","entry_number":6},"aziz-and-shamballa":{"albums":{"music-for-cosmic-lovers":{"image":"","label":"Dawnstar Productions","review":"","title":"Music for Cosmic Lovers","year":"1994"},"opening-to-love":{"image":"","label":"Dawnstar Productions","review":"","title":"Opening to Love","year":"1993"},"space-hymn":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Space Hymn","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Aziz & Shamballa","entry_number":5},"aziz-and-the-shanti-band":{"albums":{"jewel-in-the-lotus":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"Strong whiffs of incense and marijuana emanate from Aziz's debut, a somewhat lo-fi and oddly sequenced cassette that nonetheless creates a vivid portrait of late '70s new age spirituality.  The material is evenly divided between blissed out raga jams (sitar, flute, tabla) and more song-oriented material with strummed acoustic guitar and peace-loving lyrical concerns.  The styles work well enough on their own, but splitting the two into different sides of the tape would have been a big help.\n\nAziz wisely taps into the larger Soundings family to add depth and color to the tracks. Included on the tape are both [Dean and Dudley Evenson](/dean-and-dudley-evenson), Paige's wife Kabir, Larry Mitchell (AKA Golden Eagle) and his then girlfriend Phyllis, plus synth wizard Cyrille Verdeaux. For songwriter pieces such as \"Like the Sun,\" Verdeaux elevates the catchy tune with a tinkling electric piano melody, and the full group chant \"Om\" is both nostalgic and deep, a relic from the past that still resonates all these years later.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Jewel in the Lotus","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Aziz and the Shanti Band","entry_number":1},"aziz-paige-taressa-angelsong-golden-eagle":{"albums":{"to-the-sky":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"To the Sky","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Aziz Paige, Taressa Angelsong, Golden Eagle","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":130,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Aziz-Paige-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=eec364d7-d5af-440e-be13-cdeb7c576088","last_name":"Paige"},"bamboo-cathedral":{"artist_name":"Bamboo Cathedral","body":"Bamboo Cathedral was the work of Michael Engebretson, a quality assurance manager who loved electronic music, sci-fi and soundtracks. This was his only cassette release, and it was recorded in an ultra-primitive style using only a Casio SK-5 sampling keyboard and two cassette decks. The tape was reviewed at the time in outlets like *Godsend* and *ND*, and Engebretson recalls trading copies with other musicians. Two decades passed before he resurfaced again this time using the name Chronovalve for a pair of CDs produced in a more floating/ambient style.\n\nBorn in 1961, Engebretson started on the guitar in junior high and also had a passion for electronics. He studied electrical engineering in college and got a job after college repairing arcade games in the heyday of Pac Man and arcades. Eventually, he took on a job as a quality assurance manager in the late-'80s.\n\nEngebretson played in some new wave bands in the early '80s, and one day at practice one of the band members brought over a Casio keyboard. Engebretson was fascinated with the instrument and picked up a Casio SK-5, an early consumer-market sampling keyboard. He sampled sounds from vinyl and other sources, combining that with electronic soundscapes for his sole release *The Wonder Of It All* in 1991.\n\nThe album earned good reviews in underground magazines and Engebretson sold copies on consignment throughout the Beloit and Rockford, Illinois area. Looking back on the album, he says: \"I’ve always been inspired by the wonder of space, nature, life and the feeling that there is something more behind the world and in everything we experience. I saw electronic music as a great way to express this through the myriad sounds and textures available. I enjoy creating an atmosphere.\"\n\nAfter a long hiatus, Engebretson returned to recording, this time using digital technology and adopting the moniker Chronovalve. He has since released two CDs on UK label Home Normal, [Trace of Light]( https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/album/trace-of-light) (2013) and [Light](https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/album/light) (2020).\n","discography":{"bamboo-cathedral":{"albums":{"the-wonder":{"image":"","label":"Globe Music","review":"","title":"The Wonder Of It All","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":391,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bamboo-cathedral.jpeg?alt=media&token=626cdd0b-73b3-41af-bf22-20217e738697","last_name":"Bamboo"},"barry-cleveland":{"artist_name":"Barry Cleveland","body":"Barry Cleveland is a Bay Area musician who came to prominence in the '80s with *Mythos*, an ambient album featuring contributions from [Emerald Web](/emerald-web) and cymbalom player [Michael Masley](/michael-masley). He and Masley also performed as a duo called Thin Ice that released two cassettes. Although his earliest work primarily featured ambient guitar soundscapes with tape-loops and other effects, he began to incorporate synthesizers and world music elements starting with *Voluntary Dreaming* and later albums outside the scope of this guide. His work is starting to become collectible. In 2020, Canadian label [Morning Trip](https://morningtriprecords.bandcamp.com/). reissued *Stones of Precious Water* an album of early four-track recordings.\n\nBarry Cleveland was born in 1956 in Virginia. The family relocated to Atlanta when he was six and then moved to an island near St. Petersburg, Florida called Tierra Verde when he was 12. Soon after, Cleveland started playing guitar. \"I originally wanted to be an astronomer,\" he said. \"I had a big telescope and was really dedicated to it. But then it dawned on me when I hit puberty that I'd be more popular as a rock guitarist rather than an astronomer [laughs].\"\n\nCleveland practiced his guitar constantly and realized he had a knack for it. His first performance was at a psychedelic happening when he was 12 and he then went on to join a heavy rock band. By high school, he was playing at clubs with much older musicians while getting into progressive rock sounds like Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis. And then in college, he explored ECM jazz guitarists such as Terje Rypdal and John Abercrombie.\n\nAfter attending college at the University of South Florida, Cleveland joined an eight-piece mixed-race funk band called Devastation and toured with them through the South. Cleveland stayed with Devastation for about a year and then went on a long road trip with his girlfriend at the time and decided to live in San Francisco, California. \n\nOnce in California, Cleveland saw a flier for an Emerald Web concert at a new age performance space called Shared Visions.  Emerald Web was a duo made up of married couple Bob Stohl and Kat Epple, and Cleveland had jammed and recorded with them back in Florida. He checked out the show, and once they all reunited, Stohl explained they'd originally wanted Cleveland to contribute to their debut album in 1979, but they couldn't track him down. Stohl and Epple invited Cleveland to join them for their third album, *Aqua Regia* in 1982, and they in turn contributed to his 1983 cassette *Stones of Precious Water*. (The original cassette featured a drawing on the cover and was pressed in tiny edition, but the tape was reissued in 1986 on Chacra Alternative with a different cover. )\n\nIn late 1983, Barry Cleveland met Michael Masley, a street busker who played the cymbalom, a stringed instrument similar to a hammered dulcimer. However, Masley played it with his own homemade \"bowhammers\" which could strike or bow the strings like a violin. \"One night I was walking home at midnight and heard this crazy sound,\" Cleveland recalled. \"I followed the sound of the music and discovered him playing there. I was totally knocked out.” \n\nCleveland and Masley soon became musical collaborators, first working on Cleveland's tracks for *Mythos*. After that, they formed a duo called Thin Ice that played at festivals and art fairs around the Bay Area. They recorded their first album at Spark Studios in Oakland, and then later did a live album. According to Cleveland, the tapes sold pretty well. \"At those festivals, we would sell thousands of dollars of stuff. It almost didn't matter what you had. Mike referred to it as 'a salmon run' on the river. You put out your hand and there's a fish.\"\n\nIn 1985, Cleveland put out the first self-released version of *Mythos*, which included contributions from Masley and Emerald Web. A year later, it came out in a new edition on Audion. In an [interview]( https://www.innerviews.org/inner/cleveland.html) with Anil Prasad, Cleveland recalls his signing to the label: \"I performed at a benefit for WFMU in New Jersey back in 1984, where I met Richard Ginsburg, a DJ with a program called Synthetic Pleasure. I gave Ritchie a tape of *Mythos*, and he not only played it on his program, he offered to send copies to artists such as Brian Eno, Klaus Schultz and Larry Fast on my behalf. I received a very nice letter from Fast saying that Mythos was one of the most interesting-sounding projects he had heard in a long time, and that he enjoyed the music, but that he was only an artist and couldn't really get me a deal.\"\n\nCleveland continues: \"About a year later, Fast was asked to become head of A&R for a new label being started by JEM/Passport Records, which had released all of his Synergy albums. The president, Marty Scott, wanted to create what he referred to as an 'electronic Windham Hill,' in order to capitalize on the burgeoning new age genre. Fast contacted me and said that he'd like to release *Mythos* on the new label. *Mythos* was one of the first three records released on Audion. JEM took out full-page color ads in Billboard, Musician and other mainstream magazines in order to establish the label, so I benefited from the heavy exposure.\"\n\n*Mythos* went on to earn favorable reviews in *Option*, *Jazziz* and other magazines, and was chosen as one of the \"25 Best New Age CDs\" by *CD Review*, which helped to generate new interest in Cleveland's work. As a result,  the Canadian label Chacra Alternative Music contacted Cleveland and put out *Stones of Precious Water* which featured highlights of his earlier home recordings. \n\nAs Cleveland was prepping his next album, *Voluntary Dreaming* he went for a more electronic/world-fusion sound that incorporated synthesizers and MIDI. He was planning to release it with Audion, but the label went under before the release. Audion’s distributor JEM was in talks to merge with Enigma, but when the deal broke down, so did Audion and JEM. Thankfully for Cleveland, he had negotiated a release clause in his contract with Audion, so the rights to his second album reverted to him, and he was able to put it out with Scarlet Records instead. \n\nStarting in 1991, Cleveland began hosting improvisational gatherings at his home in the Oakland hills, which became known as The Lodge (also the name of Cleveland's current [blog](https://www.barrycleveland.com/)). One of the regulars was Michael Manring, the Windham Hill \"house bassist\" known for his solo recordings and work with Michael Hedges and Will Ackerman. Other regulars included Masley, cellist Dan Reiter and percussionist Joe Venegoni. The five musicians liked playing together and formed a quintet called Cloud Chamber in 1995, releasing a CD in 1998 called *Dark Matter.* The band’s music was all improvised, with elements of jazz, ambient, progressive rock, and classical, akin to ECM style jazz or King Crimson's looser moments.\n\nCleveland would also work with Masley and Manring on his next album *Volcano*. According to [Cleveland](https://www.innerviews.org/inner/cleveland.html), that album \"came about when percussionist Michael Pluznick [who previously played on *Voluntary Dreaming*] recorded some African and Afro-Haitian rhythm tracks and asked me to compose music based on them. I brought in Michael Manring and sax, flute, and clarinet virtuoso Norbert Stachel, who injected the jazzier elements into the music.\" Two more albums followed, *Hologramatron* in 2010 and a collaboration with composter Richard Pinhas (Heldon) in 2016 called *Mu.* \n\nIn addition to his music, Cleveland is also a writer and editor, getting his start working as an editor at *Mix* and *Electronic Musician* in the late ‘90s. In 2001, he wrote  *Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques* , an in-depth look at the recording iconoclast's studio techniques and professional life. A year later, Cleveland joined the magazine *Guitar Player* as an editor and worked there until 2014.  Cleveland currently resides on Malibou Lake in southern California.","discography":{"barry-celeveland":{"albums":{"mythos":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mythos","year":"1985"},"solo-electric-guitar":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Solo Electric Guitar","year":"1985"},"stones-of-previous-water":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Stones of Precious Water","year":"1983"},"voluntary-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"Scarlet","review":"Cleveland’s first album Mythos is a gem of ambient music, its improvised electric/acoustic blend avoiding cliches throughout. Cleveland (guitars, synths) and his colleagues Michael Easley (cymbalom, a hammer dulcimer relative), Robert Powell (pedal steel guitar), and Michael Pluznick (percussion) began this album by improvising, also. But then they overdubbed numerous additional parts, giving much of the album a pre-programmed feel; this is all the more the case when Cleveland uses conventional, rock-based bass and drum lines. The result sounds pretty cut and dried, and what with the simple melodic riffs, leans uncomfortably toward TV background music - until I listened through headphones. Then the baroque density of the overlaid sounds became more apparent, and the music more interesting. I think having the players improvise real *solos* would have added interest, as it did on Robert Musso's *Absolute Music*, which is similar to this in spirit. Like Musso, Cleveland gets a lot of his unusual sounds from guitars, not synths. As it is, it will appeal to ambient fans who want to hear something concise and a bit different. \n\n(Bart Grooms, *Option* March/April 1991)","title":"Voluntary Dreaming","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"thin-ice":{"albums":{"first-frost":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"First Frost","year":"1984"},"thin-ice-live":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Thin Ice Live","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Thin Ice","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":183,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/barry-cleveland-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8c86d658-b624-4b98-be31-1e49365a24d1","last_name":"Cleveland"},"bearns-dexter":{"artist_name":"Robert Bearns and Ron Dexter","body":"Based in Los Angeles, Robert Bearns and Ron Dexter were a couple who self-released a series of new age albums with visionary, geometric cover art. Bearns (born 1928) was originally from Los Angeles and attended the Chiounard Art Institute. A self-described \"flower child,\" he moved to San Francisco in the late '60s where he met Ron Dexter (born 1932), a former Broadway dancer with a knack for musical arrangement. Bearns self-published a book of metaphysical poetry called *The Awakening Electromagnetic Spectrum* in 1974 which featured the distinctive drawing style he would later use for all their albums. The duo returned to Los Angeles in 1975 and began playing music inspired by Bearns' verse,  combining the lush sound of exotica with the more introspective moods of new age. They called it \"a galactic exploration through celestial harmonies.\" (Most of their work was instrumental, with the exception of Vol. 5 which featured Bearns on vocals). Dexter and Bearns passed away in 1986 and 1987 respectively, with Bearns' mother Susan stepping in to help release their final installment in the *Golden Voyage* series in 1987. The duo's albums were long a staple of the dollar bin in the '90s before being rehabilitated in the new age revival of the 2000s. In 2014, Real Gone Records issued a retrospective *The Best of the Golden Voyage*.","discography":{"bearns-dexter":{"albums":{"golden-voyage-1":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 1","year":"1977"},"golden-voyage-2":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 2","year":"1978"},"golden-voyage-3":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 3","year":"1979"},"golden-voyage-4":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 4","year":"1982"},"golden-voyage-5":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 5","year":"1984"},"golden-voyage-6":{"image":"","label":"Awakening Productions","review":"","title":"The Golden Voyage Vol. 6","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":364,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bearns-dexter-640.jpg?alt=media&token=171f4e7a-d762-4b86-8440-93505a2226d5","last_name":"Bearns"},"becket-senchur":{"artist_name":"Becket Senchur","body":"Becket Senchur was certainly unique - a Catholic priest and monk who loved synthesizers and played yearly concerts at his church, St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, PA. Most of his music leans heavily on baroque traditions and falls outside of this guide, though he occasionally dabbled in epic, moodier soundscapes that warrant a mention here. In 1991, after completing his *Selected Works Volume II*, Senchur left his monastery and moved to Cape Cod.\n\nSenchur was born in 1946 and grew up near Pittsburgh, PA. He started piano lessons at ten and then took up the organ a few years later. By the time he graduated high school, he already knew he wanted to be a priest, so he attended nearby St. Vincent College.  Senchur went on to get a graduate degree in composition and organ, focused primarily on writing hymns and religious music. \n\nBy the late ‘60s, Senchur started taking organ lessons at Duquense College and his teacher there would make a huge impact. \"Jean Raevens was the one that got me interested in electronic music,\" Senchur recalled. \"He also taught me the art of improvisation. He was convinced that if Bach was alive then he would have used a Moog.\"\n\nAt St. Vincent, Senchur became an ordained priest and gave mass weekly. He also performed faculty recitals at the monastery where he improvised on his Moog and array of other synths. The crowds got larger each year as curious churchgoers came to see the rhapsodic music Senchur was composing on his futuristic gear. Eventually, Senchur released a cassette of his music called *Becket Senchur in Concert* in 1986 and sold them at the college bookstore. \"They sold like hotcakes,\" Senchur said.\n\nIn 1991, Senchur, who eventually came out as gay, decided to leave his monastery and move to Cape Cod to practice his Catholic religion in a more open-minded setting. \"Religious communities are quite homophobic and I wasn't even sure who I was until I was around 40,\" Senchur said. \"Then it started dawning on me. That was the main reason I left, though I wasn't disgruntled. My world became too small artistically. So I came out to my mother and dad and nieces and nephews. Now I live in Cape Cod with no paranoia. The LGBTQ  community here is huge.\"\n\nAfter arriving in Cape Cod, Senchur became the organist and music director at a church there. He remained there until his recent retirement. He now works as a piano teacher.","discography":{"becket-senchur":{"albums":{"becket-senchur-in-concert":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Becket Senchur in Concert","year":"1986"},"music-for-electronic-synthesizers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Electronic Synthesizers","year":"1987"},"selected-works-volume-i":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Selected Works, Volume I","year":"1988"},"selected-works-volume-ii":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Selected Works, Volume II","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":119,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Becket-Senchur-640-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=d19d786b-bdca-48ba-9083-bb142e2f6de2","last_name":"Senchur"},"ben-kettlewell":{"artist_name":"Ben Kettlewell","body":"During the '80s and early '90s, Ben Kettlewell was seemingly everywhere in the electronic underground – writing for magazines like *SYNE* and *Electronic Musician*, releasing over 20 cassettes, and producing a long running e-music show *Imaginary Voyage* on WOMR in Provincetown, Massachusetts from 1982 to 1991. Through his many contacts at the time, Kettlewell put together a series of interviews with luminaries like Robert Moog, Klaus Schulze and Suzanne Ciani, first for a special two-part radio show and later in his 2002 book *Electronic Music Pioneers*. Since 2002, Kettlewell has lived in Australia with his wife.\n\nBorn in 1948, Kettlewell grew up with his grandparents on their farm in Eastern North Carolina. His family lineage has both European and Native American roots, a result of early Scottish ancestors intermarrying with Cherokee people of the area. As a child, Kettlewell and his grandfather went to the Quaker church every Sunday and it was there he first started playing piano.  \n\nWhen he was 12, Kettlewell moved to Baltimore to live with his father and stepmother. There he began teaching himself to play guitar by learning folk tunes of the day by Pete Seeger and others. After high school he attended some classes at the Maryland Institute, though not officially. While there, he began playing in coffeehouses and clubs around the Baltimore and D.C. area. Kettlewell eventually scored some gigs with professional artists such as Tim Hardin and the Holy Modal Rounders in the late '60s, and then joined a series of blues, funk and jazz groups during the '70s.\n\nLife as a musician didn't always provide enough money to live on, and Kettlewell started doing leather crafts in 1971. By this time, Kettlewell was living in Provincetown, a coastal town on the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He'd originally moved there in the late '60s with some friends he met at Maryland Institute and would remain there for decades. With a large bohemian population, the area was perfect for artisanal craft making, and Kettlewell provided custom sandals, belts, handbags, and clothing to various shops around town. Eventually, he was able to open his own business, Sunburst Leather in 1979 in partnership with Michael Levine. \n\nWith his leather business thriving, Kettlewell purchased his first synth in 1976. In an interview with [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley) (under the pen name J. Engstrom) in *AfterTouch*, he recalled the pivotal moment. \"I went to see Jeff Beck when he was doing the ‘Wired’ tour with Jan Hammer and Jerry Goodman. Jan did an hour and twenty minute solo set before the band started. He covered all the songs from two of his early solo LPs, *The First Seven Days* and 'Oh Yeah?.' It was phenomenal! I was extremely inspired. So as soon as I could afford it, I went out and got my first synth - a 'guitar synth' made by Korg.\" Kettlewell began playing guitar synth in some of his bands at the time, though he didn’t get his first proper synthesizer, a Korg Poly 61, until years later.\n\nIn March of 1982, Kettlewell launched an electronic music radio show called *Imaginary Voyage* on WOMR in Provincetown. The show was immediately popular, with many locals hearing bands like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze for the first time. Kettlewell was starting to compose music of his own too, and he occasionally slipped that in too. Having the show helped him network with other musicians who regularly submitted tapes for airplay. He was also making key contacts through the IEMA (International Electronic Musicians Association), an organization for electronic music fans run by James Finch. And slightly later he made more contacts through Richard Ginsberg's Synthetic Pleasure magazine. \n\nKettlewell had been composing on synthesizers and computers for only about a year when he got his first commission to compose for theater, writing a score for *The Importance of Being Earnest* in 1983. He followed this up the next year with scores for *The Mirror Darkens* and *Shadow Box* – all composed for The Provincetown Theater Company. \"I've always loved live theater and scoring a play gives me a great deal of satisfaction,\" Kettlewell told *AfterTouch*. \"Out of all the arts, it’s the most magical because it incorporates every aspect of literature, visual, aural and performing art.\"\n\nIn addition to his scores, Kettlewell also began releasing his music on cassette to the general public, putting out *Orange* in 1985, in an edition of 100 copies. This was his first non-theatrical release of compositions on synths. He distributed the album through radio promotions and the IEMA through his own cassette label, Tarheel Productions.\n\nBy this time, Kettlewell's radio show was one of the most popular on the station. At the station's urging, he put together a small festival of electronic music in 1985 and then two years later got a grant from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities to produce a radio series on the evolution of electronic music. The two one-hour shows aired in 1987 locally and then later on thirty-three NPR affiliates across the country. Kettlewell continued to write music reviews during this time. Though *SYNE* ceased publication in 1986, Kettlewell continued to write for others such as WOMR's monthly magazine, *Airwaves*, *Dreams Word*, *Heartsong Review* and *i/e*.\n\nKettlewell's first widely distributed tape was *Kanji* in 1988. He initially self-released it on Tarheel, though it was soon picked up by UK label Electronical Dreams where it was distributed worldwide. By the close of the decade, his scores were getting more recognition too. In 1991, he won the Academy of Community Theater Excellence Award for his score to the play *Phantasmagoria*  by Michael Prevulsky. Also in 1991, he co-wrote the soundtrack for director Jonathan Morrill - the cult movie *Johnny in Monsterland* and its sequel in 1992. \n\nAfter releasing one more recording with Electronical Dreams in 1992, Kettlewell returned to self-releasing his music with *Notebook* and then *Spheres*.  By this time, Kettlewell had sold his leather business to his partner and opened a new American Crafts gallery \"Elements\" in 1990 in partnership with his wife. The shop was again a big success, but after seven years the couple divorced and Kettlewell gave her the business and moved away after nearly 30 years in Provincetown.\n\nKettlewell continued to write, launching a music website [Alternate Music Press] (http://www.alternatemusicpress.com) in 1997, and remarried to Celtic music artist Mairéid Sullivan. In 2002, Pro Music Press published an extended and updated version of his 1987 radio documentary, *Electronic Music Pioneers*, distributed by Hal Leonard. He and Mairéid currently live in Melbourne, Australia.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\nSources:\n* *AfterTouch* Volume 7&8, 1993\n* \"Ben Kettlewell: Electrified by Electronic Music,\" *The Register* May 22, 1986\n* \"An Electronic Benefit for WOMR\" by Leah Rush. *The Cape Codder* March 1, 1988\n* Author Interviews with Ben Kettlewell\n* Lyrebird Media – [Ben Kettlewell biography](https://lyrebirdmedia.com/bio.pdf)","discography":{"ben-kettlewell":{"albums":{"1-elements":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"Split into two long tracks, \"Glass & Steel #1\" is 30 minutes of ambient wash mixed with rhythm loops hinting at the tribal at times; the shorter \"The Bronze Chorus\" is harsher sounding, reminding me of the Frippertronics tape delay loops that overlap and grow into something completely different. The overall sound of *Elements* is industrial wasteland and may well require several hearings by the listener to get the full flavour of the piece, but it is well worth it in the end. An admirable album of non-conventional sounds well worth acquiring.\n\n(*KLEM*, Spring 1991)\n","title":"Elements","year":"1991"},"2-journey":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Journey","year":"1991"},"3-provincetown-portraits-ost":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Provincetown Portraits Original Soundtrack","year":"1991"},"Deathtrap":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Deathtrap","year":"1985"},"agnes-of-god":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Agnes of God","year":"1985"},"fantasies-of-flight":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Fantasies of Flight","year":"1988"},"in-concert-feb-87":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"In Concert, Feb '87","year":"1987"},"in-the-land-beyond-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"In the Land Beyond Dreams","year":"1986"},"johnny-in-monsterland-ost":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Johnny in Monsterland Original Soundtrack","year":"1992"},"kanji":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Kanji","year":"1988"},"live-with-lauri-paisley-and-david-prescott":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Live with Lauri Paisley and David Prescott","year":"1988"},"new-faces":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"New Faces","year":"1985"},"notebook":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Notebook","year":"1993"},"offering":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Offering","year":"1986"},"orange":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Orange","year":"1985"},"orbital-harmonies":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Orbital Harmonies","year":"1985"},"phantasmagoria":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Phantasmagoria","year":"1990"},"rites-of-passage":{"image":"","label":"Electronical Dreams","review":"","title":"Rites of Passage","year":"1992"},"rubicon-ost":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rubicon Original Soundtrack","year":"1996"},"seascape":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Seascape","year":"1989"},"shadowbox":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Shadowbox","year":"1984"},"spheres":{"image":"","label":"Tarheel Productions","review":"","title":"Spheres","year":"1993"},"the-importance-of-being-earnest":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"The Importance of Being Earnest","year":"1983"},"the-mirror-darkens":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Mirror Darkens","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":133,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ben-Kettlewell-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=114bfdf3-d9bf-4709-ad78-6e6352ca468c","last_name":"Kettlewell"},"benjamin-bernstein":{"artist_name":"Benjamin Bernstein","body":"Based in Norman, Oklahoma, Benjamin Bernstein was a guitar teacher and massage therapist who often meditated and played music at the Lotus Center in Oklahoma City. There, he met [Steve McLinn](https://ultravillage.com/ojas), an electronic musician who had already released many tapes of his own music. Inspired by McLinn, as well as [Iasos](/iasos) and others, Bernstein spent ten years working on an album of his own new age music that was picked up by national distributors and sold a few thousand copies on CD and cassette. However, it would prove to be his only release in this style as his second album showed him returning to his rock and pop roots.\n\nBorn in 1960, Benjamin Bernstein was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma where his father ran a hi-fi store. He started on piano before switching to classical and folk guitar lessons as a teen. Eventually, he started absorbing the more complex sounds of progressive rock. \n\nWhen he was 17, Bernstein had an out-of-body experience while listening to the Genesis song \"Supper Ready,\" sending his life on a new course. \"I was agnostic until then,\" Bernstein recalled. \"That rocked my paradigm. I could find no empirical way to explain how I was lying in bed and my astral body was slipping out. I wasn't on drugs or anything. I found a meditation school called Lotus Center and stayed there off and on for 20 years.\"\n\nBernstein attended college at the University of Oklahoma where he got a degree in Liberal Arts while also taking classes in music theory and composition. After graduation, he worked as a massage therapist and guitar teacher, while occasionally performing at the Lotus Center. One of his friends there was Steve McLinn, a fellow musician who had already released meditative cassettes of electronic music and Bernstein wanted to try his hand at it too.\n\n\"I got a synthesizer in1984 and started writing new age music,\" Bernstein recalled. \"It ended up taking 10 years to create because I was such a perfectionist. The first thing I wrote was 'Hovering Crystals.' I wanted the album to be deeply meditative all the way through, but keep the left brain interested too.\"  Some of Bernstein's favorites at the time were Iasos, Constance Demby, Ray Lynch, and Paul Horn.\n\nBernstein finally finished his debut album *The Beauty Within* in 1994 and put it out himself on cassette. The album sold well enough that he made a CD version too, and in all, he thinks he sold about 2,000 copies. However, this would be Bernstein's only album issued in the style. \n\nIn 2001, Bernstein got tired of being a fish out of water in Oklahoma and relocated to Asheville. \"I was a mystical new age guy. There wasn't much of that in Oklahoma,\" he said. More recently, Bernstein released an album of pop and rock songs under the name Benjammin. Both of his albums can be streamed on Spotify or found elsewhere on the internet.\n","discography":{"benjamin-bernstein":{"albums":{"the-beauty-within":{"image":"","label":"Inner Flow Music","review":"*The Beauty from Within* is good new age 2.0 with digital synths, but a bit uneven, perhaps an inevitability when an album gestates for ten years. The main split is between the more meditative, cosmic mood of highlights such as “Sound Beyond Sound” and “Hovering Crystals,\" and the more grandiose, cinematic pieces. While the title track does the latter style well with key modulations and a memorable melody, others such as \"The Vastness of Your Love\" and \"Radiant Heart\" are more cloying and come off like a discount David Arkenstone or Suzanne Ciani.","title":"The Beauty Within","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":246,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Benjamin-Bernstein-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3816afa9-4fc9-4a2b-a6fb-004e74bd6720","last_name":"Bernstein"},"bernard-xolotl":{"artist_name":"Bernard Xolotl","body":"Bernard Xolotl was an early practitioner of cosmic electronic music in California along with musicians like [Iasos](/iasos) and [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) in the late 70s and early '80s. However, he struggled to achieve their same level of popularity, perhaps due to the often brooding, dark quality of his music.  Uncompromising and strong-willed, Xolotl found himself at odds with a music industry that remained as predatory as ever, even if it happened to be peddling utopian visions at the time.  After a productive period in the early '80s, Xolotl retreated into his studio for nearly a decade, honing his craft away from the spotlight.\n\nBorn Bernard Jacquet, Xolotl left his home of France at the age of 17, living a nomadic life for many years before settling down in California in 1974.  There, he attended the City College of San Francisco studying electronic music with Terry Riley and others, contributing the song \"Uranus\" to a school comp called *Planets* that is now very rare and hard to find.\n\nXolotl's career aspirations at the time were more focused on his artwork, and by February 1978 he had put together his first solo show called Cosmic Art at the Astro-labe gallery in San Francisco.  Peter Georgi of Unity Records came to the show and soon discovered Xolotl's music. Georgi released Xolotl's first album on cassette *Music by Xolotl* that same year and packaged it without art (some other early Unity releases like Jordan De La Sierra's *Gymnosphere* also lacked cover art initially on cassette.\n\nXolotl entered a productive period in the early 80s, collaborating with a diverse set of musicians on two albums for his own label Syntasy and three for Ethan Edgecomb's Fortuna label.   After 1982's *Last Wave* though, Xolotl practically vanished from the scene, spending much of time in his studio in Marin County. He occasionally did some audio engineering work for friends, but for the remainder of the decade he lived a hermetic life. In 1988 he started circulating demos of a new album called *Mexechos* which finally got an official release in 1991 on Erdenklang.","discography":{"bernard-xolotl":{"albums":{"journey-to-an-oracle":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"*Journey to an Oracle* is essentially an archival release that features some of Xolotl's earliest synth and guitar explorations from around the time of  his debut on Unity . The five long tracks were recorded at home on a 4 track and foreshadow much of his later work, and the DIY feel actually adds a layer of intimacy that complements his cerebral style well.\n\nSome tracks like \"Cometary Wailing\" vibrate in blissful, floating spaces while others like \"Morning Glory\" showcase the tense, brooding sound he became known for later. The title track is probably the choice cut here, sounding almost like the Cure at first with its synth drone and  spaghetti western guitar solos drenched in echo.  But as the song develops over nineteen minutes, it hypnotizes the listener with circular riffs that spiral into the unknown like an epic Kosmiche jam.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Journey to an Oracle","year":"1981"},"last-wave":{"image":"","label":"Syntasy","review":"A brooding energy permeates Xolotl’s final '80s release *The Last Wave*.  John Carpenter scores, Goblin, and T. Dream comparisons could be made, but Xolotl’s focus and intensity set him apart from other clones. Where other space musicians use synths to impart a sense of the great cosmic expanse, Xolotl seems more interested in existential loneliness, almost like a musical Silver Surfer.\n\nThe first side of the tape features the titular \"Last Wave\" suite in three parts, with a central undulating sequencer line that ratchets the tension to a breaking point before yielding some quieter moments with dreamlike guitar solos.\n\nThe three long tracks on side two share a similar sonic palette and mood. \"Perseverance\" brings plenty of drama with its *Phantom of the Opera* synth lines howling in the emptiness, followed by the somewhat overlong \"Electronic Valkyrie\" which propels forward with a minor key melody and faint choral underpinning.  By the time of the \"Toward the Eastern Front,\" with [Daniel Kobialka](/daniel-kobialka) adding his mournful, emotive violin playing, the cumulative bleakness starts to become wearisome, though that may have been Xolotl's intention. The last wave, indeed.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Last Wave","year":"1982"},"mexechos":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mexechos","year":"1988"},"music-by-xolotl":{"image":"","label":"Unity","review":"","title":"Music by Xolotl","year":"1978"},"procession":{"image":"","label":"Syntasy","review":"","title":"Procession","year":"1981"},"prophecy":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Prophecy","year":"1981"},"return-of-the-golden-mean":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Guitarist Xolotl utilizes a near-feedback tape echo to elongate his fast guitar runs and Zeta Systems guitar synthesizer. Backing him are a violinist (3 tracks), a cellist (1 track), and Cyrille Verdeaux (ex-Clearlight Orchestra) on synthesizer (2 tracks). The energy of the playing makes this pretty dynamic for \"meditation\" music, and although Bernard points out \"There are no sequencers on this tape - all notes are played by hand,\" at time he sounds like an untended sequencer. To be fair, though, there are also some very dreamy minutes.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, Sept/Oct 1981)","title":"Return of the Golden Mean","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":44,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bernard-Xolotl.jpg?alt=media&token=e3130860-0bd8-4f7f-b915-3c13608414b7","last_name":"Xolotl"},"bert-dalton":{"artist_name":"Bert Dalton","body":"Bert Dalton was a jazz pianist living in Santa Fe during the time he recorded his only new age cassette, *Sounds of Light*, accompanied by the mysterious Nann on Tibetan bells. The album was recorded at Max Heighstein’s studio outside Santa Fe.\n \nBorn in 1952, Dalton was born and raised in Villa Park, Illinois, near Chicago. He attended Northern Illinois University, where he studied jazz and appeared on the school’s 1973 LP *A Salute to Jazz Education*. Before graduating, Dalton left NIU to become a professional musician. He formed the Chicago Jazz Exchange in the early ‘80s, touring throughout the US, Australia, and New Zealand. \n\nIn the late ‘80s, Dalton spent some time in Phoenix performing in various jazz clubs and providing music for the Religious Science Church. In 1989, Dalton moved to Santa Fe where he performed regularly, taught music, and served as the music director for the Unity Church in Santa Fe. Through a mutual friend, he was asked by a friend to play piano and synth on a meditation album, accompanied by Nann on Tibetan bells. Nann was apparently a member of the Religious Science church in Phoenix, but Dalton never learned anything more about her. This was Dalton’s only foray into meditative music. After that release, he focused his energy on his own jazz groups as well as the Latin Jazz band Yoboso who released two albums in the ‘90s.\n\nDalton went on to serve as Music Director for the National Dance Institute of New Mexico where he recently retired after 25 years. He continues performing with his jazz trio as well as the Bert Dalton Brazil Project.","discography":{"bert-dalton":{"albums":{"sounds-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Sounds of Light","review":"","title":"Sounds Of Light: Improvisions For Piano And Tibetan Bells Vol. 1 ","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Bert Dalton","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":439,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bert-dalton-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=54d644a7-a5fb-4dcf-8a58-493c3568a75f","last_name":"Dalton"},"bil-vermette":{"artist_name":"Bil Vermette","body":"Bil Vermette was an electronic musician based in Chicago who is best known for his only sole vinyl release, *Katha Visions*. Vermette pressed 500 copies on his own Rainforest Productions label and sold the record strictly by word of mouth, limiting its exposure at the time to local audiences. However, the album was rediscovered in 2010 by collectors and reissued by Permanent Records in 2013. Vermette wasn’t a one-album wonder, though, as he recorded consistently for decades, putting out two lesser-known cassettes in the '80s and three CDs in the mid-90s, with *Voyager* proving fairly popular in Europe at the time.\n\nBil Vermette was born William Vermette in 1956. While he was called Bill as a child, he later shortened the spelling to just Bil with one L. “There were so many Bills around,” he said. Vermette grew up on the southside of Chicago and remembers becoming intrigued with electronic music when he saw *Forbidden Planet* around the age of five. His family wasn’t musically inclined, but he recalls always wanting to play music. \n\nAs a music lover, Vermette spent a lot of his early teen years hanging out at record stores like Val’s Halla in Oak Park. “Everyone else was listening to Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. I always liked Pink Floyd,” Vermette recalled. “I saw them live in 1972. *Ummagumma* blew my mind.” The musically curious Vermette soon discovered experimental German bands such as Can and Faust, which expanded his musical horizons even further.\n\nBy 1975, Vermette started recording at home with a melodica and a guitar, but he never had formal lessons. “I’m a difficult person to teach, whether it’s music, swimming or whatever,” he said. “I started listening to [Brian] Eno and he called himself a non-musician. And I thought, the Beatles, they can’t read music. I’ll just give it a go.”\n \nVermette attended college at the University of Illinois, Chicago where he studied geography and geology. After graduating in 1978, he bought his first synth, an EML Electrocomp 200 from fellow electronic musician Tom Cameron, who sold keyboards out of his leather shop. Around the same time, Vermette met other musicians, such as Dave Palmer, and joined a musical collective called VCSR, which played free-form electronic music.\n\nVCSR recorded all their sessions and made a demo tape of some of their best moments that they gave out to local universities and Wax Trax Records. The store was gearing up to start a label and was interested in releasing an album by VCSR, but according to Vermette, the group couldn’t decide what to put on it, and nothing ever came to fruition.\n\nMeanwhile, Vermette had been recording electronic music at home, eventually putting together his first tape *Enivron-mentals* in 1983 by collecting some of his more ambient pieces with nature sounds, inspired by Irv Triebel’s Environments albums. He made 300 copies and hand-drew the cassette covers for the first 50. Vermette only sold the cassettes locally via word of mouth and copies are now rare.\n\nFor his next album, Vermette got the idea from some friends to self-release an album on vinyl. The result was *Katha Visions*, which collects home recordings alongside new material recorded at studios in town, including one piece (“Someday Soon”) with vocals. Vermette cited Tangerine Dream and Terry Riley as two of the key influences. “I worked at Val’s Halla at that time, from 1984 to 1986,” Vermette recalled. “After I put out Katha Visions, I would play at the store and people would come in and buy it.” He pressed 500 copies.\n\nVermette released one more album on cassette called *Observances* in 1988, but by then, he had gotten a job working as a digital cartographer. He didn’t do much to distribute the cassette, and it is now very rare. At that point, Vermette took a long hiatus from music. \n\n“In April of 1993, I was lying down with the window open, and I heard the sound of traffic from the expressway,” Vermette recalled. “It reminded me of college, and I thought, ‘What have I done? I did one album, and what have I done since then?’ So I decided to do a CD.  I already had all these recordings I was working on so that became *Voyager*.” A friend of Vermette’s knew Michael Garrison and sent him the album, and he loved it. Garrison helped get the CD distribution in the Netherlands when he was there for a festival and according to Vermette the album is still distributed there.\n\nVermette followed up *Voyager* with two more CDs, *Emocean* and *Geophobia*, considering the three works to make up a “space, water, and earth” trilogy. However, they didn’t sell quite as well as *Voyager* and he took another musical hiatus until 2005. Around 2011, collectors began to rediscover his music and bought up his stock of remaining copies of *Katha Visions*. Lance Barresi from Permanent Records was one of these enthusiasts, and he sold stock of the title for a while in addition to reissuing the album on his label. He also issued an archival album of VCSR material in 2016.\n\nVermette was a faithful archivist of his back catalog, and he has uploaded all his albums and a trove of extra material to his Bandcamp page [here](https://bilvermette.bandcamp.com/).\n\n(MG, 2026)","discography":{"bil-vermette":{"albums":{"emocean":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Emocean","year":"1985"},"environ-mentals":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Environ-mentals","year":"1983"},"geophobia":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Geophobia","year":"1997"},"katha-visions":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Katha Visions","year":"1984"},"observances":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Observances","year":"1988"},"voyager":{"image":"","label":"Rainforest Productions","review":"","title":"Voyager","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":445,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bil-vermette-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=87d161a6-ca43-4407-8683-188f14e9057a","last_name":"Vermette"},"bill-alves":{"artist_name":"Bill Alves","body":"Bill Alves is an electronic composer who released *The Terrain of Possibilities* while earning his doctoral degree in music at USC in the ‘80s. The album shows his interest in minimalism and just intonation, with Alves citing influences including Terry Riley, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and Steve Reich. At the time of the release, Alves also began working with computer animator John Whitney, creating animated music videos that would later be collected as Celestial Dance. Since 1995, he has taught music at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA.\n\nBorn in 1960, Bill Alves grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He started on piano and organ, getting much of his early experience playing in church and theater. He also learned to play the harpsichord in his teens which taught him a lot about tuning by ear and later formed the basis of his understanding of just intonation. For college, Alves attended Trinity University in Texas where he majored in computer science and music. \n\nIn 1984, Alves moved to Los Angeles to continue his music studies at USC. While there, he took an interest in minimalism, electronic music and other tuning systems, especially just intonation. Using the school’s Synclavier, he began composing material, some of which was in just intonation. Other pieces used sampled voices that he pieced together on multi-track tape. \n\nWhile earning his master’s degree and then a doctorate, Alves continued working on music, finally releasing his debut *Terrain of Possibilities* in 1989 on his own Whoosh label. The album got some good reviews in EAR and Option, and Alves recalls playing live on KPFK. In 1990, Alves put out a CD version as well, though he estimates he only sold about 100 copies total.\n\nAfter completing his PhD, Alves got a Fulbright Fellowship and spent some time teaching in Indonesia. Upon his return to the US in 1995, he got a job teaching at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA where he still teaches as of 2026. Alves has sporadically released new music after Terrain of Possibilities, including *Imbal-Imbalan* in 2008, *Mystic Canyon* in 2015, and *Guitars and Gamelan* in 2016. \n","discography":{"bill-alves":{"albums":{"terrain":{"image":"","label":"Whoosh","review":"","title":"Terrain of Possibilities","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":451,"featured":true,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bill-alves-640-1.jpeg?alt=media&token=32cca96e-9b87-4d59-879b-35fba04ef358","last_name":"Alves"},"bill-desmond":{"artist_name":"Bill Desmond","body":"Bill Desmond seemed to lead a double life in Boston during the ‘80s, helming both a new age recording project and the theatrical, aggressively weird Bentmen.  His most formative influence was progressive rock, but he also had a chance run-in with folk legend Dorothy Carter in 1978 that sent him on a path to learning the Persian santur and psaltery which he used to make relaxing, hypnotic music. Three albums later, however, he began to grow disillusioned with new age and refocused his energy on the stranger sounds of the Bentmen.\n\nBill Desmond (or \"Des\" as most of his friends know him) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts  in 1957 and grew up in Duxbury, a small coastal town 35 miles south of Boston. He loved music as a boy, though was not very fond of the piano lessons his mother forced him to take. As a teen, he was drawn to progressive rock and fusion acts such as the Mahaivshnu Orchestra, Robert Fripp and Hawkwind. For college, Desmond went to the University of Massachusetts in Boston where he studied business. By then he'd grown to appreciate medieval music and some early ambient music like Kitaro, Jean Michel Jarre and Brian Eno, who he calls a big inspiration. \n \nOn New Years Eve in 1978, Desmond wondered into a church on Boyleston street when he heard someone playing a dulcimer inside. \"There was sound bouncing off the church walls,\" Desmond recalled. \"Every strike of the strings was resonating like a bell. And there's this little pint sized lady, a hippie with a long cape, 20 or 30 years older than me, playing this thing. I walked up to her and said, 'I am going to learn to play this and we're going to do an album together.'\" The woman was Dorothy Carter, an accomplished player who then was working on her second album, the now much admired *Wailee Wailee*. \n \nAfter this fortuitous encounter, Desmond began building his own hammered dulcimer (more specifically a Persian santur). Desmond never took formal lessons so he developed his own technique and a style which emphasized polyrhythms. He played at coffee houses and outdoor festivals, and sometimes opened for Carter's shows. \"My thing was to go and just improvise,\" Desmond said. Around the same time, he got into meditation which also informed the trance-like quality of his music.\n \nIn a few years, Desmond was ready to record his first album and booked some time at Downtown Recorders in Boston.  He brought along a huge cast of people to help out, many of whom he'd played with over the years in various capacities. \"It was organized group improv,\" Desmond said. After it was complete, Desmond sent the music around to record labels including Windham Hill, but ultimately found a home with Jeff Charno's label Third Ear, a subsidiary of Vital Body.  The album, titled *Sparkle String Discoveries* featured a surrealist photo on the cover in an effort to ward off associations with new age. \"I always had a dark element to my stuff,\" Desmond said. \"I am a very spiritual person, but I need something more than just a pretty sound. I need movement.\"\n\nShortly after the album’s release, Charno wanted a follow-up and Desmond went back into the studio to record his second album of 1983, *Trapezoid Stringway to Light*. The method was similar as before, though he did include synthesizers on two songs. \"The engineer probably thought we were this new age band, but I was breaking out Cheez-its and crappy food in the studio,\" Desmond laughed. Nevertheless, Desmond thought the album was not as good as his debut, though he retains a fondness for \"Crystal Ball for a Crying Clown.\"\n\nDesmond's proposed third album was *Leprosy of the Stone.* \"I created a bunch of tape loops going through multiple machines, around the backs of wooden chairs and improvised around that. I was inspired by Robert Fripp, who I'd seen at Berklee College of Music.\" Desmond loved the album, but the title turned off Charno and nothing ever came of it. \"That title came from a documentary I saw about Venice, Italy, where acid rain was destroying sculptures. A curator said 'we call it leprosy of the stone.' I was inspired by that and started putting music together for sculptures.\"\n \nAround 1984, Desmond formed the Bentmen, a theatrical, dada-esque rock band which was a complete 180 from the more tranquil sounds of the Bill Desmond Tone Poem. \"It was like a depraved Blue Man Group,\" Desmond recalled. \"I started that with my friend Forrest Trenholm from high school. We wore strange costumes and would throw ice cream sandwiches at the crowd. The music was prog rock with strange time signatures and twisted social commentary. Other pieces were tribal and rhythmic.\" \n \nAs the Bentmen got started, Desmond continued to play his dulcimer pieces, reuniting with Dorothy Carter on his third album *Waterflow*. Released in 1985 as part of Charno's Art of Relaxation series, the cassette featured folky, relaxing pieces. The title came from Carter's use of a water harp. \"Vital Body was going for washes of sound, in many cases, music that was meandering,\" Desmond said. \"We did that too but had hints of melody or composition.\"\n \nDesmond got some occasional soundtrack work, like a piece for the educational TV show Nova, but the Bentmen became his primary musical outlet after that, extending well into the next decades. The band became a cult phenomenon in the Boston area, releasing many albums and putting on sold out shows. (One of the band's guitarists, Reeves Gabrels later played with David Bowie and the Cure; Adrian Belew also guested.)\n \nDespite the seemingly huge gulf between his two musical projects, Desmond sees a common thread. \"Ambient music can be as heavy as metal or the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Some people tap into that and some people don’t.  I can sit down and play beautiful music and then go out and see a demolition derby in the same day. Every angle of life, I just like to live it.\"","discography":{"bill-desmond":{"albums":{"stormlight":{"image":"","label":"Vital Body","review":"","title":"Waterflow","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Bill Desmond","entry_number":2},"bill-desmond-tone-poem":{"albums":{"sparkle-string-discoveries":{"image":"","label":"Third Ear Music","review":"","title":"Sparkle String Discoveries","year":"1982"},"trapezoid-stringway-to-light":{"image":"","label":"Third Ear Music","review":"","title":"Trapezoid Stringway to Light","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Bill Desmond Tone Poem","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":117,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bill-Desmond-605.jpg?alt=media&token=c816b8ac-a6e5-46fe-958a-606b4c151866","last_name":"Desmond"},"bill-gregg":{"artist_name":"Bill Gregg","body":"In the '80s, Bill Gregg worked as a folk musician on the winery circuit around Ithaca, NY, not far from where he grew up in Trumansburg. He primarily performed as a duo with his girlfriend, but when their relationship fell apart, Gregg shifted his focus to electronic music, culminating with the release of *Voyage to the Heart* in 1990. The album got a good review in *Heartsong Review* but after that, Gregg took a busy job at a biotech firm that sidelined his musical aspirations.\n\nGregg was born in 1947 and grew up in Trumansburg, New York. He started building his own musical instruments as a child and then moved on to the piano. By the age of 12 he was playing jazz standards, soon followed by stints in cover bands playing hits by the Beatles and Stones. After high school, Gregg joined the Navy like his father had before him. He worked in intelligence, spying on the Soviet Union for the next four years. \"I came back home right before my plane was shot down,\" he recalled.\n\nBack in Trumansburg, Gregg taught himself guitar, banjo, autoharp, fiddle, dulcimer, and mandolin while he pondered his next move. At that time, his father was diagnosed with cancer and Gregg stepped up to help manage the family grocery store. When his father passed away a few years later, he helped sell the business and then attended community college for two years. However, he stopped when he realized he could make a good living playing folk music on the winery circuit around Ithaca, NY with his girlfriend. From 1978 to 1988, the couple were constant performers in the area until they broke up and Gregg decided to change his musical direction.\n\nGregg's foray into electronic music began in the mid-'80s when he came into some money and bought his first synth, a Yamaha DX-7. By the time he broke up with his girlfriend, Gregg had started writing electronic music and performing at art shows and poetry readings in the area. Brian Earle, a local entrepreneur, had started Clear Productions to release some compilations of ambient and electronic music, and he asked Gregg to contribute a track to the second volume, *Visionaries* in 1989.\n\nAfter that, Earle encouraged Gregg to do a full album. He booked a studio and recorded an album using all first takes, mixing pre-recorded tracks and improvisation. Gregg self-released the album on cassette and promoted it with some live appearances and got at least one review in *Heartsong Review*, but few knew about the album outside of upstate New York.\n\nGregg then started working as a guitar teacher at the Trumansburg Conservatory of Fine Arts where he remained for several years. \"Then my music career came to an abrupt halt,\" Gregg recalled. \"I had a friend who was a chemistry professor at Cornell. One day he said, \"Bill, I'm working at a startup company. We need help in the chemistry lab. It was a biotech company working on one of the greatest cancer drugs of all time. I took the job there and it turned out to be the job of a lifetime. But I was working 10-12 hours a day. I asked myself, 'Do I want to play music, or do I want to cure cancer?' I held that job for 13 years starting in 1992.\"\n\nAfter leaving the pharmaceutical company, Gregg went back to teaching guitar. He'd also gotten married during this time and his stock options allowed him to pay off the house so he didn't have to worry about money anymore and he could focus once again on making music. Gregg continues to live in Trumansburg and maintains a website [here](https://www.harmonic-resources.com/).","discography":{"voyage-to-the-heart":{"albums":{"voyage-to-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Triple Gem Music","review":"","title":"Voyage to the Heart","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":239,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bill-Gregg-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=9a54346d-6645-4e47-885c-fc2281cd6eed","last_name":"Gregg"},"bill-tankersley":{"artist_name":"Bill Tankersley","body":"Based in Oklahoma, Bill Tankersley played bass on some notable private press records from the '70s such as [Blue Cliff Ensemble](https://www.discogs.com/release/10720375-Blue-Cliff-Ensemble-Blue-Cliff) and [Astrë](https://www.discogs.com/release/5241297-Astr%C3%AB-Foresight). In the '80s, he got more into synths and released some experimental ambient tapes with his girlfriend Brenda under the name New Warmth, as well as a few solo albums under his own name.\n\nBill Tankersley was born in 1952 in Wagoner, Oklahoma. For most of his childhood, he and his older brother lived with his grandparents. Tankersley's first love was progressive rock, which he got hooked on after buying the first King Crimson album based solely on the weird album art. He started playing the bass and joined his first band, the Mechanism, followed by the more popular hard rock band Fox.\n\nAfter high school, Tankersley moved to Tulsa to attend junior college. There he met Dave Carter who would prove to be influential in years to come. \"He had the longest hair of anybody in the world,\" Tankersley recalled. \"One day he picked me up hitchhiking and asked me who my favorite band was and I said the Moody Blues, because I knew he liked them. \" Carter and Tankersley became friends and formed a progressive band called the Blue Cliff Ensemble with Carter on piano and vocals, Karen Kitchenon guitar, and Tankersley on bass. The band put out a self-titled album on their own Woofus records in 1979 in an edition of 500 which is now a minor collectible.\n\nAround the same time, Tankersley was also in a harder rocking band called Astrë influenced by Rush and Kansas. When that band's keyboardist quit, Tankersley bought a synth and string machine and taught himself to play. \"I never played keyboards in my life,\" he said. \"Less than six months after that [in 1981], we did an album called *Foresight*.\" However, it didn't fare much better than the Blue Cliff Ensemble album, though it did get the attention of Alex Douglas who published the Contact List for Musicians (CLEM) and helped distribute the album through mail order. \"Nobody ever had any money and it cost a fortune to have an LP pressed,\" Tankersley said. \"Those records both lost us money.\"\n\nFor his next project, Tankersley released his music on cassette, a far more economical alternative. By then he worked as a mental health counselor and had a steady girlfriend named Brenda. The two would sometimes jam at home and Tankersley would play synths and she would speak, similar to Laurie Anderson. \"That was a very loving project,\" Tankersley recalled. \"We would compose spontaneously. In most cases, I would play keyboards and she would improvise lyrics in real-time.\" Tankersley issued two tapes of their music under the name New Warmth and again got distribution through CLEM, which now had a larger circulation. The tapes were sold to a small but dedicated group of tape collectors all over the world.\n\nTankersley loved the freedom of releasing music on cassette and also issued three ambient electronic solo albums from 1983 to 1984. By 1986, his music had become more abrasive, as evidenced by *The Volcanic Plane*, a three-hour noise piece. Fellow cassette culture synthesis [David Prescott](/david-prescott) loved the tape and the two collaborated on a track called \"The Beautiful Try\" through the mail.\n\nAfter he and Brenda broke up, Tankersley tried forming a new duo with another girlfriend, but he couldn't recapture the same magic. Since he didn't want to be a solo act, he started experimenting with samplers and getting into more experimental music along with his old friend Shawn O'Neal. In 1992, the two decided to form an industrial band called New Fire Ceremony and they got a record deal, the first of Tankersley's career. Tankersley was profiled in Keyboard magazine and things were looking up. However, the label didn't offer much support and the band didn't last long. They only played three shows.\n\nIn 1995, Tankersley relocated to Las Vegas where he lives now, occasionally performing on the local coffee house circuit. \n","discography":{"bill-tankersley":{"albums":{"and-i-you":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"And I You","year":"1984"},"enchanted":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Enchanted","year":"1983"},"gates":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gates, Summations, and Discoveries","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Bill Tankersley","entry_number":1},"new-warmth":{"albums":{"first-conception":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"First Conception","year":"1983"},"second-conception":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Second Conception","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"New Warmth","entry_number":2},"tala":{"albums":{"volcanic":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Volcanic Plane","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Tala","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":280,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tankersley-em-91.jpg?alt=media&token=1d1fc68d-3806-4c09-bc8e-123f3ea36a9c","last_name":"Tankersley"},"bluetoy":{"artist_name":"Bluetoy","body":"Christopher Simmons is an entrepreneur, writer and musician who released six progressive electronic cassettes in the mid-'80s. He was born in Iowa in 1962, but his family moved to California a few years later and he's remained there since, mostly based in Redondo Beach. He started playing music seriously in his early twenties, using synths and a drum machine to record a series of cassettes starting in 1984. Back in high school, Simmons launched his own movie memorabilia business, followed by a Battlestar Galactica fanzine (*Adama Journal*). After a prolific run of tapes, Simmons sold most of his music gear in 1987 and turned his attention to a new business, a Star Trek fanzine called *Galaxy Class* that ran for the next six years. This was followed by a web design business that morphed into [Neotrope](https://neotrope.com/) which he still runs today. In the late '90s, he issued a CD-R of his last album *Beserker* and a best-of collection called *Techno Sketches* but most of his catalog remains out of print and hard to find.","discography":{"bluetoy":{"albums":{"1-oscillations-unknown":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Oscillations Unknown","year":"1984"},"2-repetitive-rhythms":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Repetitive Rhythms for a Planet That Doesn't Know Any Better","year":"1984"},"3-reinventing-the-wheel":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Reinventing the Wheel Without a Third Eye","year":"1984"},"4-dancers-in-the-trance-glow":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Dancers in the Trance Glow","year":"1984"},"5-bred-for-the-basement":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Bred for the Basment","year":"1984"},"berserker":{"image":"","label":"S.U. Productions","review":"","title":"Beserker","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":290,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Christopher-Simmons-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0bc98e93-4e9c-4cf5-bae2-0815c6391f39","image_credit":"","last_name":"Bluetoy"},"bob-kindler":{"artist_name":"Bob Kindler","body":"Babaji Bob Kindler is a spiritual teacher, cellist, producer, and recording engineer who released a large body of work on his label Jai Ma Music starting in the early '80s. His work ranges from meditative instrumentals with cello and flanged autoharp to traditional Indian chants and jazz fusion. After his instrumental albums *Music from the Matrix I* and *II* proved popular on the new age circuit of the early '80s, Global Pacific signed him in 1985 and put out a third volume called *Waters of Life*. Kindler's music became more overtly spiritual after that, with many albums of bhajans and chants (not included below), though he continued to play classical music and jazz fusion as well. In 1993, he began serving as the Spiritual Director of the SRV Association, a spiritual community that taught the principles of the Sanātana Dharma, focused on Yoga and Vedanta. He would go on to publish over 30 books for SRV and remains active to this day as a writer, teacher, and musician.\n\nBorn in 1950, Kindler grew up in a musical family in the Pacific Northwest with a sister and two brothers who all learned to play instruments. Kindler played the guitar and autoharp, but his focus was on the cello, which he began learning at the age of eleven. He stuck with it, eventually earning a degree in music from Portland State University. Though Kindler was steeped in the Western Classical tradition, he became interested in Indian music and spirituality when he was 20, which broadened his scope in both his religious life and sacred music.\n\nKindler moved to Hawaii after college, where he got a position in the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra under the tutelage of conductor and cellist Robert LaMarchina. There he trained extensively in Yoga and Vedanta, spending the decade reading the scriptures of Eastern Traditions and eventually joining the Ramakrishna lineage, becoming initiated by Swami Aseshananda. His other teachers included Swami Nityasvarupananda and Swami Damodarananda.\n\nBy 1980, Kindler began sharing Sanātana Dharma teachings. He also soon launched his own label Jai Ma Music starting with his first album *Wingpsan*. Though his second, now deleted album *Mystery's Child* features vocals, much of Kindler's early music was instrumental and it fit in well with the emerging new age sounds of the time. \"Music that is unencumbered by words, i.e., lyrics, can be very pure, and conveys a type of subtle vibration or transmission that is more than just 'healing,' but actually conducive to gaining enlightened states of mind,\" Kindler wrote.\n\nAfter refining his recording techniques, Kindler recorded three cassettes for his *Music from the Matrix* series that sold well at new age bookstores and are still probably his best known to collectors today. For his third in the series, released on the now defunct Global Pacific Records, he brought in many guests including his brother Steven Kindler, a violinist, who also released some new age albums despite mainly playing jazz.\n\nBy the mid-'80s, Kindler began to focus more on bhajans and spiritual music based on vocals and chants, such as *Bhajans of Love and Wisdom* and *Shakti Bhajans*, among others. He further broadened his sound to include contemporary jazz and Indian fusion, as on *Tiger's Paw* and *Ever Free, Never Bound*. \n\n\"After extended time spent as a sadhika, I began giving instruction to spiritual seekers, mainly consisting of darshan, retreats, and discourses,\" Kindler wrote. \"[In 1993], my mentor and contemporary, Lex Hixon, started the SRV Associations of the West, and asked me to participate. Thereafter I became the Spiritual Director of the SRV Associations upon his passing, and to this date guiding its aspirants and writing many books on spiritual topics to assist them.\"\n\nKindler's first book was *Twenty Four Aspects of Mother Kali* in 1996 and he went on to write over 30 more. Kindler remains active musically as well, putting out his most recent album *Jnanamritam Stotram* in 2023.\n\n\"My life and path was always one of following music as being sacred (called Shabda Brahman, and Nada Brahman in India),\" Kindler said. \"Even the Western classical music gods were not pure enough for me, as so much of that music was done for wealth, fame, and notoriety. Thus, I took the best from it, and from Indian music, and blazed my own path to the Divine.\"","discography":{"bob-kindler":{"albums":{"ever-free":{"image":"","label":"Jai Ma Music","review":"","title":"Ever Free, Never Bound","year":"1991"},"materix-2":{"image":"","label":"Jai Ma Music","review":"","title":"Music from the Matrix 2","year":"1983"},"matrix-1":{"image":"","label":"Jai Ma Music","review":"","title":"Music from the Matrix","year":"1982"},"matrix-3":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Waters of Life: Music from the Matrix 3","year":"1985"},"tigers-paw":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Tiger's Paw","year":"1990"},"wingspan":{"image":"","label":"Jai Ma Music","review":"","title":"Wingspan","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":397,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/babaji-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8eeb752b-7b3d-4097-aa52-f199998282d9","last_name":"Kindler"},"bob-mills":{"artist_name":"Bob Mills","body":"Bob Mills was a ubiquitous figure in the Los Angeles new age scene of the 1980's, either performing music shows for kids under the name \"Mister Bob\" or playing his mystical flute improvisations at metaphysical churches, art galleries, and spiritual retreats. Along the way, he released four cassettes of his flute and synth music plus two tapes of children's music. In 1994 he added a song and re-released his bestselling album *Gentle Landscape* on CD. Mills later composed music for film scores and now has his own production company called Direct Experiences.\n\nMills was born in 1959 and grew up the second of five children in Glendale, a peaceful middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, California. His father, Maestro Alvin Mills, was the founder, conductor, and musical director of the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony Orchestra, where he worked for 63 years. Mills' mother, Marguerite Patterson, was an opera singer who would sometimes sing on stage as the lead soprano. \"When my mom was pregnant with me, I used to listen to classical music through her bellybutton,\" Mills said. \n\nThe first instrument Mills played was the violin at age eight, though he also dabbled on the piano. Around eighth grade he dropped the violin and started playing the clarinet and flute. \"My sister had a recorder and I really got into wooden flutes,\" he said. \"In high school, my family moved to La Cañada, California and we had bamboo in the backyard. I made my own bamboo flutes. The sound of the wood really attracted me. There was this whole time period where I would play in nature and talk with birds and play on the cliffs.\" Mills' taste in music was hardly restricted to flute music though. In high school, he listened to classical and world music, as well as popular rock bands like The Beatles, Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin.\n\nAfter high school, Mills got accepted into the Bachelor of Music program at Cal State Northridge where he studied composition and played recorders and crumhorn in an early music ensemble. He recalled seeing Paul Horn live around this time and cites his 1969 album *Inside*, recorded inside the Taj Mahal, as a key influence on his flute playing. At Cal State, he met some other musicians who appear on his later releases. He also had friends at USC, such as guitarists Andrew York and Kenton Youngstrom who played on his albums. However, Mills didn't complete college. Instead, he worked as a landscaper for a few years and then, in 1982, began teaching children's music at Verdugo Valley School in Glendale.\n\nWhile working with kids at school, Mills began developing a stage show that involved playing songs on his guitar, juggling, and presenting different instruments from his travels. Calling himself \"Mr. Bob,\" and later, \"Bob Sky,\" Mills branched out to perform at other schools and teach workshops on how educators could integrate music into their early childhood curriculum. In 1985, Mills put out a cassette of children's music called *In the Crayon Sky,* credited to \"Mr. Bob and Friends.\"\n\nAt the same time, Mills was playing meditative flute music, often at Religious Science and Unity Churches affiliated with the Glendale Church of Religious Science, where he was a member. At a typical Sunday church service, he'd play music for the adults, then go into the Sunday School and teach the kids some sign language and a song, and then bring them out to perform for the congregation. In the afternoon he did a children’s concert at the church, and then in the evening, he would do a new age show and have people bring drums and percussion instruments to join in. \n\nAfter his first cassette of children's music, Mills entered a productive period, releasing a new album each year for the next four years. His first release showed a strong classical influence, while his second was more ambient. For *Gentle Landscape*, Mills hooked up with master shakuhachi player [Jim Scott-Behrends](/jim-scott-behrends) for some songs on what would go on to be his best-selling release. The initial cassette version had a black and white cover, but he upgraded it soon after to a full color cover with a painting from artist and friend Schim Schimmel.\n\nLike his friend and fellow musician [Chuck Jonkey](/chuck-jonkey), also from Glendale, Mills loved to travel internationally. Both liked buying exotic instruments and recording nature sounds like streams, waterfalls, oceans and birds. Mills memorably included recordings of crickets on *Gentle Landscape*, calling them the \"La Canada Cricket Choir.\" According to a celebrity massage therapist friend of his, Madonna would often request *Gentle Landscape*, saying, “Play the one with the crickets.”\n\nIn addition to his frequent concerts playing at churches and schools, Mills traveled all over the U.S. playing his meditative flute music at conferences, libraries, bookstores and malls. He did ten musical tours of the Hawaiian Islands and Guam, accompanied Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, a popular Religious Science teacher, and Rickie Byars at their meditation, and traveled to Montana to attend a master class with famous flute master R. Carlos Nakai. \n\nOne of Mills' memorable experiences was working at Lynn Andrews’ yearly retreats in Joshua Tree, CA. \"She was very popular at the time and our music was the background of her seminars. She would come out to the desert and we’d do a sunrise service. There were 300 attendees and 280 were women! Lynn Andrews would be late, so they’d say, 'just keep playing.' She did lots of guided meditations and I set the tone with live flute music, one of my specialties. Then we'd do evening concerts and other musicians like [John DeMarco](/john-demarco) and Chuck Jonkey would play. We were jamming in the auditorium at the Joshua Tree Mentalphysics Center. Everyone was rocking out to the music; we had a blast.\"\n\nAfter the release of *Gentle Landscape* Mills got some work composing scores for David Bowyer on four of his documentary/travelogues, including *My Country: A Navajo Boy's Story* and *Monument Valley, Land of Mystery.* This would inspire him to start producing his own travelogues later on and launch his own film company in 2015 called [Direct Experiences](http://www.directexperiences.com). Now he directs, produces and composes the music for his own films, with *Baraka* and the filmmaking of Ron Fricke as a key influence.","discography":{"bob-mills":{"albums":{"cloud-drifting":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cloud Drifting","year":"1986"},"sacred-ceremony":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sacred Ceremony","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Bob Mills","entry_number":1},"bob-mills-and-friends":{"albums":{"the-ocean-the-island":{"image":"","label":"Mills-Mulligan Music","review":"The ocean was a common muse for the environmentally conscious new age community. While some like [Pauline Anna Strom](/pauline-anna-strom) or [Joanna Brouk](/joanna-brouk) reveled in its dark mystery, others like Mills chose to portray the ocean as a source of tranquility and peace. As he wrote in the liner notes: \"Let the water's peaceful essence still your mind and soul.\"\n\nMills' vision is captured with a series of long, contemplative pieces that rise and fall like the waves. The instrumentation is varied but subtle, with Mills giving room to a large cast of musicians on harp, piano, guitar, and synth, plus his father Alvin on violin and his brother Steve on marimba. Still, it's Mills flute and the sound of the ocean that tie the album together.\n\nAt times, *…the Ocean…the Island* is so serene and pretty that it feels like it could blow away on a light wind, especially on the Eno-like title tracks that start each side. However, Mills peppers the album with enough variation to make it work, as with his surprising tape-speed manipulations on \"Etheric Ripples\" or the brief appearance of singing whales on \"Whale Totem.\" Most notably, his arrangement of CPE Bach's mannered, yet sensual \"Sonata for Serenity\" serves as a welcome counterpoint to the soft pillows of sound that flow so effortlessly across these 60 minutes.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"...the Ocean...the Island","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Bob Mills and Friends","entry_number":2},"bob-mills-and-jim-scott-behrends":{"albums":{"gentle-landscape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gentle Landscape","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Bob Mills and Jim Scott-Behrends","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":171,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bob-Mills-500.jpg?alt=media&token=b5a0bd02-6c33-408c-a7b1-a45307f6ccc3","last_name":"Mills"},"bob-zander":{"artist_name":"Bob Zander","body":"Bob Zander was a childcare worker, writer and musician based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In addition to co-founding jazz-rock improv band the Intuitive Bikers with Peter Stenshoel and Todd Harper, he released various split albums and solo releases in the '80s and beyond. Zander got his start as a drummer but eventually gravitated to the kalimba which he used on all his cassettes, including his most widely distributed release *Almost Oriana* from 1994. Zander recently retired from teaching after 40 years of working with kids.\n\nBob Zander was born in 1956 and grew up in Palo Alto, California. His first instrument was the drums, and he joined some rock bands in junior high and high school. Zander started playing completely improvised music in high school with the group the Clay Winds, a band whose instruments were all made by the school's ceramics teacher. He attended Sonoma State University where he earned an English degree, hoping to someday be a music writer.\n\nAfter college, Zander and his girlfriend decided to move to the Twin Cities in Minnesota. They drove out in a pick-up truck with their dog and cat, pulling off the road and sleeping in the back when it got dark. After arriving in 1979, Zander soon got a job working in a childcare program called Minneapolis Kids. He was a sensitive and curious soul who loved working with kids and, over time, started to work music into his lessons. After a few years, he went back to school at the University of Minnesota where he earned a degree in elementary education.\n\nEven as he pivoted to childcare, Zander still looked for writing outlets. He got his first opportunity at *City Pages*, the esteemed Twin Cities weekly, writing concert and music reviews starting in early 1983. This led to work writing for the international jazz magazine *Jazz Forum*, and local papers and publications throughout the next few years. However, Zander eventually realized that he wanted to make music rather than write about it.\n\nWhile working at the childcare, Zander became friends with a fellow teacher named Todd Harper. \"One day I noticed this guy walking down the street playing two penny whistles,\" Zander said. \"I thought, this guy is kind of wacky. I'd probably like this guy. He ended up working with me that day. Todd loaned me a tape of his music and I thought, wow, his tunes are pretty good.\"\n\n1985 turned out to be a pivotal year for Zander. He met his future wife and put out the first tape of his music, a split album with Harper called *Working With Kids*. Many of the songs were inspired by their jobs, with Harper's material on one side and Zander's on the other. Zander's songs range from silly kids' music like the catchy \"Crowd Control\" or the Zappa-esque \"Nose Test\" to kalimba instrumentals augmented with drums. Three of the tracks feature contributions from his students.\n\nZander and Harper got to know another Minneapolis musician, piano and mandolin player Peter Stenshoel, and the three of them decided to form a band called the Intuitive Bikers. \"Peter is a creative and fun-loving guy so he fit right in,\" Zander said. \"We all liked jazz and improvised music and some rehearsals just started from scratch.\" They recorded their practices, and some of their improvised pieces coalesced into songs. \n\nFor their first gig, also in '85, the Intuitive Bikers did a three person acoustic and electric piano improvisation. \"It took some courage to do that,\" Zander said, \"to just play something out of the blue for the audience, but it turned out beautifully, one of the best things we played that night.\" They performed a few other times in 1986 and released their tape, *It's Just Everything* largely drawn from live shows and rehearsal recordings. The band grew to include bassist Carl Posz, trumpeter Andy Shultz, violinist David Stenshoel, and flautist Max Swanson. At the same time, Zander also played in a rock band called the Possible Gentlemen. \"It was all original music, very loud, rock drums,\" Zander said. \"Minneapolis had an inspiring music scene; you felt like you should be doing your own thing, even if it might be different from what more famous people were doing. There was an electricity in the air.\"\n\nThe Intuitive Bikers went on to release two more cassettes, both in 1987. The following year, each member issued solo cassettes: Stenshoel's *Strangely Colored Map*, Harper's *How to Make Thing Without Name* and Zander's *Friend for Life*, a mix of more intimate kalimba pieces and small ensemble tracks that mixed rock and jazz. By this time, the members of the Intuitive Bikers had gained some local recognition, and *Strangely Colored Map* was selected in *The Minnesota Daily* as being the best tape of the year; Zander's *Friend for Life* came in second. The Bikers’ tape *Ancient Circus Music*, was picked for third.\n\nBy 1989, Stenshoel moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA and the Intuitive Bikers ceased to exist. Zander and Harper continued on with their own releases, with Zander putting out the de facto fourth album by the Intuitive Bikers, *Offspring*. He also started to lead his own band playing the kalimba, and 1991 saw the release of his most mature work yet, *Sons of RAZ*. This was again a split album, with Zander's older brother Bill contributing tracks to one side of the tape. Zander would re-use many of the same songs on 1994's *Almost Oriana* which was nominated for a Minnesota Music Award.\n\nZander continued to put out music, though with much less frequency. His next release after *Almost Oriana* was 2000's *Skyline to the Sea*. Around this time, Zander moved back to the Bay Area with his wife and two of their three daughters--their eldest stayed in the Twin Cities--and he became an elementary teacher. These days, Zander still composes on the kalimba while also making time for photography and wooden slit drum building and designing. His most recent release is a double CD called *Thumbnail Sketches* from 2017 which he has made available on his YouTube page [here](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE6h82FSMx2l7iLa1BDv7aA), along with other albums.","discography":{"bill-and-bob-zander":{"albums":{"peaceful-pond":{"image":"","label":"Raz Recordings","review":"Instrumental compositions from the brothers Zander, each taking one side of the tape, but sharing an appreciation for liquid, flowing works. Bob works primarily with the Mbira (aka kalimba), and once again is joined by Max Swanson on flute as well as some strings, percussion, and more—very snappy stuff. Bill goes in for piano, synth and samples, and comes up with more laid-back work, afternoon pleasant listening stuff. Professionally done and not stuck in any one genre.\n\nMike Gunderloy, *Factsheet Five*, 1991)","title":"Sons of Raz","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Bill and Bob Zander","entry_number":4},"bob-zander":{"albums":{"almost-orianna":{"image":"","label":"Raz Recordings","review":"Right here in Minnesota, Zander is quietly breaking new ground with an ancient African instrument—the kalimba or thumb piano. Zander used the charming percussion tool as the lead voice in a stew of fresh jazz-rock with worldbeat accents. His music is lively, accessible, tuneful and seldom trite. *Almost Oriana* is Zander’s most marketable cassette thus far, thanks to a strong supporting cast including Mick LaBriola of the Maroons, fiddler David Stenshoel and outstanding young guitarist Warner Brown, who died of cancer shortly after these sessions were recorded. His pungent solos are full of strength and bite.\n\n(Tom Surowicz, *The Minneapolis Star Tribune*, December 11, 1994)","title":"Almost Oriana","year":"1994"},"friend-for-life":{"image":"","label":"Raz Recordings","review":"Zander’s first solo album is nestled between two eras – the wild, free-improv sprawl of the Intuitive Bikers and the more reflective, worldbeat sound of later albums like *Almost Oriana*. The first era is reflected in full-band pieces like \"Insomnia\" and \"What I Heard\" which have a raw, practice-space energy even as they probe into fusion jazz territory.  However, it is the more intimate kalimba duets like \"Indian Dance\" and the title track that really shine, with flautist Max Swanson earning his co-billing with sympathetic, inspired performances. Zander’s kalimba is lovely throughout, as always.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Friend for Life","year":"1988"},"offspring":{"image":"","label":"Raz Recordings","review":"","title":"Offspring","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Bob Zander","entry_number":3},"intuitive-bikers":{"albums":{"1-bikin-into-it":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"Bikin' Into It","year":"1987"},"2-ancient-circus-music":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"Ancient Circus Music","year":"1987"},"it's-just-everything":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"It's Just Everything","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Intuitive Bikers","entry_number":2},"todd-harper-and-bob-zander":{"albums":{"working-with-kids":{"image":"","label":"Raz Recordings","review":"","title":"Working with Kids","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Todd Harper and Bob Zander","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":179,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bob-zander-1.jpg?alt=media&token=cbd2e4ca-02c3-43b1-84ea-188d087677b2","last_name":"Zander"},"bobby-schnitzer":{"artist_name":"Bobby Schnitzer","body":"Based in Minneapolis for most of his career, Bobby Schnitzer was a guitarist and frequent collaborator with keyboardist [Bruce Kurnow](/bruce-kurnow). Schnitzer’s main interests were blues and jazz, but he and Kurnow began putting out new age music in the late '80s, with Schnitzer contributing to many of Kurnow’s albums and Kurnow returning the favor on Schnitzer’s *Do You Remember?*  While Schnitzer continued to play with Kurnow, he also collaborated with harpist Robin Berry in the late ‘90s, appearing on several of her albums starting with 2003’s *On the Horizon*. Berry encouraged Schnitzer to revisit new age, prompting him to release five CDs of new age guitar music in the early 2000s. \n\nBorn in 1948, Schnitzer grew up in Minneapolis and was already playing guitar in bands by seventh grade. He first met Kurnow at a talent show, when Kurnow approached him to ask if he could play bongos in his band. “I said, ‘What? Who are you?’ I completely brushed him off,” Schnitzer recalled.  However, a couple of weeks later, Kurnow bragged to Schnitzer that he could play blues progressions in any key on the keyboard, and he played harmonica too. Schnitzer gave him another audition. “He came over and within five minutes I could see the talent,” Schnitzer said. “You could hardly call it an audition. One song into it, he was a member of the band.”\n\nTogether, Schnitzer and Kurnow played in various bands in high school, though they separated for college, with Kurnow attending the University of Minnesota and Schnitzer attending the University of Miami. After a few years, Schnitzer dropped out to play guitar in a jazz band six nights a week. He returned to Minneapolis after a few years and joined up with Al Jarreau in a band called Jarreau from 1969 to 1971. The band relocated to Los Angeles in the hopes of scoring a record deal, but according to Schnitzer, “the record companies didn’t know hot to market it.” (Jarreau would, of course, land a solo deal a few years later with Warner Bros.) \n\nWhile in Los Angeles, Schnitzer reunited with Kurnow who was then playing keyboards with the country rock band Mason Proffit. After both of their LA bands dissolved, both Kurnow and Schnitzer returned to Minneapolis. There, they formed the fusion band Passage who were a popular local act for a few years before disbanding in 1979. Schnitzer stayed busy with session work and also toured with Minneapolis band Lipps, Inc after they had a hit with \"Funky Town.\"\n\nIn the '80s, Kurnow and Schnitzer built a recording studio and began recording other artists in addition to their own projects like Schnitzer’s solo album of rock-adjacent instrumentals (*Stingin’*) in 1984. The duo also tried their hands at new age with three albums in 1988 on Journey Records and Tapes credited to Kurnow, and one in 1989 credited to Schnitzer. The tapes sold fairly well and led to many more albums by Kurnow in the ‘90s. \n\nIn the late '90s, Schnitzer began working with harpist Robin Berry when she recorded one of her albums at his studio. She encouraged him to release more new age music, and he also appeared on several of her albums in the 2000s, though all that work is outside the scope of this guide. Schnitzer remains active musically and is currently based in Edina, Minnesota.","discography":{"bobby-schnitzer":{"albums":{"do-you-remember":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records and Tapes","review":"","title":"Do You Remember","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":449,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Schnitzer-1.jpg?alt=media&token=64c650ab-4f48-488d-9546-783e08b35970","last_name":"Schnitzer"},"botielus":{"artist_name":"Botielus","body":"Botielus is a synthesist who released three homemade tapes between 1987 and 1992 while living in Portland, Oregon.\n \nBotielus was born in Virginia in 1960. His father worked as a comptroller as an officer in the US Army and moved the family all over the world during his youth. He first started playing saxophone when he was ten and attending elementary school in Taiwan. A little later he also took up guitar and organ. After a year of college, he joined the army band for three years where he was stationed in Fort Monroe, Virginia and Germany.\n \nAfter his honorable discharge, Botielus moved to Houston, Texas and started a rock band. He decided to ditch the sax and instead took up the synth. In 1984, he fell in love with a new waitress at the restaurant he worked at, and they’ve been together since. The couple spent over a year driving around the country before settling in Portland, Oregon.\n \nOn the way there, the couple spent a weekend in Lake Tahoe for Valentine’s Day. “The first tape I made for her was a surprise Valentine’s gift. She loved it and suggested I do more. So I spent late nights and mornings recording a whole album. It was all synthesizer. I didn’t want to use my own name so I changed it to Botielus (when I couldn’t find my bow-tie for work one day!)”.\n \nOnce in Portland, the couple started and Botielus put together a second tape of solo synth music, naming it *Vision Quest* after a local art gallery. He started playing live shows in the area where he would sell the tapes. The following year he put out another tape in a similar style called *Phresh Ideas*. \n \nBotielus joined an Elvis Presley cover band in 1991, which turned into a full tribute show that eventually became his primary source of income. In 2005, he moved to Las Vegas with his girlfriend where they still live today. His most release synth album came out in 2017, titled *Stars to Mars*.","discography":{"botielus":{"albums":{"botielus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Botielus","year":"1987"},"phresh-ideas":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Phresh Ideas","year":"1992"},"vision-quest":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Vision Quest","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":201,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Botielus-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2075ec5b-ccdf-49b1-baf4-c867037892b5","last_name":"Botielus"},"bradley-sowash":{"artist_name":"Bradley Sowash","body":"Bradley Sowash (born 1960) is a composer known for his solo piano works in the '90s and 2000s, as well as his series of instructional books called *That's Jazz*. While Sowash was earning his degree in music composition at Ohio State University in the late '70s, he worked as an accompanist for dance classes where he learned to improvise along with modern dance. He moved to New York City after graduation where he continued to work with dancers, resulting in two works for choreography, *Impressions* and *Near Miss*. He made some limited cassettes of these at the time that may be of interest to readers of this site. Sowash went on to release more traditional jazz works such as *Out West* and solo piano albums in a George Winston vein such as *Bittersweet* in 1996. ","discography":{"becket-senchur":{"albums":{"impressions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Impressions","year":"1984"},"near-miss":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Near Miss","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":349,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bradley-sowash-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=b5d6a78a-5e62-46b2-bf94-a0c15acc4491","last_name":"Sowash"},"brain-laughter":{"artist_name":"Brain Laughter","body":"Brain Laughter was the musical project of Howard Givens (born 1960), who also founded the label Spotted Peccary to release their music. The group was more of a collective for their debut, drawing from the sounds of the desert and progressive electronic music. By the time of the second album, Brain Laughter was more of a Givens solo project, with help from Deborah Martin and [Steve Roach](/steve-roach).  Givens didn't release new music for a while after that, focusing instead on the label and working as a sound editor on films. By the 2000s, Spotted Peccary was one of the more successful new age/ambient imprints, with releases from [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns), Erik Wollo, and Craig Padilla.\n\nThe origins of Brain Laughter go back to high school when Givens first met Teeto Cheema in Tucson, Arizona where they grew up. \"My teacher played us *Switched on Bach* and I didn't know what that was,\" Givens recalled. \"I just thought it was cool. I started listening to records in the experimental section. Me and Teeto got into everything that took you to outer planets: Paul Horn, Pink Floyd, early Kitaro. We also liked the Pauline Oliveros thing where acoustic sounds interact with the environment.\"\n\nReconnecting at UC San Diego in college, Givens and Cheema formed Brain Laughter as a collective, adding Nancy Givens, and Alon Feder. They returned to Tucson in the mid-'80s and new members joined their orbit including Debra Musgrave, Tim Cox, and Mary Mathews. Givens put out a cassette EP in 1986 and then an album in 1989 that drew inspiration from the Arizona environment and an experimental approach to recording. \"We were plugging microphones into effects pedals, rubbing cacti together, using rocks, just drawing experience from the Sonoran Desert,\" Givens recalled. \n\n\"The initial collective of Brain Laughter was much more of a collaborative effort, rather than a band or group in the traditional sense,\" Givens wrote. \"After the release of *In the Land of Power* in 1989, we all migrated in time back to San Diego, which became the second home for the studio, and where personal involvements changed, and new individuals joined the effort including Deborah Martin and Jon Jenkins, bringing new focus to the label and the beginning of multi-artist releases.\"\n\nFor the second album, many members had moved on to other pursuits, leaving Givens to record on his own with assistance from Musgraves and Steve Roach. Givens first met Roach in 1988 and the two bonded immediately, sharing a love of the desert and similar sounds. While Brain Laughter effectively ended after that, Givens worked hard to keep his label afloat, releasing albums from others in his orbit such as Greg Klamt, Jon Jenkins and Deborah Martin. By the late '90s, he finally got stable distribution for the label, helping to fund a more robust slate of releases and expand the roster to other artists like Craig Padilla, Erik Wollo, and Paul Ellis.\n","discography":{"brain-laughter":{"albums":{"brain-laughter":{"image":"","label":"Spotted Peccary","review":"","title":"Brain Laughter","year":"1986"},"in-the-land":{"image":"","label":"Spotted Peccary","review":"Thematic progressive electronic music that aims to capture the grandeur and scope of the American Southwest. Synths dominate most of the tracks, though there is some light percussion on \"Awakening,\" flute and guitar on the new agey \"Dawn of the New Day\" and some guitar on \"The Waking Time.\" Some of the more melodic tracks like \"The Final Pass\" and \"The Gates of Perception\" try to emulate wind and brass instruments to dubious effect, but the more atmospheric tracks like \"Nightfall on the Sonoran Plateau\" and album highlight \"The Other Side of Night\" better convey the rugged, lonely landscapes with a pure synth sound. Excellent sound quality.","title":"In the Land of Power","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"brain-laughter-ii":{"albums":{"brain-laughter-ii":{"image":"","label":"Spotted Peccary","review":"Givens is joined by various contributors on Brain Laughter’s second and final album, the most notable being Steve Roach who co-wrote two tracks and played didgeridoo on another. Like the debut, the tracks range from atmospheric, ambient pieces (such as the Roach co-write \"Winter Nights\" or the warmly enveloping \"The First Step\") to more symphonic pieces (like \"Summit\" and \"Call of the Desert\") though these are better executed the second time around.","title":"Not Far From a Distant Sun","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Brain Laughter II","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":315,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/howard-givens-640.jpg?alt=media&token=51047848-0fa9-4a82-b187-23743d4c221a","last_name":"Brain Laughter"},"brian-geigner":{"artist_name":"Brian Geigner","body":"Brian Geigner was a musician, audio engineer and record importer who ran his own business called Syn-Prog (changed later to Syngressive) throughout the '80s. During this time, he released two Berlin-school cassettes, with the first one recorded in real time while the second one was more layered.  He only made a few hundred copies of each title, but his friend Brian Brilow helped him distribute them in Europe where they now sometimes turn up. Geigner put together a trio after that, but they never released anything and eventually his day job consumed most of his time and music was put on hold.\n\nBorn in 1956, Geigner was raised in Milwaukee alongside three other brothers in a small house on the south side of town. He started playing classical music on piano and violin as a kid, but at 14, his brother brought home a Jimi Hendrix album and that changed everything. \"I got a Strat, a fuzz pedal and huge Bassman amp that would rattle the walls,\" Geigner recalled. After a while, he realized that bass players were more in demand and he switched to bass which he played in local garage bands and the school jazz band.\n\nAfter high school, Geigner began working at General Electric and various record stores around town like 1812 Overture and Mainstream Records. At G.E., he learned electronics and started to play synthesizers, starting with a Hohner string machine and later an Arp Solis. He married and had a son, though the marriage only lasted a few years.\n\nGeigner slowly worked his way through college at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, taking classes part time while still working at G.E.. He was initially studying to be a paleontologist, but after attending classes in audio engineering, he decided he \"liked music better than digging for rocks.\" At a party, he heard Tangerine Dream and was immediately hooked on electronic music. Soon, he was devouring imports by other electronic artists like Ash Ra Tempel and Kraftwerk and starting his own radio show on campus to play these new sounds.\n\nAround 1983, Geigner started a mail order business selling imported prog and electronic records. He had been buying similar records from Eurock and overseas but was frustrated that his choices were often out of stock, so he started Syn-Prog. He advertised in magazines and sold locally, though it remained a one-man operation. He carried albums by well-known acts like Klaus Schulze, but his specialty was ultra-obscure French and German titles by Didier Bocquet, Zanov, Rolf Trostel, Hardy Kukum, and Velvet Universe. One of Geigner's customers was Bryan Brilow, who had recorded some music under the name Arpeggiator and was well connected in Europe. Brilow encouraged Geigner to put out tapes of his own music.\n\nFor Geigner’s first release, *Inertia*, he recorded the music in real time, laying down two tracks right into his tape deck. Klaus Schulze is the obvious reference point, though Geigner's methods were extremely DIY. Instead of a sequencer, he used the sample and hold function on his Moog Rogue and taped down the notes. With the album done, he distributed it through his business contacts and Brilow helped distribute it overseas.\n\nBy the time of his second tape, *Twilight Tales*, Geigner had bought a Fostex four track and a sequencer so he was able to record multiple tracks in a more traditional fashion. Like his first tape, he only pressed a few hundred copies, and ditributed them himself. After that, Geigner played in some local cover bands and formed a new project called Lynden Fall with guitarist Jeff Marcus and violinist Ken Grant. They played for a few years but never recorded anything. \n\nEarly on during school, Geigner was recruited to help build a new 48 track studio and he loved the work.  This led to him working as an audio engineer for campus events, and soon other work in the commercial audio/video business doing installations in boardrooms and industry conferences. By 1988, he'd gotten remarried and finally graduated from college. He soon got a job with MCSI, one of the world’s biggest audio installation companies,  and remained there for the next fifteen years. \n\nDuring the '90s, part of Geigner’s job was to fine tune the sound systems at the local planetarium, and he was able to parlay this into some gigs playing live there for occasional laser shows. However, he was mostly preoccupied with his work and stopped releasing music altogether. By this time, he’d also shuttered his mail-order business.\n\nGeigner currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, working now on virtual video conferencing for a new company. He still loves electronic music and occasionally plays live at local art shows or other small events.","discography":{"brian-geigner":{"albums":{"inertia":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Inertia","year":"1984"},"twilight-tales":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Twilight Tales","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":166,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Brian-Geigner-543.jpg?alt=media&token=c079ff4a-329c-4833-b46e-2dbae006a512","last_name":"Geigner"},"brian-gingrich":{"artist_name":"Brian Gingrich","body":"Brian Gingrich was a bassist and composer who issued four progressive electronic albums from 1987 to 1996. His work, which shows an influence from Byrne/Eno, [Mark Isham](https://ultravillage.com/mark-isham), and Jon Hassell, earned critical accolades at the time, but only scored modest sales of about 100 each for his first two cassettes. Gingrich fared a little better commercially with his next two releases, the second of which came out on Alchemy Records.\n\nBrian Gingrich was born in 1961 and grew up on a farm near Peoria, Illinois. His first instrument was the piano but he started taking music seriously when he transitioned to bass and joined a cover band in 8th grade. At the time he was a big fan of Kiss and Deep Purple but a few years later he discovered fusion bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra. \"From then on I was hooked on weird music that had the unfortunate side effect of alienating all the girls,\" Gingrich quipped. \n\nGingrich attended Goshen College in Indiana where he majored in music and continued to play in a band with his brother doing a mix of fusion jazz and funk. After that, he got married and moved to Chicago in the mid-'80s with his wife. Gingrich worked part-time jobs for a while but was eventually able to make a living working full time as a gigging musician, occasionally playing on sessions too.\n\nAround this time, Gingrich took an interest in Midi technology which enabled him to compose and produce music completely on his own. \"It had a lot to do with being frustrated at how band situations were not panning out in ways I had hoped,\" Gingrich said. \"I just decided that it was time to stop depending on other people to make music and see what I could do on my own.\" Gingrich assembled a home studio and started recording progressive electronic pieces that show an influence from Mark Isham, Jon Hassell, and Brian Eno.\n\nGingrich released his first cassette *Prairie Safari* in 1987, using a hand-drawn image on the cover and photo-copying the inserts. He sold the tapes on consignment with a few distributors and got some good reviews, including one from Option writer Tom Furgas who called it \"a brilliant collection of deliciously tuneful pieces with amazing substance, warmth and bold outlines.\" Gingrich put together a second album *Travelog* two years later and it again got good reviews, but sales of both tapes were modest, about 100 copies each. He also appeared on a few compilations around this time, contributing a track to a Poison Plant sampler in 1990 and one from Clear Productions in 1989.\n\nGingrich self-released one more album *Anxious Days and Forty Nights* on CD in 1992 and then moved to the label Alchemy in 1996 for his most successful album, *The White Rim of Heaven*. Gingrich continued to work as a musician during this time, and he also went to trade school to learn computer programming on the side. In 2002, he got a job working in sales for Lakland Basses where he continues to work today. Gingrich maintains a website [here]( https://www.briangingrich.com/) where you can listen to his music.","discography":{"brian-gingrich":{"albums":{"anxious-days-and-forty-nights":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Anxious Days and Forty Nights","year":"1992"},"prairie-safari":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Some folks may mislabel this as new age synthesizer music. Perish the thought; it's a brilliant collection of deliciously tuneful pieces with amazing substance, warmth and bold outlines. An intriguing use of high and low-tech equipment (a Chroma Polaris keyboard but also Casios) coupled with flawless production yield a tape that sounds as good as it sounds, if you take my meaning.\n\n(Tom Furgas, *Option*  March/April 1988)","title":"Prairie Safari","year":"1987"},"the-white-rim-of-heaven":{"image":"","label":"Alchemy","review":"","title":"The White Rim of Heaven","year":"1996"},"travelog":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/gingrich-travelog-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=6d158286-4933-4f35-9cb3-9ab1d5bed390","label":"No label","review":"Remember a strange prog band of about ten years ago called Group 87? It was made up of some Zappa alumni and trumpeter [Mark Isham](/mark-isham), and they drew their inspiration from a well of calm intelligence that made a lot of other noisy bands pale by comparison. Gingrich, a multi-instrumental threat from Illinois, has found a very similar strain of taut reflection, and even when he blatantly cribs a page out of John Adams (\"Sister Hayward\"'s combo of evangelist over common tones smacks decidedly of the infamous semi-minimalist \"Christian Zeal and Activity\"), you'll still get the joke and think it’s funny! Perhaps in deference to Isham, something very like synthesized trumpets wafts in and out occasionally, and there's also a tender acoustic/bass duet called \"Lawn-chair View of a Sunset.\" What’s really inviting about Gingrich’s work is a sort of open-country gentleness unlike that Lemme Beat You Over the Head with My Virtuosity attitude too many other cassette jockeys will essay. Points for the affecting use of an old Negro spiritual in the last tune and top-drawer packaging.\n\n(Ken Egbert,  *Option* March/April, 1990)","title":"Travelog","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":221,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/brian-gingrich-640.jpg?alt=media&token=96b01ced-9b7f-4b6c-97a4-441a2e36c489","last_name":"Gingrich"},"brian-magill":{"artist_name":"Brian Magill","body":"Brian Magill was an experimental musician who released four cassettes under the name Phyllyp Vernacular in the '80s, in addition to co-founding the Eugene Electronic Music Collective (EEMC) with five other musicians. The collective was a ubiquitous presence in underground magazines at the time, promoting solo albums from all six members and producing three compilations. The group ran for nearly a decade, though Magill's central role was only for the first three years. After he moved to Portland, he started a new improv-based group called Dumpster that put out two releases.\n\nBorn in 1960, Magill was raised in Beaverton, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. He came from a musical family and took piano lessons as a child, but he abandoned them after a few years. In high school, he joined the speech and debate teams, and it was there that he met Carl Juarez, a budding technophile who'd built his own computers.  A few years later, both moved to Eugene to attend the University of Oregon where they reconnected.\n\nBoth Juarez and Magill were huge music fans, with Magill especially fond of electronic music like Tangerine Dream and new wave like the Police and Talking Heads, while Juarez was into 20th-century classical and minimalists like Terry Riley. They both loved Fripp/Eno’s *No Pussyfooting* album which was based around long tape loops, and started experimenting in a similar style. \"We thought this is something we could get our head around,\" Magill said. \"It was process music and we were very attracted by it. We started playing with loops and I would carry two 40-pound tape recorders from the campus to my apartment.\"\n\nBy 1980, Magill had switched his major from architecture to music. He spent a year at Portland State back home, brushing up on music theory and piano skills. He discovered that nearby Lewis and Clark College had an electronic music lab, and he was soon spending time there late at night unraveling the mysteries of the Arp 2600, a complex analog synth. Magill returned to Eugene and bought his own synth, a Moog Satellite for $125. Using a reel-to-reel recorder, he would build up three or four layers of weird sounds. From his sessions at school and at home, Magill put together the first tape of his music in 1982, called *Control Monkey*. He only pressed about 15 copies and sold them in a plastic bag.\n\nIn 1983, Magill graduated from college and got a full-time job as a janitor. Eugene had a depressed economy at the time, so Magill considered himself lucky. \"I worked from 6:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. in the morning, shampooing rugs in the dining room,\" he said. \"Why they put carpet in the dining rooms is beyond me. Of course they were filthy. These were college students and they'd have food fights. But it was a job and not a lot of other people had them.\"\n\nMagill was good at bringing people together, and he knew almost everyone on campus who was into electronic music. He'd met a younger student named [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith) at work when he noticed him in a Brian Eno shirt. And he met classical guitarist Peter Thomas on the street and struck up a friendship.  Eventually, a group of six friends headed by Magill decided to start the Eugene Electronic Music Collective. The members were Griffith, Juarez, Magill, and Thomas, along with Derryl Parsons and [Peter Nothnagle](/peter-nothnagle), a seasoned audio engineer who recorded concerts for the school. \n\n\"We met at Peter Nothnagle’s house to talk about it,\" Magill said. \"We thought of ourselves as an equal collective where everyone had an equal vote. Our first idea was to put out a compilation that featured our music. Our first tape, *Free Fall* was pretty successful. I sent it to radio stations and magazines, and it got some notoriety. I think we pressed a few hundred but only sold about 40-50 copies. The rest we traded.\"\n\nIn addition to the first compilation, each artist in the collective also produced a solo release in 1984, with Magill contributing *Suggestive Reasoning* under the name Phyllyp Vernacular.  The album featured two distinct sides, with abrasive electronic collages and guitar solos on side one, balanced with what he called \"semi-ambient\" tape-loop and synth pieces on side two. He recorded that and his follow-up *Cognitive Dissonance* from the next year on a four-track porta-studio using his gear and some from others in the group. His two big musical influences at the time were Eno's *Another Green World* and Pere Ubu's *The Modern Dance.* Magill elaborates: \"More than anything, Carl and I wanted to see what we could do with some mics, some objects, and a tape recorder. The recording studio as musical instrument.\"\n\nThe collective advertised often in underground magazines, with Juarez designing the ads and Magill handling PR and outreach. They attracted a lot of interest quickly, and soon their P.O. box was flooded with tapes by other musicians. Griffith and Magill, who both had their own radio show together, played these tapes on their shows, as well as their own music. \n\nIn 1986, Magill left Eugene and Joel Horowitz took over operations for the collective until it dissolved in 1993. He released one final tape under the name Phyllyp Vernacular, the split release *The Red Bag/Let's Play* with Neil Kvern in 1987. He also formed a new band called Dumpster that started as a cooking club and evolved into a band including [Paul Ellis](/paul-ellis), Jeff Vasey, Jay Schwichtenberg and Lon Cudy. \"It was like Negativland meets Brian Eno,\" Ellis said. \"We were just a bunch of guys that drank beer, turned on synths, and jammed,\" Magill said. \"We all had samplers and would incorporate that into the music.  The music ranged from spacy to loud and noisy. Out of thousands of hours, something interesting would happen.\"  Dumpster put out two cassettes in 1987 and 1988, though they only distributed them to friends and they are now almost impossible to locate.\n\nMagill settled into family life in the following decade, getting married in 1993 and going on to have two kids. He eventually went back to school for electrical engineering and landed a job at Intel in 1995 which he's held ever since. During this time, he'd still record music late at night when the kids were asleep, but he never released any new solo albums until 2017 under the name Fervent Torpor. He also played music for a performance art theater group called \"Thringst\" for two decades, creating music and sound effects for their productions. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","discography":{"brian-magill":{"albums":{"cognitive-dissonance":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"There are few recognizable instruments to be found on this discordant collage of samples and processed guitar abstractions that brings to mind later era [David Prescott](/david-prescott) and PBK.","title":"Cognitive Dissonance","year":"1985"},"control-monkey":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Control Monkey","year":"1982"},"suggestive-reasoning":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"Cut and paste home-brew electronics with a strong scent of Krautrock experimentalists like Kluster or Faust on a more intimate scale. The album is arranged in chapters of a sort, starting with abstract synth pieces that run the gamut from frantic 8-bit abstraction (\"The Palanquin Ewe\") to a lo-fi funk sketch a la Byrne/Eno (\"Medic Under Glass.\") Then we segue into three heavily processed, avant guitar solos to conclude the side. \n\nThe second side is better at sustaining a mood, with \"four semi-ambient processed tape loops\" that channel the chilly atmospherics of Bowie's late '70s Berlin instrumentals, with plenty of tape manipulation.  This is followed by two lengthy, synth-laden ambient pieces that are just unnerving enough to keep you from nodding off.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Suggestive Reasoning","year":"1984"},"the-red-bag":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This split release was the final album for Kvern and the last solo release by Magill under his pseudonym Phyllyp Vernacular. It doesn't seem to have been widely-distributed at the time, and is seldom heard today. On the release, each artist is allotted one half of a 60 minute tape; Kvern's side is \"Let’s Play\" and Magill's side is called \"The Red Bag.\"\n\nAlthough both sides are a bit of a hodgepodge stylistically and quality wise, there is a consistency in their mix of treated percussion and ambient textures a la Byrne/Eno. In the liner notes, Magill explains that he collected \"rhythmically based music\" recorded at home from 1984 to 1986, all using the Roland TR707 drum machine \"either as audible sound or inaudible control, or both.\" On some songs like \"Monkey House\" or \"Eye Like a Camera,\" the rhythms are more forthright, whereas on songs like \"Utah Road,\" they're faintly sketched in like a pencil backdrop for his more colorful washes of synth. The most texturally interesting is probably \"Spartan Horse,\" a spray-painted collage of sound that includes fractured piano samples, and cut-and-paste drum fills. \"Three Changes\" sums up his ethos most succinctly in one varied song, with the first movement probably the most appealing moment of his whole oeuvre.\n\nKvern's side includes plenty of treated percussion too, though his approach is more introspective and primitive, yet oddly affecting. A good analog would be Arthur Russell’s mid '80s experiments, with songs like \"Umbrella Music\" attempting the same kind of dubby art pop distilled from downtown New York sources. Kvern is less sure-handed than Russell though, and his wobbly sense of time adds tension and uncertainty to prettier melodies like \"Cowboy Detective\" or \"Blue Room.\" And yet, as the songs seem on the verge of unraveling, they creak with an all-too-real human ache that connects with the listener in surprising ways.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"The Red Bag","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Phyllyp Vernacular","entry_number":1},"dumpster":{"albums":{"designed-for-daily-use":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Designed for Daily Use","year":"1988"},"do-not-play-in-or-around":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Do Not Play in or Around","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Dumpster","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":168,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Brian-Magill-new.jpg?alt=media&token=19a3174e-ff85-4615-bec7-46d804403049","last_name":"Magill"},"brian-paulson":{"artist_name":"Brian Paulson","body":"Brian Paulson is a new age musician based in Bloomington, Indiana who composes music as a tool for healing, creativity, and more. After decades playing in local prog and jazz fusion bands during the '70s and '80s, he hit on a new formula with his first cassette *Brian’s Brain Buster* in 1992 which incorporated binaural beats and was marketed as a \"relaxing ride to Nirvana.\" The tape proved popular at metaphysical fairs and local bookstores, prompting Paulson to release three more cassettes on his own Fringe Benefits label. Soon, Paulson transitioned to creating personalized CDs of healing music for over 500 clients while continuing to produce albums of healing music beyond the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1952, Brian Paulson was from a small copper mining town called Laurium in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His grandfather owned a grocery store and gas station in town, but what intrigued Paulson was a curio museum with a player piano that he studied intently, trying to play parts designed for four hands. \n\nPaulson’s family moved around during his childhood, ultimately ending up in Lexington, Kentucky when Paulson was in junior high. By then, Paulson had taught himself keyboard and joined a band called Satanic Revolt, though, despite the ominous sounding name, they sounded more like Blood, Sweat, and Tears than, say, Black Sabbath. He was later poached by a similar band called Brass Underground and went on to play with them for over a year.\n\nAfter high school, Paulson focused exclusively on music, working odd jobs as needed between gigs, and sometimes living in his car. He played organ with a country rock band called Big Bear and then joined a progressive rock band called [Pre](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOs2Rmxm-2o) who recorded an album in 1973 that was set to be released with Columbia but the deal fell through. (Paulson later reissued the album on CD in the early ‘90s and a vinyl reissue is in the works).\n\nPaulson’s next move was to Bloomington, Indiana, where he joined with an interesting jazz fusion band with a female vocalist, Hugo Smooth. They were a popular attraction in the area and lasted about six years, releasing one self-titled LP in 1980. After the band broke up, Pauulson worked various jobs, including one at a record store and another at a music store selling synths.\n\n1990 marked a turning point for Paulson as he got married and landed a job working in a local recording studio. While working there, Paulson was listening to a cassette from the Monroe Institute with binaural beats that helped him get in a creative mood for working. Paulson decided he wanted to try something similar. \"I shared the tape with people, and they liked it, but I had a different concept,\" Paulson said. \"It left me feeling cold and I really didn't wanna pursue something that pedestrian. I started doing experiments and that led to my first album *Brian’s Brain Buster* which utilized not just binaural beats but left and right harmonic series beating up to the 16th harmonic. The music takes you higher and higher into the upper octaves.\"\n\nPaulson had success marketing his tape as a creative tool, selling it to new age bookstores and metaphysical fairs (see photo above) and eventually through a distributor called Tools for Wellness. The tape went on to sell a few thousand copies by his estimation, leading to subsequent releases such as the darkly pulsing *Power of 7*, the droning *Mystic Rain*, (which utilized detuned recordings of rain sticks), and his most melodic and peaceful release *Delta Bliss*.\n\nPaulson left the studio in 1993, but he continued to create music for therapy on CD in the late 90s and beyond such as *Arc of Light* (1998) and *Return to Giza* (1999). Paulson also began creating personalized attunement CDs for clients at this time, going on to produce over 500 by his estimate. Paulson remains active musically, and has a Bandcamp site [here](https://brianepaulson.bandcamp.com/) with all his music.","discography":{"brian-paulson":{"albums":{"brians-brain-buster":{"image":"","label":"Fringe Benefits","review":"","title":"Brian's Brain Buster","year":"1992"},"delta-bliss":{"image":"","label":"Fringe Benefits","review":"Of his four tapes, Delta Bliss is the most melodic, sounding a bit like something from Valley of the Sun with synth harp, vibes, and gentle waves of percussion. Brian’s Brain Buster could nearly pass for a Spiritualized B-side, with enough melodic variation to keep things interesting. However, Mystic Rain (pitched-down layers of rain sticks) and Power of 7 are more hypnotic affairs, with only the most subtle variations across 20 minutes of sonic soundbath. ","title":"Delta Bliss","year":"1995"},"great-blue":{"image":"","label":"Fringe Benefits","review":"","title":"Power of 7","year":"1993"},"mystic-rain":{"image":"","label":"Fringe Benefits","review":"","title":"Mystic Rain","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Brian Paulson","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":411,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Brian-Paulson-edit.png?alt=media&token=b1eb3e1a-a5f2-49c3-b235-301ea8d48208","last_name":"Paulson"},"bruce-kurnow":{"artist_name":"Bruce Kurnow","body":"Based in Minneapolis, Bruce Kurnow got his start playing keyboards in country rock band Mason Proffit before pivoting to a long career in new age starting in 1988. He initially released cassettes on Ed Gross' Journey label before moving up to NorthSound, a label with ubiquitous distribution at department stores where they sold tapes of nature sounds at kiosks and end cap displays.\n\nBruce Kurnow was born in 1949 and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By his early teens, he was playing piano and harmonica, jamming with his good friend and guitarist Bobby Schnitzer. After attending three years at the University of Minnesota studying piano, music theory, and composition, Kurnow moved out to Los Angeles and joined the country rock band Mason Proffit. Mason Proffit had an early hit with *Two Hangmen* before Kurnow joined, and they toured relentlessly, playing over 300 shows a year. During this time, Kurnow appeared on two of their albums *Rockfish Crossing* and *Bareback Rider*. By 1974, the band broke up and Kurnow returned to Minneapolis.\n\nBack home in Minnesota, Kurnow got work playing on local sessions and started learning how to play the harp. He formed a blues and R&B band with his old pal Bobby Schnitzer called Passage and they became a popular local act for a few years before disbanding in 1979. Kurnow continued to play in other projects, but also had a solo gig playing harp and harmonica at a hotel six nights a week. There, he was approached by Robert Fredere who had a small label called The Musical Experience. They issued an LP of Kurnow's live act called *Mystery* in 1982, followed a few years later with an album by Schnitzer that Kurnow also appeared on.\n\nIn the '80s, Kurnow and Schnitzer built a recording studio and began recording other artists in addition to their own projects. While Kurnow still played blues at the time, he and Schnitzler also dove into new age with a trio of albums in 1988 on Journey Records and Tapes. The tapes sold fairly well over the next five years and eventually Kurnow was approached by Greg Linder who issued many more new albums on his widely distributed label Northsound. \"He heard my music at a massage therapist and got in touch,\" Kurnow recalls. The first of those tapes *Nature's Noel* went on to be his biggest seller, moving 250,000 copies in Krunow's estimation. All told, Kurnow says he's sold 750,000 copies of all his titles over the years.\n\nKurnow's career has continued into the present, capped with a 2 CD retrospective of his instrumental work in 2023 called *The Road I've Traveled*.","discography":{"bruce-kurnow":{"albums":{"1-first-light":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records","review":"This unhurried, gentle music is for visualization and visions, designed for relaxation and massage backgrounds, with 40 minutes per side. The harp and synthesizer are played with sensitivity and grace. \"Summer Afternoon\" is a delicate improvisation. Only the tinkle of tiny bells and the ripple of heartstrings is heard in this peace-filled summer garden and, just perhaps, the brush of fairy silk, against a petal. \"Morning Snowfall\" begins with one flake falling to rest and melt, then becomes a slow dance of white crystals slowly settling to form a carpet of white. \"Quiet Movements\" is the sound of the mind in deep meditation, moving from silence to small thoughts to silence again, slowly, easily.\n\n\"Awakening\" is a song for the spirit in each of us. With its gentle chimes and solitary harp notes, it asks us to relay our true selves in peaceful harmony. The subtle tones and lingering quality of \"For My Life\" express all attraction and the beauty of all caring. The crescendo notes of \"A Time for Peace\" give a timeless feeling of sitting in a shady glen on a small bridge, hearing two tiny streams babble on each side of you. The impulse is to never leave. This music is perfect for massage, yoga, contemplation, and dreaming. Recommended.\n\n(Mary Heckler, *Heartsong Review* #7, Fall 1989/Winter 1990)\n","title":"First Light","year":"1988"},"1-sky-passage":{"image":"","label":"NorthSound","review":"","title":"Sky Passage","year":"1994"},"1-trail-of-the-wolf":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records","review":"","title":"Trail of the Wolf","year":"1993"},"2-natures-noel":{"image":"","label":"NorthSound","review":"","title":"Nature's Noel","year":"1993"},"2-quiet-movements":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records","review":"","title":"Quiet Movements","year":"1988"},"2-seasons":{"image":"","label":"NorthSound","review":"","title":"Seasons on the Wind","year":"1994"},"3-dream-sounds":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records","review":"It would be difficult to find a more lulling, lovely, thoroughly relaxing musical experience…there is an absolute flowing quality permeating this music from start to finish. Synthesizer shines with versatility, in penetratingly simple melodies in \"The Voyage Home,\" with synth masquerading as crystal tones bells. The listener drifts with these simple, effective arrangement designed for massage and meditation. \"After the Rain\" takes us to a rain-glistening forest. \"Blanket of Dreams\" vibrates with magical guitar work. \"Night Vision\" gives us eyes and inspiration to travel under moonlight and stars. \"Spring Tide\" spangles with the colors and invading promise of spring, quickening the heart with hope and vigor.\n\nI deeply love this tape…it pulls the listener into the rich night of life to be enriched with vision and made more whole. The listener is lavished with gentle sounds that go on and on…each side is long (60 min!) A consistent meditative mood, yet stimulating and vitalizing. A perfect massage tape, wonderful for meditation, making love, making bread, anything when you want a long, mellow dreamy experience.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* #8, Spring/Summer 1990)\n","title":"Dream Sounds","year":"1988"},"3-earth-rhythms":{"image":"","label":"NorthSound","review":"","title":"Earth Rhythms","year":"1993"},"4-mystic-waters":{"image":"","label":"NorthSound","review":"","title":"Mystic Waters","year":"1993"},"eagles":{"image":"","label":"Journey Records","review":"","title":"Eagle's Call","year":"1991"},"forest-reflections":{"image":"","label":"Switchback","review":"","title":"Forest Reflections","year":"1994"},"mountain-mysteries":{"image":"","label":"Switchback","review":"","title":"Mountain Mysteries","year":"1994"},"mystery":{"image":"","label":"The Musical Experience","review":"","title":"Mystery","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":361,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kurnow.jpeg?alt=media&token=4e67a1ff-9e19-46e4-88a7-3b7ac61f54f4","last_name":"Kurnow"},"bruce-lehrer":{"artist_name":"Bruce Lehrer","body":"Based in Minneapolis, Bruce Lehrer released two cassettes of electronic new age in the early '90s. Together with his wife Pamla Ashlay, the couple would hold friendship circles and seminars they billed as the Institute of Metaphysical Science. Lehrer initially created music for the events before packaging it up to sell to attendees, moving about 100 copies total in his estimation. He also released one cassette in 1994 with vocals, *The Spirit of Life Goes Everywhere.*\n\nBorn in 1953, Lehrer grew up in Northern New Jersey, teaching himself guitar and listening to classical music, the Beatles and the Moody Blues. However, he recalls being too shy to ever try playing with bands. He attended the University of Cincinnati where he studied architecture and met his future wife, Pamela Ashlay. The couple settled in Minneapolis in the late '70s.\n\n\"I got into meditation and the new age world. I took a turn towards spirituality,\" Lehrer recalled. \"I liked music you could meditate to as a background. It was a part of my switch from rock-n-roll and it was where my soul wanted to go. I thought if it's helping me, I'm the creative type, I can do that too. it doesn't sound that hard.\"\n\nLehrer and his wife started out holding spiritual seminars at their house and some vacation spots. Later they also held events in conference rooms. \"She was a spiritual teacher and the psychic center,\" Lehrer said. \"I was just her partner.\" Lehrer created music for the events and began selling the music on cassette, though in small quantities. \"It was all word of mouth.\"\n\nAfter a final release that incorporates vocals, Lehrer stopped putting out music. By then he'd already been working for several architecture firms in Minneapolis and soon founded his own residential architecture practice that is still active today. He maintains a website [here](https://www.brucelehrer.com/).\n\n","discography":{"bruce-lehrer":{"albums":{"seraphim":{"image":"","label":"Ashlay","review":"","title":"Seraphim","year":"1991"},"time-out":{"image":"","label":"Ashlay","review":"","title":"Time Out","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":360,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bruce%20Lehrer-seraphim-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d5e00a20-9128-4842-9273-e1fe58c371d9","last_name":"Lehrer"},"bryan-lloyd":{"artist_name":"Bryan Lloyd","body":"Bryan Lloyd is a keyboard player who got his start playing with his father's touring group, the Ron Lloyd Band in the '80s before putting out his own album *Merlin's Cave* on cassette in 1986. The tape sold a few thousand copies and he went on to make two more, though his constant touring duties kept him out of the studio after that.\n\nBorn in 1967, Bryan Lloyd was the son of Ron Lloyd, a singer/songwriter who launched his career in the late '50s as a country duo with his first wife called Ronnie and Bonnie (\"Love Letters Never Sent\"). Bryan's parents divorced when he was eight, but he fondly remembers his family's bohemian lifestyle: \"We traveled around on a school bus to music festivals and radio stations. My father always included me in everything – he really treated me like an adult.\"\n\n\"I first started playing piano when I was seven,\" Bryan continued. \"My dad was on the road and sent an album he recorded. I had a reed organ and discovered I was able to play along with things I was hearing. I taught myself how to play until I was 11 and took then I took some lessons. In 1984, when I was 17, my dad said, 'Hey, join my band.' So I started playing piano and singing with the Ron Lloyd band.\"\n\nBy the '70s, Ron Lloyd had gotten into Alan Watts, Ram Dass and mind expansion, experimenting with LSD and developing new songs with strong spiritual leanings. He self-produced an album in 1975 of his devotional music called *Let There Be Light*, followed by similar work into the '80s. Eventually, Ron founded his own label Wizard of Harmony.\n\nBryan expanded beyond piano to play an array of synthesizers. Inspired by Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, he began composing his own progressive electronic and ambient music. In 1986, he put out his debut *Merlin's Cave* on his father's label and sold it at their shows and through book shops. According to Bryan, it sold a few thousand copies.\n\nIn 1988, Bryan released his second album *Holograph*, but he did little promotion for it and it's now rare. \"I didn't make very many copies,\" Bryan recalled. \"In my mind, it was not quite finished. It was like a beta version.\" \n\nA few years later, Bryan joined the touring band of Capitol recording artist John Andrew Parks and didn't produce any new recordings for a while. However, he was approached in the early '90s by Ric Ergenbright, a photographer, to compose a soundtrack for a Monument Valley National Park slideshow. After getting a good response, he issued an album featuring the music called *Gathering Spirit*, again selling a few thousand copies.\n\nBryan continued to tour through the '90s but around 2003, he got a job at Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River, Oregon. \"It was voted the most romantic hotel in the nation,\" Bryan said. \"I did the piano bar kind of thing -- light jazz and Elton John. I wore a tuxedo every night. I played six nights a week for four years.\" More recently, Lloyd got a day job as well, though he still plays festivals and weddings. \"But my heart is always in playing ambient instrumentals,\" he adds. Bryan currently lives in Northern Idaho.","discography":{"bryan-lloyd":{"albums":{"gathering-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Changing Image Productions","review":"","title":"Gathering Spirit","year":"1993"},"holograph":{"image":"","label":"Wizard of Harmony","review":"","title":"Holograph","year":"1988"},"merlins-cave":{"image":"","label":"Wizard of Harmony","review":"","title":"Merlin's Cave","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":271,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bryan-lloyd-640.jpg?alt=media&token=75a713ff-0585-45bf-b338-d8173f82658c","image_credit":"","last_name":"Lloyd"},"bud-wood":{"artist_name":"Bud Wood","body":"*Blue Heron* was a one-off meditation album by Bud Wood, a percussionist and vibraphone player originally from Omaha, Nebraska. He'd relocated to Seattle in 1984 and produced the cassette there, selling it at gigs at the Pike Place Market, new age book shops, and the local Unity church. He also toured with duo Eric Tingstand and Nancy Rumbel from 1989 to 1990 and appeared on their 1991 album *In the Garden* on Narada Records. He soon left Seattle for the Northeast, where he lives today and works as a carpenter.\n\nBorn in 1959, Robert Wood grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. His first instrument was the drums, which he started at the age of ten. Five years later he started playing with hard rock and prog cover bands and took an interest in jazz as well. Some of his favorites were Pink Floyd and Steely Dan.  In his senior year, he started learning how to play the vibraphone.\n\nWood attended college at University of Nebraska-Lincoln for two years and earned a BA in English Literature at Creighton in Omaha. He was thinking of becoming a doctor, but he also studied music, unwilling to leave it behind. After graduation, he spent a year in New York City studying vibes and learning more about eastern religion. \"All through my 20s, I was deep into figuring out religion and truth and enlightenment,\" Wood recalled. \"I got turned on to Buddhism at 24, then I caught wind of the Unity church. I checked out every religion that exists.\"\n\nAfter a year in New York, Wood got into medical school in Nebraska but ultimately dropped out. \"During my year in New York, I learned about holistic medicine and holistic food and became anti-standard medicine,\" he said. \"I go turned off about medical school and found out that Seattle had a naturopathic school and got accepted there.\"\n\nWood moved to Seattle in 1984 where he remained for the next ten years. He often busked at the Pike Place market, playing his vibraphone in the open air for shoppers there. He also met a jazz fusion guitarist named Tim O'Hare and gigged with him sometimes. During this time, Wood adopted a macrobiotic diet and became a vegan. \"I came to conclusion that food is your best medicine,\" he said.\n\nThe Unity Church in Seattle often featured live new age gigs, and Wood decided to put out an album of meditative music using the vibes. \"I was still young and green when I did *Blue Heron*, but lyrically and musically I've always had a knack. In high school I'd write things and they were well received. The album was simple motifs and variations. I designed the cover as a poster and shrunk it down to make the cover. I made 1,000 copies and sold them at stores like Crystal Essence in Seattle. I also sold some at the Unity Church.\"\n\nA year or so later, Wood heard about Tingstad and Rumbel, a guitar/oboe duo who had put out several popular albums on Narada. He went to their concert and gave them a tape and a month later, they called asking if he'd like to audition for their group. Wood ended up touring with them from 1989 to 1990 as a percussionist and contributed to their 1991 album *In the Garden*. However, he left the band shortly after that.\n\nWood always had plenty of other musical interests besides new age, and after leaving Tingstad and Rumbel he got deep into Brazilian music. He joined Batucada, a 20-piece Brazilian percussion group, where he mainly played the pandero, a tambourine-like instrument. He also started playing jazz piano after getting tired of playing the vibes.\n\nIn 1994, Wood left Seattle and moved to the Northeast, living first in Massachusetts and then in upstate New York. Since then, he's mainly worked as a carpenter in addition to playing drums, percussion, piano/synths, teaching, and working toward producing more original music. ","discography":{"bud-wood":{"albums":{"blue-heron":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Blue Heron","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":264,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/bud-wood-640.jpg?alt=media&token=50cde20a-c387-4329-b80b-e09a4b2c0d44","last_name":"Wood"},"carl-juarez":{"artist_name":"Carl Juarez","body":"Carl Juarez was an early member of the Eugene Electronic Music Collective along with his friend [Brian Magill](/brian-magill) and other musicians in the area. Through this group, he put out his first album *Collection Potentials* which is now hard to find. He also contributed three tracks to the *Free Fall* sampler that the group sold through underground magazines like *Sound Choice*. In 1985, Juarez left Eugene for Seattle where he went on to work as a typesetter and freelance graphic designer, though he did put out one more album *Alive and Well* in 1988, though distribution minimal.\n\nBorn in 1961, Juarez grew up an only child in San Luis Obispo. He loved sci-fi and was a budding technophile who built his own computer in junior high. Juarez recalls getting into *Switched on Bach* and hanging out at piano and organ stores trying to learn more about synthesizers. In his early teens, Juarez's family moved to Tillamook, Oregon when he first met Brian Magill through high school forensics, though Magill lived in nearby Beaverton. The two would later reconnect at the University of Oregon where Juarez went for college starting in the late 70s.\n\nMagill and Juarez both shared a love for avant-garde pop, especially Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Juarez suggested they start playing music together and they began experimenting with reel-to-reels, guitars, keyboards, and other found objects. Juarez eventually dropped out of school to focus on creative efforts like learning to play guitar and writing, and he was an early member, along with Magill in the Eugene Electronic Music Collective. The group's first release was a compilation *Free Fall* in 1984, with Juarez contributing three tracks and laying out the type for the cassette.\n\nJuarez followed that with his cassette, *Collection Potentials*, in early 1985. Writing later about this period, Juarez said, \"The punk/new wave influence of the popular music we liked had combined with the primitive electronic instruments and recording equipment to create a kind of techno-tribal northwest sound and a xerox-art esthetic that fit in with the zines of the day and showed up in our covers and posters.\" \n\nAround the time of his debut, Juarez relocated to Seattle to work at the magazine Rocket as their typesetter. He continued to write and publish zines, eventually establishing a long career as a freelance graphic designer. He did release one more album *Alive and Well* in 1988, with some copies including a second album on the B-Side called *Core: Strange Attractors*. Juarez currently lives in Seattle.","discography":{"carl-juarez":{"albums":{"inertia":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"","title":"Collection Potentials: Confessions of a Mobile Intelligence Unit","year":"1985"},"twilight-tales":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Primitive 4-track minimalism. Dark ambient rabbit holes and atonal artsiness abound on this abrasive tape that probably holds more appeal to industrial fans than the typical readers of this site. A second album called *Core: Strange Attractors* is included on side 2 and features a collage of guitar loops and treated field recordings that recalls [Jeff Greinke](/jeff-greinke) or perhaps [Doug Haire](/doug-haire).","title":"Alive and Well","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":293,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/carl-juarez-749.jpeg?alt=media&token=88cea60d-edda-4f00-af3c-a56878df77fe","last_name":"Juarez"},"carl-weingarten":{"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten","body":"Finding a unique middle ground between experimental music, new age, and ambient, Carl Weingarten secured a diverse following in the '80s underground, winning critical accolades for nearly all his work. He established his own label Multiphase early on and frequently advertised in underground magazines of the time. Weingarten rarely worked alone, collaborating with both [Walter Whitney](/walter-whitney) and Gale Ormiston on his two biggest sellers, *Submergings* and *Dreaming in Colors.* Weingarten also worked in a more conventional synth pop milieu with a trio called Delay Tactics that released two albums in the mid-'80s that are starting to attract collector interest. \n\nCarl Weingarten was born in 1956 and raised in St. Louis. His father was a chemist and his mother a psychologist. In junior high, Weingarten took an interest in film and began making Super 8 movies, often looking for instrumental music that would work as a soundtrack. This led him to discovering bands like Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson. By high school, he started playing guitar too, exploring bottleneck guitar and many styles including blues, jazz and southern rock.\n \nFor college, Weingarten attended SIU Carbondale and got a BA in film studies. There he really began to appreciate film composers like Ennio Morricone, Dominic Frontiere, Brian Eno, Bill Conti and John Scott.  After graduation, he began to think more seriously about making music after seeing a show by Robert Fripp. \"In July 1979, I went to both of Robert's *Frippertronics* shows in St. Louis.  \"I watched him perform using a pair of tape recorders to loop layers of music. I knew very little about the mechanics of recording at that time, so It had a huge impact on me that one person was able to generate all this beautiful sound with so little equipment. I had to explore this myself.\"\n \nAfter graduating in 1979, Weingarten helped to start a record store called Vintage Vinyl. Seeing other independent labels sprouting up at the time, he was inspired to create his own label called Multiphase. For his first release on the label, *Submergings*, he partnered with Gale Ormiston, a choreographer he'd worked with in college.  The album has a strong influence from minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as a resemblance to Eno's work with Fripp. \"For that album, I wanted to create a cinematic sound using tape delay. rhythms, and repeating patterns.  We produced music with a lot of sci-fi imagery.  It might fall under dark ambient today.\" The album was well-received at the time and went on to sell 3,000 copies over the span of two pressings. In 1983, Weingarten produced another LP with Ormiston called *Windfalls*.\n \nAfter recording *Submergings*, the recording engineer Greg Glazier referred Weingarten to another local musician named Walter Whitney. Walter was a multi-instrumentalist who collected keyboards and had a small studio in his house. \"Walt was hungry to collaborate,\" Weingarten recalled. \"He was kind of isolated out in the St. Louis suburbs. Walt loved the music of Todd Rundgren and producing wild song arrangements.  I took a very serious approach to the music, while Walter had a more loose, fun attitude.  We balanced each other out.\"  \n \nAt the time he met Whitney, Weingarten had been playing occasional shows around town with Reed Nesbit as a duo under the name Delay Tactics. Starting in 1982, Whitney became the third member and the band began prepping their debut album *Out Pop Options* It was a mix of experimental synth pop with ambient textures and occasional vocals. Weingarten pressed 500 copies on Multiphase and it got some college radio airplay despite the band not playing live much to support it. For the follow up, Dave Udell replaced Nesbit and the trio began playing out live more actively between the years 1983 and 1986.  Weingarten pressed 1000 copies of their next album *Any Questions* and advertised it heavily. The promo push paid off with radio play, a PBS [profile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZbAyCfjRSM&fbclid=IwAR0TkhVCzaDNh_glaYV0qvGvQAM__ZbTyYpqlxdhMAip38beRWE9sgoI5Mw), positive critical reviews and better sales than the debut.\n \nAll of Weingarten's early releases were partnerships by design as he felt producing was both a learning and creative process. \"I enjoy collaboration - there's always something to learn from the artists you work with. Eventually, as a challenge to myself, I wanted to create something totally my own,\" Weingarten said. In 1984, Weingarten released his first solo album *Living in the Distant Present*, featuring improvisations on guitar and keyboard, but now with digital delays instead of tape loops. The album earned praise from Option and other magazines.\n\nDelay Tactics started to fade to the background after Weingarten ramped up his solo releases under his own name, but Whitney was still a big part of most of Weingarten's albums, either working as co-creator or collaborator on nearly everything after that. In fact, their first album together *Dreaming in Colors*, went on to be his second best seller after *Submergings*.\n \nIn the mid '80s, Weingarten toured as a solo looping-guitarist, playing at colleges and honing his sound. He released his second solo album in 1988, *Laughing at Paradise*, a more embellished and diverse outing with Reich-like minimalism, avant-garde excursions, and fourth-world instrumentals that prefigure some of the post-rock of the '90s to come. \n \nWeingarten moved to California in 1992 and has remained active through the remaining decades, continuing to release a mix of solo albums and collaborations with others such as Forrest Fang, Joe Venegoni, Michael Manring, Kit Watkins, Ulrich Schnauss and others. His work has started to resonate with a new audience lately, and Delay Tactics' *Any Questions* album is currently slated for reissue on The Emotional Rescue label in the U.K. Weingarten's website can be found [here](https://www.carlweingarten.com/).","discography":{"carl-weingarten":{"albums":{"laughing-at-paradise":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Laughing at Paradise","year":"1988"},"living-in-the-distant-present":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"Weingarten's mesmerizing character pieces for guitars and synthesizers, with various instruments, loop and delays, pick up where Robert Fripp left off after his collaborations with Eno. At times, Weingarten even chooses guitar timbres that evoke those of Fripp, and he also prefers guitar sounds that emerge from silence rather than those with the attack of the plectrum. Certainly, he has assimilated Fripp's influence, along with a number of others, into his own creative identity. His pieces tend to be more involved and complex, yet never complicated or obscure. The music is evanescent, gentle, and quite lovely, without being aimless and meandering, and definitely worth having in your collection.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, *Option*, July/August 1985)","title":"Living in the Distant Present","year":"1985"},"pandora's garage":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Pandora's Garage","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten","entry_number":4},"carl-weingarten-gale-ormiston":{"albums":{"windfalls":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Windfalls","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten, Gale Ormiston","entry_number":2},"carl-weingarten-gale-ormiston-phil-neon":{"albums":{"submergings":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Submergings","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten, Gale Ormiston, Phil Neon","entry_number":1},"carl-weingarten-joe-venegoni":{"albums":{"critical-path":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Critical Path","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten, Joe Venegoni","entry_number":6},"carl-weingarten-walter-whitney":{"albums":{"dreaming-in-colors":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Dreaming in Colors","year":"1985"},"primitive-earth":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Primitive Earth","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten, Walter Whitney","entry_number":5},"delay-tactics":{"albums":{"any-questions":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"Synthesizer-influenced band meeting somewhere at the rock/pop interface. Clean sound, well-produced, with a sound leaning towards the softer side of electronic music.\n\n(Bob Morris, *Option*, March/April 1985)","title":"Any Questions?","year":"1984"},"out-pop-options":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Out-Pop Options","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Delay Tactics","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":29,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Carl-Weingarten.jpg?alt=media&token=54ef5f8b-98d7-4772-b3e0-33c6f99c4fee","last_name":"Weingarten"},"centerpointe-research-institute":{"artist_name":"Centerpointe Research Institute","body":"The Centerpointe Research Institute was founded by Bill Harris in 1989 with the aim of enhancing personal growth through technology. Harris had long worked as a teacher and therapist, first influenced by Dale Carnegie and later taking an interest in Neuro Linguistic Programming and Ericksonian Hypnosis. In the mid-'80s he learned about using binaural beats to facilitate deeper meditation, and set up the Centerpointe Research Institute with his friend Wes Wait to market early cassettes like *Quietude* and *Oasis* that featured their audio technology Holosync. These cassettes featured Harris' music (uncredited) and have started to garner interest among new age collectors.\n\nBill Harris was born in 1950 and grew up in Beaverton, Oregon alongside his younger brother David. He showed an early gift for music, learning clarinet at the age of seven and then moving on to the saxophone. He played in the high school band and joined the Oregon junior symphony. For college, Harris attended Portland State University and then Berklee College of Music in Boston where he earned a Master's Degree in music in 1976.\n\nBy his own account, Harris' early life was difficult. In an interview with Lewis Howes, Harris said, \"I grew up in a dysfunctional, broken home. I grew up pretty angry, difficult to get along with, rough around the edges, depressed a lot. But when I was 19, someone suggested I should meditate. I did that for 16 years and got deeply into that.\"\n\nIn addition to meditation, Harris was also a student of Dale Carnegie, and in the late '70s he began working as a life coach, teaching personal goal setting.  This would lead to an interest in other techniques for personal growth such as neurolinguistics and hypnosis, as well as further classes in meditation.\n\nDuring a class in \"high tech meditation\" with Master Charles Cannon in Virginia, Harris met fellow student Wes Wait. The two of them became interested in the idea of brain entrainment, the process of using audio signals to alter the listener's mind state. Back in Oregon, they started to experiment with the process, making tapes for their friends and trying it themselves as a form of enhanced meditation. According to Harris, the results were profound. \"All the anger I had sort of dissolved,\" Harris said. \"I had an infusion of mental clarity. I became more focused. People would come up and say, 'You seem so mellow.'\" With this initial positive feedback, Harris and Wait decided to found their own company called Centerpointe Research Institute in 1989 to market their Holosync technology.\n\nHarris proved adept at running a business, studying direct marketing and learning how to promote his business. One of Centerpointe's early promotional tools was a cassette that used Holosync called *Quietude* featuring flutes and nature sounds, with binaural beats embedded in the soundtrack. The tape featured Harris' music, though he wasn't credited on the release. Centerpointe followed that up with a three-cassette boxset called *The End Awakening* which was an audio version of Harris' personal growth program, and then another instrumental album *Oasis* in 1991. Harris then developed a second phase in the program, in which participants sent in affirmations in their own voice that Centerpointe added to customized tapes for them.\n\nAccording to Wait, Cannon believed that Holosync was infringing on his ideas and tried to sue. The suit was unsuccessful, but it caused Wait to leave the company. \"As it turns out, alpha pacing is public domain,\" Wait said. \"He was trying to cause us financial hardship. And I wasn't interested in that.\" Nevertheless, Harris forged ahead and turned Centerpointe into a million dollar company within a few years. \n\nCenterpointe continued to release personal growth albums in the ensuing years, though only the early cassettes were strictly musical. As the company grew, millions signed up for the courses and Harris became an in-demand speaker for workshops and seminars. He wrote his first book in 1992 *Managing Evolutionary Growth* which was a gift to participants in the second level of the program. He would later author another book called *Threshold of the Mind* in 2002.\n\nThroughout Centerpointe's growth, Harris still found time to play music, usually preferring to play jazz with his group the Bill Harris Quintet. In 2012 and 2013, his group released two albums on CD.\n\nHarris passed away in 2018 but the Centerpointe Research Institute is still active worldwide.\n\n**Sources:**\n- Bill Harris Memorial Video [Retrieved [here](https://www.holosync.com/bill-harris-memorial/bill-harris-memorial-video/)]\n- Author interview with Wes Wait, October 2020\n- \"How to Meditate Like a Zen Monk in a Fraction of the Time,\" The School of Greatness podcast. [Retrieved [here](https://lewishowes.com/podcast/bill-harris/)]\n- Harris, Bill. \"History of the Centerpointe Research Institute,\" 1999. [Retrieved [here](https://web.archive.org/web/19990428003637/http://centerpointe.com/about/history.html)]","discography":{"centerpointe-research-institute":{"albums":{"oasis":{"image":"","label":"Centerpointe Research Institute","review":"Billed as “the haunting sounds of a desert oasis,” this album features harmonic minor melodies with synthesized “flute” and “sitar,” with some nature sounds. Unfortunately, the instrument tones are grating and the arrangements reek of ethno-tourism. The other album is much better. ","title":"Oasis","year":"1991"},"quietude":{"image":"","label":"Centerpointe Research Institute","review":"Gentle flute solos (thankfully, it seems like a real flute this time), with light backing from synths and nature sounds. The  major downside is that this is either a repeating loop throughout or the playing is very repetitive. ","title":"Quietude","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":217,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bill-Harris-640.jpg?alt=media&token=01787b72-cdd0-4079-8dcb-bf7494fa5c10","last_name":"Centerpointe"},"charles-cohen":{"artist_name":"Charles Cohen","body":"For decades, Charles Cohen worked at Temple University as a sound engineer where he scored dance and theater performances, often in cohort with his musical partner Jeff Cain. The two of them sometimes performed as a musical duo under the name [Ghostwriters](/ghostwriters), producing two acclaimed and now highly sought after albums of left field ambient electronics. Cohen, who never referred to himself as a musician, loved to improvise on his Buchla, an inscrutable and unpredictable synth that perfectly suited his style. Towards the end of his life, Cohen finally earned more widespread recognition for his work, but at the same time also developed Parkinson's disease, perhaps contributing to poor decision making that resulted in his arrest in 2015 on charges of soliciting sex acts with a minor. He went to jail and died two years later in 2017.\n\nCharles Cohen was born in 1945 and grew up in Washington D.C. His father owned several small market radio stations and moved the family out to El Paso, Texas at some point in Cohen’s youth. According to Cohen's close friend and musical partner in the Ghostwriters, Jeff Cain, \"he was very mysterious about his family. He had an older brother but he wasn’t close to him at all. Charles was gay, but he didn't come out while he and his family were still connected.\"\n \nCohen had a mentor named Dave Hale who helped him get a job at Temple University in the late ‘60s. He worked there as a sound designer in the theater department and would remain in the role for decades.  Early on, Cohen also worked as a sound man for a club in Philadelphia called the Trauma where national acts like the Mothers of Invention and the Strawberry Alarm Clock played. The local psych band Mandrake Memorial was also a frequent live act there. Craig Anderton, who was a member of that band, met Cohen around this period and the two became friends.\n\nAfter Mandrake Memorial broke up in the early '70s, Cohen and Anderton formed a new project called Anomoli along with bass guitarist Jeff Cain. Anderton had already built some impressive electronics including a prototype drum machine and a homemade keyboard called the Modulator. The band incorporated these instruments into their experimental brew of homemade electronics, bass, processed guitar, oscillators and Theremin drenched in reverb.\n\nWhile he was at Temple, Cohen met the Group Motion Dance Company and Anomali began collaborating with them on some large scale, multi-media performances. Although Anomali never released any recordings, the three members contributed to Linda Cohen's two underrated experimental folk albums *Leda* and *Lake of Light* for Poppy, which Anderton produced. After this, Anderton relocated and published his first book *Electronic Projects for Musicians* in 1975. He later became the editor for *Polyphony.*\n\nAfter Anderton's departure, Cohen and Cain continued on with their music under the name Ghostwriters (see their [entry](/ghostwriters) for more info). The duo was a part of a larger performance arts scene based in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, putting out an EP and LP in the early '80s with the assistance of Gino Wong.  In addition to their albums, the duo played many live performances for modern dance, experimental theater and various other art projects throughout the decade. Cohen maintained his job as a sound designer for the Theater Department at Temple University while Cain occasionally worked on commissions to compose music for theater performances on his own.\n\nCohen and Cain had a unique partnership, with Cain providing a structural underpinning and melody while Cohen added unexpected textures and improvisations.  In their personal lives, Cain tended to be the organizer as well, but sympathetic to Cohen's quirks. \"He lived like a monk,\" Cain said. \"He ate health food and was not extravagant. He was very practical and conservative about spending money. He had a great sense of humor and a creative temperament. He was as far away from a 9-5 person as you can get. We used to do lecture demonstrations in school systems and we'd have to travel several hours to Allentown and have to get up at 5:30 am. Charles used to joke: 'Waking up early makes you stupid.'\"\n\nAround 1985, Ghostwriters were approached by producer Ray Monahan about doing an album with Mu-Psych, a new label focused on ambient relaxation music. The resulting album, *Remote Dreaming*, is considered their best, though it didn't sell well at the time and certainly wasn't marketed to their usual fanbase. Rob Kall, who ran Mu-Psych, had a background in bio-feedback and admits he was over his head trying to run a record label. However, the album's reputation has grown throughout the years and is now one of the most coveted and rare ambient releases of the '80s.\n\nIn 1988, Cohen finally put out an album of his own music, *Music for Dance and Theater* on [David Prescott's](/david-prescott) Generations Unlimited label. The cassette featured highlights from Cohen's musical work, some dating as far back as 1976. He followed this release up in 1989 with a cassette of a live performance, but that would be his last for several decades. According to Cain, Cohen was resistant to being classified as a musician. \"He had no musical training and was less inclined to compose music unless it was for a specific project,\" Cain said. \"He didn't think of himself as a composer in a traditional sense. But at the same time he was very dedicated to his craft. He didn't automatically think in terms of chords and measures and time frames. He also wasn’t necessarily driven to release recordings. He loved live improvisation and creating in the moment.\"\n\nCain moved away from Philadelphia in the late '80s, but he and Cohen occasionally still played music together. Meanwhile, Cohen started to phase out of his job at Temple. In 2011, Cohen was named a Pew Fellow by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage for his contributions to improvised and electronic music. Around 2012, Cohen came down with Parkinson's disease. In a perverse twist, his music was being rediscovered by collectors in Europe at the same time that he was getting sick. The label Morphine Records issued two archival albums of his '80s work, plus a reissue of *Music for Dance and Theater*. Cohen played shows in Europe to celebrate the releases and put out an album of new material in 2014. \n\nHowever, the next year Cohen was arrested on charges of soliciting sex acts with a minor in an undercover sting. He went to jail and died two years later in 2017. Cain believes that the medication Cohen was taking to deal with his Parkinson's may have clouded his judgment. \"The Charles I knew wasn't a predator. It appeared that he was lured into a sting and may have made some very bad choices.\"","discography":{"charles-cohen":{"albums":{"music-for-dance-and-theater":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"A variety of all- or mainly-electronic pieces which still sound a lot more like music than computer malfunctions. I especially liked the flipside, the score to \"Darwin in Chains,\" involving much experimentation with rhythms and a strong sense of musical continuity behind the experimentation. With one foot in tradition and the tools of the future, Cohen produces interesting and soothing music.\n\n(Mike Gunderloy, *Factsheet Five* #26, 1988)","title":"Music for Dance and Theater","year":"1988"},"the-learning-curve":{"image":"","label":"Generator","review":"","title":" The Learning Curve, 10.21.89","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":148,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Charles-Cohen-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=f448d070-cd3c-4b9c-bdbd-42f7e1c9e99c","last_name":"Cohen"},"charles-ditto":{"artist_name":"Charles Ditto","body":"Charles Ditto was already a professional musician by the time he self-released his first lp of delicate MIDI instrumentals *In Human Terms*. The album earned great reviews from magazines such as *Option*, *Electronic Musician* and *Jazziz*. Even the cranky Jim Aikin at *Keyboard Magazine* called it \"thoroughly delightful\" and \"highly recommended.\" Ditto followed it up with a somewhat different but again heralded lp of thoughtful electronic compositions, though sales were never strong enough for him to quit his regular band gigs. Ditto continued to release music on cassette and CD into the ‘90s, though with less critical notice. Ditto was re-discovered around 2016 when record collectors began buying up old stock copies of his records and reissue labels swooped in to give him the deluxe treatment.\n\nDitto was born in 1954 and raised in Houston, Texas. Both of his parents were musically talented. His mother was a pianist and his father was a rockabilly guitarist. Growing up, Ditto's house was filled with the sounds of opera, country, blues and folk. He started out playing clarinet and joined the school band, but later started playing keyboards too. In high school, he put together a garage band that played at friend’s parties.\n\nAfter high school, Ditto went to the University of Houston and majored in composition. On the side, Ditto formed a horn rock band with some of his friends called Eclipse. They were pretty successful locally, playing frat parties and bar mitzvahs with sets that included material from Styx, Chicago, Kansas, and other similar fare.\n\nDitto graduated in 1977 but kept going with Eclipse for a few more years until they ran out of gas. In 1980, Ditto headed to Austin in search of new opportunities and a more robust music scene. He soon found a job playing piano for the T. Gozney band, a renegade country outfit that performed a mix of originals and covers. \"I lived for 25 years off the income from bands,\" Ditto said. \"With the T. Gozney band, we would go up to Wyoming and play at snow resorts. We’d live like kings and get free ski passes. I learned how to ski like a master.\"\n\nAfter five years with the T. Gozney band, Ditto hooked up with the legendary rockabilly band the Vanguards and played with them for a couple years. He also got a regular gig as the live pianist at a vegetarian restaurant called Mother's and played for dance classes affiliated with the university.  His first cassette release included many of his piano instrumentals from this period, but he soon shifted his focus to the new MIDI technology he'd been hearing about.\n\n\"In the old days I had to write all my music out and get people together to perform,\" Ditto recalled, still sounding like an eager convert. \"This was a new thing, MIDI music. I could be a composer and write all of these parts like an orchestra, but it’s only me on my free time doing it electronically.\" Using his new equipment, Ditto began work on an album inspired by Brian Eno and Steve Reich, two artists who’d made a big impact on him in the prior few years. \"*Music for Airports* changed my perception,\" Ditto said.  \"I was into prog rock before and when that came out it changed my psyche. I thought 'You can do that?' That opened up a whole world of similar things.”\n\nDuring his downtime between gigs with the Vanguards, Ditto became intensely focused on his new atmospheric and rhythmic pieces which he envisioned as a \"pop deconstruction.\" Elaborating, Ditto continues, \"I was building on the Residents model. They had a heavy impact on me too. They could take three notes and turn it into a symphony. I wanted to do the opposite of that: the simplest pop artifacts turned into minimalist daydreams. Sit back, fire it up, and relax.\"\n\nDitto sent his completed album around to labels at the time like ECM and Narada, but never got a word back. So he released it himself, pressing 500 copies on LP and cassette and sending it to college radio. To his delight, it got a fair amount of radio play and earned accolades from all the major magazines that reviewed electronic music at the time.\n\nDitto began working on his second album a year later. With the positive response to his first release, he doubled the pressing size to 1000 copies for the lp, and again pressed 500 tapes. \"I was so sure the second would be better than the first,\" Ditto said. \"I was really proud of that one too, but I got a little distracted by electronic hype. The chugging guitar rhythms, that was a mistake. But *Texas Electric* has some great moments that transcend the first record. Some of my favorite stuff is on that album.\" \n\nLike its predecessor, *Texas Electric* got great reviews across the board, this time from an even larger number of outlets. But sales were slow. \"You spend all your money, you go into debt, you perform and you try to sell it – but nobody is interested,\" Ditto mused. \"I had to move on. I thought I’ll just start playing more. In 1990, I scored a gig with an up and coming country star, Kevin Fowler. I got into country because it pays well, there's consistent gigs, the musicians are excellent, and you don't have to rehearse much.”\n\nAt the same time, Ditto went back to grad school to continues his music studies at the University of Texas in Austin, eventually earning a doctorate. Meanwhile, he continued to record new music, contributing tracks to the compilations *Charmed* and *What?!*. He also went on to release new cassettes of his originals such as *Hypertronics* (1991) and *The Way of All Peach* (1992).\n\nIn the later '90s, after getting his doctorate, Ditto started teaching music theory classes at Texas State in San Marcos. He soon became a full time teacher. “Teaching that first class was so fucking fun,\" Ditto said. \"I quit all my gigs and took a drastic pay cut to go legit at the college. But, boy, I have never looked back.\"\n\nAround 2016, Ditto began to hear from record collectors who were interested in his first album.  Vendors like Séance Centre started selling the old stock, and the No Obi No Insert YouTube channel posted his decades-old music online. The records started selling for hundreds of dollars and then completely sold out. \"I thought it was all dead,\" Ditto said. \"I was giving the records away before that.\"","discography":{"charles-ditto":{"albums":{"hypertronics":{"image":"","label":"Hypertonia","review":"","title":"Hypertronics","year":"1991"},"in-human-terms":{"image":"","label":"Ditto","review":"Despite what his name may suggest, Charles Ditto makes a most unique form of synth music that, whilst being melodic and tuneful, is so difficult to describe or pin down analytically. What makes Ditto’s music so strikingly different is his overt use of emotion, very descriptive melodies and deep atmosphere. The emotional aspect is split upon two levels, one per side. High side displays jollity, happiness and humor. One could compare parts to the Residents but Ditto avoids any silliness and keeps any humorous melodies at a purely whimsical level. Low side portrays melancholy, though not the morbid depressing kind, more a mood of self-assessment and meditation. The music here is far stranger, slightly deranged probably, but always melodic. The addition of some very sad sounding sax phrasing on two tracks add to this moody music perfectly. So, *In Human Terms* is in fact just that, very human and emotional, deep and different music, that imparts a genuine listening experience.\n\n(Alan Freeman, *Audion* #9, 1988)\n","title":"In Human Terms","year":"1987"},"texas-electric":{"image":"","label":"Ditto","review":"Charles Ditto does something very right with his brand of electronic music. His miniature soundscapes are reminiscent of Jon Hassell’s Fourth Worldisms, [J. Greinke’s](/Jeff-greinke) other-worldly vision, [K. Leimer’s](/kerry-leimer) pristine colors and textures, and Ryuchi Sakamoto’s more experimental side, yet Ditto's sound is his own. His music has a distinctly American quality, easily appreciable, if difficult to pinpoint. Each side of the record has its own character. The so-called *Garage Side* presents the darker, less refined, more quirky aspect of Ditto's musical personality, while the *Parlor Side* is cleaner, with brilliant colors and lush textures. In either case, Ditto's music is quite appealing.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, *EAR*, June 1990)\n\n","title":"Texas Electric","year":"1989"},"the-cherries-are-ripe-now":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Cherries Are Ripe Now","year":"1984"},"the-fantoccini-chronicles":{"image":"","label":"Ditto","review":"","title":"The Fantoccini Chronicles","year":"1994"},"the-way-of-all-peach":{"image":"","label":"Ditto","review":"","title":"The Way of All Peach","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":129,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Charles-Ditto-640.jpg?alt=media&token=cecd19ef-82ee-4c74-8968-e034c503777e","last_name":"Ditto"},"charles-esposito":{"artist_name":"Charles Esposito","body":"Charles Esposito is a New York art school graduate who gravitated to music in the '80s, putting out five albums of percussive ambient music plus some soundtracks to local plays. Two of the tapes were reviewed by Robert Carlberg in *Electronic Musician*, with an especially nice review for *Heart Skips a Beat* that helped Esposito sell an estimated 500 copies, his best seller. Esposito has been based in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts since moving there in 1975 with his prior band, the surrealist folk trio Mr. Timothy Charles Duane.\n\nEsposito was born in Brooklyn in 1949. Although he took clarinet lessons for a while, it was art and drawing that he most loved. He especially loved the Dick Tracy comic strip which he dreamed of someday taking over. By his teens, Esposito started getting into the Beatles and taught himself to play piano along with their records. Soon, he joined a local garage band, The Shades, playing sax and organ.\n\nWhile attending college at SVA in Manhattan, Esposito got into photorealism and conceptual art.  He tried applying the latter to his music as well, forming an acoustic trio with school pals Duane Spencer and Timothy Maxwell called [Mr. Timothy Charles Duane](https://mrtcd.bandcamp.com/releases). The band ultimately stayed together for ten years, creating a strange body of work that seems to draw a strong influence from the Beach Boys *Smiley Smile* era with its harmony vocals and surrealist lyrics.\n\nEsposito worked his way through college and early adulthood at a series of factory jobs, including stints at a record pressing plant, a plastic bag factory, and an artificial flavor factory. After graduating from school in 1971, Esposito tried to break into the commercial art world as an illustrator. However, the career never quite jelled with him and he pivoted to audio engineering instead. \"My parents got me a Sears Silvertone mono tape machine when I was 13, so I had always been recording,\" Esposito said. \"I knew where to put a mic to record a guitar amp or a drum set. So in 1974 I got a four track and brought that to Martha’s Vineyard to record our album. And we never left. The Vineyard was off the grid and it was beautiful.\"\n\nSoon after arriving, Esposito got a job working at the Black Dog, a restaurant that would later become known for its ubiquitous t-shirts seemingly bought by every tourist who visited. Esposito worked as a cook, manager, and co-writer and illustrator for *The Black Dog Cookbook*. While there, he also began assembling a recording studio on the side that he called Audiolutions. He would eventually turn this into a full time job by the late ‘80s when he became one of the go-to studios on the island for musicians and voiceover artists.\n\nEsposito naturally used his studio to record his own material, much of which was influenced by Brian Eno and the Talking Heads. \"They were a big influence for my first tape,\" Esposito said. \"I loved Eno's art school approach. He was doing what I was doing: making paintings with sound. I had an Arp odyssey and a four-track.  For the songs I would set up rules and parameters, like this piece will be four minutes long and at this tempo, then building up layers based on that. I always wanted to keep the first take. I thought of it like doing a watercolor, if I started with blue I would be stuck with that blue. And I loved all the randomness and accidental moments.\"\n\nEsposito's first cassette, *Walking Towards the Meridian*, was mostly sold locally, but after people seemed to like it, he decided to send out his second tape to critics. That tape earned a positive notice in *Electronic Musician* which compared his music to gamelan, and orders began trickling in from all over the world.  Esposito bought his own dubbing decks and churned out tape copies that he sold through mailorder for many years. Strangely, Esposito recalls getting huge orders from one store in Yellow Springs, OH, the home of Antioch college. \"I have no clue why but they were selling a lot of my tapes,\" Esposito said.\n\n*Heart Skips a Beat*, Esposito’s third cassette, got the best review of his career from *Electronic Musician*. Writer Robert Carlberg said it was \"much stronger\" than *In Real Time* and called it \"too good to ignore.\" The notice helped Esposito sell close to 500 copies, a strong number for someone with few live shows and zero distribution. \"That album just fell together,\" Esposito said. \"I was pretty impressed by how my cheap Yamaha keyboards and Seil DK600 sounded on my four track recording. And then people heard that and wanted me to record their band or album.\" With his newfound income, Esposito upgraded to a new eight track recorder that he used for his next two tapes.\n\nAfter his final album *Ghost Photo*, Esposito's studio business picked up to the point that he could rent a commercial space in town and move his studio out of his living room. His most high-profile engineering project was recording the *Mouse* soundtrack with Jonathan Edwards, and many movie trailer voiceovers with legend Hal Douglas. In 1997, Hal arranged for his studio to be wired with ISDN which allowed him to connect worldwide with other ISDN equipped studios. \n\nIn the later '90s, Esposito had less time to spend on his own music, though he did contribute music for some local theater productions such as *Snow Queen* and he produced limited tape runs for some of those as well.  However, his studio business slowed down by the following decade and Esposito pivoted to a job as the director of The Martha's Vineyard Performing Arts Center where he still works today. During the school year, he is in charge of all events, running lights and sound, and mentoring some students in theater/sound tech and stage design. During the Summer, The MV PAC is booked with national music and theater acts, dance performances, and two film festivals. He currently lives in Vineyard Haven where he's working on his home studio.","discography":{"charles-esposito":{"albums":{"1-walking-towards-the-meridian":{"image":"","label":"Audiolutions","review":"On his debut, Esposito's sound arrives fully baked: budget FM synths, percussive melody lines, worldbeat rhythms a la Byrne/Eno, and a relaxed, playful attitude. The album doesn't always rise above mood music and the songs blur together somewhat, but it's such a good formula that it's hard to complain. Esposito's quieter pieces are the stand-outs, as with the pensive \"Andrea,\" while others get by on pure vibe such as the Wally Badarou-like \"Islands\" with its funky bass and sun-baked rhythm.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Walking Towards the Meridian","year":"1987"},"2-in-real-time":{"image":"","label":"Audiolutions","review":"Esposito takes a step forward with *In Real Time*, abstracting the worldbeat influences and bringing his melody lines to the fore even as the implied rhythms keep the songs welded in place. The newfound melodic emphasis makes the lack of hooks more apparent here, and some tracks like \"Fairway Market\" push their repetition into navel-gazing trance at times. Still, Esposito's good taste keeps the set enjoyable, shining especially bright on introspective ballads like the lovely \"Solstice\" which seems to suspend time. Overall, I'm reminded of [Daniel Crommie](/daniel-crommie)'s off-kilter kineticism, though I doubt Esposito had ever heard of Crommie at the time. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"In Real Time","year":"1987"},"body-on-water":{"image":"","label":"Audiolutions","review":"Hearing *Body on Water* is like returning from summer camp in sixth grade to find your best friend has now discovered girls. The album is instantly recognizable as Esposito, but more experimental and refined. Of course, some of his trick shots result in airballs like \"India Piece,\" with its swirl of bongo drums and mosquito-like leads that start out promising but quickly becoming annoying. But the rest shows just how skilled Esposito has become at creating broadly-appealing instrumental tracks like \"All 1\" or the softly psychedelic \"Fire Water Wood.\" \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Body on Water","year":"1989"},"ghost-photo":{"image":"","label":"Audiolutions","review":"Esposito's final album collects three years' worth of diverse tracks in what he calls \"A Musical Journal.\" As you might expect with that subtitle, the songs are best approached as disparate works vs. a cohesive statement. About half of the tracks share DNA with his previous album *Body on Water*, such as the ambient \"Piano In Circles\", the dubbed-out drum storm of \"Lucky Seven,\" or the hypnotic \"The Exception and the Rule.\" However, other tracks veer off in entirely new directions like the smoky jazz of \"Java\" or the series of theater pieces from *Antigone* that replace his usual rhythmic invention with arpeggiated guitars. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Ghost Photo","year":"1991"},"heart-skips-a-beat":{"image":"","label":"Audiolutions","review":"The pinnacle of Esposito's earlier work, *Heart Skips a Beat* brings more memorable tunes, a shiny-hi-fi recording, and a newfound swagger as Esposito churns through the gentle, yet funky, art school jams now familiar to his listeners. Standouts include \"Hand Dance\" which sounds like the Doogie Howser theme played on a digital kalimba; the stereophonic new age exotica of \"City of Brick\"; and the blissed-out jam \"Point of View\" which is best heard while driving a convertible in a video game circa 1987. Fans of [Michele Mercure](/michele-mercure-musser), [Charles Ditto](/charles-ditto), or later [Kerry Leimer](/kerry-leimer) should add this to their want list ASAP.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Heart Skips a Beat","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":194,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Charlie-Esposito-534.jpg?alt=media&token=2037b8e6-0b6d-448f-83c6-6c8128bb6153","last_name":"Esposito"},"charles-lloyd":{"artist_name":"Charles Lloyd","body":"Charles Lloyd was a popular west coast jazz musician who experimented with global influences and crossed over to rock audiences in the late '60s with live gigs at the Fillmore West opening for Janis Joplin, the Grass Roots and Vanilla Fudge. In the '70s, he took a hiatus to focus on meditation and personal growth, spending time with fellow TM practitioners Mike Love and Al Jardine while performing with the Beach Boys as a sideman. After a decade in Big Sur, Lloyd put out two albums in 1979 that showcased a more meditative and spacious sound which have long been a staple of new age collections. Both albums featured musicians who would later become big names in the genre: Patrick O'Hearn and [Mark Isham](/mark-isham) on *Pathless Path* and [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly) on *Big Sur Tapestry*.\n\nBorn in 1938, Charles Lloyd grew up in Memphis and started playing the saxophone at the age of nine. He learned to play jazz and blues in his teens and then attended college at USC where he continued to study music. At night he spent time at jazz clubs, jamming with Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman among others, and after graduation, he joined Chico Hamilton's group.\n\nIn the '60s, Lloyd would hit his commercial peak. After serving as musical director for two of Chico Hamilton's albums *Passin Thru* and *Man of Two Worlds*, Lloyd moved to New York and joined Cannonball Adderley's band. During that time, he met many of the biggest jazz stars such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. After a few years with Adderley, Lloyd was ready to be a bandleader and put out two albums with Columbia, though neither sold well. His big break came with a new quartet he formed with Jack De Johnette, Cecil McBee, and Keith Jarrett. The group was invited to play at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and the subsequent live album from the show, *Forest Flower* was a big hit with the hippie counterculture, eventually selling a million copies. More albums followed, and Lloyd's band was a frequent attraction at the more rock-oriented Fillmore West.\n\nIn the '70s, Lloyd retreated from the world of jazz and spent most of his time in Big Sur on an inner journey for something beyond the world of jazz and rock. Llloyd had been practicing transcendental meditation since living in New York, and became a vegetarian too. He didn't stop playing music, instead choosing to be a sideman with the Beach Boys for live shows and on albums like *Holland.* Towards the end of the decade, Lloyd began issuing albums again, including two that showed a strong influence of new age: *pathless Path* and *Big Sur Tapestry*.\n\nLloyd returned to the jazz scene in the '80s, playing often with pianist Michel Petrucciani and eventually signing to ECM, a label he seemed destined to record for all along.  He spend three decades there, putting out over a dozen critically acclaimed albums. He now records for Blue Note.","discography":{"charles-lloyd":{"albums":{"big-sur-tapestry":{"image":"","label":"Pacific Arts","review":"","title":"Big Sur Tapestry","year":"1979"},"pathless-path":{"image":"","label":"Unity","review":"*Pathless Path* is a minor classic of meditative jazz that featured two key players of the '80s new age boom, Patrick O'Hearn and [Mark Isham](/mark-isham), years before either was well-known (outside of Zappa heads of course). These two musicians and others provide a diverse and sympathetic backdrop of koto, synth, percussion and guitar while highlighting Lloyd's introspective solos on flute and sax. While new age can often feel insular and introspective, the small group settings feel distinctly alive and organic.\n\nOn the album's key tracks (\"Pathless Path\", \"Koto\", \"Agni\"), the mood is mysterious and minor key, while shorter pieces like \"Dancin' Water\" nod to the Windham Hill wing of Americana. Throughout, Lloyd gives plenty of space to the supporting players, especially O'Hearns' melodic bass lines on the James-Bond-ish title track, Peter Maunu's acoustic guitar on \"Pole Star,\" or Mara Purl's koto on the aptly titled \"Koto.\" \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2025)","title":"Pathless Path","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"Charles Lloyd","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":338,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chalres-lloyd-450.jpeg?alt=media&token=70d581a7-92c5-48f1-ba03-5d15e40395cb","last_name":"Lloyd"},"charley-thweatt":{"artist_name":"Charley Thweatt","body":"Charley Thweatt is a singer/songwriter who aims to \"awaken the listener's heart and teach them with peace.\" He started touring with Oman and Shanti in the early '80s, often playing at workshops, retreats, and Unity churches all over the country. During this time, he released two solo piano albums intended for the relaxation market, and these are probably the most relevant to readers of this site. In 1999, Thweatt issued the third installment in his solo piano series called *Piano Passions* though that falls outside the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1952, Charley Thweatt grew up in Houston, Texas. He was the oldest child, with two younger sisters and a brother. His father played trombone and his mother was in a vocal group in college; Thweatt recalls the whole family singing in the station wagon on vacation. He loved folk music -- an early favorite was Peter, Paul and Mary, soon followed by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Byrds. Thweatt took up the piano at the age of ten but he didn't like formal lessons much and mostly learned how to play by ear. Then he moved on to the guitar and joined a garage band.\n\nThweatt attended the University of Texas in Austin for college, earning his degree in architecture.  He landed a job after graduation, but started to feel like he wanted something more. He credits his initial inspiration to Ram Dass' book *Be Here Now*, as well as *Handbook to Higher Consciousness* by Dass disciple Ken Keyes. Continuing his spiritual quest, Thweatt spent some time with a meditation group in Boulder, Colorado, and then followed them to Santa Cruz, California in the late '70s. By the time he got back to Houston and returned to his day job, he wanted out. \"I was going to be a normal person,\" Thweatt remembered. \"But after three years of experience in architecture, I said, this is not me. I felt like I was on a Monopoly board going around in circles for the rest of my life.\" \n\nThweatt quit his job and started writing songs about his inner journey. He found a receptive audience at the local Unity church in Houston and started collaborating with a husband and wife duo called Oman and Shanti. The trio started touring around to other unity churches and spiritual gatherings across the U.S., and Thweatt continued to work on solo material as well.  A year earlier, he'd recorded a batch of songs that he released as his debut album, *Heavenly Angels* on his own label Angelight Music. The tape got good distribution and sold well. Thweatt's career was off and running.\n\nOver the next few years, Thweatt released an album with Oman and Shanti, as well as a new singer/songwriter album with spiritual themes called *Life on the Planet Earth is Fun* in 1983. The following year, he tried something new, putting out an album of piano instrumentals with the in-joke title *Piano Means Soft*. The album was a bid for the solo piano relaxation market popularized by George Winston and Steven Halpern, but sales were slower than his other work.\n\nIn 1985, Oman, Shanti, and Thweatt relocated to San Diego, California. However, the group broke up shortly after when Oman and Shanti's marriage fell apart. Thweatt stayed in San Diego and worked on his own music, issuing another album of piano instrumentals in 1986 called *Piano Whispers*.  That album sold better than *Piano Means Soft* and Thweatt began to stake out a career on his own without Oman and Shanti.\n\nOver the next three decades, Thweatt made a living from his uplifting folk songs, playing at workshops, church events, and relationship retreats, sometimes opening for inspirational speakers such as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, and Tony Robbins. He also worked as a life coach and conducted tours of Italy with his students. His website can be found [here]( https://www.musicangel.com/) for more on his current and past work.","discography":{"charley-thweatt":{"albums":{"piano-means-soft":{"image":"","label":"Angelight Music","review":"","title":"Piano Means Soft","year":"1984"},"piano-whispers":{"image":"","label":"Angelight Music","review":"","title":"Piano Whispers","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":224,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Charley-Thweatt-640.jpg?alt=media&token=aa1b47ea-7426-4b06-8af9-4a5b0b142fff","last_name":"Thweatt"},"chas-smith":{"artist_name":"Chas Smith","body":"Based in Los Angeles, Chas Smith started out as a pedal-steel player affiliated with the area's underground ambient labels Cold Blue and Trance Port. In addition to two unique solo albums in the '80s, Smith also appeared on releases by [Harold Budd](/harold-budd) and [A Produce](/a-produce) before becoming a frequent contributor to film scores in the '90s and beyond. Smith had worked as a welder starting in the '70s and would go on to build his own instruments such as a chime made of aluminum tubes (that he used on his 1987 release *Nakadai*) and the \"Boss Tweed\" made of scrap metal.  Smith entered a more prolific stretch of ambient music making in the early 2000s starting with *Nikko*, often featuring his own instruments more prominently. \n\nBorn in 1948, Smith grew up in Hardwick, Massachusetts and started playing the piano when he was eight. As a teenager, he heard Link Wray's \"Rumble\" and switched to guitar and soon was playing in various local rock bands. In the early '70s, Smith was so inspired by Morton Subotnick's electronic album *Silver Apples on the Moon* that he decided to attend Cal Arts where Subotnick taught. Smith went on to earn a BFA in 1975, followed by an MFA in 1977, in addition to private study with Mel Powell, James Tenney, and Earl Brown.\n\nHarold Budd, who was also a teacher at Cal Arts would became a pivotal influence on Smith, helping to put him on the map when he brought him to play pedal steel on *The Serpent (In Quicksilver)* in 1981 and influencing his musical direction. By then, Smith had became a professional welder, finding a place in the entertainment industry building camera rigs. However, he recalls that he often worked 100 hr weeks, leading to relatively light musical output at the time.\n\nIn the '90s, Smith became a regular contributor to film soundtracks, often playing pedal steel with composer Thomas Newman on films such as *The Shawshank Redemption* and *American Beauty*. In 2000, Smith returned to the label Cold Blue to release five albums, often centering his music around instruments of his own design. Smith passed away in 2024.\n","discography":{"chas-smith":{"albums":{"nakadai":{"image":"","label":"Arc Light","review":"","title":"Nakadai","year":"1987"},"santa-fe":{"image":"","label":"Cold Blue","review":"","title":"Santa Fe","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Chas Smith","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":402,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chassmith-640.jpg?alt=media&token=04072927-d4d6-4d6b-855a-c5f7c6c9c3c6","last_name":"Smith"},"chazz":{"artist_name":"Chazz","body":"Based in Tennessee, Chazz was a new age musician active in the late '80s and early '90s, producing four instrumental albums on his own Mystic Music label, plus one guided meditation tape featuring previously released tracks. According to his wife Kimberly, who helped run their label, they sold a few thousand copies across the entire discography. The couple's main income came from Chazz's piano repair business which he ran from the late '70s until 2007. Chazz passed away in 2020.\n\nBorn Charles Kerr in 1951, Chazz was a nickname that would later become the pseudonym for his musical new age project he launched in the late '80s. But long before that, he was a teenage guitarist in his trio Cold Sweat, opening for popular bands in Miami, Florida where he grew up. His musical career hit a snag when he got married at 18 and had his first child. The marriage didn't last but his parental duties meant there was far less time for music.\n\nKerr married again in 1976 to Kimberly and the two moved to Detroit where Kerr worked briefly as a recording engineer and producer at a small studio. However, nothing panned out and the couple returned to Florida, settling in Pensacola for the next five years. Kerr was a natural entrepreneur and hit on the idea to set up shop as a piano technician, repairing and tuning old pianos. He would continue in this line of work until his retirement in 2007.\n\nIn the early '80s, Kerr and his wife moved to Taft, Tennessee, and bought a farm. They built their own house and raised cattle, but Kerr continued to tinker with songwriting and recording. Through a producer friend in Nashville, Kerr heard about the rising popularity of new age and decided to get in on the action. He already had a home studio and he put together his first album *New Age* in 1987 (which he would later retitle *A Time to Dream*.)\n\nFor his second album, Kerr went in a different direction, trying a more upbeat and jazzy sound for *Make Happy*. However, according to his wife Kim, reviews were less favorable than the debut and it was not a great seller. Kerr refined the mellower sound of his debut on his third album *Refuge* which caught the ear of Ruby Rahn who planned to release it on Scarlet records before her label went under. Chazz  ended up releasing it himself, but it felt like a missed opportunity. In the same year, Chazz also released a guided meditation album with Peter Rosen using tracks from his previous three albums (*Old Magic*).\n\nKerr continued to market his music, but he struggled to keep up with the new technology needed with synths and computers. He released one last album in 1993 (*Escape*) and then decided to move on. \n\nIn the ensuing years, Kerr continued to work on his piano business and work on music at night. \"He was a Leo all the way through,\" his wife Kim recalled. \"He was happy to be all alone on the farm with his cattle, but he could also be in front of a thousand people and light up the room. His persona was huge, but he was very calm. Kids flocked around him like the pied piper.\" Kerr passed away in 2020.\n\n","discography":{"chazz":{"albums":{"escape":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Music","review":"Escape builds on the sound of *Refuge* with plentiful nature sounds and Chazz’s ersatz instruments (those “oboes” still aren’t convincing me) but the elegantly arranged tunes help smooth over these quibbles. Some acoustic blues guitar makes an appearance, but most of this is pastoral new age that could be playing at your local Hallmark store or incense shop with nary a raised eyebrow.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Escape","year":"1993"},"make-happy":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chazz-make-happy-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=9b28f873-b7c3-43ef-b554-938c06a57a52","label":"Mystic Music","review":"After a pretty solid debut, Chazz turns up the cheese factor to ten on his second album *Make Happy*, which is a series of genre experiments that flirt with jazz, funk, and synth-pop. Chazz is obviously talented, but his choice of synth sounds is dubious, using emulations of pan pipes, slap bass, English horns and cellos that are not even remotely convincing. On his debut, he was able to overcome his limited technology with thoughtfully written and arranged new age pieces that sustained a meditative mood. Here, however, the stated intent is “a wide variety of happy sounds!” so even when a track such as the piano-driven \"Sweet Earthwine\" starts off in a meditative mood, it soon evolves into inspirational music akin to an '80s kids' commercial. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Make Happy","year":"1988"},"new-age":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Music","review":"Chazz gives new age a good name. An incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist, he centers each of these six compositions on a single instrument, accompanied by a gentle wash of chimes, bells, choirs and environmental sounds. “Keys to Sanity” begins the tape with an exquisite flute solo, “Majic Music” feature acoustic 12 string guitars, and “Timeless Tunnel” is anchored by an elegant pairing of grand piano and electric harp. Side two follows these arrangements closely, with the addition of Gregorian chants in “Requiem of Deeper Dimensions.” Everything is woven together with sonically pure recordings of songbirds, waterfalls and rain - it’s really kind of fun catching the occasional bird chirp as the notes decay.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option* May/June, 1989)\n\nNote: This album was retitled *A Time to Dream* soon after the first release.","title":"New Age","year":"1987"},"old-magic":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Music","review":"","title":"Old Magic","year":"1990"},"refuge":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Music","review":"Refuge returns to the meditative sound of Chazz’s debut, but with a more refined palette and compositions. The first side features shorter pieces built on digitally emulated organic instruments like strings, piano, and oboe, plus some acoustic guitar. However, it is the sidelong title track on side two that is the star of the show, harking back to the Zen-like sound of early Valley of the Sun classics like David Naegele’s *Temple in the Forest* with its time-honored combo of extended pentatonic piano improv and the sounds of a flowing creek.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Refuge","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":318,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chazz-640-mod.jpg?alt=media&token=8ea480e4-1b3b-4a09-8431-785d116cca61&_gl=1*1ekao2*_ga*MTk3MDM4OTE1NS4xNjg1NTcwMjMz*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY4NTg5MTc0Ny4xMC4xLjE2ODU4OTE3NjguMC4wLjA.","last_name":"Chazz"},"chel-white":{"artist_name":"Chel White","body":"Although mostly known as an experimental film maker, animator and visual effects supervisor, Chel White also has a small body of musical work. He started out on drums during college at Antioch, then put out his first cassette as part of the minimal synth duo Process Blue in 1982. After college he moved to Portland, Oregon where he released a seldom seen cassette called *The Key of Dreams* in 1986 that shows an influence from Kraftwerk and early industrial bands like Cabaret Voltaire. He also composed music for many of his early short films such as *Metal Dogs of India*, *Machine Song*, and *Photocopy Cha Cha*.\n\nChel White was born in 1959 in Kansas City, Missouri. His parents were students at the time so the family moved around to cities such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, Stockholm, and Boulder, Colorado as they got their various degrees. They eventually wound up in Evanston, Illinois where his father got a job teaching at Northwestern and his mother worked as a schoolteacher. White started playing percussion in eighth grade and became fascinated with unusual time signatures and syncopated rhythms. A couple years later he discovered avant-garde film, the aesthetics of which informed his own filmmaking and later his music. \n\nAt the end of his Freshman year at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, White bought a $350 drum kit and taught himself how to play. A year later he joined a four-piece band called The Black-Outs with John Flansburgh, later of They Might Be Giants. According to White, about half of the band’s repertoire was covers and the rest was originals, with some by Flansburgh. The Black-Outs lasted less than a year but White and Flansburgh lived in the same dormitory and shared a keen interest in alternative music, listening to such albums as the Residents’ *Commercial Album* and 1980’s [*Miniatures: A Sequence of 51 Tiny Masterpieces*](https://www.discogs.com/Various-Miniatures-A-Sequence-Of-Fifty-One-Tiny-Masterpieces-Edited-By-Morgan-Fisher/release/347586). They continued to collaborate sporadically on each other’s musical projects.\n\nFlansburgh left Antioch a year later, and White formed a new band called Process Blue with musician Dan Gediman.  They both wrote songs, with Gediman’s pieces more in a synth pop mode whereas White’s work was more abstract and experimental with lots of tape manipulation.  During this time White was working in various factories to help pay his college tuition, and the mechanical ambient sounds of this industrial setting were an inspiration for his music, as were bands like Kraftwerk, Chris & Cosey and Cabaret Voltaire.\n\nIn 1982, Process Blue released their self-titled cassette album and pressed 100 copies. They sent some to press and radio stations, and a French label wound up using a song on the now sought after compilation *Alternative Funk: Folie Distinguee*. (More recently, record collectors rediscovered Process Blue via that compilation, and Dark Entries reissued the music on vinyl in 2018). Once he graduated from Antioch with a degree in visual arts, White moved to San Francisco for a year and then settled in Portland, Oregon by 1985.\n \nOnce in Portland, White began working as a professional animator, while also creating films of his own such as “Metal Dogs of India” (1985) and *Machine Song*(1987), both of which used his own musical compositions as the soundtracks. He recorded the music at home on a four track along with an open reel tape deck that he used for tape manipulation. Much of the music was created in a similar fashion as his movies. “I would usually record things in a somewhat linear fashion and then pull it apart, break it down into smaller pieces and put it back together,” White said. “To some degree it was akin to filmmaking where editing is a key component.” He completed a cassette in 1986 called *Key of Dreams* and got a review in Option, but says he barely sold any copies. “I think I sold maybe 4 tapes and gave out about 10. I realized I only liked about half of the tracks on 'Key of Dreams’, so I didn’t pursue it that much.” He later made a shorter version of the tape with a pink cover, but that again was scarcely distributed either.\n \nBy the early ‘90s, White’s career was blossoming. He began a relationship with Portland director Gus Van Sant starting with the film *My Own Private Idaho*, crafting visual effects for a memorable scene of a barn falling out of the sky. He was still writing his own music, though now only as soundtracks, such as the score to his own 1991 short *Photocopy Cha Cha* which remains a festival and repertory favorite. He contributed music to other films during this time, such as the Oscar winning short *Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase* and the feature *Bucksville*. White was  directing by this time too, creating videos for the Melvins (“Hooch”) and Candlebox (“Change”) among others. \n \nWhite’s busy film career meant he had much less time for music, and he largely abandoned music making until 2006 when he started up again using digital recording tools. In the meantime, he continued to write screenplays, direct films and commercials, and work with Gus Van Sant as a visual effects supervisor on many of his films. In 2001, he started his own company called Bent Image Lab. Since then, White has directed music videos for Thom Yorke and David Lynch. \n\nA handful of White’s early recordings from *Key of Dreams*, a couple of his soundtracks and a few unreleased songs were collected in 2019 on a compilation called *Automaton* on Platform 23 records. White currently lives in Portland, Oregon. ","discography":{"marc-barreca":{"albums":{"in-a-foreign-land":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"The Key of Dreams","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":138,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chel-White-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c8cb06c5-b973-4f4d-8251-5dcdd6fd1c3a","last_name":"White"},"chris-martin":{"artist_name":"Chris Martin","body":"Chris Martin was a classically trained pianist based in Chicago whose sole ambient release was the cassette-only release *Massage* in 1993.  His sister was a massage therapist at the time and gave him the idea to do something in a more ambient style. Martin primarily worked as a hotel pianist at the Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons. Martin got his BA in piano performance at the Amercian Conservatory of Music in 1966.\n\nMartin's self-released album *Massage* sold only a few hundred copies in his estimation, but it did have its admirers. \"The B side wasn't very good,\" Martin admits. \"There was some really great flute music on [side B track] 'Deep Blue' over an undulating synth bed. The guy on flute was one of the Chicago area's best wind instrument players. But 'Massage,' a 30 minute piece, generated some fan mail for me. People said it was the best sleep aid they had ever come across. One guy said that when he put the tape on, his cat would jump on the bed. Other people used it for their children's naps.\"","discography":{"chris-martin":{"albums":{"massage":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Massage","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":132,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chris-Martin-600.jpg?alt=media&token=5aa10bf4-c2f4-4c78-be09-918a74e8e318","last_name":"Martin"},"chris-snidow":{"artist_name":"Chris Snidow","body":"Chris Snidow was a Dallas musician who spent 15 years as a touring rock drummer and guitarist before reinventing himself as a new age artist playing uptempo electronic music in the vein of Yanni, Synergy, or Vangelis. His energetic, rock-influenced music often drew on Christian or spiritual themes, and his work garnered strong accolades at the time from outlets like *Heartsong Review*, *Dreams Word* and *i/e*.\n\nSnidow was born in Virginia in 1948 and raised Methodist in Dallas, Texas. His father was a musician and insurance salesman and his mother was a home maker. Snidow was in the marching band in high school and then transitioned to playing drums at the age of 16. Soon after that, he joined a succession of gigging bands over the next two decades, though none ever recorded anything besides scattered demos or singles.\n \nSnidow’s first brush with success was the [Menerals](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1413203-The-Menerals), a popular garage combo who sometimes appeared on the local *Sump'n Else* TV show.  They even won a  Battle of the Bands contest in 1966.  They did one recording session that yielded a cover of \"My Flash on You\" by Love, but it wasn't released at the time (it was later comped on *Texas Flashbacks Vol. 1* and others). \n \nThrough his connections on the Sump'N Else show, Snidow got an invitation to join the Los Angeles sunshine pop band [The Visions](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1342231-The-Visions-5) who had a record deal with Uni. They had previously released a few unsuccessful singles on the label in 1967, \"Threshold of Love\" and \"Small Town Commotion\". However, Snidow was only with the band a short time before moving back to Texas and joining Cheshire who played a broad variety of covers and some originals. The band was popular locally and a common opening act in the day for the likes of Sonny and Cher, the Mothers of Invention, and Chuck Berry. They went to Los Angeles to record two songs for the legendary producer Keith Olsen, but failed to get a recording deal and broke up in 1970.\n \nThroughout the next decade, Snidow worked as a drummer, guitarist and keyboardist for hire, touring with disparate bands such as Tyrone Scott and Truth in France, Pride of Texas in Holland, and Stone Creek in Texas. At this time, Snidow took an interest in metaphysics, eastern religion and reincarnation. He was especially drawn to Edward Cayce, a self-proclaimed psychic who began developing a strong following among the new age set at the time.\n\nBy 1985, Snidow was ready to finally get off the road. He'd long been fascinated by keyboards and decided to build a small studio at home and start writing his own electronic music. By this time he'd taken a strong interest in the Bible and used its themes for titles to his instrumental music. He self-released his first cassette *New Dawn* in 1987, drawing influences from the high-energy electronic styles of Vangelis and Yanni. The tape got some local airplay on KNON and earned got strong recommendations from magazines like *Heartsong Review* and *Circle of Light*, with the latter calling it \"a must for all late-night headphone enthusiasts.\" New World Productions quickly snapped up the tape and reissued it on their label in 1988, though Snidow says sales were modest, probably around 500 copies.\n\nFor his sophomore release, Snidow traveled to Ireland and prepared an album influenced by the folklore of leprechauns. New World Productions was by then having financial trouble, so Snidow released it on his own. The tape earned strong reviews from *Dreams Word* and again from *Heartsong Review* who called it \"a good tape for contemplation, creative movement, and tuning into the strange magical realm of the Wee Folk.\" Snidow went on to release two more tapes in a similar style that also earned critical fanfare, especially for his *Foundations* album from 1995 which reviewer [Ben Kettlewell](/ben-kettlewell) called  \"addictive\" and \"sophisticated.\" According to Snidow, this remains his best selling release.\n\nDespite the acclaim for his releases, Snidow was no longer making a living from his music and had begun working as a registered nurse. After that, he went on to work in psychiatry for the next 33 years, though still doing gigs on the side when he had time. He would occasionally release new albums, though they fall outside of the scope of this guide.  Snidow and his wife Catherine currently lead Joan of Arc pilgrimages to France and are active members of the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas.","discography":{"chris-snidow":{"albums":{"crossing-over":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Crossing Over","year":"1991"},"from-the-foundations-of-the-world":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"From the Foundations of the World","year":"1995"},"leprechaun-hill":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Fascinated since childhood by the magical qualities of the Emerald Isle, Chris spent several weeks in Ireland in search of the lore of the 'Little People.' This album is the fascinating, many-faceted result. Not the trilling, sweet dance you might expect of their cousins the fairies, this music has mischievous unsettling overtones, and sometimes the deep rumblings of hidden magic powers. Chris explores a wide variety of moods within a generally upbeat, moderate tempo.\n\n\"Looking Glass\" has a rhythmic, exciting feel, like a wild dance. Other cuts explore realms of mysterious, unresolved harmonies and tensions. \"Assembly of the Little People\" combines a pulsing beat with dense grand music and synthesized effects. A good tape for contemplation, creative movement and tuning in to the  strange magical realm of the Wee Folk Tech.\n\n(*Heartsong Review* #6 - Spring/Summer '89)","title":"Leprechaun Hill","year":"1988"},"new-dawn":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Comparing favorably to the likes of Synchestra, Snidow's electronic compositions are lush, entrancing tapestries of digital sound synthesis. Chris is part of a new breed of composer who has abandoned the typically electronic sequential-based pulse tone and returned to a more conventional musical structure. The sound here is more akin to the dramatics of a romantic period symphony. It has majesty and luster; it is subtly beautiful at times; and at others powerfully moving, but always melancholy and sweet.\n\n([Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Option*, Jan/Feb 1988)","title":"New Dawn","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":154,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chris-Snidow-640.jpg?alt=media&token=62465b92-b15d-4883-8dd4-41e6d462613e","last_name":"Snidow"},"chris-spheeris":{"artist_name":"Chris Spheeris","body":"Chris Spheeris and Paul Voudouris started out as a folk duo in the late '70s before moving into electronic music a few years later. Just after releasing their now sought-after ambient album *Passage* in 1981, Voudouris moved to Greece and Spheeris embarked on a long and fruitful solo career. Spheeris' first two releases were issued on his own label and show an affinity for Berlin-school style sounds, but it was his more commercial 1984 album *Desires of the Heart* that caught the ear of Columbia and led to a two-album deal. The re-recorded *Desires* went on to be a modest hit, but his 1991 album *Enchantment*, which reunited him with Voudouris, was even bigger and sold over a million copies. Spheeris returned to running his own label in the '90s, continuing to release new music and scoring films and documentaries.\n\nBorn in 1956, Spheeris was the youngest of three children. The family lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where his grandparents emigrated from Greece. His mother was an amateur painter and encouraged the kids to appreciate art, and Spheeris took up the guitar at 13 during a year when the family was living in Greece. It was there he met fellow Greek, Paul Voudouris. Later in high school, Spheeris was famous for skipping lunch and going into the auditorium to play guitar and piano, Spheeris recalled. \"That was the only time I had enough quiet to play a little bit.\"\n\nAt 19, after their second year of college, Spheeris and Voudouris decided to start a duo together, playing singer/songwriter cover tunes at restaurants. After a year or so, they began touring at colleges and incorporating more original songs. In 1978 they self-released their first album *Spheeris and Vourdouris* on vinyl and sold them at shows.\n\nBy 1980, the duo shifted into electronic and new wave sounds with Voudouris playing synths and Spheeris on electronically processed guitar. Some of their new work showed a strong Talking Heads influence, but they also developed extended, ambient pieces too. \"Both Paul and I were trained in transcendental meditation during our college years,\" Spheeris said. \"That ended up being a part of our show. We created long soundtrack pieces to induce a meditative state.\" The duo captured this style on their album *Passage* in 1981, released on their newly created Epiphany Records. The album didn't sell very well at the time but has picked up strong collector interest lately.\n\nIn 1982, Voudouris left the US to live in Greece and Spheeris found himself without a musical partner for the first time in six years. He decided to set up a small studio in his mother's basement and bought a four-track, a piano, and some synths. \"I didn't have confidence in my singing, so I started writing instrumental music,\" Spheeris said. \"Vangelis was a big influence, probably my biggest. But I also liked Eno, Kraftwerk, and the Residents.\"\n\nSpheeris' first solo album was *Electric Europe*, released only on cassette. Ethan Edgecomb, who ran Fortuna Records, heard the album and signed on to be an early distributor. Others followed and the album went on to sell 5,000 copies. After this promising start, Spheeris released *Gallery*, a more experimental album that he didn't promote much and is now lesser known. His next album *Desires of the Heart* showed him moving in a more commercial direction, channeling European romanticism on tracks like \"Andalu\" which would become his signature style. Mickey Isner, who was head of A&R at Columbia, loved the album and signed Spheeris to a deal. He re-recorded the tracks and gave the album a new cover with a shot of Spheeris posing against the wall. \n\nWith *Desires of the Heart* getting a big push by Columbia, Spheeris went on tour to promote the album and it did very well, selling around 275,000 copies by Spheeris' estimation. His next album for Columbia was looking promising too, with two songs in constant rotation on the popular Los Angeles new age station the Wave, but the album was a bit more eclectic overall and sales were disappointing. It would be his last for Columbia.\n\nIn 1987, Spheeris moved from Milwaukee to Sedona, Arizona. After visiting there for a workshop, he fell in love with the town and decided to make it his new home. \"All I had was 1,800 dollars, a U-Haul and a 1973 Cutlass Supreme,\" Spheeris said. While working on a new album, Spheeris cut his hand badly and realized he could use some help. He called up Voudouris and the two reunited to make *Enchantment* in 1991. The album originally came out on Music West, a latter-day new age label that went under almost immediately after the albums' release. So Voudouris and Spheeris revived their old Epiphany label one last time and surprisingly, it was a big hit. \"We sold a ton of those,\" Spheeris recalled. \"We sold probably 500,000 copies in Spain alone! In all, it was a million and a half worldwide. After living as starving artist all those years, it was great.\"\n\nAfter that, Spheeris retired Epiphany and started a new label Essence which he used to put out many albums in the '90s and beyond. While he didn't have another hit like *Enchantment*, his albums sold consistently, and he was able to make a living as an independent musician. To supplement album sales, Spheeris also scored films and documentaries, which turned out to be well-suited to his emotive style. Spheeris is still active today and maintains a website [here](http://chrisspheeris.com/about).","discography":{"chris-spheeris":{"albums":{"culture":{"image":"","label":"Essence","review":"","title":"Culture","year":"1993"},"desires":{"image":"","label":"Essence","review":"","title":"Desires","year":"1994"},"desires-of-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Epiphany","review":"","title":"Desires of the Heart","year":"1984"},"desires-of-the-heart-2":{"image":"","label":"Columbia","review":"","title":"Desires of the Heart (re-recorded)","year":"1986"},"electric-europe":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Electric Europe","year":"1982"},"gallery":{"image":"","label":"Epiphany","review":"","title":"Gallery","year":"1983"},"pathways-to-surrender":{"image":"","label":"Columbia","review":"","title":"Pathways to Surrender","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Chris Spheeris","entry_number":2},"voudouris-spheeris":{"albums":{"enchantment":{"image":"","label":"Music West","review":"","title":"Enchantment","year":"1991"},"europa":{"image":"","label":"Epiphany","review":"","title":"Europa","year":"1995"},"passage":{"image":"","label":"Epiphany","review":"","title":"Passage","year":"1981"},"primal-tech-music":{"image":"","label":"Epiphany","review":"","title":"Primal-Tech Music","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Chris Spheeris/Paul Voudouris","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":240,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/spheeris-temp.jpeg?alt=media&token=db6c83ba-4a3c-4565-84b2-e11c88436020","last_name":"Spheeris"},"chris-theriault":{"artist_name":"Chris Theriault","body":"Based in the Albany area of New York, Chris Theriault was a classically trained guitarist and ambient musician active in the '90s. He released a few solo albums like *Balance Point*, but he liked working in duos, collaborating with pianist Douglas Clifton as Fire and Water or partnering with Jim Corrigan in the duo Chameleon. His Christmas album *Spirit of the Holidays*, recorded as a trio, was his biggest seller, moving half a million copies in his estimation. Some of Theriault's main influences were Brian Eno, Kitaro, and Philip Glass.\n\nBorn in 1954, Theriault grew up in Queens, NY, and started playing piano at the age of seven. As a teen, he discovered psychedelics which opened up his consciousness. By 16, he was starting to meditate and listen to sitar music. Theriault went on to study music at SUNY Potsdam and the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles before settling in upstate New York. There, he worked as a music teacher and played in bands.\n\nIn the early '90s, Theriault reunited with his old college friend Douglas Clifton for his first new age project, Fire and Water, named after their astrological elements: Theriault was a water sign and Clifton a fire sign. Theriault followed that up with two albums released on Byron Duckwall’s Evergreen label, *Balance Point* and *SILA*. Duckwall contributed cello to the latter. Duckwall and Theriault added third member Robin Spielberg to form Lunamoon for Theriault's Christmas album *Spirit of the Holidays*.\n\nTheriault partnered with Jim Corrigan for his next project, Chameleon. He'd first recorded a cassette with Corrigan intended for midwives in 1988, and Corrigan tapped Theriault to help out when he was writing the score for an aquarium exhibit. That soundtrack, *Jellies*, ended up being popular and sparked two further albums, *Pond Life* and *Coastal Rhythms*. Theriault has continued to record beyond the scope of this guide, putting out albums such as *Acoustic Inspiration* and *Rest and Recover*. ","discography":{"chameleon":{"albums":{"jellies":{"image":"","label":"Chameleon Music","review":"","title":"Jellies","year":"1995"},"seasons-of-life":{"image":"","label":"Chameleon Music","review":"","title":"Pond Life","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Chameleon","entry_number":3},"chris-theriault":{"albums":{"balance-point":{"image":"","label":"Evergreen Music","review":"","title":"Balance Point","year":"1992"},"seasons-of-life":{"image":"","label":"Evergreen Music","review":"","title":"Seasons of Life","year":"1995"},"sila":{"image":"","label":"Evergreen Music","review":"","title":"SILA","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Chris Theriault","entry_number":2},"fire-and-water":{"albums":{"fire-and-water":{"image":"","label":"High Meadows","review":"","title":"Fire and Water","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Fire and Water","entry_number":1},"lunamoon":{"albums":{"spirit-of-the-holidays":{"image":"","label":"Northstar","review":"","title":"Spirit of the Holidays","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Lunamoon","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":404,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chris-theriault-sq-640.jpg?alt=media&token=a0021018-257b-4a54-9fb0-5cebbbd34ea1","last_name":"Theriault"},"chris-wyman":{"artist_name":"Chris Wyman","body":"Chris Wyman was a [New Jersey synthesist](https://ultravillage.com/new-jersey-synthscapes) who released 11 new age cassettes in a productive span between 1986 and 1992. His sound was fairly consistent throughout, featuring gently floating keyboards and various flutes (both real and sampled). He collaborated often with musician and UFO enthusiast [Ellen Crystall](https://ultravillage.com/ellen-crystall), helping to record and appearing on many of her tapes. He also jammed with [Don Slepian](/don-slepian) on occasion and released an album with him called *Duets...for Two Synthesists and Selected Atmospheres*.\n\nWyman was born in 1949 and grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, just outside New York City. He came from old stock immigrants who first settled in colonial America in the 1630’s and remained for generation after generation. His father was a sheet metal engineer and his mother taught art and was a homemaker.\n\nNone of Wyman’s family were musically inclined, but his mother (a Lawrence Welk fan no doubt) encouraged him to play accordion and he stuck with it and even played at the 1964 World’s Fair with a 24-piece accordion orchestra. Other instruments followed including guitar, piano, flute, trumpet and acoustic bass. Wyman learned them all on his own. \n\nAfter high school, Wyman joined the Navy. This was during the Vietnam war and he was chosen to study sonar because of his ability to detect minor variations in tonality. He attended Fairleigh Dickinson University after his discharge, and then cycled through various jobs in law enforcement and photography before settling on a 30-plus year career as a technical writer. \n\nBack in his college days, Wyman founded a cover band playing piano, gigging with them frequently at bars and weddings in the area all through the ‘70s. He also played organ in a rock band during the same time frame, but eventually he found a way to make music on a more intimate scale. “When I first heard the New Sounds radio show with John Schaefer, I was hearing Brian Eno and Vangelis and thinking, I can do that. And that’s what got me into electronic music.”\n\nOne of Wyman’s early electronic recordings was a piece he recorded with Steve Cohn, a New York pianist and shakuhachi flute player who put out several free-improv albums in the early ‘80s. Wyman sent his recordings with Cohn to Schaefer and he wrote back saying he liked it and soon featured a track on his show. This prompted Wyman to put together his first cassette *In the Andes*, a 90-minute tape with accompaniment from Nobuyuki Hayashi on Bolivian pan flutes. Schaefer would go on to be one of Wyman’s biggest local boosters, playing *In the Andes* on his show, inviting Wyman to play a live concert, and including him in his book *New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide To New Music.*\n\nMeanwhile, Wyman began networking with other New Jersey musicians including Lauri Paisley and Don Slepian who he met through Richard Ginsberg’s Synthetic Pleasure WFMU radio show. He played some live shows in the area and began putting out tapes at a fast pace. One of his strongest releases *Water Journeys* came in 1986, soon followed by the collaboration with Don Slepian *Duets* in early 1987. Around the same time, Wyman began working closely with Ellen Crystall, a fellow New Jersey synth musician and amateur UFO sleuth who put out six tapes between 1986 and 1988.  Both Slepian and Crystall also appeared on Wyman’s *Friends* cassette from 1989.\n\nFor most of the ‘80s, Wyman and his wife Agatha lived in a small garden apartment. They met because she lived in the same courtyard and he spotted her trying to learn guitar one day. \"Me with my big mouth, I said you can’t learn guitar with steel strings. You need nylon strings.\" Wyman recalled. \"And ten months after that we were married.\"\n\nAs Wyman continued to release solo albums, he formed a new ensemble in 1990 called Soundscape with Armen Halburian, John Best, and Keith Johnson. The band played at museums, art schools and cultural venues in Northern New Jersey and released one cassette in 1991. Wyman played keyboards in the band, and their live shows often included his environmental tapes of wind, rain, and ocean sounds as part of the mix. \n\nBy 1993, Wyman and his wife decided to buy a house and moved to a more rural setting in northwestern New Jersey. Once there, Wyman found he had much less time for music. He continued to tinker in his studio though Soundscape stopped playing and he never released any more new music. By 2008, Wyman became a press photographer, winning many awards in his first year. He continued in the profession until his recent retirement. Wyman and Agatha currently live in Highland Lakes, New Jersey.","discography":{"chris-wyman":{"albums":{"daydreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Daydreams","year":"1991"},"friends":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Friends","year":"1989"},"in-the-andes":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"In the Andes","year":"1986"},"in-the-orient":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"In the Orient","year":"1987"},"intervals":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Intervals","year":"1990"},"lifelines":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lifelines","year":"1990"},"sonic-voyager":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sonic Voyager","year":"1987"},"soundscape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Soundscape","year":"1991"},"water-journeys":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Water Journeys","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Chris Wyman","entry_number":1},"chris-wyman-and-don-slepian":{"albums":{"duets-for-two-synthesists":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Duets...for two Synthesists and Selected Atmospheres","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Chris Wyman and Don Slepian","entry_number":2},"chris-wyman-and-paul-j-horvat":{"albums":{"a-110":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"A-110: A Unique Meditation","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Chris Wyman and Paul J. Horvat","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":128,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chris-Wyman-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c872e53a-fa58-4ac1-9813-eda57c283510","last_name":"Wyman"},"christy-slovacek-mench":{"artist_name":"Christy Slovacek-Mench","body":"Originally from San Diego, pianist Christy Slovacek-Mench left Southern California with her husband to build a home in rural Oregon in 1986. There, she was inspired by her lush surroundings to create her lone new age cassette, *Wakening Heart* in 1990. \n\nBorn in 1956 and raised in San Diego, Slovacek started piano lessons at five and worked her way up to performing live by the age of 15. She had dreams of being a classical pianist when she started college at San Diego State, but got pegged as a \"wild colt\" by a tyrannical piano instructor who heard she was playing jazz in clubs. \"I got hauled into the Dean's office and they said jazz wasn't legitimate music,\" Slovacek recalled. \"I let that go as a career path and dove in my on own to play more genres.\"\n\nAfter graduating, Slovacek continued to play live for musical theater and dance while also teaching piano lessons. She eventually married Donald Mench, hyphenated her late name, and relocated from San Diego to ZigZag, Oregon. \"I was exhausted by the pace of urban life in Southern California,\" she recalled. \"We were leaving skid marks getting out of there. We started building our home on the mountains near Mt. Hood. I had gotten my first keyboard and I got a jones for describing these changes, the landscape and the lifestyle shift.\" \n\nSlovacek spent time recording an album of new age songs, inspired by artists like [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns), [Steve Roach](/steve-roach), and David Lanz. She recorded the album at a small studio on a houseboat and pressed 50 copies of her debut cassette, *Wakening Heart*.  To promote her album, Slovacek \"pounded the pavement\" and sold the tapes on consignment at various new age shops around Portland, as well as at her various gigs. The tapes sold well and she made a small tweak to the cover, adding the artist name and title, and went on to sell somewhere between 500 and 800 copies by her estimation (though she concedes the final 200 or so copies had subpar audio).\n\nSlovacek-Mench continued to play music, but ultimately decided not to release any new albums. Looking back, Slovacek-Mench sees the album as a product of a time and place, something of an anomaly. \"I am a private person,\" she admits. \"I always liked being an accompanist because I didn't want to be the center of attention. My best skill is making it work for the person out front.\"  Slovacek-Mench still lives in Oregon today, though she retired from teaching and performing music in the mid-2010s.","discography":{"christy-slovacek-mench":{"albums":{"wakening-heart":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Wakening Heart","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Christy Slovacek-Mench","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":375,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/christy-slovacek-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f0f78f2c-ec92-48b1-9f93-25582c7a547b","last_name":"Slovacek"},"chuck-jonkey":{"artist_name":"Chuck Jonkey","body":"Chuck Jonkey was a musician and musicologist who drew on a wide variety of world music styles in his seemingly bottomless discography of cassettes and CD's. Infusing his primary influences of Indian, Latin and native-american music with a new age sensibility, Jonkey used each release to zoom in on one particular theme or musical idea, giving his discography an archaeological sense of organization. In addition to his own music, Jonkey amassed an extensive archive of field recordings from his world travels, many of which he licensed for films or library music. \n\nJonkey was born in 1953 and grew up in Glendale, a middle class suburb of Los Angeles. He was the third of four kids, raised by Mormon parents. He started off playing piano and saxophone but transitioned to guitar during the British invasion of the mid-'60s. He formed a few bands in junior high, one of which included Ron Underwood (who went on to direct *City Slickers*) on drums, but the band never released anything.\n\nWhen it was time for college, Jonkey followed one of his siblings to Brigham Young University in Utah. There he joined a campus jazz group called Synthesis. The compositions and chords were more complex than what he was used to, pushing him to learn jazz guitar and more exotic time signatures. After a few years of school, Jonkey took a two year sabbatical to work as a missionary in Peru. \"That was a fantastic experience,\" Jonkey said. \"It really opened my eyes to Peruvian culture and I just fell in love with it.\"\n\nAfter his time in Peru, Jonkey returned to college and got a Bachelor's in Zoology with a minor in music. He graduated in 1979 and moved back to Los Angeles, but he was still thirsty for musical knowledge. In 1980, he started taking courses at the Guitar Institute, studying with famous session guitarists like Howard Roberts and Tommy Tedesco, as well as jazz guitarist Pat Martino. The next year, Jonkey took a trip to India and started studying the sitar and tabla upon his return. His teacher, Harihar Rao taught him the Tala system, the basis of many complex and mathematical rhythms in Indian classical music. Jonkey's most influential lessons of all were from Lyle \"Spud\" Murphy, the inventor of the Equal Interval System. \"That was the greatest composition system on the planet,\" Jonkey said. \"At the end of that study period, I had probably 800 pieces of music, many of which ended up on later recordings.\"\n\nMeanwhile, Jonkey was painting houses and teaching guitar lessons to make ends meet. He'd purchased a small Tascam 8 track reel to reel so he could compose at home, and he even had a sitar custom made for him. Jonkey began work on his first album *Latindia*, blending Latin, Indian, and even some new wave sounds (one song is a dead ringer for the Police.) He approached some labels early on, but they wanted to tinker with his sound and Jonkey felt like they were just going in circles.  Instead, he created his own label to put out his cassettes, selling them through distributors like New Leaf or sympathetic record stores like Suzanne Doucet's Only New Age Music shop.\n\nWith distributors in place and a solid grasp of home recording, Jonkey unleashed a parade of new albums. After *India* built on the sounds of his debut, Jonkey detoured into more meditative, tranquil sounds for his next three albums. Jonkey had taken a class at UCLA in synthesizer programming, where he learned about a new digital synth, the Yamaha DX7 (soon to become one of the most popular and ubiquitous instruments of the '80s.) Jonkey used the instrument to create his trippiest album, *Journey*, which he called \"a voyage to the outer limits of the galaxy.\" His next album *Mirror* was similarly cosmic, but with more concise songs. *Meditation* featured two side-long songs with tamboura drones, nature sounds, and mantra-like melodies intended for inner exploration. \"No matter what style I'm playing in,\" Jonkey said, \"it's always about the journey.\"\n\nJonkey's final album of 1987 was *Rio Amazonas*, a strong batch of songs inspired by his trips to the Peruvian Amazon. The overall sound returned to the ethnic fusion of his debut, now embellished with the rich textures of synthesizer. The year before, Jonkey had released an album of Amazonian field recordings called *Amazon Night*, and he re-used many of the ambient jungle sounds to tie the compositions together. The album is one of his best, a prime slice of indigenous escapism that is like Martin Denny's '50s exotica updated for the California new age crowd.\n\nBy the close of the decade, Jonkey had built up a nice library of world music that he'd recorded in the field during his travels all over the world. He realized the potential profitability of this when music from his *Peyote Ceremony* tape was used for *The Doors* movie. Jonkey's typical arrangement with the musicians was to offer money up front, plus a copy of the recorded album they could duplicate and sell as they wished. \"There was on group in Bali who took me up on the offer,\" Jonkey recalled. \"They sold more than I ever did.\"\n\nDuring the '90s, Jonkey continued to release many new albums that fall outside the scope of this site. Some of the most relevant may be his work with Craig Kohland in Shaman's Dream, a '90s ambient project that recalled Jonkey's earlier forays in contemplative sounds. Jonkey also got work doing sound design for some Hollywood films like *Flubber* and composing music for Disney Shanghai. Jonkey currently lives in Glendale, CA.","discography":{"chuck-jonkey":{"albums":{"amazon-night":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Amazon Night","year":"1986"},"charana":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Charana","year":"1989"},"dinosaur-drums":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Dinosaur Drums","year":"1993"},"drums-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"A moderately paced jam which is predominantly percussion. This is a trance inducing, funky, primal sound, great for dance, ritual and driving. Very repetitive and laid back, with a bit of wordless voice, and a variety of unusual percussion instruments which are unidentified on the jacket. Reminds this reviewer of reggae without the melody line. One cut effectively uses jungle sounds in the background.\n\n(*Heartsong Review*, No. 7, 1989)","title":"Drums of Light","year":"1988"},"drums-of-light-2":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Drums of Light 2","year":"1994"},"india":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"India","year":"1987"},"latindia":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Latindia","year":"1985"},"malibu":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Malibu","year":"1988"},"meditation":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Meditation","year":"1987"},"new-worlds":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"New Worlds","year":"1990"},"parallel-universe":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Parallel Universe","year":"1987"},"rio-amazonas":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"Like a leisurely hike through a rain forest, *Rio Amazonas* comes alive with rain sticks, buzzing insects and animal sounds as the backdrop to a set of quirky world fusion compositions. The songs pair crisp digital synths (Yamaha DX-7) with an earthy mix of percussion, guitar,  and flute.  The pace is unhurried throughout with many songs running over five minutes and blending together, yet easily maintaining your interest through shifting arrangements of crips digital synths, earthy percussion, fretless bass, pan pipes and sitar. A comparison could be made with the tropical downtempo Wally Badarou on 1984's *Echoes*, but with a more Peruvian village vibe.\n\nThe song flow on *Rio Amazonas* unfurls like a day's journey, with plenty of catchy melodies (\"Enquentro De Animales\") and leisurely walking rhythms (\"Un Nuevo Dia\") on side one, while side two paints a nocturnal mood, highlighted by a lovely synth and guitar lullaby (\"Ninos Del Rio Part 2\") and a lush symphonic ballad (\"Danza De Delfines\"). The album concludes with a reprise of the opening theme (\"La Gran Anaconda\") bringing the listener back to the start of a new day. \n\n*Rio Amazonas* sold well for Jonkey, meriting several pressings, a CD release, and even a cover by the Manhattan Transfer (with added vocals) in 1990. It's easy to see why the album did well - it's so imminently likable and tastefully done - a perfect summation of Jonkey's musical modus operandi.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Rio Amazonas","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Chuck Jonkey","entry_number":1},"chuck-jonkey-howard-gale":{"albums":{"tracks-we-leave":{"image":"","label":"Jonkey Music","review":"","title":"Journey","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Chuck Jonkey and Howard Gale","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":95,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chuck-Jonkey-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f9115b3f-e2ba-4874-b8c5-7f0c4e7233c1","last_name":"Jonkey"},"chuck-van-zyl":{"artist_name":"Chuck Van Zyl","body":"Chuck Van Zyl is an important figure in the fertile Philadelphia electronic music scene.  As the host of late night radio show Star’s End, he's kept locals entranced with a mix of ambient and progressive electronic sounds for decades starting in the late '70s. Throughout his career, he's released a trove of recordings, initially as Xyl and later under his own name. He also formed a group project called Xisle that started as a duo with Tom Gulch of the Nightcrawlers and later became a trio with Dana Rath and Peter Gulch. Van Zyl remains a tireless promoter for space music and hosts annual festivals in Philadelphia called the Gatherings.\n\nGrowing up in Upper Darby, PA, Van Zyl got his musical education from local station WXPN where he heard early electronic innovators like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze on the late night program Diaspar.  After getting some hands-on experience at another station, Van Zyl auditioned for an on-air host position on WXPN and got the gig. One of the shows he helped out with was \"Star's End.\" Originally developed by John Diliberto (presently of \"Echoes\") and Steve Pross in 1976 when they were students, the show was conceived to present what he calls \"forward-thinking, ethereal music,\" then staffed by a number of rotating on-air volunteer hosts. (By the mid '90s Chuck van Zyl was left to produce \"Star's End\" on his own, and remains doing so to this day.)\n\nAround 1978, Van Zyl began to take part in the local electronic music scene, attending gigs and befriending musicians.  He developed particularly close ties to South Jersey trio the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers), who encouraged him to buy his first synthesizer and start performing and recording his own music. Following the purchase of his first synth in 1983, Van Zyl began recording music under the moniker Xyl. He released his debut album *Runway* in 1985 on his own, making black and white cassette covers and dubbing off the cassettes in his bedroom. In quick succession he released three more albums, all of a consistently high quality.\n\nVan Zyl has a clear affinity for minor chords and long, slowly unfolding soundscapes. *Scanner* is probably his strongest release, with its sinister ambient pulses perfectly encapsulated on the album's nightmarish sci-fi album cover. Many of the albums were recorded live on his radio show.\n\nAround this time, Van Zyl also started a band called Xisle, who also performed live and released a number of tapes in a fashion similar to that of the uber-prolific Nightcrawlers.\n\nBy 1989, Van Zyl upgraded to professional tape duplication and printing for the first album released under his own name *Callisto*. He released other albums during this period, but it was the double cassette *Sound Museum* with Xisle that really stands out for its ambition and scope. However, as with his earlier cassettes, these were not widely distributed and sales were mostly confined to a mail-order niche or through merch booths at live shows.\n\nVan Zyl always maintained a day job with the postal service, so for him it was never about the money. \"Fortunately, financial gain was not a motivating factor, as it was understood from the outset that this music was not compatible with the commercial marketplace,\" he said. \"The main thing I wanted was to make great work, help support the local music community, and maintain a high artistic standard.\"\n\nChuck Van Zyl still lives in Upper Darby (now retired from the USPS) and continues his activity in the music scene, organizing live shows through the Gatherings Concert Series in Philadelphia, hosting the weekly overnight radio program \"Star's End\" on public radio station WXPN, writing album reviews, and continuing to perform live.","discography":{"chuck-van-zyl":{"albums":{"callisto":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Two side long tracks of up-tempo Berlin-school synth. \"Valhalla\" is a pretty standard Schulze-like hypno-burner with a manic feel. The title track has a bit more depth, building from a glassy-sounding arpeggio with synth leads into a mournful, atmospheric conclusion. ","title":"Callisto","year":"1989"},"celestial-mechanics":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Celestial Mechanics","year":"1993"},"europa":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Europa","year":"1991"},"ganymede":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Ganymede","year":"1991"},"io":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Io","year":"1992"},"the-relic":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"The Relic","year":"1995"},"the-xyl-file":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"The Moment of Totality","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Chuck Van Zyl","entry_number":2},"xisle":{"albums":{"eternitys-engine":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Eternity's Engine","year":"1989"},"journey-into":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"Journey Into Darkness","year":"1988"},"nexus":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"Side A starts off strong with beautiful, minimalistic synth soundscapes that eventually evolve into noises that sound like space ships breaking down, something Michael Stearns used heavily on *Planetary Unfolding*. Side B is darker and more intense with a pulsating, hypnotic bass line and a greater sense of forward movement. Not as engaging, but a good companion piece nonetheless.\n\n(BK, 2025)","title":"Nexus","year":"1986"},"novins":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"Space ambient/Berlin-school with three extended pieces - the ghostly “Galaxy Formation”, the pretty and ethereal “Dreamlink” and the throbbing, Jarre-ish \"Stellar Parallax.\" This was originally used for a show the Novins Planetarium in New Jersey, hence the title.","title":"Novins","year":"1988"},"novins-2":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"The planetarium is the perfect place for Xisle’s cosmic electronic music so it’s no surprise they returned to the Novins Planetarium in 1989 for a sequel to *Novins*. The cassette includes two extended pieces in the vein of ‘70s era Klaus Schulze, “Star Projector” and “From Twilight to First Light”. The trio may have upgraded their gear a bit as this sounds more digital than analog, with some emulated guitar and inspirational passages driven by drum machine and soaring synth leads. ","title":"Novins II","year":"1989"},"perchance":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":" Around 1989, Xisle updated their synths from analog to digital and rolled out a sleeker sound that in hindsight, sounds a bit more dated than their earlier material. *Perchance to Dream* is a case in point, often aiming for grandeur in place of introspection.  Whether this is a plus or minus could depend on your orientation.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Perchance to Dream","year":"1989"},"proving-ground":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"Proving Ground","year":"1987"},"the-independent-space-program":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"The Independent Space Program","year":"1988"},"the-invisible":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"The Invisible People","year":"1986"},"the-phantom-zone":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"Dana Rath and Peter Gulch join Chuck Van Zyl on this first Xisle release with the classic lineup that remained for most of their career. As usual, the tape features two 30 minute pieces recorded live. The first side alternates between moments of harmonious ambience with sections of rising tension and swirling sound effects while “Invader” on side two adds a churning rhythm and sequencer riff, propelling the trio’s excursions into the cosmic unknown.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"The Phantom Zone","year":"1986"},"the-sound-museum":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"The Sound Museum","year":"1991"},"the-space-age":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"The Space Age","year":"1990"},"winters-king":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"Recorded around Christmas in 1985, *Winter’s King* features Chuck Van Zyl and Tom Gulch from the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) on two quiet electronic pieces that channel the long nights and chilly air of December. The duo’s keyboard playing favors space and mood above all else, with long sections that resemble the shimmer of a half-frozen river.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Winter's King","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Xisle","entry_number":3},"xyl":{"albums":{"1-runway":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"Side one has some eerie space music — nice enough, but relatively standard fare. Now for something completely different, side two has a spoken reading of a psychological horror story written by Alfred K Noyes titled \"The Midnight Express,\" complete with suspense-building synth effects. An unusual offering from a tape, and maybe it'll be the start of a trend.\n\n(Bob Morris, *Option*, March/April 1986)\n","title":"Runway","year":"1985"},"2-nuclear-winter":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"An all too short release from a rather new-to-the-scene electronic composer, one of a few of the second generation Americans, whose roots stem from the German school of composing a la Tangerine Dream or Ash Ra Tempel. But one thing that distinguishes him from the others is his minimal reliance on the sequential base riff for his compositional structure. His approach explores instead the use of orchestrated melody and countermelody (\"Faston\") and simple, yet effective improvisational, arrhythmic structures (\"Nuclear Winter\"), in addition to the typical sequential approach.  But it is with \"Nuclear Winter,\" and its following piece that the success of the tape lies, through their conveyance of the mood of fear and apprehension that is central to the theme of the tape. Their tonal qualities are well selected and intelligently combined and more than any other element within set the mood of each composition, as ominous but not altogether unapproachable. And finally, to make a good thing better, the recording quality and production is excellent, and excessively listenable.\n\n([Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), * Sound Choice* #6, 1987)","title":"Nuclear Winter","year":"1985"},"scanner":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"Scanner","year":"1986"},"stars-end":{"image":"","label":"Lights Out","review":"","title":"Star's End","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Xyl","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":7,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/chuck-van-zyl-cycle.jpg?alt=media&token=2a8a9c61-e7a2-4b62-9fe7-ce0d3f24ff45","last_name":"Zyl"},"circus-underwater":{"artist_name":"Circus Underwater","body":"Circus Underwater was the project of Richard Sales and Jay Yarnall (above), two lifelong friends from Maryland who first met in third grade when they both dressed up as beatniks for Halloween. After high school, Yarnall was drafted for the Vietnam War but went AWOL and hitchhiked to California. There, Yarnall jumped out of a window after ingesting some STP-spiked punch and became quadriplegic. Sales remained in Maryland, played in bands such as Sky Cobb, and wrote thousands of songs over the years by his own estimation. Sales started Glasswing Studio in the early '80s and one of his first projects was Circus Underwater with Yarnall, taking inspiration from Eno, Fripp, and Fahey. They recorded in 1983, with Sales working around Yarnall's limitations by having him play synthesizers in certain keys with no bad notes. Yarnall also provided vocals on one track. The album remained a curio for decades but has enjoyed a higher profile recently after its reissue by Soundway in 2023. Yarnall passed away in 2013.","discography":{"circus-underwater":{"albums":{"circus":{"image":"","label":"Glasswing","review":"","title":"Circus Underwater","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":384,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jay-yarnall.jpg?alt=media&token=f21b71e3-17a7-49ae-b8b9-c204d60a0bbd","last_name":"Circus"},"claudia-tulip":{"artist_name":"Claudia Tulip","body":"Claudia Tulip was already a seasoned flutist with extensive classical and jazz training when she relocated to Sedona, Arizona at the age of 36. There she became a part of Arizona's vibrant new age music scene, playing with [Anne Williams](/ani-williams) and [William Eaton](/william-eaton), among others.  She released one solo album *Migrations* in 1991 which showcased a mix of solo flute improvisations and collaborative work with Williams, Eaton and Mazatl Galindo. Tulip also was a key member of the long-running William Eaton Ensemble.\n\nBorn in 1951 and raised in Brooklyn, Claudia recalls a childhood scored by her mother's ever-present singing and her father's melodic whistling. Claudia in turn developed a great musical ear of her own. Her first instrument was the accordion, and in fifth grade she got her own upright piano and started lessons on that too. Soon, she could pick out any melody and play it on the piano.\n\nIn her teenage years, Tulip spent most weekends watching concerts at the Fillmore East and other New York venues. She even made it to Woodstock. However, while she loved popular rock bands like Ten Years After and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, she also listened to plenty of world music and classical too. Tulip excelled in school. She had a photographic memory and started college early at the age of 16.\n\nAt Brooklyn College, Tulip discovered the instrument she later became known for. \"I remember I heard a flute recital by Karl Kraber of the Dorian Woodwind Quartet,\" she recalled. \"I felt like I was singing every note he played on the flute. It was a soul calling.\" After that, her parents got her a flute and she practiced night and day. She progressed rapidly. She learned the classical repertoire and took lessons with Patricia Spencer and Karl Kraber; later she took Master Classes with Marcel Moyse and studied jazz and improvisation with Barry Harris at the Jazz Cultural Theater. \n\nTulip initially took some odd jobs after college as a proofreader and EKG technician, but it wasn't long before she was able to make a living by giving flute lessons and performing. She primarily played in classical and jazz ensembles during her time in New York, but after a fateful backpacking trip out west, she decided to move, first to Boulder, Colorado, and then Sedona, Arizona in 1988.\n\nOut west, Tulip's flute playing took on a new character, influenced by the landscape. \"The beauty and stillness of the desert touched me deeply and became the inspiration for the original music that was to follow,\" Tulip said. In Sedona, Tulip found a group of like-minded musicians including harpist Anne Williams, percussionist Mazatl Galindo and William Eaton, a world-renown luthier known who'd been releasing music since the early '80s, including albums with Native American flutist [R. Carlos Nakai](/r-carlos-nakai).\n\nIn 1988, she first appeared on an album with Anne Williams (*Wind Spirit*) as well as one by Eaton. \"He invited me over for a jam session and we had a great time,\" Tulip recalled. \"We started collaborating as a duo and I felt like something is happening here. We'd improvise and create pieces like 'Edge of the Cedars' and 'Evergreen' for *Tracks We Leave.* That was the first album of his that I played on.\" One of Tulip's other early projects was as a contributing musician to the film score for Jerry Jacka's documentary *Beyond Tradition* which won a regional Emmy. \n\nEventually, Tulip put together her own album called *Migrations* on Canyon Records, the same label that issued much of Eaton's work. The album featured tracks with Galindo, Eaton, and Williams, plus a series of flute compositions. \"I used to dial in a place and I would call it a 'migration' because it was a movement towards something - like traveling home,\" Tulip said. \"I brought in all those moments on my album.\"\n\nCanyon released the tape in 1991 and promoted it for a few years, but it went out of print. Meanwhile, Tulip continued to teach and perform with the William Eaton Ensemble who issued three albums from 1994 to 2003. More recently, she recorded three CDs with Ani Williams:  *Calling Pyrene*, *Dragon and Pearl*, *Return of the Shining Ones.*\n\nSince 1999, Tulip has been a Music Together Center Director and is owner, director and teacher of Under One Common Sky featuring the international music and movement program Music Together, founded by Ken Guilmartin in 1987.   \"My artistic life has always been a blend of performance and innovative teaching,\" Tulip said. She currently lives in Sedona.","discography":{"ia-tulip":{"albums":{"mythos":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Migration","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Ia Tulip","entry_number":1},"william-eaton-ensemble":{"albums":{"naked-in-eureka":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Naked in Eureka","year":"1996"},"where-rivers-meet":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Where Rivers Meet","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton Ensemble","entry_number":3},"william-eaton-etc":{"albums":{"tracks-we-leave":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Tracks We Leave","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton with R. Carlos Naki, Udi Aroub, Arvel Brid, Claudia Tulip, Rich Rodgers","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":247,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/claudia-tulip-640-rev.jpg?alt=media&token=41e851ef-5f86-433e-9133-d2f6c306a2e7","last_name":"Tulip"},"conrad-praetzel":{"artist_name":"Conrad Praetzel","body":"After a surprise rave from *Electronic Musician* for an early demo tape, Conrad Praetzel caught the attention of Scarlet Records and put out a debut album of glittering, carefully composed new age that critics compared to Mark Isham and Patrick O'Hearn (though he cites Eno and the Cocteau Twins as bigger influences). He later incorporated more world music sounds on subsequent releases on his own Paleo label, such as *Myths and Memories* and *Receive* in 1998 which featured Pakistani vocalist Sukhawat Ali Khan. As of 2002, he launched a new project under the name Clothesline Revival, putting more emphasis on his roots in Americana.\n\nBorn in 1950, Praetzel grew up in Redwood City, one of six children. His mother played piano and his father was an avid record collector who loved jazz. Praetzel was drawn to blues and roots music as a kid and started playing guitar at 13, emulating John Fahey. He eventually tried playing in a garage band, but he had stage fright and didn't enjoy performing.\n\nPraetzel went to college at UC Berkeley where he studied archeology, but he dropped out in his junior year. During the '70s he worked for a landscaper and then in the early '80s he got a job doing cassette duplications at West Tape. (During that time, he recalls Michael Hedges coming by to deliver various Windham Hill masters for duplication.)\n\nIn 1984, Praetzel got a job at A/V company Otari where he worked in quality control. By this time, he was living in Menlo Park and composing electronic music, some of which he used for Silicon Valley industrial films. \"When synths became affordable, I bought a Mini-Korg 700s,\" he recalled. \"I liked Jean-Michel Jarre and had always been into Brian Eno, mainly *Taking Tiger Mountain…* and *Another Green World*. I also loved the Cocteau Twins. I was recording original compositions - some would be totally synth-based, some with acoustic guitar. I was just experimenting.\"\n\nPraetzel refined his sound until he had a body of work he was proud of, and he culled that together for 1 demo tape he used to try to get signed. While 4AD turned him down (they said it was too smooth), he earned a rave in Electronic Musician from writer Robert Carlberg, and Ruby Rahn's recently formed new age label Scarlet Records signed him. \"I heard new age and thought I fit into that,\" he said. \"I never wanted to be labeled new age but I thought, there are people selling music similar to what I’m doing.\"\n\nIn 1989, Praeztel quit his job and became what he called a \"dig bum,\" doing grunt work on archeological digs in California for the next seven years. \"Throughout my life, I asked myself, how can I make my living as simple as possible so I can concentrate on doing music?\" He continued to put out new albums between digs, founding his own Paleo label after Scarlet folded in 1990. He's been active ever since, switching to the moniker Clothesline Revival starting in 2002 though more recently he released new music under his own name again.","discography":{"conrad-praetzel":{"albums":{"culture":{"image":"","label":"Scarlet Records","review":"","title":"Between Present and Past","year":"1988"},"en-trance":{"image":"","label":"Paleo Music","review":"","title":"En-Trance","year":"1995"},"myths-and-memories":{"image":"","label":"Paleo Music","review":"","title":"Myths and Memories","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Conrad Praetzel","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":309,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Conrad-Praetzel-631.jpg?alt=media&token=9e3103ee-3e14-409b-b470-1da1ff3525a4","last_name":"Praetzel"},"constance-demby":{"artist_name":"Constance Demby","body":"Constance Demby was one of the most successful new age artists of the '80s, releasing four cassettes before hitting a commercial peak with *Novus Magnificat* which sold over 200,000 copies. Demby was classically trained on piano and also studied sculpture, combining her two interests in a series of \"Sonic Steel Instruments\" including the Space Bass and the Whale Sail. Both are large metal idiophones played with a bow or struck to create deeply mystical sounds.  In addition to her own music, she guested on other albums by artists such as [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin) and [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns). Demby passed away in 2021.\n\nBorn in 1939, Demby grew up in Northern California. She got her start playing piano at the age of eight and by high school was already playing jazz and learning to improvise.  She attended college at the University of Michigan where she studied art and music but dropped out in 1960 and moved to New York. There she worked as a musician and sculptor and had a breakthrough when she developed her first sheet metal sound sculpture that was the precursor to later metal creations like the Space Bass that she became known for in the '80s.\n\nIn 1966, Demby brought her sound sculptures to the public in a series of performance art shows at the multimedia gallery  \"A Fly Can't Bird But A Bird Can Fly.\" The space was owned by Robert Rutman, who took a strong interest in Demby's instrument (and later created his own steel cello). Demby and her husband David moved to Maine in 1967 and had a child a few years later. While in Maine, Demby and Rutman formed an multimedia ensemble called the Central Maine Power Music Company.  In addition to Demby and Rutman, the band included Richie Slamm, Danny Snerika, Hugh Robbins, Dorothy Carter and Sally Hilmer.  The band incorporated visual art in their shows in addition to a wide range of unusual instruments such as steel cello, circular saw blades, theremin, and early analog synths. The group played all over the east coast at places like Skowhegan Art Center in Maine, the Lincoln Center in NYC, and east coast planetariums. Unfortunately, no material seems to have been recorded or preserved. The group broke up in 1976.\n\nAfter the dissolution of the Central Maine project, Demby moved to Cambridge, MA.  There Demby began studying yoga and taking her music in a more meditative direction with a duo called Gandarva in which she played hammer dulcimer with a tabla player.  She guested on Dorothy Carter's album *Troubadour* playing the guqin, a Chinese instrument similar to a zither. She also released her first album *Skies Above Skies* in 1978, using lyrics drawn from spiritual texts with a variety of instrumentation. In 1979, Demby went to India where she learned Sarat Shabd yoga which had a profound influence on her life.  After returning, she settled in Mill Valley and her music career started to take off. \n\nDemby arrived in Marin at the perfect time to take advantage of the emerging new age scene in the area, and her second album *Sunborne* fit well with the movement's aesthetic.  Stephen Hill, the host of the Hearts of Space radio show, played \"Om Mane Padme Hum\" from *Skies Above Skies* for his \"Cathedral Space\" episode and was an early supporter of Demby. He helped to remaster *Skies* and *Sunborne* at his Celestial Sound studio and would later sign her to his label. \n\nFor her third cassette, *Sacred Space Music*, Demby focused more on the dulcimer, which was a favorite of her fans at live shows. By this time, Demby was playing live often, sometimes alone and sometimes with other musicians under the name Gandarva, but it was always her music and direction. In 1984, she released a live album called *Constance Demby at Alaron* which featured Demby on synths, psaltry, and cheng.\n\nWhen Stephen Hill decided to start the Hearts of Space record label, Demby was one of the first artists he signed. Her debut for Hill's label, *Novus Magnificat*, turned out to be one of his biggest sellers and a favorite of critics like [Lee Underwood](/lee-underwood). Demby used an Emulator II on the album to create a neo-classical journey, using digital samples of various orchestral instruments and a series of foot pedals to switch sounds in real time.  Demby was riding high on the album for many years after. Her house in Mill Valley had a pool and she loved to host parties for all her friends in the area, sometimes giving impromptu performances in her scenic back room.\n\nDemby went on to record three more albums for Hearts of Space and became one of the most well known new age artists.  In 1992, she released a live concert video called *Constance Demby Live in Tokyo* and in 1995 she released *Aeterna*, a sequel of sorts to *Novus Magnifcat* that again elicited a strong emotional response from her fans. In the ensuing decades, she played shows all over the world including England, Brazil, Spain, and Egypt.\n\nDemby passed away in 2021. Her archived website can be found [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20001204191600/http://constancedemby.com/).","discography":{"constance-demby":{"albums":{"constance-demby-at-alaron":{"image":"","label":"Gandarva","review":"","title":"At Alaron","year":"1984"},"novus-magnificat":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"If there's a running theme to my dip into the astral planes of thrift-store new age CDs it's a desire to strip away the melodic lines, especially those informed by the romantic tradition in European classical music, and synth string sections so I can just dig the minimalist backdrops, solar wind noises, and electronic filigree. Constance seems like a badass and I very much enjoy the portions of this 1986 release, considered a classic of the genre, where she uses her Dr. Strange-like synthesizer powers to rip my consciousness out of its meat husk and send it soaring and spiraling through awe-inspiring multihued cosmos of color and light. The other parts, where she wants to be a one-person orchestra performing Vivaldi knockoffs, plants me firmly in the waiting room of a dentist who specializes in elder care. I suppose I can handle it.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Novus Magnificat","year":"1986"},"sacred-space-music":{"image":"","label":"Gandarva","review":"Two long tracks of hammered dulcimer, gently swelling electronics, wordless vocal, and tinkling piano, recorded in 1982. Did you know Demby sculpts some of her own instruments, like the Space Bass, which is, like, giant pieces of sheet metal she plays with a bow? This album is nice, with some real radiance, but a bit too beholden to the western romantic classical elevator-music tradition. Does Demby ever get angry about stuff? Did she ever down a batch of shrooms and freak out on a death trip and take that Space Bass on a ride through the six bardos? One can dream.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Sacred Space Music","year":"1982"},"set-free":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Set Free","year":"1989"},"skies-above-skies":{"image":"","label":"Gandarva","review":"","title":"Skies Above Skies","year":"1978"},"sunborne":{"image":"","label":"Gandarva","review":"Deep interior tunings and calls of returning to places unremembered...many, many thousands of years...but not totally forgotten. Extraordinary sounds.\n\n(Stephen Hill, *Music from the Hearts of Space*, 1981)","title":"Sunborne","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":61,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/constance-demby-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=2e85c86e-26ef-4527-94b9-959548db5773","last_name":"Demby"},"controlled-bleeding":{"artist_name":"Controlled Bleeding","body":"Controlled Bleeding was an experimental trio best known for early industrial and noise releases like *Knees and Bones* that revel in harsh soundscapes. However, band leader Paul Lemos and band members Joe Papa and Chris Moriarity loved to confound expectations over the course of a 30+ album career that spanned four decades.  Starting with a trio of 1986 releases (*Headcrack*, *Curd* and *Between Tides*), the band began adding melodic and ambient elements, though with their usual idiosyncratic approach. The band continued to restlessly transfigure their sound after that, going progressive electronic for 1987's *Core* before pivoting to darkwave and chamber music in the late ‘80s and then industrial dance music in the early '90s. The band would return to ambient sounds occasionally as on 1991’s *Golgotha* or the 1996 compilation *Inanition*. Papa and Moriarity both passed away in the late 2000s, though Lemos formed a new version of the band that continued until 2020.","discography":{"controlled-bleeding":{"albums":{"between-tides":{"image":"","label":"Multimood","review":"","title":"Between Tides","year":"1986"},"core":{"image":"","label":"Subterranean","review":"","title":" Core","year":"1987"},"curd":{"image":"","label":"Dossier","review":"","title":" Curd","year":"1986"},"golgotha":{"image":"","label":"Staalplaat","review":"","title":" Golgotha","year":"1991"},"headcrack":{"image":"","label":"Sterile","review":"","title":" Headcrack","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":151,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/CB.jpg?alt=media&token=8a8f4139-96d8-451a-8f01-af0f9b2e5fb5","last_name":"Controlled"},"coyote-oldman":{"artist_name":"Coyote Oldman","body":"Coyote Oldman was the duo of Michael Allen (above) and Barry Stramp who helped popularize a hybrid of new age and Native American flute music across a multi-decade career. They first met in Oklahoma where Allen was traveling to sell his handmade flutes and they bonded over time spent in the studio recording Allen's debut album. Soon Stramp joined and they became a duo. They initially self-released their tapes so Allen could sell them on the craft circuit, but *Tear of the Moon* became a word-of-mouth hit that earned them national distribution. They put out one more self-released cassette before signing to Hearts of Space and enjoying a period of strong sales and popularity with new age fans. Coyote Oldman rarely performed at the time, but even after the band parted ways with Hearts of Space, Allen kept the albums in print and has kept the group's output available on streaming services like Spotify. \n\nMichael Allen was born in 1950 and grew up in Northern Alabama near the Tennessee River.  He loved the wilderness as a child, communing with the birds, fish, and trees. \"I remember the first time I heard the Beatles on the radio,\" Allen said. \"It certainly made a big impression. But my favorite band was the cicadas, the bugs you hear in the trees. That was the music I was drawn to.\" When he was 10, Allen learned to make bamboo flutes with his pocketknife. \"I was never any good with music. But I would play my flutes for the tadpoles. It was a very easy crowd.\"\n\nAround 1973, Allen started selling his handmade flutes at craft shows around the country. Through those shows, he met his wife and settled down in Arkansas where they had two children. \"At night, we would hear the coyotes fighting in the backyard,\" Allen recalled. \"So I made a coyote brand and put that on my flutes.\"\n\nAllen's flute-making evolved as he learned more about the instrument.  He started going to museums to study native flutes and some museums let him examine the flutes closely so he could make close replicas. However, he adds: \"I'm not a traditionalist. I must experiment. I like evolving old flutes and I made mine with a pentatonic shakuhachi scale.\"\n\nDuring a trip to Oklahoma in 1981, Allen met Barry Stramp (born 1959), then still in high school. Allen told Stramp that he was thinking about recording an album and Stramp offered to record it for free at the studio where he was working. \"I was just gonna record the simple stuff I played,\" Allen said. \"I always liked playing in caves and big buildings with a lot of resonance. I talked Barry into turning the reverb up. He had been working with the band Cosmic Debris. They would record on location and in the studio. They did experiments with analog pitch shifters, reverb. We had all the machines going, experimenting.\"\n\nAllen self-released the group's first cassette in 1985 called *Night Forest*, named after one of his favorite songs on the album that featured the flute electronically modified in the studio. At first, he just sold the cassettes at craft fairs, but when the duo released their second album *Tear of the Moon* in 1987, Tower Records picked it up for distribution and sales took off. So he took a chance and made 8,000 copies and went on the road with his family for four months to play festivals and make contacts at new age stores to sell his tapes.\n\n\"When we got back from our four-month trip, we moved to Norman, Oklahoma so I could be near the studio,\" Allen said. \"That was in 1988. We went from not being able to buy tires for a car to buying a home in Norman.\" By 1990, Stephen Hill's Hearts of Space label signed Coyote Oldman and released two albums that enjoyed their widest distribution yet. While the albums sold well, Allen admits they never did the business of *Tear of the Moon*. For a period, Allen felt like he could retire from the grind of making and selling flutes and focus more on his music and raising his family.\n\nAllen eventually relocated to Vermont where he remained for several decades. He spent time kayaking and making flutes, and occasionally releasing new albums as Coyote Oldman. The duo kept all their albums in print and were an early convert to digital streaming. \"I love streaming,\" Allen said. \"Back in the '80s and '90s, I would have piles of cassettes and CDs, maybe six or seven thousand. I'd ship them and some would get broken. I don't miss that – streaming is great.\"\n\nBarry Stramp passed away in 2025 from pancreatic cancer.","discography":{"barry-stramp":{"albums":{"sky-of-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Ancient Sun Music","review":"","title":"A Sky of Dreams","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Barry Stramp","entry_number":2},"coyote-oldman":{"albums":{"compassion":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"Compassion","year":"1993"},"in-medicine-river":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"In Medicine River","year":"1992"},"landscape":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"Landscape","year":"1988"},"night-forest":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"Night Forest","year":"1985"},"tear-of-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"Tear of the Moon","year":"1987"},"the-shape-of-time":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"The Shape of Time","year":"1995"},"thunder-chord":{"image":"","label":"Coyote Oldman Music","review":"","title":"Thunder Chord","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Coyote Oldman","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":299,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael%20allen%20temp.png?alt=media&token=db1104c2-2718-4f06-ac40-cf5ea8a8fe85","last_name":"Coyote"},"craig-huxley":{"artist_name":"Craig Huxley","body":"Born in 1954 and raised in Los Angeles, Huxley's original surname was Hundley. Craig was a precocious child, acting on TV shows like *Star Trek* and *Bewitched* in addition to releasing three jazz albums on World Pacific, all before he turned 16. Huxley did some sporadic session work in the '70s, but things really picked up in the early '80s when he became known for his \"blaster beam,\" a long stringed instrument with a metallic, futuristic sound that was used on numerous movies. He changed his last name to Huxley around 1984 when he founded his own label Sonic Atmospheres, best known as the home for several classic albums by [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns). Huxley also released three albums of his own music on his label, the cinematic and moody *Genesis Project*, an album of romantic impressionism with [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly), and the smooth-jazz fusion of *Quantum Mechanix*, though none are sought after by collectors.","discography":{"craig-huxley":{"albums":{"genesis-project":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Geneis Project","year":"1984"},"quantum-mechanix":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Quantum Mechanix","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Craig Huxley","entry_number":1},"craig-huxley-georgia-kelly":{"albums":{"in-a-chord":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"In a Chord","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Craig Huxley and Georgia Kelly","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":398,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/craig-huxley-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e25b1896-985c-479b-8d7c-0457c815173e","last_name":"Craig Huxley"},"craig-kupka":{"artist_name":"Craig Kupka","body":"Craig Kupka is a classically trained trombone player and composer based in Los Angeles whose new age albums on Folkways have been highly sought after by collectors since the early 2000s. His series of *Dance Technique* albums have also enjoyed a following among teachers and dancers since their initial release, with collector interest in those on the rise too. During his musical heyday, Kupka worked as an accompanist for dance classes at Cal State. After two decades there, he transitioned into teaching.\n\nKupka was born in 1946 and raised in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, California. His father was a fan of big band jazz, especially Tommy Dorsey, and played the trombone. Kupka started music lessons in the 4th grade, and since his family didn't have much money for new instruments, he played the trombone too.  In the '50s, Kupka listened to contemporary classical concerts on the radio and recalls hearing Stravinsky and Luciano Berio's *Sequenzas*. \"That's when I learned there was music outside of Bach and Mozart and big bands,\" Kupka said.\n\nFor college, Kupka attended UCLA where he studied music composition and trombone. \"I got involved with the ‘extended techniques’ of the trombone and new ways of notating notes,\" he said. \"In the ‘60s we were really concerned with creating new sounds that hadn’t been heard before.  I figured out a notation system for them and wrote some pieces. And then The Beatles released *Rubber Soul* and that totally changed my life. I pursued rock and roll and applied avant-garde music and spatial notation to that.\"\n\nStarting around 1967, Kupka joined an art rock band called Septimus Crow that played a totally uncommercial sound akin to Captain Beefheart or Pink Floyd’s *Ummagumma.* Kupka played keyboards and wrote arrangements for the band, filtering rock instrumentation through an avant-garde sensibility. The band played live for a few years around Los Angeles but never recorded anything.\n\nSome of the members in Septimus Crow, including Kupka, went on to form the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band. Their key influence was the Bonzo Dog Band, a British band who combined absurdist lyrics with a musical pastiche of rock and old-timey musical forms like Dixieland jazz and music hall. At first, Roto Rooter played on street corners and collected tips in an instrument case. But eventually they developed a club show and got a deal with Vanguard Records. The band put out a self-titled LP in 1974 and were a staple on the Dr. Demento radio show for years in LA, even providing some of the incidental music. Each band member had a stage name, with Kupka going by \"Sgt. Charts\" since he wrote most of the arrangements.\n\nWhile he was playing with the Roto Rooter band, Kupka found a steady job that allowed him to make a living from music. Back in 1971, a girlfriend encouraged him to move out of his parents' house and get off unemployment. She suggested he apply for a job at Cal State to become a modern dance accompanist. \"I did that for 20 years,\" Kupka said. \"They'd have technique classes where a dance teacher would demonstrate a move or exercise and you make up music for it. Usually I improvised on the piano, not as much trombone. I had the ability to look at movement and transpose that into music.\"\n\nIn 1974, Kupka married a dancer, an ex-ballerina. \"By the time I met Nancy she was 25 and her ballet career was over,\" Kupka said. \"She had danced with the San Francisco ballet and rose to the position of demi-soloist in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She was a heck of a dancer. Of course, I’m prejudiced.\"\n\nWhile he worked at his job, Kupka learned that many dancers preferred long musical pieces. He decided to pitch an album of extended dance music and attracted the interest of Hoctor Records. Kupka assembled a group of musician friends that included bassist Kenny Sawhill, who he knew from his days in Septimus Crow, as well as percussionist Roland Tripp who worked at Cal State. Also closely involved was pianist Norman Beede. Kupka first met Beede at Cal State where he was also a pianist and the two worked together closely on all of Kupka’s albums.\n\nKupka’s first album, *Modern Dance Technique Environments*, came out in 1979. By his estimation, it only sold 500 copies or so, but the reception among dancers and teachers was enthusiastic and grateful. \"To this day I still get calls about it,\" Kupka said. “The modern dance community still uses them.”\n\nFor his next work, Kupka wanted to try something a bit different, aiming for a more ambient sound. He was already aware of Paul Horn and Terry Riley, and when he and Beede heard Steven Halpern’s *Spectrum Suite* album, they thought it sounded similar to what they were already doing for dance. Kupka sold the idea to Folkways and brought back the same group of musicians to produce *Clouds – New Music for Relaxation* in 1981. \n\n\"We did *Clouds* in one take,\" Kupka said.  \"Sometimes in dance class we would do guided mediations with no pulse or discernible rhythm pattern. To create *Clouds*, we went into rehearsals and worked on slowing ourselves down. We would let an event unfold before reacting to anything . It took a while, but we could slow ourselves way down. This was a symbiotic group of musicians who could feel well together as a group. I never worked that way again.\"\n\nKupka went on to make two more albums for dance and one more new age album for Folkways called *Crystals.* According to Kupka, the lp's sold a few thousand copies at the time. Over the years, collectors have tracked him and Beede down to buy sealed copies, which eventually commanded $100 each (they're all gone now.)\n\nAfter working at Cal State for two decades, Kupka transitioned into teaching, starting at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts They were hiring musicians to teach and Kupka and his wife needed money to start a family so, he tried it out. He was soon teaching orchestra, jazz band, music theory and composition. He loved the job so much that he went back to school and got his teaching credentials.  Starting in 1994, he  taught at Hoover high school in Glendale where among other things, he taught a class in rock and roll. He retired from there in 2010 and worked at Glendale community college for another ten years. He's now retired.","discography":{"craig-kupka":{"albums":{"clouds-new-music-for-relaxation":{"image":"","label":"Folkways","review":"","title":"Clouds - New Music for Relaxation","year":"1981"},"crystals-new-music-for-relaxation-2":{"image":"","label":"Folkways","review":"","title":"Crystals - New Music for Relaxation 2","year":"1982"},"dance-technique-environments-2":{"image":"","label":"Hoctor","review":"","title":"Dance Technique Environments 2","year":"1981"},"dance-technique-environments-3":{"image":"","label":"Hoctor","review":"","title":"Dance Technique Environments 3","year":"1983"},"modern-dance-environments":{"image":"","label":"Hoctor","review":"","title":"Modern Dance Technique Environments","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":155,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/craig-kupka-640.jpg?alt=media&token=76bbaee4-e57d-4180-b9aa-a8cdb1c0b86c","last_name":"Kupka"},"craig-leon":{"artist_name":"Craig Leon","body":"Craig Leon made his name in the heyday of NYC punk, producing landmark debuts by the Ramones, Suicide and Blondie. However, Leon was also a musician and composer, producing two albums of fourth world electronica in 1980 and 1982. Soon after that, he relocated to London where he continued producing, with some noteworthy credits including the Go-Betweens, the Primitives, Jesus Jones, and others. Both of Leon’s albums have long had a rep among collectors, and have been reissued multiple times, most recently by RVNG.\n\nBorn in 1952 in Miami, Craig Leon grew up in Fort Myers, Florida. He was classically trained on piano but gravitated towards studio work, spending time at Criteria Studios in Miami before building his own studio in Florida. \n\nDuring a session with the Climax Blues Band, Leon producer Richard Gottehrer who got him a job at Sire Records in New York. Gottehrer already had over ten years experience in the music business by then, getting his start as a songwriter in the Brill Building and helping to pen hits such as “My Boyfriend’s Back” before co-founding Sire Records with Seymour Stein. After seeing the Ramones, Leon convinced Sire to release their debut and went on to produce the album. However, Gottehrer left Sire in 1976 and Leon followed, working with him to produce debut albums by Blondie and Suicide.\n\nNot long after he’d first moved to New York, Leon saw an art show in 1973 at the Brooklyn Museum with sculptures by the Dogon tribe from Mali that depicted a visit from an alien species they called Nommos. Leon was mesmerized by the show and was later inspired to  create music to approximate the sound of an ancient alien species. After meeting John Fahey in the late ‘70s, he pitched the album to him and Fahey agreed to release it on his Takoma label in 1980.\n\nLeon recorded Nommos over a week in Austin with various synths and the Linndrum machine.  \"One of my primary loves is folk music,\" Leon told [the Wire](https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/craig-leon_). \"But I didn't want to try and make an African album, I actually wanted to make what the folk or pop music on the Walkman of the guys coming down from the sky might have been... it's not an overt attempt at African music, but it does use very basic African rhythms as a root. I tried to get the earliest things we had on the planet, not in terms of sounds, but in terms of the simple modal chords and melody lines.\"\n\n\n*Nommos* sold 15,000 copies by Leon’s estimation, ultimately not enough to insure a follow-up on Takoma. However, Leon envisioned the album as a multi volume set in the vein of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, and went on to self-release the companion album *Visitors* in 1982 on his own Arbitor label.\n\nIn 1983, Leon moved to England where he continued to write, produce, and arrange for various pop and rock bands, eventually branching out to produce classical albums as well.  He is still active today and maintains a website [here]( https://craigleon.com/).","discography":{"craig-leon":{"albums":{"nommos":{"image":"","label":"Takoma","review":"","title":"Nommos","year":"1980"},"visiting":{"image":"","label":"Arbitor","review":"","title":"Visiting","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":409,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/craig-rough.png?alt=media&token=422ce45b-d550-463a-9a2d-c11c4e1d50ed","last_name":"Leon"},"craig-padilla":{"artist_name":"Craig Padilla","body":"Based in Northern California, Craig Padilla released his first electronic cassette at the age of 20, a sampler of various electronic styles that he hoped would land him a record deal. While that dream took more than a decade to come true, the small-run tape did help him meet Skip Murphy, a like-minded synthesist and frequent collaborator on a batch of cassettes released in the early '90s. Padilla continued to release music outside the time frame here, finding more success and a larger audience in the 2000s with albums on Spotted Peccary and Space for Music.\n\nBorn in 1970, Padilla grew up in Northern California near Redding where he's remained ever since. His first instrument was the guitar, but he became interested in electronic music after seeing a planetarium show in 1986 featuring Jean Michel-Jarre's *Oxygène*. \"That got me rolling,\" Padilla said. \"I got rid of my guitar and bought a Casio SK-1.\"\n\nA few years later, Padilla enrolled at Shasta College in Redding where he studied to be an actor. \"These guys at the theater department would let me hang out and record on reel-to-reel tapes. I'd be up in the sound booth until 3 or 4 in the morning,\" Padilla said. \"At the time, I was also doing a community access TV show and doing soundtracks for it. I saved up 100 bucks and found a guy to make my first tape [*The Heart of the Galaxy*]. I took my recordings and put the best of each style like ambient, new age, and Berlin-school on there so if someone heard it who liked that style, they might take notice. There was a new age show at a station in Chico and I sent them a cassette and they started playing the heck out of it.\"\n\nPadilla played a handful of shows in the area at this time, and at his second show, he met Skip Murphy who was also interested in electronic music. The two became fast friends and started collaborating. Padilla upgraded his gear from his more primitive earlier setup and Murphy had many synths of his own. \n\nFrom 1992-1994, Padilla and Murphy released a slew of homemade cassettes that they sold to people at art fairs in the area. \"The music scene there was jazz, blues, and cover bands,\" Padilla recalled. \"We'd perform and people would say, 'What kind of music is this?' And we'd say, 'It's country music….from another planet.' People seemed interested in our stuff and we thought, we can't just have 1 or 2 tapes. We gotta keep making music for people to buy.\"\n\nAfter his prolific run with Murphy, Padilla returned to doing solo albums and churned out many self-released CDs in the '90s before finally getting picked up by more established labels like Tony Gerber's Space for Music and Howard Given's Spotted Peccary. \"I knew I would be on a label someday. I had a goal to have my music included on vinyl, which finally happened [via UK label Regal Crabamophone.] I always wanted to get better and didn't want to be limited to just being a hobbyist. Looking back on my time with Skip, we didn't like the music scene here and that's why we created our own.\"\n\nAlthough he never graduated from college, Padilla's work on his public access sketch comedy show (*Bizzarro World*) taught him the requisite skills to work in video production. In 1995, he got a job at the local ABC affiliate and worked as an editor and cameraman in creative services. Ever since he's continued to work in the field and currently runs his own media production company.","discography":{"craig-padilla":{"albums":{"edge-of-eternity":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Edge of Eternity","year":"1992"},"mystical-fantasies":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Mystical Fantasies","year":"1992"},"patterns":{"image":"","label":"See Peace","review":"","title":"Patterns of Thought","year":"1998"},"the-eye-of-the-storm":{"image":"","label":"See Peace","review":"","title":"The Eye of the Storm","year":"1996"},"the-heart-of-the-galaxy":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"The Heart of the Galaxy","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Craig Padilla","entry_number":1},"craig-padilla-and-skip-murphy":{"albums":{"beyond-the-realm":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Beyond the Realm of Sleep","year":"1995"},"beyond-volume-one":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Beyond: Volume One","year":"1992"},"north-of-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"North of the Moon","year":"1995"},"spirits-of-christmas":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Spirits of Christmas","year":"1992"},"universe":{"image":"","label":"Dreamscape Music","review":"","title":"Universe","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Craig Padilla and Skip Murphy","entry_number":3},"impulse":{"albums":{"impulse-live":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Impulse Live! From Space","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Impulse","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":330,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/craig-padilla-339.jpg?alt=media&token=3fc42ad1-d2fc-4230-ac54-0886e407c199","last_name":"Padilla"},"craig-peyton":{"artist_name":"Craig Peyton","body":"Craig Peyton was a New York composer and vibraphonist who got his start with Band X, a jazz fusion group he formed while attending Berklee college in Boston. After that, he headed to New York to work as a session musician, appearing on Dan Hartman's hit disco track \"Vertigo/Relight My Fire\" which ignited a six-year run playing on dance and R&B records. In the mid-'80s, Peyton switched gears to progressive new age and formed the duo Latitude with classical guitarist Ben Verdery. They released three albums before Verdery departed and Peyton embarked on a solo career after that, gradually adopting a more smooth jazz sound.\n\nBorn in 1953, Craig Peyton grew up in Connecticut. He started playing the drums at a young age and drove his parents crazy with constant rhythmic tapping on everything. His parents caved and got him drums lessons – soon he was soon performing with a band called Shuttle at school dances and parties.\n\nAfter high school, Peyton saved up money driving a school bus and bought a set of electric vibes, wanting to write his own songs instead of just holding down the rhythm. He went on to attend two years at Berklee college, studying with Gary Burton. He then formed Band X, a jazz fusion band that played live gigs around the northeast for several years and released an album in 1976 with the tongue-in-cheek title *The Best of Band X*. The group pressed 500 copies and the lp is now highly sought after. The next year, Peyton changed the name to the Craig Peyton group and released a follow-up, *Pyramid* that is also pricey to acquire.\n\nHoping to find better-paying gigs, Peyton moved to New York in the late '70s and began looking for session work. In 1979, he hit paydirt playing vibes on Dan Hartman's hit disco track \"Vertigo/Relight My Fire\" and his career started to take off. He appeared on sessions with rock and R&B acts like Glass Moon and Mike McCray, worked as a producer, and signed a deal with Profile records, who released two twelve-inch singles by him.\n\n\"I went through a period making dance records every week,\" Peyton recalls. \"I’d open Billboard Magazine and I’d have things in the Top 10. But I was pushing into my 30s and I didn’t want to be stuck on that.\" Peyton's manager turned him on to Andreas Vollenweider and Peyton discovered new age. He decided to try a new direction and brought in his friend Ben Verdery, a classical guitarist and formed the duo Latitude, who self-released two albums of progressive new age through Lifestyle that sold pretty well at the time and enjoyed wide distribution.\n\nIn 1989, Latitude signed with Narada imprint Sona Gaia, though almost immediately Peyton got a bad feeling when label owner John Morey insisted on ditching the name Latitude. After that, Verdery dropped out of the band, worried that his new age recordings were tarnishing his reputation as a classical guitarist (he's now a professor at Yale). Peyton went on to put out a solo album with Sona Gaia, but his relationship with Morey soured further and he had to sue to get off the label.\n\nOnce freed from Narada, Peyton started his own label Earthlight and continued to put out new albums, going more in a smooth jazz direction outside the scope of this guide. In the '90s, Peyton moved to the Hudson Valley in New York where he still lives today.\n\nDuring the time he was making good money as a session musician, Peyton got his pilot's license and began flying planes. \"I was smitten with aviation since I was 5 years old,\" Peyton said. \"But I wear coke bottle glasses so I couldn’t be a professional pilot.\" Still, Peyton loved to fly and eventually relocated to the Hudson Valley in New York where he got a hangar for his plane. At one point, he started making videos of clouds from his plane that he sold as stock footage, providing a reliable source of income. Mostly though, Peyton has continued to make a living from music, writing jingles, scores, and background music for TV and commercials. Peyton maintains a website [here](https://craigpeyton.com/).\n\n\n","discography":{"craig-peyton":{"albums":{"lifeline":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"","title":"Lifeline","year":"1990"},"songs-from-home":{"image":"","label":"Earthflight","review":"","title":"Songs from Home","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Craig Peyton","entry_number":3},"craig-peyton-ben-verdury":{"albums":{"emotional-velocity":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"","title":"Emotional Velocity","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Craig Peyton and Ben Verdery","entry_number":2},"latitude":{"albums":{"40-north ":{"image":"","label":"Lifestyle","review":"","title":"40° North","year":"1987"},"latitude":{"image":"","label":"Lifestyle","review":"","title":"Latitude","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Latitude","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":272,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Craig-Peyton-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=fa3cc88d-d3de-4336-859c-c59a7fba1327","last_name":"Peyton"},"creative-spirit":{"artist_name":"Creative Spirit","body":"Creative Spirit was the new age musical project of Christian Leefeldt, an Oakland native who moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in the mid-'80s to start his life over. Inspired by the desert scenery, he recorded six cassettes from 1987 to 1988 that drew on his jam-band roots and a more meditative sound that he credited to his \"shamanic rebirth\" during a motorcycle trip in the mountains. After this burst of meditative tapes, he returned to rock and roll in 1989 and later joined a Grateful Dead cover band. He now lives in Tempe, Arizona.\n\nBorn in 1956, Leefeldt grew up in Oakland, California. He got his start playing guitar in punk bands, club bands, and a cover band called One Night Stand. After a few years of college, he dropped out and eventually moved to Chico in his mid-twenties. There he co-owned and ran a studio called Creative Spirit, recording local bands as well as his own tunes. After several years though, he fell out with his business partner, and the studio was scrapped.\n\nDevastated, Leefelt relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he had an epiphany. \"I came out here broken,\" Leefeldt recalled. \"I went out in the mountains on a motorcycle and looked across the canyon and I saw this huge giant buried in the rock and I thought, 'Wow that is something else.' I realized I had arrived. Everything that had happened before, losing all the money, was pointless. I forgave my business partner. That was like my shamanic rebirth.\" \n\nInspired by the beautiful Southwestern scenery, Leefeldt began photographing the mountains, which he is still doing today. He also decided to start recording more meditative music under the name Creative Spirit. He recorded his first album *The Shaman's Return* in 1987, including a spoken word story along with the music.  \"After I had that shamanic experience in mountains, it occurred to me I could write something half-electric and half-acoustic and market it in Sedona,\" Leefeldt said. At first, he sold his tapes on consignment at bookstores, and then he got national distribution through New Leaf.\n\n1988 was a prolific year for Leefeldt, who released five cassettes in the new style, all instrumental. Sometimes he was accompanied by Glenn Olson on percussion and keyboard, but he played most of the instruments himself and recorded it at his home studio. He sold a few hundred copies by his estimation, but it wasn't enough for his distributor to continue their relationship. \"New Leaf dropped me and my sales basically went to zero,\" Leefeldt said.  For his next cassette, *Universal Pan*, he went back to rock, returning to the music of his roots. A bit later he joined a Grateful Dead cover band No Hobo and left new age music behind.","discography":{"creative-spirit":{"albums":{"1-the-light-ones":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"The Light Ones Illuminate in '88 Part 1","year":"1988"},"2-light-ones":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"The Light Ones Illuminate in '88 Part 2","year":"1988"},"3-the-canyon-speaks":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"The Canyon Speaks","year":"1988"},"4-going-gnome":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"Going Gnome","year":"1988"},"5-pure-intent":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"Pure Intent","year":"1988"},"the-shamans-return":{"image":"","label":"no label","review":"","title":"The Shaman's Return","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":356,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/christian-leefeldt-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9cab75a1-77b8-4754-ac66-6f69aaf17e9a","last_name":"Creative Spirit"},"d'Rachael":{"artist_name":"d'Rachael","body":"Playing flute and harp, D'Rachael appeared on many releases for [Dean and Dudley Evenson's](/dean-and-dudley-evenson) Soundings of the Planet label, including the top-selling *Peaceful Pond* album. D'Rachael,  born in 1950, first met Dean Evenson while living in Phoenix, Arizona in the '70s and developed a close musical bond with him, improvising together on long meditative pieces even though she was raised on more conventional sounds like jazz and classical. She relocated to Mexico in the '80s where she lived cheaply and focused on her music. She only produced one album as a bandleader, *Coastlines*, but it has fallen out of print and by her estimation was not a big seller.","discography":{"d'Rachael-and-the-new-world-ensemble":{"albums":{"coastlines":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Coastlines","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"d'Rachael and the New World Ensemble","entry_number":3},"evenson-d-rachael":{"albums":{"joy-to-the-world":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Joy to the World","year":"1982"},"life-streams":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Life Streams","year":"1982"},"peaceful-pond":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"Peaceful, uplifting music in harmony with natural sounds (from the deserts near Tucson, AZ, where this musical clan creates). Flute, piano, cello, harps all together reflecting the essence of a lush summer day spent by the \"Perfect Pond.\"\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Peaceful Pond","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, d'Rachael","entry_number":5},"evenson-drachael-kramer":{"albums":{"whistling-woodhearts":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Whistling Woodhearts","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, d'Rachael, Kramer","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":380,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/d-rachael-640.jpg?alt=media&token=4a1e3e07-b3c7-40f6-b847-92697ef406ee","last_name":"dRachael"},"d-andrew-rath":{"artist_name":"D. Andrew Rath","body":"Dana Rath was a synthesist from New Jersey who was most active during the '80s and early '90s. He is probably best known as a member of [Xisle](/chuck-van-zyl), a trio that specialized in ambient and Berlin-school soundscapes. Rath's career began with a batch of self-released cassettes under the name Control Voltage that led to a friendship with Chuck Van Zyl, a Philadelphia DJ and musician who later recruited Rath for Xisle. All of Rath's solo albums were pressed in small quantities and are now rare.\n\nRath was born in Willingboro, NJ in 1965, where he continues to live today in the same house where he grew up. His father was an accomplished graphic artist for the Winchell company and drew an early version of the Hewlett Packard logo. Rath's father had an eclectic music collection and introduced his son to *Switched On Bach* and Rick Wakeman's *Six Wives of Henry VIII*, among others,  which got him hooked on analog synthesizers. His father also was a fan of Star's End, the long running ambient show on WXPN in Philadelphia hosted at various times by Chuck Van Zyl, John Diliberto, and Gino Wong.\n\nRath tinkered on a chord organ as a kid and took viola lessons, but it wasn't until after he graduated from high school in 1983 that he finally bought his first synth, a Korg Mono/Poly. Shortly after that, he also bought a four track and began experimenting at home, inspired in big part by local trio the Nightcrawlers.  He eventually put together enough material for his first album, *Monophonicum* using the name Control Voltage.  He only made a few copies of this and his following two tapes, but by 1986’s  *Apex* he started to press larger quantities and send them out for Press, earning some early raves from Electronic Musician magazine who reviewed *Apex* and his next two albums favorably. \n\nBy 1987, Rath opted to change his recording moniker to D. Andrew Rath and start over with the aptly titled *Reset*. The album earned an impassioned recommendation from Camera Obscura who called it “pristine” and  “impeccably thought out and presented” while also noting a tropical ambience in some of the tracks.\n\nMeanwhile, Rath had been sending his tapes to Van Zyl and the two struck up a friendship, often talking late at night while Van Zyl was hosting his show. Van Zyl even played some of Rath's cassettes on the air and loaned him some much gear. \"He really took me under his wing,\" Rath said. \"Around 1985 he let me borrow his Oberheim Matrix 6-R, and his beloved Roland MKS-80. I'll never forget it and will always owe him a debt of gratitude.\"\n\nThe two started playing together informally at first, but by 1987, Van Zyl was forming a new version of Xisle, a band he'd originally started with Tom Gulch of the Nightcrawlers, and was ready for a new lineup. Comprised of Rath, Peter Gulch, and Zyl, the new version of Xisle debuted with a live show in December 1987, followed up by *The Independent Space Program* cassette in 1988. The band churned out 2-3 tapes per year after that and played live every few months too (there is a full list of shows [here](http://s118936909.onlinehome.us/synkronosmusic/xisle.html)). \"The band was very democratic,\" Rath said. \"We were usually on the same radio frequency, and each of us would inevitably find the textures we were all looking for. But in the end I always regard it as Chuck's baby. He was the founder. Peter and I were Rev. 2.0, the original incarnation was Chuck and Tom Gulch.\"\n\n1989 was a particularly productive year for Rath, as Xisle released four cassettes and he also put out four solo albums of his own. His most well known is probably *Quantum* from 1989, his only release on Synkronos, the more widely distributed label run by Peter Gulch. Rath also released a collaboration that year with Lauri Paisley, who he'd been dating since meeting at an Xisle show in July 1986. That tape, *Truth or Consequences*, is now very rare, as are most of his solo releases.\n\nXisle's last album was *The Sound Museum* in 1991, but they continued to play live shows until 1992 before taking a break from live performance and recording.  Van Zyl later formed a new band call Ministry of Inside Things in the late '90s and Rath tried forming his own trio, but was never able to cement the lineup. He began prepping work for a new solo album to be released on CD and feature his song \"Electrum\" which he still feels is one of his strongest.  However, Rath ultimately never finished the album and got sidelined with other things such as working at a photo lab and as an IT tech. Rath currently lives in New Jersey and is now remixing some of his older releases for a potential vinyl reissue.","discography":{"control-voltage":{"albums":{"additive-synthesis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Additive Synthesis","year":"1984"},"apex":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Quiet oboe-like soloing over sequenced backing. It’s minimalist background stuff, but unlike most in the genre, little touches here and there indicate that it comes from an understated sophistication.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, June 1986)","title":"Apex","year":"1986"},"chronolog":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Chronolog","year":"1985"},"f-sub-c-equals-infinity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Somewhat like the Nightcrawlers, D. Andrew Rath takes sequencer patterns that change keys every few bars and modally improvises over the top. Unlike T.D. [Tangerine Dream] and the N.C.s, he steps outside the conventions which have grown up around this style, dropping some low register grumblings into his improvs, some slippery-pitch passages, etc. – generally goosing up a geriatric genre. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, January 1987)\n","title":"F sub c = infinity","year":"1986"},"impressions-of-the-city":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Dana Rath makes electronic music without the guilt. Through using \"only\" synths and drum machines, he warms up a cold genre with his sumptuous digital programs and impeccable recording. He even has a \"trademark\" sound, something like a harpsichord without the sharp edges. \"Evening Skyline\" is an uptempo composition with subtle, Pat-Matheny like harmonic shifts. \"As a Bird Might See It\" swoops and glides hesitantly before settling in; excellent low note-high note interplay here. \"Don't Forget Your Galoshes\" has an almost rock-like tempo and melody. My only disappointment came with the ominous wind-tunnel blasts of \"Necropolis\" -- audio visions of a lobotomized future that have been done to death. But overall, a beautiful and seductive work.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option*, 1987)","title":"Impressions of the City","year":"1987"},"monophonicum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Monophonicum","year":"1984"},"off-world":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Off-World","year":"1987"},"wind-pictures":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"D. Andrew Rath’s minimalist *Apex* gave indications it was distilled down from a full-blown musical background. As if to prove the point, this month he's released *Mind Pictures* which makes manifest all the sophistication hinted at by *Apex*. Rath elicits a broad range of sounds from his machines, and stylistically mixes it up from elaborate drones to fast changing rhythmic constructions. Both tapes are an intelligent alternative to the pablum foisted off as electronic music by the major labels.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, July 1986)","title":"Mind Pictures","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Control Voltage","entry_number":1},"d-andrew-rath":{"albums":{"cipher":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cipher","year":"1989"},"extended-meditations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Meditative electronic instrumental space music with an Eastern feel to much of it; long playing.\n\n(*Heartsong Review* No. 5, Fall/Winter 1988)\n\n","title":"Extended Meditations","year":"1988"},"matrix":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Matrix","year":"1988"},"one-small-step":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This recording is an unusual one, but in a pleasant way. It is a soundtrack for the Robert J. Novins Planetarium program, “One Small Step.” Many soundtracks just flow along without keeping your interest. This one does, changing pace often enough to keep the listener involved. Recordings of a countdown and of the famous \"One small step for man\" speech add flavor and excitement to the recording. Although it is rather short, about 27 minutes, it still ranks as one of the better soundtracks around.\n\n(Alex Rad, *Dreams Word* No. 8, Summer 1990)","title":"One Small Step","year":"1989"},"quantum":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Rath's post-Teutonic babysteps might just lead somewhere with some versatility and a wider grasp of the wonders technology can offer for the curious and able. *Quantum* fits snugly in with more of the contemporary instrumental music being made by countless bands and musicians from all over the world, and though lacking any kind of singular style, it nevertheless is an enervating and temporary enough diversion from the mundane waffle of post-Eno 'new age.' If anything, Rath is savvy enough to pay homage to the elemental beginnings of the electronic music age with \"Tribute to Bernard Hermann,\" and whether or not he utilizes a genuine Theremin or any other 'primitive' means to emulate those almost-forgotten sounds, the piece succeeds beautifully and is quite impressive. Elsewhere, Rath covers everything from Schulzian percussive motifs through transient solar tours to contemplative etherealisms with a fair amount of relish and ingenuity. Quantum's playful sense of wonder is entertaining enough to draw in even the most cursory electronic music fan. And in these desensitized, tone-deaf times when anyone with a credit card and five fingers can sashay with a synthesizer, that is no faint praise.\n\n(Darren Bergstein, *i/e*, Winter 1992)","title":"Quantum","year":"1989"},"reset":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Fearlessly plunging where so many have gone before, D. Andrew Rath manages to give the burned-out \"space music\" genre a much-needed transfusion. Though I can't put my finger on what makes *Reset* stand out, I'm certain it has something to do with Rath's ability to *concentrate* his music, so that with each successive listening new layers are exposed. The elements are obvious: minimal patterns, laid-back percussion, scattered fresh and invigorating, giving all the home taping Synergy lapdogs a run for their money.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option* Jan/Feb, 1988)","title":"Reset","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"D. Andrew Rath","entry_number":2},"d-andrew-rath-and-lauri-paisley":{"albums":{"reset":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Truth or Consequences","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"D. Andrew Rath and Lauri Paisley","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":90,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dana-Rath-600.jpg?alt=media&token=59521859-9491-441c-893b-11ab726f31fe","last_name":"Rath"},"dallas-smith-susan-mazer":{"artist_name":"Dallas Smith and Susan Mazer","body":"Born a year apart, Dallas Smith (1948) and Susan Mazer (1947) veered off traditional music paths to arrive at the epicenter of new age music in Marin County. Smith had grown up in Georgia playing classical clarinet but wanted the freedom to improvise and began playing jazz and Indian music, studying the bansuri flute for three years at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, CA. Mazer was born in Georgia and earned two degrees in classical harp. She subsequently played for decades in restaurants and casinos, but she yearned to transcend sweet harp cliches. That would lead her to eventually electrify her instrument and explore more transformative sounds in the new age scene. Smith played sax and flute on early new age albums for Jon Bernoff and Marcus Allens’s Rising Sun label. He also collaborated with Steven Halpern in the early '80s. The couple first met when Mazer was shopping her debut new age album *Fire and the Rose* to Rising Sun and they immediately bonded, marrying soon after and embarking on a long career as a duo.","discography":{"dallas-smith":{"albums":{"stellar":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Stellar Voyage","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Dallas Smith","entry_number":3},"dallas-smith-and-susan-mazer":{"albums":{"carol":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Carol for the Planet","year":"1991"},"inner-rhythms":{"image":"","label":"Music West","review":"","title":"Inner Rhythms","year":"1986"},"magic-garden":{"image":"","label":"Inner Rhythm Productions","review":"","title":"Magic Garden","year":"1994"},"still-point":{"image":"","label":"ProJazz","review":"","title":"The Still Point","year":"1990"},"summmit":{"image":"","label":"Brave Dog","review":"","title":"Summit","year":"1988"},"timeless":{"image":"","label":"Inner Rhythm Productions","review":"","title":"Timeless","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Dallas Smith and Susan Mazer","entry_number":6},"marcus-allen-jon-bernoff-dallas-smith-teja-bell":{"albums":{"petals":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Petals","year":"1981"},"summer-suite":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Summer Suite","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Marcus Allen, Jon Bernoff, Dallas Smith, Teja Bell","entry_number":1},"steven-halpern-and-dallas-smith":{"albums":{"1984-newsound":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"1984: Newsound","year":"1983"},"natural-light":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Natural Light","year":"1984"},"threshold":{"image":"","label":"Hear & Now Records","review":"","title":"Threshold","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Dallas Smith","entry_number":2},"steven-halpern-susan-mazer-dallas-smith-ft-kenneth-nash":{"albums":{"lifetide":{"image":"","label":"Gramavision","review":"","title":"Lifetide","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern, Susan Mazer, Dallas Smith ft. Kenneth Nash","entry_number":5},"susan-mazer":{"albums":{"fire":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Fire in the Rose","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Susan Mazer","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":418,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Smith-Mazer-1988-bw-640r.jpeg?alt=media&token=503bb47d-ec8f-4bb6-814b-2b7d6bc6ee6f","last_name":"Smith"},"dan-joseph":{"artist_name":"Dan Joseph","body":"Based in Washington D.C. during the '80s, Dan Joseph was a drummer and composer who released four tapes of experimental ambient music between 1987 and 1988. After tiring of home recording, Joseph moved to California to study music formally, attending CalArts and then Mills College for his Master's in music composition. At this point he switched over to playing the hammer dulcimer, forming a duo for a few years with John Ingle before settling in New York where he became a part of the downtown music scene.\n\nBorn in 1966, Dan Joseph grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, just outside  Washington, D.C. He took piano and guitar lessons at an early age and then moved to drums when he was 12. He grew up listening to top 40 music but started getting into new wave and post-punk in the early '80s. His first band was 9353, an art punk band with offbeat lyrics captured in song titles like \"Senior Citizen Disposal Plant\" and \"Viva La Sleaze.\" The band had a sizable local following and released two full length albums during Joseph's tenure in 1984 and 1985.\n\nAfter high school, Joseph tried a few semesters of college, but it didn't click and he dropped out. He continued to play drums in bands, joining the jangle pop band Crippled Pilgrims and forming a trio to play his own music called Troubled Gardens. \n\nIn the mid-'80s, Joseph retired from bands to focus on recording his own music at home. His initial inspiration was industrial and experimental music by bands like Zoviet France, though he recorded instrumental pieces in various styles. After a while, he collected the best tracks on his debut cassette *Morpheus*. He traded tapes with others in the cassette culture scene and got some good reviews in underground magazines like *Sound Choice* and *Option*.\n\nOne of the people Joseph traded tapes with was the San Francisco  musician Carolyn Fok, also known as Cyrnai. Together, they issued a split release called *The Hypno-Seizure Tape* that arrived shortly after Joseph's debut. Another kindred spirit of Joseph's was [Jack Hurwitz](/jack-hurwitz), a fellow DC electronic musician who co-ran the Poison Plant label and added a song by Joseph on the compilation *Music Electronic 1989*.\n\nAfter releasing two more solo cassettes in 1988, Joseph was ready for a change. \"I decided to go back to school for music to do something more formal. I wanted to actually write scores for musicians to play. I felt isolated making music at home. It's a solitary pursuit, which is fine to a point, but I reached the limit of my enthusiasm for it and wanted to work with other people and collaborate more.\"\n\nIn 1991, Joseph moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts. After earning a degree in music composition, he moved up to the Bay Area and earned an MA in composition at Mills College where he studied with Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran. He also recalls taking some influential workshops with Terry Riley. While he mostly focused on piano during his schooling, Joseph began taking an interest in the hammer dulcimer. After graduation, he formed a duo with saxophone player John Ingle. The duo's music was mostly improvised over patterns or melodic ideas, drawing from free jazz, minimalism and raga. They played live sporadically, attracting a small but dedicated fanbase and releasing a CD called *Trance Patterns* in 2000 on Joseph's own Dendroica label.\n\nAfter that, Joseph moved back east to New York where he formed the Dan Joseph Ensemble. The group was a vehicle for Joseph's compositions, and included other players on strings, woodwinds, harpsichord and percussion . The group was featured at some residencies in New York and also played commissioned works for ensembles and performers. They are still active today.\n\nJoseph has released four solo albums since 2000, including a set called *The Woolly Mammoth Tapes* which was drawn from unreleased material recorded in the late'80s. He is still active musically, maintaining a website [here](https://danjoseph.org/) and hosting a monthly music series called Musical Ecologies in Park Slope, Brooklyn. All of his old cassette releases have also been archived on his Bandcamp page [here](https://danjoseph.bandcamp.com). In addition to his music, Joseph has worked as an arts administrator and more recently as an IT consultant. He lives in New York. ","discography":{"cyrnai-dan-jospeh":{"albums":{"the-hypno-seizure-tape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Hypno-Seizure Tape","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Cyrnai / Dan Joseph","entry_number":2},"dan-joseph":{"albums":{"morpheus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Morpheus","year":"1987"},"reveries":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"No. 3","year":"1988"},"sonorous-alchemy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sonorous Alchemy","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":207,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dan-Joseph-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fd1d8ea4-c6d7-478d-8b4f-9f1480e92286","last_name":"Joseph"},"dan-morehouse":{"artist_name":"Dan Morehouse","body":"Dan Morehouse only released one album in his career, 1978's *Patterns of Growth*. Inspired by the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13) and its ubiquity in nature, the album is a series of ambient pieces recorded with an ARP 2600 and EML 400. The album was released on an imprint of Cheops Records, a short-lived label run by Wrecking Crew saxophonist [Steve Douglas](/steve-douglas).\n\nAt the time, Morehouse was working as an audio engineer, arranger, and producer on jazz sessions in LA at Clover Recorders. He started there around 1960 after getting out of the Air Force and worked his way up to producing, although he recalls mostly spending his time on ultra-obscure exploitation albums for Uni and Nocturne.\n\nMorehouse studied music composition through private lessons with Wesley LaViolette, a mentor for many jazz musicians on the west coast during the '50s and '60s. Through LaViolette and his work at Clover, Morehouse met a lot of the premiere session players in LA, including saxophonist Steve Douglas who had been a part of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew and played on many hits of the day.  \n\nDouglas and Morehouse shared an interest in mystical vibrations and in 1976, Morehouse went along to record Douglas' album *The Music of Cheops in the King's Chamber* at the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. Douglas released the album on his own Cheops label and then helped set up Morehouse with an imprint called Spaceola so he could also distribute *Patterns of Growth.* Perhaps Douglas wanted to do more with his label but in 1978 he joined Bob Dylan's touring band for a few years and never did anything more with Cheops. (Douglas passed away in 1993 so we may never know the full story.)\n\nAround 1980, Morehouse went to work for Bill Graham as a road manager. After Graham's death in 1991, Morehouse started his own studio, mostly doing record mastering and small overdub sessions.  Morehouse eventually got into scoring for TV and library music, which he still does as of 2018.","discography":{"dan-morehouse":{"albums":{"patterns-of-growth":{"image":"","label":"Spaceola","review":"","title":"Patterns of Growth","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":41,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/morehousesmall.jpg?alt=media&token=877b667e-ac95-4237-9f9b-fb2227c764f6","last_name":"Morehouse"},"daniel-crommie":{"artist_name":"Daniel Crommie","body":"Daniel Crommie is a multi-instrumentalist who has been active in the Portland, Oregon area since the late '70s. His music covers many genres including folk, art pop, progressive electronic, new age and new wave but his preferred cocktail is a blend of organic and electronic. In addition to a large body of solo work, he also was a member of Group Du Jour and Echo System, the latter an ambient project that evolved into synth pop. A lot of Crommie's work is song-oriented art rock that is outside the scope of this site, though five of his solo releases may be of interest to collectors including *Animosity*, *Precious Time*, *Skybridge*, *Chrysanthemum*, and *Quiet Night*, all released between 1988 and 1993. His band Group Du Jour also did an instrumental album called *Hinterland* that sounds similar to his work from the same period.\n\nDaniel Crommie was born in 1956 and grew up in the outer suburbs of Portland, Oregon. He spent a lot of his childhood in the woods, and the natural world remained a big draw for the rest of his life. By high school he got into progressive UK folk bands like Jethro Tull and Pentangle and developed a fondness for eclectic instrumentation. He started teaching himself the flute at 15 and later the clarinet.\n\nAfter high school, Crommie spent a few years playing flute and clarinet with guitarist Lew Jones. The duo played at colleges and coffee houses in the area while Crommie supplemented his income with odd jobs like working as a dishwasher and grocery cashier.\n\nIn 1978, Crommie recorded his first album *Skeletons*, a series of traditional folk tunes played on dulcimer. He pressed up a few copies for friends but never distributed it more widely than that. A few years later, he started a duo called Continuum with his pal Jamie Haggerty. The band worked in a progressive folk style, with Crommie playing dulcimer through a synthesizer.\n\nCrommie's next band was the more pop-oriented Group Du Jour, formed with the couple Paul and Bo Parker. The trio was very active during the mid 80s, playing up and down the I-5 corridor in the Pacific Northwest. They released many synth-pop albums starting with a single called *Outskirts/Sometimes* In 1983.  The band frequently played live and usually included some more jammy, atmospheric pieces in their set which they culled together for their final release *Hinterland* in 1990.\n\nCrommie recorded solo albums sporadically during the mid-'80s, and in 1986 he formed a new progressive electronic duo with Haggerty, inspired by Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream. They put out two cassettes in a Private Music/Vangelis vein but by their third release *In a Strange World*, they began adding vocals for a more commercial sound. \n\nEcho System broke up in 1988 and Group Du Jour began to slow down after the Parkers got pregnant with their first child.  Crommie put more energy into his solo work, releasing a new cassette nearly every year starting with 1987’s *Raised by Pirahnas*. Much of his work from 1987 to 1994 is the best of his career. The pressing sizes vary from about 50-200 for his cassettes from this period, but Crommie has been active on Bandcamp for the last several years selling stock copies of some titles and making others available for digital streaming. According to Crommie, one of the more popular titles from that era is 1991’s *Skybridge.*","discography":{"daniel-crommie":{"albums":{"animosity":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"Minimalist electro instrumentals with tribal and ethnic overtones, *Animosity* sounds like a collision of Bill Nelson's brash '80s art pop and [David Casper](https://ultravillage.com/david-casper)'s folk eclecticism. The album is bookended with two stylistic outliers, a spoken word sci-fi tale and a slowly drifting ambient piece, but elsewhere the compositional style is pretty uniform. \n\nMost songs lock into a repetitive bass/drum pattern that Crommie improvises over with flutes and multi-timbral synth lines.  Some of the more up-tempo tracks like \"Concrete\" and \"Horror of Horrors\" get bogged down with overt period styling like 8-bit drum machines and Casio samples, but the more austere tracks like the slowly creeping \"Red Sandstone Cliffs\" or the mysterious \"Vertical Ocean\" resonate on their own terms.  The second side is stronger overall, especially album closer \"Still Life,\" a glaze of frozen atmosphere and sparkling drops of sound.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Animosity","year":"1987"},"at-the-water's-edge":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"At the Water's Edge","year":"1993"},"attention-to-details":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Attention to Details","year":"1984"},"chrysanthemum":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"On *Chrysanthemum*, Crommie draws from his usual mosaic of ethnic, ambient, and synth-pop sounds but now refined to near perfection. Track after track unspools with exquisitely layered melodic interplay featuring myriad synths, exotic timbres, thoughtful drum programming, and skyward flute playing. The general mood is nocturnal and mysterious, but relaxed. \n\nCrommie is aided by old conspirators Jamie Haggerty and Michael Maldonado on the album, with all in top form. The whole album is solid, but particular standouts for me are \"Worldpool,\" an ethereal sound painting with backwards guitar, \"The Dark Place I Dwell,\" an epic Berlin-school sonata, \"Unfamiliar Flowers,\" a DIY take on Reich, and \"Skyline Sketches\" which sounds like Gong circa *You* with Ian Anderson ripping a wild flute solo. Only \"Cowardly Old Moon\" sours the album's taste, with a muck of Casio beats, scraping violin and pan-pipe chirping that never gels. Thankfully it's at the end of side one and is easily skipped. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)\n","title":"Chrysanthemum","year":"1993"},"info":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Info","year":"1985"},"miniatures":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Miniatures","year":"1983"},"polarity":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Polarity","year":"1983"},"precious-time":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"Crommie's musical timespan stretches from the middle ages right through a digital sampler into 1990. He plays instruments as diverse as the recorder, the psaltery, the synth, and the dulcimer, and creates gorgeous compositions which utilize medieval sounds alloyed with a new age aesthetic. Your first comparison might be [Mark Isham](/mark-isham)'s music, although Crommie is more delicate -- he doesn't go in for Isham's grandiloquence. Crommie's synthesizers are subtle, creating a sort of dreamy context which allows the acoustic instruments' voices plenty of room. If you're into medieval music, you may hear it in a new light on this tape. And if your taste runs to new age, this is a must, a distinct cut above the audio anesthesia you hear from the larger new age labels these days.\n\n(John Baxter, *Option* Mar/Apr 1990)","title":"Precious Time","year":"1989"},"quiet-night":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Quiet Night","year":"1993"},"raised-by-piranhas":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Raised by Piranhas","year":"1987"},"shadowgraph":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"Crommie's diverse buffet of styles - new wave pop, ambient soundscapes, prog folk, early music - means there are bound to be albums like *Shadowgraph*, where nothing quite gels into a cohesive whole. The main mode here is Bill Nelson and Devo-styled herky jerk electro pop with Crommie adding vocals to about half the songs. Still, Crommie being Crommie, there are a few left-turns: a mellow downtempo instrumental (\"Reconstruction\"), a progressive new age electronic suite (\"Little Bird/Past Tense Trance\") and even rap (“Hall of Fame”) though thankfully the latter style was not one Crommie attempted often. Certainly not a complete misfire, but not one of his best. For a more consistent listen in his ambient/down-tempo mode, try *Chrysanthemum* or *Quiet Night*.","title":"Shadowgraph","year":"1991"},"skeletons":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Skeletons","year":"1978"},"skybridge":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"Here is a lovely, mellow instrumental recording comprised mostly of synthesizer, percussion instruments and various flutes. It's smooth, melodic arrangements provide a relaxing backdrop to work or to meditate by. There are no rough edges on this tape, enabling it to be easy on the nerves, as well as the ears. Artist Daniel Crommie is the sole writer, performer, engineer and producer on this quality recording. This tape is sure to be enjoyed by new age and fusion fans alike.\n\n(*Heartsong Review* No. 11, Fall /91/Winter '92)","title":"Skybridge","year":"1991"},"sun-construction":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Sun Construction","year":"1987"},"the-fisherman's-path":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Fisherman's Path","year":"1982"},"tidepool-of-the-sky":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Tidepool of the Sky (EP)","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Daniel Crommie","entry_number":1},"echo-system":{"albums":{"bad-medicine":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Bad Medicine","year":"1987"},"heat-lightning":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Heat Lightning","year":"1990"},"in-a-strange-world":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"In a Strange World","year":"1987"},"nightmares-and-dreams":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Nightmares and Dreams","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Echo System","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":102,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Daniel-Crommie-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8651434f-1b84-4fc8-a66b-af28d2646aaf","last_name":"Crommie"},"daniel-emmanuel":{"artist_name":"Daniel Emmanuel","body":"Daniel Emmanuel was a synthesizer and guitar player from Houston who created hypnotic, dreamy music designed for meditation and inner exploration.  His work was informed by Terry Riley and German space music of the '70s, but with a more intimate and relaxed approach. Emmanuel wasn't very well-known when his albums were released in the '80s, but he has experienced a resurgence in the past ten years, with all of his albums being reissued in addition to a trove of archival material.\n\nEmmanuel was turned on to electronic music in 1970 when he heard works by Terry Riley and Steve Reich. After spending years jamming with guitarist Mark Towns and others in the East Texas area, Emmanuel eventually picked up a Crumar organ and a four track and began recording his minimalist experiments at home. \n\nEmmanuel's first album was *Sound Paintings* in 1980, featuring trance-like loops of guitar and organ reminiscent of Terry Riley, Roedelius or [Ken Moore's](/ken-moore) more hypnotic electronic pieces. Emmanuel pressed about 100 copies on cassette before putting out a new version called *Visions of Life* that included the same material on the first side backed with the all new \"Visions of Life Suite\" on the second side.  He only made about 25 of these before repackaging it again as *Rainforest Music* with an initial cassette run using a blue and silver cover.   This was then followed by a pressing of 500 on vinyl.  By Emmanuel's estimation, he only sold about 100 copies of the LP.  \n\n*Rainforest Music* was marketed as a tool to enhance relaxation. In one of the early versions, Emmanuel wrote that \"This is an excellent tape for the practice of visualization in meditation. This will enhance the clarity of the inner reality, as well as aid in sending caring to others, or increase your understanding of the symbolism in your life and dreams\". According to Emmanuel, the album was also used by a local doctor in his counseling sessions as background and noticed a marked difference in the quality of the patient's ability to relax and open up in their sessions.\n\nEmmanuel's next release was the cassette only *Echoes From Ancient Caves* in 1981.  Continuing his proclivity for mixing and matching, Emmanuel borrowed the \"Ocean Music\" suite from the first side of this cassette for a later cassette run of *Rain Forest Music* which he has kept in print ever since.  Finally satisfied with that track order, Emmanuel stopped tinkering with his earlier material and put out a completely new album called *Wizards*. The album retains the same aesthetic as before, but the compositions feel more cohesive and defined.  Emmanuel thought it was the best thing he'd done to date and ordered a vinyl run of 500 copies, but the album fared no better than his others in terms of sales.  Emmanuel later abandoned his old LP's in his home in Dallas after he moved out.\n\nEmmanuel didn't play live much, but he did appear at a benefit concert in 1982 at the Washington on the Brazos State Park in Texas. He continued recording at home for the next three or four years, ultimately compiling his third and final album, *Trance Formations* in 1986. (Other archival releases have followed more recently, including a cassette of his 1982 live show.) Starting in the mid-'80s, Emmanuel began working as a public speaker and instructor for the automotive industry and mostly moved on from music until the renewed interest in his work in the mid-2000's. He started recording new material again, all of which can be found on his bandcamp page [here](https://jdemmanuel.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"daniel-emmanuel":{"albums":{"echoes-from-ancient-caves":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"","title":"Echoes from Ancient Caves","year":"1981"},"rain-forest-music":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"\nLike Ariel Kalma’s *Osmose* (if you remember that one), *Rain Forest Music* consists of lightweight organ extemporizations over the sound of falling rain (surf on side B). It's a perfect noise-masking background for reading or studying.\n\nRobert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, June 1986)","title":"Rain Forest Music","year":"1981"},"sound-paintings":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"Most contemporary collectors of J.D. Emmanuel probably start with *Rain Forest Music* or *Wizards*, his two original vinyl releases from the early '80s. The music on the first side of *Rain Forest Music* was originally included here, with an extra song and a different rain backdrop, taken from \"Gentle Rain in a Pine Forest\" on Atlantic's Environments series. But all the material on side two from *Sound Paintings* is exclusive to this release, and thus the main draw.  \n\nIntended for \"movement and inner awareness,\" the second side is similar to the first with a mix of contemplative minimalism (\"Uranus\") and mystical drones (\"Movement Into Lightspeed\"). The lack of a rain motif here gives more emphasis to the individual songs, and the intimate moments stand out most, like the gently propulsive \"March of the Colossus\" or the phased blur of his solo guitar piece, \"Thoughts.\" The only weak spot is the grating \"Merry Go Round,\" a circus-like tune that spoils the more relaxed mood of the other material.  Even with that small quibble, the album is recommended, as are all of Emmanuel's releases.  \n\nNote: the album can currently be heard on JD's [Bandcamp](https://jdemmanuel.bandcamp.com/album/sound-paintings) page.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Sound Paintings","year":"1980"},"trance-formations":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"","title":"Trance Formations","year":"1986"},"visions-of-life":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"","title":"Visions of Life","year":"1981"},"wizards":{"image":"","label":"North Star Productions","review":"","title":"Wizards","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":19,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jd_1.jpg?alt=media&token=ce09826a-d90b-4766-9337-828e9aea823d","last_name":"Emmanuel"},"daniel-kobialka":{"artist_name":"Daniel Kobialka","body":"Daniel Kobialka was one of the most accomplished and highly trained musicians in the field of new age, earning a PhD in music and serving as a principal violinist in the San Francisco Orchestra for two decades. By the time he founded his own LiSem label in the late '70s to release his ambient and new age classical works, he'd already played at Carnegie Hall, appeared on a Top 40 hit by Ambrosia, and had many contemporary works composed exclusively for him. His biggest selling album was *Timeless Motion* which featured a take on Pachelbel's \"Canon in D\", though contemporary collectors prefer early works such as *Labyrinth Within* and *Cosmic Ecstasy* which use acoustic instruments to create an astral presence. However, some of his more common albums such as *Path to Joy* also contain ambient gems such as \"Blue Spirals\" which appeared on the Light in the Attic new age compilation *I Am the Center*. Kobialka passed away in 2021.\n\nBorn in 1943, Daniel Kobialka grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts. His parents were both professional musicians who trained Daniel and his brother Jan to play classical music at an early age. Kobialka took up the violin and showed early talent, soon becoming a concert director at the New England Music Camp orchestra for six years. He also joined the ranks of two local orchestras in Massachusetts, playing his concerto debut at 16 and then his first solo performance at Carnegie Hall at the age of 19.\n\nBy that time, Kobialka was attending college at the University of Hartford where he studied violin while also serving as the first violinist with the Hartford symphony. He then took four years off of music in the mid-'60s to serve in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. Upon his discharge, he moved to Washington DC and continued his education, earning a Master's Degree followed by a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Catholic University of American in Washington, DC. In 1969, he released his first album of contemporary music, *Plays New Music for Violin*.\n\nIn the early '70s, Kobialka moved to Northern California where he became the principal second violinist for the San Francisco Symphony. During this time, he recorded many sessions on contemporary classical releases on Desto, jazz albums by Ron Carter and McCoy Turner, and several albums by prog hit-makers Ambrosia. His violin work on Ambrosia's Top 20 hit \"Holdin' on to Yesterday\" remains perhaps his most widely-heard work.\n\nAfter a decade of playing other people's compositions, Kobialka founded his own record label Li-Sem in 1979 to release his own music. His first cassette was the now rare *Labyrinth Within*, featuring two side long minimalist pieces, one composed in 1972 and the other in 1979. His next album *Cosmic Ecstasy* was similar, utilizing bells, strings, and harp to achieve a meditative and cosmic sound. \n\nKobialka then settled into a signature sound for a series of many albums that paired minimalist ambient pieces (such as the title track from *Timeless Motion*) with contemporary takes on classical works by Bach, Satie, Debussy, and of course Pachelbel whose \"Canon in D\" practically became the new age equivalent of \"Louie Louie\" due to its ubiquity. During the '80s, Kobialka also collaborated with several key new age musicians, including [Bernard Xolotl](/bernard-xolotl), who he joined on two albums, and [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern) who he partnered with on many releases. He also retained an interest in contemporary classical sounds, appearing on two split releases for the avant-garde label 1750 Arch.\n\nBy the mid-80s, the ever-eclectic Kobialka moved away from ambient sounds to experiment with impressionism (*Afternoon of a Fawn*), children's music (*When You Wish Upon a Star*), and Celtic folk (*Celtic Fantasy*.)  His recorded output started to slow down somewhat in the '90s, though he remained very busy as a soloist, performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Atlanta Symphony orchestra. \n\nKobialka eventually retired and moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he served as the Concertmaster for the Kerrville Texas Symphony and also taught private lessons. In his 60s, he was diagnosed with inclusion body myositis (IBM), an inflammatory and degenerative muscle disease that made it harder for him to play. However, he still continued to compose until his death in 2021.","discography":{"daniel-kobialka":{"albums":{"1-dream-passage":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Dream Passage","year":"1982"},"1-path-of-joy":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Path of Joy","year":"1983"},"2-fragrances-of-a-dream":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Fragrances of a Dream","year":"1983"},"2-timeless-motion":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Timeless Motion","year":"1982"},"3-moonglow":{"image":"","label":"Chacra Alternative","review":"","title":"Moonglow","year":"1982"},"3-sun-space":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Sun Space","year":"1983"},"4-going-home":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Going Home","year":"1983"},"coral-seas":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Coral Seas","year":"1985"},"cosmic-ecstasy":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Cosmic Ecstasy","year":"1981"},"labyrinth-within":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Labyrinth Within","year":"1979"},"locrian-invocation":{"image":"","label":"LiSem","review":"","title":"Mind Dance","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Daniel Kobialka","entry_number":1},"daniel-kobialka-steven-halpern":{"albums":{"recollections":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Recollections","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Daniel Kobialka","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":232,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Daniel-Kobialka-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c1d78318-218a-41ad-86f0-9b89c88d6449","last_name":"Kobialka"},"daniel-lauter":{"artist_name":"Daniel Lauter","body":"Maybe there  was something in the air in Marin County. Before Daniel Lauter and his wife Donna moved to Larkspur in 1983, Lauter primarily played in funk bands, including the short-lived RX who released one album before dissolving in a clash of egos. But upon his arrival there, it wasn't long before Lauter got into meditation, crystal bowls, sound baths, and all things new age.\n\nLauter had a long history with music prior to that, growing up in Seneca Falls, NY and getting acquainted with many instruments before middle school.  He started out playing clarinet in school band, but also took up the saxophone, guitar, and bass.  He later attended SUNY Purchase to study at the music conservatory and later graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute.\n\nUpon their arrival in SF, Donna wanted to start an art gallery and the couple decided to give it a shot.  The space, called Modern Rites/Ancient Waves, became a gathering spot and performance space for locals like Steven Halpern, [Constance Demby](/constance-demby), [Karma Moffett](/karma-moffett), [Bernard Xolotl](/bernard-xolotl), Margo Anand and more. Through the store, Lauter met a friend who introduced him to crystal bowls and Lauter took an obsessive interest in them. He also realized their commercial potential and became a distributor for the bowls in the area to many like-minded new age shops and music retailers.\n\nLauter recorded his first cassette, *Quartz Crystal Bells* with Xolotol at his home studio. Lauter recalls Xolotl as a brilliant engineer and the only person he knew who could handle the challenge of recording such  quiet instruments. (He also recalled Xolotl's erratic working habits and knack for disappearing in his studio for weeks on end.)\n\nOnce the album was done, Lauter pressed 250 copies with a black and white cover and sold them through Lloyd Barde's Backroads catalog as well as at his shop.  He did a second run in 1988 with a different cover.\n\nLauter recorded another album with the bowls in 1987, called *Spirits of Passion*. Like the debut, this album is now very rare. Lauter's final album was a collaboration with Suru Ekeh in 1991. This came out on CD only.  Daniel continued to work as a sound healer, which he still does today. Lauter now lives in New York.","discography":{"daniel-lauter":{"albums":{"ceremony":{"image":"","label":"Raven","review":"","title":"Ceremony","year":"1991"},"quartz-crystal-bells":{"image":"","label":"Modern Rites Ancient Waves","review":"","title":"Quartz Crystal Bells","year":"1986"},"spirits-of-passion":{"image":"","label":"Modern Rites Ancient Waves","review":"","title":"Spirits of Passion","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":57,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/lauter2.jpg?alt=media&token=baa6a941-9955-4e56-8b07-4742e46ea77d","last_name":"Lauter"},"daniel-palkowski":{"artist_name":"Daniel Palkowski","body":"Daniel Palkowski was a New York composer who came from an academic, post-minimalist background, training with Elias Tanenbaum, Jack Beeson, and Mario Davidovsky among others. While getting his master's degree at Columbia, Palkowski helped run the Manhattan School of Music recording studio. In 1985, he recorded an album of electronic improvisations there called *Asterism* and released an LP in an edition of 1000 copies. His only other release was the CD *Electria* ten years later, featuring some of his commissioned work on chaos theory, plus some odds and ends including a song from his fusion trio Not Elvis. Around 2016, collectors rediscovered *Asterism* and [Incidental Music](https://incidental-music.com/) helped sell the back stock to a new audience hungry for privately released electronic music.\n\nBorn in 1955, Daniel Palkowski grew up in Oak Ridge, a small town in the eastern foothills of Tennessee. Palkowski's father was a mechanical engineer at the Y-12 Security Complex based there, working on top secret projects for Union Carbide. Palkowski had two sisters, who both grew up to become teachers, though he had different plans for himself. \n \nPalkowski started playing classical piano at the age of seven, and was a fan of romantic-era composers like Rachmaninoff and Liszt.  However, by 15 he was “corrupted” by a girlfriend who turned him on to the Moody Blues and recreational drugs. Soon, Palkowski was digging the progressive sounds of Pink Floyd and Yes.  Palkowski was also a talented artist as a child and eventually gravitated to abstract work.\n \nAfter finishing high school in 1973, Palkowski entered a nomadic period where he variously lived in Houston, LA, Kansas City, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, working odd jobs including a welder and a magician. This went on for a few years before Palkowski decided he was ready for college and enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music in 1978. There he studied composition with Elias Tanenbaum and wrote his first serious pieces of music. \"I thought I was going to have my symphonies played in Carnegie Hall,\" Palkowski said. He did however get his first commission around this time, writing a bass concerto for Anthony Jackson.\n \nPalkowski went on to get a Masters and Doctorate of Musical Arts at Columbia after that, finally completing his studies in 1992. While there he studied with Jack Beeson, George Edwards, and Mario Davidovsky, the latter exerting a particularly strong influence. In addition to his composition studies, Palkowski got plenty of instruction on audio engineering by helping to run, then directing the Manhattan School of Music recording studio. \n \nIn 1985, Palkowski debuted some new works such as “Southern Impingement” at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, MA.  At the same time, he was preparing an album of his electronic improvisations called *Asterism* that he recorded at the school’s studio. He used one of his own paintings for the cover and pressed 1000 copies. He sold them through NMDS, a New York distributor who specialized in experimental fare. The style veers from abstract electronic passages to more serene, ambient pieces, but always with a human touch. \"I liked minimalism but I didn't like process music,” Palkowski said. “I liked improvisation more. The music has to flow freely or not at all.\"\n \nPalkowski continued to write music while in school, though his next release *Electria* didn’t come until 1995 after he completed his phD. He had been commissioned by NYU to write music about chaos theory for a planned CD-ROM. The CD-ROM, entitled CHAOS, was released by Macmillan Digital, and Palkowski incorporated some of the music into a Suite, released on the Electria disk. The album also features some miscellaneous works recorded since 1989, such as a piece with his fusion trio Not Elvis and a nine minute 'Diurne' (daytime nocturne) for meditation. \n \nAfter graduating, Palkowski worked as a professor for fifteen years at NYU. More recently he played with the trio Erbium. He currently lives in New York and works as a video editor and composer/performer.","discography":{"daniel-palkowski":{"albums":{"asterism":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Asterism","year":"1985"},"electria":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Electria","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":134,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Daniel-Palkowski-600.jpg?alt=media&token=2306450c-9427-4e81-bf4b-9af4b294cac6","last_name":"Palkowski"},"dave-harpe":{"artist_name":"Dave Harpe","body":"Born in 1954, David Harpe grew up in various places, including Indianapolis, Chicago and Hawaii. He started teaching himself guitar at sixteen and later took up the saxophone and flute in adulthood. After attending technical college, Harpe began working as an industrial mechanic, followed by several decades as an electronic technician in the San Francisco area. By 1997, Harpe had burned out from his job and relocated to Sacramento to unwind and focus on making flutes and recording new age and ambient music.  \n\nAfter a few tentative recordings, Harpe released *Earthtones* on cassette and CD in 1997, the first in a series of five albums released between then and 2007. Despite the late vintage, he made cassettes of all the titles except 2007’s *Serenity*, and the art and music of his releases often feels like a holdover from ten years earlier. Harpe called himself \"the most obscure musician in Sacramento,\" but he did make some efforts to promote his music via his website (stoneturtle.com, now defunct) and live performances at restaurants and cafes in the Sacramento area. \n\nIn a bio from CD Baby in the early 2000s, Harpe wrote: \"I pursue this [music], while my skeptical mind says I must surely have gone mad. This is my life, this is what I want to do, and so I play, make didgeridoos and flutes and hang around with musicians, artists, and poets. I do my best to tread lightly on this planet, live simply, but fully, and treat others as I would want to be treated. I try to have a sense of humor about things and not get too uptight. I don't know what is happening to this world, but I can at least do my best to take good care of my little part of it.\"","discography":{"dave-harper":{"albums":{"earthtones":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Earthtones","year":"1997"}},"artist_name":"Dave Harpe","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":438,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/dave-harpe_640.jpg?alt=media&token=67c14f59-6b2c-46e5-a785-e1e3945ee82b","last_name":"Harpe"},"david-and-steve-gordon":{"artist_name":"David and Steve Gordon","body":"David and Steve Gordon were two brothers from Los Angeles who kick-started a successful music career with a blitz of seven excellent albums in 1982 on their own Earthlight Center label. Prior to that that, they were just two guys trying to earn a living with commercial work or wedding gigs. But the freelance life was a grind at times, and the brothers loved to unwind with nature walks and long meditations.  A memorable hike in the Sequoia Mountains gave the brothers the idea to incorporate nature sounds into their music, and they went on a binge of recording. \"Brian Eno was one of our main inspirations,\" Steve Gordon said. \"We would often leave gaps in our music to just hear the silence. And the nature sounds further enhanced that.\"\n\nTheir first of seven albums recorded in 1982, *Misty Forest Morning* and *Peaceful Evening* were largely acoustic, with nature sounds a key ingredient. David played piano and Steve played guitar. The brothers used improvisation to add texture and add color, but their pieces were always often structured in a way that sounded polished and refined, even when exploring more atmospheric territory.\n\nThe remaining five albums of that year showed them branching out to incorporate synths more into their sound, and both *Celestial Suite* and *Astral Journey* were overt attempts at space music. To release this raft of albums, the brothers created their own label called Earthlight and began printing up copies of the albums to sell on consignment at gift shops.  All of the original cassettes on Earthlight have become collectible.\n\nAt first the brothers sold the albums on consignment at local bookstores, but eventually the Gordons got a distribution deal with New Leaf that widened their exposure considerably.  When it came time to re-release the albums, the duo decided to change the label name to Sequoia in honor of their epochal hike a few years prior. They also redesigned many of the covers, presumably to keep up with the changing tastes of the times.  Steve recalls *Misty Forest Morning* and *Peaceful Evening* as their biggest sellers for most of the '80s, and that after a few years business picked up to the point where they were able to focus on their own music full time.\n\nAlthough new age and space music were losing their commercial appeal by the end of the '80s, the Gordon brothers' biggest heights were still yet to come. The brothers started going to drum circles in the '90s and learned how to play hand drums and Native American flutes.  They debuted their new tribal-fusion sound with 1994's *Sacred Earth Drums*, which went on to sell over 350,000 copies and remains their best seller according to Steve. The follow-up *Sacred Spirit Drums* was almost as popular and 1999's *Drum Medicine* won a litany of new age awards.\n\nThe Gordon brothers kept all their cassettes in print during the '80s and there are many variants and different covers too numerous to detail here.  They are still recording and releasing music today which can be found on their [Sequoia](http://www.sequoiarecords.com/) website.","discography":{"david-and-steve-gordon":{"albums":{"astral-journey":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"One of the more cosmically-oriented works among the seven cassettes released by the Gordon brothers in 1982, *Astral Journey* is an aptly-titled exploration of the Fairlight’s potential to render otherworldly music, and grades as one of their best-realized efforts.\n\nThe tape's prologue is etched with chimes and bamboo flute, which become more broadly supported by a pantheon of resplendent synth pads fading in-and-out of focus.  The side is characterized by an ever-shifting and immersive splendor, indicative of inner and outer-spaces--markedly dislocated from the physical real. \n\nSide B opens into slow, seesawing drones peppered by restrained, painterly flourishes of Telecaster notes that are gilded by a veneer of reverb and subtle delay. The seductively-bluesy psychedelic arrangement calls to mind the transitional moments of early Hawkwind records, Ash Ra Tempel, and even seems to prefigure the dreamy, chimerical noise of Flying Saucer Attack.  Following a brief interlude of synthesized gothic chorus, the tape concludes with an ethereal milieu that gently draws the listener back to center.\n\n(Jesse Woodcock, 2019)","title":"Astral Journey","year":"1982"},"at-the-rivers-edge":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"Another fine entry from 1982, *At the River's Edge* was inspired by the sounds of the Kaweah River in Sequoia National Forest. The album takes a little while to get going, with album opener \"The Return\" playing it safe with descending pentatonic piano scales in the vein of David Naegele's *Temple in the Forest*. \"Circle of Life\" is more original, with some darkly sumptuous jazz chords by David Gordon, arranged in a cycling chord progression that keeps the listener engaged while Steve Gordon's guitar and bird calls add the texture. \n\n\"The Voice of the River\" takes up all of the second side and serves as the album's high point and centerpiece. Steve Gordon really shines here, contributing a stately, slow moving guitar piece bathed in delay and underpinned by a low humming drone that is pretty ahead of its time, sounding almost like Stars of the Lid. Sometime around 1986, the Gordons changed the album name to *Beside the Laughing River* and put \"The Voice of the River\" on the first side and added a new track.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"At the River's Edge","year":"1982"},"celestial-suite":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"As the title would indicate, *Celestial Suite* is a cosmic affair. It stands on par with the best work produced by the Gordons during their prodigious early period, and is further confirmation that they had tapped a deep vein of creative ingenuity. Such short spans of prolific output are rarely realized as successfully as these first eight releases from David and Steve.\n\nThe opening tracks present a bouquet of cascading arpeggios and gentle, synthy brushstrokes; egressing into a kind of vigilant dream-sequence that demands the listener’s attention. The blissfully psychedelic, randomized waves of strummed acoustic guitar that follow would become something of a production trope in the forthcoming post-rock and dream pop genres.\n\nThe second side provides evidence of the contrasted (but complimentary) voices that each brother brings to the collaboration; Steve’s guitar providing the nerve center of the 23+ minute piece. A flanging effect imagines the reciprocal throb of an interstellar engine, supported by guitar which, at times, evokes the more expressive virtues Frippertronics —or the crystalline technique of Terje Rypdal. Other moments harken to the phantasmal desert sketches of Steve Roach, tracing the boundaries of dark ambient, but never diving deep enough to establish an aura of fear.\n\n(Jesse Woodcock, 2019)","title":"Celestial Suite","year":"1982"},"english-garden":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"English Garden and Japanese Garden","year":"1993"},"garden-of-serenity":{"image":"","label":"Sequoia Records","review":"","title":"Garden of Serenity","year":"1987"},"gate-of-the-sanctuary":{"image":"","label":"Sequoia Records","review":"","title":"Gate of the Sanctuary","year":"1990"},"lightspring":{"image":"","label":"Sequoia Records","review":"","title":"Lightspring","year":"1987"},"misty-forest-morning":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"","title":"Misty Forest Morning","year":"1982"},"music-of-the-tarot":{"image":"","label":"Sequoia Records","review":"Moody and cinematic with stream and bird sounds. Dark, rolling synth reminiscent of [Constance Demby](/constance-demby)'s space bass. In other places bouncy synth, pastoral airs, underwater strings, bloops, and some dark organ. They recommend reading Crowley. \n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2023)","title":"Music of the Tarot","year":"1993"},"olympic-rainforest-grand-canyon":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Olympic Rainforest Grand Canyon","year":"1993"},"oneness":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"Marketed as the second volume of the \"Inner Music\" series, *Oneness* shares an affinity for the cosmic motif found on releases such as *Astral Journey* and *Celestial Suite*.\n\nWhile \"Waves of Bliss\" could occasionally be described as stylistic antecedent for later acts such as Air or Boards of Canada, the track also bears subtle undercurrents of modern classical and ethno-folk.  While nothing of the track seems particularly groundbreaking—the nods to Eno and Vangelis (intended or not) are hard to deny—as a piece composed for passive listening, it is pleasing enough.  Luxurious phase tones, air textures, and low-end drones buoy the assorted downrushes of synth trills, processed bells, and silver flute.\n\nThe second side conjures both the Berlin School and ambient prog in its moody pairing of monophonic drones and bubbly arpeggiation.  Filter sweeps imitate the slow tumble of ocean waves, while showers of Elysian chimes and delayed guitar impart a harmonic balance to the track.\n\n(Jesse Woodcock, 2019)","title":"Oneness","year":"1987"},"peaceful-evening":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"One of the more conventional releases from their 1982 blitz, *Peaceful Evening* is based around grand piano and acoustic guitar, with some evening ambiance of crickets and bird calls. This doesn't have the deep quality of the best acoustic piano music like [Jordan De La Sierra](/jordan-de-la-sierra) in his prime, but it's certainly a pleasant, relaxing album.","title":"Peaceful Evening","year":"1982"},"radiant-sea":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"*Radiant Sea* is similar to *At the River's Edge* with its mix of contemplative ambient improvisations and more conventional, piano-based fare. Album opener \"Northern Shore\" and the saccharine \"Healing\" exemplify the latter, using emotive melodies and chords to strike a more neo-romantic pose. I prefer the more exploratory journeys into mystical spaces, as with the evocative title track or \"Emerald Deep.\" Both songs feature great guitar playing from Steve, especially the latter where  he seems to channel Richard Lloyd with his clear tone and impressionistic style. \"Windswept Pines/Moonblossom\" is the only track that tries to find a middle ground between the conventional/metaphysical, with the linear, minor key guitar arpeggios and glissando synth accents of the first half sounding like the intro to a hair metal ballad. But then it segues into the blissed-out \"Moonblossom\" with drones of synth melding into ocean waves - I could listen to that forever. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Radiant Sea","year":"1982"},"sacred-earth-drums":{"image":"","label":"Sequoia Records","review":"","title":"Sacred Earth Drums","year":"1994"},"still-waters-clear-sky":{"image":"","label":"Earthlight Center","review":"Recorded near Crystal Lake in the Sierra Mountains, *Still Waters, Clear Sky* is another nature inspired recording from the Gordons. Like *At the River's Edge* or *Radiant Sea*, this one has a mix of acoustic and electronic sounds, though *Still Waters* is a far more tranquil affair.  While a few tracks like \"Sierra Jewel\" and \"Timberline\" are so languid they barely even register, there are plenty of highlights. Steve showcases his sustained, soft-focus guitar playing on \"Still Waters\" and David adds an empyrean touch to \"Crystal Interlude\" with his usual great synth work.  Even better, the album closer \"Sunlight Through the Trees\" combines both of the above into a beautiful finale in the vein of Popol Vuh.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Still Waters, Clear Sky","year":"1982"},"yosemite-cape-cod":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Yosemite Cape Cod","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":36,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Steve-Gordon-640.jpg?alt=media&token=22f69977-f406-44c9-a7a6-4041126725fe","last_name":"Gordon"},"david-blonski":{"artist_name":"David Blonski","body":"David Blonski is a musician and artisan based in Northern California who released many new age cassettes in the '80s and '90s. Originally a flute maker and jeweler, Blonski got his start in music when his old friend Ed Van Fleet called him with an offer to collaborate in the studio. That resulted in *Timeless Flight*, the first album of what turned out to be a long music career. From 1986 to 1996, Blonski made his living off of music, traveling to craft fairs and selling his tapes from a booth equipped with listening stations. As music sales died down, he went back to jewelry making and selling didgeridoos, though he continues to record and release music into the present.\n\nDavid Blonksi was born in 1951 and raised in Manhattan Beach, CA. His mother worked the night shift as a nurse and his father worked for Western Airlines. Blonski grew up surfing and loved science, so marine biology was a natural choice for a major when he enrolled in college at Long Beach State. However, during his senior year, Blonski tried his hand at making candles and was surprised at how many he sold. \"I made $250 in one day selling them to students at the college quad,\" Blonski recalled. \"At that time, the only job I could find in marine biology was diving for sewage samples in the L.A. harbor. I realized I could make more money making candles.\"\n\nAfter college, Blonski and his wife took a three-month trip up the California coast. When they got back, Blonski decided to try his luck as an artist. \"I first met my wife at a Boy Scout/Girl Scout dance in Hermosa Beach when we were 16,\" Blonski said. \"I was able to convince her I was a good guy and she allowed me to chase my dreams. We just celebrated our 53rd anniversary of the day we met.\"\n\nIt wasn't just his relationship that endured, but Blonski's entrepreneurial streak. At first, he made his living selling candles all over Southern California. But he soon started making flutes out of PVC and selling those too. He typically sold his crafts at festivals and art fairs between Denver and the West Coast. At one festival in Laguna Beach, he met a jewelry designer who worked in bronze and Blonski ended up taking over his business. \n\nAll during this time, Blonski practiced the flute, which he'd started learning in the early '70s. He'd always loved music, starting with the clarinet in fifth grade and continuing through junior high. He played music with friends and wrote songs on guitar too, but he never thought he could make a living at it. That all changed when he met Ed Van Fleet. \n\n\"My wife picked up a fellow hitchhiking to college one day and it turned out he was a keyboard player in a prog-rock band called Borealis. Ed was the bass player,\" Blonski recalled. \"My wife and I moved in with the band for a while and helped support Ed's band. When the band broke up, Ed moved to Phoenix where he opened a recording studio. His girlfriend at the time was into new age music and when Ed heard it, he said 'I could write music like this.' And she said, 'I tell you what, you make the albums and I'll sell them for you.' So, Ed started making his own recordings and people asked him to add flute. He called me up and said, 'Hey Dave, do you still play flute?' So, when I came down to Phoenix for some art shows, we put our heads together, and within two weeks we came up with the *Timeless Flight* album.\"\n\n*Timeless Flight* ended up selling fairly well for Van Fleet, and he and Blonski would go on to record a second album in Maine called *Shoreline*. That album did even better, moving 50,000 copies and with that, Blonski's music career was underway.\n\nBesides Van Fleet, another important figure in Blonksi's life was [Peter Spoecker](macrofusion-/-shining-lotus), an eccentric artist and musician who he'd met on the craft circuit and the two became lifelong friends. Spoecker spent the early '80s producing a series of computer music cassettes, but when he saw that Blonski was having success with nature-themed music, he pivoted to a more new age style. \n\n\"I considered Peter an older brother, and always made a point to visit him in Joshua Tree,\" Blonski said.  \"I was going to do a collaboration with him, but I went in with strong opinions and at one point he just stepped back and said, 'You seem to be on a roll. I'm going to let you do your thing.' That ended up being my first solo album *Dance of the Dolphin*. But we agreed then that we would share our music and I recorded music for Peter that he used for Shining Lotus.  I also helped Peter produce and score a computer animated video project called 'Flights' in 1996.\"\n\nOver the next ten years, Blonski would put out many new albums on his own Timeless Productions label, mostly on cassette. He scored a children's story (*Jonathan and Glympsle*), put out two albums of field recordings, and recorded many collaborations with other musicians such as Jon Allasia, Ken Craig, and Anne Roos. He eventually earned enough to pay for a house and a new recording studio. The money came slow and steady, with Blonski touring the usual art show circuit, but now with a booth designed with listening stations so people could sample the different tapes. By Blonski's estimation, he'd sell a few hundred at every appearance. \n\nBlonski distinctly recalls the moment when things began to change: \"In 1994, two women approached my listening station and one of them said, 'You don't have to do this [buy tapes here], we can do this at Target.' I went 'What the hell?' We drove to Target and sure enough they had a listening station featuring nature sounds with music like acoustic guitar with wolves. In just a few years my sales dropped 90%. I really thought I was on my way to becoming a millionaire, but the transition happened seemingly overnight.\"\n\nOf course, this was only a temporary setback for the enterprising Blonski. In 1992, he'd gotten his first didgeridoo from his old friend Peter Spoecker, who'd become newly fixated on the instrument. Once again, Blonski pivoted to a new craft. \"Traditional didgeridoos are made from eucalyptus trees, but I made mine out of PVC, fiberglass, yucca, agave stalks, cedar, pine, and redwood. They were very popular for about 10 years. I was still selling a little music, but I went from selling 20,000 units a year to 300.\" When didgeridoo's started losing their popularity, Blonski went back to jewelry making to make ends meet, but he continued to perform live and record new albums, eventually getting to 24 titles. He also regularly records for other musicians at his studio. \n\nLooking back, Blonski still has a soft spot for his first album with Van Fleet. \"When I first heard *Timeless Flight* as I drove home across the desert, I was crying tears of joys because it dawned on me what just happened,\" Blonski said. \"I never thought I was a good enough musician to be a professional. It only became a reality because of Ed.\"\n\nBlonski's music and videos can be found at his website [here](https://timelessproductions.com/).","discography":{"david-blonksi-and-keith-bassett":{"albums":{"the-first-circle":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"The First Circle","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"David Blonski and Keith Bassett","entry_number":5},"david-blonski":{"albums":{"bells":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"The Bells of Arcosanti","year":"1998"},"dance-of-the-dolphin":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"Recorded at [Peter Spoecker's](https://ultravillage.com/macrofusion-/-shining-lotus) studio in Joshua Tree, Blonski's solo debut comes off like a more commercial take on Spoecker's mix of baroque Synclavier and lo-fi field recordings developed on early Macrofusion releases. The mood alternates between serene and playful, with Blonski's courtly sounding flute lines often paired with what sounds like a medieval version of mid-period Kraftwerk.  \"Song From the Deep\" and  \"Distant Shores” are the highlights for me, exploring a more mysterious mood while giving space for the synths to develop alongside other instrumental textures such as sitar and percussion.\n\n(MG, 2021)","title":"Dance of the Dolphin","year":"1986"},"didgeridoo-in-the-american-outback":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"Didgeridoo in the American Outback","year":"1997"},"on-wings-of-eagles":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"On Wings of Eagles","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"David Blonski","entry_number":2},"david-blonski-and-anne-roos":{"albums":{"through-the-mist":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"Flute and harp, with a mostly mystical, meditative mood that goes in some eastern/Indian directions on some tracks. Despite the co-billing, Blonski mainly takes the lead with his renaissance-inspired flute melodies while Roos provides sensitive accompaniment on harp. One of Blonski’s better efforts.","title":"Through the Mist","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Daniel Blonski and Anne Roos","entry_number":6},"david-blonski-jon-allasia":{"albums":{"land-of-the-midnight-sun":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"Prog-influenced new age with acoustic guitar, flute, synths and drum machines on a few tracks. As with much of Blonski’s work, there is a prevailing troubador/ren-faire vibe as on “Ice Flow” that brings to mind Clannad.","title":"Land of the Midnight Sun","year":"1986"},"saturn-rising":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"Blonski tries space ambient/planetarium music on this album, writing in the liner notes that this \"sonic journey transports you into the realm of deep space where time and matter are but an element of thought.\" As expected, this is in the same zone as Jonn Serrie or Fred Becker, but with some elements of symphonic prog and English folk melodies, as is typical with Blonski. This lacks the character or personality needed to stand out in an overcrowded field, but genre fans may want to check it out, especially the track \"Solar Winds\" which is nine minutes of pure astral atmosphere.","title":"Saturn Rising","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"David Blonski and Jon Allasia","entry_number":3},"david-blonski-ken-craig":{"albums":{"sierra-passage":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"Blonski and multi-instrumentalist Ken Craig explore various folk idioms on this release such as the medieval \"Crossroads\", the native-inspired \"Washoe Sunrise,\" the raga-ish \"Trail West\" or the western-themed title track with banjo and harmonica.","title":"Sierra Passage","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"David Blonski and Ken Craig","entry_number":4},"david-blonski-synchestra":{"albums":{"shoreline":{"image":"","label":"Elfin","review":"","title":"Shoreline","year":"1986"},"timeless-flight":{"image":"","label":"Elfin","review":"","title":"Timeless Flight","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"David Blonski with Synchestra","entry_number":1},"natures-symphonies":{"albums":{"point-reyes-national-seashore":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"Point Reyes National Seashore","year":"1989"},"thundering-skies":{"image":"","label":"Timeless Productions","review":"","title":"Thundering Skies","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Nature's Symphonies","entry_number":7}},"entry_number":233,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Blonski-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=9bc3fd55-628f-4771-8e3b-4730927d6b78","last_name":"Blonski"},"david-brunn":{"artist_name":"David Brunn","body":"David Brunn was a keyboardist who self-released one album of film scores and new age soundscapes in 1990. Brunn grew up in a musical household in Idaho, playing keyboards and joining his first band the Uncalled Four in the ‘60s. He went on to major in Mathematics at Boise State University, later moving to Seattle to take a job at a Cancer Research Center. It was there that he began composing music for commercials and film, including work for National Geographic and Disney that he would later collect on *Themes for Dreams*.  In the early ‘90s, Brunn took an interest in Hindustani Classical music, learning the tabla. This led him to meet violinist Alex Johnson, and the two would form an Indian-inspired trio called Jivan Gita (with Diane Givens) who released a CD in 1992. Brunn continued to work with Johnson, later collaborating on an album in 2005 *On The Road To Allahabad*. ","discography":{"david-brunn":{"albums":{"voyage-to-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Themes for Dreams","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":239,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-brunn-640-r.jpeg?alt=media&token=3d329855-540d-480f-ac80-d3f396e5cb5a","last_name":"Brunn"},"david-casper":{"artist_name":"David Casper","body":"David Casper helped expand the boundaries of new age with a series of early '80s releases that incorporated jazz, folk, classical and various forms of world music. His most popular efforts were the eastern-influenced *Crystal Waves* and *Tantra-La* which combined chamber music and raga into something refreshingly original. Casper's releases were distributed well in the US and licensed abroad in some countries, but have lately become harder to find. Casper ran a studio for much of the '80s and '90s, recording sessions for Scott Cossu and Karen Bruner, among many others.\n\nDavid Casper was born in 1949 and grew up on the southwest side of Chicago. His father was a music aficionado with an interest in many kinds of music, so it was hardly surprising that Casper developed wide-ranging tastes in music too. Casper’s first instrument was the Jew’s harp, and he soon added harmonica and guitar as well. By his late teens, he took up the sitar, which he discovered from his father's Ravi Shankar records.\n\nAfter high school, Casper took some classes at the University of Illinois and continued studying the sitar at the Vedanta Society with Sri Bhatorakir.  He also began exploring meditation and yoga more deeply, having learned it from his aunt years before. As a result, his music and lifestyle became closely intertwined. Casper recalled: \"I was trying to recreate and recall altered states of consciousness and go into deeper meditative states through music.\"\n\nBy 1970, Casper moved to California to study sitar more seriously at the Ali Akbar College of Music with Ali Akbar Khan and others. While there, Casper lived communally at \"Water Brothers\" where he built and lived in a 100 sq. ft. conical hut made from wine bottles, aluminum cans, tires,  and other materials. A few years later he relocated to Seattle and enrolled at the University of Washington. There he studied Indian classical music with Z. M. Dagar and Chinese classical music with T'ao Chu-Shen, ultimately graduating in 1976 with a degree in ethnomusicology.\n\nAfter school, Casper returned to California and got a job teaching special education. He continued his study of Hindustani and Chinese classical music, sometimes playing the cheng or sitar at restaurants for extra money. One of the reasons Casper was so drawn to those instruments was their capacity to bend notes. \"I've had a fascination with bending notes for a long time,\" Casper said. \"It's how you create continuous change rather than discrete change. I [later] invented and patented the [Primachord](http://primachord.com/), a stringed instrument with individual bending rods for each string which allows bending up and down simultaneously.\"\n\nCasper played in a music and theater group in California called Dellawattsquattie, creating music for avant-garde plays that were performed locally. But after a few years he decided to return to Seattle where he started building a recording studio in his basement that he called Hummingbird Sound Lab. There he began recording his own music, as well as sessions with classical and jazz players in the area like pianist Scott Cossu. Casper recorded Cossu’s 1982 album *Spirals* and contributed cheng to one of the songs too. Cossu would return the favor a few years later, joining on Casper’s *Tantra-La* and *Crystal Waves*.\n\nCasper's first release of his own music was a single called \"Pack a Punch,\" with a spoken word piece from the perspective of Mt St. Helens which had just erupted in May.  It was a strange song, like something you might hear on Dr. Demento's radio show at the time. \"I did other pieces like that but never put them out,\" Casper recalled. \"I  always enjoyed joke songs – when I grew up a joke song could be in top 40.\" The instrumental b-side bore more resemblance to his later instrumental work, but the single remains a bewildering effort and is now very rare.\n\nCasper's full length debut, *Hear and Be Yonder* arrived in 1981 on Casper’s newly created Hummingbird label. Whimsical and hard to categorize, the album drew from Chinese and Indian classical music, bluegrass, British folk, and jazz in a series of miniatures with myriad acoustic instruments. It has a surprising quality similar to Penguin Café Orchestra’s self-titled album from the same year, though less erudite. The album found a receptive audience with distributors of new age music at the time and Casper wisely hired a publicist named Auggie Bloom to help get it played on radio. Bloom succeeded and Casper was on his way. Soon, his tapes were distributed by Fortuna, a key player in the west coast new age renaissance.\n\nAs he was promoting his debut, Casper noticed that some distributors like Charles Muir’s Source label preferred the more relaxing sounds of the second side (the first side was more lively). So Casper went in a more meditative direction for his second release, the cassette only *Night Crossing.*  The album was meant to be more of an interlude between projects so he made cassettes only. (Casper ended the album with \"Noahs Ark Awoke,\" another novelty song, which he later felt kind of ruined the meditative mood. He later removed that track and smoothed out the running order when he reissued the album with some new tracks as *Earthsight* in 1986.)\n\nCasper’s next major work was *Tantra La* (1982), an ambitious album with two side long tracks built around the glass harmonica. \"I had multi-track tapes with several notes of the glass harmonica and I would use the mixer to laboriously construct chords together in the studio,\" Casper said. \"It took a lot of time to create, but it paid off because the variation that happened is organic and not repetitive.\" The album went on to be one of his best sellers of his career, selling several thousand copies on vinyl and cassette.\n\nFor 1983's *Another Kind of Sky*, Casper utilized a live band setting and a more jazz-influenced style. Casper mostly played piano on the album, which was a departure from his previous work and didn't sell as well. Casper concedes that it didn’t really fit into the jazz or new age camps: \"It was neither fish nor fowl.\"\n\nCasper next wanted to do a piece that was solo glass harmonica and composed a 30 minute suite for his 1984 album *Crystal Waves.* For the other side of that album, he collaborated with Cossu on marimba, Jami Sieber on cello, and T'ao Chu-sen on ch'in for a beautiful set of zen-like music.  Like *Night Crossing*, Casper saw it as more of a stopgap project and didn't think the album would do well, but it became his second best selling release. \n\nWith the success of *Crystal Waves* and *Tantra La*, Casper entered a busy period with both his studio and label. For the latter, he felt like he was in over his head. \"I ran Hummingbird by myself, pretty much by osmosis,\" Casper said. \"I really wasn’t a business person or a self-promoter. I got a lot of flak for not putting energy into promotion.\" Still, Casper balked when Narada, then the premiere distributor of New Age, wanted Casper to sign with them. They were already distributing his releases and wanted him too, but Casper didn’t like the onerous terms of the contract. It was a good move for him long term since he retained the rights to his own music, but he was now competing with his own distributor in the marketplace.\n\nWhile Casper was prepping the revised version of *Night Crossing* as *Earthsight* in 1986, Casper included a new song called 'Primitive Communion\" centered around a globular flute. He also used metal bowls with water to get bended notes. \"I thought it was one of the more unique things I did,\" Casper said. \"I had never heard anyone do that before. I was trying to find a new zone.\" Casper became so enthralled with the globular flute that he had ceramic potters make other ones for him of different sizes. He featured them prominently on his 1987 album *Primal Peace* but it wasn't a big seller and is now one of his rarest tapes.\n\nCasper released two other albums in 1987. For much of the '80s he was a member of the band Second Nature with his brother Glen on bass, multi-instrumentalist Kenny Mandell, and Mark Filler on drums. Everyone in the band wrote material, and the band played live often in the Seattle area. They finally released their lone studio album *Natural Selection* in 1987. Casper also released *Let the Earth be Happy* in the same year, which was somewhat similar in sound. Reviewing all of his subsequent releases in *Electronic Musician*, Robert Carlberg wrote that Casper's work is a \"pan-cultural blending that represents new age at its best.\"\n\nIn addition to all his studio albums from this period, Casper's music was being sold overseas and in some cases repackaged into compilations, like Third Ear's *Musical Massage*. Casper continued to engineer sessions for others, including Karen Bruner’s *Where the Dragons Come to Drink* in 1988. \"My goal was to make a living off recordings, so running that studio was my livelihood,\" Casper said. \"Between the studio, tape duplication, and my performances, I eked along. But the studio started to peter out in the '90s.\"\n\nAfter a ten year hiatus, Casper returned with one last album on CD in 1997 called *Unwrap*. The album was a bizarre and sprawling set that included prominent use of vocals, often chanted or sung wordlessly, sometimes sampled and refried. In the satirical liner notes, Casper writes that the album was recorded in a \"clandestine mental health spa in Dzungaria\" where the composer found himself \"in the hands of exiled Mongolian fringe psychiatrists.\" In a more serious appraisal of the work, Casper wrote that the album was an \"attempt to reveal continuities between the ridiculous and the sublime.\" The CD sold very few copies, though not to Casper's surprise.\n\nCasper’s first five  albums were recently reissued digitally by Numero Group. Casper lives in Northern California in Sonoma county.","discography":{"david-casper":{"albums":{"another-sky":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"","title":"Another Kind of Sky","year":"1983"},"crystal-waves":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"*Crystal Waves* revisits the contemplative, peaceful mood of *Tantra-La*, though in a more intimate setting and with a more spacious approach to instrumentation. The first side features the \"Dawn Poems\" suite, with Casper creating what he calls \"an impression of that time of day form the stillness of the first light, from the brightening of clouds to the rising sun.\" Casper succeeds beautifully in his aims, using three distinct soloists (who play cello, marimba, and the ch’in) to divide the work into three varied movements that are simultaneously deep, playful, and meditative.\n\n\"Crystal Waves\" on side two is a similarly breathtaking achievement, with four movements that aim to \"uplift the spirit by calming the mind.\" Without the variety of tonal colors on side one, this track goes deeper inward, with Casper using recurring melodic motifs to keep the mind subtly engaged through the near 30 minute run time.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Crystal Waves","year":"1984"},"earthsight":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"","title":"Earthsight","year":"1986"},"hear-and-be-yonder":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird","review":"Casper never made the same album twice, but his idiosyncratic debut has a unique charm.  Opener \"China Camp\" plunges the listener into Casper's style with folky, yet contemporary melodies played on unusual instrumentation - in this case a jew's harp, Chinese zheng and a late-arriving harmonica. The rest of the material on side one continues the same lively style, with Casper reeling off memorable tunes with sitar, marimbas, flutes, and more with dexterity, grace, and a dash of humor.\n\nCasper slows things down a bit for side two, which has longer songs and gentler tempos. Interestingly, these pieces foreshadow key styles he would develop further on future albums. The chamber orchestra feel of \"Snow at Last\" and \"John Muir Trail\" forecast the graceful symmetry of *Tantra-La* while the airy expanse of \"Carmel Valley Sunset\" echoes the mystic drones of *Crystal Waves.* Album closer \"Dream Journey\" is a beautiful summation of Casper's ethos - I could listen to another twenty minutes of its sparkling, spring-like promise.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Hear and Be Yonder","year":"1981"},"let-the-earth-be-happy":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"","title":"Let the Earth Be Happy","year":"1987"},"night-crossing":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"","title":"Night Crossing","year":"1981"},"primal-peace":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"","title":"Primal Peace","year":"1987"},"tantra-la":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Records","review":"Although all of his work is accessible, *Tantra-la* may be the most broadly appealing album in Casper's catalog. Both sides of the album feature extended meditative pieces in a sonata format that combine chamber music and raga, using simmering drones as a backdrop for an ever shifting prism of instruments such as the cello, flute, sitar, acoustic bass,  kalimba, and oboe. Although many of the solos sound improvised, the songs progress with a predetermined clarity, best highlighted during the melodic convergence of Richard Weeks' Oboe and Scott Cossu’s flute parts in the middle of the piece.\n\n\"Opening Skies\" follows a similar formula with equally spell-bending results. The Western chamber influence is replaced here with a distinct Eastern vibe, conveyed through the bended notes of sitar, acoustic bass, and the cheng.  Casper again structures the piece with a mix of solos and a composed middle section that pairs gently rolling piano with flute and cello. Soloists include Kenny Mandell on flute,  Cossu on the h'saio, and Casper's classically trained brother Glen who ends the song with an expressive solo on acoustic bass.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Tantra-La","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"second-nature":{"albums":{"natural-selection":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird","review":"","title":"Natural Selection","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Second Nature","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":51,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Casper-alt.JPG?alt=media&token=6fe84723-f2fe-4bc7-a555-58ee674caf37","last_name":"Casper"},"david-collett":{"artist_name":"David Collett","body":"David Collett (born 1950) lived a bohemian life for his first thirty years, playing country blues guitar and living in New Hampshire as a \"back to the woods hippie\" for most of the '70s. That all changed in 1980 when he broke his back and spent a long time recuperating in the hospital. He credits his recovery to meditation techniques he learned from his teacher Jack Schwarz, and when he was able to walk again, Collett moved to Boston where he worked at InHouse Studio. There he composed soundtracks and video game scores, in addition to original music based on the breathing patterns that helped him heal. The latter formed the basis of his debut album, *Balance*, released on Jonathan Goldman's Spirit Sounds label. In 1990, he changed his last name to Ison (after his birth father) and began speaking at medical conferences and workshops about the healing properties of sound. This would eventually help him land new deals with labels like the Relaxation Company and Sounds True which issued many popular CDs such as *The Musical Body Program* and *Chakra Healing Music*, which are outside the time frame of this guide. ","discography":{"david-collett":{"albums":{"balance":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Balance","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":308,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-collett-657.jpg?alt=media&token=8df04bb1-6d62-4474-8e3e-d23d379d97c0","last_name":"Collett"},"david-cosmo":{"artist_name":"David Cosmo","body":"Originally a cornet player from Indiana, David Cosmo's life took a profound turn after a spinal cord injury left him a paraplegic.  Already exploring Eastern philosophy and meditation, he decided to dedicate himself to learning sitar. From 1980 to 1987, he lived in Fiji where he studied Indian classical music at the East Indian Cultural Center.  He married an East Indian woman and the couple relocated to Sedona, Arizona. He established the Cosmic Temple recording studio there and proceeded to release over 20 albums of meditative music integrating Eastern and Western music styles using mainly sitars, tambouras, guitars, and synth.\n\nBorn in 1950, David Cosmo grew up in Indiana and then moved to Pennsylvania around high school. He started on piano but switched to the cornet and joined the school band, eventually ascending to first chair. After high school, he spent a few years at Lock Haven college, taking classes in Classical Music, Art, and Philosophy while exploring psychedelic rock like the Grateful Dead.\n\nCosmo decided to leave college after a few years to join the Coast Guard, but it soon became obvious he didn't fit in well. He was discharged in 1972 after spending a few years studying electrical engineering.   At the age of 22, Cosmo suffered an injury to his spinal cord. After intense physical therapy, he learned how to walk again using two canes, but his mobility was never the same. This led him further down a new spiritual path, moving from a foundation of Christianity in his youth to Eastern philosophy, meditation, and Yoga. \n\nThroughout the '70s, Cosmo started teaching himself to play sitar by listening to Ravi Shankar and studying his book *My life, My Music*.”  He also did Kundalini yoga at an Ashram.  \"Being paralyzed, I wanted to do music that was healing and parallel to my spiritual path\" Cosmo said.  He started to take the instrument more seriously after a move to Fiji in 1980. There, he studied Hindustani classical music with two different teachers at the East Indian Cultural Center. In addition to sitar, he also played harmonium, tabla, guitar, and sitar. He performed regularly with others from the center, usually at cultural festivals. During this time, he met an East Indian woman and got married.\n\nIn 1987, Cosmo and his new wife moved to the US, settling in Sedona, Arizona. There he set up the Cosmic Temple recording and began to compose and record music under his label Cosmic Temple Creations. \"That spring was the harmonic convergence,\" Cosmo said. \"In Sedona, I would conduct guided meditations with sitar, bowls, bells, zither, and flutes every full moon. I got to be known for it.  I formed a band for a couple of years but decided to go solo.\"\n\nCosmo released his first cassette *Soul Songs* in 1988, featuring songs in a spiritual folk vein. But his next album *Water Dance* was an East Indian raga, building on his training for much of the past decade. He continued to release music on cassettes often, exploring meditative moods with long tracks that often featured tamboura drones, guitar, sitar, and synth, continuing well into the mid-2000s. Cosmo has maintained a website for several decades [here](http://www.cosmictemplecreations.com)","discography":{"david-cosmo":{"albums":{"cosmic-voyage":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Cosmic Voyage","year":"1991"},"cosmic-voyage-ii":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Cosmic Voyage II","year":"1991"},"cosmic-voyage-iii":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"More “Galactic music” from the aptly named Cosmo featuring layers of droning synths that vibe on one or two chords throughout. The first side is meditative while the second side features slow rhythmic pulses.","title":"Cosmic Voyage III","year":"1991"},"cosmic-voyage-iv":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"The fourth volume in the *Cosmic Voyage* series is dark and eerie, populated by lonely, minor key synth lines and sporadic cymbal crashes and bells that adorn the music like broken shells washed up on some desolate beach. ","title":"Cosmic Voyage IV","year":"1992"},"in-the-cosmic-temple":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"In the Cosmic Temple","year":"1991"},"joys-of-nature":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"This is a very pleasant instrumental album, a meditative celebration of nature, dedicated to our sacred Mother Earth. Every song incorporates the sounds of nature (e.g. wind, whales, birds or coyotes) into the introductions and ending. The texture and composition of each piece is an expression of the spirit of the animal that inspired it, and the musicians mostly were able to succeed in this. The melodies and harmonic structure of the songs are generally simple, repetitious and unobtrusive. \"Love the Whales\" is flowing and dense with electronic harmonies. \"All the Birds Sing\" is full of the happy, light tones of hammered dulcimer, and what sounds like sitar and pattering tablas. The only lyrics on the album consist of three phrases, sung repeatedly through the cut \"See the Light\":  \"See the light / Be the light / You must open the door.\"\n\nThe lack of dynamic interest is compensated by the layering of different Eastern and Western instruments, the general gracefulness of the blend and the interesting percussion. It is not intended to be mentally stimulating, rather to relax the mind, and bring Eastern and Western culture together in the universal language of music. Two of the songs are musically more interesting: \"Whoop Dee Do (The Coyote Shuffle),\" with its jazzy flute solo and \"Nature Spirits are Calling Us,\" with its playful, improvisational recorder solo. Good for relaxing, meditation and gentle yet joyful background music.\n\n(Don Brenneman and Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* #12 Spring/Summer 1992)","title":"Joys of Nature","year":"1991"},"petals-of-passion":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Petals of Passion","year":"1994"},"romancing-the-dolphin":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Romancing the Dolphin","year":"1993"},"samadhi":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Samadhi","year":"1992"},"samadhi-shoreline":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"Side one features a lo-fi mix of ocean sounds, flute, and acoustic guitar with a baroque, early-music feel. Side two gets more trippy as a sitar weaves through a noisy bed of distorted stream sounds and bird calls. Just as that piece starts to grate, things cool off for a more nocturnal journey that features flutes played in abandoned caves, ominous gongs, and frogs croaking in the distance.\n\n(MG, 2025)","title":"Samadhi Shoreline","year":"1991"},"sedona-moonscapes":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"*Sedona Moonscapes* is like a hippie version of Indian raga, with a simplistic amalgam of sitars, percussion, and heavily reverbed flutes. It's about as authentic as the desert music from Super Mario, but it's not without its period charms. Still, this ultimately comes off like exploitative pseudo-raga for new age musical tourists. The final piece on side two, with its droning synths and spaced out sound effects, feels more authentic, and points the way for his more successful later work in the *Cosmic Voyage* series.","title":"Sedona Moonscapes","year":"1990"},"somewhere-over-the-rainbow":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Somewhere Over the Rainbow","year":"1989"},"soul-songs":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Soul Songs","year":"1988"},"time-travel-on-my-planet":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"*Time Travel* features big, warm synths, with an inspirational tone in that classic ‘80s Jonn Serrie style. It is similar to his *Cosmic Voyage* tapes, but with more polish and melodic variation.","title":"Time Travel on my Planet","year":"1991"},"water-dance":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"This beautiful album of sublime East India raga music is dedicated to Nataraja (Shiva), Lord of the Dance, a Hindu deity symbolizing change, death and rebirth. The first side, \"Kalee Ocean Spirit Dance,\" is one long piece using ocean waves and sitar, zither, tablas, Tibetan bowl, bells and tingsha. \"Vision your spirit travelling in from a cosmic plane to dance with Shiva on the ocean waves,\" suggests the cover insert. The second side, \"Bhoopali Water Dance\" incorporates a mountain stream. \"Go into meditation by a mountain stream. Find yourself dancing with Shiva on the fast-running ripples of the stream.\" The same instruments as the first side, plus tambourine. It maintains a constant solid sound, with little variation in texture or pitch, except for a lull at the end with stream sounds, bells and zither. David studied under the line of Ravi Shankar and the late Nikhil Banarji. His mission is to bring Eastern and Western culture and music together as the universal language. The music is like a soothing bath of sound, very dense with vibrant bells and tanpoura drones, and very healing on an energy level. For movement, meditation.\n\n(Wahaba & Easter, *Heartsong Review* #13, Fall 1992/Winter 1993)","title":"Water Dance","year":"1988"},"yoga-nidra":{"image":"","label":"Cosmic Temple Creations","review":"","title":"Yoga Nidra","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":275,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-cosmo-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c8948771-07a0-4e50-8443-2f51e4c7e956","last_name":"Cosmo"},"david-gilden":{"artist_name":"David Gilden","body":"David Gilden is a multi-instrumentalist best known for playing an African lute-harp called the kora. After graduating from the Berklee School of Music, he initially toured with a cover band. However, Gilden soon tired of that and became a busker instead, playing the kora on the streets of Boston and New York. His repertoire was based on traditional African, Irish, and classical tunes, but he had long been interested in contemporary electronic music too. He was able to integrate his disparate influences on his breakout release, *Ancestral Voice*, which blends world fusion, downbeat, and new age. The album was picked up by radio shows like New Sounds, Echoes, and Hearts of Space and sold well enough to warrant two CD reissues. Gilden took trips to Africa to study the instrument in depth and promoted the kora at festivals, concerts, workshops, and with a trio called Cora Connection he formed in the early '90s. \n\nDavid Gilden was born in Pasadena, California in 1958, but mostly grew up on the East Coast. He played the piano as a child and loved to improvise, later getting into jazz and then electronic music when he heard *Switched on Bach*. His parents bought him an early Moog modular System 12 in high school and he loved experimenting with it. He graduated in 1976 and moved away to attend the Berklee School of Music where he studied piano and composition, as well as electronic music. After graduation he headed out on the road with a cover band but that only lasted a few years.\n\nBack in Boston and needing money to live on, Gilden stared busking on the street with a unique instrument he'd discovered years earlier. \"I first heard the kora at a concert at the Smithsonian in 1978,\" Gilden said. \"The music of Mandinka Kora was so foreign to me in terms of phrasing and rhythmic concept - it spoke to my heart.\" Once he graduated from college, he received one as a graduation gift and taught himself to play.\n\nGilden did pretty well playing his kora on the streets, often attracting large audiences to hear the unusual instrument.  He was a regular performer in Harvard Square and at Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace.  His repertoire was largely based on the traditional Manding music of the Kora but also included Irish jigs, an adaptation of Bach's \"Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring\" and other world folk music. Gilden released two cassettes of his material at the time, *Kora 1* and *Kora 2*, eventually selling about a thousand of each at his shows.\n\nBy 1985, Gilden wanted to fully integrate electronic sounds into his music, and began work on *Ancestral Voice*. He recorded the album in various studios in Boston and New York for the next year, using a variety of synths like the MemoryMoog, PPG Wave 2.2, and a Fairlight CMS, in addition to the kora and mbira, a Zimbabwean thumb piano. The album got great reviews, including one in Option from fellow musician [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith) who called it a \"sensuous and delightful collection,\" noting that Gilden had \"a wonderful sense of counterpoint and capacity for obtaining opulent tones from instruments.\" The tape got airplay on WNYC's New Sounds, Hearts of Space, and Echoes, and exposed a new audience to Gilden's music.\n\nSoon after the album's release, Gilden moved to New York, living in a friend's basement in Park Slope. He continued to busk in subway stations and Central Park, and he put together re-releases of his first two cassettes with additional tracks. Whereas the music on his early tapes was based on traditional folk tunes, he started to personalize the sound more on the new material, adding three new tracks to *Kora 1* and renaming it *Jato the Lion*. Similarly, he added six new tracks to *Kora 2* and renamed it *Distant Strings.*  A few years later re-released *Ancestral Voice* too with a new mix, new songs, and added instrumentation on existing songs like \"Dragonfly Dance\" which featured bansuri flute master Steve Gorn and percussionist Ray Spiegel.\n\nIn 1989, Gilden took his first trip to The Gambia, West Africa to study the kora and has returned many times since. He moved back to Boston after returning from the trip and formed a trio called Cora Connection with Banning Eyre on guitar and other guest musicians.  This ensemble became Gilden's vehicle for musical performances as well as educational workshops where he promoted the kora and world music.\n\nIn 1996, Gilden transitioned to becoming a web designer and later, an IT professional and computer programmer.  In 2002,  he left Boston and moved to Fort Worth, Texas where he lives today.","discography":{"david-gilden":{"albums":{"ancestral-voice":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ancestral Voice","year":"1986"},"distant-strings":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tc-david-gilden-distant.jpg?alt=media&token=dc266faa-d5d9-43ad-96d0-8e9e3c45cc9c","label":"No label","review":"Gilden plays the kora, a lovely African harp-like instrument. The only other instruments are Gilden’s own subliminal synth, a “bones” player, and an English concertina. The combination is interesting, blending the gentleness of the kora and the harsh yet seductive tones of the concertina, with occasional exclamation from the bones. Primitive, but almost classical sounding, the material ranges from folk music of many lands, primarily the British Isles and Africa, to Bach to gentle ambience. Not the usual new age hype, having more life to it than most things you could buy in your local metaphysical bookstore. If there must be primitivism, let it be like this.\n\n(Dave Beltane, *Option* Mar/Apr, 1988)\n","title":"Distant Strings","year":"1987"},"jato-the-lion":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tc-david-gilden-jato.jpg?alt=media&token=b68bb283-74eb-4909-aa78-c525c3c449c0","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Jato the Lion","year":"1988"},"kora-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Kora 1","year":"1984"},"kora-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Kora 2","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":122,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Gilden-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9c11d635-bb2b-4ac4-8cb4-7380d729faa7","last_name":"Gilden"},"david-kempton":{"artist_name":"David Kempton","body":"Based in Northern California, David Kempton was a piano and synth player who grew up playing jazz and blues and later got into Indian music, fusion, and new age. He released a new age cassette in 1987 called *Primary Trigrams of the I Ching* but it was pressed in a small quantity and isn't well-known. Kempton has posted the album on his website [here](https://www.davidkempton.com/rec/trigrams/).\n\nBorn in 1942, David Kempton grew up in Massachusetts. He played piano and organ at church and later got into jazz in high school. He spent some time in the Air Force after high school and then moved to Miami after his discharge in 1963. There he played organ in a soul-jazz band and hung out with local musicians like sax player Bob Dingwall who introduced him to Ravi Shankar’s music. “That got me into Indian classical music,” Kempton said. “It’s totally improvised but with structure. It’s like 3000-year-old jazz and is still my favorite music ever.”\n\nIn 1964, Kempton briefly toured with Sam and Dave in Florida playing the electric bass, but that didn't last long. He moved around for a while after that, living in DC and Hartford before settling more permanently in Northern California in 1968 where he managed a hi-fi stereo store and studied Indian music more seriously for three years.\n\nIn the '70s, Kempton played with Sonny Simmons and a fusion jazz band called the Zytron Aquarian Ensemble. He also picked up occasional work on sessions, appearing on Michael Nesmith's 1974 album *The Prison*, Essra Mohawk's self-titled album the same year, and Willie Bobo's 1979 album *Bobo.\" On his sessions, he was usually credited as Dave \"Dasher\" Kempton, a nickname he'd gotten from Sonny Simmons.\n\nKempton first got into synthesizers in the '70s, building one from a PAIA kit and then getting an Arp Odyssey. Although his main musical languages were jazz and blues, he also liked Tomita and began creating solo synth recordings in the '80s while living in Monterey. He recorded his first solo cassette in 1987, a series of improvisations on the Yamaha DX-7 that he called \"electronic impressions\" which prioritized \"heart over intellect.\" He self-released the cassette issued in a small run of 50 or 100 copies by his estimation, and later updated it and released it on CD. \n \nKempton has continued to play music in the intervening years, returning to a meditative style on 2005's *Life Cycles*. Kempton still lives in Monterey and maintains a website with samples of much of his catalog [here]( https://www.davidkempton.com/). He currently plays piano at Clint Eastwood's Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel-by-the-Sea.","discography":{"david-kempton":{"albums":{"primary-trigrams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Primary Trigrams of the I Ching","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":344,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-kempton-640.jpg?alt=media&token=40e01795-9e9b-4e10-b012-e9205493577d","last_name":"Kempton"},"david-lee-myers":{"artist_name":"David Lee Myers","body":"David Lee Myers, an experimental musician and guitarist, released four electronic albums in the mid to late '80s before narrowing in exclusively on non-guitar feedback.  His first album in the new style was 1988's *Engines of Myth*, released on Chris Cutler's ReR label under the name Arcane Device.  Myers continued to hone his approach to treated feedback throughout the '90s on a series of releases, mostly for international labels where support for his music was considerably stronger than in the US. Myers' early cassettes may be of interest to fans of ambient or Berlin-school sounds. All of his cassettes are now scarce.\n\nMyers was born in 1949 and raised in Alliance, Ohio just an hour away from Cleveland. Already by high school he was interested in avant-garde composers Stockhausen and Tod Dockstader, with the latter looming particularly large over his subsequent career. At the time, Myers was playing guitar in a band, but he was never a conventional player. \"I was probably more interested in effects pedals,\" Myers remembers.\n\nIn 1967, Myers enrolled at Kent State for a year with an eye towards a career in the arts. However, with the Vietnam draft looming, Myers voluntarily joined the Air Force and worked there in electronics. Four years later he returned to college at the California College of Art where he studied illustration and painting.\n\nAfter graduation, Myers was ready for a change and moved to New York, arriving at a time of great artistic innovation and creativity. He particularly liked the work of minimal composers LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, as well as the more abrasive sounds of punk-influenced artists like Rhys Chatham, DNA, and Glen Branca. Around this time, Myers became aware of Brian Eno and loved his idea of using the studio as an instrument. \"I've never been able to decide if I was a visual artist or a musician,” Myers says. \"But when I found out you could be a musician in your studio, like an artist uses a studio, that was very appealing to me.\"\n\nWhile he worked as a graphic artist in the city, Myers started to think more seriously about his music, acquiring a reel to reel four track and building his own modular synth. After a few years, he put together enough material for his debut cassette, *Gravitation and its Discontents* which he released on his own Presence label. He printed about 50 copies and sent copies to magazines like Electronic Musician and Sound Choice with the latter calling it an \"impressive debut.\" The album shows a strong Berlin-school influence, with trance-like rhythms sketched under sustained, gliding guitar lines a la Michael Rother or Robert Fripp.\n\nMyers followed up his debut with *Electronic Guitar* which was the most popular of his earliest albums. He went on to release two more cassettes in a similar style, though sans guitar: *7x7+4* and *White Rushes Underneath*, the latter of which may be the most mature and best sounding of his earlier period.\n\nIn 1987, Myers accidentally discovered that by feeding one audio delay unit into another he could summon a latent, unseen source of sound material that he could then manipulate. He created a new album using this technique called \"Feedback Music\" that he issued under the name Arcane Device, in part due to the nature of his new process. Chris Cutler of ReR in the UK liked what he heard and issued the album on vinyl, a first for Myers, with the title *Engines of Myth*.  The album kicked off a new level of interest in Myers' music and he has remained dedicated to feedback as the primary source for his music ever since.\n\nUnder the name Arcane Device, Myers released many albums throughout the '90s, primarily on European labels.  In 2000, he reverted back to using his original name for most projects. He also collaborated with Tod Dockstader on two albums for ReR in the early 2000s, the culmination of a decade long friendship. Myers still lives and works in New York City.","discography":{"solara":{"albums":{"7x7+4":{"image":"","label":"Presence","review":"One of four untitled pieces demonstrating Myers’ “Live Electronics System” reminded this writer of Paul Dresher’s music. Myers is at his best working with miniature forms, as he does for a side and a half, laying down varied layers of color, texture, rhythm, melodic and harmonic material. It is clear that he has been listening to some of the best Japanese musicians, such as Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono. The Fripp influence, most readily heard in Myers’s *Electronic Guitar*, is still evident, but subsumed into the overall musical fabric. Though the quality of his music compares favorably with those aforementioned musicians, one would not confuse Myers for any of them. He remains an individual artist with an identifiable sound who records some very fine music.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, *Option Magazine*, 1986)\n","title":"7x7+4","year":"1986"},"electronic-guitar":{"image":"","label":"Presence","review":"The obvious precedent for this tape is Fripp and Eno, based as it is around infinite-sustain guitar lines and rhythmic structures built up of layered overdubs. Yet this is only the jumping-off point for Myers. Side A is called \"Vapors\" and consists of six pieces, named after various gases, which takes Fripp and Eno's formula into birdcalls, volume-pedal orchestrations and other territory they didn't get around to exploring. The other side, \"Metals,\" is heavier, utilizing extensive electronic and tape-speed alterations to create some very un-guitar-like textures. Comparisons to Throbbing Gristle or Jean-Baptiste Barriere would not be out of bounds. In all, Myers' truth-in-advertising delivers some very \"electronic guitar.\"\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, March 1986)","title":"Electronic Guitar","year":"1985"},"gravitation-and-its-discontents":{"image":"","label":"Presence","review":"This takes me back - way back - when I was 13, really stoned, twazzled in fact, in the back seat of a '67 Mustang hearing Pink Floyd's *Dark Side of the Moon* for the first time and reaching nirvana during the trippy electronic effects. In Arthur Douglas's \"Contact List for Electronic Music (CLEM),\" Myers gives an accurate description of his music: \"It is listenable, not academic, and uses electronics, guitar and processed voice (no words though). Influences are minimalism, ethnic music and German EM.\"  Myers invents and constructs \"electronic devices\" helping create the great variety of generally warm and rich sounds throughout this recording. The pleasing variety of vibrant and imaginative compositions make this an impressive debut.\n\n(Bill Hubby, *Sound Choice*, 1985)","title":"Gravitation and its Discontents","year":"1984"},"white-rushes-underneath":{"image":"","label":"Presence","review":"Ten compositions of elegant patterns, vibrant energy, and crisp timbres where melody and rhythm interchange, becoming one and the same. Dances of big winged water birds taking flight. Dances of supple wrists, coy eyes, and eloquent limbs. Dances that hold you in a symbiosis of organic depth and metallic brilliance.  Swaying oscillation interspersed with haunting enigmas and ruptured communiques splintered through a lithe musculature of sound.\n\n([Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholak), *Option* Jan/Feb, 1988)","title":"White Rushes Underneath","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":35,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Lee-Myers-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e654419c-186a-4bd8-a742-fedd4f4deb46","last_name":"Myers"},"david-lynn":{"artist_name":"David Lynn","body":"David Lynn is a music teacher in Grass Valley, California who released a new-age/electronic cassette called *Spheres* that may interest readers of this site. Based on the John Carpenter movie *Starman*, the cassette was mainly sold locally and to fans of the movie, but it is now rarely seen. Most of his other music was Christian.\n\nBorn in 1962, David Lynn lived in New Jersey for six years before his family moved to Sacramento, California. Lynn began learning guitar and writing songs at the age of 12. Soon, he wanted to learn every instrument in the orchestra.\n\nLynn initially attended San Jose State for college, where he studied music, but he didn’t complete his studies. He did, however, take his first electronic music class there with Allen Strange, experimenting on synthesizers for the first time and producing some embryonic recording. At the time, he was more focused on Christian singer/songwriter music, producing a cassette with his wife Carol in 1982 called *From the Heart*.\n\nLynn returned to college in the mid-‘80s at Humboldt State University, but this time it clicked. He went on to earn a degree in music there, again taking a class in electronic music that proved influential. \n\n“At Humboldt State, I became more aware of new age music and wanted to go in that direction. I was already fascinated with the idea of synthesizers and classical music. I grew up listening to artists who were one-man bands like Mike Oldfield and Todd Rundgren so I wanted to try putting out an album where I was playing all the instruments.  I started recording *Spheres*, some at the University and some at home, starting around 1987.”\n\nLynn self-released *Spheres* in 1989, using the label name Driving Records of Arcata. The album combines electronic new age pieces with acoustic piano tracks, showing a range of styles. \"That cassette was based on the characters and scenes of *Starman*,\" Lynn recalled. “My wife and I were big fans of that movie. She did the artwork and we had j-cards printed up. I made copies of the tape at home. I did sell some to the *Starman* fanbase, and sold some at local stores. But it was a limited release. \n\nIn 1992, Lynn got a job as the music director at a Methodist church, where he still works today. Around the same time, he also began a career as a music teacher, teaching band, choir, and classroom music in the Union Hill school district.\n\nWhile he never released any other new age or electronic music, Lynn did produce some other Christian albums, such as *My Beloved Song* in 1994 and *Pray Songs* in 2001. In 2019, he produced a world music album using acoustic instruments. Lynn currently resides in Grass Valley, California.","discography":{"david-lynn":{"albums":{"7x7+4":{"image":"","label":"Driving Records of Arcata","review":"Spheres is like a bizarro world fanfic soundtrack to John Carpenter’s *Starman* but recorded at home by a multi-instrumentalist long on imagination but a bit short on budget. Since it's a sci-fi movie, you’ll find the expected moody synth pieces (\"Voyagers\") and atmospheric explorations (\"Metamorphosis\") sometimes augmented with acoustic piano. But there are also a few full-band simulations on side two (\"Wylife Fox,\" \"Young Scott\") that go in a jazzy, mid-70s Dead direction with electronic drums, fretless bass, and flourishes of flute and trumpet. It’s all so homespun and unassuming that it’s hard not to be charmed in spite of the occasional low fidelity or lack of stylistic cohesion. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Spheres","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":436,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-lynn-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=b308bd58-0897-481c-9323-ca589404b2d7","last_name":"Lynn"},"david-michael":{"artist_name":"David Michael","body":"David Michael was a musician based in Northern California when he got his big break with Fortuna Records. In 1987, they issued his first widely distributed album called *Petals in the Stream*, though the label was overstretched financially and Michael never got any royalties. Frustrated, he moved back home to Washington to launch his own label Purnima Productions in 1990. This was a busy period that saw him release seven different albums and take many trips to Europe. But eventually the burden of running the business took a toll and he scaled back to focus on performing, mostly as a busker on Washington ferryboats and on the streets of Scandinavia. More recently, he started a massage school and wrote a memoir called *Busker - Tales of a Renegade Harpist*.\n\nThe oldest of four boys, David Michael Schroeter was born in 1951 in New York (he would drop his last name in the mid '80s). The family relocated to Seattle where his father worked as an activist and civil rights attorney. His mother was a talented pianist and arranged for David to take cello lessons at the age of five though he didn't practice much. A few years later in summer camp, he found music that was more exciting to him – the folk songs of Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton. When his father brought him a guitar from Mexico, he started teaching himself to play.\n\nAfter high school, Schroeter attended a university in Israel for a few years where he started writing song lyrics to escape the boredom of dull psychology lectures. When he came back to the US, he spent some time in Hollywood trying to sell his songs to other artists. However, that didn't work out and he soon \"ran away\" to attend The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.\n\nAt Evergreen, Schroeter first met Randy Mead who would go on to become a longtime musical partner. \"We were both jilted by the same woman,\" Schroeter recalled. \"He was my sworn enemy. But then she broke up with him and suddenly we had something in common: we wanted her, and she didn't want either of us.\" Schroeter and Mead began jamming together. Mead mostly played flute, but he also invented his own instruments such as the 40-stringed bass zither that he called a \"zithharp\" and gifted to David.\n\nAlong with Schroeter's girlfriend Ginger Huggins on bassoon, they formed a trio called Wind and started playing regularly in the Pacific Northwest.  The group got a grant from a local arts commission to play at public institutions and they were featured on public television while working with improvisational dance companies. The group released one cassette during this time, a self titled album that they recorded at home and sold at gigs. The trio came to an end at the close of the decade when Mead moved to California and Schroeter's relationship with Ginger fell apart.\n\nAfter Wind broke up, David formed a new a duo with his next girlfriend Caryl Sherman, producing the folky *Songs of the Pacific Northwest* in 1980.  Then they broke up and he started playing with his next girlfriend Cathy Noonan. By then, Michael was moving away from singer/songwriter fare into an instrumental new age style akin to early Alex DeGrassi or Will Ackerman. He and Noonan put out a tape in 1982 but the relationship didn't last, and the group ended. \"I had a habit for years of getting girlfriends who were also music partners,\" Michael said. \"Then when we would break up my entire life would fall apart.\"\n\nSchroeter decided to try his luck again in California, moving to Marin County in 1983 to record an album of his songs called *Edge of the Woods*, though he admits few were ever made or sold. He decided to stay and got a job as a delivery driver for a natural food company, Wildwood Natural Foods. One day while attending a renaissance fair in Novato, Schroeter first tried playing a levered Celtic harp at a booth. He was immediately hooked. He realized that he'd been trying to make a guitar sound like a harp for years and soon bought his own. \n\nAfter only a year of playing the harp, Schroeter booked some studio time and recorded *Petals in the Stream* at a multi-track studio. His old friend Randy Mead, who was also in the Bay Area, contributed to the recording. As he was prepping to release *Petals in the Stream*, Schroeter decided to drop his given last name and just go by David Michael. \"I imagined some radio deejay pronouncing it wrong on the air,\" Michael said. \"I figured David is a biblical harpist and Michael is the archangel. So, I went with it.\"\n\nMichael’s friend Matthew Monfort of the band Ancient Future helped them get a licensing deal with a major label in Japan, Nippon Phonogram which had just started a subsidiary called New Age. \"We thought we were going to be new age superstars in Japan,\" Michael said. However, the subsidiary was abandoned shortly after the CDs were printed and all marketing ceased, leaving the label's roster in the lurch.\n\nThe overseas release nevertheless helped Michael and Mead secure a US deal for the album with Fortuna, a Bay Area label run by Ethan Edgecomb. At the time, Fortuna's finances were strained by the effects of early grass roots success that led to rapid growth and subsequent poor business decisions. Nevertheless, the label was one of the biggest and most influential new age labels at the time and it boosted Michael and Mead's exposure considerably.\n\nFortuna issued *Petals in the Stream* on vinyl, cassette, and CD and had excellent distribution, but the label would soon become insolvent and be taken over by Celestial Harmonies. In the meantime, Michael wasn't getting any royalties and fretting about his future. By then he'd relocated to Santa Cruz and was managing the Wildwood Foods operation for four counties. \"That made me realize I was going to have a job delivering tofu for the rest of my life, if I didn't roll up my sleeves and commit to acting as my own publisher,” Michael said. \"And then in 1989 there was a big earthquake and things became more stressful. So, I moved back to Washington and started my own label Purnima.\"\n\nThe first release on Purnima was *Sierra Suite*, an instrumental album featuring an extended zither improvisation recorded during a ski trip in Tahoe. Michael played two zithers at the same time, one in each hand, improvising the whole thing. He simultaneously released *New Zealand*, a solo harp album inspired by a trip to the islands.\n\nMichael put all his energy behind the new label, signing up with new age distributors such as Life Dance, New Leaf  and Music Design. He toured the country to hand out demoes at crystal shops and gift stores. He sent promos to radio stations. He also continued to busk, playing music on the ferry as he did in the '70s.\n\nMichael went on to release five more albums between 1990 and 1995. He often spent summers touring Europe and would make great money playing his Celtic harp on the street. But when he returned back to the drudgery of running his label from his office, the high wore off quickly. In 1996, he decided to move on. \"I broke up with my partner of 12 years at that time,\" Michael said. \"She was helping with business. When I went to Europe on tour, she handled everything. But I realized I wanted to play music, not run a business.\" \n\nIn subsequent years, Michael has released more than a dozen more albums, primarily working in world fusion or ambient styles for meditation. In 2003 he met Dari Lewis at a massage convention where he was performing on harp and they married the following year. He helped her start their own massage school which ran until the pandemic of 2020 forced them to close.\n\nIn 2007, Washington State Ferries capsized Michael's 17 year stint busking with his harp on the Port Townsend ferry for reasons of \"homeland security,\" which outraged his fans and got him into the [national news](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/harpist-isnt-playing-on-ferry-anymore/), prompting him to write a memoir about his life called *Busker - Tales of a Renegade Harpist*, published in 2011. Michael currently lives in Port Townsend, Washington.","discography":{"david-michael":{"albums":{"new-zealand":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"Gently rolling solo harp pieces dedicated to the \"scenic splendor\" of New Zealand. The mood is warm and confident, though the familiar sounding melodies are simple and repetitive, bringing to mind the DIY harp moves of, say, [Michael Riversong](/michael-riversong). Works best as background or mood music.","title":"New Zealand","year":"1990"},"sierra-suite":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"","title":"Sierra Suite","year":"1990"},"winter-reveries":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"Misty-eyed and minor key instrumentals played on the Germania harp by David Michael, accompanied by Randy Mead on flute. Two trad tunes are included - \"Greensleeves\" and \"Ash Grove\"; the rest are originals that draw from Celtic and European folk, though the highlight for me was the anachronistic, eastern-influenced \"Crane Dance\" on side two. ","title":"Winter Reveries","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"David Michael","entry_number":3},"david-michael-and-friends":{"albums":{"edge-of-the-sky":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"","title":"Edge of the Sky","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"David Michael and Friends","entry_number":4},"david-michael-and-randy-mead":{"albums":{"keystone-passage":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"","title":"Keystone Passage","year":"1993"},"petals-in-the-stream":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Romantic, chivalrous instrumental tunes composed on harp and flute, with a strong baroque sensibility. The tracks, which were written shortly before the sessions, breeze by on light arrangements, augmented in some places by violin, cello or synth. This doesn't have much in common with the other new age releases on Fortuna - I'd file this closer to UK folk stuff like Pentangle than, say, Steve Roach. Michaels and Mead would return with the similar *Keystone Passage* in 1993.","title":"Petals in the Stream","year":"1987"},"spirit-rising":{"image":"","label":"Purnima","review":"","title":"Courtship of the Moon","year":"1998"}},"artist_name":"David Michael and Randy Mead","entry_number":2},"david-schroeter-and-cathy-noonan":{"albums":{"david-schroeter-and-cathy-noonan":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"David Schroeter and Cathy Noonan","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"David Schroeter and Cathy Noonan","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":217,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-michael-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e79b98da-29dd-492f-854a-af2ac764cb03","last_name":"Michael"},"david-muse":{"artist_name":"David Muse","body":"David Muse got his start as the keyboard player for soft rock hit makers Firefall, but as that band was splitting up in 1981, Muse put together a solo album of his own new age material called *Tonal Alchemy*. The album got some play on Hearts of Space and notched a few thousand in sales, but remains little known.  In 1983, Muse recorded an EP in a more AOR hard rock vein and never really returned to more contemplative sounds. By the '90s he joined the Marshall Tucker band and occasionally joined Firefall for reunion shows.\n\nDavid Muse was born in Rome, Georgia in 1949. His family later moved to Florida where Muse attended junior high and began learning the clarinet. For a while he played in a dixieland band but after the Beatles became popular, Muse wanted to play rock and roll. By high school he was learning how to play the bass and piano, and met other musicians including Rick Roberts, an aspiring songwriter who would later form Firefall with Muse.\n\nAfter high school, Muse went to junior college and studied woodwinds while his friend Rick Roberts moved to LA to try to make it as a singer/songwriter. Roberts ended up joining the Flying Burrito Brothers in place of the recently departed Gram Parsons, and wrote or co-wrote many of the songs for their underrated self-titled album in 1971. During this time, Muse came out to LA to visit Roberts and got a taste for the rock and roll life and knew he had to find a way to make it too.\n\nOnce he obtained his two year degree, Muse hit the road with a cover band called Too Much Boogie. “We traveled around the country playing bars, doing two week residencies and staying at sleazy hotels,” Muse laughed. “I made 300 dollars a week and thought I was rich.” Too Much Boogie didn't last long and Muse moved to Atlanta where he joined a band called Stillwood with Pam Rose, playing original music. He did his first recording session with her in Nashville with Pete Drake, but nothing ever came of it. He then joined Taxi, a house band at local club in Atlanta where he stayed for the next four years. \n\nBy 1975, Roberts asked Muse to join his new band Firefall who had just gotten a deal with Atlantic Records. Muse soon joined up with the band, playing on their debut album. The band exploded with a quick Top Ten hit in \"You're The Only Woman\" and found themselves on tour with Fleetwood Mac during their indulgent, excessive *Rumours* tour. Mick Fleetwood had designs on managing them, but the deal fell apart amid inner band haggling over the contract. Nevertheless, Firefall went on to release a string of successful albums until finally dissolving in 1981.\n\nDuring the waning days of Firefall, Muse went into the studio and recorded a solo album of new age influenced music called *Tonal Alchemy.* Muse played every instrument except for the vocals. \"I always had an interest in space music,\" Muse said. 'I loved Erik Satie -- he was a big influence. I also liked John Cage and electronic music too. Some of my early favorites were Tonto's Expanding Head Band and then Tomita.\"\n\nMuse released *Tonal Alchemy* on his own Deva label, pressing 3500 copies on vinyl and 1000 on cassette. The song \"River Peace\" was played on Hearts of Space and he got distribution through Narada and Backroads and went on some radio shows to promote the album. The album sold “pretty good at the time” according to Muse, but he didn’t sell out of the pressing. Muse is still fond of the album and listens to it today:  \"It still puts me to sleep,\" he said. \"The album was meant to relax you -  like a sound poem.\"\n\nMuse recorded one more album on his own, a hard rock EP called *Fantasies of Love* in 1983. He occasionally played with Firefall throughout the decade and later joined the Marshall Tucker Band in the 90s. Muse currently lives in Florida and is trying to finish up his second new age album. You can buy vinyl copies of *Tonal Alchemy* from Muse on his website [here](http://davemuse.com/store/tonalalchemy).","discography":{"david-muse":{"albums":{"tonal-alchemy":{"image":"","label":"Deva","review":"With younger listeners plunging musical extremes like hard rock or prog in the '70s, the popularity of soft rock bands like Firefall was a sign that many aging boomers preferred cozy comfort and simplicity in their music as they aged out of ear-splitting cries for revolution.  David Muse, who played keyboards for Firefall, had musical aspirations beyond his band's commercial fare and explored more inward-looking new age for his solo debut *Tonal Alchemy.*\n\nWhile not a classic, *Tonal Alchemy* has plenty of interesting moments that fall within the archetypal style - eastern flute melodies, sitars and tabla, ocean sounds, and free-floating space jams.  Album opener \"The River Peace\" starts off promising enough with the sounds of a flowing river and synth droplets that make you think you're in for an epic west coast meditation trip but the track ends after only 4 minutes. Where Muse really shines is on longer mood pieces like \"Neptune\", with its swirling ambiguity that brings to mind Popol Vuh, or the darkly evocative \"Initiation,\" a multi-part song that even incorporates the vocoder, an instrument rarely heard in the genre.  The worst that can be said about lesser pieces like \"Sunrise\" or \"Transition\" is that they are merely pretty.  Maybe I'm just not a fan of the piano/sax combo , but these compositions also feel more contrived whereas \"Neptune\" breathes with life and raw energy. For the price ($10 shipped for an old stock cassette from David's site [here](http://davemuse.com/store/tonal-alchemy-cassette-tape)), this one is a no-brainer to pick up.","title":"Tonal Alchemy","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":91,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Muse-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f5cf5d89-b053-45c8-b422-d1abffd87ee6","image_credit":"Terry Kruger","last_name":"Muse"},"david-naegele":{"artist_name":"David Naegele","body":"David Naegele (pronounced \"nay-glee\") was a classically trained pianist who became the first in-house music producer for Dick Sutphen's Valley of the Sun label, one of the most prolific and popular self-help/new age labels in Los Angeles in the early '80s. Naegele recorded eight albums for the label under his own name and many more as [Upper Astral](/upper-astral).\n\nBorn in 1951 and raised in Minnesota, Naegele fell in love with Chopin and Arthur Rubinstein at a young age and was inspired to take piano lessons at the age of eight.  He also studied the french horn and by 14 was winning piano contests.  However, after realizing that classical music was hardly the epitome of teenage cool, he decided to join a rock band called the Triumphs playing the organ and doing covers of the Beatles and other popular bands of the day. However, he eventually got tired of the simplistic three-chord songs and moved on from rock too.\n\nAfter high school, Naegle spent some time in the Navy and then variously worked as an assistant counselor in a drug treatment center, managed a residential YMCA, and taught ballroom dancing at a Fred Astaire dance studio.  During this time, he occasionally had spontaneous out-of-body experiences and was inspired to investigate and study new age topics such as astrology, reincarnation, and self-hypnosis, as well as out-of-body travel.\n\nIn 1976, Naegele moved to Hollywood to work in the television and film industry and that was the same year he first encountered [Dick Sutphen](/dick-sutphen) doing past-life hypnosis on Tom Snyder's *The Tomorrow Show*. Naegele hoped he could someday work with him.  Meanwhile, Naegele worked in audience market research and as a set manager for a casting company. However, he eventually got fed up with the prevalence of drugs in the Hollywood culture and decided to move back to Minnesota after a bad breakup to heal and resume his search for a meaningful career.\n\nIn the fall of 1980, Naegele attended a fateful Dick Sutphen seminar and got a chance to talk to him backstage. Surprisingly, Sutphen offered him a job to come work at Valley of the Sun producing music for his self-help tapes. Naegele said yes and before long he was helping to move Sutphen's operations from Scottsdale, Arizona to Malibu. \"Interestingly, when I moved back to L.A., the casting company I had previously left kept calling and asking me to resume working with them,\" Naegele recalled.  \"The last movie project I declined to work on was Spielberg's *E.T.* -- and to this day I still regret it!\" \n\nEarly in his tenure at the label, Naegele recorded three cassettes of solo piano material, one of which (*Pentatonic Suite*) he disowned as a Steven Halpern imitation. He was so embarrassed that when Halpern later visited the office, he hid in the mailroom. Either way, these early tapes didn't sell well and are now some of the rarest on the label.\n\nNaegele hit his stride a year later with his classic *Temple in the Forest*, which went on to be a big hit for Valley of the Sun. Naegele also recorded solo under the name Upper Astral, as Sutphen wanted to create a de facto house band initially. Naegele, who was busy with both musical and administrative tasks at the label, soon recruited his friend and neighbor [David Storrs](/david-storrs) to join Upper Astral in 1982. Together, they recorded five albums as Upper Astral and five under Naegele's name.\n\nAfter a few prolific years, Naegele left Valley of the Sun in 1983 to start a business selling computerized horoscopes.  However, he was unhappy with the limitations of digitally produced horoscopes and eventually got a new job as a production assistant, including stints on the TV sitcom *Double Trouble* and the syndicated late-night talk show *Thicke of the Night* with Alan Thicke and Arsenio Hall. He eventually returned to work at Valley of the Sun in 1986, though he never recorded any new albums for the label.\n\nIn 1992, Naegele moved back to Minneapolis and worked in medical manufacturing for most of the '90s before eventually moving on to become a movie theater manager, specializing as a sound and projection manager for nearly a dozen years before retiring.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020-2022)","discography":{"david-naegele":{"albums":{"classical-meditations":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Classical Meditations","year":"1980"},"dawning-of-the-new-age":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"This is the first of three David Naegele albums that was composed and produced with David Storrs in a productive period in 1983.  Contrary to the title, the album has a more Berlin School feel, especially on Side 1 with its pulsing synth motif. Side 2 is similar, but a bit warmer, with occasional ocean sounds and bird calls.\n","title":"Dawning of the New Age","year":"1983"},"dreams-of-atlantis":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"*Dreams of Atlantis* is sort of a synthier version of *Temple in the Forest*, but slightly less successful overall. The first side features a one chord drone overlaid with ethereal synth arpeggios.  The second side has a detectable Halpern influence with contemplative electric piano going into some Eastern directions.  It's good, but tends to fade into the background.","title":"Dreams of Atlantis","year":"1982"},"dreamscapes":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Similar to *Dreams of Atlantis*, this features gentle cascades of synths in pentatonic scales with nature sounds in accompaniment. Side 2 is a pretty different beast altogether, featuring electric sitar and white-noise waves.","title":"Dreamscapes","year":"1983"},"journeys-out-of-the-body":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Inspired by Naegele's own out-of-body experiences, *Journeys Out of Body* maintains a low-key mood with minimal synth washes and delayed, tinkling melodies. The first side is more mysterious and minor key while the second side is more uplifting and meditative. Produced by Naegele with help from David Storrs, this tape has lately acquired a strong rep in the new age collector community; Britt Brown named it one of the best in the genre overall in his Fact Mag [piece](https://www.factmag.com/2019/02/19/the-20-best-new-age-albums/). ","title":"Journeys Out Of Body","year":"1983"},"pentatonic-suite":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Pentatonic Suite","year":"1981"},"reveries":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Reveries","year":"1981"},"temple-in-the-forest":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"*Temple in the Forest* is a new age gem and one of Naegele's strongest albums under his own name. It was also one of the best sellers on the label and reprinted several times throughout the '80s. Although some of Naegele's recording masters were lost or damaged, this one luckily survived and has made the transition to CD and Spotify.  A lot of new age artists claim to channel their music but this album truly resonates with spiritual overtones in which Naegele seems to be playing from his subconsciousness. As the delicate piano melodies float atop sounds of flowing streams and bird calls, the forest landscape comes into vivid focus. Not since the final chapter of *Siddhartha* has nature been so seductive. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Temple in the Forest","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":69,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/naegele.jpg?alt=media&token=935ca94d-35a3-41f0-9190-88de7a780cdc","last_name":"Naegele"},"david-oliver":{"artist_name":"David Oliver","body":"Based in Bearsville, NY, David Oliver was a post-minimalist composer who put out three albums on his own Damiana label in the early '80s. He mainly wrote pieces for solo piano or mallet percussion, both of which he studied at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati. He also spent time at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, taking classes with Colin Wilcott of Oregon and playing music [Garry Kvistad](/garry-kvistad) and [Julia Haines](/julia-haines), among others. Oliver only pressed 1,000 copies of his records and copies moved slowly, so he turned to reggae for his livelihood, playing keyboards with Winston Grennan and Aston Ellis for many decades, primarily touring the New England area. After over a fifteen-year hiatus from releasing his own work, Oliver returned in 1999 with a new CD steeped in both his jazz roots and his more newfound affection for reggae.\n\nDavid Oliver was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1955. His father worked for the phone company and the family moved around a lot, though they lived in New Jersey four separate times and that was where Oliver graduated high school. Oliver started playing piano around the age of five and \"just fell in love with music,\" he recalled. \"I was playing in bands already by sixth grade, at school dances and parties.\" He went on to earn a BA in product design to placate his parents but never pursued that as a career. Instead, he went on to attend three years of school at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music where he studied composition, jazz piano, and mallet percussion.\n\nIn the summer of 1981, Oliver spent time at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, founded in 1971 by musicians including Ornette Coleman as a nonprofit focused on improvisation and \"musical cross-pollination.\" \"I originally came because I was a big fan of Oregon and saw Colin Walcott was teaching classes,\" Oliver recalled. \"After another year in Cincinnati, I moved back to Woodstock and took more classes. When I first moved there I was playing jazz and free music.\" Earning some money from grants, Oliver founded his own label Damiana and released three albums between 1982 to 1985 that he distributed through NMDS. He earned some airplay on New Sounds in New York, but sales were modest.\n\n\"In order to make a living, I got involved with reggae, ska, and soca music,\" Oliver recalled. It was a lot easier in the early 80s when grant money was floating around. But it got harder and harder to perform my own music, and I couldn’t see myself as a composition teacher at a conservatory.\nThen I got an offer from a local drummer named Winston Grennan who lived in Woodstock. He saw me play jazz and wanted me to join him on keyboards but I said, 'I don't know that music, you got the wrong guy.' But I tried it out and ended up playing with him for 17 years. I didn't know it would be a long-term thing. Every weekend we'd travel around New England. I had a farmhouse, living in the woods, and that paid my mortgage.\"\n\nAs he settled into a routine in Woodstock, Oliver returned to his own music again in the late '90s, setting up a new label Eucalyptus and releasing his earlier material on CD and an album of new compositions (*Circle of One*) that drew on his more minimalist recordings as well as ska and reggae. His next CDs, *Mariamba Musicale* parts 1 and 2, showed more of a return to the minimalist sound of earlier LPs, though with a still distinct reggae lilt. Oliver maintains a website [here]( https://davidolivereucalyptusrecordings.com/).\n","discography":{"david-oliver":{"albums":{"hope-for-la-roo":{"image":"","label":"Damiana","review":"","title":"Hope for La Roo","year":"1984"},"lizard-grows-on-you":{"image":"","label":"Damiana","review":"","title":"Lizard Grows on You","year":"1982"},"marishka":{"image":"","label":"Damiana","review":"","title":"Marishka","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"David Oliver","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":359,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/david-oliver-640.jpg?alt=media&token=7dedced6-c8b8-4c86-8ef0-ecb020201688","last_name":"Oliver"},"david-prescott":{"artist_name":"David Prescott","body":"From 1984 to 1990, Boston musician David Prescott was a ubiquitous figure on the home taping scene, churning out experimental releases on his Generations Unlimited label and trading cassettes with countless artists. His earliest four releases show a strong influence from the Berlin-school (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, etc.). However, starting in 1986, Prescott  began moving away from melody and structure in a quest to develop a signature sound that at times veered into more challenging, abstract territory.  Prescott's prolific output and intense devotion to the scene started to burn him out by 1990, and various disagreements with his peers and business partners led him to leave the music business altogether. In 1992, he moved to Vermont where he got married and became a social worker.\n\nDavid Prescott was born in 1960 in New York and grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut. His Dad was an audiophile who loved music and had speakers built into the wall. \"When I was three they sat me down and said, 'Davey dear, we want to see if you like this',\" Prescott recalled. \"And they played Beethoven’s 'Moonlight Sonata.' It was life altering. That song awakened something inside of me.\" Later, Prescott got into the Beatles and Stones (especially the latter's \"2000 Light Years From Home\") and soaked up the lysergic freakiness of San Francisco jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.\n\nWhen he was a little older, Prescott’s taste was further expanded by Allison Steele, a New York DJ at WNEW who exposed him and countless other tri-state listeners to Tangerine Dream. Inspired, Prescott would often ride his bike into Westport to go to record stores to look for interesting imports by electronic artists like Cluster and Klaus Schulze.\n\nPrescott went to Syracuse University and majored in English. While there, he played in various bands, mostly as a bassist. In an interview with Al Margolis in *Electronic Cottage*, Prescott said, \"I wound up playing in whatever bands I could. It was very depressing, but very lucrative: a real sociological experience with endless guitar solos and sexist lyrics. I was very interested in electronics but couldn't afford them, so I bought endless amounts of gadgetry and processed my electric bass within an inch of its life.\"\n\nPrescott finally got fed up playing covers and country music by 1983 and bought a synthesizer and four track. After spending a year on his own music, he put together material for his first album, *New Music for Cathedrals* which he released on a limited cassette. The tape owes an obvious debt to Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, with its sequenced pulses and improvised synth melodies.\n\nPrescott knew he needed to find a way to get his music out there, and he got his first lead from another Syracuse synthesist named [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley). Prescott met her through the IEMA and they struck up a friendship. The IEMA was an affiliation of electronic musicians started by James Finch, and they also produced a magazine called SYNE. Paisley was a key member of the IEMA, and was generally well-connected in the scene. She introduced Prescott to Richard Ginsberg who hosted the influential Synthetic Pleasure radio show on WFMU and Prescott got on his mailing list. He soon followed up his debut with three similar, though more refined cassettes including *Four Million Years*, the best example of his early sound.\n\nBy 1985, Prescott moved to Boston for graduate school where he studied social work. While there he hosted a radio show on college station WZBC called \"Neo-logisms.\" He also began pushing his sound in a new direction. Prescott sent his cassettes around to various magazines like *Audion*, *Option* and *Factsheet Five* for review and earned mostly positive responses. \"My parents always thought music was an utter waste of time,\" Prescott said. \"They wanted me to focus on my career. But I sent them a review from *Audion* and my parents said ‘wow!’ That caught their attention.\" Alan and Steve Freeman, who published Audion, also had a label called Auricle and they offered to re-release three of Prescott's tapes in 1987, plus his latest *Neologisms*.\n\nDespite Auricle's interest, Prescott had already decided by late 1986 to start his own label which he called Generations Unlimited. \"At the time, my long term buddy Ken Montgomery had released his own record and we decided to team up to create a label.\" Montgomery helped designed the label's logo and Prescott served as the PR and communications man, taking delight in putting together the packages for customers.\n\nThe first release of Generations Unlimited was Prescott's vinyl debut, *Walking in Slow Circles*, pressed in an edition of 500.  It was a bigger financial risk at the time, and somewhat out of step with his more underground peers who prized the egalitarian nature of cassettes. \"It sounds so petty but I lost some of my friends by doing that [on vinyl],\" Prescott recalled. \"But people noticed it. I didn't want to advance myself, but I did want to advance the music.\"\n\nStill, the vinyl format was rarely used by Prescott's label outside of this release. Instead he mostly focused on cassettes, using a templatized black and white label design (by [David Lee Myers](/david-lee-myers)) that could easily be duplicated and customized for each artist by stamping their initials. This allowed him to churn out releases quickly and voluminously by Conrad Schnitzler, Rollkommando, Charles Cohen, Myers and others.\n\nDuring the years of 1987 to 1990, Prescott and Montgomery released nearly 100 albums on Generations Unlimited. Prescott also put out a large volume  of his own music as well, sometimes on other labels like Sound of Pig, Audiofile Tapes, and Harsh Reality, eschewing the more relaxed, spacy sounds of his earliest material in favor of harsh or abstract electronic work.\n\nBy 1990, Prescott’s label was facing headwinds from multiple directions. First he had a disagreement with longtime associate Minoy about a live gig in Boston and the two stopped speaking.  \"I also had a falling out with Con[rad] and then Ken and I had an argument we didn't recover from,\" Prescott said. \"And I got in a relationship that ended in a not so happy fashion. I stayed in Boston for a while, then moved to Vermont in 1992. I put all my cassettes in boxes and met my wife a few weeks later.\" Prescott mostly left music behind as he shifted into a career as a social worker, which he still practices today. \n\nIn 2014, Prescott revived Generations Unlimited and began re-releasing cassettes from the back catalog in both physical formats and electronically.","discography":{"bonham-and-prescott":{"albums":{"whispering-windy":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"Whispering Windy","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Bohman and Prescott","entry_number":3},"david-prescott":{"albums":{"1-tales-from-the-public-eye":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Nine songs ranging from 4 to 15 minutes, layers of sound with mysterious crackling shortwave radio transmissions and swelling synthesizer enhancement. Some titles: \"Ragnarok,\" \"Opposition,\" \"Imago,\" \"Neologisms,\" \"New Polytheisms.\" The tones here have a tighter weave than the Arnold Mathes tape (from the same Boston address), more sustained layers that are cemented together, also almost exclusively synthesizer sounds.\n\n(Robin James, *Sound Choice* #7, 1987)\n","title":"Tales from the Public Eye","year":"1986"},"1-the-dreamer":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Dreamer","year":"1985"},"2-mythographis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mythographis","year":"1985"},"3-four-million-years":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Prescott's fourth release is his most refined and well-executed take on the established Berlin-school style, with two side long tracks that spiral into the cosmos on waves of fuzzy electronics and flowing melodies. Like his other work, the patterns slowly shift and change, nearly imperceptibly, to carry the listener forward. However, *Four Million Years* maintains a contemplative, blissed out mood.  After this release, Prescott turned towards more experimental and sometimes abrasive work in an effort to define a sound uniquely his own.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Four Million Years","year":"1985"},"active-resistors":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"Here Prescott works entirely within the constraints of synthesizer-produced electronic music. Side one features three rhythmically coherent and pulse-oriented pieces composed of combinations of sequences that vary radically in both rhythmic pattern and timbre. The result is a dramatic tension that stems from this polyrhythmic structure, each one driving and intense. Side two has two pieces, each less rhythmically coherent than the first side. Their emphasis shifts to the combination of divergent tonal colors and textures. There is also an effort to place these tones in an intrusive manner within the stereo image. Instead of a driving force, side two is an atmosphere for absorption.\n\n([Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Option*, 1987)","title":"Active Resistors","year":"1987"},"concentration-combination":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dave-Prescott-Concentration-tape-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0adda56e-e2f9-493b-9a62-bdad39628954","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"Like much of Prescott's late-'80s work, melodies are nonexistent, replaced with an unending collage of radio static, slowed down church bells, low frequency drones, and a general claustrophobic atmosphere that reminds me of the ambient sound inside a packed airplane where everyone is wearing their own headphones. Side two is a bit more interesting, with Prescott remixing and recombining elements provided by other musicians including [Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholack), Robert Rutman, and Conrad Schnitzler. The variety of sounds and personalities almost makes it feel like a late-night freeform WFMU radio show, which could be a compliment or a dig depending on your appetite for that sort of thing.","title":"Concentration/Combination","year":"1989"},"dialog-and-disparity":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"","title":"Dialog and Disparity","year":"1988"},"electromagnetism":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile Tapes","review":"Most of this 90-minute tape is a non-melodic continuous soundscape of electronic beeping and droning with the occasional inclusions of Norwegian and Latin American voicings. The created mood becomes dense, like rocket engines preparing for blast off, then subsides into tranquil gentility, only to be invaded by alien magnetic forces. A trotting rhythmic sequence is sometimes used as a floor for random electronics to bounce from. This recording, segmented into four songs, is long and trance-inducing, with a few sections notable for the hyper-tension they invoke.\n\nTom Geha, *Option*, March/April 1988)","title":"Electromagnetism","year":"1987"},"forgotten-technologies":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Forgotten Technologies","year":"1986"},"from-chance-to-probability":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"These two pieces for non-keyboard electronics fall closer to a ‘60s avant-garde aesthetic than to that of the German space music that has also influenced much of Prescott’s work. Modified square and sawtooth waves rise and fall in frequency, eerie, quavering sheets of sound hang suspended in time, twittering electro-chirps ricochet around the listening space in incredible stereo. (Prescott sometimes performs live in quad.) There’s not even the slightest concession to conventional intonation or notions of progression, but this music never grows difficult or tedious; I couldn’t help but capitulate to its alternative time-sense of history and an unusual radical retro appreciation of the potentials of analog synthesis.\n\n(Michael Draine, *Sound  Choice*, No. 14, 1990)\n","title":"From Chance to Probability","year":"1989"},"neologisms":{"image":"","label":"Auricle","review":"","title":"Neologisms","year":"1987"},"new-music-for-cathedrals":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"New Music for Cathedrals","year":"1984"},"post-traumatic-stress":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"","title":"Post-Traumatic Stress","year":"1990"},"prague":{"image":"","label":"Prion Tapes","review":"Experimental music, electronic in its orientation, executed in the \"classical\" experimental mode (read: as it was five years ago, before everything in its wake got tagged \"new age\"). It's flowing, slightly mystical in its style, and very late nightish in its instrumental presentation. Side 1 tends towards new age-ish stuff, while side two is more quirky.\n\n(Carol Schutzbank, *Factsheet Five* #26, May 1988)","title":"Prague","year":"1988"},"prague-spring":{"image":"","label":"International Terrorist Network","review":"","title":"Prague Spring","year":"1987"},"red-shift":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Red Shift","year":"1986"},"red-shift-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Red Shift 2","year":"1986"},"red-shift-3":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Red Shift 3","year":"1986"},"red-shift-4":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Red Shift 4","year":"1986"},"red-shift-5":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"There is no melody or discernible structure to be found here, just undulating waves of electronically treated samples, siren-like wails of ambient noise, and textural sci-fi soundscapes. It works well as a hallucinatory travelogue through an alien world, or perhaps a synthetic translation of our natural one.","title":"Red Shift 5","year":"1986"},"studies-in-static-and-stasis-works-in-progress":{"image":"","label":"Toracic Tapes","review":"","title":"Studies in Static and Stasis, Works In Progress","year":"1988"},"studies-in-static-and-stasis-works-in-progress-2":{"image":"","label":"Tonspur Tapes","review":"","title":"Studies in Static and Stasis, Works In Progress 2","year":"1988"},"the-depths-of-proficiency":{"image":"","label":"Xhurzhen Sound","review":"","title":"The Depths of Proficiency","year":"1988"},"the-last-battle":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Last Battle","year":"1988"},"the-last-battle-live-in-boston":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Last Battle Live in Boston","year":"1988"},"thin-veils":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"Another impressive release of cosmic synth, electronics/effects, and this time, background religious chorales in a medieval/mystic style. Each elements has turns as the dominant musical figure, yet integrates well into the generally seamless whole. Melody is not the point here, rather, the overall aura of sound is. Dave seems to be improving his keyboard and mixing wizardry with each release, concurrent with an increasing structural complexity in his compositions. Anyway, this one’s excellent for another psychic blastoff into the realms of inner and outer space.\n\nJack Jordan, *Option*,  Sept/Oct 1988)","title":"Thin Veils: Heaven and Hell","year":"1987"},"untitled":{"image":"","label":"Bestattungsinstitut","review":"","title":"Untitled","year":"1990"},"walking-in-slow-circles":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"*Walking in Slow Circles* is an LP by David Prescott who does some of the most intelligent EM around. Anywhere. The kind of intelligence in music that Varese and Wronsky talked about. Here we get spacious analog soundscapes that vary between sinuous arcs and tonal or percussive, non-metric rhythms in an interweaving where each takes cyclical precedence. The sound is sometimes dense, but never cluttered and there are subtle embellishments throughout. The development is taken at a pace that is relaxed and graceful yet firm so that you are steadily drawn into the piece as it unfolds. Though the timbres are sometimes penetrating and strident, the overall effect is somewhat phantasmic or somnambulant so that the listener can become like Cocteau’s Orpheus running backwards through a dreamscape. Ominous graphics by Minoy as a bonus.\n\n(Michael Chocholak, *Ice River*, Summer 1988)\n","title":"Walking in Slow Circles","year":"1987"},"without-direction":{"image":"","label":"Direction Music","review":"","title":"Without Direction","year":"1989"},"x-factor":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Well-recorded electronic music with loosely structured, lengthy tracks of dissonant sounds which make no attempt to sound anything other than electronic in origin. I found it enjoyable, but I’ve always liked this sort of thing. I won’t say it sounds derivative, but it definitely reflects an aesthetic which has already been tried, with enough difference to make it different enough to listen to. Now that the Psychedelic Revival is getting worn, maybe we’re in for a resurgence of the early '70s German sound – I wouldn’t complain.\n\n(Scott Lewis, *Option*, Jul/Aug 1987)","title":"X-Factor","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"David Prescott","entry_number":1},"iancu-dumitrescu-david-prescott":{"albums":{"iancu-dumitrescu-david-prescott":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"","title":"Iancu Dumitrescu/David Prescott","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Iancu Dumitrescu/David Prescott","entry_number":5},"jim-o-rourke-david-prescott":{"albums":{"op-1":{"image":"","label":"Generations Unlimited","review":"","title":"OP1","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Jim O'Rourke/David Prescott","entry_number":6},"prescott-mcgee":{"albums":{"a-fish-devoid-of-memory":{"image":"","label":"Harsh Reality","review":"","title":"A Fish Devoid of Memory","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Prescott / McGee","entry_number":4},"prescott-minoy":{"albums":{"pmp-by-z":{"image":"","label":"ZH27","review":"","title":"PMP by Z","year":"1988"},"second-thoughts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Second Thoughts","year":"1986"},"the-dying-man":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Dying Man","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Prescott/Minoy","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":118,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Prescott-640.jpg?alt=media&token=ca6fa323-4fa1-4c74-9cb6-4c18ccd198bf","last_name":"Prescott"},"david-salminen":{"artist_name":"David Salminen","body":"Based in Anchorage, Alaska during the '80s, musician David Salminen released two cassettes of meditative solo piano improvisations. These were widely distributed by new age outlets at the time, and Salminen estimates sales of 3,000 for *From the Silence* and 2,500 for *Primary Colors.*  For a period, Salminen also made personalized tapes for friends as gifts or use in therapy, similar to [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews)' \"attunement tapes\" that were customized for individual needs. In 1991, Salminen and his wife Veerah left Alaska and he began working in financial services, leaving his career as a professional musician behind. However, he has continued to present public solo piano pieces inspired by nature, the cosmos, world literature, and myths. Salminen passed away in 2023.\n\nBorn in 1951, Salminen grew up in Rochester, New York. He started piano lessons at the age of eight and showed an early musical talent.  By the time he attended college at Clark University, he was ready to explore new directions and took courses in non-Western and electronic music, as well as music theory and history.  However, Salminen decided to major in Psychology, stemming in part from  a spiritual awakening over the course of his freshman year in 1969. That was when he first read Peter Ouspensky’s book *In Search of the Miraculous* which chronicled the author’s time spent with philosopher and spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff. For Salminen, this book ignited a decades long interest in Gurdjieff’s \"Fourth Way\" teachings, as well as his music that was composed in collaboration with Thomas de Hartmann.\n\nDuring a semester abroad, Salminen attended the International Academy for Continuous Education in Sherborne, England. The school had been founded in 1971 by an acolyte of Gurdjieff named John Bennett.  Students helped run the school and set up the lectures, which included visits from Sufi teachers like Idries Shah and Pir Vilayet Khan, as well as the Jungian psychologist Edith Wallace and Arnold Keyserling, the founder of the Austrian \"School of Wisdom.\" While there, Salminen met his first wife Trilby, and the couple moved to her home state of Alaska after Salminen got his degree at Clark University.\n\nThe marriage to Trillby didn't last long, but Salminen decided to stay in Alaska anyway. Soon after the couple moved there, he’d begun taking master classes in classical piano with Jean-Paul Billaud at the University of Alaska. At the same time, he began hosting musical meditations with his friends, featuring the music of Gurdjieff.  These later evolved into sessions of original music, played in a meditative and improvised style. Many attendees requested tapes of the music and by 1980, Salminen hit on the idea to create personalized music for others. He discovered that the harpist Joel Andrews was doing something similar with his \"attunement\" tapes at the time, and the two began corresponding and sharing ideas.\n\nOne of Salminen's friends was so taken with his music that he gifted him a couple hours of studio time. Salminen showed up and played in his usual style and that became his first release, *From the Silence* released in 1981. \"That period was a positive game-changer for me,\" Salminen said. \"Two of the musicians I met then who were very encouraging are Steven Halpern and George Winston - both of whom came to Alaska, and presented workshops. Both of them really did help me to develop confidence in my own work. Steven even shared a list of the various New Age-ambient music distributors.\" Using this list, Salminen was able to get this first recording, a 90-minute cassette, into stores and reviewed by magazines like *Heartsong Review* and *Hypnotherapy Today*. It ultimately sold over 3,000 copies.\n\nTwo years later, Salminen released his next tape, *Primary Colors*. Back during his time at the International “Sherborne” Academy, he'd been introduced to meditative color awareness by the Buddhist monk \"Bhante\" Vira Dharmawara, who stayed at the school for a month-long residency. Salminen and Bhante stayed in touch with each other, and it was really from suggestions that Bhante made, that Salminen was inspired to create songs correlating to different colors for this album. That tape again sold well, with Salminen estimating 2,500 copies sold.\n\nEver since moving to Alaska, Salminen had made money through music. To supplement income from tape sales, he gave piano lessons, and was constantly playing live gigs at restaurants, parties, and weddings.  He also sometimes accompanied dancers for classes and performance, and created soundtracks for poetry readings and psychiatric diagnostic videos. Back in 1981 he’d remarried to a friend of a friend named Veerah, and the couple hosted monthly live musical mediations, often augmented with Veerah’s creative visualizations. \n\nBy 1991, the couple was ready for a change of scenery and relocated to Portland, Oregon. There, Salminen shifted into a career in financial services. \"While my evolution as a musician continues, I haven't been making a living as a musician since moving to Portland,\" Salminen remarked. Salminen has a page [here](https://vimeo.com/davidsalminen) that features some of his more recent music.","discography":{"david-salminen":{"albums":{"from-the-silence":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Placid, dense and melodic, this solo piano music has nowhere to get in a hurry. The air is full of humming, rhythmic chords and triplets which meander through smaller themes, continually changing in a drowsy, improvised fashion. The entire recording is of the mood and tone: a peaceful, continual movement which reminds this reviewer of a cloud of small insects on a summer day. Comforting, warm and heartfelt, there are no surprises here. All of Davis' concerts are performed in this improvisational format. Perfect for massage, relaxation and yoga.\n\nWahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, 1988)","title":"From the Silence","year":"1981"},"primary-colors":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":" Primary Colors","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":153,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Salminen-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0f99dee4-da27-45e2-bfdc-4d002497cd30","last_name":"Salminen"},"david-stevenson":{"artist_name":"David Stevenson","body":"David Stevenson is a guitar teacher and entrepreneur who founded his own company Sagework to produce an A-Frame support for classical guitarists that has sold 20,000 units to date. In the early '90s, he self-released a solo guitar album *Echoes of an Inner Domain* that earned strong reviews at the time, but only sold a few hundred copies. One of Stevenson's longest running gigs has been at the Biltmore estate in North Carolina where he plays every holiday season. In 1995, he released a second album called *Candlelight Christmas* to sell there, though it is the former album that will likely interest readers of this site. \n\nBorn in 1958, Stevenson grew up in North Carolina, Georgia and Indiana before his family settled in South Carolina in the late '60s. There, Stevenson took up the guitar at the age of 15. \"I wanted to be cool, but I didn't realize how much practice it would take,\" Stevenson said. \"I eventually figured it out.\"\n\n In 1979, Stevenson began attending the University of South Carolina where he studied guitar. He was never a fan of school, but his other option was truck driving and he figured he'd rather fail at music than succeed at truck driving. He went on to earn a Master's in guitar in 1986 and right away he started getting work as a teacher at UNC Asheville.  He had an old college friend who adapted the Suzuki method to guitar and taught Stevenson how to do it too. For many years, Stevenson was the only Suzuki guitar teacher in Western North Carolina.\n\nJust after finishing grad school, Stevenson went to a conference in Tempe, Arizona where he saw a device that helped classical guitarists hold their guitar in place. When he saw the price, he decided he could build one of his own and ended up creating his \"A-Frame\" guitar support with a friend. They showed it to some guitarists who loved it, so they got it patented and founded a company, [Sagework](https://sagework.org/), to sell them. Over the years, Stevenson estimates they've sold about 20,000 units.\n\nWhile teaching at UNC Asheville, Stevenson decided to record album of original music on cassette.  One of his students helped set up the recording at the school. \"My plan was to be the nylon string De Grassi and tour several times a year,\" Stevenson said, referring to Windham Hill guitarist Alex de Grassi, a big influence on his work. Stevenson originally had hoped to be on Windham Hill, and he even had the support of Will Ackerman who was a fan of his guitar support and Stevenson's music. However, Ackerman left the label before Stevenson could get a deal going and nothing ever came of it.\n\nStevenson decided to release the album himself, pressing 500 copies with a hand-drawn black and white cover depicting the inner journey that his music traced. However, some of his friends complained that he needed something more colorful and Stevenson would later update the art when he put it out on CD. Nevertheless, the tape got strong reviews in *Acoustic Guitar* magazine, *Fingerstyle*, and *Heartsong Review*, where it was featured on a sampler.\n\nStevenson played live in the area occasionally, including yearly shows at the famous Biltmore resort at Christmastime. So, in 1995, as he prepared for the arrival of his first child, he put together an album of holiday tunes called *Candlelight Christmas* to help bring in some extra income. \"It was pretty scary to be a musician and start a family,\" Stevenson recalled. \"We were looking for every avenue we could.\"\n\nSince 1994, Stevenson has taught music at Clemson, and he has also taught private lessons for many decades. He continues to run his business and occasionally record. His most recent album was *May, Arise* in 2006. All of his music can be heard on Spotify and other streaming services. \n\n\n","discography":{"david-stevenson":{"albums":{"communion":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"An excellent quiltwork of acoustical guitar styles, Stevenson offers a kaleidoscopic view into the world of the individual, \"from birth into the world of opposites…all towards the goal of freedom.\" Far from a mere chronology of rites of passage, the picture of the individual here also reveals the emotional depth and uniqueness within each of us. But besides a liner note in gratitude to Avatar Meher Baba, The Awakener, the album skirts around religion, instead moving directly into the crisp, instrumental tribute to each person's odyssey. A certain element of traditional folk guitar does provide a foundation for the album as a whole, but it is so tenderly interwoven with rarefied classical sounds that to label it folk guitar would be to miss its pensive subtlety and driving ambitions.\n\nIn listening to the progression of songs, I began to imagine the details of Stevenson's own life, starting with what must have been a tumultuous birth during a late winter thaw, followed by a perplexing childhood, as expressed by \"April.\" By the middle of the disc—by extension, the middle of life—the course of the protagonist smooths out in \"Pathfinder\" and \"Digital Waves.\" The latter of these songs introduces us to Stevenson's use of the digital delay which allows an echoing open-ended fell to develop, appearing again in the final track, \"Beside Darkness\" and signaling the relaxation of freedom for our hero. Of course, parallel to the Stevenson's story is the listeners own. Like the clean integrated sound of Stevenson's guitar, the impression we are left with is multifold and intriguing, a biography of the human condition, best listened to on Sunday morning.\n\n(Brennan Washburn, *Heartsong Review* No.  15, Fall 1993/Winter 1994)","title":"Echoes of an Inner Domain","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":234,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Stevenson-temp.JPG?alt=media&token=19265dbc-4929-4797-b394-680508b9d95a","last_name":"Stevenson"},"david-storrs":{"artist_name":"David Storrs","body":"David Storrs studied electrical engineering at UCLA, which opened numerous doors for him in the music business, building studios and troubleshooting equipment for all sorts of pop and disco acts. In the early 1980’s he met a neighbor [David Naegele](/david-naegele), who worked at the Malibu new age enterprise Valley Of The Sun, recording background ambience and solo work for various cassettes. \n\nIntrigued by the free-form nature of the projects, Storrs offered assistance, briefly joining Upper Astral for 1982’s *Skybirds*. Despite their many collaborative plans, Naegele left the label in 1983, even submitting three of Storrs' recordings as his own: *Dreamscapes*, *Dawning of the New Age*, and *Journeys Out Of Body*. The latter in particular is a masterpiece of shadowy mood and interstellar abstraction.\n \nAlthough Storrs was never officially employed by Valley Of The Sun, he recorded a smattering of other solo tapes for them, including the Berlin School-influenced *Channel For The Light*, the desert meditation *Sedona Sunrise*, and the proggy, mystical *Manifestations Of The Pyramids*. He was also largely responsible for several [Upper Astral](/upper-astral) albums, and he released an album of space-prog under the name Celestial Odysseys.\n\nAfter tiring of new age, Storrs went on to a successful career producing soundtracks and making beats for various early hip-hop MC’s including Ice-T.\n\n(Britt Brown, 2018)","discography":{"celestial-odysseys":{"albums":{"galactic-odyssey":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Galactic Odyssey","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Celestial Odysseys","entry_number":1},"david-storrs":{"albums":{"aerobic-exercise-music":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Aerobic Exercise Music","year":"1983"},"channel-for-the-light":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Channel for the Light","year":"1983"},"manifestations-of-the-pyramids":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Manifestations of the Pyramids","year":"1986"},"sedona-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"As usual with the label, the tape is split into two side-long songs that Storrs uses to explore contrasting desert moods. \"Sedona Sunrise\" aims to capture the spirit of Sedona with an expansive prog-epic that moves from the stillness of morning to a climax of Floydian grandeur with a stadium-filling guitar solo. \"Night in the Vortex\" on side two is more meditative and minimal, featuring zen-like flute meanderings over a steady hum of crickets.","title":"Sedona Sunrise","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"David Storrs","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":72,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Storrs-640.jpg?alt=media&token=49a4c1e3-9c37-4110-9edc-442bbd3d0cd6","last_name":"Storrs"},"david-stout":{"artist_name":"David Stout","body":"David Stout was part of a small but vital electronic community in Eugene, Oregon in the late '70s and early '80s. Over the span of a decade, he released eight albums, all on cassette in very limited quantities.  The scarcity of his output made him a bit of a mystery until recently, but collector interest has been on the rise since a recent Numero compilation documenting the Oregon scene.\n\nBorn in 1955 and raised in rural Oregon, David Stout grew up among farming and logging towns in the Willamette Valley. He first discovered music at an early age through the songs and dances of indigenous Native American performers. He took up the violin briefly in middle school but soon decided that art was a better venue for self-expression. Still, he retained a keen interest in music, and recalls being drawn to progressive rock like Frank Zappa, Roxy Music, and early Genesis that he'd heard on FM radio. \n\nAfter graduating high school in 1973, Stout entered college to study art. At the same time, he was getting into the more electronic and experimental sides of progressive music via bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Faust, and Brian Eno. As a sophomore, he experimented in the music studio at Oregon State University where he learned how to use the EMS Synthi, a portable modular synthesizer.  Using the Synthi, Stout composed his earliest electronic scores for modern dance and performance pieces he was working on at school.\n\nWith his interests in art and music, Stout began to think about ways to combine his passions into a multidimensional art-form.  \"My revelation was realizing that electro-acoustic music could be used in a material way. Just as oil paints and canvas are materials used in a painting, music could be approached as another material to add to my work,\" Stout recalled.\n\nStout transferred to the University of Oregon to study contemporary dance, but he continued to spend a lot of his time in electronic music studios. One day he walked in to the studio to find a fellow student named Robert Scott Thompson experimenting with a Moog.  The two became friends and later collaborated on an album called *Perhaps Art Is a Woman and Other Rhythms of the Evening* as a commercial demo. \n\nElectronic music gear was incredibly expensive at the time, but Stout managed to save up enough to construct a small home studio with a Sequential Circuits Pro 1 and a multi-track reel-to-reel recorder.  In 1979 he put together his first physical release, *Quartz Hills,* an album equally informed by contemporary experimental music and his interest in theosophy and new age thought. Minimalist and meditative, the album featured layers of synths with accents of a 4 string dulcimer that blended easily into the rippling electronic textures. Stout printed up about 25 copies of the cassette and sold it locally. \n\nA year later, Stout met a recently transplanted musician with a remarkable personal studio filled with state of the art synths, mixers and recording gear.  He was able to use the facility most nights and began producing his next album, *I See Angels* and EP called *Secret Ties*.  (Both were recorded in 1982 but never released.) \n\nIn 1982, Stout moved to LA to attend Cal Arts to get his MFA in film-video and music. There he spent time in the various Buchla and electronic imaging studios creating larger works that combined dance, video, and music. While in LA he released more recordings including *In the Heart of a Silent Wood*, which had his highest production run to date of 125 copies. \n\nFrom 1985 to 1991, Stout taught courses such as \"Video for Dance\" at the Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop at Cal Arts, while he focused on his career as a video artist. He subsequently has held academic positions at the Savannah College of Art & Design, the College of Santa Fe and the University of North Texas, where he currently oversees iARTA (the Initiative for advanced Research in Technology and the Arts). David is a founding member of the visual music group, [NoiseFold](http://noisefold.com).","discography":{"david-stout":{"albums":{"all-known-rivers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Gentle, peaceful soundscapes for synthesizer and tape, perhaps best likened to *Music for Films* Eno or Kitaro's *Ten Kai.* Most of it is exceedingly subtle and accomplished.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":"All Known Rivers","year":"1981"},"dance-disarray":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dance Disarray","year":"1981"},"in-the-heart-of-the-silent-wood":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"In the Heart of the Silent Wood","year":"1985"},"passion-bound":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Passion Bound","year":"1987"},"perhaps-art-is-a-woman":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Perhaps Art is a Woman","year":"1978"},"quartz-hills":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Despite the terrestrial implication of its title, there is very little about Quartz Hills that serves to locate it within an earthbound plane.  If Stout is guiding us to/through any such place, it certainly exists far from our cozy corner of the Milky Way.  And yet the unknown realm it presents is somehow familiar. \n\nThe cassette surges to life with a bloom of percolating arpeggios that amount to a kind of ad hoc drone, the layers roiling over one another for brief moments to shine in the foreground.  And just as quickly, we are left floating above an austere landscape; the dense, nebulous drone having given way to glittering points of sonic light, beamed from fathomless pockets of the void.  Stout's improvised playing takes on a lilting, balletic quality that seems to imply that we have arrived somewhere as yet uncharted.\n\nOur Echoplex-shaped craft slows to surveil this new place; hovering over the topography in search of something on which to affix our attention.  And then we find it: an aural cavern of sparkling synth trills.  This is not a dead mineral space.  Rather, there is life here—both in the painterly expressiveness of the piece, but also in the tiny artifacts of unintended electrical crackle that drop into the soundstream from time to time (no doubt a point of frustration for the artist, but nonetheless a charming reminder of the organic nature of composing improvised music in an era where the option to edit was a luxury).\n\nSide B is a far more minimal affair.  Low-frequency swells are offset by a glassy vibrato, each woven around a meandering, semipatterned melody played on the middle keys, which eventually reduces to a slumbering, bitonal drone.  From here we are swept into a plume of burbling and aquatic tape-echo—a vibrant and richly textured garden of cascading tonal clusters that subsequently give way to the sparse, slow-motion conclusion of the piece.  The listener is alien in this place to which Stout has delivered us, but one feels no particular impulse to return home.\n\n(Jesse Woodcock, 2018)","title":"Quartz Hills","year":"1980"},"slow-plane-circles":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Slow Plane Circles","year":"1988"},"the-gathering-cloud":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Gathering Cloud","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":86,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/David-Stout-640.jpg?alt=media&token=528c4f29-a991-4a36-9ddf-8b3d571aad28","last_name":"Stout"},"dean-and-dudley-evenson":{"artist_name":"Dean and Dudley Evenson","body":"Dean and Dudley Evenson are a rare exception among independent new age artists; over a 40+ year career, they have successfully navigated the music business from the early days of selling tapes at health food stores, through the boom and bust of commercial new age, and now in digital streaming.  The Tucson-based couple initially began their label, Soundings of the Planet, to release their own music, but by the mid-'80s they had built it into a full-time career. After decades of success, they nearly went bankrupt in 2000 after the retail store Natural Wonders went under owing them $80,000 and stripping away their most reliable source of income. But the couple held on to their label and now has millions of streams online, cementing their status as new age survivors who always find a way.\n\nThe two met in 1968 when both were living as artists in the East Village in New York. Dean (born 1944) was a recording engineer at Regent Sound and Dudley (born 1943) was a photographer.  In 1970 the couple went into business as a freelance video team, purchasing a Sony half-inch portable video camera and becoming part of the early video movement. For most of the '70s they lived a nomadic lifestyle, converting a school bus into their home and toured the world to document the emerging ecological and spiritual movements of the time. \n\nBy 1979, they were ready to settle down and try something new. At the time, they had recorded an audio cassette of Ram Dass and noticed there was a burgeoning interest in the format. Dean, who was a classically trained flutist with experience in both orchestras and rock bands, decided to turn music into a full-time career and start a cassette label.   Early on, the label established a repertoire of players who featured on the majority of their releases for most of the '80s: harpist D'Rachael, cellist Jonathan Kramer, sitar player [Aziz Paige](/aziz-paige), and keyboardist Cyrille Verdeaux.  \n\nInfluenced by a lifelong love of environmental sounds and Paul Horn's proto new age classic *Inside*, the couple established the template early and stuck to it. Their first release, *Desert Dawn Song* features the Evensons and Jonathan Kramer improvising meditative melodies accompanied by birds. Shortly after, they followed this up with *Evensong*, credited just to Evenson.  These early cassettes had silkscreen covers and were made at home using their own equipment. \n\nThe couple sold their tapes through health food stores and swap meets at first, but were able to secure distribution through Narada by 1981. The label's output sped up after that with now rare releases by Cyrille Verdeaux and Aziz Paige in addition to more by the Evensons, d'Rachael and Kramer.\n\nDean and Dudley slowly built up the business, employing as many as 22 people at their height. They enjoyed a good reputation among their artists by paying royalties and providing accounting statements, a surprising rarity in the indie record business.  Their success culminated with the 1989 release *Ocean Dreams*, which was a runaway hit.  Featuring Dean and Dudley accompanied by dolphin sounds, the album went on to sell 500,000 copies according to Dudley. The album was a mainstay at Natural Wonders where it fit perfectly with the store's aesthetic, captivating kids and adults alike. The release was also their first to include the earth resonance frequency, a low, inaudible hum (7.83 cycles per second), which Dean believed could increase the state of relaxation in the listener even if they couldn't hear it.\n\n Dean and Dudley currently live in Bellingham, WA, and continue to create relaxation music available for streaming. They maintain a website [here](http://soundings.com/) and recently wrote their first book *Quieting the Monkey Mind: How to Meditate with Music*.","discography":{"dean-evenson":{"albums":{"desert-moon-song":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Desert Moon Song","year":"1991"},"forest-rain":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Forest Rain","year":"1993"},"ocean-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Ocean Dreams","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Dean Evenson","entry_number":9},"dean-evenson-and-tom-barabas":{"albums":{"soaring":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Soaring","year":"1987"},"wind-dancer":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Wind Dancer","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Dean Evenson and Tom Barabas","entry_number":8},"dudley-evenson":{"albums":{"soaring":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Universal Meditations","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Dudley Evenson","entry_number":7},"evenson":{"albums":{"desert-dawn-song":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Desert Dawn Song","year":"1979"},"evensong":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Evensong","year":"1980"},"gong-with-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Gong With the Wind","year":"1985"},"tropic-of-paradise":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Tropic of Paradise","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Evenson","entry_number":1},"evenson-barabas-damaris":{"albums":{"high-joy":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"High Joy","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, Barabas, Damaris","entry_number":6},"evenson-d-rachael":{"albums":{"joy-to-the-world":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Joy to the World","year":"1982"},"life-streams":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Life Streams","year":"1982"},"peaceful-pond":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"Peaceful, uplifting music in harmony with natural sounds (from the deserts near Tucson, AZ, where this musical clan creates). Flute, piano, cello, harps all together reflecting the essence of a lush summer day spent by the \"Perfect Pond.\"\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Peaceful Pond","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, d'Rachael","entry_number":5},"evenson-drachael-kramer":{"albums":{"whistling-woodhearts":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Whistling Woodhearts","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, d'Rachael, Kramer","entry_number":4},"kramer-evenson-verdeaux":{"albums":{"alive-tree-o":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Alive Tree O","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Kramer, Evenson, Verdeaux","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":10,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dean-and-Dudley-Evenson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=77060840-40f6-4316-adb5-39dd560e897b","last_name":"Evenson"},"deane-delli-bovi":{"artist_name":"Deane Delli-Bovi","body":"Deane Delli-Bovi is a synthesist based in Williamstown, NY who was active from 1987 to 1997, releasing five solo albums and a collaboration with Georgia musician Kudzu. He recorded all his music, a mix of new age and fusion jazz, at his home studio and released them on his own Indawoods Audio label. Delli-Bovi also worked as a bass player on the local cover band scene and mastered some locally produced releases including the Inner Landscapes compilation on Clear Productions.\n\nBorn in 1953, Deane Delli-Bovi grew up in Port Jefferson, NY, the youngest of three children. He started classical piano lessons at five and recalls spending many of his younger days in nature, fishing on the port. He attended a few years of college at Oswego State, where he studied music with the aim of being a teacher. However, in his third year, he realized he could make more money repairing pianos and left school to run his own business.\n\nWhile he was in college, Delli-Bovi became a fixture on the local cover band circuit. \"There was always a need for a bass player,\" Delli-Bovi said. \"I taught myself how to play and I enjoyed it. I played blues, soul, hard rock, and country rock in the '80s. Until five years ago, I was on call as a bass player. I could just walk on and play and people would think I've been playing with them for years.\"\n\nAfter years of focusing on the bass, Delli-Bovi got back into keyboards and synthesizers. His first synth was a Mini Korg Univox and then a Fender Rhodes. He joined some jazz fusion cover bands as a keyboardist, performing covers of Herbie Hancock and Weather Report. But when a friend showed him how to use a sequencer and a computer, Delli-Bovi put together his own studio and started developing instrumental electronic music.\n\nIn the late '80s, a friend of Delli-Bovi's Edith Aberle-Freimanisp[]\\ showed him some artwork to ask for his opinion. \"I was admiring it and…I said boy I'd love to do a piece of music for this. I remember driving on the way home and sketching out in my head what I heard when I looked at her art.\" The completed work became Delli-Bovi first album, *The Valley of Tirmir*, which featured her art on the cover. He made 1,000 copies and initially sold them at craft shows around the area or through word of mouth. \n\nOver the next few years, *Valley of Tirmir* got good reviews in local papers such as the *Syracuse New Times* and *Syracuse Post Standard*, plus a favorable review in *Heartsong Review* that called the album \"heartfelt and moving.\" It took a few years for him to issue a follow-up, the jazzier *Oasis* in 1990. By this time, Delli-Bovi had joined the Computer Music Coalition where he was able to build a small international fanbase.\n\nDelli-Bovi went on to release three more solo albums in the '90s, plus a collaboration with Georgia musician Barry Shell (Kudzu) called *Realm Too*. He continues to work on new music sporadically and master recordings for other artists at his studio Indawoods Audio. He lives in a rural part of Williamstown, NY, and maintains a website [here](http://www.indawoods.biz) where you can still order all of his tapes.","discography":{"deane-delli-bovi":{"albums":{"dreaming-inside-out":{"image":"","label":"Indawoods Audio","review":"","title":"Dreaming Inside Out","year":"1995"},"it's-what-you-make-it":{"image":"","label":"Indawoods Audio","review":"","title":"It's What You Make It","year":"1991"},"oasis":{"image":"","label":"Indawoods Audio","review":"","title":"Oasis","year":"1990"},"the-third-pass":{"image":"","label":"Indawoods Audio","review":"","title":"The Third Pass","year":"1992"},"valley-of-tirmir":{"image":"","label":"Indawoods Audio","review":"","title":" Valley of Tirmir","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":238,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/deane-delli.jpg?alt=media&token=079eebc9-a134-4fa0-8d98-8c7581b11f65","last_name":"Delli-Bovi"},"dennis-andrew":{"artist_name":"Dennis Andrew","body":"As a member of NYC dance-punk innovators Liquid Liquid, Dennis Andrew Young found himself in the zeitgeist of downtown cool during a four year run of EP’s that produced club classic \"Cavern.\"  After the band's premature demise, Young etched out a place for himself in another trend of the moment, the mid-'80s new age boom. This time however, it wasn't until nearly 30 years later that he got his due when record collectors began scouring his closet for boxes of unsold tapes. Since then, Young has experienced renewed interest in his '80s work spanning across five albums.  \n\nDennis Young was born in Edison, New Jersey in 1958. He taught himself the drums and joined a series of cover bands in high school. At Rutgers, he started to get more into progressive and electronic music, exploring the cut-outs and import bins at Cheap Thrills in New Brunswick. Young didn't major in music, but he did take a class in analogue synthesis where he met a fellow student Richard McGuire who had a band called Liquid Idiot (among other names).\n \nIn 1980, Richard McGuire put together a band that eventually came to be known as Liquid Liquid. Young had just bought a marimba and roto-toms that he added to the band's percussive, groove-based sound. Liquid Liquid released four 12\" EP’s on influential NY label 99 Records, including the infectious \"Cavern\" from 1983.  The song ended up getting played on WBLS, a prominent black radio station in New York, spawning a soundalike track from rapper Melle Mel called \"White Lines\" that went on to be a worldwide hit for Sugarhill Records. 99 Records sued Sugarhill and won, but Sugarhill declared bankruptcy and never paid out. The lawsuit caused such distress to 99 Records owner Ed Bahlman that he left the music business and hasn’t spoken about it ever since. Liquid Liquid, who had played shows all over the world, lost momentum and sputtered out a year later.\n \nAfter that, Young began working on his own music at home in his small studio with a Korg Mono/Poly and a Tascam Portastudio. His earliest recordings show an interest in ambient textures as well as his love of progressive and jazz fusion sounds. To help break from his previous sound, he was now going by the name Dennis Andrew instead of Dennis Young. His first album under this name was *Concepts* from 1985, and remains one of his favorites. \"I was new and just doing what I thought sounded good,\" Young said. \"I played it all by ear and instinct.\"\n \nYoung pressed a couple hundred copies of the cassette and tried selling it at new age events and expos sporadically, but he never got much traction. He continued to release a new album every year for the next four years and did eventually get distribution from one of the main new age distributors, New Leaf. But for the most part, his releases just didn't resonate with the typical new age audience.\n \nSince his own music wasn't bringing in much money,  Young kept a day job as an engineer for Muzak. He recorded easy listening music that was used by corporate clients all over the world, while his own music remained mostly unheard. Still, he did find a receptive outlet, contributing original music to some local planetarium shows in the early '90s.  By the new millennium, things started to turn around for Young with the renewed critical interest in '80s dance punk and Liquid Liquid.  The band reformed in 2003 and Young began collaborating with artists including Tussle, Kasper Bjork, Padded Cell, and Stephan Eicher.\n \nIn 2016, Chicago record store Permanent Records contacted Young and bought his remaining tape stock of the first three albums. Their promotion of his cassettes helped Young reach a new generation of collectors and labels, and interest in his work has been riding high ever since.  In addition to new music on Bureau B and a compilation on Athens of the North, a Korean label called [Daehan Electronics](https://soundcloud.com/daehan_electronics) is prepping reissues of all his '80s albums to be released soon.","discography":{"dennis-andrew":{"albums":{"concepts":{"image":"","label":"Day & Nite Music","review":"With its homebrew take on Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Andrews' debut fits in well with the overall New Jersey electronic scene of the 80s, with nearby musicians like Jesse Clark and Lauri Paisley mining similar soundscapes. Heavy on sequencer lines and layered synths, this is not drone music for spiritual contemplation, but something more active, perhaps  a walk through a snowy park.  Album opener \"Twilight\" shows a more propulsive side, though the best moments dwell in more introspective spaces, like the J. D. Emmanuel-ish \"Lunar Landscape\" or the blissed-out \"Rivers in the Sea\" which sounds like something from *Kraftwerk II*. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Concepts","year":"1985"},"quest":{"image":"","label":"Day & Nite Music","review":"Seven original compositions of light electronics of restrained majesty, at times melding with the rise and fall of mantra-like vocals. On most of the pieces, the result is agreeably bright and ethereal, but occasionally one gets the impression that Dennis was pursuing his own enjoyment rather than any particular musical idea, and on \"Voices (Within),\" Dennis’ vocals fall just short. \"Ancient Vision\" is an entirely different matter, spinning well-paced energy with an assertive aural edge.\n\n([Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholak), *Option*, Sept/Oct 1987)","title":"Quest","year":"1987"},"reflections":{"image":"","label":"Day & Nite Music","review":"Six beautiful electronic compositions that relax, yet do NOT bore, with a low bouncy arpeggiator that creates a thick base for the flowing instrumentation. \"Midnight Sun\" is my fave track, calling to mind a cool waterfall, with a warm night descending around you. While other better known indies are quite competent at producing tedious electronic borescapes, Dennis does quite the opposite, creating music that is very enjoyable. Quite nice!\n\n([Sam Rosenthal](https://ultravillage.com/projekt-electronic-amerika), 1986)","title":"Reflections","year":"1986"},"sojourn":{"image":"","label":"Day & Nite Music","review":"The titles of *Sojourn* appropriately suggest adventure and beautiful travels amid natural splendor; themes reflected in this light, repetitive electronic music. \"East Winds\" which opens the Eastern side of the album, spreads a feeling of crystalline clarity and fresh dawn winds. \"Fantasia\" is a delight of dancing Oriental flavored chimes, bells, and percussion. \"Magic Forest\" tingles with dappled light, flitting birds, and unusual percussion. The Western side brings us on a \"Journey to Ixltan\" where the rhythm suggests the tenacity of a long journey by foot. \"Trio\" again feels like we're on the road, with a great jazzy piano/synth duet dominating. \"Road to Glory (Apollo Missions)\" gives us a space journey with some vocal and brassy sounds. The album closes with \"So Far\" which gives us the only real vocal: \"We are free as a bird to fly through the endless sky/So high…I know in my heart there is hope and there is justice,\" and follows the upbeat theme fo the entire album.\n\nThere is a great, positive feeling to this album, with fresh arrangements. Dennis likes to take a musical phrase and extend it for long periods, adding embellishments and subtle variations. Use it to add a splash of sunshine and fresh air to your life as you wash dishes, hoe the peas, have a special meal with a friend, drive. I enjoy the brightness of the use of chiming and cymbal and bell sounds, always well done. This is non-spacey synth music I look forward to hearing often.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review*, No. 8, Spring/Summer 1990)","title":"Sojourn","year":"1989"},"visions":{"image":"","label":"Day & Nite Music","review":"","title":"Visions","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":92,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dennis-Andrew.jpg?alt=media&token=5b7591e1-7f44-466f-b14c-b30ccbe5a296","last_name":"Andrew"},"derryl-parsons":{"artist_name":"Derryl Parsons","body":"Derryl Parsons was a synthesist, poet and 'urban shaman' based in Oregon who co-founded the Eugene Electronic Music Collective in the early ‘80s. During his time in the collective, Parsons produced a full-length cassette *Future History* and tracks for the group’s various-artist compilations like *Free Fall* and *Northwest Passages*. Parsons was an avid collector of records, synthesizers, and books, with a particular interest in esoteric subject matter such as astrology and magic. Towards the end of his life, Parsons became increasingly reclusive and passed away from cancer at the age of 54 in 2004.\n\nParsons was born in 1949 and grew up Cottage Grove, Oregon. He earned a degree in political science and sociology at the University of Oregon before going on to work some odds jobs at a cannery and printing shops. However, he was ultimately able to get Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which kept him from having to work and gave him more time to focus on his passions.\n\nParsons was about a decade older than many in the EEMC, but he shared the group’s deep interest in electronic music and underground culture. He started playing synths in 1982 and became connected with some of the other musicians initially as their drug connection.\n\n\"Derryl was one of the most interesting folks I have ever met,\" recalled EEMC member [Peter Thomas](/peter-thomas).  \"The people I met at his different residences were always interesting too: Librus, Justin the Witch guy, Ernie and his wolf Serla and more. At the 16th St. crib, the thing one would recall is the huge mass of synths stacked up in the main room. Derryl was widely read and knowledgeable about jazz, classical, and rock. He could talk music, philosophy , and society with a viewpoint worth listening to.\"\n\nWith an initial group of four musicians that included [Brian Magill](/brian-magill), Peter Thomas, and [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), the collective soon drafted in the more-experienced [Peter Nothnagle](/peter-nothnagle), as well as Magill's roommate [Carl Juarez](/carl-juarez). Magill handled most of the outreach and organization. \n\n\"We met at Peter Nothnagle’s house to talk about it,\" Magill said. \"We thought of ourselves as an equal collective where everyone had an equal vote. Our first idea was to put out a compilation that featured our music. Our first tape, *Free Fall* was pretty successful. I sent it to radio stations and magazines, and it got some notoriety. I think we pressed a few hundred, but only sold about 40-50 copies. The rest we traded.\"\n\nThe EEMC ran for nearly a decade before fizzling out. Meanwhile, Parsons continued to record though he became less social during the ‘90s, with friends stopping by to bring him food. Parsons was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 2004.\n\nSources: *Switched-On Eugene* (Numero Group, 2018) liner notes by Douglas Mcgowan, [Derryl Parsons obituary](https://www.thefreelibrary.com/OBITUARIES.-a0119604595), plus author interviews with Brian Magill and Peter Thomas.","discography":{"derryl-parsons":{"albums":{"future-history":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"","title":"Future History","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":432,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/derryl%20parsons-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=ef089e75-2346-45f4-ad20-656851e49472","last_name":"Parsons"},"dervish":{"artist_name":"Dervish","body":"Dervish was a Boston-based minimal electronic trio influenced by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and Krautrock bands like Neu and early Kraftwerk. The band was founded by Jon Coe and Rob Davis from the Molls, a post-punk band who were popular locally and released a now collectible single called \"White Stains\" in 1979. A year later, the two of them formed Dervish in part to do a cover of Riley's landmark *In C*. That never materialized but they performed live often and became a fixture in Boston's loft scene. Together with Jeff Block, a synthesist and keyboard player who trained at the Boston School of Electronic Music, the band put out an excellent self-titled cassette in 1985 and toured the college circuit, selling over 4,000 copies by Coe's estimation. The band produced a follow-up called *Uninhabited Planet* but disbanded before they could release it and broke up in 1988. Coe went on to produce more albums with Steven Winfield for various labels.","discography":{"dervish":{"albums":{"streaming-wisdom":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"Mid-century minimalism and post-punk attitude converge on this trio's mandatory album of electronic instrumentals. Across six long pieces, members Jon Coe, Jeff Block, and Robb Davis create hypnotic, evolving sculptures of sound. Every song offers fresh textures and reference points, such as the Neu-like motorik of \"Alpha 77\", the shimmering arpeggios of \"Pastorale\", or the snaking, dissonant guitar leads of \"Sveinung Hovensjo\" that channel Eno and Fripp. Still, I wouldn't call it derivative, and the album as a whole is carefully sequenced into an immersive, captivating experience that commands the listener's attention. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\n\n","title":"Dervish","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":76,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dervish-640-noborder.jpg?alt=media&token=ffbd462f-c834-4abe-9829-c6145db4119a","last_name":"Dervish"},"dick-sutphen":{"artist_name":"Dick Sutphen","body":"Midwestern-born Dick Sutphen worked in advertising and business affairs before becoming fascinated by hypnosis, past lives, and other budding pursuits of the new age, eventually founding the company Valley Of The Sun in Scottsdale, Arizona, which grew into a profitable publisher and record label specializing in self-help and new age productions. Although not a musician himself, Sutphen commissioned works from artists to conjure particular moods and visions he felt would resonate. He also designed the majority of the covers and wrote most of the text on Valley of the Sun recordings.\n \nSuccessful throughout the 1980's and into '90s operating from a glamorous headquarters in Malibu, the label's finances and influence diminished later in the decade, forcing a widespread downsizing and relocation to Agoura Hills.\n \nAfter a decade on hiatus, Valley of the Sun was reactivated by Sutphen and his wife Roberta, working in Sedona, Arizona. They were offering much of the VOS back catalog for streaming via Dick's personal [website](http://dicksutphen.org/) until Sutphen passed away September 1, 2020. At that point, the label was sold to the Numero Group who now manages the extensive library.\n\n(Britt Brown)","discography":{"dick-sutphen":{"albums":{"a-strong-immune-system":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"A Strong Immune System","year":"1986"},"accelerated learning":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Accelereated Learning","year":"1986"},"astral-projection":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Astral Projection","year":"1980"},"awakened-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Awakened Dreaming","year":"1986"},"back":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Back and Neck Pain Programming","year":"1987"},"becoming-happy":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Becoming Happy","year":"1986"},"canceling":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Canceling Out Fear Thoughts","year":"1985"},"chakra-balancing":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Chakra Balancing and Energizing","year":"1989"},"charisma":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Charisma: Drawing People to You","year":"1985"},"control-spending":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Control Spending","year":"1987"},"controlling-your-time":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Controlling Your Time","year":"1985"},"designer":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Designer/Illustrator Programming","year":"1981"},"dream-solutions":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Dream Solutions","year":"1989"},"drive-alert-and-stress-free":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Drive Alert and Stress Free","year":"1986"},"eliminating-fear-and-worry":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Eliminating Fear and Worry","year":"1985"},"erasing":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Erasing Someone From Your Mind","year":"1982"},"expansion-of-psychic":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Expansion of Psychic Abilities","year":"1976"},"experimental-weight-loss":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Experimental Weight Loss","year":"1984"},"extra-temporal-perception":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Extra Temporal Perception","year":"1985"},"focusing-concentration":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Focusing Concentration","year":"1985"},"healing-force-using-your-mind-to-help-heal":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Healing Force: Using Your Mind to Help Heal","year":"1989"},"health-and-healing":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Health and Healing","year":"1990"},"higher-self-hypnosis":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Higher Self Hypnosis","year":"1987"},"how-to-be-a-better-receiver-in-hypnosis":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"How To Be a Better Receiver in Hypnosis","year":"1980"},"increasing-your-speed-and-productivity":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Increasing Your Speed and Productivity","year":"1985"},"island-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Island Sunrise","year":"1983"},"love-yourself":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"\"From this moment on, you feel good about yourself...you love yourself.\" \n\nIn the context of self-help, these droney new age backdrops can sometimes seem like brainwashing music. The artists usually didn't put a ton of work into them, and would sell the music outright to people like Dick Sutphen who could use them ad nauseum on countless \"subliminal programming\" tapes. This particular tape has backing from Steven Cooper, though the music itself is overwhelmingly static, with a one chord drone and drowsy melodies drifting on top. Cooper's tapes under his own name are better developed.","title":"Love Yourself","year":"1985"},"meditation":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Meditation - Mountain Rain Storm","year":"1976"},"mind-projection":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Mind Projection","year":"1978"},"mudra-training":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Mudra Training","year":"1981"},"occult-protection":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Occult Protection","year":"1985"},"overcoming-shyness":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Overcoming Shyness","year":"1981"},"peace-balance":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Peace, Balance and Harmony Meditation","year":"1987"},"powerful-leader-programming":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Powerful Leader Programming","year":"1987"},"program-your-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Program Your Dreams","year":"1981"},"rising-above":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Rising Above Negativity","year":"1987"},"ritual-magic":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Ritual Magic Preparation","year":"1985"},"stress-control":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Stress Control","year":"1989"},"stress-relief":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Stress Relief","year":"1989"},"surviving-separation-or-divorce":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Surviving Separation Or Divorce","year":"1985"},"telepathic-animal-communication":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Telepathic Animal Communication","year":"1981"},"temple-of-silence":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Temple of Silence","year":"1988"},"the-critical-thirteen":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Critical Thirteen","year":"1983"},"the-love-poems":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Love Poems","year":"1981"},"transcendence":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Transcendence","year":"1980"},"ultimate-relaxation":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Ultimate Relaxation","year":"1989"},"vision-inducing":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Vision Inducing","year":"1977"},"white-light-meditation":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"White Light Meditation","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Dick Sutphen","entry_number":1},"dick-sutphen-with-upper-astral":{"albums":{"ascent-of-the-eagle":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Ascent of the Eagle","year":"1988"},"emergence-into-the-light":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Emergence Into the Light","year":"1984"},"island-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Island Sunrise","year":"1984"},"mansion-of-beauty":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Mansion of Beauty","year":"1988"},"soulmates":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Soulmates","year":"1985"},"the-alchemist":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"No instrumental side, unfortunately. The backing track sounds pretty good too - just minimal chimes and synth drones, with Sutphen offering \"superconscious symbol visualization,\" a sort of metaphorical story about an alchemist turning base material into refined gold.","title":"The Alchemist","year":"1988"},"the-dancing-flame":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Dancing Flame","year":"1984"},"the-goddess":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Goddess","year":"1988"},"the-lighthouse":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Lighthouse","year":"1984"},"the-magic-mirror":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Magic Mirror","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Dick Sutphen with Upper Astral","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":70,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dick-Sutphen.jpg?alt=media&token=e2394007-2fab-44d1-86f8-3526c97b9bbc","last_name":"Sutphen"},"dik-darnell":{"artist_name":"Dik Darnell","body":"Dik Darnell was already a music industry veteran with 30 years of experience by the time he scored an unlikely new age hit with *Following the Circle* in 1988. The tape was first created as background music for lectures by Thomas Mails, an author who'd written a book about Frank Fools Crow, a Teton Sioux chief and Darnell's adopted grandfather. That release helped establish Darnell's label, Etherean Music, as a successful indie that would last for nearly 25 years.\n\nDarnell was born in 1942 and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. All the children in his family got polio in the '50s and one of his sisters died, while Darnell suffered damage to his lungs and back. He was in and out of hospitals for years, and nearly died from complications in his '20s. \n\nAs a teen, Darnell sang in the school choir and was talented enough to snag a scholarship to attend the Henry Mancini student music academy in the summer of 1957. Once he returned, Darnell put together a doo-wop group called the Pentagons that played around town for the next three years. After that, he taught himself to play guitar and went on tour with another band called the Vest Teens (later changed to the Precisions) after high school. He stayed with them for several years and penned \"This is My Story\" for one of their singles.\n\nIn addition to performing with various bands, Darnell got interested in songwriting and would drive to Chess and Veejay Records to pitch songs. \"After a while, I became friends with Billy Davies at Chess,\" Darnell recalled. \"I just fell in love with that and pursued recording and producing from that point on.\" Darnell’s first solo record was \"The One for Me\" backed with \"No Man's Land\" in 1960 on Cliff Records, though it disappeared without a trace.\n\nDarnell got married to his first wife Vikki in 1965 and had a son named Chad a year later. However, he still had lingering health problems, and at one point ended up in the hospital, close to death. A French doctor advised him to move to Colorado where there was a great lung specialist. \"It was like a lightbulb going off,\" Darnell said. As soon as he recovered, he moved the family to Denver.\n\nWhile Denver's music scene was low key, Darnell managed to stay as busy as always. His first project was producing an R&B trio called Kenny Jay & The Rendon Brothers, and through them he met Jay Salem and Preston Smith who had opened Summit Studio, one of the first multitrack studios in the area. Darnell thought Smith was a great engineer and loved the sound of the big room they created. Over the next four years, he recorded numerous records at Summit, including \"Jokes Are For Sad People\" from Fever Tree's second album, the now collectible garage single \"What’s Happening at the Psychiatrist\" by Big Bird and the Steamshovel and lesser known tracks like \"Little Balloon Lady\" by the Gallery. Somehow Darnell also found time to teach music classes and direct a children's choir too.\n\nOne artist that Darnell had highs hopes for was Baby Huey and the Babysitters, led by James Ramey, a funk and soul artist from Chicago whose sole album is now considered a lost classic. In 1969, Darnell produced Ramey's recordings of \"Listen to Me\" and \"A Change is Gonna Come\" at Summit Studios. However, Ramey unexpectedly died of an overdose and Darnell was forced to turn the masters over to Curtom records against his better judgment. They would ultimately use the two songs on Baby Huey's posthumous album, but without giving Darnell any credit. The experience unnerved Darnell so much that he went into hiding in the mountains until things blew over.\n\nIn addition to producing bands, Darnell often wrote jingles for advertising clients like Master Charge and Big O Tires, as well as theme music and film scores.  Darnell and some of the session musicians he worked with formed their own band called the Family Circle of Music fronted by Gerard McMahon, an English songwriter who'd played bass with Jackson Browne but was looking to break out on his own. Around 1974, Darnell got the Family Circle band a live gig opening for Tommy Bolin.  There, they were spotted by Jimmy Guercio who offered them a recording deal with his label Caribou Records. Guercio originally made his name as the producer for Chicago's early top ten hits like \"Saturday in the Park\" and \"25 or 6 to 4\" and went on to produce their first eleven albums. More recently, Guercio had founded the Caribou label as well as the Caribou Ranch studio that would quickly become a hot destination for major stars like Elton John, Rick Derringer, and the Beach Boys.\n\nAfter the deal was done, Darnell and the band moved to the ranch and began work on the album. However, Darnell felt sidelined and grew disenchanted with the experience. By the time the album came out, the band was simply called Gerard. \"After a year, I left the Ranch with a broken heart,\" Darnell said. \"I felt like I did not fit in the music biz world.\"\n\nDarnell regrouped and built his own studio called Pyramid Peak, where he worked with new groups like Stallion. Darnell got them signed to Casablanca and produced and engineered two albums and four singles. Their first single \"Old Fashion Boy (You're the One)\" made it into the Top 40 in 1976, but none of the other singles charted. In 1976, Guercio recruited Darnell back for some producing projects, including Gerard's second planned album, *Row*, though it never saw official release.\n\nDarnell always thought of himself (and still does) as a developer of musical talent, but he ultimately became best known for his own music, the origins of which can be traced back to 1970. That was when he met Frank Fools Crow, the ceremonial chief of the Teton Sioux tribe who'd participated at Wounded Knee and fought for native rights. Darnell spent a lot of time at the reservation helping out, and \"Grandpa Frank\" became a mentor to him. After seven years of friendship, the chief formally adopted Darnell as his grandson, giving him the name Thundersmoke. \n\nAround the time of Darnell's naming ceremony, he was producing Jimmy Ibbotson's first solo album *Nitty Gritty Ibbotson* at Pyramid Peak. \"I told Jimmy that I was going to the reservation to do these ceremonies,\" Darnell recalled. \"He asked to come, and I said, 'Sure.' Then he said, 'Can I bring John Denver?' John came and we spent four days in the teepee together on the res’ and I discovered how great a writer and musician he was. We continued to work together up until his passing.\" (In addition to producing Denver, Darnell composed two songs with him in the '80s including \"Love Takes Time\" and \"We Are One.\")\n\nIn 1979, the author Thomas Mails published a book about Darnell's adopted grandfather called *Fool’s Crow*. Mails followed that up with a new book in 1988 called *Secret Native American Pathways* and was prepping a new printing of *Fool's Crow* for a new publisher as well. Mails set up a tour to promote the book and asked Darnell to write music to accompany his lectures. Darnell happily obliged, recording a long piece of music that included chanting, flutes, synthesizers and percussion. He also added field recordings of nature to help set the mood.\n\n\"I called it *Following the Circle,* because it was about the 24-hour circadian rhythm of life,\" Darnell recalled. \"I gave the music to Tom [Mails] and he called me [later] and said, ‘Everyone wants the music, I’ve never seen such a response! You gotta put it out.’ So, I gave in and put it together. It cost me $859 to make that album and it grossed over a million dollars worldwide.\"\n\nBy this time, Darnell had moved to an apple orchard in a more rural area. He wasn’t interested in running the label, so he put some friends in charge and his sons took over operations later.  The label started out as a vehicle for Darnell's own work, but became home to other artists like Denean, Jonathan Goldman, and New Zealand musician Steve McDonald. Running for over two decades, the label would went on to release 75 albums before shutting down.\n\nDuring the '90s and beyond, Darnell continued to write music for commercials and films, as well as producing artists like John Denver, Chuck Pyle, Glen Yarborough, and more. \"I’m 77 years old and I’m still developing artists and producing,\" Darnell said. He currently lives in Colorado.","discography":{"dik-darnell":{"albums":{"ceremony":{"image":"","label":"Etherean Music","review":"","title":"Ceremony","year":"1994"},"following-the-circle":{"image":"","label":"Etherean Music","review":"","title":"Following the Circle","year":"1988"},"in-the-presence-of-angels":{"image":"","label":"Etherean Music","review":"","title":"In the Presence of Angels","year":"1995"},"voice-of-the-four-winds":{"image":"","label":"Etherean Music","review":"","title":"Voice of the Four Winds","year":"1991"},"winter-solstice":{"image":"","label":"Etherean Music","review":"","title":"Winter Solstice","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":170,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dik-Darnell-new-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=cf944b07-6b3d-4b2b-8699-bbc482fb116b","last_name":"Darnell"},"don-campbell":{"artist_name":"Don Campbell","body":"Donald Campbell was a writer, teacher, and musician whose popular book *The Mozart Effect* summarized much of his teachings on the power of music. This success led to many compilations of baroque and classical music under his name, and he continued to write up to his death of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Campbell was classically trained on the piano and organ, but took an early interest in world music while spending time living in South American and Asia in the early '70s. Campbell began his musical and writing career in the early '80s, authoring his first book, *Introduction to the Musical Brain*, in 1983 and issuing his first tape *Crystal Meditation* in 1984. Some of his tapes from this era are now considered new age classics, such as *Crystal Rainbows* which earned a spot on Britt Brown's top 20 [list]( https://www.factmag.com/2019/02/19/the-20-best-new-age-albums/) for FactMag. \n\nBorn on December 27, 1946, Donald Campbell was an only child who grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He recalls sitting under his family's piano at the age of five and being mesmerized by \"a universe filled with endless sound and vibration.\" He would go on to become a devoted music student, taking piano lessons, joining the school band, and singing in the church choir at his Methodist church. After this, Campbell's life story reads like a travelogue, as he moved from place to place soaking up knowledge about music and culture that would form the basis for his life's work.\n\nCampbell's father was in the military and moved the family to Paris when Don was 13. There he became a student at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. He studied with Nadia Boulanger who mentored many budding composers who later found fame such as Quincy Jones, Phillip Glass and Aaron Copland. After a few years in France, the family moved to Germany where Campbell continued his studies and started playing as an organist at a local church.\n\nCampbell returned to the US for college, attending the University of North Texas where he studied music and education, and then on to the University of Cincinnati to study choral conducting. After graduating in the late '60s, Campbell toured the world soaking up new ideas. He first spent time in Haiti where he became enthralled with local drumming and chanting, and then moved to Tokyo, Japan. There he worked as a music teacher at St. Mary's International School for seven [years](https://www.subliminalsounds.se/product/kano-runes-lp-red-vinyl/). Campbell later wrote that it was during his time Japan when he started to notice the positive effects of music on his students. At the same time, he was learning more about Asian music traditions such as Gagaku, the ancient court music of Japan, as well as Gamelan music which he encountered during his travels.\n\nIn Japan, Campbell first met Andi Goldman, who would go on to be one of his closest friends (and eventually, the wife of [Jonathan Goldman](/jonathan-goldman) who ran the label that first signed Campbell). She recalls that Campbell's students loved working with him, and that he produced yearly musicals including at least one performance of *Godspell*.  Andi also accompanied Campbell on his first guided tour of Bali, which he continued for the next several decades with his students\n\nAfter leaving his post at St. Mary's, Campbell traveled around Asia for a year before finally settling in Dallas in the late '70s. There he got a job organizing concerts for the Choristers Guild and started working on his first book, *Introduction to the Musical Brain*. During this period, Campbell first met Jonathan Goldman, a Boston-based musician who helmed the New England Sound Healers organization. The two hit it off and Goldman signed Campbell to his label Spirit Music where he would ultimately issue four cassettes.\n\nCampbell later wrote about this period of music in his book *The Mozart Effect*: \"In the 1980s, I spent three years writing music based on listening to rhythms of the breath and observing cycles of relaxation, rest, and insight—music to help energy to circulate more freely and keep the inner organs, systems, and functions 'in tune.'\" The first album was *Crystal Mediations*, issued in 1984, followed by the similar *Crystal Rainbows* the following year. Goldman remains a big fan of both albums, and noted his surprise when he found out that both were totally composed with no improvisation.\n\nDuring this time, Campbell also partnered with Dr. Victor Beasley, the author of *Your Electro-Vibratory Body*.  Campbell provided music for his guided visualizations that accompanied the book. \"Instead of a progressive relaxation process, in which you visualize a movement through your body from head to toe or toe to head, Beasley had you regard different bodily systems in a holistic way,\" Campbell wrote. \"For example, he would ask you to think of your skin—the body's largest organ—and imagine every cell at one. Then he would ask you to imagine all the fluids in your body or the neurons pulsating through your nervous system. It fell to me to translate these strange mental pictures into sound and music.\"\n\nIn 1985, Campbell put out two more cassettes, both on the small Greater Spiral label out of Portland, Oregon. He continued to write too, putting out his second book *Master Teacher: Nadia Boulanger* around the same time. With interest in his books and music on the rise, Campbell began networking with others involved in music therapy all over the country. In the latter part of the decade he moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he founded the Institute of Music, Health and Education in 1988 as a central base for his research and lectures on the power for music to heal. \n\nAccording to Andi Goldman, Campbell was suffering from some health issues during the '80s. He would ultimately create a method to heal himself by chanting, inspiring his next book called *The Roar of Silence: Healing Powers of Breath, Tone, and Music* in 1989. The book was followed by a tape called *Healing Yourself with Your Own Voice*. \n\nIn 1993, three researchers published an article in *Nature* magazine about the ability of Mozart's music to positively impact spatial reasoning. The media picked up on the article and soon the public became fascinated by the idea that \"Mozart makes you smart,\" even if that was a broad simplification of the actual research. Nevertheless, the findings resonated with Campbell too, who also knew that his musical mentor Alfred Tomatis also used the music of Mozart in his research into music therapy. Wisely capitalizing on the new trend, Campbell titled his 1997 book *The Mozart Effect* and it proved to be his best selling title ever. He followed it up with compilation CD's such as *The Mozart Effect* and *The Mozart Effect: Music for Babies* which frequently topped the classical charts of the era. In 2000, he published a sequel. \n\nAlthough Campbell made quite a lot of money from his books, he continued to write up until right before his death and also worked as a consultant for music therapy. Later on, he founded a company called Aesthetic Audio Systems to provide music in health-care facilities. \"Don was a workaholic,\" Goldman recalled. \"If one of his projects crashed and burned, he'd move on to something else.\" Campbell, who was gay, never married. In 2012, he died of pancreatic cancer.\n\nSources:\n* Subliminal Sounds: Don Campbell bio [retrieved here](https://www.subliminalsounds.se/product/kano-runes-lp-red-vinyl/)\n* Don Campbell Bio, *The Mozart Effect Resource Center*, 2001 [retrieved here](https://web.archive.org/web/20010206121627/http://www.mozarteffect.com/mozarteffect/don_campbell.html)\n* Campbell, Don. *The Mozart Effect*. Avon Books, 1997\n* Author interview with Jonathan and Andi Goldman, 12/29/20","discography":{"don-campbell":{"albums":{"angels":{"image":"","label":"The Greater Spiral","review":"Angel-themed new age tapes don’t usually sound this dark. This seems more like [J. Greinke](/jeff-greinke) or background music at the Black Lodge than a Unitarian Service in Marin County. Both 20 minute tracks gurgle with droning bass, muted synth leads, and the faint echo of lost souls.","title":"Angels","year":"1985"},"birthing":{"image":"","label":"Silverthread Marketing","review":"Subtitled \"soothing music for prepared childbirth,\" this tape is a fine aid to relaxation for any occasion. It's two unbroken sides of synthesizer music (\"Tranquility\" and \"Serenity,\" respectively) feature long slow tones—most sounding like distant French horns and echoing flutes, miming the overtones of simple diatonic intervals—floating like slow clouds through the audial-mental sky. There is no noticeable melody, as the sounds are so slow--use this only when you really want to go deeply inward.\n\nThe artist is described on the cover slip as an \"internationally recognized expert in Psycho-Acoustics: the study of the effects of music and sound on the human brain.\" He has varied the intervals to ebb and flow between subtle stimulation and release of tension. He recommends it both for the entire pregnancy as well as the post-natal period of infant care.\n\nAlso available from the same address is *Quieting*, a collection of heart sounds and musical tones designed to calm and soothe infants during the first six months of life.\n\n(Mike Heffley, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, Spring/Summer 1988)","title":"Tranquility and Serenity: Music for Birthing and Relaxation","year":"1986"},"cosmic-classics":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Cosmic Classics","year":"1988"},"crystal-meditations":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"Piano and synthesizer music, very ambient and spatial. Don's explorations into quartz crystals, their properties and abilities are expressed through music, as if slowly turning and reflecting light.(*Heartbeats* catalog, Spring 1988) \n\nFrom the cassette j-card: \"To look into quartz crystals, geometric shapes recur as variations. There are reflected shapes in angles which emerge out of each crystal echoing itself. *Crystal Meditations* holds these images in sound with recurring themes as if one were looking at a cluster of quarter crystals slowly turning and reflecting light into endless variations.\"","title":"Crystal Meditations","year":"1984"},"crystal-rainbows":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"Continuing in the vein of 1984's *Crystal Meditations* this one is “a journey into the tonal spectrum…when light, sound, and quartz crystals meet. \"Crystal Caverns\" on side one is about as minimalist as new age can get before evaporating into tape hiss. Side two's \"Crystal Rainbows\" has a bit more development and texture, adding piano, chimes, and bells to Campbell's synths, culminating in a perpetually ascending xylophone melody and swirls of piano that provide a sort of climax to this ethereal set.","title":"Crystal Rainbows","year":"1985"},"essence":{"image":"","label":"Spring Hill","review":"","title":"Essence","year":"1993"},"lightning-on-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"The Greater Spiral","review":"Based on the rhythms of breathing, *Lightning on the Moon* features a Berlin-school sound across two 20+ minute tracks, though in a minimal, Zen style more akin to Cluster than say, Klaus Schulze’s manic synth workouts. The title track is a bit more successful overall, as side two’s \"Claire de Terre\" has a whiff of Orientalism that breaks the spell somewhat.\n\n","title":"Lightning on the Moon","year":"1985"},"quietude":{"image":"","label":"Silverthread Marketing","review":"","title":"Quietude","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"kano":{"albums":{"runes":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Runes","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Kano","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":215,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/don-campbell.jpg?alt=media&token=a35f1a44-2c61-43be-9075-748e8964a479","last_name":"Campbell"},"don-harriss":{"artist_name":"Don Harriss","body":"Don Harriss is a composer who enjoyed life as a touring rock musician in the early ‘80s, playing keyboards with blues rock guitar-whiz Pat Travers before settling into a more sedate life in the late ‘80s as a new age musician based in Palo Alto. There, he wrote music for commercial films while releasing a series of five albums for Sonic Atmospheres, some of which cracked the Billboard New Age charts and sold well for the genre.\n\nBorn in 1948, Don Harriss’s father was in the Air Force and moved the family around many times before eventually settling in Palo Alto, California. Harriss had begun taking piano lessons at six and got very good, moving on to playing jazz by the time he was in ninth grade.\n\nHarriss attended SF State in the mid-‘60s, where he studied composition and harpsichord, though he dropped out after forming a band Liberty Street that gigged around the area with bands like the Charlatans and was even offered a contract by Capitol Records that they inexplicably turned down. “We thought we were going to be the next Beatles, I guess,” Harriss laughed.\n\nWith the Vietnam War draft looming, Harriss emigrated to Canada, where he eventually joined up with rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins, playing keyboards with him from 1972 to 1975. Through Hawkins, Harriss met Pat Travers, who later recruited Harriss to join his band in the early ‘80s, which resulted in several years of touring and recording. Travers was popular at the time and Harris recalls touring for long stretches with Travers, opening up for popular bands like Aerosmith and Ted Nugent, often playing stadiums and arenas. “Somehow, I went through the 80s without ever trying cocaine,” he mused.\n\nIn addition to playing with Travers, Harriss also worked as a session musician, mostly in Palo Alto or at the Music Annex in Menlo Park. It was there he first learned of new age music when he met Steven Halpern who told him he’d sold one million records, all on his own label. Harriss remembered that, and would eventually try his hand at new age when a patron offered him $10,000 to produce a record of any genre. \n\n“I was a songwriter during this period, but I didn’t have enough songs at that moment,” Harriss recalls. “I thought, maybe I’ll do an instrumental record that’s not jazz or classical. I already had a Prophet 10 synth from the Travers days and I started out with a Commodore 64 and finished the record on a Mac Plus.” Harriss made 100 copies of *Elevations* on cassette and sent them to various record labels looking for a deal. Craig Huxley loved the album and signed Harriss to his label Sonic Atmosphere and released the album exactly as it was with the same cover art.\n\n*Elevations* was a modest hit on the new age circuit and led to more albums on Sonic Atmospheres. Harriss’s second album *Vanishing Point* earned a lot of radio play on the popular and influential WAVE radio station, and his third album *Abacus Moon* was his biggest commercial success, moving 70,000 copies and breaking the top ten on the Billboard New Age charts.\n\nHarriss went on to release two more albums, but he eventually decided to move on from new age. He moved to Ashland, Oregon, in 1993, where he produced theater shows and played with local bands. \n\nIn 2022, label Pine Hill reissued his debut *Elevations* on vinyl for the time being, even putting out an 8-track version in a minuscule quantity of 25. ","discography":{"don-harriss":{"albums":{"abacus-moon":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Abacus Moon","year":"1989"},"elevations":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Elevations","year":"1987"},"mysterium":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Mysterium","year":"1992"},"shell-game":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Shell Game","year":"1990"},"vanishing-point":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Vanishing Point","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":408,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/don-harriss-640-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=6e50dfdd-e1cd-4eb1-807c-499a20787747","image_credit":"","last_name":"Harriss"},"don-robertson":{"artist_name":"Don Robertson","body":"Don Robertson was one of the earliest musicians to synthesize the musical strands of new age on his prophetically titled debut *Dawn* in 1969. The obscure album didn't make much of an impact (unlike say, [Jim Horn's](/jim-horn) *Inside*), but its mix of sitars, harps, nature sounds, and philosophical questioning represent an embryonic take on new age (other songs seem to predate krautrock as well). When Robertson emerged after a long break in the '70s, he established himself as a key player in the now flourishing genre. His most well-known release remains the space music classic *Starmusic*.\n\nBorn and raised in Denver in 1942, Robertson began piano lessons at the age of three before he was even able to really even play. Although the lessons stopped soon after, the passion to compose never left him, and he would play piano off and on for decades until finally settling into his music career. \"Classical music became my first love when I was just two-years old,\" Robertson wrote on his website. \"I remember having a 78-rpm album of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that I played over and over on the family record player.\" \n\nIn his teens, Robertson spent so much time listening to opera and other classical music on the radio that his school work began to suffer.  Instead, he spent much of his time composing songs in his head. Robertson graduated high school in 1960, barely passing most of his classes. He joined the Navy for four years and continued to compose whenever he had a chance.  He finished his first symphony during this period, and was even able to convince a local symphony to perform the work.\n\nAfter getting out of the Navy, Robertson moved back to Colorado and formed a trio called the Contrasts playing soul, jazz and blues. Their manager Ron Pinkard helped the band put out a single in 1965 called \"Monkey 'Round,\" a dance-soul number that sounds like a stripped down Stax track from the era.\n\nThe Contrasts broke up shortly after their single, and Robertson moved to California to attend the UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology. It was there that he heard and fell in love with Indian classical music and became inspired to buy a sitar and learn how to play the tabla and tamboura.\n\nRobertson moved to New York a year later to attend the Juilliard School of Music.  The school seemed overly conservative to him after his experiences in LA, and he soon took up private lessons with both Ali Akbar Khan and Morton Feldman to round out his education.  With Khan he studied Indian classical vocal technique and with Feldman he studied contemporary classical music like John Cage.\n\nAfter getting out of Julliard, Robertson was able to get session work playing the sitar and tabla. Through these gigs he eventually met Robin McBride who helped set him up with a record deal at Mercury's experimental sublabel Limelight. Robertson moved to San Francisco just before recording the album with producer Abe \"Voco\" Kesh, known mainly at the time for his work with Blue Cheer. \"Abe pretty much just sat back and let me do what I wanted,\" Robertson recalled.\n\nAfter the album, Robertson grew disenchanted with the heavy rock sounds dominating the radio, as well as the cacophony of much contemporary classical music at the time. \"In 1970 I got rid of my radio,\" Robertson said. \"I saw that heavy metal was going to take everything down because it was so negative. And everything at Julliard was so negative too. When I was with Feldman I was trying to write the most dissonant music possible.\"\n\nRobertson, who was a lifelong scholar of classical music, had formulated one of his signature theories around this time that music could be either positive, with no dissonant notes, or it could be negative. He found that a lot of music from antiquity relied on pentatonic scales which were more harmonious. Robertson decided to embark on a decades long study of early music, choral music, and other genres that had seemed to him untainted by the modern drift towards negativity. He called the project his Musical Kaleidoscope and discusses it in much more detail on his site [here](http://www.musicalkaleidoscope.com/). \n\nRobertson stayed busy with his research all through the seventies, in addition to getting married and having three kids. He finally started to produce his own music again after he met Ethan Edgecomb, Steven Halpern, and [Iasos](/iasos), all who were key figures in the new age renaissance of the late 70s.\n\nEdgecomb had just started distributing cassettes and encouraged Robertson to put one out too.  In 1979, Robertson borrowed a zither and improvised his first album, *Celestial Ascent* using the pentatonic scale. Edgecomb loved the album and put it out, garnering decent sales and encouraging Robertson to continue.\n\nRobertson was enamored with the Hearts of Space radio show at the time, and felt like the dawning of the era he'd predicted ten years ago was finally here. With the advances in synthesizer technology, he felt he was finally able to compose entire symphonies at his fingertips. Inspired in part by Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching, and Vangelis, Robertson entered a productive, fruitful period. \n\nHis first synth album was 1981's *Resurrection*, followed by 1982's *Starmusic*. The latter in particular was perfectly timed for the heightened interest in space music, and was played constantly on the radio show *Musical Starstreams*. The album sold over 20,000 copies.\n\nFor his next album, *Spring*, Robertson mixed his space influences with a more pastoral touch inspired by Mount Shasta where he had spent many days in 1983. Robertson moved his family back to Colorado in 1984 and began work on a new home studio. His wife at the time ran the DBR label, some days sending out hundreds of tapes in the mail to fans and distributors.\n\nBy 1989, Robertson grew tired of new age music and shifted his focus to other sounds. On his site, he said that \"It had become - like the other genres - polluted by greed and big business, and so I dropped out of it completely, turning instead to writing music for orchestra and acoustic instruments.\"\n\nAfter largely being forgotten for decades, Robertson's music has been dug up and reappraised in the past fifteen years and relegated to its rightful status as exemplary ambient music.","discography":{"don-robertson":{"albums":{"anthem":{"image":"","label":"DBR","review":"","title":"Anthem","year":"1986"},"celestial-ascent":{"image":"","label":"DBR","review":"","title":"Celestial Ascent","year":"1980"},"dawn":{"image":"","label":"Limelight","review":"","title":"Dawn","year":"1969"},"resurrection":{"image":"","label":"DBR","review":"","title":"Resurrection","year":"1981"},"spring":{"image":"","label":"DBR","review":"","title":"Spring","year":"1984"},"starmusic":{"image":"","label":"DBR","review":"A fascinating mind trip per side. Floating music that would make Klaus Schulze blush. Don blends droning string and voice-like synthesizer sounds with crickets, bells, and effects to create a warm ocean of aural color that soothes the brain. Side 1 consists of \"Horizon Beyond Infinity,\" a cascading orchestration of sound that seems to drift effortlessly. Robertson utilizes the synthesizers to generate a particular mood of calmness and he manages to maintain this \"alpha\" state throughout the piece by adding gentle changes in orchestration while retaining the ethereal string and \"voice\" background.\n\nSide 2 begins with the mystical \"Stardance,\" a hypnotic piece with a high string melody, cascading sound effects and bell like tones that come together into a string drone that starts “Star Journey,” a meditative and simply structured strings excursion that resolves with angelic-like voices. The final piece, \"Gymnopedie,\" features more of a melodic, classically orchestrated structure utilizing gentle strings, harp, and bell tones with a slightly Eastern flavor. Robertson realizes some of the best synthesized string textures I have heard since [Iasos](/iasos). His music seems to soar with deep emotion and is almost hymn-like. His composition, orchestration, and recording are far more than competent. If you enjoy real dream music, this high quality cassette is an excellent addition to your collection.\n\n(James E. Finch, *Syne*, March 1984)\n","title":"Starmusic","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":73,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/DonRobertson.jpg?alt=media&token=3135c645-0f66-41ae-bef0-e737fe51a3b4","last_name":"Robertson"},"don-slepian":{"artist_name":"Don Slepian","body":"Don Slepian was a born tinkerer and electronics wizard destined to be part of the electronic music scene of the '70s and early '80s. Although isolated in far-off Hawaii for much of that time, Slepian was able to make a lasting impact when he moved back to the mainland and released his biggest seller *Sea of Bliss* in 1980.  Recorded when he was 26, the album remains his most well-known work, though he has a large body of cassettes and records that have been high on many collector want lists for the past decade.\n\nBorn in 1953, Slepian was experimenting with electronics from an early age, making circuits and homemade instruments like a pipe organ that used car horns and doorbells.   His father David, a Bell Labs researcher and mathematician made a huge impression on his son when he brought home the first-ever electronic music record *Music for Mathematics* recorded on a Bell Labs computer.\n\nIn 1971, Slepian graduated high school in Summit, NJ and began attending the University of Hawaii. As a student there, he met professor Peter Coraggio who served as his mentor, teaching him piano as well as giving him ample studio time to record with his homemade synths at Synergia studios. There, Slepian became acquainted with the entire Arp line of synths and continued to build his own creations.  At college, Slepian also became interested in Hindu philosophy and meditation, sparked by the book *Autobiography of a Yogi* (the title \"Sea of Bliss\" comes from this book). \n\nAlthough he had been playing for nearly a decade, Slepian finally released his first cassette in 1978 while in Hawaii called *Electronic Music from the Rainbow Isle*. According to a Don & Judy Records catalog from 1981, Slepian produced 450 copies of the tape. It's now very rare. During this time, Slepian made a living as a musician scoring local commercials for clients like the Hawaii Visitors Bureau and serving as musical director for the Honolulu Theater For Youth.\n\nIn 1979, Slepian moved back to New Jersey to get an MFA in music composition at Fairleigh Dickinson and began working for Bell Labs as an artist in residence.  He was recruited by Dr. Max Mathews to work with the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer (\"The Alles Machine\") which he used on several of his albums.  While there, Slepian recorded a trilogy of cassettes for the Plumeria label who had requested that Slepian do something more ambient in nature compared with his more experimental earlier work. \n\nPlumeria pressed 500 copies of Slepian's first album for them, *Sea of Peace*, with hand airbrushed covers by Juelle Lumiere.  The label was run by Tim O'Hanlon and Gary Terrell and according to Slepian, they were both struggling at the time to keep the label running due to personal issues.  The label put out two more tapes from Slepian in 1980, *New Dawn* in April and *Open Spaces* later in the year.  Sometime around 1981, the first two cassette covers were redesigned. The hand-painted covers for *Sea of Bliss* were jettisoned for a more traditional screen printed design and *Open Spaces* was redesigned to include a mandala on the cover. Earlier versions of that release had just black text on white card stock. Plumeria's final Slepian tape was *Largos* in 1982, which featured baroque and classical compositions performed on synthesizers.\n\nIn 1981, Slepian self-released his first album on vinyl *Computer Don't Breakdown*. This was essentially a compilation that included two of the better pieces from *Rainbow Island* and an edited version of *Sea of Bliss* called \"Sonic Perfume.\"  The record was well-received, especially at *Electronic Musician* magazine where reviewer Robert Carlberg called it a \"masterwork (see full review below). Slepian sent some of the records to his hero Klaus Schulze in Germany, and many people later wrote from Poland saying they heard \"Sonic Perfume\" on the radio. At last, Slepian's music was traveling around the world and making a big impression.\n\nBy 1982, Slepian left Bell Labs and hooked up with Ethan Edgecomb from Fortuna who gave *Sea of Bliss* better distribution and yet another cover design, this time selling an estimated 5,000 copies of the cassette. Fortuna also released two additional releases, the lively *Rhythm of Life* in 1982 and a Christmas album in 1986. According to Slepian \"Ethan was one of the most honorable of the rogue's gallery of music business people I worked with back then.\" \n\nSlepian then moved to Larry Fast's Audion label for his next two releases, *Reflections* and the compilation *Sonic Perfume.*  He also released several collaborations, including *Duets* with fellow New Jersey synthesist Chris Wyman, plus a classical album and a kids story called *The Strawberry Candle.*  Slepian continued to release music beyond that, but his output slowed down greatly throughout the 2000s.  His current music can be found on CD Baby and his YouTube channel.","discography":{"chris-wyman-and-don-slepian":{"albums":{"duets-for-two-synthesists-and-selected-atmospheres":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Duets...for two Synthesists and Selected Atmospheres","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Chris Wyman and Don Slepian","entry_number":3},"don-slepian":{"albums":{"1-the-sea-of-bliss":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"The Sea of Bliss","year":"1980"},"2-new-dawn":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"New Dawn","year":"1980"},"3-open-spaces":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"Open Spaces","year":"1980"},"computer-don't-breakdown":{"image":"","label":"Don and Judy","review":"Marvelously rich synthetic voicings in suites whose complexity owes more to classical than pop. What's the opposite of minimalist? A masterwork.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1981)","title":"Computer Don't Breakdown","year":"1981"},"electronic-music-from-the-rainbow-island":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Electronic Music from the Rainbow Isle","year":"1978"},"largos":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"Slepian breathes life into several Baroque chestnuts through use of delicate and beautiful synthesizer sounds. Even Pachelbel's Canon responds to a lovely Mormon Tabernacle patch. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony* ,1982)","title":"Largos for Learning, Loving, and Living","year":"1982"},"new-liberty":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"The problem with so many new synth composer virtuosos is that they channel all their technical ability into recordings of inconsequential noodling over simplistic electro-pulsation, providing the listener with little else than more techno-background-music for one’s collection. Happily this is not the case here. \n\nSlepian composes inspired melodic pieces, richly colored with a spirit of fantasy and wonder. His approach falls somewhere between Wendy Carlos and Vangelis, with just a hint of Debussy like lushness. The shorter pieces are solidly arranged, laced with diversions not usually found in the computer synth medium. In the selection, \"Life\" for example,  sparkling arpeggiated melodies give way to a slower, melancholy variation in cello-like voices. \"Stasis,\" with its relentless racing percussive framework, recalls Genesis' \"Los Endos\" in energy and structure. The 20-minute-plus \"Nightwatch\" is a lilting, rippling nocturne which comes closest to free form of all the material, and makes for tranquil yet stimulating evening listening. \n\nSlepian is obviously a happy person.  The good-natured, non-dissonant music on this tape suggests a high spirited artist with a youthful enthusiasm I found inspiring.\n\n(Michael Goodspeed, *Sound Choice* #3, 1985)","title":"New Liberty","year":"1984"},"reflections":{"image":"","label":"Audion","review":"[Slepian] was one of the pioneers of independent electronic music, so it's good to see him getting released on Fortuna, Narada, and now Larry Fast's Audion label. *Reflections* was recorded primarily on Ensoniq Mirage, with piano and acoustic guitar and a few parts recorded on Suzanne Ciani's Synclavier. Slepian is the master of the extended motionless drone that ripples like the sea.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, Dec. 1986)","title":"Reflections","year":"1986"},"rhythm-of-life":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"For anyone who hears the band name Tangerine Dream, this must be what they imagine their music sounds like – rhythmic synth pieces brimming with positivity and joy (instead of the anxious dirges for which they're revered). Most tracks are based on sequencer riffs in a lockstep 4:4 tempo to match the human heartbeat, though Slepian keeps things engaging with added textures like flutes, gamelan bells, and unexpected chord changes. Each piece seems designed for a different type of movement, be it walking, dancing, maybe even rollerblading through a magical forest while microdosing on magic mushrooms.  Unfortunately, album closer \"Life After Life\" alters the formula and goes for a more organic fairytale vibe with acoustic guitar and flute that teeters dangerously close to schmaltz, a recurring weakness for Slepian. Nevertheless, the other pieces make up for it, and this is definitely a keeper whose rep in collector circles has been on the rise in recent years.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Rhythm of Life","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Don Slepian","entry_number":1},"electric-diamond":{"albums":{"electric-diamond":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Electric Diamond: Stuart Diamond / Don Slepian","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Electric Diamond","entry_number":4},"synarios":{"albums":{"uncontrolled-voltage":{"image":"","label":"Don and Judy","review":"","title":"Uncontrolled Voltage","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Synarios","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":1,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Don-Slepian-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=2dc8a066-4d56-4404-a603-c08391b5a7f3","last_name":"Slepian"},"donald-sosin":{"artist_name":"Donald Sosin","body":"Although he's largely made his living playing music along with silent movies at theaters and on DVDs, New York pianist Donald Sosin also released a few electronic cassettes in the '80s. These remain little known and hard to find.\n\nDonald Sosin (b. 1951), grew up in Rye, New York where he lived until 1966 when the family moved to Germany. He started piano lessons early and studied all through high school while also developing an interest in theater. Although he mainly played classical music initially, Sosin started getting into rock music and joined a band in Germany as their keyboardist. Sosin returned to the US for college, enrolling at the University of Michigan where he majored in composition and learned how to accompany dance classes.\n\nIn his senior year at college, Sosin discovered transcendental meditation. \"I'd been interested in spirituality at an early age,\" Sosin recalled. \"I tried to hypnotize my friends growing up in Rye. I read about Eastern Mysticism. In 1972, my girlfriend's brother told me about TM and I'm still involved. It totally changed my life and helped me to compose. I just stopped worrying and started doing it. I went into a deep place twice a day and came out refreshed, happy, and creative.\"\n\nMoving to New York after college, Sosin got involved with the theater scene, playing in off-Broadway shows and working at the BMI Music Theater workshop. In 1974, he went back to school at Columbia and earned a Master's Degree in music. That led to jobs as a staff arranger at Warner Brothers and a job writing sheet music for pop songs. In 1982, he began leading songwriting workshops at New York public schools.\n\nAround this time, Sosin started listening to John Schaefer's radio show New Sounds which played a mix of new age, electro-acoustic, ambient, and other \"new music.\" \"I heard Steven Halpern and George Winston and I thought – hell, I can do that,\" Sosin recalled. The result was his *Utopiano*cassette which he self-released in 1983 and ended up getting played on New Sounds. However, Sosin recalls only limited sales of only 25 copies.\n\nSosin's next album came out of a commission. A theater director hired him to compose background music for an audio recording of the New Testament and Sosin spent four months writing 12 hours of music. His favorite section was the music he wrote for the Book of John and he decided to put this out as the album *Avatar* in 1987, again a self-release.\n\nBy this time, Sosin had started to get more work playing music along with silent films. He performed musical accompaniment at MOMA, BAM, and Lincoln Center throughout the 80s and is now one of the \"first calls\" for this kind of work. By his estimation, he's done over 4,000 performances for silent films at this point, many captured for posterity on official DVD releases. In 1989, Sosin and his wife had a child and they relocated to Connecticut where he still lives today. ","discography":{"donald-sosin":{"albums":{"avatar":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Avatar","year":"1987"},"utopiano":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Utopiano","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":294,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/donald-sosin-572.jpg?alt=media&token=0511ef2e-4811-4b6c-90ff-0e7b00bde31a","image_credit":"","last_name":"Sosin"},"donny-regalmuto":{"artist_name":"Donny Regalmuto","body":"Donny Regalmuto is a keyboardist based in Maui who arrived in 1983 with a hundred dollars and a plan to make it as a musician. He ended up making most of his money recording other artists at his studio Tantra Productions, but he did record some new age cassettes of his own in the '80s, two vocal-based albums with Rose Gardner (*Love is the Answer*, *Be Still and Know*) and two solo piano cassettes listed below. These were produced in small numbers, but his *Maui Magica* cassette and CD came out on Venetia Featherstone-Witty's better-distributed Shaman Mystique label and sold about a thousand copies by his estimation. He nearly finished a second album with drummer Brent Lewis, but it never came out. After that, Regalmuto continued to engineer and produce other records in his studio, such as Daniel Paul's *Rhythms of Paradise* (Soundings of the Planet, 1996).","discography":{"donny-regalmuto":{"albums":{"acoustical-love":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Acoustical Love","year":"1987"},"bali-hai":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Bali Hai","year":"1987"},"maui-magica":{"image":"","label":"Shaman Mystique","review":"Like Tobias’ *Rainforest Rhapsody* (which is on the same label), this is well-recorded new age with plentiful nature sounds, an introspective mood, and a mix of pianos and digital synths. It's a bit more spotty overall though, marred in places by cliche chord changes and ethno-kitsch about as authentic as Pier 1 Imports. That often comes with the territory on early ‘90s new age, so I’m able to appreciate this as a whole for its ability to sustain a dreamy mood while keeping me firmly planted in a very specific era (the Christian Riese Lassen cover art is the first clue).  As with a lot of tapes, the best song is the last one, the dreamy \"Cosmos.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2025)","title":"Maui Magica","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Donny Regalmuto","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":323,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/donny-regalmuto-square.jpg?alt=media&token=0cab3374-9399-45b4-9715-e8a1e44ba5f3","image_credit":"","last_name":"Regaulmuto"},"dorothy-carter":{"artist_name":"Dorothy Carter","body":"Described by friends as a \"brilliant\", \"amazing artist and storyteller,\" Dorothy Carter self-released two albums of hammered dulcimer and psaltery instrumentals in the '70s.  Carter (1935-2003) lived in New York, Cambridge, Maine, Berlin, and New Orleans during her life, often leaving a trail of passionate converts in her wake who saw her busking, one of her favorite activities. Some of her fans include [Laraaji](/laraaji), [Bill Desmond](/bill-desmond), and artist Robert Rutman who became a collaborator after meeting Carter while she was staying at a monastery in Mexico. More recently, her fanbase has expanded further thanks to a reissue of *Wailee Wailee* on [Palto Flats](https://paltoflats.bandcamp.com/album/waillee-waillee-2).\n\nBorn in 1935 in New York, Dorothy Carter was raised in Boston by her grandparents, playing piano at six years old. She later attended Bard and studied the Irish harp, taking a special interest in music of the Renaissance and French troubadours. However, a chance encounter while getting her harp fixed would change her musical directory in a profound way.\n\n\"I was having my harp worked at a shop near Lincoln Center, and the shop owner showed me an instrument he had made,\" Carter wrote. \"It was a jewel of an instrument, such as I'd never seen before except in old paintings and illustrations, a psaltery. I felt something like a strange recognition, THIS was the instrument I wanted to play, even more than the harp. And so began my fascination with the 'trapezoids', the dulcimer and psaltery.\"\n\nIn the early '60s, Carter first met Robert Rutman, a German-born artist who went on to become a lifelong friend and artistic partner. Together the two founded the Washington Galleries in Soho in 1962 and later co-owned another gallery called A Bird Can Fly But a Fly Can't Bird. There Rutman showed his sculptures and Carter exhibited tie-dyes. The two would eventually leave New York for Maine along with [Constance Demby](/constance-demby), and form the Central Maine Power Company, a multimedia ensemble that incorporated visual art in their shows in addition to a wide range of unusual instruments such as steel cello, circular saw blades, theremin, and early analog synths. The group played all over the east coast at places like Skowhegan Art Center in Maine, the Lincoln Center in NYC, and east coast planetariums. \n\nAfter the group broke up in 1976, Rutman, Demby, and Carter all relocated to Cambridge, and continued to collaborate musically. Demby contributed to Carter's first album *Troubadour*, and Rutman played the steel cello on Carter's second album *Wailee Wailee*. Both were released on Carter's label Celeste, named after her young daughter. By then, Carter was a single mother, living at a house on Cherry Street and frequently performing on her dulcimer or psaltery around town.\n\nOn New Years Eve in 1978, local musician Bill Desmond wondered into a church on Boyleston street when he heard a dulcimer player inside. “There was sound bouncing off the church walls,” Desmond recalled. “Every strike of the strings was resonating like a bell. And there’s this little pint-sized lady, a hippie with a long cape, 20 or 30 years older than me, playing this thing. I walked up to hear and said, ‘I am going to learn to play this and we’re going to do an album together.’” The two became friends, and Carter later played on album of Desmond's called *Waterflow* in 1985, that appears to be her only release during the decade.\n\nBy the '90s, Carter moved to Berlin where she spent much of her time detailing the history of the dulcimer instrument family and preserving old folks songs with sheet music. She wrote at least two manuscripts, though only a few excerpts have surfaced as of 2024.  In 1996, Carter co-founded Mediæval Bæbes with British musician Katherine Blake, playing medievial folk and a capella pieces sung in Latin. The group's first album was a surprise hit and they went on to release eleven more albums up to the present day, though Carter was only involved in the first four.\n\nCarter spent her final years mostly in New Orleans and was still playing music until her death in 2003.","discography":{"dorothy-carter":{"albums":{"troubador":{"image":"","label":"Celeste","review":"","title":"Troubador","year":"1976"},"waillee":{"image":"","label":"Celeste","review":"","title":"Wailee Wailee","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Dorothy Carter","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":385,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Dorothy-Carter-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3c80f0ce-a977-4f78-b67e-0ac51194b482","last_name":"Carter"},"doug-haire":{"artist_name":"Doug Haire","body":"Doug Haire is a musician, recording engineer and radio host based in Seattle since 1985. His music strongly evokes landscapes and real-life ambience, though warped and re-imagined with electronics. He was very active in the free-improv scene, recording hundreds of albums for the likes of the New Art Orchestra, Wally Shoup, Dennis Rea, [Jeff Greinke](/Jeff-greinke) and countless others while working at the Jack Straw studio. He also produced a long-running radio show called Sonarchy on KEXP which he ended in 2018.\n \nBorn in 1955, Doug Haire grew up in various cities throughout the south, describing himself as a \"southland mongrel.\" He took an interest in people and landscapes at a young age, observing them from a distance with an ethnographer’s eye. Haire went to college at Tulane where he studied broadcast engineering and graduated in 1977.\n \nHaire's first job was at WWNO where he began recording other performers (mostly early music and jazz) and experimenting with his own music, usually improvisations on turntables with a reverb unit. Haire had been paying guitar since he was a kid, but he was especially drawn to manipulation of recorded sound.\n \nAfter that, Haire entered a period of restless wandering, living in various cities and working primarily as a cable lineman. In 1985 he settled more permanently in Seattle where landed a job at EMS, a west coast Muzak competitor. He also began circulating with the sprawling free-improv scene that included the New Art Orchestra and musicians like Wally Shoup, Dennis Rea, and Charley Rowan.  A big focal point for this group was the annual Seattle Festival of Improvised Music, which was originally started by musician Paul Hoskin in 1985. Various musicians pitched in to help produce the festival in various years after that, with Haire joining the planning committee in 1988 along with Rea, Rowan, and Shoup. The festival lasted well into the new millennium. \n \n1987 would prove to be a particularly busy year for Haire. First and foremost was his debut album *Synesthesia*, which plundered his huge library of field recordings. \"I became obsessed with location recordings,\" Haire said.  \"That set me apart from most people at the time. There’s something intoxicating about listening to location recordings after the fact and thinking of it as a composition.\"\n \nHaire released the cassette himself at first, but his friend and fellow musician Jeff Greinke picked it up for re-release on his own Intrepid label soon after. Greinke was probably the most similar musician to Haire in Seattle, as both shared an affinity for drones and ambience. However, Greinke often used electronic instruments to generate ominous, environmental soundscapes, while Haire started with field recordings and used electronics to process them into something more alien.\n \nHaire's recording skills and appreciation of improvised music made him the go-to engineer for many free-thinking jazz and avant-garde musicians. And sometimes, Haire even went beyond just engineering. A case in point was 1987’s co-billed album with Shoup called *Upright*. Haire recorded and mixed the sessions which featured music from scene stalwarts like Rea, Rowan and Craig Flory, but he also added field recordings and sound manipulation of his own.\n \nHaire also hooked up with a collective of electronic musicians in Seattle called NEMUS. The group met monthly at a studio/industrial space called the Dutchman to exchange ideas, and in 1987 Haire and studio owner Gary Mula produced a compilation of their work. Titled *NEMUS: NW Electronic Musicians*, the cassette showcased a wide variety of sounds including synth pop, new age, minimalism and downtempo. Even in this relatively diverse set, Haire's contribution \"Tension\" stuck out as deeply idiosyncratic.\n \nHaire put out his next album *Distance* in 1989. He put a strong emphasis on silence, with the liner notes suggesting the listener open a window or otherwise preoccupy themselves. \"My idea was to have electronics influenced by location recordings,\" Haire said. \"I like to color the sound around you. I don’t want my music to be foreground. I want it to just color ambience around listener. It’s sort of there and it’s not there.\"\n \nAfter that album failed to generate much interest, Haire began to change his perspective. \"I realized my job was not making music, but recording it. In 1990, I got job at a non-profit studio called Jack Straw Productions and spent 28 years there as recorder and producer. I worked with hundreds of people. Most of them had to have something recorded and I was very happy to help.\"\n \nHaire did still record his own music occasionally, putting out *Locale* in 1992 (with guests including Jeff Greinke and Dennis Rea), as well as a collaboration with Craig Flory in 1998.  He also started a radio show in 1996 on KEXP called Sonarchy that ran for the next 22 years, featuring live shows from many musicians in the free-improv scene.","discography":{"doug-haire":{"albums":{"distance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Distance","year":"1989"},"locale":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Locale","year":"1992"},"synesthesia":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Haire's emphasis is on industrial and environmental tape recordings, processing, with occasional use of keyboards, sax, and metallic percussion. The sounds are often heavily processed but they remain identifiable retaining their normal impact in addition to the new dimension achieved by the mix. Often it is this oscillating contrast that produces the major effect. The results range from ambience to poignant and powerful moments, with some bizarre juxtapositions involving sheep, tribal singing, and a brass/percussion ensemble. Sonics that alter your perception, as the title suggests.\n\n([Michael Chocholak](/Michael-chocholak), *Sound Choice* #10,  1989)","title":"Synesthesia","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Doug Haire","entry_number":1},"doug-haire-and-wally-shoup":{"albums":{"upright":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Upright","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Doug Haire and Wally Shoup","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":108,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Doug-Haire.jpg?alt=media&token=1ead0883-2817-4f6f-8d03-e866f9227407","last_name":"Haire"},"doug-mckechnie":{"artist_name":"Doug McKechnie","body":"Doug McKechnie was one of the first San Francisco hippies to get his hands on a modular Moog in 1968, using the instrument's futurist appeal and psychedelic capacity to wow crowds at Bay Area ballroom shows. During his heyday, he helped engineer a drugged out session with the Dead, performed for ballets and symphonies, put together a planetarium show, and even appeared at Altamont. By the late '70s, he transitioned into a career doing soundtracks with his partner John A. Lewis, and then in the '80s created a duo with Paul de Benedictis called New Logic. McKechnie and de Benedictis only released one commercially available album during their long-running tenure, the now rare *Inside Your Head* from 1984. However, both were also in a short lived project called the San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble who released a tape in 1986.\n \nMcKechnie was born in Berkeley in 1941 and grew up in nearby Richmond. As a child he learned to play the violin and tap dance, later becoming a part of the theater crowd in high school. For college, he attended SF state and studied drama, theater and film. After that, he and his wife Kitty Washburn (along with John Johnson and his wife Carol) made a documentary on George Rockwell and the American Nazi party that won best documentary at the Flaherty Film Festival in 1967. Following that, he entered the army for a few years where he worked as a medic.\n \n1968 was a year of big change for McKechnie. He got out of the army and divorced his wife, moving into a warehouse at 759 Harrison St. \"I rented a whole floor and found a guy, Bruce Hatch, who would live with me and pay half the rent,\" McKechnie remembered. \"He was an audiophile, but he wasn't musical. He was the scion of a wealthy mid-western capitalist. He saw a Moog in an audio magazine and got his dad to buy him one for $8,000. He put it together and showed me how it worked. I was stunned; I couldn’t believe it.\"\n \nSpellbound by the Moog's vast array of electronic sounds, McKechnie spent the next four years performing with the instrument. His style was experimental and psychedelic, or as he summed it up: \"I explored the boundaries of what you could do with sound without committing to modal circumstances.\"\n \nDuring a four year period, McKechnie performed at universities, museum openings, the San Francisco ballet, the Fillmore, and the Family Dog on the Great Highway. He also worked at a Grateful Dead session for *Aoxomoxoa* during their bizarre vocal experiment \"What’s Become of the Baby\" though he wasn’t credited. Stephen Hill, who had recently moved to San Francisco from Pennsylvania, ended up doing sound at some early shows and began working as an engineer and tech with McKechnie. Hill also worked with Ram Dass and Ali Akbhar Khan among others at the time, and went on to start the famous Hearts of Space radio show.\n \nIn 1969, McKechnie was scheduled to appear at Altamont. In the morning he played a short sunrise [set](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rConeeD1AI) that was recorded for posterity, but his performance on the main stage was cut short when Owsley Stanley, who was running sound, pulled the plug. “I took a square wave at 55 cycles and was slowly ramping it up so it would sound like a huge siren. Well, I didn’t think to mention it to anyone. As Owsley was looking at needles, they were in the red, but no sound was coming out and he pulled the switch on me. I never got to play for the crowd. That was a frustrating experience.” \n\nIn 1973 McKechnie contributed music for a show at the Morrison planetarium that featured imagery by Marcel Duchamp and colorizing instruments created by Jordan Belson. The show, originally introduced in the late 1950s, was re-created by McKechnie along with Stephen Hill and David Pizarro, an acolyte of Jordan Belson. After a successful first run at the Morrison planetarium in Golden Gate Park, the trio took the show to the MacMillan Planetarium in Vancouver, Canada. However, after they returned home, a suitcase with a check of their earnings was stolen at the airport, prompting a bitter feud between Pizarro and McKechnie. The two never resolved the issue and Pizarro died a year later.\n \nWith his money from the planetarium gigs, McKechnie bought some equipment and built a music studio. One of his early projects was recording the sounds of suspension cables on the Golden Gate bridge, along with Arnie Lazarus and Michael Phillips. (Though it wasn't released at the time, McKechnie did revisit the concept later, creating the \"Golden Gate Anniversary Suite\" in 1987 using sounds from the bridge as part of the instrumentation.) One of McKechnie's early jobs was composing the soundtrack with John Lewis for the short film *Spaceborne* (1977). When that film was nominated for an Oscar, it helped bring in new business and McKechnie and Lewis went on to record over 100 soundtracks up through the early '90s, including an Oscar win in 1987 for the documentary short, \"Women For America For The World\".\n \nOne of McKechnie’s key musical partners during the '80s was Paul de Benedictis, who originally came to him as a student who wanted to learn synthesizers. The duo sometimes performed as New Logic, and they also formed a larger quartet called the San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble. The latter included Lewis and Dr. Jim Purcell, later replaced by Scott Singer. This unique quartet performed occasionally throughout the decade, including the aforementioned 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate bridge. The duo also released a space ambient cassette called *Inside Your Head* in 1984.\n \nBy the early ‘90s, McKechnie got out of the soundtrack business and began working in public relations. He began producing a 90-minute live television Christmas show each year. He had remarried in 1983 and had a daughter in 1991, settling down with his family in the Oakland Hills. McKechnie currently lives in Oakland and works as a photographer. He also plays live piano music twice a week in Berkeley and is getting into acting. \"If I had gone to Hollywood in the ‘60s, I would have been the next Tab Hunter and probably dead by now,\" McKechnie laughed. \"I dodged another bullet.\"","discography":{"mckechnie-and-debenedictis":{"albums":{"inside-your-head":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Inside Your Head","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"McKechnie & de Benedictis","entry_number":1},"sf-synth-ensemble":{"albums":{"sf-synth-ensemble":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The San Francisco Syntheszier Ensemble was formed by Doug McKechnie and Paul de Benedictis, who initially played as a duo called New Logic before expanding to the four piece here, adding John Lewis and Scott Singer. It’s fun all around, with each musician contributing tracks in the classic mid-'80s corporate synth style of Peter Buffet or Jan Hammer, with triumphant melodies and pop song structures that are just begging to soundtrack some lost episode of Automan or Street Hawk. There’s “The Sharper Image,” a send-up of techno-futurist yuppiedom with spoken word narration, a smooth jazz piece (\"Sausalito Sunset\") and plenty of catchy instrumentals like Singer’s solo-heavy \"Ponty’s Theme\" or De Benedictis’ downtempo \"Logical Funk.\" Side 2 is a bit more introspective, featuring three songs in a row without drum machines and concluding with the elegant \"Sumner’s  Whale,\" which sounds like a lost classic from Suzanne Ciani.","title":"The San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"San Francisco Synthesizer Ensemble","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":113,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Doug-McKechnie-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f5bc33d9-f3d1-41f2-bebe-5a9080d0cab8","last_name":"McKechnie"},"dream-waves":{"artist_name":"Dream Waves","body":"Errol Specter was a prolific Santa Cruz musician who released fourteen cassettes during the '80s under the name Dream Waves on his own Phantasma Sound label (plus a poetry album and three environmental recordings). His style was primarily progressive electronic, but he found his biggest success with a pair of ambient albums in the mid-'80s. In fact, though his music career was initially paid for through a lucrative leather goods business, his ambient period proved to be such a hit with his customers at art fair booths that he basically had two full time jobs for a few glorious, but stressful years.\n\nSpecter was born in 1947 and began learning the clarinet at the age of ten, studying jazz and classical music. After getting out of the Navy in 1968, Specter began studying eastern philosophy and doing transcendental meditation in the San Diego area. He tuned into a local radio station and heard Morton Subotnick's *Silver Apples of the Moon* and immediately knew electronic music was his calling. At the time, however, he lacked the means to buy the expensive gear. It wasn't until 1975 when he moved to Santa Cruz and his leather goods business started taking off that he was finally able to start acquiring synths. He started with a Micromoog and soon added an Arp Odyssey and Arp 2600.\n\nSpecter started recording a few years later, releasing a stream of instrumental cassettes inspired by Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.  By 1984, he was experimenting with more ambient sounds starting with *Universe* and then on his best seller *Radiance* in 1985.  At this time, Specter was selling his cassettes exclusively through his sporadic live shows or booths at art fairs. He tried to get signed to a bigger label or distributor but couldn't get anyone interested, which is surprising given that by Specter's estimation he had sold about 15,000 copies of *Radiance* alone.\n\nWithout wider distribution, it meant that Specter was stuck at home doing the tape duplication himself, and when he wanted to do a vinyl run of his follow up *Astral Currents* (1986) he ended up over his head, losing $3,000 to a shady middleman who went out of business before pressing up the vinyl. \n\nIn 1986, Specter began teaching Electronic Music at Cabrillo College where he remained until 1992. Around this time he also picked up a corporate gig doing audio recordings for UC professor John Grinder's extremely popular Neuro Linguistic programming seminars. Meanwhile, Specter continued selling his cassettes through the mail. Inspired by [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) and other who were adding nature sounds to music, Specter released another version of *Radiance* called *Radiance II* with an ocean backdrop and was pleasantly surprised when it sold even better than the original, moving over 20,000 copies (by his account).\n\nThe new age boom was beginning to slow down by this time, and Specter's remaining tapes never sold as well as *Radiance* or *Radiance II*. Specter tried to get into soundtrack work and had some success with smaller movies but never was able to make a career out of it.  In 1995, he wrote a book called *Fundamental Technologies of the Synthesizer*. Specter continued to record and do leather work, although the pace of his musical output slowed greatly. His last album was released in 2007, but he's currently at work on a new one called *Mists of Time.* Specter and his wife Dharma live in Ben Lomond, CA, a small mountain town near Santa Cruz.","discography":{"dream-waves":{"albums":{"1983":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"1983","year":"1983"},"astral-currents":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Astral Currents","year":"1986"},"celestial-wanderer":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Celestial Wanderer","year":"1981"},"electronce":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Electronce","year":"1983"},"fantasy-in-the-forest":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Fantasy in the Forest","year":"1980"},"heaven-world":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Heaven World","year":"1987"},"new-music-for-harpsi-piano":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"New Music for Harpsi Piano","year":"1983"},"nocturnal-voyage":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Nocturnal Voyage","year":"1981"},"other-realms":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Other Realms","year":"1990"},"panacea":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Panacea","year":"1988"},"radiance":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Radiance","year":"1985"},"radiance-ii":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Radiance II","year":"1986"},"trystaline-skyway":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Trystaline Skyway","year":"1987"},"universe":{"image":"","label":"Phantasma Sound","review":"","title":"Universe","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":21,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Errol-new-temp-640.jpg?alt=media&token=18e0005d-f915-4609-aac9-8f2818d72015","last_name":"Dream Waves"},"dreamrunner":{"artist_name":"Dreamrunner","body":"Brad Rudisail (born 1963) was a pianist from Atlanta, GA who worked as a jingle writer and corporate marketer in the '80s before a layoff in 1991 prompted him to make his own music. He recorded one album of contemporary instrumental new age under the name Dreamrunner before switching to the moniker Brad Rude. He was a member of the Unity Church and often performed at their churches in the Southeast to promote his music; he also played music festivals, trade shows, and even malls. He went on to release more music outside the scope of this guide, such as two Christmas albums and an album of religious arrangements called *Hymns from the Heart*. In 1998, he left the music business after suffering from health problems and eventually landed in IT.","discography":{"brad-rude":{"albums":{"awakening":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Awakening","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Brad Rude","entry_number":2},"dreamrunner":{"albums":{"clouds-from-the-east":{"image":"","label":"Rising Star","review":"","title":"Clouds from the East","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Dreamrunner","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":331,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/rudisail-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d4edc3c2-acfe-4522-805f-1a4ecb102828","image_credit":"","last_name":"Dreamrunner"},"dru":{"artist_name":"DRU","body":"Dru is about as obscure as they come in the electronic music world. He occasionally performed locally during the '80s and '90s, but almost no one outside of his friends knew of his music until tapes started popping up on the second-hand market in the 2000s. It turns out that Dru, also known as Andrew Faltonson, had spent the '80s and '90s recording a large body of work in the studio and live, but never released anything. Then, in a sudden burst of activity in 1995, he posthumously released everything as cassettes, including a boxset. He also issued one new album that year, *24 Medications*, featuring tracks recorded on consecutive days under the influence of Zoloft. After that, he went silent again, though he still sometimes sells his tapes on eBay under the name [AF Vintage Tapes](https://www.ebay.com/usr/**af_vintage_tapes**?_trksid=p2047675.l2559).\n \nFaltonson's parents first met in Paris while his father was stationed there as a US soldier. The couple then settled in Des Moines, Iowa where Faltonson was born in 1953. Ten years later a sister followed. As a child, Andrew obsessed over maps and music, though he found Iowa unstimulating. \"Iowa was not a cultural hub – you had to make your own noise,\" Faltonson said. \"I'm a little on the autism spectrum so I had a highly vivid musical imagination that seemed abstract. When I heard music, it was synthesizing in my brain. I've never had any musical training.\"\n\nAs a teen, Faltonson began traveling the country. \"I hitch-hiked to 49 states and Canada by the time I was 18,\" Faltonson recalled. \"I started at 14 – I was just restless.  I first heard Pink Floyd in Vancouver and they became a big inspiration.\" In the Yukon, he found a harmonica on the ground and started teaching himself to play.\n\nAfter high school, Faltonson joined the military and was stationed near the border of East Germany. There, he worked as a company clerk and had plenty of free time to practice his harmonica. When he was discharged in 1974, he headed to Fresno with a buddy to form a blues band, but it didn't last long. Nevertheless, Faltonson liked the area and stayed in California for the next 14 years.\n\nFaltonson landed a radio job at KVPR in 1980 as a deejay and producer. By then, his tastes had evolved from blues and rock to avant-garde and contemporary classical music. At the station, a local NPR affiliate, Faltonson programmed a classical show on the weekends. However, when he aired a 2-hour program on John Cage, the lines lit up with angry and supportive callers and he was fired a few months later.\n\nDuring this time, Faltonson had started recording music for the first time. He'd first purchased a synthesizer, a Roland SH-5, in 1976. More followed. Using a reel-to-reel, he produced his first work, *Tableau Philosophique #1* in 1981, combining philosophy lectures with his own original music. It was originally intended as a radio piece, and he never tried selling or distributing it. He did send his reel to reel master to the KPFA Pacifica Archives, but they have since lost it. \n\nFaltonson worked for the IRS for a few years after that and then got a new radio gig at KFCF. He continued to record sporadically throughout the '80s. Some of his albums were soundtracks to his own films (*In a Dark Time*, *Shiva 9*), and others were recordings of live performances (*E-scape*, *Nuclear Freeze*) at art galleries or restaurants.  Again, none of his works were ever sold to the public.\n\nIn 1989, Faltonson moved to Seattle where he got a job in quality control at Muzak and a spot at KSER hosting a 2-hour classical show. Things were going well until 1995, when he got laid off and had a hard time finding work. With over a decade of recording projects behind him, he got inspired to release his back catalog, including an ambitious box set of 10 tapes. \"Because of my restlessness, I had to focus on something,\" Faltonson said. \"I had read that reel to reel tapes were deteriorating and my masters were on reel to reel. So I started thinking I should make copies of my tapes. That was the impetus. For a month and a half, that's what I did. I mostly gave them away to friends.\"\n\nAfter 6 few months, Faltonson returned to work and mothballed his cassette project. He later worked at Boeing and the IRS again before pivoting to a career as a health administrator. He got married and moved north of Seattle to Edmonds where he lives now. Unfortunately, just before his move, his landlord threw out all his old synths and master tapes. All that remains of his prodigious output is the series of cassettes he produced in 1995.","discography":{"dru":{"albums":{"1-tableau-Philosophique":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tableau Philosophique","year":"1981/1995"},"2-e-scape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"E-scape","year":"1983/1995"},"3-in-a-dark-time":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"In A Dark Time","year":"1983/1995"},"4-out-of-the-darkness":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Out of the Darkness","year":"1984/1995"},"5-shiva-9":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Shiva-9","year":"1987/1995"},"6-tableau-philosophique-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Talbeau Philosophique #2","year":"1991/1995"},"7-improvisations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Improvisations","year":"1992/1995"},"8-from-the-hall-of-the-digital-king":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"From the Hall of the Digital King","year":"1993/1995"},"9-la-ciel-imaginaire":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"La Ciel Imaginaire","year":"1994/1995"},"z-24-medications":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"24 Medications","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":229,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/dru-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2ddb0060-edbc-4b4b-afd1-2ea9c72e4acc","last_name":"Dru"},"duane-frybarger":{"artist_name":"Duane Frybarger","body":"Duane Frybarger is an electronic musician based in Los Angeles who flew way under the radar in the early '90s, putting out a stream of cassettes that he sent to college stations, but otherwise did little to promote. Musically he was omnivorous, trying his hand at various styles including new age, ambient, latin, and  smooth jazz, with an emphasis on melodicism.\n\nBorn in 1950, Frybarger grew up in Oakland, learning to play piano at church, but he gave up the instrument for many years starting in high school, suffering from depression. \"I just floated for decades,\" he recalled. \"I was just doing as little as possible. Eventually I got into temp work and that suited me. I did that for 30 years and it was how I met my wife.\"\n\nFrybarger always loved music, and tried playing in lounge bands in the '70s, but he didn't like performing in front of people. He focused on writing instead, and when a friend later introduced him to MIDI and home recording. \"That was what I needed,\" he recalled. \"With MIDI, I loved that I could do everything myself.\" Frybarger soon relocated to LA from Oakland and began putting together a studio and learning to use a sequencer.\n\nWith Frybarger in his comfort zone, he hit a vein of creativity, first releasing two cassettes under his own name before adopting the moniker Pangaea World Orchestra. The name came from his idea that tech and MIDI had connected the world together in much the same way it was once connected physically as a massive continent called Pangea.  \"Tech has made the world one small village,\" he said.\n\nAs far as influences, Frybarger cies Beethoven, Bach, and Hans Zimmer, though noting that Paul Desmond was probably the biggest influence. \"Everything he played was beautiful,\" Frybarger said. \"He couldn't play a bad note.\"\n\nFryberger's last cassette was *A Musical Feast*, switching over to CDs after that. These days, Frybarger still records new music and is working on getting his old music out there again via his website [here](http://duanefrybarger.com/pwo.html).","discography":{"duane-frybarger":{"albums":{"city-lights":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"City Lights","year":"1992"},"sunday-morning":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Sunday Morning","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"pangaea-world-orchestra":{"albums":{"a-musical-feast":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"A Musical Feast","year":"1996"},"back-in-the-city":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Back in the City","year":"1993"},"junglemania":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Junglemania","year":"1993"},"lost-in-paradise":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Lost in Paradise","year":"1994"},"pangaea-world-orchestra":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Pangaea World Orchetra","year":"1993"},"southern-suites":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"Southern Suites","year":"1993"},"trujillo":{"image":"","label":"Dancing Bear","review":"","title":"The Trujillo Suites","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Pangea World Orchestra","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":392,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/duane%20image.jpg?alt=media&token=eae4ac2b-ea22-4c52-9fde-417a2f85ee36","last_name":"Frybarger"},"e-q-zak":{"artist_name":"E.Q...Zak","body":"E.Q...Zak was the musical duo of Jeffrey Sontag and Wayne Smith who released three cassettes and an LP between 1982 and 1988. They were primarily a recording project, though they did play live sporadically during this period, usually at live shows put on by the Creative Underground, a collective of fellow New Jersey musicians and artists.\n\nJeffrey Sontag (b. 1951) and Wayne Smith. (b. 1952) were both only children, growing up in Southern New Jersey.  They first met in ninth grade and bonded over their similar musical tastes which spanned from jazz to psychedelic rock. They formed a cover band early on, but had trouble holding on to a drummer, a recurring theme throughout their career.  For college, they went their separate ways, with Sontag attending Duke while Smith enrolled at Emory and Henry College in Virginia.\n\nUnsatisfied with Duke, Sontag later transferred to Emory and Henry College and reunited with Smith. They soon got a new band together, exploring the sounds of progressive rock and electronic music. After college, both migrated back north, Sontag to Toms River, New Jersey and Smith to Philadelphia. Sontag got a job as a logistics manager in the civil service and Smith worked in retail. The two continued to play music together when possible, though they couldn’t stabilize a full band lineup, a familiar problem from their high school years. So finally by the early ‘80s they decided to just be a duo, something that the newly available drum machines and electronic technology had now made possible.\n\nE.Q…Zak issued their first cassette, *The Right Hand of Morning* in 1983. Their early sound was steeped in ‘70s prog rock, with a notable influence from Pink Floyd and Gong. Soon after the release, they discovered Synthetic Pleasure, a local electronic music show on WFMU, and sent a tape to the host Richard Ginsberg. He liked what he heard and invited the band on the air for an interview. This helped introduce them to the burgeoning electronic music scene in the area that included musicians like [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), [Neil Nappe](/neil-nappe), [Jesse Clark](/Jesse-clark), and [Don Slepian](/don-slepian). \n\nWith their newfound connections, Smith and Sontag got their first live show in 1985 with the Creative Underground, a collective of musicians in the area that included many of those mentioned above. The show caught the attention of [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl), who began playing a song from *Harbourclouds* on his ambient radio show *Star’s End* in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, the duo got new tape reviews in other outlets such as CLEM and SYNE.\n\nFor their third tape,*A Gathering of Colour*, E.Q...Zak abandoned the vocals and rock elements of their previous work for a sound rooted in the ambient electronic style of late 70’s Ash Ra Tempel or Jean Michel Jarre. It was their best received album yet, and led to live performances at Philadelphia's Painted Bride Arts Center (pictured above) and a live in-studio performance on Ginsberg's show. \n\nTo help get wider exposure for their music, E.Q...Zak decided to put out their next album on vinyl. Neil Nappe had just released his debut on vinyl courtesy of Audion, Bill Rhodes from Jazzical Records had just put out a compilation of Creative Underground artists on vinyl as well as the debut of his protégé [Patrice DeVincentis](/patrice-devincentis). And Sontag’s close friend Lauri Paisley was prepping her own vinyl album as well. By early 1988, *Premonition of Reality* was done. Paisley had recommended the artist Diane Beeny, who contributed a primitive, but compelling sci-fi painting for the cover. Sontag and Smith pressed 500 copies and got better distribution than before, but by this time the local scene was losing momentum.\n\n\"The scenes we were part of underwent a major retrenchment as 1988 wore on, and killed the momentum of many of the folks, including us, as far as breaking out (or even really standing still),\" Sontag wrote. \"Essentially the electronic music of our school devolved to New Age and what would eventually become EDM. Quite quickly, with the scene’s leaders either moving on or stepping back rather than get co-opted, our old audience melted away to indifference. So the decision was made in late 1988 to wrap up live performance. At some time either that year or the next we recorded a space/ambient piece for one of Chuck Van Zyl’s shows, but that was the last thing we ‘released’ so to speak, and no live performance was involved.\"\n\nSontag and Smith continued to play music in the intervening years, even as their careers and personal lives demanded more of their time.  According to Sontag, he and Smith remained in contact, occasionally recording new work in various styles such as hard rock, progressive, ambient, and soft jazz.  Both are now retired.","discography":{"e-q-zak":{"albums":{"a-gathering-of-colour":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"For their third cassette, E.Q...Zak abandon the vocals and rock aspirations of their earlier work to focus on extended cosmic jams and atmospheric pieces. The Pink Floyd and Gong influences are still prevalent, though now integrated within a late '70s progressive electronic framework a la Jean Michel Jarre or Ash Ra Tempel's *New Age of Earth.*\n\nThe presence of guitar helps differentiate E.Q...Zak among their keyboard-centric peers in the New Jersey scene, as does their avoidance of Berlin-school tropes. The duo generally works in two styles. There are progressive tracks like the standout \"Ionisopheric Strut,\" with its glissando guitar casting a dreamy spell over a subtly funky bassline and skeletal trip hop beat. Elsewhere the duo points their keyboards skyward, creating shimmering soundscapes like \"Summit Lawn\" and the spellbinding \"Eyes of Red and Gold.\" These tracks nicely balance a contemplative mood with some interesting harmonic and tonal shifts that keep things interesting. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"A Gathering of Colour","year":"1986"},"harbourclouds":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This transitional release shows two sides of the band. Side 1 focuses on their song-based psychedelia in the vein of Gong and Pink Floyd while Side 2 features a space ambient suite that travels the same astral pathways as Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze. The band would develop this sound further on their next two albums.","title":"Harbourclouds","year":"1984"},"premonition-of-reality":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Premonition of Reality","year":"1988"},"the-right-hand-of-morning":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"The Right Hand of Morning","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":139,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/EQZak-640-rev.jpg?alt=media&token=97dbab01-e341-4617-9509-a4b3697b5f6a","last_name":"E.Q...Zak"},"ed-tuton":{"artist_name":"Ed Tuton","body":"Ed Tuton is a classically trained pianist who grew up in Boston and attended the New England Conservatory of Music in his childhood.  After graduating from Vassar, Tuton moved to New York City in the early '80s where he tried starting a band but became so frustrated that he decided to learn recording and engineering so he could produce his music on his own. By the late '80s, he released two downtempo electronic cassettes that were nationally distributed through New Leaf. By Tuton's estimation, he sold about 1,000 copies. He recorded several follow-up albums, but by that time he had gotten into developing bands and when one of them, Maggie's Dream, landed a major label deal, it kick-started a long career for him as a producer and engineer. Since 1990, Tuton has worked with artists including Alana Davis, Maxwell and Japanese duo Dreams Come True.","discography":{"ed-tuton":{"albums":{"vibrations-1":{"image":"","label":"Dial 8","review":"","title":"Vibrations 1","year":"1989"},"vibrations-2":{"image":"","label":"Dial 8","review":"","title":"Vibrations 2: Marmion Way","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":370,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ed-tuton-640.jpg?alt=media&token=79695cff-8466-407e-881b-a5443286ff72","last_name":"Tuton"},"eddie-guthman":{"artist_name":"Eddie Guthman","body":"Eddie Guthman is a multi-instrumentalist and music teacher who played in various folk, jazz, and new age groups including Belair, Acoustic Medicine and Crystal Wind. Cassette collectors will likely know him best from the one-off *Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Crystal Forest in Ojai, Ca.*, which he produced as a site-specific soundtrack for his friend Zubin Levy's environmental art installation \"Infinite Crystal.\"\n \nGuthman was born in Seattle in 1952. His father was Edwin O. Guthman, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who worked at the Seattle Times and later went on to be Robert Kennedy’s press secretary. In 1965, the family moved to Pacific Palisades, California where the elder Guthman worked as the national editor for the Los Angeles Times. By that time, Eddie had started to learn guitar and was soon jamming with friends after school.\n \nAfter high school, Guthman attended Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo for a few years where he studied music.  While there he joined a six piece band called Acoustic Medicine that included Ede Mae Kellogg who was formerly with the New Christy Minstrels. The group played off and on until the end of the decade, appearing at political rallies in the area including a huge event protesting the Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant with 40,000 people attending.\n \nGuthman then transferred to Sonoma State in Northern California where he earned his BA in music, and then went on to achieve a Masters in Music Education. Around 1977, Guthman formed a quintet called Belair with fellow student Fred Wetterau on sax, plus other locals including David Balakrishnan on violin and Michael Belair and Tucker Crosby on guitar. The band played contemporary jazz originals with folk and chamber influences, sort of a Northern California take on the band Oregon. Belair, Crosby, and Guthman all composed. Belair was active in the area and self-released their debut album on vinyl in 1977, *Relax, You’re Soaking In It*.  \n \nWhile Belair was trying to make a name for themselves, Guthman also created a side project called the Circle, featuring a large performance ensemble of singers doing chants and songs inspired by Native Americans. The band put out one cassette in 1980 called *In Search of Our native Roots.* Around this time, Guthman began working steadily as a music teacher in Tiburon and San Anselmo.\n \nIn 1983, Belair had runs its course and Guthman headed south to the hippie enclave of Ojai. He wasted little time finding work as a bassist, joining a trio with Ken Dixon and Jim Petrarca, a straight-ahead jazz group that played often at the Biltmore Hotel in Montecito. With drummer Ken Dixon at the helm, the trio played shows with jazz icons including Jimmy Smith and Red Holloway. They would eventually go on to release two cassettes of their live shows.\n \nIn Ojai, Guthman met a local named [Seabury Gould](/seabury-gould) who was a vocalist and flute player who worked as a music teacher at Happy Valley School and the Montessori School. Gould was in the process of leaving Happy Valley School and recommended Guthman as his successor to the school's director. Guthman recalls that he sealed the deal when the director caught a live show with Kenny Dixon: \"Afterwards, I remember hearing him say, 'that's the guy. I want that guy'.\" At Happy Valley, Guthman created a music department and taught folk, rock, blues and jazz to groups of ninth to twelfth graders, sometimes even playing his own compositions. (To show their appreciation for his work, Happy Valley--now Besant Hill-- later named a new music building after Guthman). \n \nTogether with Gould, Guthman produced one of his most noteworthy albums in 1985 as a site-specific soundtrack for his friend Zubin Levy. Levy was known to many locals for a performance space he'd built at his house in Ojai called \"Infinite Crystal.\" The landscape was thick with trees and foliage, dotted with nature trails and environmental art installations. \"Zubin was a visionary,\" Guthman said. \"He built a dome that had mirrors on it. You'd be inside the dome and different lighting would come on and the walls would change color. It was a healing environment and he wanted me to create a soundtrack for it.\" The result was *Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Crystal Forest in Ojai, Ca.*, cassettes of which Levy sold on site. \n \nAs if he wasn't busy enough, Guthman revived his old Acoustic Medicine group as a live ensemble, though without Kellogg. The group included Alan Sternik, Karen Sternik (his future wife), Shari Bernstein Garn, Clay Warry, George Howard, Donald Funk, Robert Greenway, Nancy Goddard and others.  This group served as a vehicle for Guthman's songs, which were mostly in the singer/songwriter mold, with some jazz influences. Acoustic Medicine put out one cassette in 1985 (*Uplifting the World*) and one in 1988 (*Prayers Go Out*). Guthman also revived the Circle in 1988 for a cassette that revisited the Native-American inspiration from the previous album. \n\nIn 1986, Guthman joined up with an old friend from Sonoma State, [Kip Setchko](/kip-kevin-setchko) to form a new project called Crystal Wind. Back in 1980, Guthman had played on Setchko’s folky debut, *Born to Sing* and the two stayed in touch. Setchko was coming off his most successful cassette yet called *Cloud Etchings*, and Crystal Wind was quickly signed to Higher Octave, a well-funded new age label at the time. The nucleus of the band was Setchko, Guthman, Paul Rodriguez, and Robin Zickel, and the sound was a commercial mix of new age and smooth jazz with a debt to the Paul Winter consort, Andreas Vollenveider and Shadowfax. The albums sold well, and the band toured all over the U.S. for five years playing university and colleges. Their first release *Inner Traveler* sold 30,000 copies and the 1990 follow-up *Cafe Tropique* sold 20,000.\n\nAfter that band split up, Guthman remained in Ojai. He continued to teach, play live jazz and earn occasional work scoring for documentaries for TV. In 1999, he released *Tower in the Mist* on CD, featuring his most meditative work since*Crystal Chimes* in 1985. In 2005, after living three years in Europe with his wife, Karen and two daughters Roxann and Kaya, Guthman moved to Sebastapol where he continues to play professionally and chair the music department at Credo High School.","discography":{"acoustic-medicine":{"albums":{"prayers-go-out":{"image":"","label":"Acoustic Medicine Productions","review":"","title":"Prayers Go Out","year":"1988"},"return-of-the-circle":{"image":"","label":"Acoustic Medicine Productions","review":"","title":"Return of the Circle","year":"1988"},"uplifting-the-world":{"image":"","label":"Acoustic Medicine Productions","review":"","title":"Uplifing the World","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Acoustic Medicine","entry_number":3},"eddie-guthman-and-zubin-levy":{"albums":{"crystal-chimes-in-the-enchanted-crystal-forest-of-ojai-ca":{"image":"","label":"Acoustic Medicine Productions","review":"Long sought after by tape collectors, *Crystal Chimes* is a quintessential example of a site-specific new age album. The one-off project was produced by Eddie Guthman with help from friends [Seabury Gould](/seabury-gould) and Brock Travis. The cassette-only release was commissioned by Zubin Levy, a local artist who had a performance space at his house that he called Infinite Crystal. The musicians recorded the music on site, surrounded by forests, trails and environmental art, interweaving the sounds of acoustic instruments as they communed with various birds, insects, and frogs providing additional accompaniment.\n\nSide A has an evening ambiance, with crickets singing and frogs gurgling while wind chimes softly fade in. The music is atmospheric, with each player leaving plenty of room, like jazz soloists taking turns after the opening theme.  Each brings a unique sensibility, with Gould’s bamboo flute providing harmonically complex, eastern overtones while Travis reels off abstract, impressionistic harp lines. Guthman serves as an anchor, creating a backdrop of tinkling wind chimes and recurring motifs on bowed double bass. \n\nSide B is similar, but with an early morning mood.  Chirping birds and a gently flowing stream signify a new day (and a new jam), with Guthman adding a strolling guitar part that keeps the minimal melody lines from floating away.  The recording throughout is excellent, with a dreamy effect imparted through a mix that allows equal billing from the landscape, as well as a subtly shifting mix where flute and harp come into focus and then recede into the distant forest.  For me, this tape is a classic, with a magical quality that is all too rare in the world of free-improv new age.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Crystal Forest of Ojai, CA","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Eddie Guthman and Zubin Levy (w/ Seabury Gould and Brock Travis)","entry_number":2},"the-circle":{"albums":{"in-search-of-our-native-roots":{"image":"","label":"Acoustic Medicine Productions","review":"","title":"In Search of Our Native Roots","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"The Circle","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":112,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Eddie-Guthman-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f9419d06-d9a8-4014-913c-aa621d518197","last_name":"Guthman"},"ej-gold":{"artist_name":"EJ Gold","body":"EJ (Eugene Jeffrey) Gold is a self-described \"hi-tech shaman\", musician, and writer based in Grass Valley, CA. Influenced by GI Gurdjeff, the Human Potential Movement and Sufism, he spent much of the '70s writing books about self-improvement and spiritual philosophy, with *The Western Book of the Dead* (1975) emerging as his best-selling title. Gold's first musical work was 1971's *Epitaph for an Ego*, an album of solo piano pieces recorded under a pseudonym and meant for Sufi dervish dancing. By 1984, he began putting out albums more regularly under the name EJ Gold, often three or four per year. This stream of cassettes, all sold via his Gateways imprint, typically feature free-form experimental jams with Gold's discursive synth lines accompanied by standard funk, samba, or jazz beats. On other albums, he explored mystical soundscapes (*Beyond the Veil*), free jazz (*Alto Sax Zarathustra*) and Baroque music (*Live At the Philharmonic*). Gold performed with various bands like the Jeff Spencer Trio and Zaphod and the New Harmonics through the '80s and '90s, issuing many cassettes with both of those groups (not included in the discography below) in addition to his voluminous solo material. Much of it can be heard on his Bandcamp page [here](https://faxlmusic.bandcamp.com/).\n\nBorn in New York City in 1941, EJ Gold was the son of Harold Gold, a famous science fiction magazine editor. EJ recalled growing up among famous musicians, filmmakers and writers as a teen and then attending the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles where he studied painting and sculpture. In the mid-'60s, he landed a job as a photographer at Columbia/Screen Gems, taking photos of the bands like Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders for magazines like *Tiger Beat*. He later got a gig working as a photographer for RCA where he met Harry Nilsson who ended up being a lifelong friend.\n\nIn the early '70s, Gold pivoted to writing and music. He founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of the Human Being with the goal of \"educating the universe, one idiot at a time.\" In 1971, Gold self-released the Gurdjeff-influenced *Epitaph for the Ego*, composing solo piano pieces performed by Brad Newsom. Featuring a drawing of a guru character on the cover, Gold was already referring to himself as a \"Sufi Master\" in the liner notes, albeit a controversial one. Gold, who had access to the RCA studios via his photography work, recorded some other sessions from 1972-1974 that he didn't issue until almost 20 years later on cassette (*I Can Free You* in 1990 and *Pythagorean Harp and Harmonium Improvisations* in 1993).\n\nFor most of the '70s, Gold focused on his writing career, authoring titles such as *Tales of the Jewish Sufis* (1973), *The Western Book of the Dead* (1975), *Autobiography of a Sufi* (1977), and *Joyous Childbirth* (1977). Perhaps his most controversial book from the era was *Secret Talks with Mr. G* (1978) which Gold initially marketed as the unpublished work of Gurdjeff, even trying to look like him on the book cover. This earned him a [rebuke](https://gurdjiefflegacy.org/40articles/glitters.htm) at the time from some Gurdjeff/Fourth Way adherents to dub this book \"faux Fourth Way.\"\n\nBy the '80s, Gold was settled in the Sierra Mountains in the small town of Grass Valley. He founded Gateway Books to self-publish his works and began releasing a steady stream of cassettes. Primarily using a Yamaha DX7, he recorded experimental jazz, primitive space-funk, and mystical soundscapes that feature his idiosyncratic, amelodic style. According to Gold, some of his influences included Herbie Hancock, Bartok, John Cage, Moon Dog, and Yes. Nearly all his music was improvised and quality control took a back seat to self-expression, no matter how inscrutable.\n\nDespite the high volume of musical output, Gold dabbled in many, many other areas during his life. According to his website, he also worked in various capacities as a chef, animator, puppeteer, game developer, movie consultant, gold miner, and magician, to name just a few. He also retained a modest following as a writer and spiritual thinker, holding annual workshops in the Northern California area.","discography":{"ej-gold":{"albums":{"adventures":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Adventures of the Hi-Tech Shaman","year":"1985"},"alto":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Alto Sax Zarathusra","year":"1992"},"bardo-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Bardo Dreams","year":"1985"},"beyond-the-veil":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Beyond the Veil","year":"1985"},"blue-smoke":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Blue Smoke","year":"1984"},"childhood's end":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Childhood's End","year":"1989"},"children-of-the-night":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Children of the Night","year":"1994"},"dance-of":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Dance of the Hi-Tech Shaman","year":"1984"},"fourth-dawn":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Fourth Dawn","year":"1989"},"golden-age":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Golden Age","year":"1988"},"i-can-free-you":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"I Can Free You [Archival]","year":"1990"},"live":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Live at the Philharmonic I-III","year":"1989"},"mystical":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Mystical Journey of the Hi-Tech Shaman","year":"1988"},"night-blooming-jazzman":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Night Blooming Jazzman","year":"1985"},"private-reserve":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Private Reserve","year":"1985"},"pythagorean":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Pythagorean Harp and Harmonium Improvisations [Archival]","year":"1993"},"rates-of-passage":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Rates of Passage","year":"1984"},"ritual-of-the-cave":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Ritual of the Cave","year":"1989"},"school-days":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"School Days","year":"1989"},"spacing-out":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Spacing Out","year":"1989"},"superjam":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Superjam","year":"1992"},"the-drone":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"The Drone","year":"1992"},"venus":{"image":"","label":"Gatweways","review":"","title":"Venus Rising","year":"1984"},"visions":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Visions in the Stone","year":"1990"},"way-beyond-the-veil":{"image":"","label":"Gateways","review":"","title":"Way Beyond the Veil","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"EJ Gold","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":357,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ejphoto.jpeg?alt=media&token=02147a48-9548-469f-b81b-c90cac891c20","last_name":"Gold"},"elevation-express-aiki-domo":{"artist_name":"Elevation Express/Aiki Domo","body":"Mysterious and private, Carl Oehlman never used his real name for any of his various electronic and new age projects in the '80s. His first cassettes were recorded under the name Elevation Express before switching to Aiki Domo for some nature-inspired ambient albums, billing himself as a musician from Japan. Oehlman's wife Julianne (\"Jewel\") Hill often joined him on these projects, playing synths and drum machine in addition to running their label Mirror Image. Oehlman was also a visual artist (his desert-inspired acrylic painting can be seen on the *Vista* tape cover) and a writer. He authored his first book in 1984 under the name C. Elliot Hilton (*Life Control, Life Enhancement*) and later went by Jon Peniel. Some of these books include *The Lost Teachings of Atlantis* and *Ancient Atlantean Teachings and My Personal Experiences with Aliens and UFOs.*\n\nBorn in 1950, Carl Oehlman grew up in Louisiana and California. He claimed to have spent time at a monastery in Tibet in his late teens on a spiritual quest to [\"get free from the pain of life\"](https://youtu.be/oeNKsCQhHS4?t=264). After returning to the US, he studied psychology at UCLA for a while but his concerns were ultimately not academic. He practiced martial arts, ate vegetarian food, and spent time at various communes on the West Coast, including the Source Family commune, led by Father Yod. He is the guitarist credited as Zoroaster on some Father Yod albums such as *Contraction* (1974).\n\nOehlman was an excellent guitarist and he befriended Georgie Hormel in Los Angeles who owned the popular Village Recorders studio. Oehlman often got work playing on sessions at the studio with musicians including Elton John, Chaka Khan, and Stevie Wonder. According to Hill, Hormel once described Oehlman as \"looking like Jesus – blue eyes, beard, carrying a guitar and no shoes.\" Oehlman refused to be credited for his session work, though it wasn't especially common to credit studio musicians at that time anyway. Even when he played on stage, which was not often, he would bribe the crew to keep the lights off him. According to Hill, this was rooted in a Buddhist-like quest for humility. \n\nIn the late '70s, Oehlman met Jewel Hill in Denver, Colorado and the couple soon relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. They recorded two electronic albums at a local studio, using the name Elevation Express, and released them on their own label Mirror Image. Next, Oehlman recorded some albums under the name Aiki Domo, apparently borrowed from the phrase \"Domo Arigato\" in the Styx song \"Mr. Roboto\". These albums were more serene and nature-inspired, such as *Sunrise Walk Along a Tahitian Seashore* which included one section with harpist Kim Robertson. To repay the favor of her guest appearance on his album, Oehlman provided the art on Robertson's cassette *Moonrise* in 1984. \n\nAccording to Hill, the couple got their cassettes duplicated at Liv Singh Khalsa's duplication facility but didn't realize until years later that he was also selling copies under his own label Invincible, and not paying them. Oehlman had even recorded an album with Khalsa called *Vista*, with the latter adopting a bizarre pseudonym: Hans Wolfgang-Von-Heldenleben. However, once Oehlman and Hill found out he was selling versions of their tapes directly to distributors without their knowledge, the couple severed ties with him.\n\nBy the mid-'80s, Oehlman was getting some local recognition for his art, especially for some pieces commemorating Halley's Comet. His music took a backseat for a while, though he and Hill issued a few more albums during the decade including the *Tibetan Transformation Trilogy* and some classical interpretations for one of their least-known albums, *Vintage Classics*, using the alias Domo.\n\nOehlman used different pen names for his spiritual books, the first of which appeared in 1984. He later adopted the name Jon Peniel and wrote about an ancient spiritual order he called \"Children of the Law of One.\" (He did some interviews in 1998 which can be found on YouTube). According to Oehlman's son Aedan, Oehlman suffered from many health issues throughout his life and passed away in 2006. Hill has recently started a website to sell their back catalog and is also a vocalist in a Pink Floyd tribute band.\n","discography":{"aiki-domo":{"albums":{"sunrise-walk":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"Similar to his earlier album *Twilight Walk Along a Creek*, this album is an audio travelogue that winds through various musical scenery but this time with a bit more variation. In addition to the mood-setting ocean waves and bird calls, the listener encounters some jaunty synth tunes, a drum circle, Kim Robertson on the harp, and an inspirational choir to cap it off. The second side features the same journey but with nature sounds only, no music. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Sunrise Walk Along a Tahitian Seashore","year":"1985"},"twilight-walk":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"Turning away from the synth pop sound of Elevation Express, Carl Oelhman’s first release as Aiki Domo is a new age sound-walk that evokes images of hiking a trail beside a flowing stream, with sounds of footsteps and Domo’s faint synth pieces wafting in from some distant campground. Combining field recordings and music was not exactly a new concept by this time (Wendy Carlos's *Sonic Seasonings* and Ernest Hood’s *Neighborhoods* were 8-10 years earlier), but the idea of simulating a nature walk was still very fresh and unique at the time. Domo’s sequel would go on to be a bigger seller, but this is just as compelling, if a bit more subtle overall.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Twilight Walk Along a Creek","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Aiki Domo","entry_number":2},"aiki-domo-and-elevation-express":{"albums":{"tibetan":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"","title":"The Tibetan Transformation Trilogy","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Aiki Domo and Elevation Express","entry_number":4},"aki-domo-and-hans":{"albums":{"vista":{"image":"","label":"Invincible","review":"Meant to evoke the vast power of nature, *Vista* features four stately ambient pieces with a warm, brassy sound. Both artists play synth. For some reason, Invicible label boss Liv Singh Khalsa adopts a pseudonym here as \"European synthesist\" Hans Wolfgang Von-Heldenleben. Domo is also a pseudonym, though that was not unique to this album. Perhaps the ruse worked because this sold pretty well for the label. However, this has less personality and charm than Aiki Domo’s other material, sounding more like [Mark Isham](/mark-isham) at his most subdued or perhaps *Angelic Music* by [Iasos](/iasos). Not bad, but a bit generic.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Vista","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Aki Domo and Hans Wolfgang Von-Heldenleben","entry_number":3},"domo":{"albums":{"vintage-classics":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"","title":"Vintage Classics","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Domo","entry_number":5},"elevation-express":{"albums":{"going-up":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"","title":"Going Up?","year":"1984"},"homecoming":{"image":"","label":"Mirror Image","review":"","title":"Homecoming","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Elevation Express","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":365,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/carl-and-jewell-640.jpg?alt=media&token=28f71803-fc44-4915-8f26-ae2a6091b180","last_name":"Elevation Express/Aiki Domo"},"ellen-crystall":{"artist_name":"Ellen Crystall","body":"Ellen Crystall was a musician and writer with an enduring interest in UFO's that she documented in a popular book called *Silent Invasion* in 1991. She claimed to first encounter aliens in her early twenties, going on to record over 1,000 sightings in her lifetime. She was also a classically trained musician with a Ph.D. from New York University. Between 1986 and 1988 she recorded six synthesizer albums with the help of her friend [Chris Wyman](/chris-wyman), though the tapes were seldom heard outside of her native New Jersey and are rarely seen these days. Crystall died of pancreatic cancer in 2002.\n\nEllen Crystall was born in 1950 and grew up in New Milford, New Jersey. Her father was a manufacturing supervisor and her mother was an elementary teacher.  Ellen had two younger sisters, Sandy and Lisa. \"My sisters were hippies,\" Lisa remembers. \"I remember Ellen took my sister to the airport when the Beatles landed at JFK. She had posters of rock bands in her room and she just loved music. She played flute in the high school band and guitar too, but that was later on. She used to tell me I was adopted.\"\n\nIn addition to music, Crystall also loved fashion and art. She learned to draw as a child, creating realistic portraits in pencil of the Beatles and the Stones. After high school, she attended the Traphagen School of Fashion for two years and took classes at FIT as well. She worked some part time retail jobs at Bonwit Teller and Gimbels in Manhattan, but she ultimately decided to go back to school and focus on music. She first earned a Bachelors in Music at Rutgers and then went on to get an MA in music at Montclair State University. Starting in 1979, she began registering her compositions for copyrights, such as \"Life Plays a Game\" in 1979 and an intriguing demo tape called *Crystall’s Five Unheard Hits of 1982*.\n\nWhen she was 21, Crystall saw her first alien. \"The being had a very large head and a rust-color stretch-knit jump suit,\" Crystall [told](http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Clippings/0%20-%20Master/1980s/1987%2010%2027_New%20York%20Times_AFU%20scan_CFI%20archive_keyword%20UFO.pdf) the New York Times in 1987. \"I said, 'Oh my God, they have stretch knit fabric!\" Crystall and other UFO enthusiasts in the area gravitated to each other, and they would take regular trips to Pine Bush, New York, a hotspot for paranormal activity.\n\nCrystall remained living at home with her parents while she continued her ongoing education and worked as an office temp. \"I couldn't understand how someone so smart couldn't connect dots to be independent,\" Lisa said. \"But for whatever reason she couldn't live the same life I did, having a regular job.\"\n\nCrystall's interest in music and UFO's intersected perfectly with space music, which was starting to become more popular in New Jersey by 1984. Crystall discovered the radio show Synthetic Pleasure which was broadcast on WFMU, and she became friends with Don Slepian who'd had an underground hit with his tape *Sea of Bliss* a few years earlier. The two became friends and recorded a music video together in 1984, and then Slepian introduced Crystall to Chris Wyman, another synth player closer to her home of New Milford. Crystall and Wyman began to get together for jam sessions that Wyman recorded.\n\n\"I remember that at the beginning of one of the sessions she started going wild about a UFO encounter she had had the night before,\" Wyman recalled. \"That was the first time I was aware of her enthusiasm about the planet supposedly being invaded by aliens.\"\n\nCrystall would channel her interest in aliens and outer space into many of her improvisational recordings, starting with her tape *Shooting Stars and Halley’s Comet* which she released in 1986. This began a flurry of activity that ultimately yielded six albums in a three-year span. One of her tapes, *Space Junk After the War* included co-billing with Wyman and was played on Synthetic Pleasure at the time, delighting Crystall. Wyman helped Crystall make professional covers for her tapes, and she made all the dubs by hand at home.\n\nBy 1988, Crystall seemed to lose momentum with electronic music, releasing her final tape *Cosmic Laws*. By this time, she was starting to get more interested in acting, and she enrolled in theater and acting classes. She got a headshot made and spent much of the next decade appearing as an extra in TV shows like *Law and Order* and films such as *City Slickers*, *Private Parts*, and *Men in Black*.\n\nCrystall's biggest success would ultimately come from her book about UFOs. By this time, she had amassed thousands of photos and some videos of suspected alien spacecrafts, and she assembled a book of her experiences called *Silent Invasion: The Shocking Discoveries of a UFO Researcher*. It was first published by Paragon House in 1992 and sales were robust. Suddenly, hundreds of people started flocking to Pine Bush to hunt for UFO's alongside her. Crystall appeared on talk shows to discuss her sightings, and at least one of her TV appearances can still be found on YouTube [here]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjnO2M2BAzM). Over time, the interest in Pine Bush started to create a party atmosphere there at night which Crystall reportedly didn't like.\n\nIn the late '80s, Crystall started attending NYU to get her PhD in music, though according to her sister Sandy she didn't graduate until the mid-'90s. At that point, Crystall finally got her first steady job, teaching high school music in Patterson, New Jersey. However, she hated the experience and later thought the stress contributed to her getting cancer. \"It started with a pain in her sternum,\" Lisa said. \"By the time she went to the hospital she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was devastating. We just weren't prepared for that.\" Ellen Crystall died a year later in 2002.\n\nAfter her death, Crystall was memorialized by some of her fellow sky watchers, such as \"C.B.\" who wrote an informative [tribute](https://web.archive.org/web/20031030094052/http://www.pinebushufo.com/pinebushpage25.htm\n) about her lasting influence in the UFO community.\n\nSources:\n* Author interviews with Chris Wyman, 11/10/19\n* Author interview with Sandy Crystall, 12/3/19\n* Author interviews with Lisa Crystall, 9/18/20\n* Winerip, Michael, \"UFO Stakeout: A Polite Request to Land in the Rain,\" *The New York Times*, October 27, 1987","discography":{"ellen-crystall":{"albums":{"1-shooting-stars-and-halley's-comet":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"With titles like “Voices of God,\" \"Alien Energy\" and \"Touch of Death,\" you can tell this is not your garden-variety synth album. No, Crystall’s music is a deeply personal and highly visual trip into sci-fi-inspired sounds that cast a creepy and mysterious spell throughout, perfect for sighting UFOs or pondering crop circles. Whether its the cacophonous “Invasion,” or \"Venus,\" with its mix of high-pitched tones and eerie string synth melodies, this is abstract and challenging music with few concessions to commercial appeal.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Shooting Stars and Halley's Comet","year":"1986"},"2-on-man":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"With *On Man*, Crystall revisits the eerie atmosphere of her debut while beginning to introduce new hues to her palette, such as the pastoral ambience of album standout \"Sumerian Hymn\" or the new age elements of \"Rescue from Sabu Mountain\". Overall, though, her sound remains closest to the brooding and atmospheric '80s synth soundtracks of John Carpenter and Howard Shore, but infused with themes of religion, mythology, and the supernatural.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"On Man","year":"1986"},"chamber-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Chamber Music* is a transitional release between the sci-fi paranoia of early albums with the ethno/new age moods of later fare. The album alternates between the two styles, with tracks like \"Spring Storms\" and \"Before We Love\" sounding airy and calm, more like Aeoliah than a soundtrack to a John Carpenter film. But on other tracks, she retains her supernatural edge, like the frantic and gurgling “Magic Power” propelled on 8 bit drum sounds, or the warped techno of \"Living on the Edge.\" Most memorably, Crystall starts off the track \"Visitors\" with a 2-minute field recording of herself and friends freaking out as they react to UFO sightings in Pine Bush, New Jersey. It's a reminder that at heart, Crystall remains a watcher of the skies, whether cloudy or clear.","title":"Chamber Music","year":"1987"},"cosmic-laws":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The best of her late-period work, Crystall fully synthesizes the new age and tribal influences from *Of Mountains and Sky* into her most mature and palatable work. Like *Mountains*, the run times are generous, with only four songs across 60 minutes. Opener \"Sunakumara\" charges forward on a series of tribal beats and organ vamps with spirited flute leads, traveling both on land and underground. \"David’s Energy Web\" percolates with extra-terrestrial ambience. \"Pyrananda,\" at 25 minutes, lords over side two, with a tribal beat, chiming synth lines, and a progressive electronic section a la T. Dream. Album closer \"The Sirius Connection* is a nostalgic bliss-out with fuzzy synth clouds and analog leads that curl like smoke rings. Good stuff!\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Cosmic Laws","year":"1988"},"of-mountains-and-sky":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Of Mountains and Sky","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Ellen Crystall","entry_number":1},"ellen-crystall-and-chris-wyman":{"albums":{"space-junk-after-the-war":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Space Junk After the War","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Ellen Crystall and Chris Wyman","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":200,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ellen-Crystall-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1bd8f251-5020-4533-bc46-f5f719d9fb30","last_name":"Crystall"},"emerald-web":{"artist_name":"Emerald Web","body":"Formed by husband-and-wife Bob Stohl and Kat Epple, Emerald Web released 11 albums in their successful career as soundtrack composers and new age musicians. The couple first met at the University of South Florida, where they bonded over a love of psychedelia and spirituality.  While there, they discovered synthesizers which became a key element of their sound in addition to the flute, which they both played. During the band's '80s heyday, they were based in Berkeley, California, though they relocated to Florida in 1989, just before Stohl's tragic death in 1990. Their final album came out on Ruby McFarland's short-lived Scarlet label, but Epple continued to record under her own name in the '90s and beyond, sometimes with the artist Robert Rauschenberg who she befriended at a Florida party.\n\nBorn in 1952, Epple grew up in the Appalachia region. She started piano lessons early, learning how to sight-read at the age of six. \"I heard a lot of bluegrass as a child,\" Epple recalls. \"My grandmother would take me to old-timey churches and they'd have these songfests. When I saw bluegrass church musicians improvising, I thought 'Yeah that's what I want to do.' But bluegrass wasn't my style so I started writing my own songs.\" Epple's father died when she was young, and the family moved to Florida in 1968. \"We loved the natural beauty of what Florida was back then,\" Epple recalled.  Four years later, Epple enrolled in college at the University of South Florida and it wasn't long before she met her key musical partner and future husband Bob Stohl. He was two years younger, born in California and raised in the Chicago area.\n\n\"I had just arrived at college and knew no one,\" Epple said. \"I went outside to sit under a tree and play my flute. Bob heard me playing and he came over, sat down quietly and pulled his flute out and started playing with me. At the time, I had my eyes closed. I first heard it and thought, 'This could be terrible.' Flutes have to be in tune and in sync or it can sound terrible. But it sounded so wonderful out under the tree. We thought, 'Oh this is a beautiful moment.' We opened our eyes and all around people are applauding. We didn't realize probably 40 people had gathered in a circle around us to hear and witness this.\"\n\nAt college, the two became interested in synthesizers, studying at Larry Austin's electronic music studio SYCOM (Systems Complex for the Performing Arts). \"They had a big modular Moog and a Buchla,\" Epple said. \"I was attracted to synthesizers because I always loved orchestral music, but I wanted to be the whole orchestra.\" As they began composing together, the duo drew on a diverse set of influences including Pink Floyd, Debussy, John Cage, Vangelis, and sci-fi novels. During this time, they met another student named Barry Cleveland who shared some of the same influences. He opened for one of their shows at the time, and they would later reconnect in California.\n\nIn 1975, the couple moved briefly to Connecticut where Stohl's parents lived before spending some time at a mansion in Upstate New York. By this time, they had acquired their own synthesizers: Stohl got a Mini-Moog and Epple bought an Arp 2600. They played occasionally at a place called the Shaboo Inn, but most venues were uninterested in a synth band. However, the couple did find lucrative session work in Manhattan, programming synths or playing the Lyricon. \"We would bring in a synth and program a simple square wave so a keyboardist could play a melodic lead,\" Epple recalled.\n\nThe couple recorded their first album in 1977 and 1978. \"This was before there was a new age market,\" Epple recalled. \"Bob and I both were into the psychedelic scene and spirituality. That first album was based on Ursula Le Guin's *Earthsea* trilogy and Tolkien.\" They decided on the name Emerald Web shortly before the album's release, which came out on their own label, Stargate.\n\nEmerald Web leaned into their atmospheric, ambient side on their second album *Whispered Visions*, codifying their signature sound of atmospheric synths and mystical flute solos. Unlike the debut, it was released on cassette, originally by Aquarian Media Services, a small company run by two hippies who lived on a farm in Missouri. This tape attracted the attention of Ethan Edgecomb, who'd started one Fortuna as an early new age distribution company, selling cassettes out of his car trunk to metaphysical bookstores and crystal shops. \"Bob and I were packing up cassettes to send to Ethan and we said, 'We might as well move there to be closer,'\" Epple said. \"It was spur of the moment. We had 244 dollars and thought - that's gotta be enough to move to San Francisco.\"\n\nThe couple found a house in Berkeley, setting up a studio of wall-to-wall synths and drum machines in a room with large windows that looked out onto lush greenery. The couple next put out the spacey *Sound Trek*, followed by one of their all-time bestsellers, *Valley of the Birds*. When Edgecomb saw how well it was selling, he signed Emerald Web to his Fortuna label for two albums, the languid and quiet *Nocturne* and the more sprightly, progressive *Light of the Ivory Plains*. By this time, the duo was one of the more popular new age acts, collaborating with [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern) and their old friend [Barry Cleveland](/barry-cleveland). Their work was favorably reviewed in underground newsletters and magazines, as well as in more mainstream publications like *Electronic Musician*. Robert Carlberg, who reviewed several of their releases there, summed up their music as \"somewhat saccharine but heartfelt New Age phantasmagorias.\"\n\nEmerald Web next moved to Larry Fast's short-lived but widely distributed Audion label for *Catspaw*. This release showed them embracing a more commercial sound and higher production values. By this time they were starting to get commissions for film scores and their pace of output slowed down. In 1989, Stohl and Epple moved to Florida. They'd just gotten an advance from Ruby McFarland who'd split with Eckart Rahn and formed her own label Scarlet Records. Epple and Stohl figured the money would go further in Florida and planned to spend some time there. Not long after they arrived, they met artist Robert Rauschenberg at a party and hit it off during an impromptu jam session. This led to the release of an album featuring themselves plus Lawrence Voytek called *Strategic Structures* in 1989 (it was reissued recently).\n\nThe following year, after they had finished their album for Scarlet, Stohl unexpectedly died from an embolism while swimming laps in the pool. McFarland released *Manatee Dreams of Neptune* after Stohls' death, but her label did not last long and the album is now scarce. Epple continued to make music in the '90s and beyond, producing film soundtracks, recording under her own name, and often contributing to albums by Devin Townsend.\n\nLooking back on the heyday of new age, Epple said, \"The corporations kind of bought us out. Before they came along, those of us that originated the genre were making a living by producing our own product and selling it. The distributors were all independents. We were our own people doing our own art. But there came a time when corporations and big labels saw that we were making money and that changed the whole genre when they commercialized it.\"\n\nRecently, Emerald Web has found a new audience with younger listeners and tape collectors. The labels Finders Keepers reissued some of the early Emerald Web albums and a compilation called [*The Stargate Tapes*](https://finderskeepersrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-stargate-tapes), while Trading Places reissued *Valley of the Birds* in 2020.\n","discography":{"emerald-web":{"albums":{"1-whispered-visions":{"image":"","label":"Aquarian Media Services","review":"On their second album, Emerald Web begins to codify their sound, dropping the vocals and concentrating on atmospheric mood pieces that float on dreamy synths, string ensembles, and wistful flute melodies. Opener \"Ice Caves\" provides the template they'd explore for the next 4-5 years, a sound that is at once sci-fi and romantic. But the album also shows a band still in transition, trying out some experimental sounds on tracks like \"Doppler Bells\" and the multi-part \"Air Smith,\" plus a diversion into soft-rock on \"Mistress Ship.\" A few tracks feature special guests, which help to deepen the band’s trademark sound, with Jonn Serrie adding his unique synth style to the live track \"Stargate\" while vibes player Ben Carriel helps elevate \"Air Smith\" to one of the album's high points. The album reprises a few tracks from the debut, such as \"Dawn\" and the dramatic \"Loosing of the Shadow\" which features a ripping Lyricon solo.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2022)","title":"Whispered Visions","year":"1980"},"aqua-regia":{"image":"","label":"Stargate","review":"Kat and Bob concentrate on synthesizers here instead of the flute/synthesizer meditation music for which they are known. Some great tones result, a little darker than usual but still beautiful. In places it sounds more like Michael Gilbert than Web. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1982)","title":"Aqua Regia","year":"1982"},"catspaw":{"image":"","label":"Audion","review":"Emerald Web showcases a new clarity in their sound with *Catspaw*. Bob and Kat's usual flair for ethereal drama is intact, but now in enhanced by digital synths and computer sequencing. Opener \"Fog\" sets the stage with a tense, two-chord ping pong that resolves into a shimmering flute duet. The songs that follow ease into a nostalgic mood, conjuring the grandeur and mystery of the ancient past.\n\nSide two opener \"Time Particles\" begins with the same gauzy romance of \"Fog\", but then shifts into an ostinato pattern with bell-tones and a whimsical melody. \"Open Passage\" is a longtime favorite, a [Mark Isham](https://ultravillage.com/mark-isham)-like thinkpiece that combines creative percussion and a catchy, ever-shifting melody. It's a perfect soundtrack for reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica circa 1987.  Also unique is Bob's shredding guitar solo on album closer \"Soft Silence the City\" - mixed so low that it becomes just another texture among the assortment of bagpipe siren calls and harp arpeggios. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Catspaw","year":"1986"},"dragon-wings":{"image":"","label":"Stargate","review":"","title":"Dragon Wings and Wizard Tales","year":"1979"},"dreamspun":{"image":"","label":"Stargate","review":"","title":"Dreamspun","year":"1989"},"light-of-the-ivory-plains":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Light of the Ivory Plains","year":"1984"},"manatee-dreams-of-neptune":{"image":"","label":"Scarlet","review":"","title":"Manatee Dreams of Neptune","year":"1990"},"nocturne":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Flutes, digital synthesizers, and electronic birds & crickets in slow mournful suites. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1984)","title":"Nocturne","year":"1983"},"sound-trek":{"image":"","label":"BobKat Productions","review":"Probably Emerald Web’s spaciest album, *Sound Trek* shows the couple in command of their analog synths, creating swirling electronic mood-pieces that glide like a comet through the night sky. Epic ten minute tracks like  \"Beyond the Towers\" and \"Stellar Wonderer\" are highlights, but the whole album is a strong example of their  signature fantasy/sci-fi sound which seems to have one foot in the distant past and the other in some far-off future. The album closer features an ethereal piece with wordless vocals, a rare treat in their catalog outside their debut.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2022)","title":"Sound Trek","year":"1980"},"valley-of-the-birds":{"image":"","label":"Stargate","review":"","title":"Valley of the Birds","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"emerald-web-jay-scott-neale":{"albums":{"love-unfolding":{"image":"","label":"Star Gate","review":"","title":"Love Unfolding","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Jay Scot Neale and Emerald Web","entry_number":2},"robert-rauchenberg":{"albums":{"comet-kansas":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Strategic Structures","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Robert Rauschenberg, Kat Epple, Bob Stohl, and Lawrence Voytek","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":60,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/emerald.jpg?alt=media&token=98269dec-ea80-4e8b-8132-da5b7e7e2a62","image_credit":"Dan Drasin","last_name":"Emerald Web"},"eric-denton":{"artist_name":"Eric Denton","body":"Eric Denton was the keyboardist for the Monroes, a San Diego power pop band whose song \"What Do All the People Know\" charted at #59 in 1982. The band toured to support the single, but their Japanese label, Alfa, canceled their planned expansion into the US market, leaving them without a label to capitalize on their initial success.  For his part, Denton already had plenty to keep him busy at home, as he owned Guitar Trader, an instrument store, plus he was a part owner of Accusound, the studio where the Monroes first met and recorded their EP. Denton's foray into new age came about through [William Aura](/william-aura), who introduced Denton to the style and enlisted him to play synths on all his albums from 1983 to 1987 such as *Paradise*, *Dreamer*, and *Half Moon Bay*. During this period, Aura returned the favor to appear on Denton's lone new age release *Arrival*.","discography":{"eric-denton":{"albums":{"arrival":{"image":"","label":"Music Power","review":"On this release, Eric teams up with William Aura, a main squees of new age, with results that are not at all surprising. The music is airy, relaxing, and even lush at times, although it never lapses into clutter. In places it achieves a logical hybrid feel of new age and light jazz. The musicianship is very competent and the production is excellent (digital mixdown with some instruments recorded direct to digital in the process). As a showcase of digital sample, its samples are proficiently captured and executed, particularly the trumpet. However the music is a cohesive blend that also uses a host of non-sampling electronic and even an acoustic moment or two.\n\n([Michael Chocolak](/michael-chocholak), *Option*, July/August 1987)","title":"Arrival","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":346,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/eric-denton-642.jpeg?alt=media&token=62ae0c6c-db77-40f2-bee8-b3300b68e75a","last_name":"Denton"},"eric-muhs":{"artist_name":"Eric Muhs","body":"An experimental guitarist based in Santa Cruz and Seattle, Eric Muhs released a bounty of tapes in various styles starting with *Alligator Wrestling* in 1985. His debut earned excellent reviews and he was a critical darling in the underground press in the second half of the '80s. Much of his early music was made with an elaborate tape loop mechanism that he built with some input from the like-minded [Paul Dresher](/Paul-dresher). Muhs was both prolific and diverse, trying his hand at ambient, tape collage, experimental rock, and abstract soundscapes throughout his career; he also loved to collaborate with others in bands such as Mata Rata, Invisible Wilbur, and Ant & Bee.\n\nEric Muhs was born in 1958 and grew up near Philadelphia. In his teen years he attended boarding school in Delaware where he got into music and taught himself to play bass. Some of his early influences were country rock and LA singer/songwriters, but by the late '70s he was trying out new sounds including punk rock. \"I remember I went with some friends to see The Ramones. I thought it was stupid. It didn't grab me at all,\" Muhs said. \"Then I saw XTC and that changed my world.\"\n\nMuhs attended college at Cornell for a year but wasn't happy, so he headed to the west coast with just a backpack and a guitar. He ended up in Seattle in 1977, attending college at the University of Washington. He began meeting musicians in the budding new wave and punk scene. \"By 1979, I met some really interesting creative people and started going to shows,\" Muhs recalled. \"There was a lot of stuff happening in Seattle at the time. Friends and I got together on Saturday night and a lot of us lived in group houses: artists, musicians, dancers, writers. We'd plug microphones into a cassette deck and record live.\"\n\nMuhs graduated with a degree in Nutrition Science in 1981 and suddenly found himself with more free time. The first summer he played in an art punk band called Student Nurse and then the next year joined Audio Leter with Sue Ann Harkey and Sharon Gannon. \"I was always interested in making my own musical instruments and they recruited me because I made an instrument on a fruit crate with a string, played by a Tinkertoy attached to a motor on a dimmer switch,\" Muhs said. \"We called it the 'thumper,' from the *Dune* novels. It was perfect for Audio Leter.\"\n\nDuring his time in Seattle, Muhs worked at a collective café for a few years and then started to get work as a student teacher in 1984. However, by that time Audio Leter had relocated to New York and Muhs decided to move to Santa Cruz, California. There he got into teaching middle school and high school science full time.\n\nDisconnected from Seattle's sprawling band scene, Muhs began recording music on his own. \"I had just moved from Seattle to Santa Cruz and it was a much smaller music pond to swim in. It was clear that if I was going to keep doing music it was not going to be the relentless performing in clubs that I had been doing in Seattle--it would be recording music and releasing it. I just got a 4 track reel to reel a year before and the first tape I put out was *Alligator Wrestling* in 1985. I modified a 4 track and could do 16-20 second loops, a one man band kind of thing.\"\n\nMuhs got an amazing review in *Option* for his debut, with writer Dino DiMuro calling it \"one of the most satisfying independent tapes I've ever received,\" prompting an inquiry from a rep at Windham Hill (though nothing came from that).  Muhs followed up his debut with another loop-based work called *Ring of Tape* and then *Imprint* which was culled from earlier ambient material, including live recordings of soundtracks for dance performances. Muhs duped all the tapes himself and made each one to order. He traded tapes with fellow musicians he found in the pages of underground magazines, and formed a close bond with Don Campau who had a radio show on KKUP in nearby Cupertino and he sometimes featured Muhs' music on his program.\n\nThrough Campau, Muhs met R. Michael Torrey, a Miami transplant who was also a part of the cassette underground. Torrey made solo tapes under the name [Galibar Louis](/galibar-louis), but he also collaborated with Muhs in two bands, Mata Rata and Ant & Bee. \"We used tape loops, anything we could think of that would make sound,\" Torrey said. \"We did a lot of vocal stuff too, with us reading kid's books. The band name Ant and Bee actually came from a children's alphabet book from the '40s.\"\n\nMuhs moved to Seattle in 1991 and continued to make self-released tapes and CD's regularly into the present. He has experimented with a wide variety of styles, though he generally favors atmospheric or ambient pieces, odd vocals samples, and often using loops as a basis for compositions. In some of his collaborations he tested the boundaries of his sound, such as the math-jazz wonkery of his  Brilliant Pebbles project with Charles Laurel in 1991. Muhs is known for his homemade musical instruments such as a mag-alloy wheel rim spun by a motor for doppler shifted clangs, a robotic harp, and other computerized devices. \n\nMuhs currently lives in Seattle and has uploaded a lot of his music, old and new, to his [website](http://www.invisiblemoose.net/music.html). He plays regularly in an acoustic traditional Hawaiian band, Na Hilahila Boys. His most recent release was *Frontera Dogs*, a collaboration with his longtime partner, poet Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs. He also started a community radio station KBFG that went live in 2018.","discography":{"Eric-Muhs-and-Charles-Laurel":{"albums":{"brilliant-pebbles":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Brilliant Pebbles","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Eric Muhs and Charles Laurel","entry_number":8},"Eric-Muhs-and-Deran-Ludd":{"albums":{"carnage-motel":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Carnage Motel","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Eric Muhs and Deran Ludd","entry_number":9},"ant-and-bee":{"albums":{"ant-and-bee":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Ant and Bee","year":"1987"},"more-ant-and-bee":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"A crisply recorded collaboration with piles of sped up/mixed up vocals, guitar, keyboards, violin, assorted percussion, even kazoos and lots of household objects sprinkled in for good measure. Weird! Songs with simple underlying structures smashed to bits and taped back together. Rich with layers of casual noodling. Very unlike Muhs' solo work, this sounds more like a stretching exercise than a collection of completed works, although it is an interesting exercise.\n\n(Bret Hart, *Option*, March/April 1988)\n","title":"More Ant and Bee","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Ant and Bee","entry_number":3},"blubber":{"albums":{"grows-down":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Grows Down","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Blubber","entry_number":7},"eric-muhs":{"albums":{"24-hours":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"24 Hours","year":"1993"},"alligator-wrestling":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Simple, yet hauntingly beautiful electronic melodies set against steady, unobtrusive rhythms. Eric C. Muhs is the synthesist here, and his expertly produced tape boasts some of the nicest echo/synth guitar I have heard in eons, interweaving perfectly with occasional chanted vocals and Muhs' own synthesizer. For sheer depth and variety, *Alligator Wrestling* is miles ahead of most  1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 electronic molasses: I never had the feeling Muhs was sitting back and letting his machines or riffs do the work. Even his inclusion of Billy Graham makes the evangelist seem wise and reassuring, negating the usual cliched reaction (this may not have been Muhs' intent but it reflects favorably on his upbeat, spacy backing track). One of the most satisfying independent tapes I've ever received.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option* May/June, 1986)","title":"Alligator Wrestling","year":"1985"},"boy-in-wuhan-reads-while-tending-buffalo":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"What more praise can be heaped upon the ever-diverse E. Muhs that has not already been heaped? Very apt guitar multi-tracking and tape loop excursions (\"Sinking in Your Eyes\", \"Sweat and Smooth as Sand\"). Strangely atmospheric and dangerous romps through silk crates and microscopic locations teeming with ugly things (\"Jupiter Winds,\" \"Fires\"), clever and cleanly executed examples of bands he has been associated with (Flavor People doing \"We Like to go to Bed and Sleep\" VXT doing \"Nightmare,\" Invisible Wilbur doing \"Life is Calling\"). Eric does amphetamine guitars, bass, lyrics, synth, drum programming, sampling and just about everything else with verve.\n\n(Bret Hart, *Sound Choice* #9, 1987)","title":"Boy in Wuhan Reads While Tending Buffalo","year":"1986"},"electric-zebra":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"*Electric Zebra* shows Muhs further exploring his loop-based sound to include Talking Heads-like grooves, as well as more ominous pieces somewhere between [Prescott](/david-prescott) and [Greinke](/jeff-greinke). None of the tracks have titles, but the first and final pieces serve as strong bookends, with Muhs delivering fuzzed out, gliding guitar solos over catchy loops that sound like a home-taper version of Krautrock.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Electric Zebra","year":"1987"},"imprint":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Imprint","year":"1986"},"lies-and-truth-and-truth-and-lies":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Lies and Truth & Truth and Lies","year":"1989"},"machine-language":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Machine Language","year":"1991"},"ring-of-tape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Began with experiments in Frippertronics (regenerative tape loops) and led to this masterpiece in instrumental environmentalism. Gorgeous like a series of paintings, very strange. Except for animal sounds in \"Pet Tricks\" all sounds are done live. Electric guitar, Casio, tennis racquet guitar, Humanatone nose flute, finger cymbals, toy flute, Roland Sh-101, sound effects tapes, oil funnel, voice, Mexican Jews harp, Eric's Stomach.\n\n(Robin James, *Sound Choice* #6, Jan/Feb, 1987)","title":"Ring of Tape","year":"1985"},"swooploop":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Swooploop","year":"1987"},"talk-is-cheap":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Talk is Cheap","year":"1997"},"the-green-hills-of-earth":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"The Green Hills of Earth/Gentlemen, Be Seated","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Eric Muhs","entry_number":1},"eric-muhs-and-don-campau":{"albums":{"interference":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Interference","year":"1997"}},"artist_name":"Eric Muhs and Don Campau","entry_number":10},"eric-muhs-and-myles-boisen":{"albums":{"notochord":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Notochord: An Electronic Wonderland","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Eric Muhs and Myles Boisen","entry_number":6},"flavor-people":{"albums":{"go-there":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Go There","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Flavor People","entry_number":4},"invisible-wilbur":{"albums":{"infinite-invisibility":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"A great sampling of simple electronic sounds mixed with rhythm patterns that don't get caught in the way. Upon first listen, I found this tape to be too much to comprehend because of the many layers of sounds—there is too much to listen for. It takes a few plays of this tape to hear all its parts, and then you can piece together the whole picture.  Muhs' use of the synthesizer is adult, professional and anything but stale.\n\n(Michael J. Laszuk, *Sound Choice* #9, 1987)","title":"Infinite Invisibility","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Invisible Wilbur","entry_number":2},"mata-rata":{"albums":{"comet-kansas":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Comet Kansas","year":"1990"},"don't-think-little-of-me":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Don't Think Little of Me","year":"1987"},"horns-and-tales-set":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"Horns and Tales Set","year":"1988"},"king-of-panama":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"King of Panama","year":"1989"},"the-howling-truth":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Music","review":"","title":"The Howling Truth","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Mata Rata","entry_number":5}},"entry_number":146,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Eric-Muhs-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=630327d1-cf10-4d4d-a947-b775676b6c1d","last_name":"Muhs"},"erik-berglund":{"artist_name":"Erik Berglund","body":"One of the more well-known new age harpists, Erik Berglund was based in New York City when he released his debut album *Beauty* produced by [Aeoliah](/aeoliah). He would eventually relocate to Mount Shasta, California in 1991 where he recorded more albums on Aeoliah's Helios label and some for his own Elarian Unlimited. Over the course of a 30 year career, Berglund toured worldwide to promote his message of musical healing.\n\nErik Berglund was born in 1948 and grew up in Northfield, Minnesota just outside Minneapolis. He had two brothers and an older sister. His parents were both musical – his mother was a singer and choir director and his father Donald led the orchestra at St. Olaf College. Berglund was naturally drawn to music too, singing in the school choir and playing the violin. He was also an actor, performing as the lead in various theater productions during his youth.\n\nAfter graduating college in 1970, Berglund moved to New York where he became a partner in a puppet theater, working as a writer and performer. He also acted in off-Broadway shows. Music remained a big part of his life as well. In addition to playing in a folk-rock band, he played violin in his father's orchestra and sang in choirs and Renaissance Festivals.\n\nAround 1980, Berglund began studying the harp with Mildred Dilling and it gradually became his primary instrument. He went on to play at weddings, art openings and other events. He was also getting more interested in mediation, and played his harp for mediation groups and workshops. At a conference in Canada, he met new age musician Aeoliah who invited him to record an album. The result was Berglund's first album *Beauty*, recorded and produced by Aeoliah at his studio in Mount Shasta, California. Aeoliah helped him get it released on Sona Gaia, Aeoliah's label at the time. The album sold fairly well and helped to kick-start a long career for Berglund in the new age scene.\n\nBerglund's next release was a guided mediation tape with [Jon Shore](/jon-shore) called *Developing Intuition*, followed by his breakout album, *Angelic Harp Music* again recorded and produced by Aeoliah. Advertised as \"a devotional offering to the angelic realms,\" the album showed Berglund's thematic interest in angels, which marked much of his subsequent work. \n\nBy the end of the decade, Berglund decided to leave New York and dedicate his life to healing. According to an archived [article](https://web.archive.org/web/20010513204004/http://www.erikberglund.com/reviews/articles.html) on his now defunct website, \"his first reported healing was something he stumbled upon while on a trip to the Andes Mountains in Venezuela in June, 1989. A person he met there asked Berglund to help him with a physical affliction. 'I said, 'I can't do anything, but let's ask God and we'll see what he can do,' he said. Three months later, the group paid Berglund's way back to Venezuela for what Berglund thought was a harp concert, but to his amazement, found a crowd lined up outside his door, including doctors and lawyers, wanting to be healed.\"\n\nBerglund would eventually settle in Mount Shasta, California in 1991. There he continued to work as a musical healer, often working with clients suffering from trauma. He also hosted the Mount Shasta Millennium, a gathering of light workers, and developed various healing workshops. His first two albums of the decade were again popular, with the all original *Angel Beauty* being a favorite of many reviewers, such as Ken Gruen in *New Frontier* who called it \"one of the best and most beautiful new releases of 1993.\"\n\nWhile Berglund continued to release CD's into the ensuing decades, putting out his final CD in 2009. He toured worldwide, playing in Canada, Europe, and South America. Berglund passed away in 2013 of cancer. He was working on an album at the time but it was never released. He was 65 years old.","discography":{"erik-berglund":{"albums":{"angel-beauty":{"image":"","label":"Elarian Unlimited","review":"","title":"Angel Beauty","year":"1992"},"angelic-harp-music":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Angelic Harp Music","year":"1988"},"beauty":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"We humans can see beauty in almost everything, but it's hard to find a more soothing, flowing musical example of the concept. Wrought with delicate, clear notes of the Irish harp, this solo album is at times both simple and complex, and always quiet, slow and sweet.\n\nThe first song, \"Little Fountain,\" shows each individual drop of water in its descent, then lets us stand back and see the whole, lovely spray. \"Beloved\" is a tender song with one repetitive theme that develops naturally and gracefully, like love in the spring. In \"Angel Wings,\" one can almost feel the rush of air against the face, and fragile pinions brushing the arms. Almost sad, yet at the same time warm and lovely, it touches the heart. On the other side \"Diamond Dance\" has delicate and lively moments, and others are deep and sweeping, like sunlight in the pines. \"Lord Come and Heal the World\" is a very moving song full of the wish for peace, and a quiet, trusting hope.\n\n*Beauty* is undemanding, and makes good background music for relaxation when under stress and also for helping you descend into the realm of sleep. Recommended.\n\n(Esther Park, *Heartsong Review* No. 6, Spring/Summer 1989)","title":"Beauty","year":"1985"},"elysium":{"image":"","label":"Oriade","review":"","title":"Elysium","year":"1994"},"harp-of-the-healing-waters":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Harp of the Healing Waters","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"erik-berglund-christopher-hausman":{"albums":{"project-earth":{"image":"","label":"Helios","review":"","title":"Project Earth","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Erik Berglund and Christopher Hausman","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":209,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Erik-Berglund-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=426a37d1-32f9-4450-9896-b1f78cddd235","last_name":"Berglund"},"erling-wold":{"artist_name":"Erling Wold","body":"With a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley, Wold came to music with a different sensibility than most, as evidenced by early solo releases that show an analytical and eclectic take on contemporary minimalism. Prior to that, Wold spent time in the sprawling avant-garde band Name that counted Henry Kaiser as a member. Wold founded his own label Spooky Pooch to release an album by Name, as well as an album by his group Duncan Trio, with all members playing the Yamaha DX-7.  In the '90s, Wold began producing large-scale musical theater works such as *A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil*.\n\nA California native, Wold was born in Burbank and raised by a Lutheran minister. Wold, who called himself a \"geeky kid,\" attended Caltech for college where he studied math and engineering. However, one day, a guest musician came to school to teach Indian music and that inspired him to take music classes at nearby Occidental college. \"I almost dropped out and became a music major, but I ended up studying both,\" Wold said.\n\nWold completed his BS in Electrical Engineering at Caltech and then moved to Berkeley in 1978 for graduate school.  After a few years, he got involved with a Bay Area art-rock band called Name, a moniker that surely confused listeners. Made up of old friends from his high school that had relocated to Northern California, the band included Bob Adams, Lynn Murdock, Everett Shock, Rick Crawford, and Mark Crawford. They all lived together in a house in Berkeley.\n\nOne day in the early '80s, local station KALX was playing one of their songs on the air, and guitarist Henry Kaiser happened to tune in during that time. He loved the song and drove over to their house with his friend Fred Frith to meet them. Soon Kaiser was in the band too. \"We were like little kids and we were amazed that these people had shown up,\" Wold said. \"He pleaded with us to be in the band.\" Name gigged pretty regularly around San Francisco for the next few years, striking a theatrical pose onstage with all the members in costume. For some shows, they backed vocalist Diamanda Galas. After the band recorded some tracks, Wold and Shock decided to start a label called Spooky Pooch to release it.\n\nShortly after Name's debut, Wold released an album by a new side project called Duncan Trio which featured Richard Crawford and Lynn Murdock (who he married in 1983). \"The Yamaha DX-7 had just come out and I thought it was great,\" Wold said. \"I scraped together my pennies and bought one. I wrote some music, not really rock. It was supposed to be new music stuff. Like everybody, I was into John Adams. Einstein on the Beach also had a big impact on me. I wrote some basic things and the three of us decided to do this together.\" Wold pressed 500 copies of the LP and sold it through distributors like NMDS in New York and the reception was good enough that he printed another 500 copies.\n\nIn the mid-'80s, Wold went to Stanford to study computer music which he'd been investigating a few years prior. With his interest in both music and computers, it was a natural fit. At the same time, he was starting to teach himself to play the Synclavier, a state-of-the-art sampling synth that also incorporated a computer. Using the Synclavier that Kaiser owned Wold recorded his first solo album *Music of Love*. He issued the album on CD and again sold about a thousand copies. Wold followed that up with another album in 1990. Both albums were eclectic takes on minimalism, with a crisp digital sound.\n\nAfter earning his doctorate from the University of California Berkeley, Wold got a job at Yamaha for a few years until he left to co-found Muscle Fish in 1992. There he wrote audio plugins and music platforms like Mixman. Wold stayed busy with his music as well, producing soundtracks and other commissioned works. He played on Faust's *Rien* album and formed his own ensemble to produce musical theater works. His first production was *A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil* in 1995, and it was well-received. One of Wold's inspirations for the ensemble was Paul Dresher, so it was fitting that Dresher went on to release a CD of the opera later on his MinMax label.\n\nWold continues to produce dramatic works, most recently *Rattensturm*, a war opera commissioned by the Klagenfurter Ensemble, and *UKSUS* based on the life of Daniil Kharms. Wold's website can be found [here](http://www.erlingwold.com/about.html).","discography":{"duncan-trio":{"albums":{"baron-ochs":{"image":"","label":"Spooky Pooch","review":"","title":"Baron Ochs","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Duncan Trio","entry_number":1},"erling-wold":{"albums":{"i-weep":{"image":"","label":"Spooky Pooch","review":"","title":"I Weep","year":"1990"},"music-of-love":{"image":"","label":"Spooky Pooch","review":"","title":"Music of Love","year":"1988"},"the-bed-you-sleep-in":{"image":"","label":"Table of the Elements","review":"","title":"The Bed You Sleep In","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Erling Wold","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":227,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/erling-wold-640.jpg?alt=media&token=24091cd2-157b-44e7-9128-e2e998ca4e9a","last_name":"Wold"},"ernest-hood":{"artist_name":"Ernest Hood","body":"Ernest Hood was a painter, musician, and radio host with a passion for regional history and using art to create a sense of place. This sensibility helped forge a proto-ambient classic in *Neighborhoods*, his 1975 album that was pressed in a small edition of a few hundred copies. Despite its humble origins, the album has risen in status in the five decades since, helped along by a reissue on Freedom to Spend in 2019.\n\nHood was born in North Carolina in 1923. He moved to Portland, Oregon during his childhood and would spend the rest of his life in the area. He came from a musical family; his mother sang on the radio and his brother Bill went on to work as a session musician with artists like Shorty Rogers, Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie. Hood gravitated to guitar in his teens and by the early 1940s was gigging as a jazz guitarist in Portland. This period culminated in a 1945 tour with the Charlie Barnet Big Band that made it all the way to New York with plans for a world tour. \n\nHowever, a year later, Hood contracted polio and spent an anguished year in an iron lung.  “I think the only reason I got out of the iron lung was because I was so mad and yelled so loud that my lungs were finally able to take over so I could breathe on my own,” he later recalled. Hood would regain some mobility by using leg braces or a wheelchair, but he was never able to play guitar the same. Instead, he took up the zither.\n\nHood remained committed to jazz, starting to perform again in the mid-fifties and helping to found Portland’s first jazz club. He worked as an arranger for the Oregon Symphony’s pops concerts and produced some local TV shows. He also played with a local band called the Zephyrs. \n\nOne early experience that proved influential to his later work was a stint as the coordinator for the Oregon Centennial in 1959. This would spark an interest in regional history, later leading him to create audio tours of places like a local general store. In the late '60s, Hood co-founded a freeform station called WBOO and began hosting variety of radio programs such as one called *Radio Days*. His shows included a mix of big band music, narration, and field recordings taken from his trips around Oregon. According to writer Michael Klausman, his shows featured “cleverly edited soundscapes combining rapturous nature with the already faded remnants of Western Americana — journeys for which even a housebound or disabled listener might experience a bit of the wider world via frequencies drifting over waves of air.”\n\nBy the early ‘70s, Hood finally released some music under his own name, a curious single on A&M that included two short instrumentals. A few years later, Hood partnered with vocalist Flora Purim, co-writing the song “Mountain Train” and contributing zither to her first two studio albums.\n\nIn 1975, Hood released *Neighborhoods*, creating snapshots of neighborhood life with field recordings from general stores and street scenes of Portland alongside instrumentals built up with layers of zithers, a Roland SH-3 and Crumer Orchestrator. He released the album on his own Thistlefield label, a name he had already been using to distribute cassette copies of his radio shows to seniors and for printing projects like greeting cards. However, according to his son Tom, Hood mainly gave away copies of *Neighborhoods* and didn’t actively market the release or seek broader distribution.\n\nHood continued to document Oregon through sound and record additional music into the 80s, but he never released any new material until the posthumous release of *Back to the Woodlands* in 1982 which various recordings from this period. By the early ‘90s, Hood’s health was deteriorating due to post-polio syndrome which weakened his muscles and lungs. After Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act in 1994, Hood became one of the early patients of the state. He died in the hospital surrounded by family in 1995.\n\nSources: \n- Crouch, Chad. *Ernest Hood: A Short Biography* [Retrieved [here](https://chadcrouch.substack.com/p/ernest-hood-a-short-biography)]\n- Klausman, Michael. *Neighborhoods* liner notes (Freedom to Spend, 2019)","discography":{"ernest-hood":{"albums":{"neighborhoods":{"image":"","label":"Thistlefield","review":"","title":"Neighborhoods","year":"1975"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":450,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ernest-hood-zither-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=7b713f5b-aef9-4729-a0d4-94d79835ecdb","last_name":"Hood"},"ernest-woodall":{"artist_name":"Ernest Woodall","body":"Ernest Woodall (born 1959) is a musician from Long Island, NY who founded the indie cassette label Daystar with [Tony Garone](/tony-garone) to release their music. Woodall started playing guitar at ten and was influenced by prog rock, 20th-century minimalism, and jazz, going on to study music more seriously at the Five Towns College of Music and Berklee School of Music in Boston, MA. Woodall partnered with Garone in the trio Loomings and released seven solo albums on cassette during the label’s heyday. They put some promotion behind the label, advertising frequently in underground magazines like Fact Sheet Five, earning reviews for some of the tapes, including *Albert’s Warning* and *House of Stairs*. While Woodall primarily worked as a house painter, he also got some work in the ‘90s scoring music for independent films and received two Meet the Composer grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. ","discography":{"ernest-woodall":{"albums":{"abstract-paragraph":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Abstract Paragraph","year":"1995"},"alberts-warning":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Albert's Warning","year":"1988"},"dirty-water":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Dirty Water","year":"1990"},"haute-monde":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Haute-Monde","year":"1987"},"house-of-stairs":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"House of Stairs","year":"1988"},"mad-man":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Mad Man of 1st Avenue","year":"1991"},"three-worlds":{"image":"","label":"Daystar","review":"","title":"Three Worlds","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"E. Woodall","entry_number":2},"loomings":{"albums":{"loomings":{"image":"","label":"Daystar Records","review":"","title":"Loomings","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Loomings","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":443,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ernest-woodall-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=2728f5fc-2c29-4f19-a9bf-a135182f28b5","last_name":"Woodall"},"forrest-fang":{"artist_name":"Forrest Fang","body":"Despite a busy career as a lawyer, Forrest Fang (pictured far right above) has been able to make a name for himself as an ambient composer with an experimental edge. Over a forty-year period, Fang self-released five solo albums on his own Ominous Thud label before moving to Cuneiform Records and then Projekt Records to release ten more. His initial influences were minimalism and progressive rock, but he later drew from Chinese classical music and Indonesian gamelan as well. His fourth album *The Wolf at the Ruins* was his biggest success of the '80s, selling out of its first pressing.  Fang is still active, most recently releasing *The Fata Morgana Dream* in 2019.\n\nFang was born in 1959 and raised in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. He performed well in high school and was a member of the debate team. He had adventurous musical tastes early on, listening to progressive rock like Klaus Schulze and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. His love of progressive music led to an interest in modern classical music as well, especially Aaron Copland and Bela Bartok after reading that they were big influences on Keith Emerson. Fang began attempting to make music of his own, tinkering with his father’s reel-to-reel decks to create experimental tape loops.\n\nStarting in 1977, Fang attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in political science. He also took music classes there, studying composition with Roland Jordan and refining his tape loop technique, by then a standard component of modern classical music. Fang sometimes recorded in the electronic music lab at the school, and much of that material ended up on his first album. \"Universities were still big proponents of more dissonant styles at that time,\" Fang said. \"I studied twelve-tone music, but didn't adopt it.  My earlier music was more progressive and folk-oriented. I became interested in fiddle music through one of my political science teachers. One piece on the album was inspired by Fred Frith’s abstract guitar solos.\"\n\nAfter graduating in 1980, Fang put out his first album *Blackboard Jungle* in an edition of 200 copies on vinyl. A friend's band called the Janitors had released a record on their own and Fang realized he could do the same. He considered cassettes, but as Fang said, \"Albums were more real. I was always playing albums, not tapes. I thought the music would present itself best in the LP format.\" An art student friend of Fang’s designed the cover, which consisted of stickers on the front and back of a plain white sleeve. Fang sent it out to indie distributors, including Greenworld manager Archie Patterson, who added it to the company's mail order catalog and reviewed it for his Eurock magazine. The album wasn't heard by many, but did receive some positive notice in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine.\n\nFang then entered law school at Northwestern in Chicago. During one of his brief moments of down time, he released a second album, *Some Brighter Stars* in 1982. That album had been recorded primarily during Fang's last few months at the University.  Unlike his debut album, which was about 80% notated, this album was more improvisational. \"I made that album by drawing on hours of tape delay recordings,\" Fang said. \"I'd start with a loop and improvise. Once I ended up with something that sounded interesting, I'd create a little bed of sound and add instruments on top.\" For the release, Fang pressed 300 copies and again sent it out to potential distributors and small indie magazines. Overall, the record was a more refined effort than his debut, with Fang mostly leaving his prog-rock past behind and focusing on more ambient textures. Mykel Board reviewed the album in Op and hilariously said that it sounded like \"Glenn Branca, but turned down a whole lot...a great album to listen to after a hard day at a punk club.\"\n\nBefore graduating, Fang started work on his third album. He started it while still in school in the Midwest, and completed it after moving to San Francisco in 1983--hence the title, *Migration*. Parts of the album were recorded in Chicago, some in Moline with Jack Schrage (of the electronic group River Musik Werks), and some in San Francisco. Fang wasn't sure he was going to continue on as a musician, and the album took several years to complete. \"In 1986, I had a 'what the hell' moment and decided to put out *Migration*,\" Fang said. \"It didn't sell out of the 1000 copies I had made, but I was satisfied with how it turned out.\"\n\nFang was more fond of his next album, 1989's *The Wolf at the Ruins.* Before recording that one, he had been studying the gu-zheng, a type of Chinese zither, with Zhang Yan, a master musician from mainland China. Fang's parents were both Chinese, and he was interested in studying Chinese classical music and possibly incorporating those elements into his own work. The gu-zheng is featured on the first track \"Windmill\" from *The Wolf at the Ruins*, signaling a departure from his earlier work. \"That album wasn’t as strictly minimalist [as the other records],\" Fang said. \"My older influences like Jade Warrior or Popol Vuh were better integrated into the music. At one point, I was working on two albums. One was going to be pure ambient and the other would be more world-influenced. But at some point, the two projects merged together.\"\n \n*The Wolf at the Ruins* earned positive reviews and Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space played the song \"Silent Fields\" on his influential radio show, then syndicated in hundreds of markets across the US. Even though the song was ambient, and fit the show's style well, Fang remarked that the song was never intended to be simply relaxing music, but instead something more subtly political. Nevertheless, getting airtime on Hill's show opened him up to new distributors such as Backroads. The album sold out of its first pressing of 1000 copies (it was later reissued in 2013).\n\nFang's next album was *World Diary*, released in 1992. It was similar to its predecessor, but more exploratory. The album sold reasonably well, but Fang felt like he was done with running a label and possibly, with music. However, two of his new friends helped inspire him to keep going. After the release of *World Diary,* Fang was introduced to the musicians Steve Roach and Robert Rich, both of which had established successful careers in ambient music.  Fang began collaborating with them, and appeared on Rich's 1994 album, *Propagation,* playing violin on \"Guilin.\" Rich would soon return the favor.\n\nWhen Fang put together the music of 1995's *Folklore* he decided to find a label to release it. The album had a strong gamelan influence and featured appearances from Rich and Roach, as well as from musicians from China, Tibet and Bali, including Fang's gu-zheng teacher.  Cuneiform ended up releasing the album.  They had a previous relationship distributing Fang's albums through Wayside. The album was reviewed widely, in places such as Billboard and the Wire, with the latter calling it \"exceptional.\"\n\nFang followed up *Folklore* with *The Blind Messenger* in 1997. \"I discovered fractal music and was interested in the relationship of self-similar fractals to nature. It was an experimental album. It was recorded after my gu-zheng teacher had passed away. I thought it would be my last album, so I decided to take the music a little further 'out' than I ordinarily would. It did surprisingly well.\"\n\nIn 2000, Fang moved from San Francisco to Berkeley, where he has lived ever since. He also moved to a new label in the same year, putting out *Gongland* on Sam Rosenthal's Project label. Fang seemed to finally stop thinking about quitting music as he went on to release many new albums with Projekt, as well as reissuing both *Migration* and *The Wolf at the Ruins*. Projekt recently released his 16th album, *The Fata Morgana Dream*. ","discography":{"forrest-fang":{"albums":{"amazon-night":{"image":"","label":"Ominous Thud","review":"","title":"Some Brighter Stars","year":"1982"},"india":{"image":"","label":"Ominous Thud","review":"Forrest Fang has released quite an eclectic mix of electronic music that boasts a wide range of influences and styles. Basically, all of the music falls under the rubric of Minimalist, in its broadest sense, yet the variety is considerable. Fang's accomplishment is admirable. His music is influenced by a wide number of composers and styles, filtered through his personal approach. The piano writing of \"Through a Glass Landing' is influenced by more recent works by Reich, such as *Octet* while \"White Fences\" hints at Durutti Column. \"Koshi\" and \"Peru,\" as their titles imply, have an exotic feel, with a pseudo-oriental plucked string in the former and zither-like sounds in the latter. Other works are more electronically oriented, some with gently droning washes of sound, other more colorful and activated. There is some very fine music captured in the grooves of this record.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, *Sound Choice*, 1987)","title":"Migration","year":"1986"},"latindia":{"image":"","label":"Ominous Thud","review":"","title":"Music from the Blackboard Jungle","year":"1980"},"meditation":{"image":"","label":"Ominous Thud","review":"","title":"World Diary","year":"1992"},"parallel-universe":{"image":"","label":"Ominous Thud","review":"","title":"The Wolf at the Ruins","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":98,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Forrest-Fang-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d5953909-7cb4-49b1-8921-4f383d466490","last_name":"Fang"},"fred-becker":{"artist_name":"Fred Becker","body":"So many electronic musicians have tried to imagine space travel through music; Fred Becker got one step closer and actually worked at NASA for decades. During the '80s, Becker released two cassettes, *Asterism* and *Inner, Stellar*, with the latter earning strong reviews. Becker even quit his job for a few years to try music full-time. That didn't quite pan out, but he continued to play electronic music on his own and with groups including Enterphase and Conduits.\n \nFred Becker was born in 1956 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He grew up as an obsessive music fan, first getting into progressive rock bands like Yes and the Moody Blues and then later into early electronic music by Wendy Carlos, Kraftwerk and Hawkwind. By the time he started studying engineering at Rose-Hulman College in 1974, he was spending nearly all his money on records. \"It was a disconnect for me being in Indiana,\" Becker said. \"I really wanted to be in Europe because of all the good music I was hearing from there. It inspired me to make music myself, and I started improvising on the school’s grand piano.\"\n \nBecker mostly played piano at first, though in 1975 he saw Francesco Lupica's musical invention, the \"Cosmic Beam,\" on the *Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder* and decided to build his own. He bought lumber, piano wire and pickups and put together his own instrument, recording new music in the vein of Tangerine Dream’s *Zeit*.\n \nAfter graduating college, Becker landed his dream job working for NASA as an aerospace engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He used some of his new money to buy a synthesizer, a Synergy digital synth with onboard recording.  Becker built a small home studio and began recording sporadically for the next few years, eventually putting together his first cassette *Asterism* in 1985, featuring the best of his earlier work. He got the cassette listed in the *Synthetic Pleasure* magazine and sold copies at his occasional live shows. Houston had a progressive station called KPFT at the time where Becker heard electronic acts like [Emerald Web](/emerald-web), and at one of their concerts he met [Tim Boone](/tim-boone), a like-minded musician from Dallas who had also recorded with [Jaxon Crow](/jaxon-crow). Boone and Becker soon formed a duo called Vector Unit that gigged occasionally in the Texas area. \n \nAfter a few more years of refining his craft, Becker was feeling more confident about his next album *Inner, Stellar* which came out on cassette in 1989. Becker originally composed the music for a lecture on space, but liked it enough to release it as an album. The cassette did well and Becker was inspired to quit his job and try to make music a full-time career. He hired a manager and released *Inner, Stellar* on CD, getting distribution through Eurock and selling about 1,100 copies.\n \nBecker spent the next few years working on music and playing live shows at colleges and other local events, including a show at Space Fest in Florida. There he met Jeff Filbert, a radio deejay who had a show called Global Village at the Florida Institute of Technology. They had an impromptu jam session and decided to work together, forming a duo called Enterphase. That band got signed to AD Music and ultimately released three CD's for the label.\n\nDuring Enterphase's run, it became clear to Becker that music was not going to be a lucrative career for him. Around 1996, he went back to work as an engineer for the space program, going on to many prestigious positions all over the U.S. (\"I'm a bit of a space gypsy,\" he said.) Becker still continued to record in his spare time, forming a new project with Dean De Benedictis in California called Conduits. More recently, Becker has begun making available music from his enormous back catalog of unreleased material on his Bandcamp [page](https://fredbecker.bandcamp.com). Becker currently lives in Florida.","discography":{"fred-becker":{"albums":{"asterism":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Asterism","year":"1985"},"inner-stellar":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Inner, Stellar","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":165,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Fred-Becker-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=59b29dba-8ead-465e-8d59-591bdd773979","last_name":"Becker"},"fred-simon":{"artist_name":"Fred Simon","body":"Fred Simon (right) is a distinctive composer who got his start with the Simon and Bard jazz fusion quartet in the early-'80s before moving into a more contemplative sound on a series of releases in the latter half of the decade. Recently, collectors have taken an interest in *Time and the River*, a collaboration with harpist Liz Cifani (left) on the short-lived Quaver label, one of many indies modeled after Windham Hill's big success with George Winston. While Quaver soon went under, Simon's album attracted the interest of the real Windham Hill and he moved there to release *Usually/Always* in 1988, followed by another one-off release on Columbia. Simon was in-demand as a session musician and accompanist for most of his career and is still active today.\n\nBorn in 1953, Simon grew up the eldest of three children in Chicago and in Evanston, Illinois. In fourth grade, his parents offered him music lessons and he jumped at the chance, playing cello and then moving to piano so he could compose music. His parents saw that he was serious and bought him a nice piano and his father took him to see jazz shows of now-legendary figures such as Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and McCoy Tyner. \n\nSimon went on to be a composition major in college at the University of Illinois. While there, he joined the school's big band and played some dance parties on the weekends. He also found work playing improvised piano along with dance classes which helped him go to school tuition-free. \n\nAfter college, Simon put together a fusion band with Michael Bard called Simon and Bard, with influences including Oregon, Pat Metheny, and Weather Report. The quartet landed a deal with Flying Fish Records who went on to put out three albums by them between 1980 and 1984. By Simon's estimate, each sold about 5 to 10,000 copies. However, Bard moved to Portland, Oregon in the early '80s and the band sputtered out despite trying to make it work long-distance for a brief period.\n\nAround the time that Simon and Bard were dissolving, Dave Baker approached Simon to record for his new label Quaver Records. Baker had seen Windham Hill achieve huge success with contemplative instrumental music and his Quaver label put a sort of Midwestern spin on the same concept.  Baker commissioned an album of Simon playing minimalist solo piano – what Simon has described as \"new age but more compositional.\" The result was *Short Story* which came out in 1984 and got some airplay on Hearts of Space. Baker contracted Simon for another album, this time hooking him up with harpist Liz Cifani who played with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The result was *Time and a River*. However, Baker's label struggled to stay afloat and went out of business in 1985, soon after the album's release.\n\nLuckily for Simon, an A&R rep from Windham Hill, Iain Matthews of Fairport Convention fame, heard *Time and the River* and asked him to rerecord the title track for a Windham Hill Sampler *Soul of the Machine*.  Simon went on to contribute tracks to other Windham Hill compilations and put out another album *Usually/Always* in 1988 under his own name. He also conributed to three other Windham Hill albums by Paul McCandless, Michael Manring, and Iain Matthews.  Simon would continue to work with McCandless throughout the '90s, appearing on two albums with him along with Teja Bell.\n\nSimon has continued to tour and work as a session musician in the ensuing decades. He put out an album of Beach Boys instrumentals in 1999, followed by a series of new works on the Naim label in the 2000s.  He currently lives in Chicago.","discography":{"fred-simon":{"albums":{"short-story":{"image":"","label":"Quaver","review":"","title":"Short Story","year":"1984"},"usually-always":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Usually/Always","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"fred-simon-liz-cifani":{"albums":{"time-and-the-river":{"image":"","label":"Quaver","review":"","title":"Time and the River","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Fred Simon and Liz Cifani","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":278,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/fred-simon-liz-cifani-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1f7b9b43-b85d-44a0-9379-ab2b3b8e1658","image_credit":"","last_name":"Simon"},"fred-wackenut":{"artist_name":"Fred Wackenhut","body":"Fred Wackenhut (1958-2016) was a pianist with wide-ranging music tastes including new wave, disco, fusion, jazz, and new age. Based in Philadelphia, Wackenhut's first major gig was touring with soul group Double Exposure, who had a big disco hit with \"Ten Percent\" in 1976. When he wasn't on the road, Wackenhut played on local sessions and had his own band called Wack Attack. According to friend Billy Kahn, the group's repertoire included material by Neil Larsen (known to yacht rock fans for his duo Larsen-Feiten), who was one of Wackenhut's musical idols. Kahn and Wackenhut had worked together on the track \"[24 Hour Love Affair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlfmo-0uGI)\" for a Budweiser song competition in the early '80s that ended up winning and was produced as a 45. (It is now sought after by disco aficionados). Wackenhut recorded *Oriana Twilight* as a one-off for Mu-Psych, playing piano, synth and Fender Rhodes. Like most of the releases on the Philadelphia label, it is now highly collectible and sought after. In the early '90s, Wackenhut married Patty Greer, a singer in one of his bands, and they moved to Illinois where he worked as a musical director at St. Mary's Church. Wackenhut died of a heart attack in 2016.","discography":{"fred-wackenhut":{"albums":{"orianna":{"image":"","label":"Mu-Psych","review":"","title":"Orianna Twilight","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":348,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/wack%20crop-2.jpg?alt=media&token=55da7684-bcc8-4f89-9c75-ed5c12ddd29a","last_name":"Wackenhut"},"funharm":{"artist_name":"Funharm","body":"Paul Ashby had a long and successful career in the indie distribution business, working as the import buyer for Tower for nine years before moving over to Revolver USA for an even longer tenure. He also had a short lived ambient/experimental music group called Funharm responsible for two cassettes in the mid '80s, but he eventually mothballed the project in the face of what he termed \"thundering silence\" from the general public.\n\nAshby was born in 1959 in Los Angeles and had two older brothers with great record collections. They introduced him to underground bands that would go on to be lifelong favorites like Todd Rundgren, Cluster, Brian Eno, and Roxy Music. Ashby's family moved to the suburbs of Chicago for his formative teen years, but returned to Los Angeles in 1980.  There Ashby began working at a record store in Long Beach called Music Plus, rising to become the store's import buyer. When some of the employees at Music Plus left to start Greenworld Distribution, Ashby jumped ship a couple years later and became a sales person there.\n\nDuring his early twenties, Ashby learned the ropes of indie music distribution, then providing a vital lifeline between zealous music fans and the more obscure music they craved.  At Greenworld, Ashby met like-minded music lovers such as Archie Patterson who ran the company's mail order business, Paradox, before leaving to found Eurock. Ashby remembers Patterson listening to cool, obscure imports like Torgue’s *Le Prince Apatride* in the warehouse at Greenworld. \"I was a sponge,\" Ashby said. \"I soaked it all up and made tapes for my friends. It was an exciting time.\"\n\nWhile he was at Greenworld, Ashby’s older brother, John, would sometimes lend him an Arp Solus synthesizer. He was enthralled with the instrument and started recording material with John and an old neighborhood friend named Steve Dobey. They would get stoned and record improvisationally, and Ashby compiled the best pieces for the first cassette. Titled *8.81 to 1.83*, the tape got short mentions in OP, Sound Choice and CLEM (Contact List of Electronic Music).\n\nAshby sold a few tapes from the press mentions, but he mostly traded copies (about 15 or so) with others like Richard Franecki from F/I. Meanwhile, Ashby continued to record new material that would form the basis of his next and final cassette *Segments.* It earned favorable mentions in Sound Choice and Option, but looking back, Ashby feels like his music never had a chance at wider recognition: \"It was music I enjoyed listening to, but I wasn't sure it would translate to somebody who wasn’t there when we recorded it. It was really self-indulgent. By necessity it was low fidelity. We used Radio Shack equipment and broken cassette decks so we could overdub.\"\n\nBy 1984, Ashby landed a job as the import buyer for Tower Records. He moved to Sacramento for the opportunity and has been based in Northern California ever since.  At the time, Tower placed a heavy emphasis on Japanese imports. Ashby, who'd become fascinated with Yellow Magic Orchestra and their solo artists while at Greenworld, worked to discover and stock a wider variety of underground rock, jazz, electronic, and ambient music from Japan with the help of Tower Japan head Keith Cahoon.\n\nHe borrowed money from his father to buy a Korg Poly 800 synth and continued to record more material on this own that was higher fidelity and more structured than before. However, Ashby lost the momentum to release his music and those tunes have remained in the vault ever since. Ashby did play briefly in a band in Davis called Shep's Faithful Head with artist Dave Muller. That band never released an album, but did manage to contribute a song to the 1987 compilation *Out Among the Cows* .\n\nAshby hosted a three hour radio show for Davis college radio station KDVS from 1984 until 1993. Every Saturday night he'd play a mix of alternative rock and imports, sometimes incorporating multiple turntables and sound collages from experimental bands like Negativland or Nurse with Wound. \n\nIn the early '90s, Ashby received a copy of Bananafish magazine via interoffice mail from Doug Biggert, who ran Tower Magazines' warehouse. Ashby was transfixed by the San Francisco magazine's bizarre, impressionistic coverage of the avant-garde music scene. In 1993, he decided to move to San Francisco where ultimately took a job at Revolver USA, an upstart independent music distributor. Ashby remained there for the next 24 years, working on marketing, distribution sales, IT, and digital distribution at various stages in his career. Ashby currently lives in Northern California.","discography":{"funharm":{"albums":{"8-81-to-1-83":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"8.81 to 1.83","year":"1983"},"segments":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Segments* is a C-90 filled with short pieces which have a spiritual affinity with Brian Eno's *Another Green World*. They say the tape is best in small doses, but I liked hearing the whole thing in one sitting too.\n\n(Tom Furgas, Sound Choice #1 1985)","title":"Segments","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":54,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Ashby.jpg?alt=media&token=70017977-bd6c-458b-b6ef-9d9a7a454a00","last_name":"Funharm"},"galibar-louis":{"artist_name":"Galibar Louis","body":"Galibar Louis was an alter ego used by Santa Cruz musician R. Michael Torrey for a series of ambient electronic recordings from 1986 to 1990. This was essentially a side project for him, as he also played in two experimental rock projects with Eric Muhs called Mata Rata and Ant & Bee that each released numerous cassettes. Additionally, he recorded under the pen name Statik Aktion for his more pop/rock oriented material.\n\nAlthough he was born with the first name Robert in 1953, Torrey has gone by Michael since he was a kid growing up in Rockland County, New York. Torrey's father worked as a mechanical engineer for Honeywell but Torrey was more of a creative kid, always involved in writing, art and music, often simultaneously. His first instrument was drums and in his teens he joined a local cover band. However, he wanted to write his own material so he switched to guitar. \"The way I learned is by writing songs,\" Torrey said. \"I couldn't motivate myself any other way.  I would learn a new chord and then write a song with that chord.\"\n\nAfter high school, Torrey enrolled in art school briefly, but dropped out and eventually moved to Miami in 1976. At that time Miami was awash in drugs and parties, and Torrey partook of it all. Along with his friend Mark Varian, Torrey put together a gigging hard rock band that played all originals and lasted for several years. At the same time, Torrey also wrote folkier singer/songwriter material. In 1979, he even won a radio contest for unsigned artists and got some free studio time to record some tracks.\n\nWhile living in Miami, Torrey worked for Allied Leisure, designing art for now obscure pinball machines like *Get Away*, *Eros 1* and *Circuit 37*. Although the company created the first solid state pinball machines, their innovations were soon co-opted by larger companies like Gottleib and they went bankrupt in 1980. This sent Torrey into a period of treading water for several years where he worked for a camera store and then moved back in with his parents.\n\nTorrey was ready for a fresh start by 1982, so he and Varian decided to move to Santa Cruz and get the band going again. However, once they got there, they had trouble finding the right rhythm section and eventually lost steam. Instead, Torrey found another promising collaborator in Eric Muhs who'd heard Torrey's music played on Don Campau's radio show on KKUP in Cupertino. Soon after, the two were trading tapes and jamming together.\n\nMuhs soon turned Torrey on to the cassette underground and magazines like Sound Choice and Option that covered it. The two of them formed two different musical projects in 1985, first Ant & Bee and then Mata Rata, the former with Charlie Laurel. \"We used tape loops, anything we could think of that would make sound,\" Torrey said. \"We did a lot of vocal stuff too, with us reading kid's books. The band name Ant and Bee actually came from a children's alphabet book from the '40s.\"\n\nWhile Torrey saw his bands with Muhs as his primary musical outlets at the time, he also was creating ambient instrumental experiments on the side. \"At the time, I was getting tapes by Jeff Greinke, Ken Clinger, and Michael Chocholak and I realized that I was not the only person doing experimental stuff,\" Torrey said. \"Eric Muhs also had a tape called *Imprint* that was ambient sounding. I heard all these and had been playing with my instruments, using tape loops, reverb, an echo machine...I could get lost playing with that stuff for hours, just seeing where it would go.\"\n\nTorrey set up a label for his releases, calling it Invisible Disk (though similar to Muhs Invisible Music, the two labels were unrelated). Torrey's first release was his more pop-oriented material under the name Statik Aktion, but his second release was the debut Galibar Louis tape in 1986 called *Chanson*. Torrey came up with a fictional backstory for the character that he explained in the liner notes: \"Born in France in 1963, Galibar Louis moved to Haiti with his family at age 2. A skiing accident left him paralyzed from the waist down at 15. He was accepted at Julliard but withdrew in his 2nd year, afraid of becoming rigified. He now lives as a recluse in the Santa Cruz mountains, an illegal alien, his only contact with the outside world his faithful companion, Jamaica Day. She brings his masters to us at the Garage Studio.\"\n\nTorrey sent the tape around and got some scattered reviews, but he continued to view the Galibar material as a side project. Few reviewers seemed to realize he was working under a pseudonym, and some took the Galibar back story at face value, as ridiculous as it may seems in retrospect.  \n\nAfter an extremely productive few years, things slowed down in 1989 around the time of a huge earthquake in the area. \"After that, the character of downtown changed,\" Torrey said. \"I had also gotten divorced at that time, and I had a new love interest. We wanted to move in together but it was too expensive in Santa Cruz so we moved to Portland, Oregon and bought a house there. Music went onto the back burner when I left. Every now and then I’d play live, but it wasn't until 2006 that I got back into music again.\"\n\nTorrey's next musical project was another alter ego, this time a country musician named Bum Wagler. In 2010 he began playing out under that name, drawing key inspiration from early Hank Williams. Asked about his predilection for creating musical characters, Torrey said, \"When I was performing just as me, people would forget my name and what I was doing. But having a pseudonym allowed me to play a character and better connect with the audience.\"\n\nTorrey’s Bum Wagler continues to perform, has produced a 10-song CD, and now lives in the LA area after 6 years in San Francisco.","discography":{"galibar-louis":{"albums":{"chanson":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Disk","review":"","title":"Chanson","year":"1986"},"iii":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Disk","review":"","title":"III","year":"1990"},"mademoiselle":{"image":"","label":"Invisible Disk","review":"","title":"Mademoiselle","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":125,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Gailbar-Louis-new.jpg?alt=media&token=8fa2d4f7-4709-4231-92db-9f2d9d232df1","last_name":"Louis"},"garry-kvistad":{"artist_name":"Garry Kvistad","body":"Garry Kvistad is a percussionist with a long musical resume that includes ensemble performances with Steve Reich, Nexus, and his own Blackearth Percussion Group. He's also performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic, all in addition to founding his own successful Woodstock Chimes company with his wife which has sold over a million units. His chimes are often based on ancient tunings, and to promote his \"Pipedream\" chimes in 1990, he collaborated with Vinnie Martucci to make a cassette of \"Ugandan, Balinese, and New American music styles\" with percussion and electronics. The tapes were packaged with the chimes initially and later issued as a standalone CD by Jeff Charno's Relaxation Company.\n\nKvistad was born in 1949 and grew up outside of Chicago. He got his musical start in 4th grade, joining the school band. He went on to attend an arts high school where he learned about contemporary Avant Garde musicians such as John Cage, Steve Reich, and Harry Partch who opened up his mind about the possibility of sound. He continued to study music in college, completing a Bachelor of Music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1971.\n\nAfter graduating, Kvistad moved to Buffalo where he worked with composer and conductor Lukas Foss in his Creative Associate group. A year later, Kvistad moved back to Illinois and formed the Blackearth Percussion Group with his brother Richard, Allen Otte, Michael Udow, and Chris Braun. The group was inspired by Jan Williams' new Percussion Quartet of Buffalo and named after a small farm town in Wisconsin. The group initially had a residency at the University of Illinois in Urbana before establishing a nearly five-year residency at Northern Illinois University. The group toured throughout the US and Canada in the '70s and recorded an LP for Opus One in 1974.\n\nDuring his time at Northern Illinois, Kvistad took classes in music, art, and physics and went on to get a master's degree in music. Inspired in part by Harry Partch, he also learned metallurgy and woodworking with the goal of building his own metallophone tuned to an ancient Greek scale. It turned out so well that he used the same tuning for a homemade wind chime that he called \"The Chimes of Olympos.\"\n\nKvistad and his wife Janie, an art student he'd first met at Northern Illinois University, decided to start their own company to sell chimes. They relocated to Woodstock, New York in 1979 and have been in business ever since. On the side, Kvistad began playing with Bob Becker and Russell Hartengerger, two founding members of the percussion group Nexus. He also performed with Steve Reich and Musicians, eventually earning a Grammy for their 1998 recording of *Music for 18 Musicians*.\n\nBy the late '80s, Kvistad's chime business started making good money. He expanded his lineup of chimes to include new instruments like the Pipedream, based on a six-note Ugandan scale. To promote it, he collaborated with jazz pianist Vinnie Martucci to produce *Music for a Pipedream* on cassette in 1990. The album included songs adapted and arranged from African folk tunes. Kvistad estimates they sold about 30,000 copies over the years, first selling them as a cassette and later as a CD through Jeff Charno's Relaxation label.\n\nKvistad never released any additional music of his own after that, though he continued to perform with various symphonies, and in 2002 he began performing and touring with Nexus extensively. In 2016, Kvistad did a Ted Talk about his life and work which can be seen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzS0hCWvJ7c). In 2020, he was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.","discography":{"garry-kvistad-vinnie-martucci":{"albums":{"music-for-a-pipedream":{"image":"","label":"CBP","review":"Kvistad gives synth player Vinne Martucci co-billing but this is very much Kvistad’s album, showcasing his interest in the pointillistic rhythms of gamelan combined with ancient African scales. Synth player Vinnie Martucci mostly provides color and warmth, with gentle synth backdrops that frame the melodies. Although this was originally packaged along with Kvistad's chimes, this album is more than a souvenir - this is well-crafted minimalist music that should appeal to most new age collectors and open-minded fans of Steve Reich or Phillip Glass.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Music for a Pipedream","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":236,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/garry-kvistad-640c.png?alt=media&token=7ab5c8bf-ad3d-47b3-b2ee-69507a8c69be","last_name":"Kvistad"},"gary-chambers":{"artist_name":"Gary Chambers","body":"Florida synthesist Gary Chambers is mostly known by collectors for his *Myth, Magic and Mystery* cassette, though he also put out a rarely seen demo called *Healing* prior to that. In 1987, Chambers met his future wife JoAnn when she saw him play live in Clearwater, Florida and the couple married a few years later. By JoAnn's estimation, Chambers sold about 2,500 copies of *Myth Magic and Mystery*. The couple took a long hiatus before putting out a slew of new albums from 2000- 2015, earning enough money for them to live on for a while. Chambers passed away in 2023.\n\nBorn in 1955, Chambers grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida. Raised by his mother, Chambers loved music and starting playing piano at five. Even though his mother agonized that he didn't pursue something \"more normal,\" Chambers remained obsessed with music, particularly taking an interest in Peter-Gabriel-era Genesis and Todd Rundgren.\n\nIn the '70s, Chambers formed the prog band Babylon with Rod Sacco and put out a self-titled album in 1978. While owning an obvious debt to Genesis, the album has also drawn comparisons to Mirthrandir and Yes. However, Chambers fought a lot with Sacco with Sacco and the group disbanded after a few years.\n\nChambers re-invented himself as a new age musician in the '80s, first putting out a cassette *Healing* as a demo. \"I met him in 1987,\" recalled JoAnn. \"He was playing at a circle center in clearwater, surrounded by candles. I went there and sat down and connected with him. Our connection is quite deep and strong.\" The couple married in 1989 and Chambers released *Myth, Magic and Mystery*\n\nThere was a long dormant period where Chambers didn't release new music, though JoAnn says he continued playing and researching the healing effects of music. \"His theory was that our DNA could be effected by sound,\" JoAnn said. \"That was his premise of everyting. That we could evolve ourselves consciously through music. He considered the '90s his research years.\"\n\nIn 1999, the couple moved to Asheville and began releasing new music which sold well enough to support them for the next 15 years. They eventually returned to Florida ten years later. Eventually, money from the music began to dry up in the wake of digital streaming, and JoAnn worked to support the couple. \"He struggled with day jobs,\" she recalled. \"He was a very serious and intense person who was into sacred objects and crystals. If you didn’t let him be who he needs to be it would never work.\"\n\n(Source: Interview with JoAnn Chambers, January 2024)","discography":{"gary-chambers":{"albums":{"healing":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Healing","year":"1986"},"myth-magic-mystery":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Myth, Magic, and Mystery","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":387,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/gary-chambers-blur.jpg?alt=media&token=5803dc43-703a-4cb3-97aa-65043445ad63","last_name":"Chambers"},"gary-strauss":{"artist_name":"Gary Strauss","body":"Although his primary gig was as a drummer with club bands, Gary Strauss (right) also dabbled in electronic music on the side, putting out two cassettes under his own name in 1988 and 1992. Strauss grew up in Michigan but moved to Los Angeles for a few years in the early '80s after visiting his childhood friend and musical kind spirit [Richard Burmer](/richard-burmer) (above left) there. Strauss released his first album *Sea-Quencher* in 1988, earning a positive review in *Camera Obscura* with Marc Tucker calling it \"a drummer's potpourri of serialism.\" Strauss went on to release one more cassette before eventually relocating to Orlando, Florida where he worked as an audiovisual technician.\n\nBorn in 1953, Gary Strauss grew up in Owosso, Michigan. He showed an early talent for drums and by the age of 13 was already in a cover band called the Mad Hatters that gigged often in the area. A few years later, he met Richard Burmer at a talent show and the two became fast friends. \"He was playing sitar and I said, 'I gotta meet the guy,'\" Strauss recalled. \"He had a studio and a homemade Mellotron, the first one I've ever seen. It was a keyboard hooked up to four cassette players. We were into Arthur Brown, Can, Gong, stuff like that. He got me into a lot of prog music like Renaissance. We hung out and got in trouble – we had some wild times.\"\n\nStrauss spent much of the '70s and '80s drumming with club bands, making a living as a performer. After Burmer moved out to Los Angeles in the late '70s, he and Strauss stayed in touch. \"Rick sent me tapes of Devo, Tom Petty, and said 'You gotta check it out here,'\" Strauss said. \"I Bought a ticket and ended up staying.\" However, Strauss only stayed a few years and moved back to Michigan where he got married and started a family.\n\nWhile Strauss continued to gig with bands in the '80s as a drummer, he eventually acquired some synths and began composing his own material. Like Burmer, Strauss was a big fan of electronic music, especially Tangerine Dream whose influence is evident up on his debut cassette *Sea-Quencher* in 1988. The tape was little heard at the time, but it did earn a positive review in  the *Camera Obscura* zine. Strauss returned with new work four years later. His tape *Rhythm of the Clouds* showcases more of a  fusion influence and an overall progressive new age sound. \n\nIn 1995, Strauss moved to Orlando where he went back to school and got an associate's degree in Audio Technology. For 20 years, he worked as an audiovisual technician before retiring recently. He did release one more electronic album *Particle Dust*, in 2005 on Spotlight Records, and he is currently prepping new material that he features on [YouTube]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkFzA1MBT7I).","discography":{"gary-strauss":{"albums":{"rhythm-of-the-clouds":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rhythm of the Clouds","year":"1992"},"sea-quencher":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sea-Quencher","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":291,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Burmer-l%20and%20Strauss-r.jpeg?alt=media&token=6b9e8e52-a87e-4206-873e-86eb1163cd61","last_name":"Strauss"},"gene-groeschel":{"artist_name":"Gene Groeschel","body":"Based in Lancaster, PA, Gene Groeschel was a flute player and avid bird watcher who combined these passions on his sole album, *Hawk Eyes Dreaming*. Born Eugene Groeschel in 1948, he grew up in Lancaster and spent time in Florida and Colorado studying business and forestry after high school. He served as a Marine in the Vietnam War where he earned a Purple Heart, and then spent two years backpacking through North and South America. Groeschel settled in New Mexico in the '70s and bought his first flute at the age of 30 at a Native American pow-wow. Discussing his style years later, Groeschel said: \"Everything I do is in the energy of the moment. The Native American flute is often referred to as a 'spirit catcher' because when you listen to it, it's so haunting and it captures your attention so well.\" By the time of his album, Groeschel had moved back to Lancaster and married. He was a regular presence at the Unitarian Universalist church where he played flute and kalimba for decades at the Winter Solstice services. Groeschel passed away in 2023. ","discography":{"gene-groeschel":{"albums":{"hawk-eyes-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"Wild Wing Music","review":"","title":"Hawk Eyes Dreaming","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":386,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Gene-Groeschel-temp.jpeg?alt=media&token=a98b6def-8bb6-4845-9235-0eb2a8e16fb4","last_name":"Groeschel"},"gene-newton":{"artist_name":"Gene Newton","body":"Gene Newton (born 1951) was a new age composer based in Albany, Oregon when he released four albums from 1993 to 1998. Newton says the spark that ignited his interest in new age primarily came from Vangelis, though he also cites influences from classical and jazz, plus some local inspiration from the likes of Scott Cossu and Michael Gettel. Newton earned an undergraduate and master’s degree in music. He then spent the early '70s as a singer/songwriter, appearing on the *Hometown* compilation of aspiring local acts in funded by the Eugene Downtown Association. Newton self-released his first two new age albums on cassette and CD, earning positive reviews form *New Age Retailer*, *Heart Song Review*, and more, leading to a deal with Bluestar in 1995 who reissued his first two albums and issued two new albums, *Tarot* and *Elemental Suite*.","discography":{"gene-newton":{"albums":{"celstial-plea":{"image":"","label":"Nez","review":"","title":"Celestial Plea","year":"1993"},"elemental-suite":{"image":"","label":"Bluestar","review":"","title":"Elemental Suite","year":"1997"},"eternity":{"image":"","label":"Nez","review":"","title":"Eternity","year":"1989"},"tarot":{"image":"","label":"Bluestar","review":"","title":"Tarot: Music for Readings","year":"1997"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":426,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/509.jpeg?alt=media&token=9fddcca6-ab4d-4f4a-8966-32b925f812ef","last_name":"Newton"},"geodesium":{"artist_name":"Geodesium","body":"Colorado native Mark Petersen was one of the first to develop a library of music for planetarium shows, later incorporating a full package of visuals and scripts with the help of his wife Carolyn. He ultimately went on to provide music for planetariums all over the world in addition to releasing thirteen albums under the name Geodesium from 1977 to the present.\n\nIn 1973, Ivan Dryer pioneered the laser light show and formed a company called Laserium to produce events at planetariums. While attending the University of Colorado to study music education, Petersen saw a Laserium show and was hooked. He'd already been an astronomy buff since childhood and he'd been spending time learning how to use the Moog at the University of Colorado College of Music's Electronic Music Laboratory. \n\nWhen the university began construction on a planetarium during his senior year in '75, Petersen asked if he could compose music for the shows. To his surprise, they actually agreed. The result was a soundtrack for the planetarium show \"Stardeath,\" that he recorded on site.\n\nWhen Petersen first started playing music, he learned trumpet and then French horn before settling on the tuba by the time he entered college. But once there, Petersen got hooked on keyboards and spent much of his free time in the planetarium's studio. \"I composed twelve different soundtracks for the planetarium there,\" Petersen recalled. \"Each show was about 40 minutes long, and the music had to support the narration. I learned on the job when to stay the heck out of the way of the narration. But the operations manager said I could use all the tape I wanted. It was a golden time.\"\n \nIn 1976, the International Planetarium Society met at the University of Colorado, and Petersen was asked to demonstrate the in-house studio to the guests.  He gladly obliged and when he was done, he already had some offers to provide music for his guest's planetariums around the world.  That was when Petersen hit on the idea to provide a library of music to sell, calling it his \"music back-pack.\"\n \nWith all the interest in his music from other planetariums, Petersen decided to collect the best tracks from his soundtracks and release an album on his own label, Loch Ness Productions, which went through two pressings. For his artist name, he picked the portmanteau of Geodesium combining 'geodesic dome' and 'planetarium.' \n \nPetersen's girlfriend Carolyn saw some early planetarium shows with him and thought she could do better. The two began collaborating to market an entire show package to other planetariums that included slides, audio tapes, and script notes. They sold hundreds, and the two have been in business ever since (they married in 1978).\n \nIn the early '80s, another composer named [Jonn Serrie](/jonn-serrie) was also making a name for himself scoring planetarium music.  At a conference, Petersen recalls hearing someone say to Serrie, \"Better be careful, your competition is creeping up behind you.\" Serrie shot back, \"I don't have any competition!\" And Petersen walked up to him and said, \"Yeah you do. Me!\" The two composers ended up becoming friends and playing some live shows together.\n\nAfter putting out his second LP in 1981, Petersen didn't release a new album for six years, though he was still active with his wife, building up Loch Ness Productions into a mainstay in the planetarium field. Returning with *West of the Galaxy* in 1987, he got some airplay on Hearts of Space, introducing his music to a new audience of new age and ambient fans. Five years later he put out *Fourth Universe* which was nationally distributed through the Natural Wonders chain of stores and become his best-selling work to date, moving about 10,000 copies.\n \nPetersen still lives in Colorado with his wife and their business is still thriving. He maintains a website [here](https://www.lochnessproductions.com).\n","discography":{"geodesium":{"albums":{"double-eclipse":{"image":"","label":"Loch Ness Productions","review":"","title":"Double Eclipse","year":"1981"},"fourth-universe":{"image":"","label":"Loch Ness Productions","review":"","title":"Fourth Universe","year":"1992"},"geodesium":{"image":"","label":"Loch Ness Productions","review":"","title":"Geodesium","year":"1977"},"west-of-the-galaxy":{"image":"","label":"Loch Ness Productions","review":"","title":"West of the Galaxy","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":311,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/geodesium-640.jpg?alt=media&token=94749f50-1832-4b1b-aa1e-7a123c54ecdc","last_name":"Geodesium"},"geoffrey-chandler":{"artist_name":"Geoffrey Chandler","body":"Geoffrey Chandler was a visionary artist whose space-themed paintings were featured on magazine covers, in commercial art, and in solo art shows around the Bay Area during his lifetime. He also released one cosmically-themed electronic album, *Starscapes*, on the early new age label Unity. However, his music career was short-lived and he maintained his focus on art after that. \n\nBorn in 1951, Chandler was a lifelong Californian who grew up in the Bay Area alongside one older brother and two younger sisters. Chandler's teenage passions included surfing, drawing, and music, but in college he focused on art, earning a BFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts.\n\nAfter graduating, Chandler became known for his paintings and drawings of the cosmos which earned him a modest income so he could live off his art. His work was frequently sold at the Illuminarium Gallery in Santa Monica, adorned the covers of magazines such as *Time* and *Omni*, and was featured in both group and solo shows at museums in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. \n\nIn the late '70s, Chandler recorded about five hours of space music with his friend and musical engineer [Robert Orban](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1298970-Robert-Orban) who he'd known since he was 18. \"He did his music instinctively and by ear,\" Orban recalled. \"He didn't think in conventional harmonic terms - he thought in terms of color, ambiance, and feeling.\" Chandler's main instrument was the Minimoog and he would start by crafting a sound from scratch (since there were no presets) and building pieces gradually in the studio with Orban's help.\n\nOrban recalled frequently going to the symphony with Chandler, who had a large collection of classical music. Chandler loved Mahler, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Ravel, but also enjoyed the Hearts of Space radio show whose host Stephen Hill was a fan of Chandler's art and music.  Orban helped Chandler to select six tracks from their sessions to make up his album on Unity Records, a pre-eminent new age label at the time, though it was also known for not paying royalties to artists.\n\nAfter the album's release, Chandler didn't play live to promote it and returned to making visual art for the remainder of his life. In his later years, Chandler began using Photoshop to make surreal collages. He passed away in 2017.\n\n**Sources**:\n* Author interview with Robert Orban, Dec 20, 2022\n* Geoffrey Chandler obituary, San Francisco Chronicle, 2017 [Retrieved [here](https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/sfgate/name/geoffrey-chandler-obituary?id=15313386)]\n","discography":{"geoffrey-chandler":{"albums":{"starscapes":{"image":"","label":"Unity","review":"One of the finest painters of visionary spacescapes, Geoffrey Chandler is able to bring back both the images and sounds of the far reaches of deep space. His first album contains beautiful electronic portraits of star realms and eternal motions.\n\n(Stephen Hill, *Music from the Hearts of Space*, 1981)","title":"Starscapes","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":324,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/geoffrey-chandler-640.jpg?alt=media&token=89e6b0c7-7843-4b3d-9444-4a5945db0a23","last_name":"Chandler"},"geoffrey-newhall":{"artist_name":"Geoffrey Newhall","body":"Geoffrey Newhall was a Louisville musician who worked in many genres throughout his career, including a brief dalliance with new age in the mid-'80s that produced *Creative Flow* and *Self Awareness Through Love's Light*.  Newhall attributes his musical shift to a \"burning bush variety of spiritual experience\" he had while in a treatment center for alcohol abuse.  Newhall, who had lived in an ashram and was a vegetarian in the late '70s, was naturally drawn to the idea of healing sounds and began recording the tapes at his small home studio after getting out of the program. The tapes were distributed through New Leaf, but only sold about 500 copies of each. Newhall moved on to blues and rockabilly bands in the '90s after becoming disillusioned by the commercial forces that co-opted and watered down new age's indie origins.\n\nBorn in 1956, Geoffrey Newhall grew up a self-described \"wild child\" in Louisville, Kentucky. He started out on the drums before moving to bass in seventh grade when friends wanted him to join their cover band. Newhall attended community college briefly, but dropped out to work a series of blue collar jobs in carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work. On nights and weekends, Newhall played with a series of bands in the area, and he admits that he drank heavily at times. \"Alcoholism runs in my family,\" he drawled. “[After rehabilitation], guys would see me and say, 'Damn! It’s good to see you Geoff, we thought you were dead.'\"\n\nNewhall hit a turning point in 1984, when he was arrested for public intoxication and court ordered into a treatment center. There one of his counselors recommended meditation and it really opened Newhall's mind to a new path. He began attending some spiritual churches in Indiana and working on new music that could help people heal.  \"I was actually doing seminars using music as a medium,\" Newhall said. \"For a while I tried to make a medical prescription to use my music to heal. People would tell me their ailment and the part of the body —there's charts out there with musical notes for different parts of the body—and I tried to put all that together. If they liked flute or piano, or synth, I’d make them a fifteen minute tape as a prescription.\"\n\nGetting to work in his small home studio, Newhall put together his first album *Creative Flow* which he released in late 1985. Touted on the cover as a \"harmonizing agent for your sub-conscious mind,\" Newhall found a receptive distributor in Atlanta-based New Leaf and they helped get it in book stores and gift shops that catered to new age clientele. The next year, Newhall produced his next album, *Self Awareness Through Love’s Light*, a somewhat less experimental album work than *Creative Flow.* \n\n\"Those albums were meant to be a tool for self-exploration\" Newhall said. \"I'd listened to guided meditation albums and I found that distracting. And the music that had a rhythm to it, I thought that was too confining. I wanted to stay away from light jazz and do something non-structural that could trip you out. I used the natural rhythms of vibrations from different tonal frequencies. I do think there's something to the power of vibrations. Disease of thought can lead to disease in the body and if you can tune the body to a healthy vibration, that is a way of healing.\"\n\nBy 1986, Newhall considered going into the music business and moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University. There he met like-minded musicians like Tony Gerber, William Linton, and Kirby Shelstad. Newhall began helping to sell their tapes to his clients too. However, he eventually realized that the music business was not for him and dropped out. \"After a while, I didn’t have the same passion, and the pay wasn't good. I knew I could make more slinging a hammer. And the new age movement started going in an area where I didn’t see much there for me. The industry was changing, getting more commercialized and less accessible.\"\n\nNewhall got married in 1992 and returned to his early love of blues, playing live with Rufus Thomas and Bo Diddley, in addition to more extensive tours with Buddy Flett and a rockabilly band Lawrence Bell and the Sultans. Newhall is still actively musically, playing primarily with Jumptime, a Nashville blues band.","discography":{"geoffrey-newhall":{"albums":{"creative-flow":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Creative Flow","year":"1985"},"self-awareness-through-love's-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Self Awareness Through Love's Light","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":107,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Geoffrey-Newhall-640.jpg?alt=media&token=5068dfc8-6651-4b1e-b1dd-3126101d2cd5","last_name":"Newhall"},"george-goulding":{"artist_name":"George Goulding","body":"George Goulding (1919-1992) was one of the oldest musicians in the new age scene, not getting his start until his retirement in the late ‘80s when he was already close to 70 years old. He spent much of his life as the musical director and organist at the Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles, where he composed the music used in their services. After he retired, Goulding moved to Denver, Colorado, where he put out a trove of material in 1987. A few years before he passed away, he moved again to Sedona, Arizona where he released his last cassette *Lotus Land*.\n\nGoulding grew up in Garden City, Kansas, but was drawn to Los Angeles for the music scene. He primarily loved classical music, though there are elements of exotica in some of his albums as well, especially Lotus Land. In Los Angeles, Goulding primarily made a living as a performer, playing at weddings, 4H concerts, fairgrounds, or with musicians looking for an organist.\n\nAccording to his life partner, Victor Mull, Goulding performed new age music by channeling. “He was into metaphysics and the spiritual aspect,” Moll recalled. “He would meditate and in the process of meditating, he would have piano or organ, and channel music. The recordings were from those meditations.” Flutist Claudia Tulip recalls playing flute and piano meditations with Goulding in Colorado at the Tibetan Foundation, founded by Janet McClure who was also interested in channeling.\n\nWhile Goulding was most active during his period in Colorado, he moved to Sedona sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, where he recorded at least one more album, Lotus Land. He passed away in 1992.","discography":{"george-goulding":{"albums":{"breaking-up-ehteric":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"Breaking Up Etheric Crystallization with Sound","year":"1987"},"lotus-land":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"Lotus Land","year":"1989"},"seven-chakras":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"The Seven Chakras","year":"1987"},"to-open-the-heart-with-sound":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"To Open the Heart with Sound","year":"1987"},"white-bird-meditation":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"White Bird Meditation","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"George Goulding","entry_number":1},"goulding-ascentia":{"albums":{"earth-transfigured":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"Earth Transfigured","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"George Goulding and Ascentia","entry_number":2},"goulding-kopp-tulip":{"albums":{"the-good-within":{"image":"","label":"Azalar Music","review":"","title":"The Good Within","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Kad Kopp, Claudia Tulip, George Goulding","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":420,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/george-goulding-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=d20c0290-9c0c-483f-b3d7-3d09b355cc7d","last_name":"Goulding"},"george-tortorelli":{"artist_name":"George Tortorelli","body":"With a bamboo flute, zither, and a perfectly timed debut, Tortorelli went from North Florida unknown to new age mainstay in the early '80s. Released in 1982, his debut *TranceMission* went on to sell thousands of copies. He quickly released a follow up in 1983 but waited nearly eight years to record again. In the meantime, he built up a robust business selling homemade bamboo flutes. In 1997 he hooked up with harpist Lisa Lynn Franco to record a series of albums and by the late '90s was making good money from music again, selling CD’s by the truckload at their live appearances.\n\nTortorelli was born in 1957 to musician parents in Syracuse, New York. His dad was a jazz bassist and encouraged Tortorelli to take up the bass too. When he was 12, they moved to Miami to be closer to his mother’s family and Tortorelli ended up taking bass lessons with Mark Egan, then attending the University of Miami. He recalls also jamming with a young Pat Metheny who would go on to acclaim in the jazz world with his idiosyncratic, unpredictable style.\n\nDespite his jazz background, Tortorelli’s main interest in the early '70s was hard rock. He played in a series of bar bands in the area, covering songs by Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. But in 1975 he heard a record that completely changed his musical direction. \"I was at a hippie commune in Miami Beach,\" Tortorelli began. \"This girl burned one [a joint] and dropped the needle on *Inside the Taj Majal* by Paul Horn. I was like 'What is that?!' Paul Horn became like my guru. That album influenced my life. After that I started pulling away from rock and made the decision to leave the city and focus more on acoustic instruments.\"\n\nTortorelli finally moved away to Gainesville in 1980. He liked that it was a college town with a healthy music scene, but was even more drawn to the abundant nature with endless forest canopies and beautiful natural springs. Tortorelli’s mother helped him buy a small house (he called it a \"tin roof shack\") on an acre of land off a dirt road. Tortorelli began planting bamboo there which he would soon carve into flutes to make music and sell at art fairs.\n\nAfter arriving in Gainesville, Tortorelli befriended Bob McPeek, who co-owned a local record store called Hyde & Zeke with his friend Ric Kaestner.  McPeek also had his own studio, Mirror Image, which he was then operating out of his house. McPeek asked Tortorelli to join a music project he had going with Kaestner and Dave Smadbeck, a gifted multi-instrumentalist from New York. \n\nTortorelli gave the group its name, Trance Form, and assisted with bass, flute, and other instruments on their sole release *Stranger in the Same Land*. The album was a mixed bag of soft rock tunes by Kaestner and Tortorelli vs. more prog-influenced material by Smadbeck and McPeek. The LP was released on their own Hyde & Zeke Records in an edition of 1000 copies and the band organized some local concerts to help promote it. The shows went well, but Smadbeck wasn't ready for a full time project and the band fell apart.\n\nAfter that release, Tortorelli recorded his first album *TranceMission* at McPeek’s studio. The album was built around a zither loop, with Tortorelli adding percussion from a Shruti box and layers of flute. For his shows, Tortorelli often played all three instruments at the same time (you can see the configuration on the cassette cover) calling it his \"one man celestial band.\" \"Everything on that album was done live, in one take,\" Tortorelli recalled. \"It was kind of a stream of consciousness thing. It was just spiritual spontaneous combustion, really psychedelic.\"\n\nTortorelli printed up copies of his first cassette and sent them along with a promo letter to new age labels like Narada and Fortuna. To his surprise, everyone liked it. \"Before I knew it, I'd started my own record company,\" Tortorelli said. \"I didn't know what I was doing, but I would strap the boxes of tapes on my bicycle and ride to the post office and send them out.” Wisely, Tortorelli retained the rights to his music and just used other labels to help distribute. \n\nIn 1983, Tortorelli recorded and released his sophomore release *Medicine Wind*. He had also used that title for the name of his record company, which had come to him while hanging in the forest with the wind blowing through the trees.\n\nDespite his success at the time, Tortorelli didn't record another album for nearly a decade.  In 1983 he got married and had a daughter. He settled into a more domestic life after that, though he continued to sell his flutes and tapes at art festivals. He also stayed in touch with McPeek, who begged him to come record again.  \"I tried to convince him to do another album for so long,\" McPeek said. \"I finally ended up luring him into the studio and burned candles, got a cool light going. That was his *Rites of Passage* album.\"\n\nTortorelli never released another solo album again. However, he did pair up with Celtic harpist Lisa Lynn Franco who he met at an art fair in Orlando. The two clicked immediately and recorded an album in 1997 (*Love and Peace*) that sold well, prompting them to record many more and tour together off and on for the next 20 years.\n\n\"I was blown away by her,\" Tortorelli said. \"When we played together we had unbelievable CD sales, sometimes thousands in a weekend. But we've seen a big decline in CD sales the last five years. And streaming [revenue] is just terrible. So I've kind of fallen back on my flute sales lately.\"\n\nTortorelli still lives in Gainesville and continues to play music and sell his flutes. You can view his website [here](https://www.medicinewind.com/MedWind/HOME.html).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"george-tortorelli":{"albums":{"medicine-wind":{"image":"","label":"Medicine Wind Productions","review":"\"Celestial bliss music...For use in all ultra-sensitive activities.\" Indeed. After Tortorelli made a splash with his debut, he put together a similar follow-up that is nearly as good. Again we get pentatonic meditation music based mostly on the zither, though with the new addition of tamboura and tabla.\n\nThe synths are more downplayed here, with Tortorelli mostly relying on his plucked clouds of zither to weave his spell. Further enhancing the blissful mood is an excellent recording by his friend Bob McPeek that surpasses the sound of the debut (which was already pretty great). Unfortunately, this one is quite rare. Despite Tortorelli claiming sales of 50,000 copies, this almost never turns up.","title":"Medicine Wind","year":"1983"},"rites-of-passage":{"image":"","label":"Medicine Wind Productions","review":"","title":"Rites of Passage","year":"1991"},"trancemission":{"image":"","label":"Medicine Wind Productions","review":"Drawing on the roots of Indian and Chinese classical music, Tortorelli weaves his flute and guitar meditations through shimmering backdrops of synth and zither drones.  The notes hang in the air like gentle mist, creating a dreamy atmosphere akin to contemporaneous new age releases by [William Aura](/william-aura), [Laraaji](/laraaji) or Daniel Moore (*Yellow Bell*).\n\nThe first side is one long piece \"River of Devotion\" that is largely acoustic, while the second side experiments with other textures, like the sumptuous layers of synth on \"Ascension,\" the electric sitar of \"Whispers of the East\" or the double tracked flutes on the strummy \"Ecstasy.\" This album is quintessential early '80s new age, and well-loved by many. Heartily recommended.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"TranceMission","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":56,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/George-Tortorelli-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2db9bd69-939d-4143-97d2-ed13e222c37a","last_name":"Tortorelli"},"george-wallace":{"artist_name":"George Wallace","body":"George Wallace is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who got his big break at 26 with a record contract at CBS and a staff song-writing position at Screen Gems. Despite the enthusiasm of critics, his vinyl debut *Heroes Like You and Me* failed to generate a hit and the songwriting contract wasn't renewed.  Down but not out, Wallace began creating music on his own terms, rolling out a series of self-released cassettes inspired by Jade Warrior, Brian Eno and Mike Oldfield. His albums caught the attention of prominent radio shows like *Hearts of Space* and *Star’s End* and helped to kick off a long career that stretches into the present.\n\nBorn in in 1952, Wallace grew up in Philadelphia, PA. He started classical piano lessons at the age of 8, but moved to the electric guitar when he discovered the Beatles and Motown in the early '60s. He taught himself how to play rock and pop music, adding electric bass to his arsenal.\n\nWallace attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he studied composition and arranging. While there, he worked with regional bands playing the club circuit, and ultimately set his sights on a career in songwriting and a record deal. At 26, he returned to Philadelphia and produced a demo tape of his songs, which he used to land a position in New York as staff writer at Screen Gems/EMI and a record contract with CBS.\n\nFrom 1980 to 1983, Wallace composed songs for Screen Gems and worked on material that would become his vinyl debut on Portrait records, a subsidiary of CBS. \"They were preening me to be a latter day Springsteen or Sting, but I didn't want to be a sound-alike,\" Wallace said. \"My music was well received critically, but sales were marginal. I call that period my rich rock star phase even though I was neither rich nor a rock star.\"\n\nWallace's publisher, EMI, continued to pitch songs to other artists and managed to get a few recorded by established artists such as Joan Jett and Ted Nugent though they were never released. He also co-wrote many songs with singer and then-wife Amy Bolton, two of which came out as singles in 1982. He also produced a three album set of children's exercise music called *Fit Kids* that earned kudos from Billboard at the time.\n\nEventually, Wallace got disenchanted with the music business and turned his sights inward. \"I started to get more involved in spiritual matters,\" Wallace said. \"I explored past life regression and meditation. My world started opening up, informing and expanding the kind of music I was making.\" In 1984, Wallace began recording material for his album *Sacred Earth* — intending to \"celebrate the miracle of Creation within the context of Ritual and Reverence.\" The music was expansive and ambitious, a sonic journey that drew on progressive iconoclasts like Jade Warrior, Brian Eno and Mike Oldfield, as well as the electronic music of Jonn Serrie. \n\nAs Wallace finished his new album in 1985, he sent a copy to [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl), host of *Star's End*, the long-standing ambient/space show on WXPN in Philadelphia. \"Usually when a radio station likes something, they don’t tell you, \"Wallace said. \"But Chuck had the decency to write me a note saying he really liked it and that he’d played it again and again. He aired a best of the year show, and *Sacred Earth* wound up on the 'Best of 1985.' That's what got the whole thing rolling.\"\n\nIn 1988, Wallace released *Communion* which was similar in style to *Sacred Earth*. Again, it was played on *Star's End*, as well as *Hearts of Space*, then the most widely syndicated ambient radio show. The radio interest helped Wallace get some distribution deals with Backroads and New Leaf, though he recalls only manufacturing the tapes in a short run of 200.\n\nDespite having taken on a day job and new family obligations – he had become a father just after the release of *Communion*— Wallace continued to produce music. Next out of the studio came *Garden of Dreams*, which dealt with themes of childhood and innocence. One of its songs, \"Almost Arizona,\" aired on the debut of the radio show *Echoes* in 1991. But Wallace wasn't happy with the project and chose not to officially release it. \"After some deliberation, I decided it was substandard, maybe a bit scattered. I usually take a year to do a project. This album took five months and it actually sounded rushed. Meanwhile, *Echoes* had me in heavy rotation, go figure.\"\n\nSoon Wallace began work on a new album *Frontiers* that would be released in 1993 under his new label name AirBorn Music (it was previously called \"Larger Than Life.\") At the same time, he found another outlet for his music at planetariums. From 1992 to 1994 he created music for various shows at the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, including \"A Day in Space,\" \"Chasing the Myth of the UFO,\" and \"The Bat Show.\"\n\nSince then, Wallace has released nine more albums, all released on AirBorn Music. He also performs his ambient music live, including tracks from *Sacred Earth*, *Communion* and *Frontiers*. Occasionally he'll get an email from an adoring fan, often from overseas, who remembers one of his early albums. Wallace currently lives in Lancaster, PA, with his wife, surrounded by farm country. He still has a recording studio, and a new album is always on the horizon. \"Musicians don't retire, they just work themselves to death – and I'm working on that,\" Wallace joked. \"You may have noticed - I have a dark sense of humor, that's what keeps me going.\"\n\nGeorge Wallace maintains a Bandcamp page [here](https://georgewallace.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"george-wallace":{"albums":{"communion":{"image":"","label":"Larger Than Life","review":"","title":"Communion","year":"1988"},"frontiers":{"image":"","label":"AirBorn Music","review":"","title":"Frontiers","year":"1993"},"sacred-earth":{"image":"","label":"Larger Than Life","review":"","title":"Sacred Earth","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":182,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/george-wallace-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=99883069-eda8-4997-b6a8-2c9823c015e1","last_name":"Wallace"},"georges-boutz":{"artist_name":"Georges Boutz","body":"By 1980, Georges Boutz had already lived a long musical life as a drummer for hire in the San Francisco Bay Area. He'd played shows with Lightnin' Hopkins, the Liverpool Five, and the curiously named Skidmark and the Victims, but by then was primarily working as a limo driver in Los Angeles.  One night he got a job driving Tangerine Dream and they offered him tickets to see their show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Boutz went and was blown away. \"I decided right then and there this was something I wanted to do,\" he recalled. A few weeks later he bought a Micromoog and started making his own electronic music.\n\nThirty years earlier, Boutz was born in Paris in a music loving household where he was exposed to classical, Russian and flamenco music. He started out playing guitar and banjo at the age of ten, but after his family moved to San Francisco in 1963, he took an interest in the drums and started playing around town in various blues and rock bands.\n\nAfter his epiphany in 1980, Boutz spent the next two years recording songs on a Tascam four track in his West Hollywood apartment.  In 1983 he took the best of these tracks and released them as his debut cassette, *Amber 7*. Boutz had also worked for many years in the airline industry, and drew on aeronautical themes for much of his work, favoring song titles like \"Cloud\" and \"Nightflight\" just to name a few. Boutz pressed up 500 copies of the album and sent promo copies all over the world, getting some interest from college radio.  He was interviewed by a few stations and played some compositions live on the radio, but he never really toured.\n\nIn 1985, Boutz followed up his debut with *Silver Eagle*, again recording everything at home.   The album again sold close to 500 copies, but without touring or formal distribution (Boutz mostly sold tapes through the mail), he eventually gave up and moved on.  Boutz and his wife moved to Florida and he got into real estate.  In 2017, Italian label Orbeatize packaged both of his releases for a double vinyl reissue.","discography":{"georges-boutz":{"albums":{"amber-7":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"So overwhelming is the influence of Tangerine Dream on French synthesist  Boutz, his *Amber 7* is virtually indistinguishable from an opus of the German synth group, save the absence of electric guitar. This is not to denigrate Boutz's work, as it is a fine example of music in his genre. Particularly notable is his ability to create complex, rich textures in live-in studio performances with no overdubs. The basic compositional tenet is the use of patterns reiterated by sequencer over which various melodies, drones, rhythms, and other swathes of sound are laid. Boutz also manages to avoid triteness by disdaining the use of hooks and riffs in favor of an emphasis on texture and sonority.\n\n(Dean Suzuki,  *OP*, July-August \"X\" Issue 1984)","title":"Amber 7","year":"1983"},"silver-eagle":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"One of the finest examples of ambient electronic music I've heard. Gentle, ethereal swells mesh with fluid melody lines and subtle yet persistent sequences to create overall tranquility…yet with a  somber undercurrent. An interesting note about this cassette: it was recorded in one take with no overdubs. Bearing this in mind, the sonic density and richness speak well of Mr. Boutz' mastery of the electronic music medium.\n\n([Allen Green](/allen-green), *Sound Choice*, Fall, 1985)","title":"Silver Eagle","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":28,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/boutz2.jpg?alt=media&token=7cc9626d-59a4-40c7-80eb-fc5e58f7d0c0","last_name":"Boutz"},"georgia-kelly":{"artist_name":"Georgia Kelly","body":" Georgia Kelly (born 1941) had one of the earliest new age hits with her debut album *Seapeace* in 1978 which went on to sell 250,000 copies. Kelly recorded the album while living in Topanga, CA and her friend, jazz saxophonist Vinny Golia, encouraged her to self-release it. Kelly sold the album on consignment at metaphysical book stores around town and was astonished at how quickly it took off. \"First I'd bring in five copies, then they'd call back and want 25 more, then 100. I lived off that album for years,\" she recalled.\n\nKelly almost didn't have the chance to enjoy her newfound success though.  In 1979, she was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver and suffered serious injuries.  When she woke up at the hospital, Kelly was surprised to find out that her surgeon heard her music and encouraged her to listen to it. \"That was when I realized the healing power of this music,\" Kelly said.\n\nLuckily for Kelly, the accident didn't affect her ability to play the harp, a notoriously demanding instrument. Kelly had originally started out playing piano at the age of three while growing up in Palm Springs, California.  By the time of high school, her parents had moved the family to the Bay Area and Kelly switched to the harp.\n\nAs Kelly continued to study the harp and music composition in college, she also became interested in eastern philosophy, Sanskrit, self-realization, and yoga.  However, she grew disillusioned with music for a while and quit. But at the age of 26, Kelly picked up the harp again when she moved to Big Sur and got married. During this time she took lessons with [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews) and met the saxophone player [Charles Lloyd](/charles-lloyd), later appearing on his album *Big Sur Tapestry*.\n\nAfter about ten years in Big Sur, Kelly and her husband moved to Los Angeles. By then, she'd developed a style of harp that combined her classical background with jazz and eastern mysticism which she debuted on *Seapeace*. The same year, she recorded a session with [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern) that would further raise her profile. By the '80s, she was one of the preeminent new age harpists, alongside Andrews and Swedish harpist Andreas Vollenweider.\n\nGeorgia Kelly released all of her earlier work on her own label Heru, but she eventually signed with the label Global Pacific in the late '80s for a string of albums including collaborations with Steven Kindler and Dusan Bogdanovic. \n\nKelly, who advocated for peace in the '60s, remained politically involved even as her recording career blossomed. She produced California  Governor Jerry Brown's radio show, helped with his 1992 presidential campaign in Marin County and was a delegate at the Democratic convention the same year. Moving to Sonoma in the late '90s, Kelly started the [Praxis Peace Institute](https://www.praxispeace.org/) to promote \"systemic peace, economic justice, and environmental sustainability through education, research and informed action.\" ","discography":{"craig-huxley-georgia-kelly":{"albums":{"in-a-chord":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"In a Chord","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Craig Huxley and Georgia Kelly","entry_number":4},"georgia-kelly":{"albums":{"birds-of-paradise":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Birds of Paradise","year":"1980"},"eros-and-lagos":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Eros and Lagos","year":"1986"},"garden-of-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Gardens of the Sun","year":"1993"},"harp-and-soul":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Harp and Soul","year":"1983"},"seapeace":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Seapeace","year":"1978"},"sounds-of-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Sounds of Spirit","year":"1981"},"tarashanti":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Tarashanti","year":"1979"},"winter-classics":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Winter Classics","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Georgia Kelly","entry_number":1},"georgia-kelly-and-laura-lea-cannon":{"albums":{"voyage":{"image":"","label":"Heru","review":"","title":"Voyage of Joseph T. Bear","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Georgia Kelly and Laura Lea Cannon","entry_number":3},"georgia-kelly-and-steven-kindler":{"albums":{"fresh-impressions":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Georgia Kelly and Steven Kindler","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Georgia Kelly and Steven Kindler","entry_number":5},"georgia-kelly-dusan-bogdanovic":{"albums":{"a-journey-home":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"A Journey Home","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Georgia Kelly and Dusan Bogdanovic","entry_number":6},"georgia-kelly-steven-halpern":{"albums":{"ancient-echoes":{"image":"","label":"Heru/Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Ancient Echoes","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern, Georgia Kelly","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":288,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/georgia-kelly-crop-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e192293f-e69c-4c17-9b58-b95de4e46769","last_name":"Kelly"},"gershon-kingsley":{"artist_name":"Gershon Kingsley","body":"While the word \"pioneer\" is thrown around liberally when it comes to electronic music, Gershon Kingsley is one of the few that has earned the term. In the mid-'60s, he and Jean-Jacques Perry produced one of the earliest electronic pop albums, *The In Sound From Way Out* by splicing together synthesized tones on tape. His best known song was the bouncy Moog instrumental \"Pop Corn,\" but Kingsley also composed electronic music for plays, commercials, soundtracks, and rock operas, with a particular affinity for Jewish religious music. In the '80s, Kingsley shifted his focus to more meditative, new age sounds on the albums *Much Silence\" and *Anima\" which are the most relevant to this site.\n\nGershon Kingsley, born Goetz Ksinski in 1922, grew up in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1946. He studied at CalArts and worked as a musical director and conductor for a while in Los Angeles before moving to New York where he served as musical director for Broadway shows and ballets. He eventually got a job as an arranger at Vanguard Records mostly working on albums of Greek, French, and Israeli folk songs. \n\nAt Vanguard, Kingsley met Jean-Jacques Perrey who had previously worked as a salesman for the proto-synth instrument the Ondioline and was also skilled at musique concrète and tape splicing. Together, the duo painstakingly cut together various synthesized tones into a series of chipper instrumentals decked out in futuristic ear candy that today would probably be called space age pop. Their next album was similar, but incorporated a Moog and an Ondioline. Kingsley went solo after that and recorded his most popular album, *Music to Moog By* which featured rock and pop covers played on a Moog with a backing band. The album included Kingsley's original song \"Pop Corn\" which later became a hit via Hot Butter's cover, and it remains his best-known composition.\n\nDuring the '70s, Kingsley wrote film soundtracks and concocted an album of more quirky pop tunes called *Mr. Popcorn and his Soundmachine*. However, he also composed more serious work, such as a piece for a Moog quartet that was performed at Carnegie Hall, a 1971 oratorio called \"What is Man?\" based on the Talmud, and a Passover rock opera (\"The Fifth Cup\"). By the '80s, he began moving towards more meditative and progressive electronic sounds on albums like *Much Silence* and *Anima*. \n\nKingsley continued to compose a wide variety of electronic music and more for the next three decades, ranging from large scale works like the opera \"Tierra\" to  quirky electronic pieces he posted on Soundcloud [here]( https://soundcloud.com/gershon-kingsley). Kingsley passed away in 2019.","discography":{"gershon-kingsley":{"albums":{"anima":{"image":"","label":"Kingsley Sound","review":"","title":"Anima","year":"1990"},"much-silence":{"image":"","label":"Relativity Theory","review":"Subtle, visionary music from the many keyboards of composer Kingsley. Drifting, relaxing and deep music abound on this high-quality release from Relativity Records. Perfect for T'ai Ch'i and inner endeavors.\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Much Silence","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":321,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/gershon-kingsley-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=e36cd2ca-68f1-452a-9003-ac45a4de4806","last_name":"Kingsley"},"ghostwriters":{"artist_name":"Ghostwriters","body":"The Ghostwriters were an electronic duo from Philadelphia who made music for over a decade but only released two albums and an EP before drifting apart in the late '80s. That's not to say they weren't active - the duo of Jeff Cain and Charles Cohen often performed alongside dancers or did soundtrack work that has not yet been archived or made available in a commercial way. In the 2010's, their 1986 album *Remote Dreaming* acquired a rabid cult following that sent prices of the cassette skyrocketing.\n\nCohen and Cain first worked together in a group called Anomali in the early seventies with co-founder Craig Anderton, formerly of Philly psych heroes the Mandrake Memorial.  Anderton had already built some impressive electronics including several prototype drum machines and two versions of a homemade keyboard called the Modulator. The band incorporated these instruments into their experimental brew, thick with unexpected electronic sounds, bass, processed guitar and Cohen playing oscillators or theremin drenched in echo.\n\nAt Temple, Cohen met the Group Motion Dance Company from Berlin and Anomali began collaborating with them on some large scale, multi-media performances. Although Anomali never released anything, the three members contributed to Linda Cohen's two underrated experimental folk albums for Poppy, which Anderton produced.   After this, Anderton moved away and began working for various magazines in addition to publishing his first book called *Electronic Projects for Musicians* in October 1975.\n\nThe other two continued on with their music, briefly changing their name to Airways before settling on Ghostwriters. Cohen maintained a day job as a sound designer for the Theater Department at Temple University while Cain occasionally worked on commissions to compose music for theater performances. The band was a part of a larger performance arts scene based in the Old City neighborhood, and the duo partnered with a mix of modern dance performers, experimental theater and performance artists in various projects. In particular, they did a succession of dance works and performances with improvisational dancer pioneers Terry Fox and Ishmael Houston Jones. \n\nIn the mid-'70s, Cain began writing and directing his own performance pieces including *Living Room at the Bottom of the Lake* and *No Man's Land*.  Gino Wong, who was a student at Temple and a host on WXPN's Star's End approached the band around this time to release some music on his Zero label, and the result was their first EP, *Music from No Man's Land*, released in 1980.  The album used two pieces from Cain's *No Man's Land*, hence the name.  Wong pressed 1,000 copies and sold them through non-profit distributor NMDS (New Music Distribution Service) who specialized in experimental music.\n\nAt the time, Wong had been working for Richard Jordan at a Philadelphia distribution company called Bayer Records that primarily sold UK punk singles as imports on the east coast. On a buying trip in the UK in 1978, Henry Cow member and Recommended Records owner Chris Cutler suggested that they form their own label instead of just distributing. Wong and Jordan folded their existing labels into a new venture called Red Records, starting out with a compilation called *Guitar Solos 3* in 1979.\n\nA few years later, Wong executive-produced the band's follow up *Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear*, also on Red. The band incorporated some of their standard live pieces like \"Swizzle\" into the album but also added in some improvisational tracks.  Red printed 2000 copies and helped set up some shows in Europe to promote the album.\n\nBack in Philadelphia, the two continued to do soundtrack work, as well as school assembly programs on analogue synthesis.  Around 1985, Ghostwriters were approached by producer Ray Monahan about doing an album with Mu-Psych, a new label focused on ambient relaxation music.  The resulting album, *Remote Dreaming*, may actually be the Ghostwriters best, but it didn't sell too well and certainly wasn't marketed to their usual fanbase. Rob Kall, who ran Mu-Psych, had a background in bio-feedback and admits he was over his head trying to run a record label. However, the album's rep has grown throughout the years and is now one of the most coveted and rare ambient releases of the '80s.\n\nA few years after *Remote Dreaming*, Cain got an offer to become head of operations opening the China Grill restaurant in NYC and decided to leave Philadelphia to move to New York. He returned in the early 90s and continued to play with Cohen sporadically, though they never released anything else.","discography":{"ghostwriters":{"albums":{"music-from-no-man's-land":{"image":"","label":"Zero","review":"With the release of this EP, two Philadelphia area electronic musicians make their recording debut. The Ghostwriters, Charles Cohen and Jeff Cain, have finally decided to export their music to a wider audience after several years of live local concerts in Philadelphia, where they have been well received. *No Man's Land* consists of two compositions...Side 1 being a six minute opus entitled \"Dance of the Spirit Catchers,\" composed by Charles Cohen. It is indeed very spirited and dance-like. One might envision this accompanying the antics of a whirling dervish. A careful blend of driving sequencer rhythms gives the selection its strong momentum.\n\nOn Side 2 is a seven minute piece composed by Jeff Cain entitled \"Sleepwalker Sleepwalker.\" As the title may suggest, the composition starts out in a quiet night time setting and then builds into a slow melody of low chords suggesting a slow walk while in a trance. The tempo does not change much and the piece gradually fades into the nighttime setting again. Both Cohen and Cain play a variety of electronic instruments on these selections including a Buchla Modular System. The compositions are well executed and after hearing this EP one hopes that an LP will soon be in the offing. \n\n(Peter D. Gulch, *SYNE*,  Vol. 4, No. 3, 1980)","title":"Music From No Man's Land","year":"1980"},"objects-in-mirror-are-closer-than-they-appear":{"image":"","label":"Red","review":"","title":"Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear","year":"1981"},"remote-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"Mu-Psych","review":"After years of playing for theater and dance performances, Jeff Cain and Charles Cohen developed a symbiotic, near telepathic rapport in their electronic ambient music. There is a clear yin/yang dualism at play, with Cain bringing the order (song structure, melody) and Cohen responsible for the more improvisatory, abstract elements. By the time of their 1986 cassette *Remote Dreaming*, the duo had become a  potent combination, but unfortunately very few actually heard the album at the time of its release. Over the years the tape has acquired a mythical status among collectors and is now one of the most sought after tapes in the field. \n\nThe hype around *Remote Dreaming* may initially be perplexing for new listeners, especially with the slowly unfolding song sequence which saves the show stopper for the end of side one. But further listens reveal a surehanded methodology and confirm this as the masterpiece many claim this to be. \n\nThe tracks generally alternate between nouveaux classical piano pieces like the title track and the more contemplative \"Left Handed Fiction\" with more introspective ambient fare like the blurred washes of \"Sub Blue\" or the spellbinding \"Empty Chairs\" which uses moments of dissonance to keep the listener engaged despite the dreamy mood.\n\nAnd then there's \"Rococo Rondo.\" The track begins as another of Cain's acoustic piano pieces with light Buchla coloring before shifting into a waltz pattern on bass that leads the track from the hotel lobby into an alien symphony of skittering percussion that nearly sounds like Squarepusher with its melodic density and explosion of ideas. The rest of the album is great but this track is simply otherworldly and is a big part of *Remote Dreaming*'s heavy rep.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Remote Dreaming","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":13,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ghostwritersps.jpg?alt=media&token=585cd341-ec3d-4117-983d-ff389573dd09","last_name":"Ghostwriters"},"gil-trythall":{"artist_name":"Gil Trythall","body":"Gil Trythall was a composer and music professor from Tennessee who began recording electronic music during the mid-'60s. In the early ‘70s he made a commercial splash with two albums of country hits played on the Moog synthesizer. His only other album was the privately pressed *Luxikon II / Echospace*, a short but intriguing album of minimal electronics.  Despite this meager output, he was very active in the early electronic scene, organizing yearly festivals called Electronic Music Plus. The festivals, which he started hosting in 1970, ran for 19 years and provided a showcase for many electronic composers. Trythall passed away in 2023.\n \nBorn on October 28, 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Trythall grew up listening to his mother play the grand piano at home. Both Gil and his brother Richard grew up to be musicians and credit their mom for early inspiration. After 12 years of schooling and a stint in the US air force, Trythall emerged with a doctorate in music theory and composition from Cornell in 1960. He studied the entire history of classical music from Gregorian chants to Bartok, but was most interested in the electro-acoustic experiments of contemporary composers like John Cage and Stockhausen. \n\nTrythall first taught at Knox college for four years and then moved on to join the faculty of the School of Music at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville. in 1964, he established an electronic music studio in his office there with tape recorders, primitive signal generators, and electronic percussion sounds built from a Popular Science magazine schematic. During his down time, Trythall began assembling his earliest electronic works. In a speech at Knobcon 7 in Chicago in 2018, he recalled his early experiments.\n\n\"To have the necessary pitches at the ready,\" Trythall said, \"I recorded 2 octaves of chromatic pitches above and below middle C and hung the recorded strips of tape on the wall with tags. Then, when I needed a pitch of a certain duration I would calculate its length and cut off as much tape as I needed. Then to the splicing bar to add to the growing tape composition. This was tedious, slow work. A good day produced 7 or 8 seconds of music. I worked with my shoes off so that, if a piece of tape fell on the floor, I would feel and retrieve it before it was crushed. The finished tape was an accompaniment for live performers.\"\n  \nPeabody eventually built a nice electronic music studio with a Moog IIIc in the late '60s, and Trythall spent a great deal of time learning to use it.  Around this time, Rick Powell, a University of Florida graduate who'd just come to Nashville, launched the Athena record label and showed up at the Peabody College studio. Powell wanted to release an album of country hits recorded entirely on the Moog, and he wanted Trythall to make it. At the time, *Switched on Bach* was a huge commercial smash and Trythall couldn’t say no. Growing up in Tennessee, he was already familiar with the songs.\n \nTrythall worked late into the night notating the hit songs while he spun them over and over on his turntable. He used the Moog to approximate the acoustic instruments and arranged the songs in two and three part counterpoint. Three months later he finished the album *Switched on Nashville* and Athena released it to moderate success. According to Trythall, the album got as high as #23 on the country charts.  Trythall did some interviews to promote it on local TV and radio stations, including one memorable experience with WSM’s Ralph Emery where the album was beamed out at midnight to unsuspecting truckers all over the South while Trythall explained how he created the new sounds.\n \nFor his next album, Trythall created the similar *Nashville Gold* which also did well for Athena. With Trythall's profile on the rise, he was able to land a book deal and put together *The Principles and Practice of Electronic Music*, published in 1973. The book explained the various types of synthesis and how they work, as well as illustrating techniques for recording and editing techniques on tape. It even came with a 7\" record to demonstrate the sounds.\n \nAfter this run of success, Trythall hit a rough patch. Athena went out of business, despite their success with the country Moog albums. And soon after, Trythall lost his job at Peabody when the college merged with Vanderbilt and all faculty positions except those in the Department of Education were terminated. \n \nIt wasn’t long before Trythall bounced back, landing a new job at West Virginia University where he remained until retiring in 1996. During his tenure, Trythall tried many electronic experiments that he performed at his Electronic Music Plus festivals. One of his memorable experiments was called \"Biological Loop\", inspired in part by the book *The Secret Life of Plants*. Trythall read that plants could respond to thoughts, so he hooked up a begonia plant to a resistance meter and a Micromoog VCO and amplified it. Much to his amusement, it never actually worked except for the one time he performed it on stage and, according to him, the plant screamed. The audience, which included Don Buchla, roared with laughter.\n \nIn 1980, Trythall recorded a short electronic album called *Luxikon II / Echospace* and pressed 500 copies on his own Pandora Records label. \"I thought I would do more and more of these albums, but that’s all I ever did,\" Trythall explained. \"It was classical music training transferred to the electronic medium. The song 'Luxicon II' is in rondo form and 'Echo Space' is theme and variations. I used tape loops and feedback and 'Echospace',  in particular, was very influenced by Terry Riley’s *Rainbow in Curved Air.*\"\n \nA few years later, Trythall met the younger electronic musician [Zon Vern Pyles](/zon-vern-pyles). Trythall was impressed with Pyle’s gift for tone color and programming and the two of them performed locally for the next few years, usually in academic settings. Trythal continued to host his festivals until 1989 and retired from teaching in 1996. He maintains a Soundcloud [page](https://soundcloud.com/user-943710126/sets/gil-trythall) where he's hosted audio files of selected tape experiments and early electronic pieces.","discography":{"gil-trythal":{"albums":{"luxikon-ii-echospace":{"image":"","label":"Pandora Records","review":"Hot off the presses here in the good old US of A comes a new LP from veteran electronic artist Gil Trythall, whom you may remember on the LPs *Country Moog* and *Nashville Gold* way back in the '70s. He was also featured on the CRI collective album #382 with two other solo sets by avant-garde electronic artists. \n\nGil explores some interesting and lightning-quick keyboard improvisation with his modular Moog against a backdrop of a complex sequencer bed in his commissioned dance piece \"Luxikon II,\" which made its debut Feb. 2 1980 with laser projections in Atlanta. The piece features some excellent, classical counterpoint and avant-jazz synthesizer riffs. It is remarkably accessible for all its compositional complexity. The instruments on this piece were Moog IIIC modular, two interconnected Micromoogs, EML 400 sequencer, Multivox Analog Echo, and a Farfisa Combo Organ. The music never fails to surprise in its directions and moods. It is just short of 15 minutes and takes up all of side 1. \n\nSide 2 consists of \"Echospace,\" a remarkable experiment in multiple echo and tape delay techniques using the Moog IIIc and a Farfisa Combo Organ. Although advanced in its production, it is as accessible to a variety of different “schools” of thought as the first piece. And as with Luxikon II, the music never dwells for too long on one concept. It constantly changes and explores different states.\n\n(James Finch, *Syne* January 1981)","title":"Luxikon II / Echospace","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":94,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/gillp.jpg?alt=media&token=a7ab3360-d74e-4ede-bebd-a3ad5fdc74ad","last_name":"Trythall"},"giles-reaves":{"artist_name":"Giles Reaves","body":"Born in 1961, Giles Reaves was a decade younger than many of the new age and ambient synth pioneers like Brian Eno, [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns), or the artists on the Unity label. Although he shared some of the same influences, his debut *Wunjo* heralded the next phase of new age. Played and recorded completely with computers, digital equipment and MIDI, the album serves a bridge between the more organic analog sounds of the old guard to the more commercial wave of the late '80s when the music became more calculated.\n\nReaves never set out to upend the status quo. By his own estimation he was a renaissance man who happened to be in the right place at the right time. While working at the Castle studio in Nashville in 1984, Reaves used his downtime to experiment with their room of synths and sequencers. One day, Tony Brown from MCA Records was in the studio for another project and became intrigued by what he heard through the walls.  A deal quickly materialized after that.\n\n\"All my friends at the time were trying to get record deals, and here I was with a major label dropped in my lap,\" Reaves recalled. \"I almost turned them down because I was worried I had nothing to say. The whole thing was pure luck.\"\n\nOf course, Reaves is being humble - his success was more than blind luck. Reaves had a long history as a musician, arranger, and engineer before getting his big break.  Growing up in Gainesville, Florida with four brothers and sisters, Reaves learned about electronics early on from his brother. The two would do hobby projects like building an oscillator or a step sequencer. Reaves started playing drums in 7th grade in the school band and the percussion ensemble. He was good enough to earn a full scholarship to the University of Utah, but he only attended for a year before he transferred to Belmont in Nashville. Reaves did take an electronic music class while there and learned how to use the modular Moog.\n\nIn 1981, Reaves dropped out and played in drums in a Top 40 band and worked at Baskin Robbins on the side. His girlfriend helped get him a job as an assistant engineer at the Audio Media studio in 1982, working with producer Marshall Morgan on tracking sessions. Reaves was elated to go from working at an ice cream shop to helping out on tracking sessions with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Anne Murray, the Osmonds, and more.\n\nBy 1984, Reaves got a full time job as an audio engineer at Castle Studios where he was mentored by Chuck Ainlay and Jay Joyce. It was at Castle that Reaves put together *Wunjo* during his off hours.  With a $15,000 recording budget from MCA, he was able to buy an Apple Computer and other gear to do the work.  Among his inspirations for the album were Jean Michel Jarre and Michael Oldfield.  When putting the album together, he realized that he could arrange the album in a way to tell a story, and he used a Book of Runes to come up with all the song titles to help tie it together.  \"As a drummer growing up, I always felt that melody was challenging for me,” Reaves said. “So I decided to focus on melody for that album as a challenge to myself. I'm not sure how I had the guts to do that.\"\n\nReaves estimates that *Wunjo* probably sold about 10,000 copies. His follow up *Nothing is Lost* had more percussion, with Reaves returning a little more to his comfort zone.  However, the album didn't generate the same level of interest as the debut and MCA didn't promote it much. \n\nAfter one more album for MCA, Reaves signed to Hearts of Space and had more success there with 1992's *Sea of Glass\" which rose to #11 on the new age charts.  Reaves' took a hiatus from his own music until the late '90s while he focused more on his audio engineering work. He became an in-demand vocal tuner in the studio due to his perfect pitch, cleaning up vocal tracks for bands as disparate as Megadeath and Peter Cetera. He currently lives and works in New York.\n","discography":{"giles-reaves":{"albums":{"letting-go":{"image":"","label":"MCA","review":"","title":"Letting Go","year":"1989"},"nothing-is-lost":{"image":"","label":"MCA","review":"","title":"Nothing is Lost","year":"1988"},"wunjo":{"image":"","label":"MCA","review":"By 1986, new age was becoming big business and many of the major labels created boutique labels for the genre. MCA started their Master series in 1986 and released over 200 albums before fizzling out in 1990. Giles Reaves was one of the earliest artists on the label, and his 1986 debut *Wunjo* met with glowing reviews at the time and is still well-liked by many.  Inspired by Nordic mythology, *Wunjo* is a cinematic record with big ambition and a crystal clear recording. The album is varied, with the five long songs incorporating sounds from both the mechanized Berlin school and the more sentimental side of ‘80s new age (i.e. \"Strength\"). Side 2 is more consistent and enjoyable to these ears with two long tracks that start with a brooding, eastern motif and journey into the majestic \"Odin\" with its layers of wordless vocals and synth pads bringing to mind the mighty \"I'm Not in Love\" by 10CC.","title":"Wunjo","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":97,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/giles.jpg?alt=media&token=64fd5173-bd12-4634-9bff-4525d2671bd9","last_name":"Reaves"},"glen-neff":{"artist_name":"Glen Neff","body":"Glen Neff was a painter, sculptor and musician from Southern California who released five hard-to-categorize cassettes from 1987 to 1991 that drew from minimalism, fourth-world experimentation, free-improv jazz and new age.  In 1990, *Option* magazine singled out the \"languid dissonance\" that characterized his music at the time, though Neff himself put a peppier spin on his business card: \"art for your ears: grooves, jazz moves and atmosphere.\" Prior to his solo work, Neff helmed a latin-jazz band called Aura with his wife Maria Solaris in the late '70s, in addition to producing jazz festivals in his hometown of Carlsbad.  The couple eventually divorced and Neff moved to New Mexico, re-emerging in the late '90s with a backlog of new material. He has been active ever since, even winning a New Mexico Music Award for new age in 2016.\n\nGlen Neff was born in New Jersey in 1947, the first of four kids. His father worked for the coast guard and his mother was a nurse. One of his grandfathers was first violin for the Philadelphia Philharmonic and another was an old time fiddle player. Neff's father could play any instrument and encouraged him to play bluegrass, but he wasn’t interested.  Instead, he took up the piano initially and later played the trumpet in the school band.  By the time his family settled in Carlsbad, California in his sophomore year, Neff was interested in jazz, blues, and rock, especially Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Grateful Dead.  For a short while, he played Fender Rhodes in a local rock band.\n\nAfter graduating high school in 1965, Neff enrolled in college at San Diego State and got a fine arts degree.  He then traveled throughout Europe for a while before relocating to Sebastopol in Northern California.  For most of the '70s, Neff bounced between Sebasatapol and Carlsbad, picking up freelance design work and showing his vibrant, abstract paintings at solo and group shows in the area. In 1974, he helped to produce some jazz and electronic concerts at the Carlsbad library, inviting musical acts to play and recording the  show. He went on to organize many more of these shows, usually including a performance from his own musical projects.\n \nAround 1976, Neff met Maria Solaris, a textile artist and teacher who was 17 years his senior. The two of them fell in love and formed a latin-jazz band called Aura with some other musicians including bassist [Greg Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Cohen). Aura played live throughout California, including a few gigs at Neff’s outdoor music shows in Carlsbad, but never released any music commercially.\n \nNeff and Solaris settled in San Diego by the early '80s, living downtown in a loft they called Blue Door Studio. Neff worked as a drywall contractor and helped to raise Solaris' two daughters from a previous marriage. They were mainly engrossed in their art by this time, and music took a backseat in Neff's life. This began to change in 1987 when Neff put together a recording studio including a Memorymoog and Yamaha DX-7 and began recording new material with Solaris they would soon release on cassette. Nearly all of the music was built up through improvisations that were later edited and embellished in the studio. \"Improvising is the best way for me to get what's inside out,\" Neff told *Keyboard* magazine in 1988. \"It connects me to that mystical side.\"\n \nNeff’s debut album, *Inner Journey*, was released in 1988. Dissonance, odd timbres, and sound effects all combine into an atmospheric sprawl that requires inquisitive ears to fully parse, but the overall effect is meditative and hypnotic. His next album, *The Voice in the Garden* followed, with Solaris providing wordless vocals to many songs in a style somewhat reminiscent of Yma Sumac or Sondi Sodsai.  Writing in *Heartsong Review*, Wahaba Heartsun noted the \"random, organic\" quality of the improvisations but still praised it as \"good music to carry you off on a journey, if you don’t mind going through some dark tangled jungles as well as the peaceful Oriental gardens.\"\n \nNeff's next album, *Trio Extempore* explored a live sound in a group setting, while his 1990 release *Morning Sun* was a true solo effort. The latter was reviewed in *Option*, giving Neff one of the best pull quotes of his career: \"With an extra measure of jazz chops, Glen Neff is head and shoulders above the Budd/Eno clones in his sophisticated use of harmonics, rhythms and synth voicings.\"\n \nAfter one final release, the couple divorced and Neff relocated to Northern California. He continued to record often, but didn’t get around to releasing more music until he settled more permanently in New Mexico. After that, he began releasing a torrent of new music starting in 2000 and hasn't let up since. He built a new studio in 2001 and has gotten some commissioned work, but he mostly works on his own music and paintings.","discography":{"glen-neff":{"albums":{"glen-neff's-trio-extempore":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is a little like those ‘70s ECM albums that used to pit unsuited musicians against each other in the guise of a \"small group\" format. Whether Glen Neff’s Trio is unsuited to each other is not the point, though. I was too busy trying to guess what outrage they’d perform next. There's a nervy take of \"God Bless the Child\" scored for sax, synthesizer and jew’s harp. Or maybe you’d get off on Ornette Coleman’s \"Lonely Woman\" as done by tenor sax and church organ? The originals (mostly by Neff) run the gamut from fusion synth noodles to free playing, yet it is all done with such loony abandon and harmonic good sense. I recommend this despite its lack of thematic unity. In a case like this, you don't need it.\n\n(Ken Egbert, *Option* Jul/Aug, 1989).  \n\n*Trio Extempore'* is comprised of improvised avant jazz pieces that tend to dissolve in swirls of disorienting sound effects, flailing sax, and oddball synth parts. However, stranded in the middle of all this is the sublimely beautiful “Fanfare,” an ambient synth track with wordless vocals from Neff’s then-wife Maria Solaris. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Glen Neff's Trio Extempore","year":"1989"},"inner-journey":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Inner Journey","year":"1988"},"morning-sun":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Subtle and complex music done with a variety of synthesizers, these songs range form spacy to syncopated to odd experimental. Glen uses an impressive range of timbres, from fat basses to windchimes and flutes, and careful use of non-harmonic sounds like fog-horns, gongs, dripping water and space squeaks. While this is not always \"pretty\" music, it is always interesting. Glen's highly developed musical sense and personal vision hold the collection together in spite of the diversity. Excellent for planetary escape, dance improv. \n\n(Brad Evans, *Hearthsong Review* #10 Spring/Summer 1991)","title":"Morning Sun","year":"1990"},"the-sound-poets":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Sound Poets","year":"1991"},"the-voice-in-the-garden":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Voice in the Garden","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":103,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Glen-Neff-photo.jpg?alt=media&token=802a604f-5ef0-4eb3-ad2e-a96f0e949665","last_name":"Neff"},"glenn-smith":{"artist_name":"Glenn Smith","body":"Dr. Glenn Smith (born 1946) was a music professor at George Mason University for 47 years, composing a large body of work including piano concertos, symphonies, and new age cassettes that he sold through Unitarian Church stores. Smith was interested in the healing properties of music, eventually starting the Music and Well-Being program at George Mason and creating albums for relaxation and healing such as *Music for a Peaceful World*. Smith maintains a website [here](https://everycelliswell.com/) with more detail.","discography":{"glenn-smith":{"albums":{"bringing-in-the-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Bringing in the Light","year":"1991"},"improvisations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Improvisations","year":"1989"},"music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for a Peaceful World","year":"1989"},"nostradamus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Nostradamus: Visionary Healer","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"jeanne-marshall-glenn-edward-smith":{"albums":{"circling-in-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Clearing Your Channels of Perception","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jeanie Marshall and Glenn Smith","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":379,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/glenn-smith-640.jpg?alt=media&token=6d8b5062-df9a-404f-8e00-9092e235f576","last_name":"Smith"},"gostbit":{"artist_name":"Gostbit","body":"Gostbit was the moniker for Bryan Tilford's ever changing musical project, which began in the early '80s in Nashville and lasted until his death in 2014. The name means \"God's drum\" and shows Tilford's interest in religion as well as African rhythms which infused much of his early work. Tilford was a music fanatic with many influences including Harry Nilsson, Kraftwerk and XTC, though most of his music was based on pop song forms and falls outside the scope of this guide. However, he had a brief phase in the late '80s making instrumental music in the vein of Byrne/Eno that may interest readers of this site. \n\nBryan Tilford was the middle of three children, born in 1960 and raised in Evansville, Indiana. His father worked in corporate management and his mother stayed home with the kids. The family went to church every Sunday. Always imaginative as a child, Bryan would build cities out of matchboxes in the basement while his sister Kris looked on in amazement. He took an early interest in music, strumming a tennis racket along with the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and the Partridge Family while putting on his own version of American Bandstand with neighborhood friends.\n\nTilford began teaching himself to play piano at twelve, inspired by Scott Joplin's ragtime songs, and a year later he got his first guitar. By 16, he'd already composed a hundred songs, a  harbinger of his prolific songwriting that would yield 20 albums worth of material before his death.\n\nOne of Tilford's early fans was his younger brother Lance. \"I grew up watching him and being duly inspired by his passion for music,\" Lance [wrote](http://brevardbusking.org/2014/04/bryan-tilford-1960-2014/#comments). \"He put me on a path of ridiculously eclectic musical appreciations. Was he 'contrarian?' Oh, yes. We loved a good argument, and as brothers, we had great contests of intellect. But that always faded when it came to the two things we have shared our entire lives: a love of music and a love of humor.\"\n\nAfter a couple years of college at the University of Missouri where he studied journalism, Tilford dropped out in 1980 to pursue music. He married his high school girlfriend and the couple moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There, Tilford and his wife Jane put together the first incarnation of Gostbit (pronounced ghost-beat) along with Mark Pilkington and Dave Haverkampf. The band sometimes played live in the area, joining an interesting Nashville new wave and rock scene that also included bands like Actuel, Dessau, the Wrong Band, and Factual. Gostbit's first release was a single in 1984 on their own label Arts Records, which featured the vocals of Chip Woody, credited as Toumas Voudee. (Interestingly, the record was mixed by [Tom Behrens](/artificial-horizons) from the one-off electronic obscurity Artificial Horizons). Gostbit would go on to issue two full-length cassettes in 1987, a self-titled debut and *Montage*. \n\nGostbit's gaining momentum was put in deep freeze when Bryan and Jane's marriage abruptly fell apart in 1988. Tilford abandoned Nashville for his family's vacation house in Gatlinburg, Tennessee where he would remain for the next four years. There, he dealt with lingering depression which he channeled into instrumental music that combined tribal beats and primitive electronics in a stew he [called](https://web.archive.org/web/19970129031302/http://ghostbeat.com/fulldisc.htm) an \"adventurous foray into rhythmic relaxation.\" The songs drew from a variety of African and Asian influences, as well as Byrne and Eno's early '80s experiments.\n\nTo document this period, Tilford first released *Falling in a Dream* in 1988 on cassette, followed by a reworked version called *Themes for Dreams* in 1989.  However, Tilford's instrumental period was brief, and starting in 1990, moved back to rock and pop songcraft, even while incorporating a newfound industrial element via Nine Inch Nails. On his 1990 tape *Here Now*, he included a song called \"Sam I Am\" which Florida magazine Ink 19 later called \"a weirdly organic industrial track...with lyrics borrowed from Dr. Seuss\" that earned him some local airplay.\n\nAfter putting out a demo collection in 1992, Tilford moved to Melbourne, Florida where his sister Kris and his parents were living. He wasted little time assembling a new iteration of his band, first as a duo with a chanter/singer named Cutter and then later a trio with Joe Lamy and drummer Ken Green. By then, Tilford was using the spelling Ghostbeat, perhaps tired of people mispronouncing the name for years. \n\nTilford's new project would ultimately go on to release eight CD's over a fifteen year period. As Tilford's style increasingly favored musical craftsmanship, reviews typically compared the bands like Squeeze and XTC, though Tilford still loved to experiment. Tilford, who was known for his strong opinions, sometimes exasperated his bandmates. According to a touching [tribute](http://brevardbusking.org/2014/04/bryan-tilford-1960-2014/#comments) written after his death, one fellow musician wrote that Tilford had a \"passion for perfection and obstinate dedication towards doing things the Bryan way.\"\n\nDuring his life, Tilford worked a variety of shipping and delivery jobs, and later refilling toner cartridges. But these jobs were just a paycheck to him; music remained his driving force. One job that he did love was working with the nonprofit organization \"Songs of Love,\" writing and recording songs for children who were terminally ill. Tilford touched many people with his generous and giving nature, which grew out of his Christian faith and general interest in World religion, particularly the teachings of Yogananda.\n\nWhen he was only 54, Tilford died in his sleep of natural causes. His funeral attracted hundreds of friends and fellow musicians. One [remembered]((http://brevardbusking.org/2014/04/bryan-tilford-1960-2014/#comments)) him thus: \"His love was abundant and overflowing; that we live in a universe of love is one of the ever-present themes in his lyrics. It wasn't clever wordplay, but a genuine expression of his beliefs, and he did his best to live up to this world view.\"\n\n\n**Sources**:\n- Author Interview with Lance Tilford, December 20, 2019\n- Author interview with Kris Hardy, December 6, 2020\n- Author interview with Joe Lamy, December 15, 2020\n- Wagner, Anton. \"Ghostbeat,\" *Ink 19*, February 1997\n- Ghostbeat.com Archived Web Page [Retrieved here](https://web.archive.org/web/19970120234802/http://ghostbeat.com/brybio.htm)\n- \"Bryan Tilford, 1960-2014\" [Retrieved here](http://brevardbusking.org/2014/04/bryan-tilford-1960-2014/#comments)","discography":{"gostbit":{"albums":{"byzantium":{"image":"","label":"Arts Records","review":"","title":"Themes for Dreams","year":"1989"},"falling-in-a-dream":{"image":"","label":"Arts Records","review":"","title":" Falling in a Dream","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":211,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bryan-Tilford-640.jpg?alt=media&token=ce13cdca-2419-48ad-accf-ee10f8f8e7a2","last_name":"Gostbit"},"greg-fodrea":{"artist_name":"Greg Fodrea","body":"Along with [Quark Pair](/quark-pair), Greg Fodrea was one of the few teenage artists active in the heyday of new age music, a genre largely forged by Baby Boomers in their thirties and forties. Born in 1974, Fodrea grew up in Aurora, Colorado - a self-described sci-fi fantasy nerd who loved synth pop and the more emotive side of new age like Patrick O'Hearn and Yanni. Fodrea got a Korg M1 keyboard in his freshman year of high school and his family convinced him to release his music on cassette a few years later. Fodrea recorded the album in Jesse Allen's basement studio and put out 1,000 copies of the tape that he sold locally, though he recalls one station in Alaska playing the title track on a new age radio show. Fodrea went on to a career in business and never released any further recordings.","discography":{"greg-fodrea":{"albums":{"fulcrum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Windsong","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":372,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/fodrea-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2da0c32d-7c1f-4b4b-a035-b6d9af7ef98a","last_name":"Fodrea"},"greg-harris":{"artist_name":"Greg Harris","body":"Based in Los Angeles, Greg Harris was a multi-instrumentalist who spent his teens immersed in classical music before dropping out of college and starting a new wave band. He then got involved with new age musician [Raymond Daniel Platt](/raymond-daniel-platt), appearing on his album *Fields of View* and trance-jamming with dancers in epic improv sessions. From 1989-1992 he released two electro-acoustic albums that employ a wide range of instruments in a post-psychedelic context. He continued on with other projects that fall outside of this guide, but his early releases may be of interest to the more adventurous readers of this site.\n\nGreg Harris was born in 1962 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. The eldest of three, he started piano at the age of seven with his grandfather teaching him how to play. Harris practiced often and showed talent, moving on to Chopin and Beethoven a few years later. When he was 14, he joined the Cal Arts Orchestra for young musicians and took a compositional class where he learned about Steve Reich, Milton Babbitt and Morton Subotnick who come to influence his work. At the same time, he was hired by his Episcopal church as a choir director.\n\nAfter high school, Harris went to Cal Arts for a year. \"I was bored to tears,\" Harris said. \"I thought I had absorbed all this much earlier and I felt like I was spinning my wheels.\" Harris dropped out and joined a new wave band, Systems of Romance. The band gigged around town for a few years and put out an EP in 1983 called *Dare the Dance* on their own Stolen Riff label before calling it quits.\n\nIn 1984, Harris spent a year in London with his girlfriend. There he took up the saxophone and started recording guitar tracks and busking in the Tube to make money. When he came back to the states a year later, he started teaching piano lessons and working at St. Francis Episcopal church as a music director where he remained for 35 years.\n\nWhile buying some gear, Harris met Raymond Platt, a fellow musician who'd founded his own label to release electronic music. They started to jam together, and Platt had Harris play saxophone on a few songs for his 1986 album *Fields of View*. \"Ray was renting a place and they had a dance studio,\" Harris recalled. \"We'd have sessions with drumming and dancers and people would chant off the top of their head. It was a congealing of people’s minds. But it wasn’t chaotic - there was a natural flow.\"\n\nIn 1989, Harris made a cassette of his own, *Chemo Savvy*. \"At that time, a lot of people were using samples to substitute for real instruments. My interest was doing the reverse,\" Harris said. \"I wanted to use acoustic sounds to mimic electronic sounds. In the song 'Rain Prayer' for example, I used unusual tuning. I was looking for in-between harmonic relationships that would reference an emotional past or generate an emotional or tactile effect.\" Harris made a few hundred copies and gave a lot of them away and sold some on consignment locally.\n\nIn 1992, Harris released a second cassette called *Skipping the Philosopher's Stone*. The first side featured a concerto for saloon piano, bagpipes and other unusual instruments. The second side featured two long pieces using tape manipulation and a similar sound to his debut.\n\nIn the mid-'90s, Harris started a new band called Quercus and released two CDs. The first *Ode to Earthly Delight* (1997) showed Harris trying a more mellow and romantic sound, but he added more complexity on the band's self-titled CD in 1999 which added mandolin and bouzouki. Most recently, Harris's string quartet, \"Landscapes,\" was recorded by the Sirius Quartet for their album, *Playing On The Edge 2* in 2021.","discography":{"starroot":{"albums":{"chemo-savvy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Chemo Savvy","year":"1989"},"skipping-the-philosophers-stone":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Skipping the Philosopher's Stone","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":230,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Greg-Harris-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0de08b59-645a-406d-b5e5-c7627bff8763","last_name":"Harris"},"greg-klamt":{"artist_name":"Greg Klamt","body":"Greg Klamt was a designer and artist based in San Diego who began playing electronic music in the mid-'80s. Klamt attended UC San Diego where he met musician [Howard Givens](/brain-laughter) and the two bonded over a shared interest in Brian Eno, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre. Givens would go on to launch the Spotted Peccary label in the late '80s, hiring Klamt to provide artwork for some albums and releasing Klamt's first solo album *Fulcrum* in 1993. The album got some airplay on Hearts of Space end Echoes and Klamt went on to release two more albums for Spotted Peccary that fall outside the scope of this guide, *Fluxus Quo* in 1997 and *Convergence* in 2002.","discography":{"greg-klamt":{"albums":{"fulcrum":{"image":"","label":"Spotted Peccary","review":"","title":"Fulcrum","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":371,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/greg-klamt-640.jpg?alt=media&token=620efa25-3318-46b3-9d5a-dbb4600d3b24","last_name":"Klamt"},"gregory-taylor":{"artist_name":"Gregory Taylor","body":"Gregory Taylor, who sums up his style as \"fourth world DIY,\" was an experimental home taper, writer, painter and radio show host. While based in Ithaca, NY and Madison, WI,  he issued a run of five cassettes on his own ARTLevel label from 1983 to 1989. Taylor's work often incorporated Asian elements like microtonal tunings and Gamelan-inspired melodies refracted through a cerebral sensibility that favored found sound and odd juxtapositions. Taylor took a long hiatus after his 1989 album *What the Thunder Wrote*, but returned to music at the behest of Kerry Leimer in 2007 who recruited him to join his resurrected label, Palace of Lights.\n\nBorn in 1953, Taylor’s family moved around a lot during his youngest years. His father worked for a firm updating the U.S. power transmission lines, and the family slowly crept eastward from Chicago to upstate New York as the work was completed. By the early ‘60s, they finally settled down in Wheaton, Illinois near Chicago where Taylor devoured unusual records at his local library, including Folkways field recordings, John Cage's prepared sonatas, and gamelan music from Indonesia. \"A lot of things I love now were records I discovered back then,\" Taylor said.\n\nIn addition to music, Taylor showed an early aptitude for drawing and painting. He attended Wheaton College starting in 1971 and ultimately got a BA in art there.  On the side, he continued to play music and joined a band called AIR after moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. \"I was the world’s worst keyboard player,\" Taylor said, \"but I loved producing and experimenting in the studio.  In the studio, you don’t have to be embarrassed about your lack of skills. I was more of an idea person.\"\n\nFollowing his departure from the group and a move back north, the remnants of the AIR band--now called Ground Zero--tapped him to produce a demo to help get them gigs at clubs. They were essentially a bar band, but Taylor had them doing finger picking and using drum loops and marimbas. The sessions inspired Taylor to create his own music, and eventually it became his preferred artistic outlet. \"My paintings at the time were these tiny, little fussy things that took weeks to create,\" Taylor said. \"When I discovered the Portastudio four track, I realized I could make my art much more quickly.\"\n\nBy the late '70s, Taylor worked at Fermilab and Bell Laboratories, where he learned his first programming language. During this time he also started doing technical writing, a skill that became his primary vocation. Shortly after his marriage in the early '80s, Taylor put together a small home studio in his closet consisting of a four track, a Casio keyboard, and a Korg MS-20. Working slowly and deliberately, Taylor crafted an album's worth of material that he released as his first cassette, *Given Names*, in 1983.\n\nTaylor pressed a few hundred copies of the album and bought ads in Op magazine to sell it. He found distribution with Interdisc, Important, and AEON who described his debut as \"thirteen short compositions of divergent themes and styles [that] weave in and out between sound experiments, atmospheric pieces, experimental electronics and electro-rock.\" Although some of his friends were befuddled when Taylor stopped painting, others admired his musical work too. One friend memorably summed up his aesthetic as \"cultural artifacts from imaginary cultures.\"\n\nAfter the release of his first cassette, Taylor and his wife Jolanda moved to Cornell where she was pursuing a Ph.D. There he joined the University’s gamelan group and began studying and playing Indonesian music. He also discovered that nearby Ithaca College had a Synclavier, a then state-of-the-art synthesizer, which he was able to re-tune to Gamelan scales. This resulted in his next album, *Logic of Possible Worlds* which was essentially his version of gamelan played on the synclavier. Taylor produced 300 copies of the album and again sold it via underground magazines.\n\nBy 1984, Taylor’s wife got a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin and they moved again. By this time, Taylor had built up a nice collection of tapes through trading with other like-minded artists, and he was working pretty regularly as a freelance writer for magazines like OP and its successor Sound Choice. In 1986, he started a radio show on community station to play his favorite experimental and ambient releases. He couldn’t think of a name of the show so he consulted his *Oblique Strategies* cards, a type of idea-generator created by Brian Eno to assist the creative process. Pulling a card from the deck, Taylor hit on the perfect name: *Remember Those Quiet Evenings*.\n\nAfter five years in Wisconsin, Taylor's wife received a Fulbright grant to study in the Netherlands and they relocated to Utrecht. While there, Taylor decided to apply to the Dutch Institute of Sonology and was shocked when they actually admitted him despite a lack of the typical academic credentials. The chance to study Sonology with teachers such as Dick Raaijmakers and Paul Berg changed his life, but with one unforeseen result - he didn't release any work for nearly a decade.\n\nAfter returning to Madison in 1990, Taylor resumed his radio show, which he continues to host to this day. He worked for many years as a marketing director, but left that behind in the late '90s to work at Cycling '74 with Max, a graphic programming language for music. This work inspired him to reconnect with pals from the old cassette culture days and to start playing live again. In 2007, former acquaintance (and one of his personal heroes) [Kerry Leimer](/kerry-leimer) asked Taylor if he’d like to release something on his label, Palace of Lights. \"I was flattered and floored,\" Taylor recalled. \"I had talked to him about doing an interview on my show, and never even mentioned to him that I played music. I’m a Midwesterner, and you never flog yourself like that. But working with Palace of Lights is something I would never have imagined back in the day. I'm so honored.\"\n\nAlong with a solo career, Taylor has also moved out into collaborations and live work with various small groups like PGT, the Desert Fathers and a quartet with Darwin Grosse, Tom Hamer, and Mark Henrickson. Taylor lives in Madison, Wisconsin.","discography":{"gregory-taylor":{"albums":{"given-names":{"image":"","label":"ARTLevel","review":"A good collection of mesmerizing drones (mostly in the lower register) along with some uptempo numbers built on e-percussion and S&H [sample and hold] triggers. Taylor's search for tonalities includes not only rich, vibrant synthesizer chords, but some unusual taped voice loops, soothing nature recordings, and guest spots by a guitarist, sax player, drummer, etc. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":"Given Names","year":"1983"},"interregnum":{"image":"","label":"ARTLevel","review":"With a technique that Taylor refers to as \"permutational noise/sound alignment,\" he has created a startlingly beautiful tape. Electronic trance  sounds punctuated with short melodic bursts keep the music interesting without letting it lapse into new age banality. The all-synthesized sounds are remarkably organic sounding. Taylor knows how to coax out the many beautiful sounds that synthesizers are capable of producing. The koto-like sound on \"The Critic in Winter\" is particularly outstanding. Some of this tape reminds me of Balinese Gamelan music, while other parts sound slightly middle eastern. The whole tape has a flavor or some mythical non-western culture and I like it.\n\n([Allen Green](/allen-green), *Option* July/Aug, 1986)","title":"Interregnum","year":"1986"},"the-logic-of-possible-worlds":{"image":"","label":"ARTLevel","review":"Keyboardist Taylor creates some very lush and lovely soundscapes without ever resorting to the cliches that are synth music's downfalls. His works are more like the exotic concoctions of Jon Hassell (especially when Peter Dodge adds trumpet), and occasionally recall Robert Fripp's spacier stuff. There are gamelan-inspired moments, and touches of organic sound too, as with the odd inclusion of cello or tabla. Tape effects and great titles (\"An Inclined Lake in Air,\" \"Short History of Malice\") round out an intelligent, rewarding tape.\n\n(Bruce Grove, *Option*, Nov/Dec 1986)","title":"The Logic of Possible Worlds","year":"1984"},"virtual-terrain":{"image":"","label":"ARTLevel","review":"Dreamlike and surreal, the aptly titled *Virtual Terrain* refracts and re-imagines a wide range of Asian music in an experimental, post-industrial context.  The album was recorded at home, and features an hour and a half of Taylor's distinctive microtonal synth explorations. By this point, Taylor seems to have mastered his Yamaha DX7, reprogramming it with non-western intervals and plenty of custom patches that approximate kotos, pedal steel guitars, and bowed strings in addition to a host of alien timbres. \n\n*Virtual Terrain* can be a challenging listen, with dissonant shards interconnecting at abstract angles, and melodies rarely repeated. Instead, Taylor creates structure with loops of repeated sound, usually treated vocals or manipulated samples, and a carefully plotted running order. For me, quieter pieces like \"Mapping the Rift (for Jeff)\" or the gently shimmering \"How Humidity Affects Bronze\" are the highlights, and it's hard to not want more of these beautiful, spacious sounds from the sometimes cerebral Taylor. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Virtual Terrain","year":"1987"},"what-the-thunder-wrote":{"image":"","label":"ARTLevel","review":"*What the Thunder Wrote* features microtonal ambient pieces recorded live in one take with no overdubs, lending the album a solitary, zen vibe, even as Taylor warps his instruments (Yamaha DX7, Ensoniq Mirage, and E-mu Proteus) into an idiosyncratic blend that remakes Asian folk music (particularly Gamelan) as ‘80s avant-garde minimalism.\n\nWithout the studio to refine and color his tracks, some of the material starts to blur together, but there are plenty of highlights, including \"Air Swimmers,\" which stretches brassy tones across wide vistas, the haunting and sparse title track, and the amazingly guitar-like sounds of \"Interrupted Transmission,\" sounding like an ambient take on the Sun City Girls, complete with random studio glitches.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"What the Thunder Wrote","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":53,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Gregory-Taylor-640.jpg?alt=media&token=daf5025e-e4ee-4f6c-955a-752905c39aa6","last_name":"Taylor"},"harold-budd":{"artist_name":"Harold Budd","body":"Harold Budd is one of the most important figures in ambient music. Although he is often recognized for collaborations with pop/rock provocateurs like Elisabeth Fraser and Brian Eno, his style is rooted in avant-garde and classical traditions that he absorbed while getting a music degree at USC in 1966.  During an incredible run in the '70s and '80s, he helped to introduce minimalism to a new audience with a series of piano-based albums that filtered the romantic appeal of Erik Satie and Debussy through a more contemporary lens of minimalism. Budd passed away in 2020.\n\nHarold Budd was born in 1936 and raised outside of Los Angeles in the desert town of Victorville.  He was interested in music from an early age, but it wasn't until his '30s that he seriously considered a life in music. During a stint in the army, he played drums and jammed with jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler,  but by the time he graduated from USC with a degree in music composition, he was already 30 years old and settled down with a family. His early love of jazz had given way to an interest the minimalist work of John Cage and Terry Riley, and his early work reflected an interest in subtracting until there was almost nothing left. In the liner notes for *Pavilion of Dreams*, he wrote:\n\n\"It had taken ten years to reduce my language to zero but I loved the process of seeing it occur and not knowing when the end would come. By then I had opted out of avant-garde music generally; it seemed self-congratulatory and risk-free and my solution as to what to do next was to do nothing, to stop completely.\"\n\nIn 1970, Budd began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts, a key incubator for electronic music, with teachers including Don Buchla and Morton Subotnick. While at CalArts, Budd began experimenting with Buchla's synth and released a rare LP called *The Oak of Golden Dreams* with two side long improvisations that recall Terry Riley or the ragas of Indian Classical music.  Both songs feature solos over hypnotic drones, with Side A performed on analog synth and Side B featuring an organ and sax.\n\nIn 1972, Budd began composing again, starting with a work called \"Madrigals of the Rose Angel\" that featured electric piano, harp and angelic voices. Budd composed other works in this style, which he described as having an \"existential prettiness.\" Brian Eno heard this music and asked Budd to release them on his Obscure label. Budd accepted the offer and by 1978 released the songs under the title *Pavilion of Dreams*. \n\nBudd's next release with Eno was *Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror* in 1980, which featured Budd's trademark \"soft-pedal\" playing with bell-like piano notes drenched in reverb, similar to Debussy put through a Roland space echo. Budd and Eno used a similar style on *The Pearl* from 1984, and both albums are now considered by fans and critics to be high water marks of his catalog.  Perhaps the most concise description of his music came from Robert Carlberg in a *Polyphony* review of his 1981 album *The Serpent (In Quicksilver)*: \"[He] plays dream soundtracks on undamped and electric pianos.\"\n\nOn other albums in the '80s, Budd experimented with different moods, as on the 1982 release *Abandoned Cities*,  which eschews piano for an ominous, foreboding sound culled from distorted guitars and electronics. For 1985's *Moon and the Melodies*, he collaborated with dream pop legends Cocteau Twins and then recorded another album at their studio, *Lovely Thunder* on their equipment.  The latter again explores dissonance, though with shorter songs and more varied textures.\n\nIn 1987, Budd signed to Eno's Opal Records, distributed by Warner Bros. His first release under Opal was the most overtly new age album of his career *White Arcades*. By this time, Budd's place as a key figure of ambient music was cemented, and he went on to produce many more albums into the next four decades. He often collaborated with others, including projects with XTC's Andy Partridge, Zeitgeist, Daniel Lentz, John Foxx, and many more with Elisabeth Fraser.\n\nBudd continued to release music for several decades, but that work falls outside the scope of this site and is covered extensively elsewhere. He passed away in 2020.","discography":{"harold-budd":{"albums":{"abandoned-cities":{"image":"","label":"Cantil","review":"*Abandoned Cities* lives up to its title with two extended tracks of eerie, moody ambience. Side one’s “Dark Star” features dissonant synth drones punctuated by occasional stabs of melody while the title track on side two is a bit more mournful, with faint glimmers of piano dotting an otherwise desolate soundscape. Unsettling, powerful stuff.","title":"Abandoned Cities","year":"1984"},"agua":{"image":"","label":"Sire","review":"","title":"Agua","year":"1995"},"by-the-dawn's-early-light":{"image":"","label":"Opal Records","review":"","title":"By the Dawn's Early Light","year":"1991"},"lovely-thunder":{"image":"","label":"Editions EG","review":"","title":"Lovely Thunder","year":"1978"},"the-oak-of-golden-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Advance","review":"","title":"The Oak of Golden Dreams","year":"1971"},"the-pavilion-of-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Obscure","review":"","title":"The Pavilion of Dreams","year":"1978"},"the-serpent-in-quicksilver":{"image":"","label":"Cantil","review":"This interesting EP followed Budd's breakout *Ambient 2* and shows there's more to Budd than just echo-drenched piano sonatas. In a series of short vignettes, he eschews studio treatments for a more intimate take on ambient music played on synths, piano, and even some pedal steel courtesy of Chas Smith, one of his students at CalArts. ","title":"The Serpent (in Quicksilver)","year":"1981"},"white-arcades":{"image":"","label":"Opal","review":"Released during new age's commercial zenith, *White Arcades* would have been an easy sell to the Windham Hill crowd with its billowy clouds of digital synths and ethereal piano lines.  While it has a couple tracks that don't work -- \"Totems of the Red Sleeved Warrior\" feels one dimensional and \"The Child with the Lion” has a grating melody-- there are still plenty of gorgeous pieces here. The title track radiates an early morning glow, \"The Real Dream of Sails\" shows an almost upbeat side to Budd, and album closer \"The Kiss\" is like an ambient take on a jazz ballad. For me this one is underrated, and certainly a more engaging listen than something like *Abandoned Cities*.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"White Arcades","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd","entry_number":1},"harold-budd-and-brian-eno":{"albums":{"ambient-2-the-plateaux-of-mirror":{"image":"","label":"Editions EG","review":"*Ambient 2* is another fine entry in Brian Eno’s ambient series. Here, Eno takes Budd’s piano improvisations and adds layers of delay and reverb, plus some sound effects and synths, yielding a series of gorgeous, yet melancholy tone poems. There is some subtle variety throughout, with moods ranging from unsettling (\"Wind in Lonely Fences\") to more peaceful topographies, such as \"Arc of Doves\" and the textural title track. The only skip for me is \"Not Yet Remembered\" which has loudly mixed vocals and a plodding quality that feels disconnected from this otherwise ethereal collection.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Ambient 2 The Plateaux of Mirror","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd and Brian Eno","entry_number":2},"harold-budd-and-brian-eno-with-daniel-lanois":{"albums":{"the-pearl":{"image":"","label":"Editions EG","review":"*The Pearl* continues the collaboration between Eno and Budd from *Ambient 2*, with Eno getting out of the way to really showcase Budd's shimmering and ghostly piano treatments. \"Stream with Bright Fish\" is a personal favorite, but there are plenty of other gorgeous pieces here such as the mysterious-sounding “Foreshadowed” and \"Against the Sky\" which pairs Budd with one of the most beautiful-sounding instruments of all time - the Fender Rhodes electric piano.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"The Pearl","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd and Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois","entry_number":3},"harold-budd-elizabeth-fraser":{"albums":{"the-moon-and-the-melodies":{"image":"","label":"4AD","review":"","title":"The Moon and the Melodies","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd, Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, Simon Raymonde","entry_number":4},"harold-budd-ruben-garcia":{"albums":{"music-for-3-pianos":{"image":"","label":"All Saints","review":"","title":"Music for 3 Pianos","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia, Daniel Lentz","entry_number":5},"harold-budd-zeitgeiest":{"albums":{"she-is-a-phantom":{"image":"","label":"New Albion","review":"","title":"She is a Phantom","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd with Zeitgeist","entry_number":6}},"entry_number":2,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Harold-Budd-640.jpg?alt=media&token=200aca24-6259-4c9e-8b98-4d8ba407ab3b","last name":"Budd"},"hasan-bakr":{"artist_name":"Hasan Bakr","body":"Hasan Bakr (pronounced 'Buh-car') was a percussionist who got his start working on reggae sessions in New York with the producer Bullwackie in the '80s. However, he was also a songwriter and composer who released two ambient cassettes that may interest readers. His first tape *Visions* was produced for Dr. Jewel Pookrum, a healer who commissioned the album for her practice. His second ambient release came years later when he had a daughter and was inspired to compose music to help her sleep. Bakr has a long list of other credits that fall outside the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1955, Bakr grew up in Savannah, Georgia. As a teenager he loved funk and R&B acts like the Commodores, the Bar-Kays, and James Brown. He taught himself to play drums, spurred on by another musician who noted his natural gift for rhythm. He attended college at the Tuskegee Institute and was initially pre-med until he joined a band and realized that music was his calling.\n\nWith fewer opportunities to make money from music in the South, Bakr moved to New York in 1978, settling in the North Bronx and later Harlem. \"Everybody said New York was it for music,\" Bakr said. \"So I jumped on Amtrak and put my drums on the back of the train.\" Once he arrived, Bakr started guesting with bands while studying with percussionists Al \"Babafemi\" Humphries and Chief Bey, both of whom helped integrate African rhythms into the New York music scene.\n\nAfter a few years, Bakr became a specialist on African percussion instruments such as the djembe, shekere, and mbira. During the '80s, he became a regular at reggae sessions produced by Lloyd Barnes (AKA Bullwackie), appearing on albums by Max Romeo, Wackies Rhythm Force, Milton Henry, and more. He also joined the popular reggae band Itopia from 1984 to 1988. \n\nOne of Bakr's closest collaborators throughout his career was mbira player Kevin Nathaniel. The two met as members of the band Spirit Ensemble, a worldbeat group founded by Jimmy Cruiz and Zeleka Jenkins. The band, who combined R&B and African influences, was a popular live act during that era in New York. They would go on to produce cassettes in 1987 and 1992 and continue into the present (though they rarely play these days).\n\nDuring their time in Spirit Ensemble, Nathaniel and Bakr released an album as a duo called *Bright Sayings* in 1989. \"It wasn’t ambient, but it had a lot of deep grooves,\" Nathaniel remarked. \"It was like techno but in an organic way with African instruments.\" In addition to live gigs, Nathaniel and Bakr often performed for student assemblies and workshops.\n\nBakr's first tape release under his own name was *Vision* which he created while he was working with a meditation group. \"The group was run by Dr. Jewel Pookrum,\" Bakr said. \"My friends contacted me that she wanted a cassette of ambience for her seminars. I said I can write some music. I didn't get paid for that, I just did it. I whipped up something real quick on my Amiga computer. I gave a lot away and sold a lot of copies - everybody loved it.\" Early editions of the tape were released without a cover, but later in 1992 Bakr put out a version with a full color cover.\n\nBakr stayed busy in the following years with session work, touring with various bands, and occasionally contributing to film scores such as *Brooklyn Babylon*. After the Spirit Ensemble became less active, he and Nathaniel formed a new similar group called Heritage O.P.\n\nIn 1995, Bakr had a daughter, and he was inspired to create new ambient music to help her sleep. Working with the same Amiga computer he used on *Vision*, Bakr produced *Scenes From a Dream* the following year.\n\nMore recently, Bakr relocated to Florida, where he continues to work as a musician. Looking back on his life, he's thankful that he found a way to do what he loved. \"I didn’t make a whole lot of bread, but I made my money through music,\" Bakr said. \"It’s amazing to think about it.\"","discography":{"hasan-bakr":{"albums":{"gnosis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Scenes from a Dream","year":"1996"},"vision":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Vision* makes a strong case for musicians venturing out of their comfort zone, as Bakr, normally a worldbeat percussionist, turns in an intimate and refreshing take on ambient electronica. Over three long tracks, he hypnotizes the listener with lush soundscapes that float by on ineffable grooves.\n\nSide one features two long tracks of looping miniatures that sometimes blossom into lavish interludes. \"In My Heart\" is the most rhythm-oriented, sounding like early Suzanne Ciani covering Prefab Sprout, while \"With Care She Smiles\" loses the drum machine to spotlight a more reflective mood and a gorgeous refrain. The BPM slows to a crawl for the title track on side two, as Bakr summons an atmospheric dirge that builds tension for long stretches before clearing the air with a serotonin-blast of melody.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Vision","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":204,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Hasan-Bakr-640-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=3c707e6d-e6ab-4ff3-9044-cde75e668faa","last_name":"Bakr"},"heather-perkins":{"artist_name":"Heather Perkins","body":"Based in Eugene, Oregon during the '80s and early '90s, Heather Perkins was a mainstay of the music scene there, playing in many bands such as the Saddle Soars, Transister, and Dangerous Household Objects. After getting a four-track recorder and some synth gear, she unleashed a flurry of albums from 1987 to 1992 that spanned her musical interests, ranging from art-rock and punk to electronic and ambient soundscapes. In the mid-90s she earned a master's in electronic music at Mills College in Oakland.\n\nBorn in 1957, Heather Perkins' youth was spent exploring in the woods of Portland, Oregon, catching newts and building forts. She took lessons in clarinet, piano and voice, but after she got into progressive rock in her teens she gravitated to learning guitar and then synth.  Perkins went on to get a degree in communications at Evergreen State in Olympia.  While there, she tried out their Buchla and Arp 2600 on campus and spent a lot of time doing poetry, multi-media, and working at the campus radio station, KAOS FM.\n\nAfter college, Perkins lived in the middle of the Oregon desert for a year, and then relocated to Eugene, joining the city's fertile music scene while working jobs at restaurants and bars. She played in an all-female funk/pop band (Transister), a reggae/punk band (None If Any), and a short-lived country band (The Saddle Soars). In 1986 she got a four-track and started recording at home, a mix of experimental sounds and new wave. During this time, she took some classes at Lane Community College where she learned about Midi and sampling, which helped to inspire some new music such as the \"imaginary soundtrack\" of *Steel Tribe*. She also attended some meetings of the Eugene Electronic Music Collective.\n\nPerkins had discovered cassette culture in magazines like Op, so she naturally gravitated to the format for her releases, putting out two cassettes in 1987 and four in 1988, including a double album *Why I Did It/Binky's Revenge* that featured one side with vocals and one of instrumentals. All were released on her own label, Land-O-Newts, put out in small editions of 50-100 copies and mostly traded with friends like [Michael Chocolak](/michael-chocholak) and Don Campau. At the time she recalls some of her main influences were Vangelis, Kate Bush,  Peter Gabriel, and especially Laurie Anderson.\n\nAfter that prolific two-year period, Perkins returned to playing with a live band, Dangerous Household Objects for the next four years, and kept releasing cassettes until 1992. She still composed electronic music, often working with choreographers and for student productions like *Midsummers Night's Dream*. Eventually, she decided she wanted to teach electronic music and went on to earn a degree at Mills College.\n\nAfter graduating from Mills in 1996, Perkins didn't end up teaching as planned. Instead, she went to work at a dotcom, scoring a series of animated greeting cards. That led to a long freelance career creating music and sound for animations, games, theater, dance and live performance, which she still does to this day from her studio in Portland, Oregon. Perkins maintains a Bandcamp page [here](https://heatherperkins.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"heather-perkins":{"albums":{"a-midsummer-nights-dream":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"A Midsummer Night's Dream","year":"1991"},"burning-through":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Burning Through","year":"1987"},"dangerous-household-objects":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Prairie Safari","year":"1987"},"living-room":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Living Room","year":"1988"},"never-whatever":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Never Whatever","year":"1992"},"steel-tribe":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Steel Tribe","year":"1988"},"the-hamster-wheel":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"The Hamster Wheel","year":"1988"},"the-pink-album":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"The Pink Album","year":"1989"},"why-i-did-it-binkys-revenge":{"image":"","label":"Land-O-Newts","review":"","title":"Why I Did It/Binky's Revenge","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":292,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/heather-perkins-kaos.jpeg?alt=media&token=03057511-5b08-4ea1-b949-685e04572430","last_name":"Perkins"},"heavenscent":{"artist_name":"Heavenscent","body":"Heavenscent was the trio of Randy Peyser, Debra Nunes, and Michael Sloan who improvised both sides of their sole cassette several years apart. Based in the Bay Area, Peyser and Nunes (pictured above) were a guitar duo who performed together often, but they had a deep connection with Sloan after meeting him at an art show. In 1991, Sloan invited the others over when he had some free studio time and they recorded an album’s worth of material on the spot. A few years later, Nunes was working at popular New Age distributor Backroads and decided they should release their cassette. However, it turned out that Sloan had recorded over one side of the material so they got together to record, again improvising all the tracks (these comprised the second side). \"It was a couple years apart, but the magic was still there,\" Peyser recalled. The cassette got good reviews at the time, and sold a few hundred copies by their estimation, but they never tried to rekindle the magic as a trio after that. ","discography":{"heavenscent":{"albums":{"heavenscent":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Heavenscent","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":403,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/heavenscent.jpg?alt=media&token=27ed04bc-dbe4-4e23-b737-4cb6a841053c","last_name":"Heavenscent"},"henry-warwick":{"artist_name":"Henry Warwick","body":"Henry Warwick is an ambient composer who was based in Washington DC when he began to produce handmade cassettes. In 1991 he relocated to San Francisco where he issued one last cassette before taking a hiatus from music to focus on painting. He also made a career change in the '90s, going from typography to working in tech. He returned to music making in 2000 and after earning his MFA, started working as a professor.\n\nHenry Warwick was born in 1958 and grew up in Edison, New Jersey, about a half hour away from New York. \"It was a real brutal kind of place with lots of heavy industry,\" Warwick recalled. \"Basically, we were the toilet and New York City was the person taking a dump into it. Then in the 1970s, all the industry left.\" Henry focused inward, learning how to draw and paint, eventually becoming the president of the art club in high school. He also taught himself to play guitar and bass and joined a prog-rock cover band doing songs by Genesis and King Crimson.\n\nAfter high school, Warwick attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for a short time, where he first got a taste of electronic music, studying with Larry S. Johnson. He ran out of money and returned home to New Jersey where he enrolled at Rutgers after working some odd jobs. At school, Warwick continued to tinker with synths but he mainly focused on visual art and got his degree in Visual System Studies, a major he invented.\n\nIn the early '80s after graduation, Warwick got married and moved to Washington D.C., churning through a series of unsatisfying jobs. After getting laid off from AT&T where he worked on an anti-trust case, Warwick bottomed out. \"My marriage collapsed and life sucked,\" he said. \"A friend of mine said, 'Henry, your mind is falling apart. You need to take care of yourself. I suggest meditation.'\" Warwick took the advice and started studying Zen Buddhism and living at a Zendo near Takoma Park, Maryland.\n\nWhile at the Zendo in 1986, Warwick borrowed an ARP Odyssey from his friend Bob Boilen and spent many hours playing it with his headphones on. Warwick moved out a year later to live with his girlfriend and took out a loan to build his own electronic music studio. \"I had an instant system,\" Warwick said. \"My first album *Etudes*, was me basically learning how to play the keyboards. It was all these studies.\" Though Warwick was strongly influenced by the avant-garde (Stockhausen, John Cage) in his teens, by this time he was drawing on albums like Wendy Carlos' *Sonic Seasonings* or Brian Eno's *Discrete Music*. His second album, *Metawind*, was similar in sound but shows a bit more new age influence. \n\nBy this time, Warwick started working as a typesetter, which was better suited to his talents and temperament. He designed his own tape covers, gluing images cut out of magazines onto j-cards so each was unique. By his estimation, he made about 150 copies of each that he mostly traded or gave away. By his third album in 1989, *Breathless*, Warwick was gravitating towards more experimental and dark ambient music such as :zoviet*france:, and he was increasingly composing digitally instead of playing all of his instruments by hand.\n\nIn 1991, Warwick moved to San Francisco where he started designing typography. He recorded and released one album on cassette called *SNOW*, but he wasn't happy with the results and only made 20 copies. After that, Warwick got back into painting and remarried in 1993. He went on to work at Macromedia, Apple, and Napster before enrolling at Goddard College where he earned an MFA.\n\nWarwick got back into music-making again in 2000, and has been active ever since, releasing CD-Rs on his own Kether label. He maintains a Bandcamp page [here](https://henrywarwick.bandcamp.com/) where all his music is available for downloading or streaming. He has a Ph.D from The European Graduate School and is a tenured professor of new media and electronic music at Ryerson University in Toronto.\n","discography":{"henry-warwick":{"albums":{"breathless":{"image":"","label":"Kether","review":"","title":"Breathless","year":"1989"},"etudes":{"image":"","label":"Kether","review":"","title":"Etudes","year":"1987"},"metawind":{"image":"","label":"Kether","review":"","title":"Metawind","year":"1988"},"snow":{"image":"","label":"Kether","review":"","title":"Snow","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":253,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Henry-warwick-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2bdccc50-07fc-41fc-8454-ef5b9653a24e","last_name":"Warwick"},"herb-ernst":{"artist_name":"Herb Ernst","body":"Based in Seattle, Herb Ernst was best known for his three *Dream Flight* cassettes that sold well in the late '80s new age scene. His romantic, grandiose electronic sound arrived just as that style was becoming popular and the album went on to sell tens of thousands of copies by his estimation.  The album was originally produced for an event by the Rosicrucian Order, a society of mystics and metaphysical thinkers that he originally joined when he was 19. Ernst went on to produce more albums in the '90s that fall outside the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in San Diego in 1950, Herb Ernst's father was in the Navy and he moved around during childhood. However, by the time Ernst entered college at the University of Oregon, he would remain in the Pacific Northwest for thirty years. In college, he initially worked towards a degree in sociology and it was during this time that he first became aware of the Rosicrucian Order, a group of metaphysical philosophers and mystics. According to Ernst, \"they interpreted life as a form of energy. That was fascinating to me and I really got into it.\" After struggling to find a job in his field after graduation, Ernst returned to school in 1977, studying electronics. That enabled him to land a job with Boeing in Seattle where he worked for decades. \n\nIn the '80s, Ernst continued to be a part of the Rosicrucian Order, and it was through them that he met his wife and kick-started his music career. He'd played piano throughout childhood and college, and even considered trying to become a concert pianist at one point. \"There was a Rosicrucian conclave at Orcas Island that was hosted by our lodge,\" Ernst recalled. \"We needed to do something and I said maybe we could make a meditation tape to be played at the conclave. Everyone liked the idea.\" With some financing from his fellow members, Ernst bought a Synergy keyboard and produced what became his first album *Dream Flight*. Many songs reference the event such as \"Candle Lighting\" which was written for a candle-lighting ceremony at the event.\n\n\"The first run of cassettes was maybe 50 copies,\" Ernst recalled. \"I was worried I’d get stuck with them. But they sold out and people wanted more. My wife and I started taking free demos to local stores and they kept selling out. Someone told me the album was especially popular with chiropractors in Seattle. I think we probably sold tens of thousands of copies. That enabled me to purchase my own equipment and record more albums.\"\n\nErnst went on to release two more cassettes, picking up major distributors and enjoying healthy sales. The second album was geared more to meditation and the third was focused on inspiration. Shirley MacLaine, a big proponent of new age thought, heard *Dream Flight 3* and chose to use it as the background music for her guided mediation *Inner Workout*. He also provide background music for three guided meditations with Jan Frichot around the same time.\n\nIn addition to his mass-produced albums, Ernst often recorded personalized albums for customers he met at new age events or health expos. These one-of-a-kind recordings that he called \"musical soul portraits,\" followed a similar idea from other musicians like [Arden Wilken](/arden-wilken) and [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews) who offered their fans a similar service. In the late '90s and beyond, Ernst went on to release three more albums and is still active. He currently lives in Vancouver and maintains a website [here](https://herbernst.com/). All his work is available on streaming.\n","discography":{"e-q-zak":{"albums":{"dream-flight":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Visions","review":"Some New Age music is drones, and some is slowed-down tunes like *Dreamflight*. Ernst plays Synergy II Plus synthesizers and composes long modal melodies which he slows down and breaks apart, leaving them to hang suspended in midair, evaporating into the atmosphere like vapor trails.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, August 1987)","title":"Dream Flight","year":"1986"},"dream-flight-2":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Visions","review":"","title":"Dream Flight 2","year":"1987"},"dream-flight-3":{"image":"","label":"Mystic Visions","review":"","title":"Dream Flight 3","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":282,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/herb-ernst-1980s-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=9a9a03bc-69ac-43bf-aaa5-38d1f575b6d7","last_name":"Ernst"},"herb-moore":{"artist_name":"Herb Moore","body":"Herb Moore was a multi-instrumentalist and nature-lover who often referred to himself as an \"auditory gardener.\" He self-released albums on his own Melodius-Sync label starting with the acoustic, Windham Hill-influenced *Hinterlands* which New York radio host John Schaefer called \"one of the best independently produced albums in the style.\" Moore often utilized found sound in his work, especially on 1992's *H2Overture* which included collages of water sounds and synths. Moore was a creative soul who loved the Grateful Dead and was beloved by many in Palo Alto, where he worked as a technical writer and sought to bridge the worlds of engineering and art. Moore passed away in 2019.\n\nBorn in 1944, Moore grew up in Northern Virginia near the town of McLean. He had one brother and two sisters. He played football and ran track, but also became enthralled with folk music, teaching himself guitar at 15 and learning Carter Family songs. He attended college at American University, paying his own way. After graduating, he did volunteer work with AmeriCorps, an anti-poverty national service program.\n\nMoore moved to Palo Alto, California in 1968 and began hanging out with folk musicians at St. Michael's Alley. A few years later, he came up with the concept of \"scrapophony\" which is making music with found materials. He got the idea after hearing the clatter of rain on his metal roofed garage and wrote a piece using dried peas and metal. He later maintained this was just another form of folk music: \"I'm always looking for the contribution music makes to our everyday lives,\" he wrote.\n\nLiving in Silicon Valley, Moore established a career working with software companies as a writer and technical publications manager. He taught himself BASIC and in the early '80s co-wrote books like *Atari Sound and Graphics*, *Using the Commodore 64* and *Shapes and Sounds for Atari*. \n\n1983 marked the debut of Moore's first album *Hinterlands*, released on his own label Melodius-Sync. \"An initial interest of mine was to incorporate found sound into a more meditative style of music,\" he said. \"*Hinterlands*, which I recorded in 1981, mixes many found sounds with meditative acoustic guitar, piano and other conventional instruments.\"\n\nMoore took a long break before putting out another album, though he did compose music for a guided meditation tape by David Thornburg which includes a side of Moore's instrumental music. Moore enjoyed being an accompanist, often playing live music for modern dance, yoga, or other kinds of movement. While he sometimes worried that music was just a \"big ego trip,\" this gave him a sense of connection with the community, as he later wrote on his website.\n\nIn the early '90s, Moore revived his Melodius-Sync label for a new water-themed album *H2Overture*. \"This project evolved over a five-year period as I recorded the natural sounds of water,\" Moore wrote. \"During this time, I also learned to listen for the music in these water sounds, allowing the rain, rivers, oceans, and thunderstorms to evoke their own themes and feelings in me.\"\n\nThe next year, Moore released *Dragon Dreams*, which included an ecological fable to accompany the music. \"The message to myself as reflected in the story was that music, art, dance, and poetry are very valuable to our human experience,\" Moore wrote. \"As a matter of fact, I feel the need to reintegrate these realms more directly into our everyday lives.\"\n\nAfter that, Moore took another decade long-musical hiatus, returning in 2003 with *Sophia's Garden*, an album based on DNA sequences. The idea was sparked by his friend Richard Sachs (who designed the cover for *Dragon Dreams*) whose child Sophia had the genetic disease ASM. Moore donated some of the proceeds to the [Sophia's Garden Foundation](http://www.sophiasgarden.org/about_us/about_hist.html) which Sachs founded and is still active today.\n\nIn spite of his drift towards more synthetic sounds, Moore never lost his love for folk. In 2007, he formed a trio called Elm Street with friends Ed Cirimele and Frank Smithson, playing a mix of bluegrass and old-time music at local cafes, fairs and festivals. He also put out an album of folky acoustic guitar pieces in 2013 (marking the fourth decade in a row where he released an album in the fourth year of that decade.)\n\nMoore passed away in 2019, but his strong connection with the community is evident in his loving [obituary](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/obituaries/memorials/herb-moore?o=6068). All of his work except *Hinterlands* remains available on his [Bandcamp page](https://herbmoore.bandcamp.com/), as well as on most streaming services.","discography":{"david-thornburg-herb-moore":{"albums":{"balanced-relaxation":{"image":"","label":"Starsong Publications","review":"","title":"Balanced Relaxation","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"David Thornburg and Herb Moore","entry_number":2},"herb-moore":{"albums":{"alpha-wave-movement-2":{"image":"","label":"Melodius-Sync","review":" Moore takes the listener on an immersive trip through the hydrosphere, interweaving field recordings of rainstorms, streams, lakes, and oceans into lively instrumentals with acoustic guitar, percussion and synth. Standouts include \"A Silver Dance\" with its dancing, kalimba-like tones and the evocative \"Of the Lake\" which paints a musical picture of a placid lake momentarily rippled by a murmuration of birds. \n \n(MG, 2026)","title":"H2Overture","year":"1992"},"dragon-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Melodius-Sync","review":"*Dragon Dreams* is a serene and gorgeous album that takes care to balance organic artistic expression with meticulous digital production. Moore does this by letting synth-driven tracks like \"Each Moment\" and \"Dragon Dreams\" breathe in natural rhythms, or by adding acoustic guitar improv to a sequencer-driven piece like \"Waves of Gold\" or by a stumbling synth line to the metronomic pulse of \"In a Child's Eye.\" \n\nThe album is also exquisitely arranged, with recurring leitmotifs and melodic ideas, making for a holistic, harmonious listening experience that elevates the album to a bonified work of art.\n\nTo accompany the album, Moore includes a short tale about a dragon whose heart has been corrupted by careless denizens of earth, emphasizing the need for poetry, art, and dance to sweeten the dragon’s heart. Luckily, Moore proves his point through example, delivering the best album of his career and one that should be much better known.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Dragon Dreams","year":"1993"},"hinterlands":{"image":"","label":"Melodius-Sync","review":"","title":"Hinterlands","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Herb Moore","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":347,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/herb-moore-640.jpg?alt=media&token=502db41e-01da-41a0-8a28-37e03d25b590&_gl=1*1xr8h49*_ga*MTk3MDM4OTE1NS4xNjg1NTcwMjMz*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY4NTg4NDAxNi44LjEuMTY4NTg4NDA2OC4wLjAuMA..","last_name":"Moore"},"howard-white":{"artist_name":"Howard White","body":"Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Howard White (left) is a multi-instrumentalist and studio owner who engineered hundreds of local recordings in the '80s. Minda White, owner of the new age store Earth Wisdom, encouraged him to compose a new age tape with ocean sounds and he responded with *Ocean Song* in 1987 which went on to sell thousands of copies in multiple pressings. White produced a follow-up in 1992, but it was only sold locally and is lesser known today.\n\nHoward White was born in 1946 and grew up in Detroit. He performed in rock and folk bands through high school, playing guitar and bass. For college he attended the University of Michigan where he studied zoology and medicine, followed by several years working at the botany department studying a mold called neurospora. However, after a year of medical school, he abandoned that and decided to pursue a career in music instead.\n\nAround 1973, White founded a band called Melodioso, playing salsa and Brazilian music to packed crowds at clubs and parties around Ann Arbor for many years. He also started teaching guitar. By the close of the decade, White founded a recording studio, eventually going on to record hundreds of sessions by local artists.\n\nIn the '80s, White met a woman named Minda Hart who owned a shop in Ann Arbor called Earth Wisdom that sold new age tapes, books, and clothes. She encouraged White to make a tape that included ocean sounds. \"I took her advice and started recording, traveling to the coast to record the ocean,\" White recalled. \"I wrote the tunes and played harp and keyboards. A friend played flute and I recorded it at my studio. I took my recordings of the ocean and dubbed it onto the 8 track. Minda said the ocean has to pulse 5 times a minute - that's the golden standard for relaxation, so I did that.\" White and Hart put out the cassette on their own label and the album kept selling out of her store. Eventually, it went on to sell 10,000 copies by White's estimation.\n\nWith the success of the album, White produced a follow-up in 1992, *Paradise of Whirlwinds*, but he felt it wasn't as good as the debut and never made a CD version. \"On *Ocean Song*, everything fell together,\" he said. \"I didn't feel the second one was quite as good. I remember designing labels for it and put it in Minda's store, but that was as far as it went.\"\n\nAfter moving on from new age recordings, White continued to run his recording studio and started writing scores for commercials and documentaries from the late '90s to the 2000s. Eventually, he also launched the Omnimedia Group to produce videos and interactive design, setting up kiosks for trade shows and museums. White still runs this company and lives in Ann Arbor as of 2022.\n\n","discography":{"howard-white":{"albums":{"ocean-song":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ocean Song","year":"1987"},"paradise-of-whirlwinds":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Paradise of Whirlwinds","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":287,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/howard%20white%20left%20crop.jpg?alt=media&token=990438e8-ba63-40c0-a434-a1c8b70f282d","last_name":"White"},"iasos":{"artist_name":"Iasos","body":"Over a six-decade career, Iasos stayed true to his original vision, lending his music a purity that was uncommon in new age, a genre prone to trendiness in its heyday.  Whereas many of his peers dabbled in subgenres like neo-classical, worldbeat, Celtic, and smooth jazz while upgrading their gear every couple years in attempts to stay relevant, Iasos remained in his comfort zone of blissed out, analog synthscapes. While this may have limited his fanbase at the time, Iasos didn't mind. \"What I do isn't determined by the technology available. It's determined by visions in my head,\" Iasos said. \n\nBorn in 1947 in Greece, Iasos and his family moved to America when he was four.  As a child, Iasos took both flute and piano lessons, but he eventually abandoned his training and preferred to learn on his own. Iasos attended college at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY where he studied anthropology.  By the time of his graduation, he was already hearing the kind of music in his head that he would later record - what he came to later call \"heavenly music.\"\n\nStarting in 1973, Iasos began playing concerts in Marin County, developing a small following there and attracting attention from Peter Georgi, the son of a GM exec with plenty of money and a strong conviction that new age music was important and should be documented. Together they released Iasos' debut *Inter Dimensional Music* in 1975. Many of the sounds featured on the album have precursors in work by minimalist composers like Terry Riley or more commercial releases like Wendy Carlos' 1972 *Sonic Seasonings* and Tangerine Dream's 1973 *Phaedra*, but the album set the tone for Georgi's genre defining Unity label, and remains a fully realized and important statement of purpose.\n\nAround this time, Iasos was still playing live in the area and fine-tuning his live show to include visuals. \"Combining music with visuals can ignite a person into higher states of consciousness,\" he said. He would often incorporate two slide projectors, projecting kaleidoscope images. He played at indoor halls, a Greek amphitheater on top of mount Tamalpais, and countless other outdoor settings.\n\nLike others in the new age scene, Iasos decided that working with a bigger label might dilute his art and opted to start his own. Iasos' second album *Angelic Music* sold very well, serving as the template for much of his subsequent work.  Iasos got good distribution from Pyramid, New Leaf, and Fortuna and his cassettes became a mainstay of the genre.\n\nIasos continued to play live and produce recordings until his death in January 2024.  \"I'll stop when I'm dead,\" he once said. \"And even then I'll be creating in another dimension.\"","discography":{"iasos":{"albums":{"angelic-music":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"Iasos sets the template for much of his later work on *Angelic Music* which was a strong seller for him during his '80s heyday. The cassette features two 30-minute pieces. “The Angels of Comfort” on Side 1 is immersive and sensuous, forgoing melodic development in favor of a deep, immersive experience. “Angel Play” on Side 2 is a suite featuring distinct and melodic sections that incorporate some delayed guitar, gliding melodies, and bell-like synth sounds, all connected by interludes of a chorus of frogs. Truly inter-dimensional.\n\n(MG, 2025) ","title":"Angelic Music","year":"1978"},"crystal-love":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"This cassette only features 30 minutes of music as each 15 minute track repeats twice on each side.“Crystal White Fire Light” is similar to “Angel Play,” with otherworldly bird sounds weaving in and out of Iasos’ luxurious synthesizer swells. “Oh How Deeply Do I Love You” is more linear as it first springs forth from bubbling lava with piano arpeggios and wild synth lines that eventually blossom into a more peaceful and space-bound sense of calm.","title":"Crystal Love","year":"1979"},"earth-calm-space-calm":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"","title":"Earth Calm-Space Calm","year":"1979"},"essence-of-spring":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"This is something of a concept album, with songs themed around Spring. “The Descent of “Spring” starts things off in the usual Iasos style with enveloping swells of synth pads, but other tracks represent stylistic detours, such as the Halpern-like e-piano solo “Palm Innocence” and especially the 2X speed flutes and maniacal laugh track of “The Pipes of Pan.” The second side is 30 minutes of just nature sounds. This one might appeal more to fans of his debut since it is less cohesive and more experimental, making room for something like “Winds of Olympus” with its layered flutes that echo and bounce around the room in gorgeous epiphanies of light.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Essence of Spring","year":"1983"},"inter-dimensional-music":{"image":"","label":"Unity","review":"Iasos’ debut must have blown people’s minds in 1975. Even today, it sounds visionary, if somewhat transitional. Pieces like “Formentera Sunset Clouds” and “Libra Sunrise” anticipate two subgenres that didn't exist yet, ’80s space ambient to ’90s chillout. And yet, “Lueena Coast” looks backward to early ’60s exotica, with its wordless vocals and piano, while “Maha Splendor” folds in elements of jazz flute and space-age electronic music. Although Iasos would later settle on billowy synth compositions as his signature sound for more cohesive albums like *Angelic Music*, these anomalous early experiments still proved influential as musicians like George Goulding or Robert Bearns and Ron Dexter picked up on the new age exotica hybrid and ran with it later.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2026)","title":"Inter-Dimensional Music","year":"1975"},"jeweled-space":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"Gorgeous, ethereal mists of synths that float on eternally. Melodic development is minimal, but there is just enough movement to keep you locked in to Iasos’ dreamy reveries for the hour long duration.","title":"Jeweled Space","year":"1981"},"throne-realms-and-lagoon-waves":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"","title":"Throne Realms and Lagoon Waves","year":"1982"},"timeless-sound":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"By 1991, nearly ever OG new ager had moved on to more commercial, Wave-friendly contemporary instrumental styles, adding touches of prog, pop, and jazz to their instrumental music, putting out Christmas albums, and otherwise giving up on the cosmic meditations of the '70s and early '80s. Not Iasos. *Timeless* is a perfectly titled album with two blissed-out ambient pieces that unfold luxuriously over 60 minutes in that classic Iasos style of *Angelic Music*, *Jeweled Space*, and more. Of the two tracks, \"Cloud Prayer\" is a bit more muted and solemn, whereas \"Throne Realms\" sparkles.","title":"Timeless Sound","year":"1991"},"wave-2":{"image":"","label":"Inter-Dimensional Music","review":"\n*Wave 2: Elixir* is vintage Iasos, with ethereal, lush washes of sound that ascend gradually heavenward. Symphonic, brassy swells add color to some tracks like \"Blue Fire Realms,\" while lead melody lines shoot up and down in portamento bursts, never repeating long enough to lock the songs into an identifiable pattern. Instead, the listener is left floating in an amorphous womb of sound, aglow in the ever-expanding now. \n\nIntended as a \"Vibrational gateway to the celestial dimensions,\" the six long pieces here are themed around spiritual beings, sacred ceremonies and energy that Iasos sketches out in song descriptions, noting an affirmation for each track. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Wave 2: Elixir","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":16,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/iasos.jpg?alt=media&token=b8148ef4-f4dd-4532-b0ba-829b03933c4c","last_name":"Iasos"},"jack-gates-tim-white":{"artist_name":"Jack Gates and Tim White","body":"North Berkeley musicians Jack Gates (guitar, above left) and Tim White (sitar/flute, above right) were childhood friends who began playing together as teenagers, sharing a love of blues, jazz, and classical music. After going their separate ways for college, the two reunited in the mid-'70s and began studying at the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music. Fusing the sounds of North Indian classical and western influences, the two formed Phoenix with some other musicians and performed throughout the Bay Area regularly. The group released one cassette in 1982 featuring their melodic world music sound. For their next album, Gates and White did a completely improvised set, *Morning Song Evening Song* which they self-released on vinyl in an edition of 1,000 copies. Sales were modest and the group didn't release any further LPs, though Gates put out a 30-minute cassette called Mosaic in 1987 that earned a favorable review in *Option* magazine (see below). White went on to get an MFA in music at Mills in the '90s and both have continued to release music into the present that is cataloged on their website [here](https://whitegatesmusic.com/).","discography":{"jack-gates":{"albums":{"mosaic":{"image":"","label":"WhiteGates Records","review":"Gates plays elegant, lyrical electric jazz guitar, tending toward new age, and with a spacious, Metheny-like sound and a touch of flamenco and modal-ethnic flavor. Restrained guitar synth strings are used on several tracks, and Simmons drums are used, perhaps a bit too predictably, on another. Gates' original compositions have some substance, and he also demonstrates a nice ear for melody. Just 29 minutes of music on one side of a tape and nothing at all on the other.\n\n(Bill Tilland, *Option*, May/June 1988)","title":"Mosaic","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Jack Gates","entry_number":3},"jack-gates-tim-white":{"albums":{"morning-song-evening-song":{"image":"","label":"WhiteGates Records","review":"","title":"Morning Song Evening Song","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Jack Gates and Tim White","entry_number":2},"phoenix":{"albums":{"legends":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Legends","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Phoenix","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":314,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jack-left%20and%20tim%20white-right-640.jpg?alt=media&token=41d95315-9ed6-4f1d-9670-39137c1ce16e","last_name":"Gates"},"jack-hurwitz":{"artist_name":"Jack Hurwitz","body":"Jack Hurwitz was an electronic musician from the Washington DC area who co-founded the Poison Plant label in 1988 with fellow musician [Todd Fletcher](/todd-fletcher). The two had previously run their own studio called Sonus Recorders but abandoned that after a year to start the label and focus on their own music. Hurwitz was prolific for a four year period, issuing seven cassettes of progressive electronic and ambient sounds starting in 1988.\n\nHurwitz was born in 1964 and raised in Washington D.C. Both of his parents loved music and his dad was a Sinatra-loving record collector, specializing in big band jazz. His mother was from Morocco and preferred French and Arabic music. Hurwitz started out playing percussion in the school band, and then moved up to drums, joining a series of rock and blues bands.\n\nBy the late '70s, Hurwitz started to get into electronic music like Klaus Schulze and Kraftwerk, as well as Frank Zappa. Using a reel-to-reel, he recorded experiments at home with drum machines and other percussion. At high school, he met a fellow musician named Todd Fletcher who was also a drummer with similar tastes. The two started to jam together in the basement with their drums, synthesizers, and even some cookie sheets.  \n\nFor college, Hurwitz went to Middle Tennessee State and studied to become a recording engineer. However, he got fed up with school after a year and returned home to start his own studio. He and Fletcher rented a house and got a loan, building up a studio called Sonus Recorders in Silver Spring, Maryland.  The idea was to record other bands by day and then work on their own music after hours. \"We were only around for a year, but we did well,\" Hurwitz said. \"We recorded rock, soul, solo artists, synths. It was fun at first, but then reality set in.\" Fletcher concurred: \"After four hours in a studio recording rap, music was the last thing I wanted to do. So we started a label instead.\"\n\nPoison Plant was intended to be a collective where each artist would pay to produce and market their own releases. \"For me and my friends, [Jeff Greinke](/jeff-greinke) was a head turner. He legitimized the whole thing [of putting out music on cassettes],” Hurwitz said. \"We did a lot of trading with others. That was one way to get your music out there and you didn't have to be good at marketing. I was amazed that we would run ads for the label and get responses. Almost every time we sent out a catalog to someone, we got an order. Over time we sold thousands of tapes.\"\n\nThe first releases on the label were Fletcher's *Songs from 3 Phases* and Hurwitz’ *Tones Timbre*, soon followed by many others, all on cassette. Hurwitz experimented with different sounds on his albums, with his debut representing his more progressive side while tapes like *Thin Drone Silence* were more droning and ambient, inspired by Brian Eno.\n\nIn 1991, Hurwitz decided to leave Poison Plant. By then, the musician Treoips Treyfid had joined the fold, and he would eventually take over business operations. Hurwitz had briefly ran a new label called 1 Zero as well for the previous two years, releasing tapes by Thomas DiMuzio and Miguel Ruiz, in addition to his own stuff. \"That was more of an esoteric label, focusing on experimental, composed music,” Hurwitz said. \"I was getting bored of the anything goes movement. Anyone could do it, and anyone did,\" he laughed.\n\nAround the same time, Hurwitz was getting into computers. In the early '90s he went back to school at Montgomery college to study computer science. Like his first attempt at school, however, he didn’t finish. Instead, after a successful summer job at the National Institute of Health, he pivoted to a full-time job at AOL as a computer programmer. In 1995, he moved to San Francisco and began working for other startups and tech companies.\n\nHurwitz eventually returned to music making in 2010, unleashing a torrent of albums on a new label called Aural Films. Hurwitz has uploaded much of his music on Bandcamp, and readers can find his early cassette releases available [here](https://jackhertz.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"jack-hurwitz":{"albums":{"alpha-syntauri":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":"Alpha Syntauri","year":"1991"},"emutated":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"Emutated","year":"1989"},"escaping-opposition":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":"Escaping O Position","year":"1990"},"music-from-distant-days":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"Hurwitz goes for a big synthesizer sound on this release, alternating between a sort of new-age/jazz fusion reminiscent of Group 87 and some more adventurous non-harmonic pieces. The latter work best, especially when Hurwitz touches on the expressive capabilities of his synth patches without over-\"playing\" them, a major problem in his more rhythmic pieces, which don’t communicate much to the listener other than technique. If Hurwitz integrated some of the freshnesss of his more experimental side, particularly as regards programming, with his more familiar-sounding music, it might sound a bit more human and live.\n\n(Brook Hinton, *Sound Choice* No. 14, 1990)","title":"Music from Distant Days","year":"1989"},"pointillism":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":"Pointillism","year":"1990"},"ritual-effect":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile","review":"","title":"Ritual Effect","year":"1990"},"thin-drone-silence":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"A lovely, moody, soft, atmospheric release. Meandering synth textures call. Consistent throughout, never leaving its own track. Acceptance, perhaps. But not resignation.\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #6)","title":"Thin Drone Silence","year":"1989"},"tones-timbre":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":"Tones Timbre","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":163,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jack-Hurwitz-522.jpg?alt=media&token=48dd6eea-8b13-4667-9bbb-973ec8c26bd4","last_name":"Hurwitz"},"jack-tamul":{"artist_name":"Jack Tamul","body":"Jack Tamul was a modern classical electronic composer who wrote scores for planetariums, commercials, ballet, and more in a successful career starting in the mid ‘70s. His first album from 1980, *Electro/Acoustic*, drew from planetarium and ballet pieces and showed an abstract expressionist influence from Georgy Ligeti, as well as a penchant for electronically treated vocals. He released a few cassettes in a similar style and an ambient CD called *Meditation Massage* in 1992,  reissued as *Cura* in 1997. Tamul lives in Rhode Island and is still a working composer.\n \nTamul was born in 1948 in Providence, Rhode Island. For college he initially went to Berklee school of music but transferred to Jacksonville University after a friend of Bob Moog's told him about their electronic music studio. There, Tamul studied with Bill Hoskins and learned how to use modular synthesizers. After graduating in 1971, Tamul got a grant to study composition at the Sibelius Academy in Finland with Einojuhani Rautavaara.\n\nUpon his return to the U.S., Tamul got a series of freelance music jobs, scoring several PBS shows for local affiliate WJCT and an HBO documentary called *Porpoises: Betta and Eva*. After that, Tamul began running Vincent Studios in Jacksonville, engineering sessions, composing music for commercials, and generally taking care of anything that was needed. One of his early clients at the studio was the Jacksonville Museum of Arts and Sciences who was looking for music for their planetarium shows. Tamul began working with them, ultimately leading to a decades-long relationship.\n \nIn 1975, Vincent studios was sold and Tamul left the country to work in Germany assisting a planetarium project. At the time, Stockhausen was working on an electronic music composition called SIRUS for a planetarium show, intended to honor the American bicentennial. While there, Tamul was able to observe how Stockhausen ran the studio and staff, though he never worked directly with him.\n\nTamul returned to Jacksonville after that and began setting up a studio at the Jacksonville Museum of Arts and Sciences. Along with museum director Phil Groce, the two of them would produce the shows and Tamul would write the music. His first score debuted in 1977 and was called \"Eyes of Man.\"  This led to work with other museums and planetariums in the state.\n\nIn addition to his planetarium scores, Tamul got various gigs in town, such as writing for the Florida Ballet (\"Mogul\"), the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and various film projects for WJCT such as the memorably titled *Florida – Come Before It's Gone.* To produce his own more idiosyncratic pieces, he often applied for grants. \n \nIn 1980, the classical label Spectrum contacted Tamul about putting together a record with them as they were looking to expand into electronic music. They requested that he use only shorter pieces, so Tamul pulled from his archives of previous compositions, including two ballet pieces and four songs from his planetarium shows. By Tamul’s estimation, the album sold about 2000 copies.\n\nTamul's next major piece came through a grant from the State of Tennessee. Around 1982, he moved to Nashville to compose the score for a replica of the Parthenon that used an Alvin Lucier-like electronic treatment of field recordings.  Another grant, this time from the state of Florida, resulted in Tamul's next major work. The finished piece was  an abstract expressionist song cycle called *The Referee has Vanished* featuring the work of poet Richard Matthews. Tamul and his musicians played the show throughout Florida and Baltimore, and in 1982 released a cassette that included the title track from *Referee* plus \"The Parthenon.\" (A few years later, Tamul issued another version of *Referee* backed with two of his planetarium compositions.)\n\nIn the late 80s, Tamul started his own recording studio called JTM (Jack Tamul Music). In addition to his usual commercial work, he began getting requests from massage therapists were looking for music that would match the flow of a 60 minute massage. So Tamul put together *Meditation Massage* as a CD in 1992. In a strange turn of events, he later called to renew his Architectural Digest magazine but misdialed and ended up speaking to Cynthia Frado at the office of Deepak Chopra. She heard Tamul listening to *Mediation Massage* in the background and asked if they could sell it to their customers.  Tamul went along, and renamed it *Cura* per their suggestion. Frado helped sell a few hundred more copies by hyping it in Chopra's monthly newsletter.\n\nDespite his modest success with *Cura*, Tamul preferred to write more experimental music. His scant other releases in that decade - including a track on an Auricle compilation and \"Igniters\" from a Prix Ars Electronica compilation, attest to the lingering avant garde influence.  In the ensuing decades, Tamul continued to compose for film and commercials, including several projects to help Everglades preservation.  Today Tamul is semi-retired but still writes music. \"In your face electronics – that's what I'm doing now,” Tamul said. \"That stuff does well in Europe but here they treat me like I ate too much garlic or something.\"","discography":{"jack-tamul":{"albums":{"electro-acoustic":{"image":"","label":"Spectrum","review":"","title":"Electro/Acoustic","year":"1980"},"meditative-massage":{"image":"","label":"JTM","review":"As the insert says, \"The astute listener will notice that the music contained in this disc is multi-cyclical, that is, cycles within cycles. The resulting waves of sound textures are the effect of the various cycles interacting with and within each other creating patterns of dissidence and resolve.\" This sound, for whatever reason, is so relaxing that I am floating into another dimension as I type….The gamelan chime sounds are like the softest echoing marimba, arranged in some mysterious way, not melodic. But very pleasant. The effect is like a bass wind chime in a lazy breeze, with a bit of slow and subtle strings in the background.\n\nThe album is about deeply relaxing. For the first time ever I went to sleep at the computer, listening to this random, warm toned comfortable stuff. I want more, I want more. It sends you into that wonderful place of dreams and you wake full of mystical energy and zest. Stop doing stimulants, shut out the world and sleep your way back to vibrant hope, happiness and wellness. Of course, perfect for massage and meditation of all kinds.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* No. 14, 1993)","title":"Meditative Massage","year":"1992"},"synthesist":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*The Referee Has Vanished* (music: Tamul; lyrics: Richard Matthews) features William Brown's tenor vocals with Tamul's synthesis. It isn't your run-of-the-mill synth pop or ambient/mood piece by any stretch of the imagination. To my ear, Tamul has more in common with Luciano Berio, Megan Roberts, and a latter-day David Berhman than he does with Eno, Tuxedomoon, YMO, etc. At least on pieces like \"Referee,\" which has an experimental edge, it's probing and beautiful. \"The Parthenon\" features the cello of Sebastian Toettchner with Tamul. This piece moves closer to Tangerine Dream, Cluster, and Eno than \"Referee.\" \"The Parthenon\" is beautiful and restless, and it fits neatly into the very highest level of ambient/mood work the genre has produced.\n\n(Charlie Newman, 1983)","title":"Synthesist","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Jack Tamul","entry_number":2},"spell":{"albums":{"time-waves":{"image":"","label":"Tsunamu Records","review":"","title":"Time Waves","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"Spell","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":88,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jack-Tamul-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1adc677c-5b27-4194-bbaf-5f2f763e5eb2","last_name":"Tamul"},"jake-hottell":{"artist_name":"Jake Hottell","body":"Jake Hottell started his music career in Nashville as an engineer and producer at Roy Orbison's studio before health issues necessitated a return home to Aztec, New Mexico. A few years later, he discovered the polluting effects of fracking and was inspired to record *Break the Chains*, a downtempo electronic album that took aim at government corruption. He only produced 100 copies and the album remained unknown for decades until its recent discovery and reissue by Spacetalk. Hottell also produced a cassette in 1988 called *The Sapphire Album* that has a similar sound.\n\nJake Hottell was born in 1947. He was the youngest of three children, all raised on an organic farm in Cedar Hill, New Mexico. He grew up playing guitar in church and married his high school sweetheart Sharon who played music at his church.\n\nAs a teen, Hottell yearned to play guitar like Chet Atkins. He formed a band in high school called the Enchantments that covered songs by the Beatles and Roy Orbison. After high school, his music activities were cut short when he was drafted and spent 13 months in Korea. Since he’d grown up on a farm, he was handy with fixing things, and he avoided combat by taking an electronics course and serving as an audiovisual technician. \n\nHottell was discharged in 1969 and reunited with Sharon in Denver. He worked in the oil fields and then at an Agent Orange factory briefly, but then got a job that suited him better: repairing audio/visual equipment for a local college. Several years later, he went with a friend to Nashville and fell in love with the city. He and Sharon moved there soon after.\n\nIn Nashville, Hottell got a job at Studio Supply. Founded by Dave Harrison, the company got their start building studios and selling recording equipment, but would they ultimately become known for producing high-quality mixing consoles. Next, Hottell pivoted into a job as a recording engineer at Roy Orbison's studio, working on various country and gospel singles, including Roy Orbison’s *I Still Love You* from 1975. Hottell was riding high, cruising around town in his Lincoln Continental, and living his dream.\n\nBut as his career was accelerating, Hottell came down with spinal meningitis and had to return home in 1979, staying at his grandparent's house in northern New Mexico. A few years later, he discovered analog synthesizers and realized he could use the varied sounds to record complete tracks on his own. He got to work assembling a new studio with synthesizers and drum machines, and starting writing music in 1982 that would become his first album *Break the Chains*. \"We were moving into rock and progressive sounds then,\" Hottell recalled. \"I also liked Windham Hill - meditation-type stuff. That really went through my psyche.\"\n\nOne of his initial inspirations came from the book *Your Body's Many Cries for Water*, which helped him realize the benefits of purified water. Hottell remembered visiting his mother back home and how the water smelled like methane gas because of fracking. His anger at the government spilled out into his newly recorded tracks, especially the song \"Horizon.\"  \n\nIn 1985, Hottell released *Break the Chains* on his own Horizon record label. With his experience in Nashville, he knew how to get the vinyl professionally mastered and produced on his own. He pressed 100 copies and sent it out to some radio stations, but there wasn't much interest and he ended up giving most of them away. Nevertheless, he continued recording new music and put out a follow-up on cassette called *The Sapphire Album* a few years later. \n\nAfter that, Hottell didn't release anything new for several decades. In the '80s, he'd started his own business called Mach 1, repairing 16MM film projects and VCRs, and later DVD players. That kept him busy, though he did still sometimes play with other local bar bands in Denver too.\n\nThen, around 2017, two record collectors named Jeremy Spellacey and Danny McLewin discovered Hottell's music and tracked him down. They bought his remaining stock copies of *Break the Chains* and helped introduce it to a new generation of collectors and fans. In 2019, the label Spacetalk reissued the album on vinyl. Writing on their website, Spacetalk called the album \"suitably cosmic and emotive, with Hottell cannily fusing gentle drum machine rhythms and dreamy synthesizer motifs…with his own glistening guitar passages.\"","discography":{"jake-hottell":{"albums":{"instratum":{"image":"","label":"Horizon","review":"","title":"Break the Chains","year":"1985"},"sapphire":{"image":"","label":"Horizon","review":"","title":"The Sapphire Album","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":225,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jake-hottell.jpg?alt=media&token=5f7742a7-4520-4e8f-a29c-d8ed1e9a756f","last_name":"jake-hottell"},"james-hardman":{"artist_name":"James Hardman","body":"James Hardman is a keyboard composer and painter who has spent his adult life on the San Juan islands of Washington State, contemplating the beauty of his surroundings and interpreting it into his synthesized music and art practice. Since 1987 he has been releasing his compositions on his own Anahata label, which draw \"from both classical forms and popular idioms,\" combining \"intellectual discipline with deep emotional expression.\"\n\nBorn in Seattle in 1957, James Hardman grew up a few miles north in seaside Edmonds, Washington. He gravitated towards music early on and by his teens he was already receiving national recognition for his choral and chamber compositions. Inclined toward art as well as music, Hardman enrolled at Fairhaven College in western Washington, where he studied painting with Paul Glenn, who exposed him to Eastern art techniques and culture, as well as Jungian psychology and concepts like chaos theory, which would later inform his musical work. He went on to study music composition with composer Lockrem Johnson at the Cornish College of the Arts in the mid-'70s.\n\nIn 1978, Hardman moved from the mainland to the San Juan archipelago, where he began recording his own compositions on the synthesizer. \"I wasn't working with other musicians in those days,\" he recalled. \"I was working alone in a 10' x 10' shack on the shore of Orcas Island with electricity supplied by a 100' extension cord.\" \n\nHis first tape, *Lapus Lazuli*, consists of two side-long pieces of what he calls \"transformative music for electronic instruments,\" and was released on his own label Anahata in 1987. The music shows some Asian influence with electro-acoustic elements. By his second tape a year later, *Pleiadian Suite (Celestial Dances for Electronic Instruments)*, the sounds were more cosmic and entirely synthesized, a style which he continued on subsequent releases, adding orchestral samplers and solo piano to the mix as the years progressed. \n\nHardman's isolated locale has always informed his practice. \"I engage in music to participate in the harmony of nature. I turn to music to express my own emotions: but as the work evolves it goes far beyond myself and develops its own life and destiny.\"\n\nAs a form of self-promotion in the late ‘80s, Hardman set up an answering machine with a phone number that people could call to hear a \"taste\" of highlights from his releases. He would go on to release five cassette tapes and several CDs and continues to release music up to the present. Hardman is also an accomplished painter and printmaker (*see above for a self-portrait*), the subject matter being the natural landscapes of the islands. He lives in a rustic cabin near the former Buck Horn resort \"where he enjoys the company of bald eagles, harbor seals and white-tail deer.\"\n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2020)","discography":{"james-hardman":{"albums":{"archipelago":{"image":"","label":"Anahata","review":"","title":"Archipelago","year":"1997"},"lapis-lazuli":{"image":"","label":"Anahata","review":"Comprised of two side-long synth epics, James Hardman's debut had a slow-burn effect on listeners after its release,  accumulating fans via word of mouth for years, with Backroads later calling it an \"underground classic.\" This praise may be a bit overheated, though the album is certainly a well-crafted example of late '80s symphonic space music a la Jonn Serrie or Iasos. It's often gorgeous, but Hardman has a flare for dramatic, heroic imagery typical of the era (parts remind me of U2) that can be overbearing.  \"Amethyst\" on side two shows a bit more restraint and dynamic range than the title track, though Hardman still packs in plenty of ear-candy and production tricks that demand close attention. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Lapis Lazuli","year":"1987"},"pleiadian-suite":{"image":"","label":"Anahata","review":"*Pleiadian Suite* is a grandiose creation of synthesized music. Sweeping, enlivening music, in the tradition of science fiction movie scores, it is as astonishing as a deep space meteor shower. Named after the seven ephemeral \"doves of Heaven,\" the compositions seem to be in some way channeled from the Pleiades constellation. The fabric of the music is unique, energizing and upbeat, unlike other synthesized music that tends to be hypnotic and almost dreary. \n\nJames Hardman composed and performed each piece, and no two cuts are alike. On side one, \"Maia\" transforms from a quiet, slow, warbling morning birdsong into a fast paced, exciting and rhythmic journey into space. Then it slides into slower moodiness, majestic and softly flowing. The sounds echo and rebound, creating a sense of expansion. \"Merope\" is a joyful and mysterious, beginning with notes like bells and kalimba tones. \n\nThis tape is useful for positive mood changing – listen to it when you want to feel that creative spark. Its enchantment lies in drawing out from within the feeling of being in love with life. \n\n(Kim Rodrigo,  *Heartsong Review* No. 14, Spring/Summer 1993)\n","title":"Pleiadian Suite","year":"1988"},"the-enchantments":{"image":"","label":"Anahta","review":"","title":"The Enchantments","year":"1994"},"the-river":{"image":"","label":"Anahata","review":"","title":"The River","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":156,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/James-Hardman.jpg?alt=media&token=e23f8236-8646-4491-b60e-9a04edfdbccb","last_name":"Hardman"},"james-newton":{"artist_name":"James Newton","body":"James Newton is a jazz flutist from Los Angeles who is known for an expressive playing style and willingness to push boundaries. After some early albums of avant-garde jazz on small labels like Circle Records and India Navigation, he began working with bigger labels like Blue Note and Gramavision in the mid-80s. This was also the time he released the solo flute album that will likely be of interest to readers of this site: *Echo Canyon*, recorded outdoors at the Echo Amphitheater in northern New Mexico. \n\nBorn in Los Angeles in 1953, Newton grew up in San Pedro and first explored music in high school, playing alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, and flute. After playing bass in various rock and pop bands, he went on to study classical music at Cal State where he became increasingly interested in avant-garde jazz, especially the work of Eric Dolphy and Roland Kirk. In the mid-1970s, Newton joined the group Black Music Infinity, led by Stanley Crouch. While he was finishing up his studies, he recorded his self-released debut *Flute Music* at the age of 24.\n\nNewton spent a few years in New York in the late '70s and early ‘80s, where he often played with pianist Anthony Davis and Cecil Taylor’s big band. He also recorded some albums as a leader, including an unusual chamber jazz ensemble on *Mystery School* that showed his willingness to try new formats and textures.\n\nNewton returned to San Pedro in the early ‘80s and began teaching jazz history and composition at Cal Arts in Valencia, in addition to helming new albums for ECM and Gramavision, one of which (*Axum*) featured a sample later used by the Beastie Boys that Newton sued them over (and lost). In the ‘90s, Newton authored the instructional book *Improvising Flute*. He also showed increasing interest in other genres, exploring classical music on *Suite for Frida Kahlo* and hip-hop and Latin sounds on *Above is Above All*. \n\nIn the 2000s, Newton continued teaching and composed works for the symphony and modern dance, but his recordings tapered off. He remains active as of 2026.","discography":{"james-newton":{"albums":{"echo-canyon":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Harmonies","review":"","title":"Echo Canyon","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"James Newton","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":440,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/james-newton.jpeg?alt=media&token=d3563a9b-ebd1-427b-aba5-deddc5e6de6a","last_name":"Newton"},"jamie-janover":{"artist_name":"Jamie Janover","body":"Jamie Janover was a talented dulcimer player who could be considered an East Coast analogue to [Michael Masley](/michael-masley) (who he collaborated with for a one-off release in 2000). Inspired by jam bands like the Grateful Dead, Janover improvised the hypnotic and meditative music of his cassettes which he sold while busking in New York and Boston. By his estimation, he sold about 10,000 cassettes and CDs during a run from 1988 to 2001 where he made a living playing music, with a highlight being a live jam session with Bela Fleck at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1999 (see photo above). Starting in the 2000s, Janover turned his focus to a downtempo trio called Zilla and his own Sonic Bloom electronic music festival in Colorado.\n\nBorn in 1969, Jamie Janover grew up in New York City and New Jersey. He started playing drums as a teenager, but soon became fascinated by the dulcimer when his uncle Sandy Davis lent him one at the age of 16. It soon became his main instrument.\n\nOnce he got his driver’s license, Janover hit on the idea to play his dulcimer for tips in Manhattan. After driving into one of the busiest cities in the world and somehow finding a parking spot, Janover set up his dulcimer in Grand Central Station. He played for about 45 minutes and realized he’d already hauled in $17, about four times the minimum wage at the time. The police kicked him out soon after, but that was a life-changing moment for him as he would end up making a living busking for the next fifteen years.\n\nThe genesis of Janover’s early cassettes can be traced to a Grateful Dead parking lot. \"I was in the parking lot at a Dead show and I sat on my station wagon and started playing the dulcimer,\" Janover recalled. \"Pretty soon, a crowd formed and some people asked if I had a cassette of that. I thought, 'That’s a good idea!' I signed up for an electronic music class at Skidmore, and that first album was a class project for Recording 101. I made the cover myself at Sir Speedy Printing. So in 1988, I sold my tapes while traveling with the Dead.\"\n\nJanover tried out a fuller sound on his second album *Trapezohedron*, playing percussion and synth in addition to his dulcimer, while bringing in guests on piano and fretless bass. As with the first album, all the tracks are improvised. A few years later, Janover released his third album *Streams of Consciousness*, which returned to the solo dulcimer style of his first album, though he also added a solo digeridoo track as well.\n\nIn 1991, Janover graduated from Skidmore and moved to Boston where his grandmother was a teacher at Harvard. He recalls spending all his summers in Cape Cod, hanging out at the beach during the day and busking at night. \n\nBy 1994, Janover moved to Boulder, Colorado where he lived with other musicians from the String Cheese Incident and Dave Watts, a drummer in the band Motet. He began playing with other bands in the area, though he kept busking until 2001. One of the highlights of this period was jamming on stage with Bela Fleck at the Telluride Bluegrass festival in 1999. At the time, Janover was playing music as a 'tweener' while other bands were setting up and Fleck loved Janover’s sound. During this period, Janover also met fellow dulcimer player Michael Masley while he was in Berkeley and the two musicians collaborated on an album together called All Strings Considered in 2000.\n\nAfter he stopped busking, Janover's main musical project was Zilla, which he formed with Michael Travis of the String Cheese Incident and Aaron Holstein. The group’s sound was more groove-based and electronic, though completely improvised. Zilla released four albums from 2004 to 2006. After that, Janover started running the Sonic Bloom festival in Colorado, featuring multi-day lineups of electronic bands and running annually from 2006 to 2023. ","discography":{"jamie-janover":{"albums":{"evolutions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Evolutions","year":"1993"},"stellar-conversations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Stellar Conversations","year":"1988"},"streams-of-consciousness":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Streams of Consciousness","year":"1988"},"trapezohedron":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Trapezohedron","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":423,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Janover-Bela-temp.jpeg?alt=media&token=cff8ec7c-b099-4196-8393-5d9ee34241d7","last_name":"Janover"},"jaxon-crow":{"artist_name":"Jaxon Crow","body":"Jaxon Crow was a Dallas musician who released a series of progressive electronic cassettes from 1985 to 1990. His real name was James McLaughlin, but he adopted the moniker Jack Crow during stints in late '70s/early '80s punk bands such as Snakes on Everything, Terminal Mind, and the Red Tapes. David Price, who played guitar in the Red Tapes, helped turn Crow onto electronic music and by the mid-'80s they began working on an album together called *Alphawaves*. After that, Jaxon struck out on his own for three solo albums, as well as collaborative projects with James Flory III (Born Yesterday on Television) and his second wife Irene (Gone Tomorrow).  Crow used Midi and Amiga computers extensively in his music and worked often with filmmaker John Walker on various commercial audio and video projects throughout the '90s. Crow had diabetes for most of his life and passed away in 2004, at the age of 51.\n\nCrow was born James McLaughlin in 1953 in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas.  He had two younger siblings -  a brother named Gary and a sister named Kim. His mother owned a children's clothing store. Crow had an unusual sense of humor and a contagious laugh, but his family life was not an easy one. Crow was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes which meant regular insulin shots, and he later began having trouble with his vision. \n\nBy middle school, Crow started playing guitar and bass, joining a series of rock bands, even briefly playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was also from Oak Cliff. By the early '70s, Crow got more into singer/songwriter style music and played the folk club circuit for about four years before getting into punk.\n\nBy some accounts, Crow never drank much, after witnessing alcohol abuse in his family. Instead, he preferred marijuana and LSD. According to Ronna Gunn Epperson, who dated him for four years in the mid-'80s, Crow once took LSD while in the hospital and ended up detaching his retina. This, combined with his existing complications from diabetes led to him being legally blind and unable to drive himself around.\n\nBy the late '70s, Crow began hanging out with local punk musicians including bassist James Flory, sax player Will Clay, and guitarist Paul Quigg. Together they formed Snakes on Everything and contributed the track \"Karen Ann\" to the compilation *Are We Too Late for the Trend* which featured Dallas bands. According to Epperson, Crow and Flory used to occasionally hang out in Dealey plaza playing loud, abrasive music and ask people to pay them to stop. Crow loved Dealy Plaza in part because of its connection to the Kennedy Assassination, which he was obsessed with. He even visited the house where Lee Harvey Oswald was living when he assassinated JFK.\n\nAt the time, Crow was married to his first wife Tina and they lived together in Oak Cliff near the Dallas zoo. However, they separated in 1980 and he moved to Austin for a year where he joined the punk band Terminal Mind as a keyboardist. According to Crow's friend Marshall Cline, \"Jaxon took up with a bartender there named Margo. He kind of went from woman to woman who would give him a place to eat or a place to sleep. I don't recall him ever having to get up and go to work. He was always a very affable guy.\"\n\nCrow returned to Dallas sometime around 1982 and moved into a cottage house with a basement and set up a studio there that he called Neon Tetra Productions, a name he would use for the next decade.  Reuniting with Flory and Clay, Crow formed a new band called the Red Tapes, also adding guitarist David Price who he'd met years earlier and who shared an interest in electronic music.  (In a later incarnation they added Valerie Bowles and Erin Arthur). Crow helped write most of the band's material and they recorded a lot at his studio, but they never released anything during their active years. (One song appeared posthumously on Texas DJ George Gimarc's compilation *Tales from the Edge Volumes 5&6.*)\n\nAround 1984, Crow began dating Ronna Gunn Epperson. Recalling their first meeting, Epperson said: \"There was a local restaurant called the Boulevard next to Jack's studio. I was having a drink and talking to the owner and Jack sat down and started talking. We knew a lot of the same people and had an instant connection. He was so calm and very handsome. There was a seriousness to him, an aspect that was very spiritual but not religious. He was a seeker.\" Crow and Epperson soon moved in together. Epperson remembers that he was a vegetarian at the time and into psychedelics. She herself however was deep into a heroin addiction that clouded much of her memory of the era, though she stayed close with Crow up until his death.\n \n\"Jack was a very interesting person,\" Epperson reminisced. \"He reminded me of John Lennon – his demeanor and his view of things were very countercultural, and he was very talented musically. Jack never had a day job; he sold marijuana and did some music for commercials. He also had his studio, Neon Tetra. Later on, he moved the studio to a larger building [Jefferson Tower] and decided to build an entire wall that was an aquarium and fill it with neon tetra fish.\"\n\nAfter the demise of the Red Tapes, Crow and David Price started their own instrumental project with a more minimal electronic sound. They released their first cassette *Alphawaves* in 1985 and Crow followed it up with two solo albums *Nextworld* and *Amazonia* in 1987.  The cassettes were never nationally distributed, though Crow did trade tapes with some musicians including [Daniel Emmanuel](/daniel-emmanuel) from Houston.\n\nIn addition to the Red Tapes and his solo projects, Crow also had a more pop-oriented new wave project with James Flory called Born Yesterday on Television (BYOTV). Crow released one album of their work called *Flirting with Disaster* on his Neon Tetra label in 1987.\n\nIn 1988, Crow met Irene Herebia who ran a consignment art gallery in Oak Cliff. The two began dating and Crow enlisted her in a yet another new musical project called Gone Tomorrow. Herebia had previously played clarinet so Crow got her a Casio digital horn and she also sang through a Vocoder. The couple began working on new material which they performed live accompanied by computer visuals at a planetarium in Dallas. Crow soon put out the recordings as the album *Planetarium*.\n\nIn addition to his own music, Crow began working with Texas filmmaker John Walker in the '80s. Together they produced TV commercials, PSA's, documentaries and instructional videos with Crow contributing all the music. According to Irene, \"the computer was his consolation and friend. He spent many hours in studios wherever we lived, experimenting with sound, looping, using live electric guitar and MIDI programing combined.\" By the early ‘90s, Crow was a contributing editor for the Amiga Video Journal, writing technical articles about how to use various software in audio/visual applications. Crow continued to use the Amiga up until his final release on CD in 1997.\n\nIn 1990, Crow and Irene moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas where Jaxon's beloved grandfather Lafayette Angel had once lived. They got married in 1993, but entered a tough time soon after as both Crow's mother and brother fell ill and moved in with Crow and Irene so they could help to care for them. Crow's mother and brother passed away in the next few years and Crow, searching for a new direction, enrolled at the University of Arkansas to study computer science. \n\nCrow and Irene divorced in 1996, and he wound up relocating to Albuquerque, New Mexico to continue his computer science studies (several photographs there show him in front of the Sandia Crest towers, another reported obsession). He released one final CD in 1997 on a new label called Behavior Modification and started a website called [bmod.com](http://web.archive.org/web/20010406061144/http://www.bmod.com/history.htm) where he sold CD-R's of his earlier releases. However, according to friend Mark Cotton, Crow was unhappy. \"He was increasingly depressed in New Mexico,\" Cotton recalled. \"He found it boring there and had no friends. It was a social vacuum. And Jack was a person who wanted to bring joy to everyone around him.\" However, Crow was increasingly in poor health and in 2004, he was found dead by the maintenance man in his apartment building. \n\nCrow has recently started to generate some interest in collector circles after the *NextWorld* tape was found in a thrift store by Joshua Bradshaw and posted on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p114LQ2bCuY) in 2018.","discography":{"byotv":{"albums":{"flirting-with-disaster":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Flirting with Disaster","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"BYOTV","entry_number":3},"gone-tomorrow":{"albums":{"braid-of-glass":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Braid of Glass","year":"1990"},"planetarium":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Planetarium","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Gone Tomorrow","entry_number":4},"jaxon-crow":{"albums":{"amazonia":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"Taking inspiration from the landscapes and culture of South America, Jaxon Crow's *Amazonia* is a highly visual, diverse album with sounds ranging from guitar feedback and clanging percussion to serene sound baths. As with all his solo work, there is plenty of period charm in the extensive use of computers and midi, as well as some late ‘80s cheese factor such as the pounding bravado of  \"City in the Image of Man\" or the digital pan flutes of \"Machu Pichu.\" But a few listens dispel any lingering nostalgia as Crow paints a convincing portrait of the Amazon, teeming with equal doses dark and light.\n\nSide one certainly has some high points, like the impressionistic \"Walk on Water,\" but side two is stronger overall, with every song a winner: the mystical \"Savannah\" with sitar-like synths snaking through a bed of looming drones, \"AD 2081\" with its immense guitar tone, the [Mark Isham](https://ultravillage.com/mark-isham)-like \"Diamond Train\" and the nocturnal bug symphony of \"Amazonia\" with swarms of guitar delay.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Amazonia","year":"1987"},"angels-street":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Angels Street","year":"1988"},"condensation":{"label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"We've heard the titles of Mr. Crow's compositions before (\"The Whales,\" \"Alphawaves,\" \"Evergreen\"), but the music is something else altogether. Utilizing what's probably the usual run of keyboards (along with what sounds like an old-fashioned voice mellotron), Crow works a vein parallel to some of the California synth school (Steve Roach, etc.). But there's also a European sweep to the tracks, a depth reminiscent of Cluster or Yanni (not so much Vangelis). Probably the best ditty is \"Amazonia,\" built around a vibrating dulcimer pattern and hung all about with Edgar Froese-like shimmering guitar tones, and synthesized waves bringing in thousands of tiny bursting foam bubbles. Highly recommended.\n\n(Ken Egbert, *Option* Sept/Oct 1990)","title":"Condensation (compilation)","year":"1988"},"fractals":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Fractals (compilation)","year":"1988"},"nextworld":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Nextworld","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Jaxon Crow","entry_number":2},"jaxon-crow-david-price":{"albums":{"alphawaves":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra Productions","review":"","title":"Alphawaves","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Jaxon Crow with David Price","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":50,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jaxon-Crow.jpg?alt=media&token=2cb69bb4-1495-4fa6-ae2e-e0db6e099117","last_name":"Crow"},"jc-high-eagle":{"artist_name":"High Eagle","body":"While working at NASA in the '80s, High Eagle launched a new age music career drawing on his Native American heritage and a connection to the spiritual world. He was prolific from 1987 to 1991, releasing thirteen cassettes that he manifested spontaneously and recorded live in one take. He started out with a series of solo flute releases before adding synths and field recordings to his sound. (He also released some albums in other genres such as classical guitar, country, blues, and two albums of field recordings.) During his forty-year career at NASA, Elliott worked on the Apollo project as a flight mission operations engineer and earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom.\n\nBorn in 1943, Jerry C. Elliott grew up in Indian territory near Oklahoma. Both of his parents were Cherokee and his mother part-Osage. Elliott's father left early on, leaving his mother to raise him by herself. He recalls that she tried to teach him piano, but he preferred guitar, saying the piano never made sense to him.\n\nElliott was a good student and attended Oklahoma University after high school, earning a degree in Physics in 1965. He'd had a vision at the age of five that he would help land people on the moon, and when he got a job at NASA after college, he would soon go on to make this a reality with the 1969 Apollo moon landing. He also worked on the ill-fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission, which was aborted after an oxygen tank failed, but Elliott and others at NASA helped the crew return to Earth safely, earning him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.\n\nElliot continued to work at NASA during the '70s while also using his position to promote Native American issues more broadly. In 1976, he wrote legislation for the first ever Native American Awareness week, and the following year he co-founded the AISES non-profit to increase the participation of US indigenous peoples in STEM fields.\n\nIn the mid-'80s, Elliott was given the name \"High Eagle\" by native elders. The name signified that the eagle who flies highest is closest to God. It was also around this time that he started playing solo flute music.\n\n\"I went to a Cherokee nation meeting in Oklahoma, and I saw a Cherokee flute made out of cedar,\" Elliott recalled. \"I didn't know how to play but I bought it. I took it home and put it on the wall in my living room. I constantly stared at it and thought, I'd sure like to play that. My daughter, who was 5 or 6 years old, and I were in the living room and I had recording equipment set up because I liked to record jazz off the radio. Outside the house, I heard a clap of thunder - it was kind of like a talking thunder. It said, 'Get your flute, I'll give you a song.' I looked at my daughter, I got the flute off the wall, and I flipped on the recorder. Out came 36 minutes' worth of music, non-stop. I played it back and I couldn't believe what was coming out. Later, I took a demo recording to NASA and started giving out copies, and people enjoyed it so I decided to commercialize it. I called it *Homage* in tribute to the creator who gave me the music.\"\n\nFor the next year, Elliott continued recording in this fashion, receiving the music in bursts of inspiration. \"Every time I picked up the flute and turned on the recorder, I got music,\" Elliott recalled. \"And every tape I produced was 36 minutes and 26 seconds to the second. I never planned it that way.\" Elliott released his albums on cassette, creating his own label Panoramic Sound and selling them through new age distributors at the time.\n\nElliott's tapes sold pretty well and he was inspired to branch out to synthesizer music in 1988. Again, he recorded in bursts as the inspiration came to him. \"I woke up one morning after Christmas in Houston, and got a message to buy a synth,\" Elliott said. \"I spent $1,875 on a synth and the next morning I couldn't even find the knob to turn it on. But again I had my recording equipment set up and out came 36 minutes of synth music. That became *Great Spirit*.\n\nElliott would go on to release 13 albums between 1987 and 1991. He varied his sound occasionally, adding field recordings to some such as *Serenity*, explored a cosmic ambient sound on *Creation*, and says he unknowingly channeled ancient Eastern music on *Seasons*. \"Some people said it sounds like music from Ming dynasty which I didn't know anything about,\" Elliott said. \"The music manifested through me.\"\n\nIn addition to his recordings, JC High Eagle also performed solo flute pieces in the '90s with the Milwaukee Symphony, and later at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In 2013, JC High Eagle founded High Eagle Technologies with a focus on medicine and cancer treatments.\n\nSources:\n* Interview with the author, June 19, 2023\n* American Institute of Physics, Oral History Interview, 2020 Retrieved [here](https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/44901)\n\n","discography":{"jc-high-eagle":{"albums":{"1-homage":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Homage","year":"1987"},"1-visions":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Visions","year":"1988"},"1-wikutha":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Wikutha","year":"1989"},"2-echoes":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Echoes","year":"1987"},"2-great-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Great Spirit","year":"1988"},"2-stormdancer":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Stormdancer","year":"1989"},"3-creation":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Creation","year":"1988"},"3-serenity":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Serenity","year":"1989"},"4-abyss":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Abyss","year":"1989"},"4-peace":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Peace","year":"1988"},"5-seasons":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Seasons","year":"1988"},"currents":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Currents","year":"1991"},"spheres":{"image":"","label":"Panoramic Sound","review":"","title":"Spheres","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":357,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jc-high-eagle-640.jpg?alt=media&token=373b7200-87b5-4cae-acc7-8a82bc100a9e","last_name":"High Eagle"},"jeem":{"artist_name":"Jeem","body":"JEEM was the project of Jim Seeley (above right), an electronic musician from Scottsdale, Arizona. He released four cassettes during the '80s, with his first tape *Neuro Pond* the best seller. His tapes had good distribution, but Seeley kept a low profile, playing live only occasionally and usually in the Phoenix area.  His current whereabouts are unknown.\n\nSeeley was born in 1951 and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He played the accordion as a child, but later switched to the guitar. After high school he played guitar in various local bands, but started to get interested in electronic music at the beginning of the '80s. \"That was fun but I was searching for something,\" Seeley told *The Arizona Republic* in a 1986 interview. \"I wanted the experience to be interactive between me and my audience.\" Seeley did just that at one of his first live performances, handing out cheap Casio keyboards to the audience and asking them to play along.\n\nWorking in the computer industry, Seeley already had a knack for technology. But another factor that attracted him to electronic music was the ease of composing on keyboards, as well as the possibilities offered by using computers.  By the mid-'80s, he'd built up a studio with $8K in gear that included two computers, a Juno-60, a drumulator, and more. \"I probably would relate as much to a computer person as a musician,\" Seeley said. \"The music sometimes becomes secondary. I'm not interested in playing the fastest arpeggio, because I have a computer that can do that.\"\n\nSeeley released his first tape *Neuro Pond* in 1985, which showcased his mellow, progressive electronic style in the vein of '80s Tangerine Dream. The album got good reviews from outlets like *Electronic Musician* and won best album from *Sound Board* magazine.  He followed that up with the space-themed *Star Gait* which included an 18-minute downtempo suite on side one and a heartfelt ode to the victims of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on side two. \"The soul of the music comes from the artist who's playing it,\" Seeley said. \"I've experienced a lot of emotion sitting at those keys.\" \n\nSeeley went on to produce two more tapes in the '80s, but after that, he decided to tour Europe and never came back. He released a CD called *Ancient Promise* in 1994 but then went silent. His family has lost touch with him and his current location is unknown.","discography":{"jeem":{"albums":{"ancient-promise":{"image":"","label":"Arcturus","review":"","title":"Ancient Promise","year":"1994"},"free-reign":{"image":"","label":"JimSyn Music","review":"A magical collection of new age music, full of imagery from its gradual beginning to the evolution into an incredible soundscape. Jeem's quirky voyages on *Neuro Pond* and the excellent *Star Gait* have really matured here, and he's joined by full collaborator Sean Reynolds of England.\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Spring 1988)","title":"Free Reign","year":"1987"},"neuro-pond":{"image":"","label":"JimSyn Music","review":"Jeem's debut attracted critical attention at the time with its melodic, well-arranged progressive electronic sounds that drew from '80s era T. Dream, Vangelis, and Jarre circa *Les Chants Magnétiques*. His synth sounds are often cheesy and dated, but the album has a certain period charm and grower qualities that sneak up on you.\n\nThe overall aesthetic is straight out of a low-grade '80s time travel movie, with a generally mellow, downtempo mood. Side one features two long tracks \"Crystalline Meadows\" and \"Magenta Travels\" that stay locked in minimalist grooves while airy melodies and gurgling SFX twinkle above. Side two explores similar sounds, though adds some noodling solos and hints at an oddball worldview with titles like \"Duck Hunting on Orion\" and \"Oh! Those Digital Blues.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Neuro Pond","year":"1985"},"no-propaganda":{"image":"","label":"JimSyn Music","review":"","title":"No Propaganda","year":"1988"},"star-gait":{"image":"","label":"JimSyn Music","review":"*Star Gait* is a more sophisticated take on the downtempo sound stablished on Jeem's debut, with a prominent space theme a la [Jonn Serrie](/jonn-serrie). Side one features the enjoyable \"Star Gait Suite,\" with 18 minutes of hypnotic grooves that recall other examples of regional home-brew electronica like [E.Q. Zak](/e-q-zak) or [Mike Christopher](/mike-christopher). \n\nSide two is less cohesive, with the East/West fusion track \"China Down\" sounding out of place with an unfortunate and stereotypical asian synth sound . Things pick up with the tense, pulsating \"Berrien’s Window\" which builds up to a cacophony of incomprehensible dialogue samples. The album closes with a heartfelt tribute to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster with a melancholy jam that summons the ghost of Pink Floyd's epic \"Echoes.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":" Star Gait","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":159,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jim-Seeley-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=caeb2488-272e-4d88-87d1-387d1f89e1fb","last_name":"Jeem"},"jeff-carney":{"artist_name":"Jeff Carney","body":"Jeff Carney was a west coast synth player and avid record collector who was close friends with Doug Walker of [Alien Planetscapes](/alien-planetscapes). Walker released Carney's first tape in a small edition and then helped get him signed to the more well-known Audiofile Tapes. Carney's run only lasted four years, before he moved on to a career in marketing, though his tape *Imperfect Space Journeys* has become collectible in recent years and was recently reissued on vinyl via [Lion Productions](https://www.lionproductions.org/).\n\nCarney was born in 1968 in San Francisco and grew up in nearby Morada, California. His mother got him to take classical piano lessons as a young boy, but he soon lost interest. \"I hit music very early, but I wasn't satisfied with radio,\" Carney said. \"The first thing that blew my mind was Dave Brubeck. By the time I was eight, I was buying albums by ELP, Genesis and Rush.\"\n\nWhen he was 12, Carney started learning guitar, though he dropped that after a few years and switched to bass, which he played in the high school jazz band and a prog band called Evolution. By this time, he started to delve more deeply into the music of Terry Riley, who happened to be his father’s cousin. \"He was very influential on me, and not just because he was part of my family,\" Carney recalled.  \"He was always on road. I used to go his mom’s house in Colfax and bug her – 'You got any of Terry's records?' I think she gave me *Shri Camel* and  *Rainbow in Curved Air*. I was always listening to that stuff.\"\n\nCarney graduated high school in 1986 and started working as a waiter and taking some classes, but his main focus was music. \"That summer, I started buying keyboards,\" Carney recalled, \"But the stuff I was buying was analog. This was right in the middle of the digital era and I was only interested in analog. The upside was the price was good, but no one knew how to work anything. I had a Micromoog and a Polymoog. Later I got an Arp 2600.\" With his new equipment, Carney began recording Berlin-school inspired pieces at home.\n\nThe same year, Carney placed an ad in Keyboard Magazine to trade tapes of live shows. He got a letter back from Doug Walker of the band Alien Planetscapes.  The two soon became close. \"Doug blew me away,\" Carney said. \"He told me about music I’d never heard about. I didn’t know about Soft Machine, Hawkwind, Gong, or Sun Ra. We talked on the phone probably once a week; he was one of my closest friends at that time.\"\n\nWalker was already well-known in the cassette underground for cranking out cassette after cassette of electronic space music on his own Galactus label. In 1986, Carney visited Walker in Brooklyn and met others in the scene including Reginald Taylor, Louis Boone, and Arnold Mathes. “Doug and I would listen to music at all hours,” Carney said. “He had a huge tape collection. I thought I liked Van Der Graaf Generator and then I’d look at his wall and he’d have 50 concert tapes of theirs. I probably taped a suitcase worth of stuff while I was there, just dubbing stuff constantly.”\n\nBack home in California and newly inspired, Carney produced his first cassette *A Trip Through the Universe*. He sent it to Walker who said, ‘This stuff is great! I’m releasing it right now.” Walker designed a cover and made 50 copies that sold quickly.\n\nCarney followed up his debut a year later with *Imperfect Space Journey*, showcasing a more ambitious sound influenced by ‘70s prog and electronic music like Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, and Heldon. When Walker heard it, he loved the album and wanted to give it more of a push so he licensed it to the better distributed AudioFile label. It worked, and the album got excellent reviews in outlets like Sound Choice and was issued in the UK as well.\n\n\"The second album sold probably  a few hundred,\" Carney said. \"I wanted to be more unique than just the Berlin-school. Everything was played live. That was my way of saying, this is what I do. I don’t do same thing as people who record on 24 tracks and do overdubs.\" To help illustrate the point, Carney's final solo album was a live album, again released on Audiofile Tapes. He also did a one-off collaboration with his brother Greg under the name Code Zero, though the sound was more experimental, inspired by free jazz.\n\nBy 1990, Carney decided it was time to move on. \"I just started realizing that the market for what I’m doing is limited. I could feel content with it creatively and artistically but I wasn't willing to die for my art like some people. I got jobs working in sales and marketing. Got married, had a kid, then dot divorced. Went through a lot of stuff. I remember when I talked to Doug many years later, for him it was like nothing ever changed.\"","discography":{"code-zero":{"albums":{"process-of-improvisation":{"image":"","label":"Audio File Tapes","review":"","title":"Process of Improvisation","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Code Zero","entry_number":2},"eepie-allum-schlugdha":{"albums":{"eepie-allum-schlugdha":{"image":"","label":"Code Zero Music","review":"","title":"Eepie Allum Schlugdha","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Eepie Allum Schlugdha","entry_number":3},"jeff-carney":{"albums":{"a-trip-through-the-universe":{"image":"","label":"Galactus Tapes","review":"","title":"A Trip Through the Universe","year":"1987"},"imperfect-space-journeys":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile Tapes","review":"","title":"Imperfect Space Journeys","year":"1988"},"live-electronic-music":{"image":"","label":"Audiofile Tapes","review":"","title":"Live Electronic Music","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Carney","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":193,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jeff-carney-640.png?alt=media&token=eb48554a-800f-478b-82d5-61a3d94dabcb","last_name":"Carney"},"jeff-central":{"artist_name":"Jeff Central","body":"Jeff Chenault (born 1964) is a writer and experimental musician, based in Columbus, Ohio since the early '80s. Originally from Detroit, he grew up with a father who was a DJ that introduced him to a wide swath of music. He eventually taught himself to play the synth in the late '70s and began recording on a reel to reel as Musicopsychological, inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle. In 1983, he and his best friend Patrick Harvey (Pat Grafik) formed an industrial duo called International Terrorist Network and released two cassettes before Chenault repurposed that name for their own record label, issuing a variety of compilations and solo albums from himself and Harvey. While many of the releases fall outside the scope of this guide, Central produced plenty of ambient pieces scattered through his albums that may be of interest, such as the track \"Bleedthrough\" on his tape *Primativa*. The title of this release comes from Chenault's long-standing interest in exotica; he is now an exotica DJ and author of the books *Ohio Tiki* and *Kahiki Supper Club*.","discography":{"jeff-central":{"albums":{"de-operation-automatica":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"De Operation Automatica","year":"1984"},"dream-cavern":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Dream Cavern","year":"1986"},"lysergic-voodoo":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Lysergic Voodoo","year":"1990"},"primativa":{"image":"","label":"Black Music","review":"","title":"Primativa","year":"1988"},"the-anatomical-theater":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"The Anatomical Theater","year":"1987"},"werkshau":{"image":"","label":"Deaf Eye","review":"","title":"Werkshau","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Central","entry_number":4},"jeff-central-and-alios":{"albums":{"resonance":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Resonance","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Central and Alios","entry_number":6},"jeff-central-and-bill-jaeger":{"albums":{"the-auditory":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"The Auditory Brainstem Companion","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Central and Bill Jaeger","entry_number":7},"jeff-central-and-chris-phinney":{"albums":{"alternative":{"image":"","label":"ITN/Harsh Reality","review":"","title":"Alternative Commnunication Through Autonomic Overdubbing","year":"1986"},"weird-drug":{"image":"","label":"ITN/Harsh Reality","review":"","title":"Weird Drug-Inspired Hits","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Central and Chris Phinney","entry_number":5},"jeff-central-and-pat-grafik":{"albums":{"satanic-state":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Satanic State","year":"1983"},"stimulus-and-response":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Stimulus and Response","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Central and Pat Grafik","entry_number":2},"musicopsychological":{"albums":{"ear-training":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Ear Training","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Musicopsychological","entry_number":1},"musique-psychologiue":{"albums":{"absolute":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Absolute","year":"1986"},"pulse":{"image":"","label":"ITN","review":"","title":"Pulse","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Musique Psychologique","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":335,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jeff-central-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e1580fb7-e8b8-49e1-99a1-fcf5971ba44b","last_name":"Central"},"jeff-defty":{"artist_name":"Jeff Defty","body":"Jeff Defty was a classically trained cellist from Oregon who played in various orchestras and a chamber jazz group called Aurora throughout the '80s and '90s. He self-released a solo album in 1985 but took a hiatus while he earned a degree in library science. He reemerged with *Vanish Into Blue* in 1992 which was featured on Stephen Hill's *Hearts of Space* radio show and sold much better at the time than his previous effort. He currently records as the Chronotope Project.\n\nJeff Defty was born in Los Angeles and his family moved to Medford, Oregon when he was 8 years old. Soon after, he began studying the cello and music composition with his grandfather, an accomplished cellist and conductor. He developed an early taste for chamber music and formed a string quartet in high school. At the age of 15 he joined the Rogue Valley Symphony, a community orchestra. After graduating high school, Defty went to Willamette University in Salem to get a degree in Philosophy, completing his BA in 1980. By 1983, he started to get another Bachelors in music composition, but ultimately dropped out.\n\nAt the time, Defty was struggling financially, but his prospects for making a career out of music still seemed within reach. By then he was a member of the Eugene Symphony, Oregon Mozart Players and the Oregon Bach Festival orchestra. He also played pickup gigs around town, taught lessons on the side, and formed an acoustic group with guitarist Forrest McDowell called Aurora. That group had a small but loyal fan base locally and managed to put out one self-released cassette in 1984 called *And There Was Light.* The music was probably best classified as chamber jazz, similar to Oregon. The band later changed their name to Confluence and went on to produce two further albums. They finally disbanded in 2004.\n\nAfter a few years with Aurora, Defty began work on his own debut album *Primeval Mind* which he released in 1985 in an edition of 1000 copies on cassette. The songs were neoclassical ambient pieces using synthesizer and heavily processed cello. \"Unlike much ambient music, my works most often have a distinct beginning, middle and end,\" Defty said. \"I also have some pieces that have no formal structure—more diffuse soundscapes—but as a rule, I am attracted to structure in music, and use a variety of classical forms in my work.\"\n\nIn 1986, Defty auditioned for a cello chair in the Oregon symphony. \"That was an eye opener,\" Defty said. \"There were 150 applicants for one position. I heard some of them warming up and thought - I'm out of my league. Not long after, I got the idea to go to library school.\" \n\nDefty began attending the University of Washington in Seattle in 1989, earning his library science degree a year and a half later. Library work proved enjoyable for him, particularly storytelling, and provided a livable income even if it meant putting his musical projects on hold for a while. Still, he continued to find time to compose, perform and record in spurts. In 1992, two years after being hired as a children's librarian, he'd managed to complete a new recording at his home studio in Eugene. He released that album as *Vanish Into Blue* on his own Neptune Music label and it was a modest success, with \"Medicine Wheel\" and the title track, \"Vanish into Blue\" getting airplay on Stephen Hill's Hearts of Space radio show. With national distribution, the album sold about 5000 copies by Defty's estimation.\n\nDefty's next release was *The Descent of Inanna* in 1997. The music was originally the basis for a theatrical production about the Sumarian goddess Inanna, who descends to the underworld. That album didn't fare as well, selling only about 400 copies. Defty continued to produce works for theater and modern dance and performing with Confluence, but took a hiatus from recording solo works until 2012, when he retired from library work and began producing works under the name Chronotope Project. He also changed his last name to Allen a few years before that, in order to restore a connection with his family heritage. His website can be found [here](https://www.chronotope-project.com/).","discography":{"jeff-defty":{"albums":{"primeval-mind":{"image":"","label":"Shabda","review":"","title":"Primeval Mind","year":"1985"},"vanish-into-blue":{"image":"","label":"Neptune","review":"","title":"Vanish Into Blue","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Defty","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":52,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jeff-Defty-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3e369463-92cc-4323-a223-321573a2a76c","last_name":"Defty"},"jeff-greinke":{"artist_name":"Jeff Greinke","body":"Seattle musician Jeff Greinke is one of the more well-known composers of dark ambient music. He earned strong reviews in the underground press for his early solo cassettes and picked up momentum in Europe with his first vinyl release *Cities in Fog* in 1985. He has been active ever since, creating music best summed up by the Seattle Weekly: \"Instant fog bank...you don't hear this music as much as absorb it through your skin.\"\n\nBorn in 1959, Greinke spent his early years in New Jersey. His father was a plant manager for various corporations, so the family moved around a bit, spending time in Chicago and then Pennsylvania as well.  Greinke was a weather buff as a kid, and would eventually go to school to study meteorology. However, music was his primary passion. \n\nBy ninth grade, Greinke already had an adventurous ear, listening to late night radio shows and scouring the import bin at his local record stores for experimental rock bands like Can, Tangerine Dream, Guru Guru and Jane. \"I was the oddball at school,\" Greinke recalled. \"I was fanatical about music, but I didn't find many people to share it with.\"\n\nIn college at Penn State, Greinke hosted a radio show where he further explored experimental US music and free improv. By his senior year, he finally met someone who loved music as deeply as he did, a musician named Rob Angus. They started playing music together, with one musician playing a key influence. \"I fell in love with an album called *Terrain* by David Moss,\" Greinke said. \"It was textural, not rhythmic. He was a percussionist and used his voice too, but it was very layered and almost ambient, like rivers of sound.\" So when Greinke and Angus jammed, Greinke just used his voice, adding texture with long delays and loops.\n\nGreinke got more serious about music making and taught himself to play the guitar, piano, trombone, and eventually the synthesizer. After earning his meteorology degree, he and Angus moved to Seattle. To them, the city seemed like a progressive place with a strong arts community, so they took the leap. Neither of them had ever been.\n\nAfter arriving in 1981, Greinke and Angus started playing live in Seattle immediately. One of their first contacts was Herb Levy, who was putting on electronic, modern classical, and free-improv shows at small venues and galleries. Levy introduced them around and they hosted their own shows too. \"I knew I wasn't going to make a lot of money, but it was a dream and I was very optimistic,\" Greinke said. \"Also, I was willing to put the time in so down the road I could support myself.\"\n\nAngus and Greinke released their first cassette a year after arriving, *In Hell's Shadow*. The tape was mostly comprised of earlier material recorded in Pennsylvania, including some of Greinke's echoed vocal pieces and more industrial soundscapes. Although totally unknown at the time, the tape got a review in *Surface Noise* with editor John Loffink calling it \"highly recommended.\" Greinke soon put out two more tapes of his own before he and Angus decided to launch a more official cassette label called Intrepid. Their first title was a co-production called *Night and Fog* that featured some solo tracks as well as some collaborations, followed up by a solo Greinke tape *Before the Storm*. \n\nAlthough both musicians were steeped in the more atonal and abrasive free-improv scene of Seattle, Greinke's music by this point was atmospheric and quiet, with a foreboding, tactile quality that set him apart from many other ambient musicians at the time. His approach was primitive but effective – he sampled sound effects records and then ran them though his synthesizer and augmented that with a Casio.\n\nGreinke's tapes earned him accolades in underground zines like *Op* and *Unsound* and he decided to move up to vinyl for his next album, *Cities in Fog*. \"Vinyl seemed more legitimate than cassettes, so I tried that and *Cities in Fog* caught on. It got picked up by some distributors in Europe and the states and I made a name for myself especially in Europe.\" Greinke would go on to sell around 3,000 copies by his estimation. \"The reception encouraged me. I hadn't been doing music long and I was excited; it spurred me on.\"\n\nGreinke kept his foot on the gas, releasing two more cassettes on Intrepid and getting reviewed more than ever. He kept production costs down by recording at home and printing photos and gluing them on to all his early cassette covers. Greinke had been taking photos as a hobby since the late '70s (another Angus influence) and his abstract images of surfaces were a perfect complement to his music. \n\nBy 1987, Greinke was ready to move on to a bigger label, and German label Dossier stepped in with 1987’s *Places of Motility*. Greinke would stay with Dossier for two albums, though he moved to a series of other labels after that as he continued to put out albums regularly. By this time, he had become a favorite of critics who loved describing his music, such as this attempt by Keyboard Magazine: \"[*Places of Motility*] has some of the spaciousness of new age, but it's dark instead of pretty. Maybe we should call it 'dark age' music.\" \n\nGreinke was close to achieving his dream of making a living from music, though he still worked part time in the restaurant industry.  \"It was low budget living,\" he admitted. But in the world of underground ambient music, Greinke had become close to a household name. However, by the end of the decade, things began slowing down. Greinke knew he was good with numbers and began working as a part time accountant for his fellow artist friends. \n\nAccounting would eventually become more of a full-time job for Greinke, but he remained a respected figure in the electronic underground during the ‘90s, and he sometimes played high profile gigs like the Beijing International Jazz Festival in 1996. Throughout it all, his recording process never changed much. \"I was always behind the curve,\" Greinke said. \"I used tape decks all the way to 1999 and then finally got a computer and started recording on Protools. My approach didn't get much more sophisticated.\"\n\nIn addition to his solo work in the ‘90s, Greinke formed a group project called Land. The intention was to combine the sound of Brian Eno and Miles Davis, with the tunes based on samples and looped grooves. Land released three albums.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"j-greinke":{"albums":{"before-the-storm":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"Avant garde electronics with style, originality, and excellent command of timbre, mix and arrangement. Each piece is fresh, unique, and varied. Sounds zip around in all directions with an unearthly order. Greinke has a distinctive, original sound. The title of this album is apropos since most of the music sounds rather dark and forbidding. Greinke uses electronics, trumpet, voice, guitar, piano, trombone, percussion, tapes, turntables, and processing and makes all of it sound completely different from the norm. The sound textures are subtle and thought-provoking throughout.\n\n(Jim Finch, *SYNE*, Fall 1985)","title":"Before the Storm","year":"1984"},"big-weather":{"image":"","label":"Linden","review":"","title":"Big Weather","year":"1994"},"changing-skies":{"image":"","label":"Multimood","review":"Greinke’s earliest recordings were primarily available via the mid-'80s industrial cassette scene alongside experimentalists such as [Controlled Bleeding](/controlled-bleeding) and Asmus Tiechens – I first encountered him on the second volume of the influential *Dry Lungs* compilation series – and while he's been embraced by the Hearts of Space crowd (and to some extent the wider new age audience) generally speaking his aesthetic as well as his restrained approach to composition have retained a comforting and sophisticated edge throughout. The extensive use of energetic, organic percussion on 1990's *Changing Skies* gives the various metallic drones, environmental sounds, and slowly shifting electronic melodies a sense of dark playfulness. Never lapses into new age cliché. A moonlit forest full of shining eyes and sharp smiling teeth.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Changing Skies","year":"1990"},"cities-in-fog":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"Greinke's first LP is a mature set of dark soundscapes that are sparse, distant and beautiful. Greinke's haunting, exotic music quietly evolves through delicate layering of reverberating tones. This is a somber, moving record, and as its title suggests, points to a scene where objects are nebulous and sounds dampened.\n\n[Paul Lemos](/controlled-bleeding), *Sound Choice*, Summer 1986)","title":"Cities in Fog","year":"1985"},"drifting-bandharps":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Drifting Bandharps","year":"1982"},"fragment-1":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"","title":"Fragment 1","year":"1989"},"in-another-place":{"image":"","label":"Linden","review":"","title":"In Another Place","year":"1993"},"lost-terrain":{"image":"","label":"Silent","review":"","title":"Lost Terrain","year":"1992"},"moving-climates":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"Jeff Greinke’s regular listeners are in for a surprise on this new cassette release: his predictable slabs of quiet and foreboding electronics are augmented by electronic percussion and the addition of occasional bursts of intelligible spoken material. The framework on which his slowly developing clouds of treated guitar and trombone and synthesizers are hung this time out is a basic kind of fractured groove rather than extended silences. The result is predictably well-crafted, and even hovers on the edge of being ah…dance material. \n\nFollowing on the heels of his LP *Over Ruins* this cassette still continues to explore the possibilities of crossbreeding the foreground/background spaces of Eno’s *On Land* with the quieter parts of PGR’s non-abrasive industrials. Jeff seems to be producing a set of transitional recordings, in much the way that people like Michael William Gilbert (*In the Dreamtime*) and Marc Barreca (*Music Works for Industry*) have done in the past. Now that he’s confident of his basic set of techniques (and Jeff has a stronger grasp of them than most) he begins to widen the territory and include a larger range of sonic materials. *Moving Climates* consolidates his strengths, expands his range, and gives new meaning to the phrase \"moody and upbeat.\"\n\n([Gregory Taylor](/Gregory-taylor), *Sound Choice* #8, 1987)","title":"Moving Climates","year":"1986"},"over-ruins":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"As the initial elements of the industrial movement ferment and decay, a new style of (implied) industrialization is awakening and evolving – ambient/industrial. The skull-pounding rhythms have given way to subtle atmospheric textures designed to please – not annoy. We are no longer confronted with the inhumanisation and desensitization of contemporary society. Now, we look into the inner self for our existence. The outside world is insignificant as we seek a more thorough understanding of ourselves. Yes, this is a wonderful cassette.\n\n(BL,  *Unsound*, Vol 3, No. 1)\n","title":"Over Ruins","year":"1985"},"places-of-motility":{"image":"","label":"Dossier","review":"Tracks from '85 and '86. Same as the other stuff but adds some Berlin School style hypno-synth and the kind of disconnected snatches of dialogue I associate with the early industrial music scene. Killer.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Places of Motility","year":"1987"},"suspended-pillars-of-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Early release from Jeff Greinke, before his work became the dark ambient/industrial hybrid that he is most known for. This tape sees Greinke exploring more minimalist inspired territory, and he does so incredibly well. Almost entirely acoustic in its instrumentation, it's an anomaly in his vast catalog. One can already sense the thick, lost-in-the-fog atmosphere that he honed in on later, but these tracks provide an unexpected amount of light and breathing room, making for a more approachable listen than I expected (which is a positive thing in my book).\n\n(Jed Bindeman, 2020)","title":"Suspended Pillars of Light","year":"1983"},"tactilie-zones":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"","title":"Tactile Zones","year":"1983"},"timbral-planes":{"image":"","label":"Dossier","review":"Gong-like drones, shuffling layers of natural-sounding percussion, snippets of snake-charmer melody weaving their way in and out of the mix. Alternates rhythmic workouts and straight-up ambient tracks. If you're looking for atmospheric, abstract music you can chill to without navigating cliché or losing your goth cred, Greinke might be your dude, at least during this era. Also recommended for fans of Zoviet France and Rapoon looking to expand the collection without taking out a second mortgage.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Timbral Planes","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"J. Greinke","entry_number":1},"j-greinke-pierre-perret":{"albums":{"stormlight":{"image":"","label":"ND","review":"","title":"Fragment 1","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"J. Greinke, Pierre Perret","entry_number":3},"j-greinke-r-angus":{"albums":{"crossing-ngoli":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"Distant synth drone, guttural chanting, ice-cold sound stabs, and Greinke's trademark hypnotic, organic approach to rhythm. Kinda feel like the tempo and aggression are cranked up a bit relative to other Greinke albums I have. Parts of this make me want to put on a loincloth and dance around a big beach bonfire at midnight, psyching myself up for the suicidal battle taking place the following dawn. I mean, I always want to do that anyway, kind of, but this makes me REALLY want to.\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Crossing Ngoli","year":"1992"},"in-hell's-shadow":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"In Hell's Shadow","year":"1982"},"night-and-fog":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"","title":"Night and Fog","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"J. Greinke, R. Angus","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":116,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jeff-Greinke-640alt.jpg?alt=media&token=4bf857e1-b51c-4121-9b60-3877a1b93630","last_name":"Greinke"},"jeff-majors":{"artist_name":"Jeff Majors","body":"Jeff Majors (sometimes stylized Jeffmajors) is a harpist who sought to update spiritual jazz with more modern forms like new age and R&B on a series of albums in the '80s and early '90s. Born in 1955 and raised in Washington D.C., Majors moved to California after high school where he spent three years studying with Alice Coltrane, a pivotal influence on his life. He returned to D.C. where he released his now rare first cassette *Change Has Come*, followed by *For Us All* on vinyl, an album that has become collectible and was reissued in 2018. His following albums explore gospel (*Back to Classics*), smooth jazz (*New and Improved*), and new age (side 2 of *New Age Soul*), though he would primarily focus on devotional music for 1997's *Sacred* and its many sequels. Starting in the '90s, Majors began a career as a radio host on various gospel shows such as \"Sunday Morning Joy\" and served as a programming executive for others. He also hosted a TV show called \"The Gospel of Music.\" ","discography":{"jeff-majors":{"albums":{"back-to-classics":{"image":"","label":"Glass Wing","review":"","title":" Back to Classics","year":"1989"},"change-has-come":{"image":"","label":"Glass Wing","review":"","title":"Change Has Come","year":"1985"},"for-us-all":{"image":"","label":"Glass Wing","review":"","title":" For Us All","year":"1986"},"new-age-soul":{"image":"","label":"NAS Music","review":"","title":" New Age Soul","year":"1994"},"new-and-improved":{"image":"","label":"NAS Music","review":"","title":" New and Improved","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":374,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jeff-majors-642.jpg?alt=media&token=7a1aa33e-f95d-4432-83e9-2d633568b583","last_name":"Majors"},"jeffrey-thompson":{"artist_name":"Dr. Jeffrey Thompson","body":"Jeffrey Thompson was a Virginia-based chiropractor with an interest in holistic healing and the mind-body connection when he released his debut *Isle of Skye* in 1986. The album was a surprise success at new age bookstores and Thompson would go on to issue over 20 more albums during a successful career that continues today. His music utilizes a technique he calls \"brainwave entrainment\" which uses frequencies to alter the listeners' state of mind.\n\nBorn in Stockton, California in 1947, Thompson's father was a colonel in the air force and the family moved every few years during his childhood. At various points, they lived in California, Tennessee, Oklahoma, England, and finally Massachusetts. Thompson channeled most of his energy inward as he explored art, filmmaking, and music.\n\n\"I was a weird kid from the start. I made my first stop-motion animation film when I was 11 with my parent's Brownie movie camera,\" Thompson recalled. \"I also had a collection of electronic music that included Stockhausen and a record by Badings/Raajimakers. I wanted to make electronic music, that was my big desire. I borrowed my parent's reel to reel recorder and started screwing around with it. I would record sounds at fast speeds, play them slow. One day my mom came into the room and I was doing brain surgery on it and she just turned around and closed the door. They bought a new reel to reel and let me have that one. Pretty soon I had the new one in my room too.\"\n\nThompson played several instruments as a kid, including piano, guitar and even sitar. In high school, while living in Boston, he joined a successful band called the Spectres as their lead guitarist. The band blew up locally after releasing a teen pop 45 called \"Oh Darlin\". \"After we put out that single, our bookings just exploded to huge venues just because we had a record. Fans were lined up out the back door. The girls were screaming and trying to tear our clothes off. It was crazy.\"\n\nFor college, Thompson went to the Massachusetts College of Art where he studied painting, sculpture and filmmaking. After he graduated in 1970, he used his skills in sculpture to get a job making pewter molds for a museum village in Upstate New York. He then opened his own company called Oxford Pewter making tableware that he sold at craft fairs around the country. He also worked part-time as a carpenter, learning skills that came in handy when he decided to rehab his own house.\n\nDuring his time in New York, Thompson was on a deep spiritual search: \"I was into esotericism and exploring eastern religion, the I Ching, the Vedas. I was also part of a study group that followed the mystic Gurdjeff. He had come to the US and synthesized all of this information from the Middle [East] and Far East and brought it to Europe in 1920.\"\n\nThompson's home in New York was a renovated barn. He'd installed the plumbing and electricity himself and then stuffed the house with all his art projects. But one day in 1977, the barn caught fire and he lost everything. \"All my films, cameras, musical instruments, everything I'd ever done…gone,\" Thompson lamented. \"I didn't even have a toothbrush.\"\n\nAs Thompson came to terms with his new reality, he decided it was time to try something new. \"Before the fire, my best friend Bob from art school had a twin brother who'd gone to chiropractic school at Palmer College in Iowa,\" Thompson said. \"I went out to visit and it was a mind-blower. Everything I'd studied spiritually was inside my body. If you study chemistry and anatomy, it's all there. I came back all enthused, ready to go. But I'm looking at this barn full of stuff and thought, how am I going to get to Iowa?\" But when it all burned down, Thompson decided to use the insurance money to attend chiropractic school and he headed to the midwest.\n\nAttending Palmer College, Thompson memorized the intricate details of anatomy by creating detailed drawings. He also studied acupuncture, meridians, polarity and other holistic applications. Most importantly he realized that he'd found a practical way to impact people's lives. After graduation, he returned to Virginia to live with his parents for a few months and then found a job at a holistic health center where he was mentored by Robert Yowell.\n\nOnce he started working as a chiropractor, Thompson was making good money and realized he could finally afford synthesizers and achieve his boyhood dream of making electronic music. He bought a reel-to-reel recorder, effects, and synths and decided to make an album even if no one ever heard it. \n\nAs Thompson built out his new studio, he discovered that sound could have applications in his practice. \"One day my wife at the time, Norma, wanted me to work on her back and I got her on the treatment table in my recording studio. I realized I'd been set up by the Cosmos. I knew that each vertebra is a different shape, so I thought I could use a resonant frequency to make adjustments. I put a speaker on her back and in five minutes she was better.\" \n\nIn 1973, Gerald Oster published an influential article in Scientific American about binaural beats, a pulsing effect created by listening on headphones to sine waves with slightly different frequencies. The article was a sensation and inspired many researchers to look for applications,  such as Robert Monroe, who sought to use using binaural beats as a therapeutic tool or to trigger an out-of-body experience.\n\nThompson was unaware of Oster and Monroe until later, but he came up with a similar concept he later called \"brainwave entrainment\" in which sound frequencies can alter the listener's state of mind to help them relax. He used this concept on his first album *Isle of Sky* which he finally released in 1986 after years of work.  In the liner notes, he wrote that the frequencies \"have been processed electronically so that only the subconscious mind can recognize them.\" It worked, and the album was a surprise hit on the new age circuit, selling 20,000 copies in the first year.\n\nLooking for a more receptive place to further hone his ideas, Thompson decided to move his practice to San Diego. In 1988, he opened an office called Brainwaves Research where he studied the effects of different frequencies on the mind and body. A few years later he put out his second album *Egg of Time* which was even more popular than his debut. \"I wanted to create shamanic journey soundtracks,\" Thompson said. \"The music was a transformational experience using consciousness, sound, music, 3D processing, and binaural beats. Also, I wanted to create my own musical rules. I wanted compositions to be unfamiliar: beautiful, nice, but not recognizable. I want your mind to be free so I can put you where I want you to go.\"\n\nAfter *Egg of Time*, Thompson went on to release a torrent of new work in the '90s. He collaborated with Ilizabeth Fortune on a dolphin-themed album, recorded a live improvisation with his friend Victor Zirak on sacred land in California, and put out his third solo studio album *Child of a Dream* which included sounds from space.\n\nIn 1994, Thompson signed with Jeff Charno's Relaxation Company which finally got his albums shelf space in malls and chain bookstores that the indies had a tough time reaching. The first release was the quadruple album *Brainwave Suite*, with each tape designed for a different state of mind: meditation (Alpha), sleep (Delta), creativity (Theta), and intimate communication (Alpha Theta). The album went on to sell millions and became his best seller.\n\nThompson continued to have success in the 2000s and beyond, increasingly gearing his music for specific purposes. He even helped design a bedside sleep unit that was sold at Brookstone and promoted with an infomercial. Thompson currently teaches sound therapy courses at the California Institute for Human Science, a graduate research school in Encinitas.  ","discography":{"jeffrey-thompson":{"albums":{"celestial-dolphin":{"image":"","label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"","title":"Celestial Dolphin","year":"1994"},"child-of-a-dream":{"image":"","label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"","title":"Child of a Dream","year":"1992"},"delta-sync-sleep-system":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Delta Sync Sleep System","year":"1995"},"egg-of-time":{"image":"","label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"","title":"Egg of Time","year":"1990"},"isle-of-sky":{"label":"Sound Sphere Productions","review":"","title":"Isle of Skye","year":"1986"},"sri-yantra":{"label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"","title":"Sri Yantra","year":"1994"},"the-brainwave-suite":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Brainwave Suite","year":"1993"},"windows-live-concert":{"image":"","label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"An enclosure explains that this music “stemmed from the idea of building brain-wave frequency patterns into music and ‘primordial’ nature sounds, to resonate the audience’s brainwave patterns in synchronicity, for an experience of a group unity meditation”. During \"Ascent\" we hear rocket exhaust sounds. In \"Ocean of Sky\" we float in space. \"Inner Heights\" (love that paradoxical title) uses elongated throbbing and soaring synth and bird voices for 11 minutes. \"Window\" zaps us a notch higher to 7 minutes of Attainment where rich sweet organ-like synth sounds dominate with celestial throbbing up and down the synth scale. It does have quite an impact listened to as a whole with eyes closed (as suggested). Well done and worth experiencing.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* #12, Spring/Summer 1992)","title":"Windows Live Concert","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Dr. Jeffrey Thompson","entry_number":1},"jeffrey-thompson-Ilizabeth-Fortune":{"albums":{"isle-of-sky":{"image":"","label":"Brain/Mind Research","review":"A new age sound collage of deep droning synth, bird sounds, dolphin squeaks and a rumbling wall of water that seems to be pushing through the speakers. There's no melody or anything musical, just a teeming environment of sound. As with his other albums, Thompson adds imperceptible frequency pattens into the music for the purpose of \"deep relaxation, inspiration, or mediation.\"","title":"Dolphin Touch","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and Ilizabeth Fortune","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":206,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jeffrey-Thompson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=df1ec8f6-335e-4e1a-a9b8-6406053091e5","last_name":"Thompson"},"jerome-gilmer":{"artist_name":"Jerome Gilmer","body":"Jerome Gilmer was a pianist and composer based in Denver who enjoyed a successful career in commercial music starting in the mid-'70s. A decade later, he was winning Emmys for his work composing TV news themes and ad campaigns. One of his friends, Robert Mariash, liked his music for a scuba diving series so much that he decided to license it for a one-off cassette called *Crystal Journey* in 1987. Mariash marketed the tape to new age distributors like Backroads, but the tape didn't sell particularly well and is now scarce. (For his part, Gilmer doesn't want to be associated with new age and doesn't even mention the tape on his current site.)\n\nJerome Gilmer was born in 1950 and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. He studied jazz at the University of Southern Mississippi and played in society bands around the Gulf Coast area. In his senior year, he appeared on a Jazz Lab LP put out by his college. After graduating in 1973, Gilmer got some work on Spielberg's *Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, helping to create \"musically coordinated lighting effects for the final scenes.\"\n\nGilmer used his earnings from the Spielberg film to move to Denver, Colorado in 1976. There he set up his own company and worked as a commercial music composer. One of Gilmer's main clients was the local news channel KCNC-TV in Denver. He went on to write many themes and incidental music for them, some of which went on to earn Emmys like his song \"This is Colorado.\" He also composed music for other TV news networks in addition to working with other clients such as IBM and the Colorado Winter Olympics committee.\n\nNot just a composer, Gilmer also worked as a studio musician sporadically, appearing on albums by local artists like Buddy Red Bow, Maxine Watta, Jim Salestrom and Lonnie Hill. He also worked as an engineer, eventually running his own studio where he learned the art of digital recording.  Starting in 1989, Gilmer taught recording at the University of Colorado, Denver and at various workshops.\n\nIn the mid-'80s, a real estate developer and friend named Robert Mariash heard Gilmer's score for a scuba-diving shows and loved what he heard. He licensed the music and marketed it as a new age release called *Crystal Journey* with an image of a dolphin on the cover. Mariash got some national distribution from Backroads but he recalls that the tape didn't sell especially well, probably under a thousand copies. (When later asked about the tape, Gilmer disavowed any association with new age and declined to be interviewed.)\n\nIn the '90s and beyond, Gilmer continued to work as a composer, scoring films and writing music for clients and production libraries. He also taught recording technology at the University of Colorado in Denver and hosted workshops on commercial composing. More recently he issued a CD of his piano music called *Remember Well* in 2013. ","discography":{"jerome-gilmer":{"albums":{"crystal-journey":{"image":"","label":"Crystal Foundation","review":"With a cover image of a dolphin and pastel color scheme, *Crystal Journey* aims for the new age demographic, in spite of the fact that the actual music had nothing to do with crystals or the \"unconditional enrichment\" promised on the j-card. Instead, this is repurposed music from a TV scuba series that nevertheless does a good job of multi-tasking for both underwater exploration and inner exploration.\n\nMusically, *Crystal Journey* has a feather-light yet deft touch, with uncluttered arrangements of digital synth and electric piano that could be compared to [Robert Slap's](/robert-slap) Sounds of Relaxation [series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDizkHBCqE). The soundscape is mysterious and evocative, though the melodies rarely penetrate deeply; these sophisticated songs serve as mood-setting first and foremost. Unfortunately, the cassette has distorted and overdriven sound that detracts quite a bit from Gilmer's pristinely recorded vignettes.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Crystal Journey","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":218,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/gilmer.jpg?alt=media&token=d846c726-615c-4f7c-a301-54f96b925d5e","last_name":"Gilmer"},"jerrold-rabushka":{"artist_name":"Jerrold Rabushka","body":"Jerrold Rabushka is a musician and author based in St. Louis who has written over a hundred plays, in addition to many short stories and novels. During the mid-'80s, he began making new age synth music, bringing a similar prolific spirit. After recording his first cassette *Adventures* in 1985, he followed that up the next year with five new albums. His work was reviewed in *Option* and *Sound Choice* but the tapes were produced in small editions and are now rare. He left new age behind in the '90s and focused more on playwriting, forming his own theater company and publishing plays for community theater.\n\nBorn in 1960, Jerrold Rabushka grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He played trumpet in the school band and loved classical music, especially Mozart.  By his admission, he didn't have much of a social life and spent his time writing short stories. By 17 he'd written his first novel. He started getting into pop and disco when he was 19 and played piano in a new wave band. \n\nRabushka attended college at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, majoring in political science. When he graduated in late 1982, he got a job working as a case worker at a welfare office. He continued playing with his band but it fizzled out. \"I thought I was going to be discovered after college and I would be the next big thing,\" Rabushka said. \"It didn’t quite work out.\" Instead, he started focusing on synth music. \n\n\"Back around '85 I got a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synthesizer,\" Rabushka recalled.\" I went into a room and improvised a lot of these albums. I liked drones and atmosphere and that you could create a loop and play along with it. People told me it would work in the new age community, so I tried playing psychic fairs and selling tapes. I made a stack and sent them around.\" Some underground magazines such as *Option* and *Sound Choice* reviewed Rabushka's tapes, though he only made small amounts of them and they're now all rare.\n\nIn addition to his new age cassettes, Rabushka also composed local soundtracks in addition to theater and dance music. One of his scores for the play *Dansirs* became his 1989 cassette *Prometheus.* Rabushka also wrote music reviews for local zines *Spotlight* and *Inside News*, interviewing new age artists like Ray Lynch and David Arkenstone. However, by the end of the '80s, Rabushka moved away from new age.  \"I found the community was a little unpleasant,\" he said. \"They were difficult, backstabbing people who needed this philosophy to calm themselves down. I gave *A World of Innocence* to someone I respected, and he told me how stupid it was. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it that bothered me, it was the glee with which he told me.\" \n\nRabushka continued to play music, though one of his last works was the klezmer-influenced *Ricky and Sonia*. Starting in 1992, he focused more on writing musicals, in addition to books and plays. One of his plays, *Seeking Asylum* was produced in 2002 and went on to have a long life, being produced 50 or 60 times around the country by Rabushka's estimation. He also had a few of his books published later in life, the first in 2012.\n\nRecently, the State Historical Society of Missouri has collected much of his papers and music which they catalog [here](http://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/saint-louis/S0299.pdf).\n","discography":{"jerrold-rabushka":{"albums":{"1-glowing-embers":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Glowing Embers","year":"1986"},"2-music-for-a-new-universe":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Music for a New Universe","year":"1986"},"3-crystal-meditations":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Crystal Meditations","year":"1986"},"4-down-home-america":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Down Home America","year":"1986"},"5-the-ocean":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"The Ocean","year":"1986"},"a-world-of-innocence":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"Eight compositions, mostly electronic, with an occasional touch of acoustic instrumentation in the form of guitar or pipes. All songs are pleasantly soothing, nothing very upbeat, though all are in possession of a definite rhythm. There is a flow and ebb response as each piece moves without a hitch, in a style reminiscent of European ensembles. \n\n(Nathan Griffith, *Option* 1987)","title":"A World of Innocence","year":"1987"},"adventures":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Adventures","year":"1985"},"prometheus":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Prometheus","year":"1989"},"ricky":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Ricky and Sonia","year":"1990"},"shuttle-diplomacy":{"image":"","label":"New Universe Productions","review":"","title":"Shuttle Diplomacy","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":316,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jerry-rabushka-640.jpg?alt=media&token=5e1a6658-9774-4941-8c78-8798d1c37139","image_credit":"Rabushka","last_name":"Jerrold Rabushka"},"jerrolyn-and-dean":{"artist_name":"Jerrolyn and Dean","body":"Jerrolyn Meers and Dean Babcock were a married couple based in Los Angeles who released three new age cassettes in a burst of inspiration in the early '80. Both had a background in jazz that influenced the improvised meditations of their debut, with each track based on a different color. The duo’s cassettes were nationally distributed by Charles Muir's Source label and other new age distributors, but the money was never comparable to what they got teaching music, playing at weddings, or touring with the Drifters. Babcock had been a disciple of Sivaya Subramuniyaswami since the early '70s and the couple eventually relocated to Hawaii in the ‘80s where the guru had established an ashram. \n\nJerrolyn Meers was born in 1947 in Salt Lake City but grew up mostly in Denver. Babcock was born in 1948 and grew up in Minnesota. Both were involved in music before they met:  Meers performed as a jazz vocalist in Denver in the 60s and 70s and had some minor success, releasing an EP of jazz standards on the local Keyboard Records label. She also was a staff writer for Jobete Music briefly in the ‘70s. Babcock earned a music degree at the University of Minnesota and went on to play guitar in the local Minneapolis scene. Later, he joined a touring lounge band that had stopped through in 1973. “I thought - this is my ticket out of Minnesota winters,” he said.\n\nAfter a few years on the road, Babcock settled in Los Angeles where he met Jerrolyn in 1979. “A mutual friend was doing a full moon meditation and was going to invite us to perform,\" he said. \"We got together to play, and immediately, this celestial music came out between the two of us. My gift for melody, her gift for harmonization, and our intuition of what the other would play meant that we improvised compositions from the very first note we played.\" A few years later, the couple got married.\n\nMeers and Babcock got distribution for their tapes, landing their home-recorded cassette in metaphysical book shops and new age shops all over the US. They went on to release two more cassettes, with their second album *Cosmic Dance* featuring composed works while *Let There Be Light* was completely improvised like the debut, with each track based on a different type of light.\n\nBoth Babcock and Meers had always been spiritual, and that influenced their early music. Babcock had studied Buddhism and Hinduism before meeting his guru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. The couple began spending a lot of time in Hawaii helping their guru to build a Hindu temple. In 1986, they adopted the Hindu names Roshan Kumar and Shivani Kumar, and a few years later moved to Hawaii permanently.\n\nBesides selling their recorded music, Roshan and Shivani taught music and performed at various venues including cruise ships. Their main two bands were Mandala, which featured original music, and Clear Sky, which was their cover band.\n\n“Shivani was blessed with perfect pitch,” Roshan said. “At two or three years old she could hear something and play it on the piano. Back when we were gigging, I’d be driving to a wedding, she'd play a cassette and write down the chords, transpose it to the key appropriate for her voice, and write me a chord chart and we would perform it for the first time without ever having rehearsed it once.”\n\nOver the years, Roshan estimates he played in 41 different bands in addition to working as an engineer for bands too. The duo recorded one vocal album called *Down 2 Us* in the late '90s. They never released any additional new age albums, though they did reissue their first three cassettes on CD under their new names, Roshan and Shivani, with a new label Cosmic Cat Music.","discography":{"jerrolyn-and-dean":{"albums":{"cosmic-dance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cosmic Dance","year":"1981"},"let-there-be-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Let There Be Light","year":"1981"},"sonic-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sonic Light","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Jerrolyn and Dean","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":405,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/roshan-shivani-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=0220c66a-65a4-4da0-a7cb-d595290439fe","last_name":"Jerrolyn"},"jerry-florence-randall-leonard":{"artist_name":"Jerry Florence and Randall Leonard","body":"Jerry Florence (left) and Randall Leonard (right) were two musicians closely associated with Louise Hay, a minister for the Church of Religious Science. Both gravitated towards Hay’s positive messages about self-worth, her open acceptance of homosexuality at a time when it was stigmatized, and her “Hay Ride” support groups, which started at her home and quickly expanded to larger venues. Florence was the charismatic leader of a trio called Alliance with his partner Keith Kimberlin and vocalist David Ault who played synth pop songs with messages drawn from Hay’s teachings. \n\nAlliance frequently played live to support Hay’s events and went on to sell tens of thousands of cassettes. However, as the AIDS epidemic worsened, the trio found themselves playing more often at memorials. In addition to his work with Alliance, Florence released three instrumental synth/piano albums with Leonard. After Kimberlin’s death of AIDS in 1989, Florence put out a solo instrumental album and composed background music for Louise Hay’s cassettes up until his own death in 1994. Leonard (born in 1951) went on to produce albums of solo piano work on his own Sound & Spirit label until his death in 2002.\n\nJerry Florence was born in 1952 and grew up in Dallas, Texas. The son of fundamentalist Christian parents, Florence sang weekly in church and learned how to play piano and guitar. He attended Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma and after graduation, he stayed on as a staff member to help with the music program. The only recorded output of his work there is the *New Song* LP on Benson Sound from 1977 which features Florence’s arrangements and some compositions by then-student Marty Nystrom who went on to some acclaim later in the CCM world.\n\nDuring the summer, Florence ran Oral Roberts’ summer ministries program, where students traveled around the U.S. to sing in churches. David Ault sang in the program during his first summer at Oral Roberts and recalls meeting Florence at the time. \"He waltzed in when we were in New Orleans, and he made up an elaborate story to the person who was hosting us. Jerry took me on an adventure through Bourbon Street where we both got quite inebriated. We became friends, but then I didn’t see him for years until we literally bumped into each other on Melrose in Los Angeles.\"\n\nAccording to Ault, Florence was kicked out of Oral Roberts when they found out he was gay. Florence then relocated to Los Angeles, where he taught singing lessons and shopped his songs around for films. Eventually, he connected with Louise Hay and began working as her sound engineer and musical accompanist.  \n\nBy 1986, Florence formed the trio Alliance with Kimberlin and Ault. He and Ault had reconnected after their chance meeting on Melorse and soon, the two were working together to rewrite lyrics from Florence’s older songs to match Hay’s teachings. \"Jerry was a musical genius and a charismatic guy who could do a lot of things,\" Ault recalled. \"But he also had a big ego and wasn’t the type of person who wanted to give credit. Still, he was a pivotal part of my life.\"\n\nAlliance ultimately released seven albums that sold very well for independent releases. By Ault’s estimation, the group sold over 100,000 copies in total. \"It was meteoric,\" Ault said. \"We were on the road with her [Hay] all the time. When we weren't with her, we were touring in Unity churches and places that were LGBT friendly.\" The group even auditioned for Star Search, but they were not allowed on after the producers discovered Keith Kimberlin had AIDS.\n\nIn addition to Alliance, Florence recorded three albums of meditative instrumental music with Leonard that he sold at Hay’s events. Randall and Florence had been longtime friends, and Florence had brought Randall into Hay’s orbit several years earlier. Leonard was good at organization and helped out with clerical work for Hay’s office.\n\nDespite Alliance’s success, the threat of AIDS was a constant, looming presence. \"There were three or four memorials a week and we were musicians for a lot of those,\" Ault recalled. \"When Jerry got sick, there was an unspoken finality to what we were doing. So even when he wasn’t feeling well, we were going into the studio and making music. It was all because of Louise Hay.\"\n\nAfter Kimberlin’s death, Alliance stopped releasing music, though Florence continued to record background music for Hay until his death in 1994. He also put out one solo album with contributions from Leonard. At the same time, Leonard had begun a solo career, releasing four solo piano albums between 1988 and 1995. However, Leonard eventually got sick too and moved to his family’s farm in Oklahoma a few years before his death in 2002.\n\nDavid Ault is currently based in Atlanta, where he works as a teacher, author and humanitarian who focuses on social justice and personal transformation. He has authored two books on personal growth (*Where Regret Cannot Find Me* and *The Grass Is Greener Right Here*) and in 2010, he founded the nonprofit Kaleidoscope Child Foundation, which educates underserved children and communities worldwide.","discography":{"jerry-florence":{"albums":{"on-eagles-wings":{"image":"","label":"Science of Mind Communications","review":"","title":"","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Jerry Florence","entry_number":2},"jerry-florence-and-randall-leonard":{"albums":{"1-music-from-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Go with the Flo","review":"","title":"Music from the Heart","year":"1986"},"2-music-from-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Go with the Flo","review":"","title":"Music from the Heart 2","year":"1986"},"light":{"image":"","label":"Go with the Flo","review":"","title":"Light","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jerry Florence and Randall Leonard","entry_number":1},"randall-leonard":{"albums":{"angels":{"image":"","label":"Sound & Spirit","review":"","title":"Angels in the Rain","year":"1988"},"flutterbys":{"image":"","label":"Sound & Spirit","review":"","title":"Flutterbys","year":"1989"},"light":{"image":"","label":"Sound & Spirit","review":"","title":"Terra Angelica","year":"1995"},"melting-snow":{"image":"","label":"Sound & Spirit","review":"","title":"Melting Snow, Thirsty Flowers","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Randall Leonard","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":448,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jerry-Randall.jpg?alt=media&token=43f69476-16ba-4826-8b03-e653c058934b","image_credit":"","last_name":"Leonard"},"jesse-clark":{"artist_name":"Jesse Clark","body":"Jesse Clark  was a prolific composer and performer in the New Jersey area who modeled his style on the classic era of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Jean-Michel Jarre.  Along with [Don Slepian](/don-slepian) and guitarist [Neil Nappe](https://ultravillage.com/neil-nappe) (pictured above on the right),  Clark (above center) was a key component of the Creative Underground, a collective that organized multimedia shows starting in 1986. Clark released close to 20 cassettes between 1983 and 1993, most in small editions of 20 or 30 copies. His career was almost cut short by a traumatic car accident in 1984 that left him comatose for three months and with multiple serious injuries. Upon regaining consciousness, Clark powered through his rehab program, newly invigorated by the fan mail awaiting him when he awoke. A year later he was back in his home studio, releasing new albums at a blistering pace. \n\nBorn in 1964, Clark moved around central New Jersey a lot as a kid. He taught himself the piano at an early age, impressing his family by learning the *M.A.S.H.* theme song by ear. By fifth grade he started playing the trumpet, and a few years later was deep into Chuck Mangione. In 1978, a school friend played him Jean-Michel Jarre's *Oxygene* and Clark had a new obsession. \"That is still my favorite album ever recorded,\" Clark said.\n \nWhen he was 16, Clark acquired his grandfather's electronic piano and a reel to reel recorder and started experimenting at home with his instruments and an FM radio that he used as a sound source. Clark eventually bought his first synth, a Korg Mono/Poly and taught himself synthesis from the ground up. \n\nClark's early inspirations, in addition to Jarre, were Tangerine dream and Synergy. Through Richard Ginsberg’s Synthetic Pleasure radio show on WFMU, Clark learned about other locals like Lauri Paisley and the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) who were putting a uniquely American spin on the Berlin-school sound and releasing their albums on cassette. Soon, Clark too was doing the same and trading his tapes with other musicians or selling them through mail order.\n\nBy his senior year in high school in 1983, Clark put out his first cassette *Visionary*. The music owed a clear debt to Jarre and Schulze with its sequenced motifs and improvised synth textures. Clark designed the cover art, printed up a handful of copies and sent one to Synthetic Pleasure.  Shortly after, he debuted \"Universal Ego,\" one of his earliest compositions, at a school talent show and released as an EP of the performance called *Concert Music*. Later in the year he went to see the Nightcrawlers doing their *Crystal Loops* piece.  \"They were one of my main influences,\" Clark recalled. \"That was the first performance I ever saw and I was just floored by it.\" Soon after that, Clark released his second full-length album *Indigo*, which showed him trying a more cinematic approach.\n \n*Snowbound*, Clark's next release, was recorded in real time during a snowstorm in the early winter months. The second side was recorded the morning after the storm and was much lighter in mood. He followed that up promptly with *Dreamquest* in January 1984, which he sent to Peter Gulch from the Nightcrawlers and Richard Ginsburg. Both loved it. Ginsberg played it often on his radio show and encouraged fans to order a copy. \"Don't ask for a copy, demand a copy,\" he said. \"This is too good.\"\n\nClark released a handful of albums in 1984 that were full-on improvisations including *Nightingale* and *Monolith* but he felt that they lacked the power of *Dreamquest* and he treated them more as demos. His next composed work was *Psycho Surgery for Early Morning Risers*, which showed him trying shorter song formats and varied tempos. \"That was a big one,\" Clark said. \"There was a record store at Seaview Square Mall and they put album descriptions on the sleeves of records. 'Psychosurgery for Early Morning Risers' was how they described Tangerine Dream's *Tangram* album.\" \n\nJust as Clark was starting to get fan attention from *Dreamquest* and *Psychosurgery*, tragedy struck. He was in a car accident so gruesome that he ended up in a coma with a broken arm, broken leg, and a brain injury.  Clark was diligent with his therapy, but he still had a lot of ground to cover, learning how to eat and sit up again after being flat on his back for three months.  And though he would soon return to playing, his life was forever changed. He could no longer drive and getting around was a constant struggle.\n\nOne bright spot for Clark was all the fan mail he'd gotten during his time in the hospital. \"After all I'd been through, I was glad that my music was being heard,\" Clark said, adding: \"Not that my wallet was impressed.\" Although he had to rebuild his setup to be more automated, Clark was able to start composing again, and released *Abstractions* in November 1985. \n\nIn 1985, Clark met fellow New Jersey musician Neil Nappe at a Synthetic Pleasure benefit show, where Clark was performing \"Abstractions.\" The two bonded, and along with Don Slepian, they joined the Creative Underground, founded by Billie and Patrick Tooker as a collective to organize electronic shows in the area. Through these shows, Clark met [Tom Masapollo](/tom-masapollo), and the two of them formed a duo called Syntegrity. That duo played live occasionally, and released their first cassette *Visions of Two* in 1986. They followed these up with a few more live releases.\n\nClark had been in college at the time of his accident, studying computer science, but he never finished. His brain injury made schooling difficult and he decided to commit to his music making while he was living at home and had the free time. So in addition to his Syntegrity project, Clark unleashed a torrent of solo albums in 1986, nearly one every other month by his estimation.  The biggest of these was *Transcendental Excursions*, which was a favorite of Chuck Van Zyl, who played it on his radio show Star's End and called it a \"classic.\" \n\nThat album ended up being one of his last in his older style, as the advent of new digital technology such as MIDI was changing the way many musicians approached electronic music. Clark started to rely less on the Korg Mono/Poly and bought the newer Ensoniq SQ-80 which allowed him to create a more complex and layered sound than before. But it also slowed down his output considerably as he struggled to keep up with the technology. He debuted his new sound at a pub called the Dubliner, where he had worked as a short order cook many years before, calling it the *Dubliner Concert.*\n\nClark's last two studio albums came out in 1991, and he ended strong with *Locked in Heaven*, which featured an epic, side long track 'Snow\" that was on par with Jarre’s best '70s work. After that, Clark put out a few more live releases, but those likely never escaped New Jersey.  Around this time, the Creative Underground was dissolving and with Clark’s transportation issues, it became harder for him to get out and play.  At 29, he decided it was finally time to move out of his parents’ house and relocate to Bradley Beach, where it would be easier for him to get around and live on his own. But once there, he felt more isolated from his musical support network, and didn’t release any new material until he put out a CD in 2008 titled, naturally, *Return Again*.\n\nClark continues to live in New Jersey and plays piano a couple times a week for a volunteer gig – usually a mix of his old material and long improvisations. He is also active in the Hatsune Miku fan community making digital art. \n\nBonus: There is a video from Peter Honig of Clark playing his composition \"Snow\" from *Locked in Heaven* [here]( https://www.facebook.com/peter.honig.9440/videos/vb.100004803575679/1054297204740389/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"jesse-clark":{"albums":{"1-visionary":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The title might be a bit of a reach, but Clark's style is well articulated on his debut, a faithful homage to the classic analog Berlin-school sound a la Jarre and Schulze. The first track, \"Snowscape,\" is a tentative waltz-time sequencer piece, but the aptly named \"Perpetual Dreamstate\" is a more dynamic and rewarding listen that sinks into a deep melancholia by song's end. Sprawled across the second side is \"Obsession,\" a 37(!) minute synth-venture that starts with an airy feel before moving into a trippy wormhole of geometric synth patterns.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Visionary","year":"1983"},"2-concert-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Concert Music (EP)","year":"1983"},"3-indigo":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Indigo* eschews Clark's typical sequencer based sound for two side-long epics that share the symphonic ambitions of early Genesis and the nocturnal atmospherics of the Nightcrawlers. \"Dimensions of Indigo\" sets the tone early with a bit of whole-tone impressionism that later gives way to frantic T. Dream spirals and dreamlike abstraction. \"Tales of Xebeth\" is more overtly prog, with carefully arranged movements that sound like Vangelis or perhaps Mike Christopher. It gets a little heavy handed at the end, but this is one of the more captivating tracks that Clark produced.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Indigo","year":"1983"},"4-snowbound":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Snowbound* is a Berlin-school concept album, with Jesse Clark using sequencer riffs and analog synth leads to paint a musical picture of a fierce blizzard he’d just experienced at the time this was recorded.  The three-part epic on side one portrays the storm, slowly building from swirling wind effects to a brooding middle section and a frenetic ending. The second side begins with a delicate introduction that harks back to *The Nutcracker*, eventually gearing up to a mid-tempo piece that glistens like a fresh blanket of white snow. The side concludes with a meditative, organ-led coda that reverberates with stillness and finality. One of Clark's most inspired albums.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Snowbound","year":"1984"},"5-dreamquest":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Clark upgrades the sound quality a bit on *Dreamquest*, a relentless Berlin-school jam with two 30 minute tracks. The first side features the high BPM workout \"Carmellia,\" similar to Schulze efforts like *Timewind*, with a slowly mutating sequencer riff that gradually shifts the orbit of the room. Halfway through, Clark downshifts into a respite of eerie introspection that I wish he did more often, but I get it, that's not really his thing. The title track returns again to a hard-hitting trance sound that pits manic layers of sequencer riffs against floating synth lines. ","title":"Dreamquest","year":"1984"},"6-psycho-surgery-for-early-morning-risers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"\nSolid release from Clark, which showcases both triumphant melodicism (\"Interstellar Convention\"), introspective soundscapes (\"Nystul's Magic Aura\") and an epic progressive electronic suite a la Jarre (\"Astral Projection\").","title":"Psycho Surgery for Early Morning Risers","year":"1984"},"abstractions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Abstractions","year":"1985"},"aural-illusions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Aural Illusions","year":"1990"},"diversion-tactics":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Diversion Tactics","year":"1985"},"drifting-and-expanding-through-time-and-space":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Drifting and Expanding Through Time and Space","year":"1986"},"dubliner-concert":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dubliner Concert","year":"1988"},"ether-light-live":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ether Light (live)","year":"1992"},"kaleidoscope":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Kaleidoscope","year":"1986"},"live-at-the-painted-bride":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at the Painted Bride","year":"1986"},"locked-in-heaven":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Locked in Heaven","year":"1991"},"morning-mood-silk-lined-alcove":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Morning Mood/Silk Lined Alcove","year":"1986"},"october-fantasy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"October Fantasy","year":"1987"},"psychotic-episode-subterranean-fire-ghosts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Psychotic Episode/Subterranean Fire Ghosts","year":"1986"},"short-stories":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Short Stories","year":"1985"},"simultaneous-contrasts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Simultaneous Contrasts","year":"1991"},"ticonderoga":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ticonderoga","year":"1986"},"transcendental-excursions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Clark caught the attention of Chuck Van Zyl with this release, and it's easy to see why, especially with the slower pace and sophisticated arrangements on the first side of *Transcendental Excursions.*  Part 1, titled \"Midday Moon\", takes up the entire first side. Clark begins with an unadorned, mid-tempo synth melody and then slowly mixes in a phased drum pattern and undulating synth chords that coalesce into a nice jam before fading out. After that we get to the heart of the piece, a Jarre-like EM meditation based around a three note riff that ebbs and flows with plenty of abstract squiggles and otherworldy bleeps. Part 2, \"Suspended Animation,\" is more typical of Clark's work, with two sequencer driven pieces adorned with painterly swaths of melody. The final movement is slower and simpler.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Transcendental Excursions","year":"1986"},"traveling-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Traveling Music","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Jesse Clark","entry_number":1},"syntegrity":{"albums":{"easter-jam":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Easter Jam","year":"1987"},"live-at-the-nexus-gallery":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at the Nexus Gallery","year":"1988"},"visions-of-two":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"In the style of most Jesse Clark tapes, this album is comprised of two long (nearly 30 minutes each) pieces on each side. \"Skydive to the Rain Forest\" on Side A is the pick here, starting with a minor key drone and improvised synth lines decorated with plenty of sci-fi sound effects, oscillator sweeps, and other analog blurps. A two bar sequencer riff fades in to serve as the background for the middle section, with both synthesists ping ponging robo-melodies back and forth.","title":"Visions of Two","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Syntegrity","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":65,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jesse-Clark-640.jpg?alt=media&token=4950ca7e-b1e3-4087-a36d-8358aab95bfa","last_name":"Clark"},"jim-oliver":{"artist_name":"Jim Oliver","body":"Jim Oliver was a classically trained organ player who tapped into the burgeoning market for massage music in the early '80s with two cassettes, *Faces of Neptune* and *Restive Woman*. This led to a career for the Santa Fe musician as a new age and film composer, and allowed him to leave his days of touring with Top 40 bands behind. Oliver ultimately went on to earn an Emmy for one of his TV scores, and stayed busy as the owner of an Audio/Visual company he still runs today.\n\nOliver had known long before that music would be his life. Born in Connecticut in 1952, Oliver began piano lessons at the age of five and by highschool was playing in an acid rock cover band called Truth. His flirtation with the counterculture was short-lived, and he soon enrolled at Hartt college, where he studied music theory and classical organ. \n\nAfter graduating in 1973, he spent the next eight years on the road with a top 40 band doing covers of Elton John, the Doobie Brothers, Glen Campbell, and more. By the end of the decade, he was sick of staying in hotels every night and headed back home to ponder his next move. It was there he met his future wife Jann Napoletano who was about to enroll in massage school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She suggested that he compose relaxing music for her clients and Oliver took the leap. His career as a new age artist was born.\n\nOnce Oliver had the idea to do relaxing music, he quickly put together two albums, one in major keys (*Restive Woman*) and one in minor keys (*Faces of Neptune*) and pressed 100 copies of each. He booked a booth at the AMTA convention and sold 150 albums in one day. \"I was dirt poor,\" Oliver said. \"I put every last dollar I had into those albums and walked out of there with $1400 in my pocket. It was a real turning point for me.\"\n\nAfter Oliver's good experience with the bodywork crowd, he began getting booths at other similar events and promoting his releases all over the US.  Word got out about his music and distributors like Fortuna and Jeff Charno's Vital Body Marketing began helping to sell the tapes.  Oliver initially did a licensing deal with Charno, but by the '90s, Vital Body was producing and distributing. Although his wife Jann drew the first two album covers, at some time in the early 80s, Oliver changed the album cover for *Faces of Neptune* to a photo of a glass sculpture by artist Bob Hooper.\n\nAround 1983, Oliver started an audio/video company that did installation work for recording studios and theaters and was his main income outside of music.  This venture helped fund future album releases like *Piano Meditation* and *The Crystal Star Soundtrack* both released on his own label, Oliver Music. \n\nIn 1985, Oliver joined the Sundance Institute as a composer in residence. He also composed the score for the TV movie,  *Life in the Stress Lane* which won him an Emmy.  Oliver stayed active as a musician, releasing albums for Vital Body and the Relaxation Company every few years. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.","discography":{"jim-oliver":{"albums":{"crystal-star-soundtrack":{"image":"","label":"Oliver Music","review":"For his fifth album, Oliver moves further away from the exploratory improvisations of his early work in favor of a symphonic ambient sound with shimmering digital synths and clear melodic themes that recall Don Slepian's *Sea of Bliss* or Don Robertson’s *Space Music.* Thankfully, Oliver avoids the bombast and techno-fervor that can mar mid-80s new age, nurturing a low-key vibe throughout that is alternately contemplative, mysterious and romantic.","title":"Crystal Star Soundtrack / Santa Fe Moonrise","year":"1987"},"faces-of-neptune":{"image":"","label":"Oliver Music","review":"","title":"Faces of Neptune","year":"1982"},"harmonic-resonance":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Harmonic Resonance","year":"1995"},"healing-harmonies":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Healing Harmonies","year":"1992"},"music-for-relaxation":{"image":"","label":"The Relaxation Company","review":"","title":"Music for Relaxation","year":"1992"},"one-with-the-eagle":{"image":"","label":"Oliver Music","review":"Continuing the style his first two tapes, *One with the Eagle* features two side-long tracks of gentle electric piano pieces with occasional synth flourishes. Oliver's classical training is evident in the structured improvisation and melodic development, but it still works for more disengaged, meditative listening as well. ","title":"One With the Eagle","year":"1983"},"piano-meditation":{"image":"","label":"Oliver Music","review":"Performed on a \"magnificent 9' Steinway Concert Grand piano\" all by his lonesome, this \"transformational healing music\" isn't as immediately entrancing as Oliver's first two e-piano tapes but is still an essential OM release IMHO. The side-long pieces in soft-sounding E-minor don't get too dramatic, romantic, or cinematic and Oliver's talent is his ability to pull puffs of melody from the air and ease them together fluidly.  \n\nProbably best to just let him explain it though as he does in the notes. \"Recorded on the eve of an Autumn Equinox, the music embodies the transformative energies of the Earth's cycle into Autumn and sets the mood for inner renewal. What you receive is the exact musical creation untouched and spontaneously played rather than a patchwork of previously recorded segments. This provides an extremely smooth flow of energy to you. This was quite a challenge but well worth the effort. You feel like you're there!\"\n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2020)\n","title":"Piano Meditation","year":"1984"},"restive-woman":{"image":"","label":"Oliver Music","review":"Along with [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern), Jim Oliver makes a strong case for the Fender Rhodes as the quintessential new age keyboard. The glowing sustain and round tone soothe the soul like no other. The way the musicians approach the instrument is not too similar though – as Halpern tends to emphasize the space between notes while Oliver has busier hands that fill the air with sound, perhaps betraying his classical organ roots.\n\nThis tape was meant to accompany massage and as such is 90 minutes long, with two improvisations on each side, both in a major key (*Faces of Neptune* is in minor keys and sold slightly less as a result.) Both pieces are built on simple, yet lovely melodic themes, which Oliver kneads and reworks subtly, creating a warm cocoon of sound. Occasionally he adds other synthesizers for depth and emphasis.\n\nOliver's first two cassettes might not blow anyone away on first listen, but they have a magic that slowly unfolds after several plays.  They've charmed many over the years and remain in demand by tape collectors, especially the versions with art by Oliver's wife Jann Napoletano. \n\nTechnical Note: While Oliver prides himself on the tape quality in the liner notes, I found my copy to be quite hissy and Dolby was an absolute must.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Restive Woman","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Jim Oliver","entry_number":1},"rusty-crutcher-jim-oliver":{"albums":{"love-dance":{"image":"","label":"Emerald Green","review":"","title":"Love Dance","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Rusty Crutcher and Jim Oliver","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":81,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jim-Oliver-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c0bb8f2c-c97e-41cc-84b6-11318b7d2df7","last_name":"Oliver"},"jim-scott-behrends":{"artist_name":"Jim Scott-Behrends","body":"Jim Scott-Behrends was a shakuhachi player from California who released several solo cassettes and played on others with [Bob Mills](/bob-mills) (*Gentle Landscape*) and Victoria Looseleaf (*Harpnosis*). He also formed a trio called Song Waves to put out the one-off *Peacescape* tape in 1987.\n\nScott-Behrends was born in 1947 and grew up in Riverside, CA. His family lived on a turkey ranch and were conservative Christians, but he developed a taste for the raucous sounds of the British invasion he heard on his transistor radio.  His first instruments were simple - the recorder, harmonica, and bongos, but he showed an early musical ability.\n \nAfter high school, Scott-Behrends attended a few years of college before getting drafted for the Vietnam war. He was a conscientious objector and became a medic for two years, stationed in Monterey and then Georgia. He started teaching himself to play the silver flute around this time, but had an epiphany when he discovered the shakuhachi. \"That was the sound I'd been looking for,\" Scott-Behrends said.\n \nScott-Behrends began taking shakuhachi lessons from Peter Ross in Santa Cruz, and later with Masayuki Koga. Koga showed him how to turn the five notes on a shakuhachi into 30 or 40 different tones. \n\nIn 1973, Scott-Behrends went back to college at Long Beach State where he got a degree in English and religious studies.  He also began studying tabla there with noted master Harihar Rou.  In the summer, Scott-Behrends worked as a lifeguard, a job he would continue to work seasonally for decades.\n \nBy 1982, Scott-Behrends and his wife settled in Southern California. He began taking shakuhachi lessons with Matsui Kazu who would go on to play the instrument in many soundtracks like *Jumanji*, *Willow*, and *Empire of the Sun*. Matsui encouraged Scott to record too, and his first sessions resulted in his debut album *Bamboo Meditations*. Earlier  that year he’d played on Victoria Looseleaf's neo-classical *Harpnosis* album, and she released the tape on her own Goddess records. The tape featured improvised pieces, some in the traditional Honkyoku style of Zen music and others in a more hybridized style. \n\nBy the time Scott-Behrends next cassette *Dream of the Butterfly* came out in 1987, he was pivoting to becoming a tai chi teacher. He’d first learned the discipline in Santa Cruz and found it a lucrative source of income. Many of his students bought the tape, and it went on to sell several hundred copies. Scott-Behrends released another album in the same year with a trio he’d formed called Song Waves. The original group featured two vocalists, Charlotte Lancaster and Florence Riggs-Hellen, but when Lancaster suddenly died, Scott-Behrends replaced her with keyboard player Earle Weatherwax. \n \nThe Song Waves group played live in Southern California fairly often, and one show at a church in Glendale led to Scott-Behrends meeting Bob Mills. Mills was known as Mr. Bob at the time and was recording songs for children as on his *In the Crayon Sky* cassette. Mills was pivoting into improvised new age sounds and recruited Scott-Behrends to help him out, playing shakuhachi and koto. This album, *Gentle Landscape* sold fairly well at the time, as did Mills previous new age album *The Ocean...The Island...*.\n \nScott-Behrends released his final album *Songs of the Dao* in 1991. It was mostly solo flute though Steve Appley contributed as did Dr. Van Duc who did a chant.","discography":{"bob-mills-and-jim-scott-behrends":{"albums":{"gentle-landscape":{"image":"","label":"Mills-Mulligan Music","review":"","title":"Gentle Landscape","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Bob Mills and Jim Scott-Behrends","entry_number":2},"jim-scott-behrends":{"albums":{"bamboo-meditations":{"image":"","label":"Clear Wind Music","review":"A mix of traditional and original Japanese flute pieces played on the shakuhachi, a bamboo flute known for its expressive tone and spiritual gravitas. Scott-Behrends plays with a raw immediacy that is highlighted by a close mic recording that plants the listener practically in the back of his throat. It can be a bit intense at times, and it lacks the smoothness of peers like Ralph Samuelson or John Singer.  Whether this is a plus or minus though, depends on the listener.","title":"Bamboo Meditations","year":"1984"},"dream-of-the-butterfly":{"image":"","label":"Clear Wind Music","review":"The Shakuhachi is a traditional Japanese bamboo flute of simple design, but capable of a wonderful range of sound qualities. It is reputed to be one of the most difficult instruments to master. This recording of seven songs captures the complex but serene nature of the instrument, which is capable of high warbles, sustained notes full of longing, and low breathy tones. The effect on the listener is a calm alertness, and in fact the music has been designed as a meditation for both the listener and the musician.\n\n\"Sakura, Sakura\" is a duet, a conversation between two Shakuhachi, possibly a double track of the same instrument. Otherwise the songs are all solo work, expressing subtle feeling, intense passion for life and a haunting, introspective mood. In short, this is a recording of a beautiful, unique music played by a master. For relaxing, healing, and contemplation.\n\n(Ralph Jaszkowski, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, 1988)","title":"Dream of the Butterfly","year":"1987"},"songs-of-the-dao":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Songs of the Dao","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Jim Scott-Behrends","entry_number":1},"song-waves":{"albums":{"peacescape":{"image":"","label":"Song Waves","review":"","title":"Peacescape","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Song Waves","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":127,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jim-Scott-Behrends.jpg?alt=media&token=0d3f97be-ca9f-4891-b696-a0897fe864f2","last_name":"Scott-Behrends"},"jo-anna-burns-miller":{"artist_name":"Jo Anna Burns Miller","body":"Born Joanna Finley in 1942, Burns-Miller grew up in Portland, Oregon to a large Italian family. She was a trained vocalist and cabaret singer who played throughout the Northwest area starting in the '70s. She mostly performed jazz and pop standards but she also included some originals in her set. She was a member of the Unity Church in Portland where she met her second husband David Brenton Miller, who was the sound engineer there. In the late 80s, they both got into new age and released cassettes on their own Little Pond Productions label.  Her tapes sold well and are now easy to find. However, Brenton Miller's tapes are more uncommon. She passed away in 2018.","discography":{"joanna-burns-miller":{"albums":{"patterns-of-growth":{"image":"","label":"Little Pond Productions","review":"","title":"Desert Flower","year":"1987"},"snow-flower":{"image":"","label":"Little Pond Productions","review":"","title":"Snow Flower","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":256,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/joanna-burns-miller-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3a80be20-b328-4cfe-bcfa-eea72a9e7106","last_name":"Burns-Miller"},"joanna-brouk":{"artist_name":"Joanna Brouk","body":"Joanna Brouk was a writer and poet who worked for decades as a radio producer and later moved into writing for Internet publications, newspapers, children's books, erotica, and plays. She was also a musician for a period, starting in the early '70s when she had an epiphany about the healing power of sound and began studying electronic music at UC Berkeley and then Mills College. Brouk produced five albums between 1980 to 1985, all on cassette, many of which were collaborations with Mills teachers and graduates.  With little prior musical training, Brouk brought a fresh perspective, sometimes notating her work with abstract designs. Although her career was brief, Brouk's albums have resonated with a new generation drawn to her quiet experimentalism and deep expressiveness. Brouk passed away from cancer in 2017.\n\nBrouk was born in 1949 in St. Louis to a wealthy family. However, by the time she began attending college at UC Berkeley in the late '60s, she had reinvented herself as a bohemian artist. She initially studied creative writing and poetry, but after seeing a video on sound healing in an Anthropology class, she became transfixed by the power of sound. Soon, she started spending a lot of time at Berkeley's electronic music studio. With the help of one of her teachers, she got into Mills with almost no musical training. There, she studied with Terry Riley, taking his minimalist approach and simplifying it further, often just playing one sustained note for hours and listening to the overtones and vibrations. \n\nBrouk hosted a radio show at KPFA in the early '70s, playing what the channel called \"music of a spiritual nature from many ethnic categories as well as electric rock music.\" She used her shows to highlight some of her key interests including nature, feminism, and mythology, titling one of her early shows: \"Conch Shell: The Sea at Sunset\". During and after her time at Mills, Brouk collaborated with musicians affiliated with the school, often dictating the mood and theme but allowing her own playing to serve more as a texture for accompaniment. For Brouk, silence was a key element of her style. As she wrote on her now-defunct web site: \"All music has its source in silence. It rises and falls from that infinite source. By \"tuning in\" to one's own silence, one can hear the music of the spheres, the hum of the universe, and the songs of the body.\"\n\nAfter graduating from Mills, Brouk began to teach at the school and loved to watch students approach a synthesizer for the first time. But as she relayed later to [Aquarium Drunkard](https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/08/02/joanna-brouk-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/), \"I was too embarrassed to call myself a composer. I didn't study like Steve Reich [who got an MFA from Mills] or any of these people. I was just loving it, [experiencing] the joy of hearing music and making it from the simplest things: hitting sticks together, or rocks, or a gong.\"\n\nBrouk released three cassettes from 1980 to 1981, all of which were drawn from material recorded from the past six years or so. She created her own label called Hummingbird and was well-positioned to capitalize on interest in new age and meditational music at the time. Her albums only sold modestly, but her music was played on Hearts of Space and distributed fairly well on the West Coast.\n\nBrouk's first album, *Healing Music*, was intended to alleviate stress and create joy in the listener. As with other Brouk releases, she gives ample space to her accompanist Maggi Payne, who contributes beautiful flute playing over Brouk's droning Buchla textures. On her second album *The Space Between*, Brouk made room for Mills teacher Bill Maraldo to shine with some truly deep solo piano work. And on her third album, Brouk again creates the backdrop and mood for solos from flutist Nina Raymaker and wordless vocals from Lindsey Laton and Russell Newhouse.  These three albums all retain Brouk's signature touch - a mix of simplicity and serene beauty. In a way, she was more like a conductor or film director than a composer when it came to music, finding ways to get what she wanted from the unique personalities of others.\n\nBrouk's final two albums were recorded a bit later than the first three, and showcase her own playing more directly, with *Golden Swan* a series of solo piano pieces and *The Healing Touch* featuring the Yamaha DX7. Brouk moved to San Diego in 1985 and had a son. She continued to work as a producer for NPR and writer, but she gradually left music behind, though she still kept a piano and played privately. In the late '90s she was drawn to the Internet and began writing about its transformative power. She remained a prolific author, penning several plays and books, including children's books and erotica under the name Amy Van. \n\nStarting in the early 2000s, Brouk's work started to find a new audience, including [Yoga Records](http://www.yogarecords.com/) founder and record collector Douglas Mcgowan who helped her sell stock copies of her remaining cassettes. He also included her on the *I Am the Center* compilation in 2013, and produced a retrospective of Brouk's work for [Numero Group](http://www.numerogroup.com/products/joanna-brouk-hearing-music) in 2016. Unfortunately, Brouk passed away shortly after in 2017. She was 68.","discography":{"joanna-brouk":{"albums":{"golden-swan":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Productions","review":"Returning from her adventuresome exploration of sound to the simplicity of piano solos, this music ripples, sparkles, and dances like water under wind and sun...and elicits a calmness, fulfillment, joy of arrival.\n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Golden Swan","year":"1983"},"healing-music":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Productions","review":"With this soothing music that transports you beyond space and time, Joanna demonstrates through her compositions how a single note can resonate to create a symphony. Her music is used in hospitals and healing facilities, and for birthing and post-natal care, massage, and meditation. Joanna has also had strong ties with the feminist community. Here, her piano and synthesizer are heard on one side, and flute improvisations by Maggi Payne fill the other.\n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Healing Music","year":"1980"},"sounds-of-the-sea":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Productions","review":"*Sounds of the Sea* is an oceanic journey that encompasses all the beauty, serenity, and existential dread below sea level. As with her first two tapes, Brouk gets stellar results from her collaborators - flutist Nina Ruymaker (a fellow student at Mills), vocalists Lindsey Laton and Russell Newhouse, and Jonathan Worchester on conch shell, a symbol of natural symmetry and femininity that Brouk held dear.\n\nThe first side primarily centers around conch drones and zen-like flute pieces, with occasional dolphin sounds. There are some light-hearted moments like \"Playing in the Water,\" but the overall feel is mysterious, with the music submerging the listener in a shimmering void. Side Two's \"The Sailor and the Nymph\" explores similar sonic spaces with a mythological tilt, conjuring images of sirens at sea through a raga-like treatment of wordless vocals.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Sounds of the Sea","year":"1981"},"space-between":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Productions","review":"On this cassette, which includes, chimes and bells and winter chimes, Joanne plays electric piano, synthesizer, and saron. As you might guess, the sound here is characterized by pure, ringing, reverberating, resonating qualities and is absolutely lovely. Recommended.\n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Space Between","year":"1980"},"the-healing-touch":{"image":"","label":"Hummingbird Productions","review":"","title":"The Healing Touch","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":42,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/brouk.jpg?alt=media&token=bfe29961-ba47-4d4b-94e1-0f4429ed9a99","last_name":"Brouk"},"joe-poshek":{"artist_name":"Joe Poshek","body":"Joe Poshek was primarily a classical and jazz guitarist who issued a series of successful holiday albums on his own Bauhaus Records in the '80s and early '90s. He also put out one tape of computer music called *Humanistic Dances* though sales were slow and he never returned to the style again outside of his dance scores. He currently is a dean at Irvine Valley College and also teaches at Orange Coast College in California.\n\nBorn in 1956, Joe Poshek was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His parents weren't exactly hip, but they bought him an acoustic guitar during the folk boom and he latched on to it right away. A few years later he was playing songs by Peter, Paul and Mary and listening to Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. By high school he'd gotten pretty good and joined a cover band.\n\nAfter high school, Poshek attended Macalester College in St. Paul where he majored in composition. \"I did a bunch of arranging and performing, got deep into classical guitar,\" he said. \"I got my BA, but I wanted a conservatory training. So I moved to New York City in 1978 and got undergraduate and graduate degrees in classical guitar at the Manhattan School of Music. All the while I was composing and performing with different bands, playing at restaurants, weddings, and in contemporary ensembles playing academic type music.\"\n\nPoshek spent six years in New York and then decided to move to Los Angeles to find a career in music.  He landed a job teaching at Orange Coast College and ended up staying for the next 31 years. Meanwhile, he set up a record label with help from his friend Dewitt Daggett in Colorado and put out his first cassette, a classical guitar Christmas album called *L'age Noel*. Over the next few years, he got the tape into new age shops and bookstores and sales were strong. \n\nWith the success of his Christmas album, Poshek decided to take a left turn and try electronic music. He put together a new album solely using a computer and MIDI, and then hired some choreographers to create a dance sequence to it. \"Musically, it has a lot of inspiration from Mahler with some of the chord progressions,\" Poshek said. \"I tried to market it to Windham Hill but it was too edgy for them. Some stores tried it but it just didn't work. Looking back, I was naïve.\"\n\nThough sales were minimal for *Humanistic Dances*, Poshek released another Christmas album in the same year called *Encore Noel* that sold well.  Meanwhile, Poshek was starting to play live jazz more often, usually with his friend Art Davis. He released more albums on his label, including the folksy *Americana* and an album by Lisbeth Woodies, a composer for modern dance and ballet.\n\nPoshek continued to perform throughout the '90s and released one more Christmas album called *Fantastique Noel.* Eventually he would go on to rack up close to 100,000 copies sold for all his holiday music. In the latter half of the decade he became a full time teacher, and Poshek stopped releasing music. He currently lives in California.","discography":{"joe-poshek":{"albums":{"humanistic-dances":{"image":"","label":"Bauhaus Records","review":"","title":"Humanistic Dances","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":185,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Joe-Poshek-640.jpg?alt=media&token=93225e11-0289-4a4d-92c3-5dcc8f3c9ed6","last_name":"Poshek"},"joel-andrews":{"artist_name":"Joel Andrews","body":"Joel Andrews was a harpist and metaphysical healer who articulated many new age ideas well before that term existed. Over the course of a restless, searching life, he married five times, moved all over the US for residencies and teaching jobs, produced harp festivals and workshops, and toured the world. By his own estimation, he recorded thousands of personalized attunement tapes for his clients to heal past life traumas and other ailments, as well as releasing many albums in the '70s and '80s, some channeled through ancient masters. In 1989, he published a memoir called *Harp Full of Stars* that delves into his early life, musical career and healing practice. Andrews passed away in 2019.\n\nAndrews was born in 1928 in Santa Barbara and raised by an authoritarian stepfather whose personality was at odds with his more sensitive temperament. His family was high-born and wealthy, although Andrews' side of the family had a bohemian streak, best personified by his uncle Gavin's commune in Pismo Beach where Joel met many artists and philosophers at a young age, including spiritual philosopher Alan Watts.\n\nAndrews' stepfather, Robert Hyde, was a real-estate developer who bought a large tract of land in the hills above Montecito, California, which he would later turn into a community called Mountain Drive. When Joel was a young child, Hyde moved the family there and began building their new house while they lived temporarily in a cave.\n\nHyde was a classical music lover and encouraged his kids to take music lessons. Andrews picked the harp, inspired by a nearby friend, and finally got his own instrument at the age of thirteen. At the time, Andrews went to private boarding schools where he excelled at sports like tennis and soccer, but he also loved practicing his harp and writing poetry inspired by nature. \n\nBy the time he enrolled in college at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Andrews had begun playing other instruments including the piano, trumpet, and marimba. He formed a jazz band there and began to study music theory and composition. During the summers, he built homes with his father, a skill he would later put to use building his own home after his first marriage. In 1948, he spent a summer in Maine studying with harp master Carlos Salzedo, and Andrews was very much a disciple of his \"Salzedo Method.\"\n\nIn 1951, Andrews enlisted in the Air Force where he remained for four years, playing in the band. A few years in, he had a vision which he marks as the beginning of his spiritual awakening. \"[I was] existing at the center of an ideal liquid suffused with a pink-violet-beige light,\" Andrews wrote in his book. A day later he came down with the flu.\n\nAt 25, Andrews married his first wife and moved to Ohio to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with Alice Chalifoux, one of Salzedo's most prominent students. He got a master's degree there and after graduation, moved to Austin to become head of the harp department at the University of Texas. He stayed there for four years before moving to San Francisco in 1960, a key period in his spiritual and philosophical development. \n\nIn San Francisco, Andrews immersed himself in the burgeoning countercultural scene, attending parties and lectures where he reconnected with Alan Watts. In 1962, Andrews married Alan's daughter, Anne Watts, and had two children, Myra and Michael. Andrews welcomed both of his kids into the world by playing his harp in the labor room at the hospital, accidentally frightening some nearby residents who, upon hearing harp music, had thought they had literally died and gone to heaven.\n \nAndrews' talents, work ethic, and charisma meant there was always plenty of work for him. In addition to his solo performances at weddings, funerals, and events, he also toured with his lyra chamber groups on the west coast and performed with the San Francisco Opera and Oakland Symphony. He taught classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, gave seminars on the healing properties of sound, organized a harp concert on Mount Tamalpais, and did a small number of film scores.\n\nIn 1966 Andrews released his first album, *Harp Soundings*, a classically influenced work that contains one of his early original compositions, \"Sea Suite.\" The liner notes make clear that this is no ordinary harp album, but one that aims for a \"transcendental quality when the ego is stilled and the artist becomes a channel for the universal forces of light.\"\n\nAfter nearly a decade in San Francisco, Andrews left to be a musician in residence at North Carolina State. In the spring of 1970, he organized a debut concert in New York and practiced incessantly, putting his heart and soul into the program of songs. Prior to that, he'd always dreamed of being a concert harpist, and he saw the show as a coming-out party of sorts. However, although the show was reviewed well, he had been so consumed with anxiety and stage fright beforehand that he ultimately decided to try a different career path. He did however release a two-album set of material from his North Carolina period called *Cathexis in Spectrum*.\n\nIn 1971, Andrews got divorced. He did some soul searching during this period and decided to quit smoking and drinking, and give up meat as well. A year later, Andrews joined the Paul Winter Consort on tour, but returned to life in North Carolina after that. By this time, Andrews was regularly attracting clients who were interested in sound healing, and he offered to help them resolve issues from past lives and other ailments through personalized attunement tapes. \n\n[Schawkie Roth](/schawkie-roth), who later played music with Andrews, recalls how amazed he was that a musician as talented as Andrews even did psychic readings. \"He was a fabulous harpist as an improviser. He was classically trained and knew how to play inside and outside any scales. But even with all that knowledge, he could not make it in the world just playing music. He had to figure out something else, and that was doing psychic transmissions. That was his main bread and butter, a gig he did every day. He made music based on the letters of their names that he channeled into notes.\"\n\nAfter finishing his residency in North Carolina, Andrews moved to Virginia Beach, where he continued his practice and began jamming with some local musicians who formed a band they called the Order of Orpheus.  The group played locally and released one now rare and collectible self-titled album. \n \nAndrews began releasing solo recordings in 1975, starting with *Locrian Invocation*, released on his own Full Circle label. That album, like many that followed, was dedicated to (and purportedly channeled from) what theosophy adherents would call an “ascended master.\" Because the masters were reincarnated many times, they go by multiple names, and Andrews refers to the spirit as both \"Pythagorus\" and \"Kuthumi.\" The album was apparently requested by a group of new age hippies in Daytona Beach, Florida and recorded live there.\n\nIn 1977, Andrews released his next album *The Violet Flame*, also recorded in Florida and again featuring channeled improvisations. Although based in Virginia and later Washington DC during this period, Andrews spent most of his time on the road, going back out with the Paul Winter Consort in 1978 and contributing to their 1980 album *Soundings.* He still found time for a slate of his own solo releases, and recorded two collaborations with Schawkie Roth and joined Paul Horn on his *Inside the Magic of Findhorn* in 1983.  \n\nAndrews returned to California in 1984, finally settling down in Ben Lomond near Santa Cruz, California with his new wife Serafina. He continued to put out new albums, while his personalized sound healing sessions provided the bulk of his income. He also ran a workshop called the Pacific Summer Music Colony. \n\nAndrews passed away in 2019.","discography":{"joel-andrews":{"albums":{"Iridescence":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Iridescence","year":"1987"},"cathexis in spectrum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cathexis in Spectrum","year":"1971"},"celestia":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Celestia","year":"1982"},"cellular-light":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Cellular Light","year":"1988"},"emblissening-movement":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Emblissening Movement","year":"1986"},"essence":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Contemplative solo harp pieces produced in association with the Flower Essence Society, a non-profit organization founded in the '80s to promote \"the harmony of humankind with the living earth and all forms of life.\" Both pieces were recorded outdoors in the spring with Andrews meditating on a \"Rainbow of Flowers\" for side 1 and the \"Golden Poppy\" on side 2. Both feature his dynamic playing and harmonic adventurousness that keep the improvisations interesting even as they drift into ethereal spaces.","title":"Essence","year":"1983"},"from-pain-to-peace":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"From Pain to Peaceo","year":"1986"},"harmonious-childbirth":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Harmonious Childbirth","year":"1986"},"heart-reflection-in-gold":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Heart/Reflections in Gold","year":"1986"},"in-the-heart-of-it":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"In the Heart of It","year":"1984"},"locrian-invocation":{"image":"","label":"Full Circle Music","review":"","title":"Locrian Invocation","year":"1975"},"meditation-2-ave-maria":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Meditation 2 / Ave Maria","year":"1980"},"pan-solstice":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Pan Solstice","year":"1986"},"paradise-bird":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Paradise Bird","year":"1985"},"root-thyroid-chakras":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Root/Thyroid Chakras","year":"1986"},"seraphic-aurora":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Seraphic Aurora","year":"1986"},"solar-crown-chakras":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Solar/Crown Chakras","year":"1986"},"splendor-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Splendor of Light","year":"1986"},"the-violet-flame":{"image":"","label":"Full Circle Music","review":"The violet flame of purification channeled through the harp of Joel Andrews. During the recording process, calling forth the flame is said to have produced a loud hum in the studio equipment and burned a hole in the cloud cover over the building.\n\n(Stephen Hill, *Music from the Hearts of Space*, 1981)","title":"The Violet Flame","year":"1977"},"unitas-eanokee":{"image":"","label":"Golden Harp Enterprises","review":"","title":"Unitas Eanokee","year":"1980"},"your-healing-pain":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind Productions","review":"","title":"Your Healing Pain","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Joel Andrews","entry_number":2},"joel-andrews-schawkie-roth":{"albums":{"love-the-earth":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Love the Earth","year":"1979"},"mother-of-pearl":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Mother of Pearl","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Joel Andrews and Schawkie Roth","entry_number":3},"the-order-of-orpheus":{"albums":{"the-order-of-orpheus":{"image":"","label":"Om Source","review":"","title":"The Order Of Orpheus","year":"1977"}},"artist_name":"The Order of Orpheus","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":27,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Joel-Andrews-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1a22f121-3d91-4727-aef0-db10876847c8","last_name":"Andrews"},"joey-latimer":{"artist_name":"Joey Latimer","body":"Joey Latimer is a multi-instrumentalist based in Idyllwild, California who released a series of new age cassettes between 1986 and 1990. He started out as a recording engineer and later got a job as an editor at *Family Computing* magazine where he wrote programs for composing music. This led to a series of synth-based albums, including *Mountain Meditations*, one of his best sellers that was created soon after he joined a dharma center to study Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Latimer now works in information technology and plays with two blues bands on the side.\n\nJoey Latimer was born in 1954 and grew up alongside four brothers and sisters in Downy, California. His mother was a kindergarten teacher and his father was the manager of a car dealership. When he was in third grade, Latimer's parents bought a chord organ and he learned how to play \"Silent Night\" as his first song. Soon he got into the Beatles and drove his parents crazy tapping out songs on the table or with his teeth.\n\nIn his early teens, Latimer’s neighbor Joey Naspini got a guitar and showed him how to play songs by the Beatles and \"Gloria\" by Them. \"We stole cigars from my dad and smoked them at his house,\" Latimer recalled. \"It made us both sick and I then made up a song with the chords to ‘Gloria’ and substituted the lyrics 'I smoked a big green cigar and threw up in the yard.' So that’s how I started playing guitar.\"\n\nWhen Latimer's uncle bought him a reel to reel recorder and microphone, Joey did what any self-respecting kid would do: he recorded fart noises. When that got old, he recorded himself singing \"Wild Thing\" by the Troggs and started to get pretty good sounds. He started playing acoustic shows at coffee houses with his friend Larry Dunlap around Long Beach. Then he joined some bands during high school with friends to play local parties.\n\nWhen he was 14, Latimer first became aware of psychedelics and meditation. \"I used to listen to radio shows at night with Ram Dass where they would teach meditation,\" Latimer recalled. \"I would lay in bed and do meditations. My younger brother took kung fu and brought home books about Taoism, Gurdjeff, and Buddhism. We were from a Catholic family but my mom was real open about stuff. So I got in to eastern philosophy.\"\n\nAfter graduating from high school, Latimer formed a trio with his old pal Joey Naspini and singer/songwriter Bob Bennett called Paddlefoot. They often played around Orange County beaches and started pitching songs to publishers in Hollywood. They got some interest from Kerry Chater who recorded them at Chappell music. Nothing was ever released, but being in the studio reinforced Latimer's interest in working behind the boards. So he enrolled at Golden West College, studied audio engineering, and learned how to run multi-track tape machines and professional consoles. While attending Golden West, Latimer was signed by Screen Gems EMI as a songwriter and managed by Christopher Nicks (Stevie's brother.)\n\nIn 1977, Latimer got his first staff-recording job at Fidelity Studios working with a diverse group of artists like Joan Jett, Billy Joel, Chick Corea, Gabor Szabo, and Hindu artists from the Siddha Yoga Foundation. \"Most engineers didn’t want to do spiritual music – they were into rock and punk - but I liked all kinds of different artists,\" Latimer said.\n\nLatimer got some occasional work doing soundtracks, and that led to him playing synthesizers and drum machines starting in the late '70s. After working as an engineer for a few years, Latimer taught himself computer programming and got a job at Kid Space Museum in Pasadena, where he installed a computer lab and taught kids how to use them. Then he got hired by Scholastic as an editor for Family Computing magazine in 1983. He contributed a column called MicroTones about computer music and he wrote many programs that allowed users to create music. He also contributed articles and programs for other magazines like *Compute!*, *A+*, *RUN*, and *Parents*.\n\nThe same year he started working for Scholastic, Latimer and his wife Elaine moved to Idyllwild, California. Elaine was also a musician and the two of them had a jazz-pop band called Kindred Spirit that played around the area at restaurants and coffee houses in the mid-'80s. Meanwhile, Latimer was working on music of his own, putting together his first cassette *New Avalon* in 1986. \n\n\"That had a King Arthur theme,\" Latimer said. \"When I was growing up, I was really attracted to the mythology of King Arthur. My family goes back to England and the Earl of Warren and Hugh Latimer. I read a bunch of books about King Arthur lore and there was a shop in Idyllwild called Avalon that sold King Arthur stuff. I recorded that cassette and they quickly sold out. So I made 500 more and those all sold out too.\"\n\nIn 1986, Latimer helped to found a dharma center called the Karma Mahasiddha Ling, where he practiced Tibetan Buddhist meditation under the Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche. \"At that time, we were listening to music by Deuter, Andreas Vollenweider and Steve Roach,\" Latimer said. \"I remember *Dreamtime Return* [by Roach] was a favorite. That was how I got into meditation music and I wanted to make my own pieces we could meditate to.\" The result was Latimer’s next cassette called *Mountain Meditations* that he recorded with Lee Miracle and Tim Whitcanack. He advertised them in *Meditation Magazine* and sold them at retreat centers in the area. In all, he estimates he sold about 1,000 copies. \n\nIn 1989, Latimer left Scholastic and started working at the Idyllwild Arts campus as an IT manager where he would remain for the next 20 years. During this time, he put out two new albums, including the I-Ching inspired *The Joyous Lake* and *The Coyote and the Princess*, which had a Native American theme. After that, Latimer decided to move away from computer music and synthesizers. \"I was wearing headphones all the time and synth music started to bother my hearing. So I stopped playing synths and started studying with old blues guitarists, playing blues and jazz, totally different kinds of music.\" Latimer’s next band was group called the Blues Monks and they put together an album called *In Your Living Room*. \n\nLatimer remarried in 1997 to Robin Rabens, who he'd known back in his childhood. Rabens was a music teacher who played piano and bass, and the couple have performed together over the years. Their current band is a trio called DoRoJo. Latimer also performs in a trio called the Louie Bluies with Don Reed and bassist Marshall Hawkins. Latimer maintains a website [here](http://www.joeylatimer.com).","discography":{"joey-latimer":{"albums":{"coyote-and-the-princess":{"image":"","label":"Idyllwild Music Co","review":"","title":"Coyote and the Princess","year":"1990"},"idyllwild":{"image":"","label":"Idyllwild Music Co","review":"","title":"Idyllwild","year":"1989"},"mountain-meditations":{"image":"","label":"Idyllwild Music Co","review":"","title":"Mountain Meditations","year":"1989"},"new-avalon":{"image":"","label":"Idyllwild Music Co","review":"","title":"New Avalon","year":"1986"},"the-joyous-lake":{"image":"","label":"Idyllwild Music Co","review":"","title":"The Joyous Lake","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":197,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/joey-latimer-600.jpg?alt=media&token=1814e19b-e90a-479c-8e30-6c9cbadc6839","last_name":"Latimer"},"john-demarco":{"artist_name":"John DeMarco","body":"John DeMarco was a musician and visual artist from Philadelphia who released three cassettes of experimental ambient music from 1991 to 1993. All three of the tapes were primarily sold at Lynn Andrews' yearly retreats in Joshua Tree, where DeMarco played background music for her inspirational talks. He also recorded some handmade demo tapes of his synth work that have been found, and he released some earlier material with Nomadic Tools in the early '80s. \n \nJohn DeMarco was born in Philadelphia in 1958, the child of second generation Italian-Americans. His father worked in real estate and his mother stayed home to care for the family. DeMarco's father loved contemporary classical music (Bartok, Stravinksy, Varese) and classic films, and used to bring the family to the Museum of Modern Art where DeMarco recalls seeing silent films with a live pianist.\n \nDeMarco was already writing songs in his head when he got his first guitar at the age of twelve. He had some guitar lessons initially but was mostly self-taught and self-motivated. In high school, he formed various bands playing a mix of originals and covers of progressive rock bands like Gentle Giant and Henry Cow. Fred Frith, the guitarist of Henry Cow, would go on to be one of his primary influences, along with Derek Bailey.\n \nDeMarco went to college at the Philadelphia College of Art and studied painting, but ultimately dropped out. At the time, he was working at a wine shop and going to see bands at night. Philadelphia had a vibrant music scene, with clubs like the Painted Bride, the Wet Spot, and the East Side Club hosting local bands looking to break out. DeMarco was in several bands, among them some groups with free music improvisor Jack Wright, but his main project soon became Nomadic Tools.\n \nNomadic Tools was formed by DeMarco and three members of the Improvisational Arts Ensemble who were based at nearby Stockton University. They all jammed for the first time live on WXPN and formed their own project soon after. The band was large and unconventional, with three sax players and a dancer. All the band members wrote material. After playing live locally and refining their set, band leader Michael Smirgs secured a deal with Ulterior Records and they headed to SF to record their debut album *No Amount of Talk.* \n \nUnfortunately, the album did not sell well and DeMarco became disillusioned with the band scene. He put out one more 45 under his own name, with Nomadic Tools backing, but that also failed to connect.  After a visit to Los Angeles to see his girlfriend, DeMarco decided he'd had enough of Philadelphia and moved west.  \"I was walking around in short sleeves in December and I said, screw it, I’m moving out here.” DeMarco recalled.\"\n \nOnce in L.A., DeMarco put renewed energy into painting and got some scattered gallery shows. By this time, he was developing imagery based primarily on experiences of synesthesia that were triggered by the music he was composing and listening to. By 1988, he landed a job as an art director at a dance studio, doing photography, composing music, and designing sets and costumes. He remained there for the next five years.\n \nDeMarco had continued to play music since leaving Philadelphia, but it was mostly a solitary pursuit, recording various pieces at home on his four track. A lot of it was experimental, with double speed percussion, sax, recorder, and hand drumming. He was influenced by ambient and minimal music by Brian Eno, Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, as well as world music including gamelan, Hindustani classical, and Gagaku. \n \nIn 1990, DeMarco's friend Jeff Fishman helped DeMarco get a gig at a Lynn Andrews retreat in Joshua Tree. By that time, Andrews had amassed a large following as an author and new age shaman and she held yearly gatherings for her devotees. Fishman encouraged DeMarco to come with him and play background music for her guided sessions. He also suggested that DeMarco put together a tape he could sell at the event. Titled *Breath of Renewal*, the recordings were drawn from his backlog of home recorded experiments and the cover featured one of his drawings. He sold close to 100 of them and replicated the tactic for the next two events in 1992 and 1993 as well, though he never really distributed the tapes anywhere except at these events. \n \nBy 1994, DeMarco moved to Taos, New Mexico where he owned a gallery called Altarworks that specialized in visionary art. DeMarco sometimes performed there, but music began to take more of a backseat after he met his wife and started a family. DeMarco didn't release much music during this time, though by the early 2000s he put out a few CD’s with percussionist Christopher Taylor as the Bodhi Brothers, playing western swing and blues.\n \nDeMarco continued to write music and record at home during this time, and around 2015 he began cataloguing and releasing much of his archival music on Bandcamp [here]( https://johndemarco.bandcamp.com). While the music draws from diverse genres and styles, one of his recent releases, *Curious Music and Organized Noise* will likely appeal to readers of this site. DeMarco currently lives in in Nevada City, CA.","discography":{"john-demarco":{"albums":{"breath-of-renewal":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Breath of Renewal","year":"1991"},"earth-and-crystal":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The sound on DeMarco's second release is a departure, with a more ritualistic desert-air vibe in place of the homespun experimental studio creations from his charming debut. Recorded in a Hollywood studio, the set has a crisp, professional sound that makes listening a pleasure, even when the album doesn't quite hang together in spite of some highlights.\n\nThe sides are divided up into \"Alpha\" and \"Omega\" with both featuring a mix of native-sounding percussion pieces (\"Pulselight\", \"Earth Dancing Under\") shamanistic  chants (\"The Calling\"), solo dulcimer (\"From Rest She Awakens\"), and lonesome ocarina passages (\"Moonset\").  Elsewhere, DeMarco is able to synthesize these organic elements with keyboards into better developed, multi-layered studio creations that are more successful to my ears. \"Depolarization Games\", for example, pairs a Korg T3 and a complex rhythm into a gently grooving jam, while the all too-short \"Childheart\" pairs a glassy sounding prepared guitar and mbira in a lovely ambient piece that recalls [David Gilden](/david-gilden).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)\n","title":"Earth and Crystal","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"John DeMarco","entry_number":1},"john-demarco-with-jack-lee-and-fred-mitchum":{"albums":{"sacred-dreamer":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sacred Dreamer","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"John DeMarco w/Jack Lee and Fred Mitchum","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":126,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/John-Demarco.jpg?alt=media&token=0185f340-84e2-49f4-b15e-563ba83ce0c3","last_name":"DeMarco"},"john-di-stefano":{"artist_name":"John Di Stefano","body":"John Di Stefano was an electronic composer based in San Francisco who released many underground cassettes of experimental ambient music starting in 1980. In addition to his tapes, he produced music for film, theater, dance, and art installations, and collaborated with musicians like Ellen Zweig, Kalonica McQuesten and Joel Graham, the latter joining him in the duo Klang. His work was the subject of a recent retrospective and has become sought after by collectors.\n\nBorn in 1951, Di Stefano grew up in Buffalo, New York. At 16, he was inspired to become a musician after hearing Keith Moon play drums with the Who. He spent some time teaching himself to play drums and then joined a blues band for the next 7 years. In college, he discovered avant-garde music like Stockhausen and John Cage, ultimately leading him on a different path that led to a lifelong interest in electronic music.\n\nAfter a few years at the University of Buffalo, Di Stefano moved to San Francisco and began taking classes at City College of San Francisco. There he studied jazz and got to spend time experimenting in the school's electronic music lab. After earning an A.S Degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management, Di Stefano worked on and off as a chef for the next 15 years. \n\nMeanwhile, Di Stefano began composing electronic music and went on to earn a Master's Degree in Interdisciplinary Arts. He began putting out cassettes of his work, which he called Elektronische Musik, mixing percussion and minimal electronics in experimental ambient pieces. The tapes were sold through underground catalogs like Aeon and Synthetic Pleasure, always getting good reviews, but relatively few sales.\n\nDi Stefano also composed music for film, theater, and dance, as well as art installations, like a show he put on with music set to Kandinsky's abstract paintings. In the mid-'80s, he founded the Lab, an experimental art space where he served as the artistic director. He collaborated with other San Francisco musicians such as Ellen Zweig and the performance art group Elbows Akimbo and worked with artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson.\n\nDi Stefano continued to record music in the '90s, taking an interest in Gamelan music. He spent years studying karawitan, the aesthetics behind the playing of the gamelan and translated it to electronic music. Later, Di Stefano got a second Master`s Degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages, which eventually led him to Japan where he resides today. In 2019, Concentric Circles released a compilation of his work called *For the Moment*.","discography":{"ellen-zweig-john-distefano":{"albums":{"we-must-all-be-explorers":{"image":"","label":"Awkward Sentence","review":"","title":"We Must All Be Explorers","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Ellen Zweig and John Di Stefano","entry_number":3},"john-di-stefano":{"albums":{"1-cosmologue":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Cosmologue","year":"1980"},"2-compos-mentis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Compos Mentis","year":"1980"},"for-the-moment":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"For the Moment","year":"1985"},"nuage":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Nuage","year":"1985"},"synchronisms":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"John Di Stefano is one of America's most important and unique electronic composers. For many of the pieces, a 12-volt spike was recorded onto one track of a multitrack tape recorder. This spike was used to trigger simultaneous events on the other track, producing a totally synchronized effect. Percussion was added, furthering the effect of the synchronized parts.\n\n(Aeon Catalog,  Winter/Spring 1984)","title":"Synchronisms","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"John Di Stefano","entry_number":1},"john-di-stefano-kalonica-mcquesten":{"albums":{"equity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Equity: Music for the Performance","year":"1987"},"music-for-anatomy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Anatomy of a Springroll","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"John Di Stefano, Kalonica McQuesten","entry_number":4},"klang":{"albums":{"drift":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Drift","year":"1985"},"klang":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Klang","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Klang","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":268,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/john-di-stefano-640.JPG?alt=media&token=46130db1-0483-49c0-bc73-903b8bb8e59d","last_name":"Di Stefano"},"john-higham":{"artist_name":"John Higham","body":"John Higham was a British expatriate who recorded a one-off new age album called *Sierra Crossing* in 1988 before returning to his day job as an industrial engineer. Since moving to the US in 1970, Higham was based mostly in Menlo Park, California. Higham was friends with fellow musician [Conrad Praetzel](/conrad-praetzel) and both sent new age demo tapes to various labels together in the '80s and both signed to Ruby McFarland's short-lived Scarlet label. That album sold about 5,000 copies by Higham's estimation.","discography":{"john-higham":{"albums":{"sierra-crossing":{"image":"","label":"Scarlet","review":"","title":"Sierra Crossing","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":99,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/John-Higham-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=3341fb02-3736-42ed-b7d6-2ecaacb6c5a8","last_name":"Higham"},"john-mazzei":{"artist_name":"John Mazzei","body":"John Mazzei was a keyboard player based in Ashland, Oregon who got his start playing rock and jazz before expanding into new age in the late '80s. During this time, he released some albums under his own name as well as collaborating with locals like Erik Berglund and Sky Douglas. He also played backing music for many meditation tapes by new age author [Solara](/solara). After 1992, Mazzei got married and moved to San Francisco where he pivoted to soundtrack and production music, leaving new age behind.\n\nMazzei was born in Sacramento in 1959 but grew up in Weed, California near the border of Oregon. His grandfather was a musician and Mazzei took up piano early, already playing in rock bands by the age of 13. By high school he'd moved on to playing jazz, which he continued to play for the remainder of his career. Mazzei went to community college for a couple years but in 1980 went out on the road in a cover band playing pop hits by the likes of Prince and Madonna.\n\nIn 1982, Mazzei settled in Ashland, Oregon where he lived for the next 10 years. There he joined another cover band playing keyboards, and also began working in various studios on the side, learning how to engineer. He eventually built his own studio where he engineered sessions by local artists, while also producing original music for theater productions and commercials.\n\nOne of the artists that Mazzei met at the time was Solara, a mystical new age author who was looking for music on her guided meditation tapes. \"As a jazz musician I could tune into other musicians and create something new and spontaneous. I just put a different style on it. She said she was writing a book about angels and it seemed like she had all her cosmology put together. I worked on a lot of music with her. She would record her voice and I'd write the music after. Sometimes I'd play behind her at her events too.\" One memorable event was Solara's \" Activation Ceremony for the Opening of the 11:11 Doorway \" which took place in Egypt.\n\nIn 1992, Mazzei got married and the couple moved to Mount Shasta and later San Francisco. There, he worked as a musical director for local shows including a tribute to Judy Garland. Currently, Mazzei composes for film and production music libraries that have licensed his music to TV networks like HBO and Discovery.","discography":{"etherium":{"albums":{"starry-processional":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Starry Processional","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Etherium","entry_number":2},"john-mazzee":{"albums":{"etherium":{"image":"","label":"Beyond Music","review":"","title":"Etherium","year":"1993"},"song-of-the-sacred-mountain":{"image":"","label":"Apex Productions","review":"This music, all synthesizer and piano, was inspired by the composer's earlier years \"in the shadow of Mount Shasta in Northern California.\" There is a quiet intensity about it, a depth and haunting recreation of mountain hollows, winds and crevices. The music is generally rich, somewhat complex, with lots of unusual experimentation with sounds to evoke certain qualities of nature as well as feelings. It has a subdued inner power, mixing elements of jazz, soft rock and space music. It is music for driving, background, relaxing, movement.\n\n\"Morning Mountain Mists\" is soft, gentle, with quiet pattering drums and tingling bells. \"Earthdreams\" has more complexity, richness—the synthesizer, percussion, flute, piano, the haunting, repetitive hollow sound of wind. \"Sun Woman\" continues with percussion, horn, piano and is sometimes somber, sometimes joyous.\n\n\"Alizarin Street\" is upbeat, with repetitions creating the sense of moment to moment sameness within variations surrounding a central theme. \"Transparent Afternoon\" and \"Son of the Sacred Mountain\" continue in the same vein, evoking feelings of expansion and experimentation with some profundity and depth. This is \"dedicated to all those who are choosing to live their lives according to what matters most to them.\"\n\n(Joan Levine, *Heartsong Review* No. 7 , Fall 89/Winter 90)\n","title":"Song of the Sacred Mountain","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"John Mazzei","entry_number":1},"sky-douglas-with-etherium":{"albums":{"heavenly-heaven":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Essence","review":"","title":"Heavenly Heaven","year":"1988"},"the-stars-are-calling":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Essence","review":"","title":"The Stars are Calling","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Sky Douglas with John Mazzei","entry_number":3},"solara-and-etherium":{"albums":{"angel-that-you-truly-are":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Angel That You Truly Are","year":"1988"},"archangel-mikael-empowerment":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Archangel Mikael Empowerment","year":"1990"},"lotus-of-true-love":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Lotus of True Love","year":"1990"},"remembering-your-story":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Remembering Your Story","year":"1990"},"star-alignments":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Star Alignments","year":"1990"},"temple-invisible":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Temple Invisible","year":"1992"},"the-star-that-we-are":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Star That We Are","year":"1988"},"the-starry-council":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Starry Council","year":"1992"},"through-the-doorway-of-the-1111":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Through the Doorway of the 11:11","year":"1992"},"true-love-one-heart":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"True Love / One Heart","year":"1992"},"two-guided-journeys":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Two Guided Journeys","year":"1992"},"unifying-the-polarities":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Unifying the Polarities","year":"1992"},"voyage-on-the-celestial-barge":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"Amid a backdrop of meandering digital synth, Solara narrates in barely comprehensible fashion about traveling to other dimensions, gods named Og-min, living among the stars, etc.  Side 2 features just the music, but even without the incomprehensible narration, there isn't much of interest here. Etherium seems to just be doodling on this synth with no apparent theme or direction.","title":"Voyage on the Celestial Barge","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Solara and Etherium","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":208,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/John-Mazzei-640.jpg?alt=media&token=04dbc7ec-215d-4827-ab0b-1ba48b728cc3","last_name":"Mazzei"},"john-robert-krause":{"artist_name":"John Robert Krause","body":"John Robert Krause was a classically trained pianist and composer active in the new age scene from 1987 to 1992. Born and raised in Nebraska, Krause's self-released debut got some traction on new age radio and prompted a move to Marin County, an epicenter for the genre. He put a lot of money into promoting his second album *3 Steps from Tomorrow*, appearing on the Adult Contemporary charts in 1992. Now going by just John Robert, he tried to parlay that into a record deal but nothing came of it. He quietly released two more albums (of mostly previously released material) before heading back to Nebraska in the early '90s and putting his new age career to bed.\n\nBorn in 1958, Krause grew up in Nebraska and majored in music at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He became adept at improvisation by playing piano along with modern dance and ballet, eventually creating his first album of romantic, lyrical pieces influenced by Debussy and Aaron Copland. \"Kurzweil had come out with the K-250, one of the first viable sampling keyboards,\" Krause recalled. \"Suddenly I had a full orchestra at my fingertips. That album was a certain mood and place.\"\n\nKrause dropped off copies of the cassette at a local metaphysical bookstore, The Way Home, and the owner Scott Colburn sent one off to Stephen Hill, host of influential radio show Hearts of Space. Hill featured the song \"Winter Garden\" on his show and that helped Krause's music reach a wider audience. Sales of the tapes eventually numbered around a few thousand copies by Krause's estimation.\n\nAfter the success of his first album, Krause moved to Sonoma in Northern California and joined the sprawling new age scene there, playing with musicians like Randy Mead, Barbara Borden, and Jai Uttal, the latter two appearing on Krause's next album *3 Steps from Tomorrow*, credited to just John Robert. Krause hired a radio promoter to push the album, landing on the adult contemporary chart in 1992 and again sold a thousand copies.\n\nRobert's biggest backer remained Hearts of Space and their affiliated distributor Backroads who carried all of his music and featured it prominently.  However, Krause was starting to become frustrated about self-releasing his music and tried to land a record deal to no avail. In 1993, Krause released two more albums, *Intuition* (which re-used some songs from *3 Steps*) and *Secret Realms*, a remix of *Heart of the Flower*. These didn't sell many copies, and Krause moved back to Lincoln, Nebraska. \n\nFor his day job, Krause worked as a sales rep for an art publishing company and later became a Pilates teacher.","discography":{"john-robert":{"albums":{"3-steps":{"image":"","label":"Ashwini","review":"","title":"3 Steps from Tomorrow","year":"1992"},"intuition":{"image":"","label":"Ashwini","review":"","title":"Intuition","year":"1993"},"secret-realms":{"image":"","label":"Ashwini","review":"","title":"Secret Realms","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"John Robert","entry_number":2},"john-robert-krause":{"albums":{"heart-of-the-flower":{"image":"","label":"Living Waters","review":"","title":"Heart of the Flower","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"John Robert Krause","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":383,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/john-robert-small.jpeg?alt=media&token=efa0facb-228f-4470-b4bb-9b770109dc95","image_credit":"","last_name":"Krause"},"john-rose":{"artist_name":"John Rose","body":"John Rose was a radio host and synthesist based in Lexington, Kentucky who released ten cassettes under his own name before joining up with Tony Gerber in the long-running band Spacecraft. Rose also played in two short-lived space-ambient projects, 326 and Stormlight, during the '80s. Rose's tapes are all very rare, though his sole vinyl release *Rainsongs* does occasionally pop up on the secondary market where it sells for large sums. His work mostly alternates between reflective piano pieces and spaced out, Berlin-school sounds.\n\nJohn Rose was born in 1959 and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother was a bank teller and his father was a clothing buyer. Rose wanted to learn piano at a young age, but his family was not supportive. \"I had to keep my music pursuits a secret,\" Rose recalled. \"I come from old Kentucky blood where boys do boy things and music is for the girls, a really backward mentality, but that's how it was here back in the day. Luckily an old German couple lived across the street and when they passed away they left me their Blutner grand piano that was smuggled to America in pieces after World War II. They also introduced me to Theresa Garbulinska, a well-known Polish concert pianist who took me under her wing. She let me take care of her yard in exchange for piano lessons.\"\n \nRose loved baroque and early music, and by eighth grade was exploring contemporary classical and electronic music. And then, in ninth grade, his best friend was murdered. Rose went into shock. \"That shifted my life completely,\" Rose recalled. \"After that I buried myself in avant garde music. I got my first synthesizer around that time and gave impromptu concerts on the streets. Needless to say, I was not in the popular crowd, but it saved my life.\"\n \nAfter high school, Rose enrolled at Transylvania University where he studied organ with Eugene Maupin. However, he soon left school for the Air Force. While stationed in Madrid, Spain, he discovered Tangerine Dream who became a lifelong influence.  By 1980, Rose returned to Lexington and helped Maupin set up the Maupin International Conservatory for Music and the Arts. While there, he studied Middle Eastern music with Jamil Shamma. \n\nRose, who had been struggling with PTSD for years, realized that music could be a source of calm. \"It was therapy for me after all that trauma in high school,\" Rose said. \"My brother in law was a Zen lecturer and was a mentor to me. I started to get more deeply into eastern philosophy. I also got into martial arts, and had a deep love of nature. There’s nothing but music when you’re in the middle of nowhere, be it the wind in the pine trees, bird songs, frogs, thunderstorms.\"\n \nIn 1983, Rose attended Columbus Technical Institute in Ohio where he studied electronics.  Around the same time, he formed a duo called 326 with his old high school friend Charles Ellis and they put out a cassette called *Tzu*.  Both of them had bought their first synthesizers around the same time (a Moog Sonic Six) and had remained in close contact ever since. Their cassette, featuring improvised synth tracks in the style of Tangerine Dream, soon caught the attention of the Kentucky School of Metaphysics who commissioned more music from Rose.  Sensing a burgeoning market, Rose produced a cassette under his own name in 1984 simply titled *Meditations*. He issued the tape in a numbered edition of 100 and sold them to anyone interested either at shows, or word of mouth.\n \nAfter finishing school, Rose got a job at a tobacco manufacturing plant and the industrial sounds had a big impact on his next album, *Chemical Dreams*. \"I was captivated by the sounds of all this machinery and started working it into my music,” Rose said. “Everything is music to me. I approach music as a soundtrack to life.\"\n \nRose remained prolific for the remainder of the decade, despite having to often record on borrowed instruments or at friends home studios. \"I was dirt poor,\" Rose said. \"I had a four track recorder that I shared with other people. And sometimes I recorded at a friend’s studio at night.\"\n \nRose's fortunes began looking up with his third cassette, *Night Songs*. Again released in an edition of 100, the album got some airplay on local NPR affiliate WUKY, and was reviewed locally. He capitalized on this momentum with his first vinyl release ever, *Rain Songs*, the following year, in an edition of 250 copies each on LP and cassette.  Later, WUKY would hire Rose to produce several radio shows including two focused on space music and two on classical. Occasionally, Rose would perform live on his show using the station’s grand piano.\n \nIn 1990, Rose got a job as an audio engineer for the city. He continued to release new albums regularly into the early ‘90s and even produced an electronic festival called Summer Solstice Celebration. This festival had support from the city and ran for five years with attendance of 2500 people at its peak. It was at this festival that Rose met a veteran of the Nashville electronic music scene, [Tony Gerber](/tony-gerber). The pair hit it off and collaborated on \"The Badlands,\" a track from Gerber’s 1995 CD *Blue Western Sky*.\n \nSoon after, Rose and Gerber decided to form a new group called Spacecraft. Together as Spacecraft, they went on to put out over eight full length albums starting in 1997. Rose, who married Diane Timmons a few years prior, recruited her to join the band too. \"I heard her sing and she had a voice I wanted for my music,\" Rose said. \"And I had never done music with lyrics or vocals before.\" Rose currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky where he continues to compose music and work as an audio engineer and stagehand.","discography":{"326":{"albums":{"Tzu":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tzu","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"326","entry_number":2},"john-rose":{"albums":{"apocalypse":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Apocalypse","year":"1992"},"chemical-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Chemical Dreams","year":"1985"},"evening-thoughts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Evening Thoughts* is pretty evenly split between plaintive solo piano pieces and multilayered electronic ambience. While this makes for a fragmented listening experience, it helps to keep things interesting across the sprawling 90-minute runtime. The electronic pieces are the high points for me, especially the spaced out \"Dreaming on the Event Horizon,\" the gently percussive \"Source\" and the Schulze-lite of \"Running Time\" which seems to holds an impending beat drop at bay throughout. The piano pieces are still lovely in their own way, but their proximity to tracks laden with electronic ear candy can make them sound overly subdued or even dull at first, making one wonder if perhaps putting them on different sides would have been more satisfying.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Evening Thoughts","year":"1991"},"i-could-see-them-in-the-distance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Introspective and thoughtful electronic ambience, with a possible UFO theme given the cover and title. The first side starts and ends with serene piano-driven pieces, the minor key \"Sacred Earth\" and the spacious \"Meditation\". In between are more uptempo progressive electronic pieces with light percussion, the highlight of which is \"3rd Shift\" with an almost funky electric piano. Side two features a 30-minute suite (\"Andogeny\")[sic] which pairs airy synth chords with harpsichord-like melodies in the first half, while the second half is a yearning piano improv with field recordings.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"I Could See Them in the Distance","year":"1990"},"meditations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Meditations","year":"1984"},"night-songs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Night Songs","year":"1986"},"nocturne":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Nocturne","year":"1992"},"rainsongs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rainsongs","year":"1987"},"songs-from-green-earth":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Songs from the Green Earth","year":"1986"},"zietreissen":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Zietreissen","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"John Rose","entry_number":1},"stormlight":{"albums":{"stormlight":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Stormlight","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Stormlight","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":114,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/John-Rose-640.jpg?alt=media&token=43160d12-3882-4f8c-bb45-cee070725719","last_name":"Rose"},"john-selbey":{"artist_name":"John Selbey","body":"John Selbey is a prolific writer who has authored over 30 self-help and spirituality books such as *Kundalini Awakening* (1992) and *Seven Masters, One Path* (2003). Born in 1945, Selbey grew up in California on a cattle ranch before attending college at Princeton in the late '60s. He experimented with LSD and hung out with Alan Watts in San Francisco where he went on to get a doctoral degree in Theology. He studied screenwriting in the '70s and worked as a therapist and counselor before moving to Germany in the '80s. There he met his third wife and produced a 24-book self-therapy library and wrote music to go along with it. After returning to the US in 1988, he put together his only album, *Zen Tunes*, compiling improvised pieces recorded in various cities including Berlin, Freiburg, and Kauai. The cassette is now rare. Selbey maintains a website [here](https://www.johnselby.com/bio).","discography":{"john-selbey":{"albums":{"zen-tunes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Zen Tunes","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":369,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/selbey.jpg?alt=media&token=2f9653ef-dd0f-4021-83de-91c018bd877c","last_name":"Selbey"},"john-wiggins":{"artist_name":"John Wiggins","body":"John Wiggins is an Emmy-winning sound editor and composer who worked for decades at HBO before moving on to launch his own company in 2001. Born in 1951, Wiggins learned guitar and sax in high school and went on to attend the RCA Recording Institute. After that, he got a job writing jingles and began experimenting with Moogs and a Serge synthesizer. He was an early member of the IEMA, occasionally penning how-to articles about analog synthesis for their member newsletter. In 1982, he released his first tape *Tuned Space* which he mostly traded with other electronic musicians in the IEMA circle such as [Ken Moore](/ken-moore), [Emerald Web](/emerald-web) and Dave Vosh. After trying out a variety of sounds on his debut, including some spacier moments, Wiggins narrowed his focus to musique concrete for the follow-up, *Anagenic*, which went on to strong reviews and won \"Tape of the Year\" at *Polyphony*. However, this album and his three others are all in a similar style and hence fall outside the scope of this guide. His final album was the more jazz-influenced *Timbre Maps* which he wasn't happy with and lead to him feeling like he was \"lost.\" He took a hiatus from music for over a decade but returned in 2008 and is still active.","discography":{"john-wiggins":{"albums":{"all-the-truth":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"All the Truth at Once","year":"1986"},"anagenic":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Anagenic","year":"1985"},"the-timbre-Maps":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Timbre Maps","year":"1993"},"tuned-space":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tuned Space","year":"1982"},"whirl-without-end":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"Whirl Without End","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"John Wiggins","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":304,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/john-wiggins.jpeg?alt=media&token=0cb18eb6-67d5-4874-a950-baf107f71eea","last_name":"Wiggins"},"jon-bernoff-marcus-allen":{"artist_name":"Jon Bernoff and Marcus Allen","body":"Jon Bernoff and Marcus Allen were close friends and business partners who bonded over a shared interest in new age philosophy backed with a can-do entrepreneurial spirit. Together, they ran a publishing company with Shakti Gawain starting in 1978 (Whatever Publishing) that had a big hit in Gawain’s *Creative Visualization* and a new age label (Rising Sun) that also saw early success with their improvised album *Breathe*. Using a knack for distribution and marketing, the duo helped propel the label to sales of 100,000 units by the time they sold their label to Narada in 1986 amid a glut of new competition. But during their heyday, their albums, which included solo releases from Allen as well as group efforts with Teja Bell and Dallas Smith, were staples in metaphysical book shops and new age stores. After selling their label, Bernoff moved to Colorado and changed his name to Sky Canyon, leaving the publishing company in Allen's hands, which he renamed New World Library and still runs today.\n\nJon Bernoff was born in 1953 and grew up in Los Angeles. He learned how to play piano, drums, and vibraphone by high school, joining an early incarnation of Craig Hundley's teen jazz trio though he was replaced before the group recorded two albums with World Pacific Records in the late 1960s. He attended UC Santa Cruz briefly before dropping out and heading to Berkeley, California. \n\nMarcus Allen Donicht was born in 1946 in Minnetonka, Minnesota. He came from a musical family, singing in church choir and starting piano lessons when he was five.  He was in rock bands in high school but his main love was drama, going on to be a theater major at the University of Minnesota. After college, Allen joined the experimental Firehouse Theater and followed them from Minneapolis to San Francisco when they relocated there in 1969. However, they ran out of money soon after and Allen began focusing more on music and spirituality, spending the next three years at a Tibetan Center in Berkeley.\n\nBernoff first met Allen at the Living Love Center in Berkeley in late 1974. The Center was created by Ken Keyes, Jr., a quadriplegic self-help author whose *Handbook to Higher Consciousness* was a big seller at the time. Bernoff and Allen led a folk-rock band affiliated with the Center whose lyrics were drawn from Keyes' ideas about personal growth. The group self-released two albums, the first as the Love Band in 1975, which sold well, and another in 1977 under the name Reunion Band and Friends, which sold less well. Allen and member Summer Raven wrote most of the songs, Bernoff played drums and vibes, and Bernoff and Allen arranged. \"We were embarrassed about *Oneness Space*, Allen recalls. \"Ken originally said we were just recording it and that he'd never release it.\"\n\nBetween the two albums, Bernoff, Allen and others in the group left California to be the house band at a club in North Carolina created by one of their friends. However, after nine months, the club burned down, and the group decided to spend their remaining time there recording. After returning to Berkeley in 1977, Allen formed a publishing company and record label with his girlfriend Shakti Gawain called Whatever Publishing to issue a new version of a book they'd written with Bernoff a few years earlier called *Reunion: Tools for Transformation*. The next year, they released two albums of the material recorded in North Carolina, *Seeds: Hymns for a New Age* followed by *Eveningsong* and a book by Gawain. The albums didn't get much traction but Gawain's book, *Creative Visualization* proved popular and would eventually sell millions after being featured on Oprah.\n\nBernoff returned to Berkeley in 1978 after a stint in Los Angeles, where he worked at United Artists and attended business school. Bernoff stepped in to serve as president and publisher of Whatever Publishing, and he and Allen resumed their close musical partnership. One day, Bernoff and Allen were playing together at Bernoff's four-track home studio when they created the album that launched their careers.\n\n\"Mark was on acoustic piano, and I was on electric piano,\" Bernoff recalled. \"I said, let's smoke a joint; if anything interesting happens, I'll hit the record button. We never said one word. We'd play awhile, take a breath and then play more music. That's where the title *Breathe* came from. After it was over, we sat back and said 'We may have something here.' We could not be more naive. We pressed 1000 records, and I said, 'You know Marc, if we can sell a thousand I'll be thrilled.' That was our big vision for new age music.\"\n\nAllen and Bernoff's timing couldn't have been better. New age music was becoming popular, especially in California, and demand was shooting up for new releases. They got good distribution for their album, radio play on *Hearts of Space*, and United Airlines even added the album to their new age channel for in-flight listening called \"Music in the Air.\" With *Breathe* doing well, their label Rising Sun was now a going concern in addition to their publishing company. According to Allen, they would eventually sell 60,000 copies of *Breathe.*\n\nFor their next two releases, Bernoff and Allen brought in more players from their orbit, including sax/flute player Dallas Smith who’d played on the Reunion Band's *Ocean of Love*, and guitarist Teja Bell. These releases mixed improv and composed pieces in contrast to the fully improvised *Breathe*. Allen followed these with two solo piano albums in 1984 and 1985.\n\nBy 1985, the label was financially strained as their was a glut of new artists also competing for distributors, making it harder to get shelf space. Major labels were also entering the fray, putting pressure on the smaller indies who’d previously had the genre to themselves. According to Bernoff, they sold their label Rising Sun to Narada and Bernoff left the publishing company, soon to be renamed New World Library. \n\nBernoff changed his name to Sky Canyon and relocated to Colorado where he focused on consulting work in the publishing industry. It would be 12 years before he returned to making music, releasing a solo album called *Immersion* on CD in 1998. Allen got sober in the early '90s and began focusing more on writing. He'd written two books in the '80s (*Tantra for the West*) and (*Friends and Lovers*), but was more prolific after that, writing many self-help books on business and money such as *Visionary Business* in 1996 and *The Millionaire Course* in 2003.\n\nAllen continues to lecture and write, having authored over 30 books. Gawain passed away in 2018, but Allen remains the president of New World Library. Bernoff continued to work as a business consultant and financial advisor, while also founding Universal Light Technologies in the ‘90s, promoting light as a healing tool. He continues to play music, primarily focused on jazz.\n\n(Source: Author interviews with Marc Allen and Jon Bernoff, 2025)\n","discography":{"jon-bernoff-marcus-allen":{"albums":{"stellar":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Breathe","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Jon Bernoff and Marcus Allen","entry_number":1},"marcus-allen":{"albums":{"quiet-moments":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Quiet Moments","year":"1984"},"solo-flight":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Solo Flight","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Marcus Allen","entry_number":3},"marcus-allen-jon-bernoff-dallas-smith-teja-bell":{"albums":{"petals":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Petals","year":"1981"},"summer-suite":{"image":"","label":"Rising Sun","review":"","title":"Summer Suite","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Marcus Allen, Jon Bernoff, Dallas Smith, Teja Bell","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":420,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bernoff-Allen-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=25a7a74c-45fe-4bf4-a670-c79ef241d144","last_name":"Bernoff"},"jon-denzene":{"artist_name":"Jon Denzene","body":"Jon Denzene was a new age musician based in the small town of Fairmont, Minnesota. He issued two cassettes in the early '90s, with both making extensive use of his own field recordings of nature sounds. His work has recently started to attract interest from tape collectors.\n\nBorn in 1955, Denzene grew up in Albert Lea, Minnesota just a few blocks away from Eddie Cochran's old house.  He was the middle child, with a younger sister and older brother. Both were musical. His brother recruited him to record his garage band with their father's reel-to-reel recorder and Jon had a knack for getting good sound. To his surprise, the tape ended up getting airplay on a local radio station, and that set him on a course for a life in music.\n\nIn high school, Denzene got interested in electronics and tried building his own synthesizer, though he never quite got it to work right. He had better luck with his reel-to-reel recorder though. Most of Denzene's friends in high school were in bands and Denzene became the go-to person to run sound at their shows or record their sessions.\n\nIn the late '70s, Denzene got his first four track and started writing and recording his own material under the name the Torrent. (He would continue to use this name throughout his career, even as members came and went.)  His early incarnation of the Torrent included Jon Kallberg and Charlie Mangskau and that group put out a new wave single in 1983 called \"Dressing up for Jimmy.\" Denzene sent it to out to radio stations and got some limited airplay, but sales were minimal (Denzene still has stock copies).\n\nAfter that, Denzene decided to try becoming a professional audio engineer and enrolled at the Recording Workshop in Ohio in 1987. He then spent some time in Minneapolis trying to network his way into an engineering job, but he ultimately didn't like the big city life. Instead, he settled in Fairmont, Minnesota, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. He got a midi keyboard and drum machine and started working on what would become his first album *Life Waves* in 1990.\n\n\"At that time, I was working at Pizza Hut, \"Denzene said. \"I'd come home and do my music. I was inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Captain Beyond, and Kitaro. I had a Sony DAT Walkman that allowed me to record storms and crickets and other sounds in nature. When I played those over my drum machine, it was greater than the sum of its parts. That gave me the inspiration for *Life Waves*.\" Denzene made about 100 copies of *Life Waves* on cassette and sold them at a local gift shop.  \n\nFor his next album, Denzene got a grant from the McKnight foundation and used the money to pay for studio time to record his second album *Surface Tension*. \"That album really brought everything together,\" Denzene said. This time, he issued more copies: 1,000 CD's and 300 tapes. The album was better circulated than his debut and got airplay on Musical Starstreams and earned a nomination for best new age album from the Minnesota Music Academy. New Age magazine Heartsong Review weighed in as well, writing that the \"…subtle, simple style is pleasing and relaxing.\"\n\nDenzene partnered with sax player Peter Skjervold for his next album, a CD released called *Mist on the Gypsy Moon*. Skjervold had already appeared on a few tracks of *Surface Tension* and Denzene wanted to continue in that direction. However, Denzene ran out of money after recording and mastering, so he only issued demo copies . Next, Denzene started collaborating with Tony Andrea, a musician that he happened to meet at a book store. Denzene helped record and produce some of Andrea's work and the two of them also issued an album together under the title *Improbable Distance* in 2000, so named because of the long distance between the two musician's homes.\n\nAt the same time that he was releasing albums, Denzene was also an amateur bodybuilder. He included a photo of him posing in his press release for *Surface Tension* and has credited bodybuilding as a source of musical inspiration. \n\nDenzene continues to record and produce in his home-based studio, Nimzhead Rush Audio to this day, working on his own nature sound recordings and music, as well as projects for Minnesota artists. He has also worked frequently at a group home for people with disabilities for the last 17 years.","discography":{"jon-denzene":{"albums":{"life-waves":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Coming in at 100 (?!) minutes, this tape represents three years of Denzene's ambient and progressive electronic studio experiments with synth, drum machines, field recordings, and guitar. Some tracks have rhythm to the fore a la Virgil Work Jr. or Wally Badarou, whereas others are more serene soundscapes. There are strong moments here, but his next album was better developed and more cohesive.","title":"Life Waves","year":"1990"},"mist-in-the-gypsy-moon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mist on the Gypsy Moon","year":"1995"},"surface-tension":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Nice mix of field recordings and subtle electronics that creates a calming, unobtrusive mood, broken only by Denzene's shredding guitar solo on \"Beyond This Horizon.\" Elsewhere, it's mostly a series of tasteful, minimal new age synth pieces that could appeal to fans of the Japanese ambient style.","title":"Surface Tension","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Jon Denzene/The Torrent","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":224,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jon-Denzene-640.jpg?alt=media&token=245a6dce-241e-4497-a30b-8957e99e1ad7","last_name":"Denzene"},"jon-iverson":{"artist_name":"Jon Iverson","body":"Jon Iverson was a multi-instrumentalist from Palo Alto who played a head-spinning mix of genres in the '70s and '80s including punk, singer-songwriter, folk, new age, and parody rock with his college-roommate \"Weird\" Al Yankovic. However, he only released one album during this time, the now sought-after new age/folk hybrid *First Collection*. The LP was released on the short-lived Eagle Records, a Windham Hill wannabe label run by Guthrie Thomas. The album only sold a few thousand copies or so, and Iverson moved into the high-end audio equipment business. Iverson and Walters recorded a follow-up but it was never released, though he did return with a new album in 1999 called *Alternesia.*\n\nJon Iverson was born in 1958 and grew up in Palo Alto during the blossoming of hippie and psychedelic culture. His father was an electronic engineer, initially working at Stanford, though he later transitioned into software engineering to stay relevant in Silicon Valley. Iverson's parents often took him to concerts and he started learning classical guitar when he was six years old. By the time Beatlemania took hold in the mid-'60s, Iverson went electric and also joined the school band to learn the trumpet, drums, and eventually keyboards.\n\nAfter high school, Iverson picked up a Teac four track to try recording at home. He attended college at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA, where one of his roommates was \"Weird\" Al Yankovic. They both loved the Dr. Demento radio show and hit on the idea to do parody songs about food, calling their duo Weird Al and Jumpin' Jon. Iverson usually played guitar and Yankovic played accordion and sang.  Iverson recalls, \"We had a parody medley of current hits (Bad Company, Supertramp, Heart, etc), and attempted to make everything about food. That was where 'My Bologna' came from.\" The duo wrote and performed for a couple years before Yankovic moved to LA in the early 80s to make it big. However, they did contribute an original song (under Al's name) to a local compilation called *SLO Grown* in 1978.\n\nIn addition to Yankovic, Iverson collaborated with another college friend, mandolinist Tom Walters. They shared a love for singer/songwriter fare and gigged around campus playing covers of Neil Young, CSN, and Loggins/Messina in the late '70s. The duo contributed a folky blues song called \"Only Three Days\" to the next SLO Grown compilation. \n\nIverson sometimes worked with local drummer Jeff Picket who was also in a prog rock band at the time. At one point, Picket lent Iverson his Minimoog. Iverson, who'd already been a fan of Jean Michel Jarre's spaced out electronic records of the '70s, fell in love with the instrument and started composing his own tunes in a similar style. He later bought a synth of his own, a Prophet 5, and added it to his expanding studio, which now included a borrowed Otari 8 track recorder and a handful of mics.\n\nAround his time, in 1982, Iverson started hosting a radio show on KCBX called \"The Last Jazz Show\" which he'd continue for the next 25 years. He played a lot of artists from the ECM record label, such as Steve Tibbetts, Jon Hassell and Terje Rypdal, along with electronic and experimental sounds from around the world. \n\nIverson doesn't remember the details, but soon after he launched his radio show he met singer/songwriter Guthrie Thomas who was starting an indie label similar to Windham Hill, called Eagle. Guthrie was a cranky, chain-smoking outlaw-type, but he also had good connections and strong ideas about how to capitalize on the growing demand for all things new age. Iverson was hesitant about Guthrie at first, but decided to give his label a try and put together *First Collection*, achieving minor success. The duo recorded a follow up, but decided not to offer it to Guthrie after dissatisfaction with the quality of the vinyl pressings and homogeneous cover designs of all the Eagle releases. The album has remained on the shelf ever since.\n\nDuring this period Iverson had become enthusiastic about audio equipment through all his engineering work, and joined some pals who had a high-end audio shop called Audio Ecstasy in San Luis Obispo, CA. The store was a success, and left him with little time for his own music anymore. Iverson sold his share in the store in 1995 and finally returned to music in 1999 with a new gamelan influenced album called *Alternesia*, released on the M•A record label. Robert Rich, who shared similar influences, mastered the album.\n\nIverson currently lives in Atascadero, California. He is in talks with a few labels about putting out some of his unreleased material from the '80s which will hopefully emerge soon.","discography":{"iverson-and-walters":{"albums":{"first-collection":{"image":"","label":"Eagle","review":"Using such non-EM instruments as mandolin and 12-string guitar, Jon Iverson and Thomas Walters produce a distinctly folk-oriented electronic music, full of exquisite acoustic sonorities along with their lovely digital synthesis. Wonderful job of recording, too. Among the \"thanks to\" listed on the back cover is William Ackerman, which seems appropriate. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":"First Collection","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Iverson and Walters","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":83,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jon-Iverson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=92f4c81c-7709-4c75-ac59-1ef083846d43","last_name":"Iverson"},"jon-scoville":{"artist_name":"Jon Scoville","body":"Jon Scoville primarily composed music for dance performances, often working closely with his wife Tandy Beal’s company.  Producing over 50 scores in his lifetime, his commissions included works for Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis, and the Oakland Ballet. He was also an adjunct professor of dance at the University of Utah from 1988 to 2013. \n\nScoville was born in 1943 and grew up in Connecticut. He attended Yale for a few years before dropping out and eventually moving to California in 1966, where he remained for the rest of his life. His lone cassette release, *Running Man Music*, was made up of compositions for various choreography projects such as “The Bone People,” based on the 1984 novel of the same name, and “Neither Darkness Nor Science,” which was choreographed by his wife Tandy Beal.","discography":{"jon-scoville":{"albums":{"running-man-music":{"image":"","label":"Albert's Bicycle","review":"","title":"Running Man Music","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":430,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jon-scoville-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=42b58567-1889-437e-a45d-78fcaf89bdcf","last_name":"Scoville"},"jon-shore":{"artist_name":"Jon Shore","body":"Jon Shore was a psychotherapist based in Phoenix, Arizona when he issued five cassettes of guided meditations in 1982. For many years he promoted his albums by driving around the country and selling them to small bookstores or at his various workshops and conferences. He initially licensed music from other musicians for his narration, but in the late '80s he got a synthesizer and began recording some instrumental albums which are listed below. \n\nBorn in Dayton, Ohio in 1951, Jon Shore spent his childhood in Minneapolis before moving to Homestead, Florida at 12. His father was a traveling salesman and his mother was a homemaker and former opera singer. In his teens, Shore taught himself guitar and bass and was soon singing and playing in a local cover band.\n\nShore initially attended college at the University of South Florida where he was planning to be a lawyer, but he switched his focus to psychology. \"I was a hippie, into Timothy Leary and Ram Dass, the Beatles and LSD,\" Shore recalled. \"In psychology, the movement was looking at alternatives to Jung. We tried everything to expand our minds: hyper empathy, float tanks.  I had to explore this completely.\"\n\nAfter earning his bachelor's and then a master's degree in Psychology at Goddard College in Vermont, Shore moved to Phoenix and set up a psychotherapy practice in the late '70s. In the early days, he would sometimes make guided meditation tapes for his clients and got such good feedback that he decided to produce some for the general public. Working with musician Frank Smith, Shore recorded guided meditations over Smith's music for five tapes in quick succession starting with *Meditation 1 and 2*. Shore released all five tapes simultaneously in 1982 on his own Light Unlimited label.\n\nTo promote his albums, Shore took a page from his father's playbook. \"I made about 200 copies of each and bought a trailer for my pickup truck,\" Shore said. \"I drove around the United States and looked through the Yellow Pages in each town to find new age bookstores. I'd give them a call and bring in my little cassette player and play it for them. Nine times out of ten, they'd take some. And then I'd be on my way to the next town.\" Eventually, Shore's grassroots approach paid off and larger distributors like New Leaf started selling his tapes too. \n\nWith Shores' tapes in stores all over the country, he set up cassette decks at home and started duplicating them throughout the day and night. He also contributed a guided meditation to Ed Van Fleet, who issued *The Phoenix Tapes* in 1982. Shore mostly spent the next few years promoting those titles, though he didn't make any new recordings as he spent a few years in Colorado where he worked as a ski instructor.\n\nBy 1986, Shore was back in Phoenix and newly married. His parents moved there and opened their own new age bookstore, and Shore was the music buyer. He began putting out guided meditation albums again, licensing music from artists he learned about through the store such as Steven Bergman and Erik Berglund. He also started recording nature sounds on trips all over the US. \"I drove all around America going to National Parks. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to find a quiet place when there are no airplanes,\" Shore said. \"I camped out in the Everglades for days, was up at sunrise on a beach in St. Augustine, Florida, went to the Pacific Northwest, all over.\"\n\nEventually, Shore decided to get a keyboard and create his own music. \"I had no idea how to play the keyboard so I just got books and I read articles,\" Shore said. \"I knew I was never going to play like Kitaro but he was one of my biggest inspirations.  I learned to play what I needed for the background for my guided meditations, which for me, was primarily non-melodic, so that the mind would be focused on the meditation rather than the music.\"\n\nIn another prolific burst of activity, Shore put together a home studio and released three instrumental synth albums in 1988 starting with *To Touch the Light*. He also created the music for *Peace Tape*, a guided meditation. For the next few years, he mainly produced instrumental albums, with his last one *Incan Dream Music* coming out in 1992. However, his first five mediation albums continued to be his best sellers.\n\nIn the '90s, Shore's tape sales started to level off as he focused more on his therapy practice, placing a new focus on patients suffering from depression. By the mid-'90s, Shore also set up a consulting business to provide marketing and business advice to clients. One of his clients had a banking startup and Shore became so interested in the industry that he dreamed up a new company of his own. He spent years learning how to patent his ideas and ultimately created his own system of electronic payments under the name Sentegra.\n\nShore currently lives in Latvia and continues to work as a therapist and business consultant. He maintains a website [here](http://www.jonshore.net).\n\n","discography":{"jon-shore":{"albums":{"concert-for-the-angels":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"Concert for the Angels","year":"1989"},"incan-dream-music":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"Incan Dream Music","year":"1992"},"lullabies-for-the-inner-child":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"Lullabies for the Inner Child","year":"1989"},"stream-tones":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"Stream Tones","year":"1988"},"tibetan-memories":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"Tibetan Memories","year":"1989"},"to-touch-the-light":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"","title":"To Touch the Light","year":"1988"},"wave-tones":{"image":"","label":"Light Unlimited","review":"Extended digital synth meditations with a sentimental quality set against a backdrop of crashing waves. ","title":"Wave Tones","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jon Shore","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":249,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jon-shore-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=62a97e08-ecbd-4656-a529-5ddc22375b66","last_name":"Shore"},"jonathan-goldman":{"artist_name":"Jonathan Goldman","body":"Jonathan Goldman was a musician, author, and entrepreneur who had an epiphany in the early '80s to focus on healing music. Based in Boston, he founded the Spirit Music label in 1979 and released works by [Don Campbell](/don-campbell), [Sam McClellan](/sam-mcclellan), [Sarah Benson](/sarah-benson), David Collett and others, as well as his own music under the pseudonym Lyghte (pronounced \"Light\") and later with his given name.\n\nGoldman was born in 1950 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. His extended family was mostly doctors and lawyers, but young Jonathan was drawn to rock and roll and had different career aspirations in mind. By the age of 15 he was playing lead guitar and vocals with a local rock band. He attended Boston University starting in 1967, where he studied filmmaking.  \n\nAfter graduating in 1971, Goldman played around Boston in two band bands, Salvation Day and Slippery Jack, for a few years before a music pal hooked him up with a DJ job at WHLY in Orlando during the overnight shift. \"I found that I had a real gift for segueing songs,\" Goldman said. \"At that time, WHLY was a soft rock radio station but we could play anything we wanted as long as rhythms weren't too fast. I could play 'Stairway to Heaven' but had to fade about before solo came in. Then I moved from the graveyard shift to primetime drive but it was no fun. They had a regimented list of music and I could only say certain things.\" \n\nGoldman soon returned to Boston where he started a newspaper called *International Times*, but it folded after two months due to stiff competition from other local weekly papers.  Meanwhile, Goldman formed a hard rock band with vocalist Tennie Komar and began playing around the Boston area. In 1979, they released their first 7\" called \"Road Trouble\" on Goldman's newly founded Spirit Music label. At the time, Goldman was going by the stage name Jonathan Shade, and he wrote and produced the single. That was followed by \"Baseball,\" a reggae-influenced track credited to the Silencers which featured Goldman on vocals and guitar. \"That song should have been a huge hit,\" Goldman recalled. \"I loved that song. I remember going in to Fenway Park and dropping off box of 45's. If I was clever I would have left a card, but the woman there probably threw them in the trash.\" \n\nAs a curious aside, most of the catalog numbers for Goldman's '80s releases end with 007. Goldman did this intentionally as a tribute to James Bond. \"I saw the world premiere of *Dr. No* in the Bahamas when I was 12 years old and I became a Sean Connery fan,\" he said.  He even tried writing his own James Bond style novel a few years later that he called *To Love and Die*, starring a James-Bond-like protagonist named John Brant.\n\nGoldman's band put out one final EP called *Future Stories* credited to Tennie Komar and The Silencers. But Goldman's path was about to take a very different course. \"I remember coming onstage during a show in Marshfield, Mass and as I started playing I became aware that the ambience was one of negativity and violence,\" Goldman said. \"I wondered if music can be used to make people feel better. That single thought changed my life. Within a week that thought changed to: I wonder if sound can be used to heal.\"\n\nSoon after, Goldman saw a flyer for a Sarah Benson workshop. He attended the event and had a transformative experience.  Benson was a major influence - he still refers to her as 'The Divine Mother of Sound Healing.' Shortly after that, he had another revelation. \"I was with a woman named Priscilla King, RN, who was a holistic healer,\" Goldman recalled, \"She was the head of the American Holistic Nurse Association and came down from Maine to visit me in Lexington, Massachusetts. I made a pledge that night to pursue uses of sound for healing. The next day I'm awakened by phone call from lawyer who'd been dodging me for six months and now he says 'Congratulations on *Future Stories*!' The album was pick hit of the week in *Billboard*. Because I felt that the energy of the album was not a good vehicle for sound healing, I immediately pulled it off the market.\"\n\nNewly inspired, Goldman started the New England Sound Healers association. Every month he'd bring in people like Kaye Gardner to lecture and the events began to attract a following. The first speaker was Sasha Ambrose and she had recommended the musician Sam McClellan to Goldman. At that time, McClellan was going to nearby Hampshire College where he'd developed music based on the principles of Chinese medicine called *Music of the Five Elements.* Goldman put the album out on his label and it was a surprise hit.\n\n\"I knew nothing about the music business when I started,\" Goldman recalled. \"I called up a distributor, Lloyd Barde, and told him about the album, and not only did he distribute it, he gave me the name of six other distributors too.\" The album went on to sell several thousand copies and remained one of the most popular on Goldman's label throughout the '80s. It has since been reissued by [Séance Centre](https://www.seance-centre.com/sam-mcclellan).\n\nWith *Music of the Five Elements* generating some heat for Goldman, he wanted a follow-up to capture the momentum they'd built. McClellan ultimately delivered two more sequels over the next two years but sales were less robust. Goldman's label was just McClellan at that point, so by 1984 he started adding new artists to the roster and began working on an album of his own.  \n\nGoldman attended Lesley College in Boston starting in 1983 to get a Master's Degree in Sound Healing.  He reached back into thousands of years of research and combined many different systems across various cultures. One of his contributions to the field was the importance of the listener's belief and the musician's intentions when performing their music. \"Frequency + intent = healing,\" Goldman said. \"That may be the phrase I am most well-known for, as well as 'sound plus belief = outcome.' As more research is being done, the more the power of placebo and belief is being validated.\"\n\nDuring a research trip to New York, Goldman met Don Campbell at Weiser's Metaphysical book store and realized they shared an interest in healing music. Goldman soon signed Campbell to Spirit Music and put out his first cassette, *Crystal Meditations*. Campbell would go on to produce three more for the label and while they sold fairly well, he would find much greater success later with his book *The Mozart Effect* and CD's like *Mozart for Babies*. \n\nIn 1984, Goldman put out the first album of his own music, a collaboration with Michael Noll called *Windows of Light*, a guided meditation based on the best-selling book of the same name. The tape sold well, and Goldman followed it with an instrumental version called *Windows of Sound*. \n\nGoldman's next release was with [Laraaji](/laraaji), by then well-known for his association with Brian Eno. Goldman and Laraaji had originally met at a new age conference in the Northeast. They became friends and Goldman invited Laraaji to play at a New England Sound Healers concert. Laraaji stayed at Goldman’s house and the two had an impromptu jam in his basement. Goldman liked the recording so much he released it a few years later as *Celestial Realms*. While Goldman used his real name for production credits, at the time he was using the artist name Jonathan Lyghte. “There was a new age store near me that I used to go to,\" Goldman recalled. “And when I came in they’d say 'Here comes Ligete,' referring to György Ligeti. They were goofing on me. At the time I didn't know who György Ligeti was.  I later found out that he was the person who created the choral sounds that occur in the movie *2001* when astronaut David Bowman goes through the star gate at the end of the film.\"\n\nGoldman went on to put out albums by other friends in the healing music community, such as Sarah Benson and Stephen Winfield, who was then getting his Masters of Education. For his thesis on the adagio tempo, Winfield put together *Crystal Silence*, a sparse and droning album along with Jonathan Coe.\n\nBy 1990, Goldman dropped the name Lyghte and reverted back to his original name. His first release as Jonathan Goldman was the popular *Dolphin Dreams*, and he followed that with over 25 more music recordings in the ensuing decades, rarely pausing to take a break. He put out new albums with Laraaji including *De-Stress* and *Rainbows of Venus.* He won several Visionary Awards over the years, such as a 2017 Gold Award for *Chakra Chants*, one of his best sellers, and he earned a Grammy nomination for his 2004 album *Tibetan Master Chants*. \n\nIn 1992, Goldman put out his first book *Healing Sounds* which was popular in new age book stores throughout the U.S. and the U.K. This helped him get more speaking engagements and lecture opportunities, which quickly became his livelihood.  He went on to write five more books on healing music including *The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing*, *Chakra Frequencies*, and most recently, *The Humming Effect*. He currently lives in Colorado, and his website can be found [here]( https://www.healingsounds.com/).","discography":{"jonathan-goldman":{"albums":{"angel-of-sound":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Angel of Sound","year":"1993"},"gateways-men's-drumming-and-chanting":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Gateways: Men's Drumming and Chanting","year":"1991"},"song-of-saraswati-goddess-music":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Song Of Saraswati: Goddess Of Music","year":"1994"},"trance-tara":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Trance Tara","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Jonathan Goldman","entry_number":4},"laraaji-and-lyghte":{"albums":{"celestial-realms":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"As the title suggests, this music offers a journey to deep space. It consists of two long pieces that produce very different, yet equally altered states of awareness. The first work \"Equinox\" evokes the image of celestial wind chimes. Zither, bells, synthesizer and guitar slowly spin out diverse threads into a dense, vibrant fabric of sound. The resulting musical quality may be compared to the splitting apart of white light as it passes through a crystal. These diverse threads ultimately resolve into a subtle, repetitive and hypnotic melody. \n\nThe second and title piece \"Celestial Realms\" consists of plucked sounds of a sustained, pulsing background, creating a quieter, more intimate musical space. It evokes a natural organic quality like water dripping from a leaf; a simple meditation on nature. Although less interesting than its companion, this piece succeeds in producing a subdued, meditative state of mind, very pleasant even if not celestial. Excellent for relaxation, exploration of altered states, or background for dreaming.\n\nBradford Evans, *Heartsong Review*, No. 4, 1988)\n","title":"Celestial Realms","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Laraaji and Lyghte","entry_number":2},"lyghte":{"albums":{"crystal-resonance":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"Specifically created as an aid for mediation within crystal grid guidelines. Resonating Tibetan gongs, multi-tracked overtone chanting, and some electronics plus bells end choral effects create a very harmonious, inner-space tape.\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Spring 1988)","title":"Crystal Resonance","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Lyghte","entry_number":3},"spirit-sounds":{"albums":{"dolphin-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"Droning voices resonate in the distance while waves crash overhead and dolphins frolic underwater. The collage of noises gets downright bizarre at times, with what sounds like squeaking doors, theremin squiggles, and a moaning woman that might be connected to the childbirth theme here. Or maybe it's just a freaky sounding whale. This one is probably best approached as new age sound art or a technicolor field recording of an underwater ecosystem.","title":"Dolphin Dreams","year":"1990"},"windows-of-sound":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Windows of Sound","year":1984}},"artist_name":"Spirit Sounds","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":177,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jonathan-Goldman-500.jpg?alt=media&token=2c1ff102-becf-4199-b350-a238ad4b9c47","last_name":"Goldman"},"jonn-serrie":{"artist_name":"Jonn Serrie","body":"First coming to prominence as a composer for planetarium soundtracks, Serrie eventually crossed over into the new age and space music market starting with his breakout album *And The Stars Go With You* which was inspired by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He has steadily released new music since the '80s and has also worked as a composer for film, TV, and commercials. \n\nBorn in Waterford, CT in 1953, Serrie started playing classical piano at four, encouraged by his mother who was a concert pianist. Serrie abandoned the piano for guitar when the Beatles came along and spent his teenage years in a series of rock bands in Connecticut. In 1971, Serrie entered Central Connecticut State University, majoring in philosophy with a minor in music.  There Serrie began experimenting with a modular synth called an EML 200 and became so proficient that he got a job doing synth demos at the company's factory after college.  Serrie was continuing to play in rock bands at this time though, and it wasn't until he heard Tangerine Dream's *Phaedra* in 1974 that he knew synthesizer music would be his future.\n\nSerrie began composing works on synth and by 1977 he sold his first piece to a planetarium in Hartford. Hearing his music against the backdrop of space, he felt like he'd found his calling. A year later, the Hayden Planetarium in Boston commissioned a full score from him for one of their shows and Serrie suddenly found himself as a working musician. \"Doing planetarium work was, in all aspects, like heaven for me,\" Serrie said.\n\nSerrie networked extensively with the planetarium crowd, and in 1983 he created a production library that he sold to planetariums all over the US.  Even though his work was mostly heard in planetariums at the time, his work did appear on the early IEMA compilations, including two songs on Volume 1 in 1981, \"Inside/Outside\" on volume 7 in 1985, and two tracks on volume 8. All are exclusive to those releases which are now of course very rare.\n\nIn 1984, Serrie finally released his debut album *Star Moods* on a tiny indie called Future Music. He moved to Atlanta and began working as an in-house composer at a studio, primarily doing commercial work. One of his projects involved composing music for NASA's First Teacher in Space project. When the Challenger tragically exploded with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board, Serrie was so devastated he couldn't touch his instruments for months. He eventually did record an album as a tribute to her called *And the Stars Go With You* with a powerful emotional undercurrent. The Miramar label signed Serrie based on the album and released it to critical and commercial acclaim.\n\nAccording to Serrie, \"The best moment for me came when they built a fantastic memorial planetarium in Christa's hometown. During the dedication ceremony of that place, I got the chance to give Christa's mother and her husband a copy of the *Stars* album. There may be some great moments that happen in my career from this point on, but this was probably the finest of my life.\" \n\nSerrie went on to release many more popular albums with Miramar, staying pretty close to the original style he developed in the '80s. His *Planetary Chronicles* series dusted off some material from his planetarium days, while *Midsummer Century* and  *Ixlandia* were both based on a science fiction story that he wrote. Serrie has remained active since, composing film scores and continuing to license music for planetarium shows.","discography":{"jonn-serrie":{"albums":{"and-the-stars-go-with-you":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"And the Stars Go With You","year":"1987"},"flightpath":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Flightpath","year":"1989"},"ixlandia":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Ixlandia","year":"1995"},"midsummer-century":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Midsummer Century","year":"1993"},"planetary-chronicles-i":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Planetary Chronicles Volume I","year":"1992"},"planetary-chronicles-ii":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Planetary Chronicles Volume II","year":"1994"},"star-moods":{"label":"Future Music","review":"Jonn Serrie, a veteran IEMA member and one of the hottest commercial synthesists in the East, explores rich floating music here on his first \"public\" release. Jonn has been doing space music for planetariums for a number of years and the experience has polished his sound. The music here is quiet and contemplative, but not static. The long chords undulate, shimmer, and gradually change shape. He doesn’t use many distracting effects and there is a lot of emotion here. So many so-called \"spiritual\" recordings of this genre are indeed lacking spirit. Not so, here.  Some of you may recall Jonn’s music from Group Tape #1. His sound has always exemplified detail and nuance, but this release is his best yet.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE*, Fall 1985)\n\nStar Moods was the culmination of Serrie's soundtrack work with planetariums over the previous seven years and it shows his masterful style firmly in place. While a Tangerine Dream influence is evident in some of the more abstract passages, Serrie’s awestruck tone and emotional warmth helped differentiate him from the genre’s more existential originators in Europe. Like Don Robertson, who mined a similar style on his excellent *Starmusic*, Serrie untethered his cosmic explorations from the hypnotic propulsion of the Berlin-school, lifting up the listener through sound into a heavenly, blissed-out zone with no boundaries.\n\nWhile this early release didn’t sell well in the consumer market (and is now sadly very rare), most of the music within was later edited and updated on Serrie’s *Planetary Chronicles* series, though without the narrative vignettes of flight ops communications and sound FX between tracks that cast a nostalgic, 80s sci-fi spell over the proceedings.\n\n(MG, 2026)\n","title":"Star Moods","year":"1984"},"tingri":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Tingri","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":20,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jonn-Serrie-Crop-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2b581a82-a779-49a9-8390-94ce833aa5c5","last_name":"Serrie"},"jordan-de-la-sierra":{"artist_name":"Jordan de la Sierra","body":"Jordan De La Sierra was a musician based in San Francisco who put out one of the early solo piano new age albums *Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose* in 1978. The album grew out of his study with minimalist composer Terry Riley and Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, and can be seen as a bridge between minimalism and new age. While he only released one other album during his career, he nonetheless has a large body of work including performance art, film, and paintings.\n\nBorn Jordan Stenberg in 1947, De La Sierra was raised in the mountain country near Yosemite and grew up intimately connected with nature. He joined the Audubon Society in third grade and fondly recalls hiking and learning about the native flora and fauna. In high school, De La Sierra became an accomplished vocalist and saxophonist and earned a full scholarship to the SF Conservatory of Music in 1966. De La Sierra went on to study music theory and composition in college where he became interested in the work of Terry Riley. In 1969 he joined the school's new music ensemble in a performance of Riley's landmark work *In C*.  \"I had an affinity for his approach to sound, tonality, rhythm and the element of chance that he scored into his structural improvisations,\" De La Sierra said.\n\nDe La Sierra began auditing Riley's classes at nearby Mills college and the two struck up a friendship, sometimes making Indian lemon pickle on the roof of Riley's loft in San Francisco.  Through Riley, De La Sierra met distinguished North Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath (also a teacher at Mills) and began studying with him. He also began a decade-long study of Ayurvedic folk medicine, sound and art with the master water-colorist Harish Johari.\n\nAround 1970, De La Sierra became friends with KPFA music director and fellow composer Charles Amirkhanian, and a year later was invited to perform his own vocal composition live on the air called \"Seahorse, Butterfly, Cuckoo, Bee, Swan, Zebra, Owl.\" The song was an early example of his minimalist approach to music that he calls \"pure sound with shape.\" In the same year (1971), De La Sierra composed and presented his first \"inter-dimensional\" performances at San Francisco's Theatre Artaud.  Designed to impact the participants on many sensory levels, De La Sierra says the best way to describe the events would be a \"dreamscape\" or an \"elemental symphony.\"  The all night performances made a huge impact on those who attended, and were so complex and multi-layered that De La Sierra is currently writing a series of articles about them. The titles of the pieces were  \"A Stitch of Light of Fragrance and the Music and the Sphere\" and \"Music in Waves and Poppies Dance the Light and Sound of Nature.\"\n\nIn November 1974, De La Sierra visited the KPFA station in Berkeley during Stephen Hill's show \"Music from the Hearts of Space.\" There he auditioned a minimalistic piano piece for Hill who decided to air the performance live on his show.  This led to a long friendship between the two, culminating in the recording of De La Sierra's debut album, *Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose* in 1976.  Hill, who financed and recorded the album calls it \"one of the most artistically significant products of the period.\" Hill encouraged Unity Records head Peter Georgi to release the album, which was packaged in a lavish set with two records, a gatefold cover, and a 22 page booklet that articulates De La Sierra's philosophy and ideas. \n\nAfter *Gymnosphere*, De La Sierra got a gig at the Hyatt Regency for six months playing material from the album, but as the decade waned he began putting more effort into his electric music which was in more of a singer/songwriter style influenced by Bob Dylan.   In 1980, he released a single in this new style on Jon Bernoff's Rising Sun records called \"Half in the Middle of the Night.\" The single was intended for demo purposes only and is now very rare. \n\nAlso in 1980, De La Sierra met legendary producer Bob Johnston Sr. who was then living in Marin County. He auditioned some of his songs for Johnston and the two struck up a lifelong friendship. In 1984, De La Sierra produced and staged an elaborate concert called *Sing a Song for Peace* with producer Rachel Lahn that also included Johnston.  De La Sierra wanted to do a concert featuring pacifistic message songs, and he invited Johnston to perform \"It's an Exxon World\" in addition to many originals by De La Sierra including \"Fear is a Dark Force\" and \"Evolution High School Glee Club\" song. \n\nIn 1988, De La Sierra's friend Teja Bell helped him set up a deal with CBS's new age/world imprint Global Pacific to release his only other album, *Valentine Eleven*.  Though its ensemble band and synth dominated sound are quite a departure from his debut, the albums do share a similar sense of symmetry and mantra-like patterns.  Unfortunately, Global Pacific went under after the album's release and without their financing De La Sierra was unable to mount a tour to support it. \n\nAfter that, De La Sierra continued to play some smaller concerts and record his compositions sporadically, but he also began taking on more responsibility at his job, which at that time was managing large-scale landscaping and engineering projects. He continues to write music, poetry, and make art that he sells at galleries in the Fresno area. \n\nDe La Sierra admits that he has faced some setbacks in his life, but he always persevered and stayed focused on his artistic visions. \"Over the course of my life,\" De La Sierra told me, \"I've discovered that a true artist is one who has to sacrifice on a personal level all and everything for the moment to moment chance to create something of lasting human value.\"","discography":{"jordan-de-la-sierra":{"albums":{"gymnosphere":{"image":"","label":"Unity","review":"*Gymnosphere* draws from a deep well of western and eastern classical theory to arrive at something strikingly timeless and profound.  Recorded live to tape in a Berkeley studio on a \"well-tuned\" piano, De La Sierra then took the recordings and replayed them through the Grace Cathedral.  Utilizing the walls of the church as a giant reverberation chamber, he achieved a sense of vast space and spiritual reflection.  \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose","year":"1978"},"valentine-eleven":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"\nValentine Eleven features joyous, electro-symphonic pop songs  with a big world beat. De La Sierra likens it to \"a psychic acoustic  journey into a new frontier.\" The music is sensually rich, the notes hanging like heavy, ripe fruit waiting to be plucked in some hedonists’s version of heaven. This is music to dance to, skate through, actively listen to. \n\n(Patti Jean Birosik, *New Age Music Guide*, 1989)","title":"Valentine Eleven","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":4,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jordan-DeLaSierra.jpg?alt=media&token=4987b2b2-772f-4385-a720-143c981a449c","last_name":"De La Sierra"},"joy-willow":{"artist_name":"Joy Willow","body":"Joy Willow was a vocal teacher based in Sonoma County, California who conducted, composed and performed with various local choirs and self-released one cassette, *Exploring the Cave* in 1992. Unfortunately, she never released anything else as her husband and then mother became ill and she suddenly had no time for musical projects anymore.\n\nJoy Willow spent her early years in Pennsylvania, growing up in Bethlehem and attending college at Moravian. There she studied English and music, expanding on her piano skills from youth and learning the finer points of singing and choral conducting. She then went on to get an M.A in English from Lehigh University, also in Bethlehem.\n\nAfter college, Willow got married and taught English at a local community college for a few years. However, her marriage eventually fell apart and she left for Philadelphia in 1974 at the age of 29 to start over. There she took post graduate music classes at Temple started writing her own compositions. To make extra income, she taught piano and played frequent gigs as a singer/songwriter.\n\nBy the close of the decade, Willow was ready for a change and embarked on a restless period of traveling. \"I was living like a gypsy for three years,\" Willow said. \"I played solo shows all over the US. I'd play at a restaurant three nights a week in one city and then move on. I was between husbands and I was singing my life. I was very inspired by the heroines of the day like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell.\"\n\nAfter her nomadic life grew tiresome, Willow settled in Sebastapol in Northern California by 1982, attracted to the idyllic weather and cultural vitality. Soon after she began giving voice lessons and studying composition with [Allaudin Mathieu](/allaudin-mathieu). She composed several pieces for the Occidental Community Choir who often released annual cassettes of their work. She was later was director of the Sonoma County Peace Chorus as well. \"That was a really creative time,\" Willow said. \n\nBy 1990, Willow started recording her first cassette late at night, using a four track, a water harp and a Korg M1. By then, she had started painting and the two acts of expression became intertwined. \"I was doing these abstract paintings and I realized that is what I wanted to do with sound. I was really inspired by Brian Eno and other ambient composers.\"\n\nWillow pressed 500 copies of *Exploring the Cave* on cassette and sold a few hundred locally. She started to work on  a follow-up but then her husband was diagnosed with cancer. She spent much of the next decade caring for him and then other ill family members including her mother. \"I just had no time for music anymore,\" Willow said. \"I'd teach voice in the afternoon and then after that was focused on care taking and surviving. I dealt with four deaths in about that many years.”\n\nDespite this difficult period, Willow channeled her energies into poetry, painting, and music. She began showing her abstract, nature-inspired paintings in the late '90s and continues to this day. She also published two volumes of poetry, the first *Soma Songs* in 2013. \"I get accused of being all over the place,\" Willow said. \"I have moved 22 times. I have a passion for music, painting and poetry, but my roots are music and that's where I feel I'm the most facile. Right now I'm just doing pure improvisation and that's so satisfying. I'm just following the moment and that's more exciting that writing any piece of music.\"","discography":{"joy-willow":{"albums":{"exploring-the-cave":{"image":"","label":"Turtle Crossing Music","review":"","title":"Exploring the Cave","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":115,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Joy-Willow.jpg?alt=media&token=33d18c6a-92ce-4c4f-b20d-3d87ffa17f01","last_name":"Willow"},"judith-tripp":{"artist_name":"Judith Tripp","body":"Judith Tripp is a flute-player and psychotherapist who released a new age cassette in 1983 called *Windscape*. While music was always a big part of her life, her primary focus was therapy work, especially the Women's Dream Quest workshop, which she held yearly at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco starting in 1987.  There she would sometimes incorporate her flute playing into sessions, using music as a therapeutic and spiritual tool. When she began leading pilgrimages to Avalon with her groups later on, she recorded her first new album in twenty years, a solo flute piece called *Homage* recorded at various sacred sites in England and France. She has also written a book of her teachings called *Circleway, The Story of the Women’s Dream Quest*.\n\nJudith Tripp, née Johnson, was born in 1948 and grew up an only child in San Jose, CA. She started out playing the violin but later took up the flute to join her school marching band.  She attended college at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an ultra-progressive university set among ancient redwoods and contemporary architecture.  She didn't play much music while there, instead focused on getting her degree in sociology and philosophy.\n\nAfter graduation, Judith married Michael Tripp and began working as a special education teacher for the next ten years. She still loved flute music, and even gave birth to her child while listening to [Paul Horn's](/paul-horn) proto-new age classic *Inside*. In 1978, she went back to school at John F. Kennedy University to study transpersonal psychology, a relatively new school of thought at the time that aimed to integrated spirituality in the discipline.\n\nWhile at JFK, Tripp began studying the flute again with a new teacher [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin), and he taught her how to improvise. Coughlin was a Sufi and inspired her to join them for their music and dancing sessions. Towards the end of her schooling, she attended an Association of Transpersonal Psychology conference and saw another flautist named [Larkin](/larkin) who was selling his cassettes and promoting their healing quality. Tripp liked the idea and decided to make her own flute cassette for the next conference.\n\n\"Stephen Coughlin really contributed to making me trust I could play music,\" Tripp said. \"He looked at me and said, 'You know what you’re doing.' He gave me confidence to the *Windscape* album.\"\n\n*Windscape* was recorded in one session, with Tripp, her new partner and later husband, Gil Chasin and Naldo, who played the synthesizer, starting at eight o’clock at night and finishing at four in the morning. Afterwards, she printed 100 copies of the tape with a black and white cover and brought them to the conference to sell.  She also sent a copy to the Hearts of Space radio show where it was played on air and eventually distributed through Lloyd Barde's Backroads catalog where it remained for several years. After the initial run sold out she made a new version with a full color cover.\n\nAfter graduation, Tripp moved on to a new career as a therapist, working primarily with women. She still played the flute in her spare time, but didn’t release any more albums until almost twenty years later. \"I'm really glad I did that tape,\" Tripp said. \"But music was never my major focus.\" However, Tripp was able to integrate music into her therapy work, especially with her Women's Dream Quest workshops at Grace Cathedral where she and 100 women spend the night at the church and participate in psycho-spiritual exercises with art and healing. Since starting those in 1987, Tripp would usually include some time where she played flute for the groups.\n\nAs an extension of Dream Quest, Tripp has  led yearly pilgrimages with her groups to places like Stonehenge in England. She would always play her flute on those trips and had the idea to do a new flute album like Paul Horn, recording her flute solo in a powerful, mystical location. She released this new piece, called *Homage* in 2002. This was followed by two more albums: *Return Again*, featuring the songs of the Women's Dream Quest, and *Bless the Walk*, featuring solo flute and vocals recorded live at Chartres Cathedral during a private labyrinth walk.  Tripp also wrote a book to chronicle 25 years of her work called *Circleway.*\n\nTripp currently lives in California and continues to work as a psychotherapist.","discography":{"judith-tripp":{"albums":{"windscape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Under Berkeley sun these\nvitamin D prism beams becoming\nslow-motion modular drones solid \nas the out-breath of invisible canyons\nwelcoming  this see-through silver flute\ncircular and skeletal while saying silky \na thick threading of her lung’s love\ninto a vast silence swallowing while\na  kalimba like wildflower petals sways \npurple-orange on the horizon ever-receding \nReagan-era reverberations blooming as bottom-end bliss \nwe're mellowing well with the winds ascending\na soft refrain of going home heard \nwalking simply on  the skyward notes.\n\n(Jogen Salzberg, 2020)","title":"Windscape","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":164,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Judith-Tripp-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=a5ac0511-a949-4586-a21b-dbe45149ff6c","last_name":"Tripp"},"julia-haines":{"artist_name":"Julia Haines","body":"Julia Haines is a harp and piano player currently based in Woodstock, NY, though she previously spent time in New Hampshire and Philadelphia as well. She originally moved to Woodstock in the late '70s to study improvisation at the Creative Music Studio where she played with musicians Sue Pilla, Ann Sheldon, Steve Gorn, Glen Velez, David Oliver and Pauline Oliveros as well as collaborating with storyteller Laura Simms. During this period, her group WINDHARP released one cassette called *Wind/Water/Light*. She relocated to Philadelphia in 1985 for a Masters Degree in Music therapy. In 1988 she released her first solo album, *Odyssey.*\n\nHaines, born in 1952, was raised in New Jersey. Her father was a treasurer at an electronics firm and her mother was a musician. She had three older sisters who all played music. She took piano lessons from age 5, learned classical repertoire as well as Broadway tunes, continued through high school and went on to be a music major at Smith College in Northampton, MA. \n\nDuring college, Haines studied Buddhism and began meditating. She also focused on electronic music composition and began making tape music pieces at the studio on campus. Her piece, “Squash”, overdubbing xylobells and recorder in the resonant campus squash court, was included in Jim Metzner’s first *Sound Image* compilation.\n\nAfter college, Haines moved to Hanover, New Hampshire to pursue her work in electronic music. Thanks to the generosity of Jon Appleton, she was able to compose using the Synclavier prototype at the Bregman Electronic Music Studio at Dartmouth College. In exchange, she taught music students the rudiments of using tape machines, Moog Synthesizer and editing techniques. She’d compose in the studio mostly in the middle of the night when the students weren’t scheduled. She composed electronic music there for the next two years, using some of these pieces as the soundtrack for the film “Transformations”, directed by Barbara Hirschfeld. \n\nIn addition to her electronic projects at Dartmouth, she also was introduced to the concept of free improvisation and studied traditional West African Drumming with Abraham Adzinyah.  She bought her first harp around this time, after happening upon one during a trip to Vermont. She hitchhiked back home with it and it soon became her primary instrument.\n\nIn 1977, Haines relocated to Woodstock where she began studying and working at the Creative Music Studio, founded in 1971 by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso and Ornette Coleman. Master classes were taught by guest artists and there were frequent live concerts with an emphasis on improvisation and world music traditions. It was a fertile period for Haines, who honed her improvisation skills, studied with the great kora master musician, Alhaji Bai Konte, and started playing concerts with a newly refurbished Celtic harp. She collaborated with other musicians such as Sue Pilla, David Oliver, Steve Gorn, Glen Velez and Pauline Oliveros. Most notably, she played accordion on Oliveros’ composition, \"Horse Sings From Cloud\" on her 1984 album *The Wanderer.* \n\nHaines maintained a job at the time, working as a music therapist designing programs for people who had been in mental institutions and young people who had suffered trauma. She developed community music programs and engaged the participants to form bands and perform for their communities. \n\nDuring her time in Woodstock, Haines took an interest in the sound the wind made when she played her harp outside. Haines put a pickup on her harp, and began making recordings of the wind playing the instrument. She recorded on Overlook Mountain, at the Ashokan reservoir and the by the ocean. She was introduced by a mutual friend to Hal Willner who was interested in the sound, but both realized it wasn’t commercially viable. During this time she and Sue Pilla, a flautist, formed a duo called WindHarp. They released some of these recordings on a cassette called *WIND/WATER/LIGHT* in 1984, an edition of 500 copies.\n\nIn 1985, Haines received an assistantship for a Masters in Music Therapy at Temple University and moved to Philadelphia. There she worked as a music therapist in a rehabilitation hospital for children with chronic disease and traumatic injury. After that she moved on to a role designing music programs for elementary age children with learning differences. She played solo harp concerts and released her first solo cassette in 1988 called *Odyssey: An Exploration of Afro- Celtic Harp-Fusion*. It was produced by Michael Aharon, again in an edition of 500.\n\nIn the early ‘90s, Haines was commissioned to write a piece, “Sophia”, for the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir. She also receive a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to create an experimental radio project for New American Radio. Titled \"Earth Work:  Voices of the Elders, Voices of Young People,\" the composition featured tape collages of interviews. At the end of the decade she released her second solo album, *Thunder: Perfect Mind*, which was composed after a year-long meditation on the ancient poem found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. \n\nHaines continues to compose new music and maintains a website [here](http://www.juliahaines.com/).\n","discography":{"julia-haines":{"albums":{"odyssey":{"image":"","label":"A.Howl","review":"Fusing elements of Celtic and African traditions, Haines arrives at a similar world fusion sound as early [David Gilden](/david-gilden), another harpist with a similar style (though Gilden plays the kora, an African instrument.) Haines' pristinely recorded lines emphasize melody and feeling over precision, and the moods range from melancholy (\"Ashokan\") to sunny exuberance (\"Make Time.\")  Some pieces, like the excellent \"Do What You Like\" add digital delay and other subtle processing but the harp is always front and center. Haines composed most of the pieces herself, though the tape is very consistent overall. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Odyssey","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Julia Haines","entry_number":2},"windharp":{"albums":{"wind-water-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Wind Water Light","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"WindHarp","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":173,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Julia-Haines-640alt.jpg?alt=media&token=d4b4e959-c1c6-4a43-8d25-bc63e828533f","last_name":"Haines"},"julie-frith":{"artist_name":"Julie Frith","body":"Julie Frith is a musician and artist based in Eureka, CA whose main musical project was the Psyclones which she founded with her husband Brian Ladd in the late ‘70s. The couple first met while Frith was in college at the University of Illinois where she studied music theory and played violin in the orchestra. She carved a more experimental path with the Psyclones, playing a mix of new wave, post-punk, and minimal wave synth music. The couple released most of their musicon cassette via their Ladd-Frith imprint, as well as releases from like-minded artists. In 1990, Julie Frith released *Music for Restaurants*, a solo ambient album which she created for a local Chinese restraint called Samurai, inspired partly by Brian Eno’s *Music for Airports*.","discography":{"julie-frith":{"albums":{"music-for-restaurants":{"image":"","label":"Ladd-Frith","review":"","title":"Music for Restaurants","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":427,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Julie-Frith.jpg?alt=media&token=ee56f1a3-644a-4fdb-87fe-fce619dda027","last_name":"Frith"},"kai-fournies":{"artist_name":"Kai Fournies","body":"Kai Fournies (born Barry Fournies, 1960) produced a little known one-off ambient album in 1996 that he mainly sold to friends in the drumming community or to massage therapists. Prior to that, he'd played bass in a prog band called Travelog in Olympia after attending college at Evergreen State. Fournies, who had problems fitting in and keeping up with peers as a child, was eventually diagnosed with autism later in life. He suspected he was different early on, finding solace in progressive rock, especially the more emotive bands like Happy the Man, Kayak and Camel. During the time of his cassette, Fournies was living in the Bay Area, recently laid off from his job as a computer administrator and with plenty of time to let his long pieces develop organically. Shortly after the release of his tape, Fournies produced another version under the name Kai Jakoma (he would later change his name again to Shinai Jakar).","discography":{"kai-fournies":{"albums":{"almost-as-if-we-belong-here":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Almost As If We Belong Here","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":286,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kai-fournies-crop-640.jpg?alt=media&token=bdb4bc84-a355-47cc-a02e-ce0557f4766b","last_name":"Fournies"},"karma-moffett":{"artist_name":"Karma Moffett","body":"Karma (Richard) Moffett was one of the earliest musicians to popularize Tibetan bowls and bells in the California new age scene.  He was a true bohemian who lived in communes, went to Woodstock, and never wavered from his artistic pursuits.  Although he struggled to make a living at times, he released over 100 albums, successfully ran his own Tibetan shop for 11 years, and produced a deeply resonant body of work.\n\nAlthough Moffett admits he was never a great businessman, he had a strong drive to learn and taught himself many skills over the course of his life. Born in 1946 in Arlington, Virginia, Moffett's first skill was drawing, which he took up at a young age, sometimes selling his drawings at school for 50 cents each. Moffett later taught himself carpentry, sculpture, and other handmade arts. In 1968, Moffett was drafted for the Vietnam war and went to Nahtrang where he drew propaganda for army leaflets that were dropped from helicopters into the small villages there.\n\nAfter getting out of Vietnam in 1969, Moffett moved back to the east coast where he lived communally in various places including Washington D.C. and Maryland.  He began to draw in a surrealist style, supplementing his income doing portraits on boardwalks and at malls. By 1973, he relocated to San Francisco and was homeless for a time, selling his drawings on the street. One day on a whim, he went to Chinatown and bought a bamboo flute. He found that he made better money playing music than making art, so he used his busking money to help fund his art projects.  A year later Moffett settled down into a more domestic life, fathering his first child and becoming a stay-at-home dad. He would go on to have three more children. \n\nAround this time, Moffett met Dorje Lama who ran the Tibet Shop at 1807 Polk St. Moffett worked there off and on for years and it was where he first learned about Himalayan bells. Dorje took a liking to Moffett and gave him a ticket for a \"Black Hat\" ceremony with the 16th Karmapa where Moffett took his Buddhist vows to be kind and compassionate. The Karmapa gave him the name Karma Sherab Dhonden which meant \"Possessor of Meaningful Wisdom.\"\n\nIn 1975, Moffett purchased a Micromoog and a cassette recorder and began recording music daily. Around 1980 he started releasing cassettes of his early work including *The Mystic Sounds of Annapurna* and *Golden Roofs* in tiny, handmade editions. By 1982, Moffett had a better setup at his home to duplicate the tapes, although he continued making them by hand for years.  Dorje sold most of Moffett's tapes at his shop. \n\nIn the mid-'80s, Moffett began his own label, Padma Tapes which he ran throughout the next decade. He released many cassettes of sessions with Tibetan bowls and longhorns, and well as synth-focused tapes like *Chomolhari* and the flute-centric *Kailash*. In 1993, Moffett opened his own shop across the street from his house, calling it the Tibetan Bell Experience Gallery.  There, he gave free concerts three times a week and spent his days making art, music, and jewelry. He often released tapes of his live shows, and his discography became a blur of releases in the '90s that has yet to be fully documented. In 1995, Moffett released *Golden Bowls* on CD which went on to become his best-selling work by his estimation, selling around 5,000 copies.\n\nMoffett was forced to shut down his shop in 2004, but he continued to play live shows and produce art. He is still active as an artist and musician as of 2018.","discography":{"karma-moffett":{"albums":{"1-mystic-sounds-of-annapurna":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Mystic Sounds of Annapurna","year":"1980"},"a-million-years":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"A Million Years","year":"1994"},"airy-fairy":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Airy Fairy","year":"1997"},"andromeda":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Andromeda","year":"1992"},"bardo":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Bardo","year":"1991"},"birds-and-creek":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Birds and Creek","year":"1991"},"birth-of-padma":{"image":"","label":"Tibet Shop","review":"","title":"Birth of Padma","year":"1984"},"boundless":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"Water sounds and tibetan singing bowls - very minimal and meditative. ","title":"Boundless","year":"1994"},"bowls-ocean-beach":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Bowls Ocean Beach","year":"1987"},"bowls-ocean-brook":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Bowls Ocean Brook","year":"1987"},"chomolhari":{"image":"","label":"Tibet Shop","review":"*Chomolhari* is named after a mountain held sacred to Tibetan Buddhists, and as such is rarely climbed, and only then with special permission. With the first side labeled \"The Way To\" and the second side labeled \"The Way From,\" this tape is probably the next best thing to an actual climb - an audio journey with a suitably epic feel that at times recalls the Nightcrawlers or Steve Hillage's *Rainbow Dome Music*.\n\nAs the first piece unfolds, the sounds of fierce wind give way to a bellowing Tibetan horn to announce the beginning of the trek. But instead of Moffett's usual array of bowls and bells, the middle section is a synth-based meditation built on a mid-tempo loop of electronics layered with Moog leads and shimmering arpeggios in a polyrhythmic orgy of sound. This slowly builds to a crescendo before winding down into a gentle hum. The second side follows a similar pattern, ending with the sound of horns, bringing us back to where we began.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Chomolhari","year":"1984"},"copper-harp":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Copper Harp","year":"1991"},"driving":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Driving","year":"1997"},"essence":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Essence Arose From Clouds","year":"1994"},"for-tibet":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"For Tibet","year":"1991"},"free-from-sorrows":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Free From Sorrows","year":"1992"},"golden-bowls":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Golden Bowls","year":"1995"},"golden-compassion":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Golden Compassion","year":"1986"},"golden-roofs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Golden Bowls* features two side-long tracks with layers of Tibetan bowls, droning horns, and field recordings that project ancient visions of misty hillsides. Unlike *Sitting Still Within*, which uses extreme repetition to induce satori, this tape plays out like a psychedelic journey that shifts and evolves, holding your interest and expanding new vistas throughout. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Golden Roofs","year":"1980"},"great-ocean":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Great Ocean","year":"1997"},"himalayan bowls":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Himalayan Bowls","year":"1982"},"himalayan-bell-ceremony":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Himalayan Bell Ceremony","year":"1995"},"himalayan-bells":{"image":"","label":"Tibet Shop","review":"","title":"Himalayan Bells","year":"1983"},"himalayan-bells-ii":{"image":"","label":"Tibet Shop","review":"Two long sides journeying through the ascent, \"The Way to Potala,\" to the descent, \"From the Potala to the World Below,\" accompanied by Bay Area musician Moffett. Authentic and in the spirit of these exquisitie tonalities, Karma delivers his tapes right through our front door, and bestows his kindred music for all to hear. His three tapes (*Sitting Still...* & *Kailash*) make a nice set for touching upon the places within that know the stillness of the east and seek the path that will lead one there.\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Himalayan Bells II","year":"1984"},"himalayan-bells-iii":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Himalayan Bells III","year":"1991"},"kailash":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Kailash","year":"1986"},"karmic-relief":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"A lot of Karma's music is like Color Field paintings, with a seemingly simple veneer that conceals infinite layers of meaning within. Both tracks on *Karmic Relief* are a case in point, with each side-long meditation an exercise in stillness. The songs begin with one key note oscillating and reverberating for 20 minutes with slight textural variation. Soon, a trance takes hold and the music dissipates into your thoughts completely, until you awake much later to the sound of waves and birds to bring you back to the natural world.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Karmic Relief","year":"1993"},"light-wind":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Light Wind","year":"1997"},"longhorns-and-bells":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Longhorns and Bells","year":"1991"},"love-white-sand":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Love/White Sand","year":"1990"},"medicine-buddha-puja":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Medicine Buddha Puja","year":"1991"},"ocean-bowls":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Ocean Bowls","year":"1998"},"ocean-sutro-baths":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"One of Karma's many '90s tapes, *Ocean Sutro Baths* is simply a field recording of the Pacific ocean near the Sutro Baths, with occasional traffic sounds.","title":"Ocean Sutro Baths","year":"1992"},"shambhala":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Shambhala","year":"1997"},"sitting-still-within-sitting-still-without":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"One of Moffett's early successes, *Sitting Still Within Sitting Still Without* is a meditative experience that aims to calm the listener's monkey mind.  The first song, \"Sitting Still Without,\" stretches across the first side with one long, echoed note struck on a Himalayan bowl, repeated over and over while river sounds bubble underneath. Side two's \"Sitting Still Within\" uses the same chiming bowl, though the patterns are less repetitious and embellished with a psychedelic menagerie of bells, rattles, and metallic percussion.  Whereas the first side is calming, this side is more mystical and cerebral, with sounds coming in and out in stereo, much like his even more popular *Himalayan Bells* series soon to come.","title":"Sitting Still Within Sitting Still Without","year":"1982"},"soft-bowls":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Soft Bowls","year":"1993"},"souls-ascending-peace":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Souls Ascending Peace","year":"1987"},"spring-devas":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"Moffett is joined by shamanic vocalist Diana Taressa (a pseudonym for Taressa Bell) on this tape featuring two side-long pieces. Side one is \"Spring Devas,\" a raga like piece with harp, environmental sounds, and Taressa's wordless vocals, which bend and blur notes into mystical shapes. Side two's \"Heart\" has more conventional development and dynamics, with Moffett playing harp and synthesizer alongside Taressa vocalizing in a more ethereal, UK style reminiscent of Elizabeth Fraser or Celia Humphris from Trees.","title":"Spring Devas","year":"1992"},"ten-foot-longhorns-and-tibetan-bells":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Ten Foot Longhorns and Tibetan Bells","year":"1998"},"three-angels":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Three Angels","year":"1991"},"tibetan-bowls-bells-and-cymbals":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Tibetan Bowls, Bells, and Cymbals","year":"1997"},"tibetan-longhorns":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Tibetan Longhorns","year":"1998"},"ufo":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"UFO","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Karma Moffett","entry_number":3},"karma-moffett-and-john-singer":{"albums":{"shaukhachi-bell":{"image":"","label":"Empty Bell Music","review":"","title":"Shakuhachi Bell","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Karma Moffett and John Singer","entry_number":4},"karma-moffett-and-taressa-bell":{"albums":{"bless-all":{"image":"","label":"Padma Tapes","review":"","title":"Bless All","year":"1991"},"camel-walk":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Camel Walk","year":"1991"},"dance-of-the-buffalo":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Dance of the Buffalo","year":"1991"},"darling":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Darling","year":"1994"},"ecstasy":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Ecstasy","year":"1992"},"little-tara":{"image":"","label":"Padma","review":"","title":"Little Tara","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Karma Moffett and Taressa Bell","entry_number":5},"karma-sherab-dhonden":{"albums":{"shangrila-bells":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Shangrila Bells","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Karma Sherab Dhonden","entry_number":2},"stars-window":{"albums":{"shangrila-bells":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Star's Window","year":1979}},"artist_name":"Moffett","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":22,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/karma.jpg?alt=media&token=e55585bd-6c46-4ca3-889d-24fc75c877b4","last_name":"Moffett"},"keith-keeler-walsh":{"artist_name":"Keith Keeler Walsh","body":"Keith Keeler Walsh (1952-1992) was an electronic musician based in New York City. He moved to the area from Florida when he was in his early twenties. Walsh and Stefan Tischler formed the synth duo Port Said in 1981 and quickly earned a good reputation in the underground with a series of minimal synth cassettes. However, they parted ways in 1984 and Walsh began producing solo albums which were well-reviewed in outlets such as *Option* and *Sound Choice*. He also formed a short-lived project called Other Skies with guitarist Anton Tibbe, putting out the cassette *Vistas* in 1986. Walsh launched his own label Great Orm Productions in 1988 with the release *Outward Signs* which seems to be his most widely distributed and is now the easiest to find. He recorded many more cassettes in the late '80s and early '90s such as *Seeking a New Frontier* and *Mode Gemini* and released some of them on CD as well, usually a few years later. However, Walsh died of complications from AIDS in 1992.  Swedish label Multimood released some of these later cassettes on CD after Walsh's death, including *The Age of the Inventor* in 1993 and *Trapped in the Hi-Fi Zone* in 1995.","discography":{"keeler":{"albums":{"Legerdemain":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Legerdemain","year":"1986"},"age-of-the-inventor":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"The Age of the Inventor","year":"1990"},"autofocus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Keeler does great “progressive electronic’ music,  replete with both synthesizers and melodies. The vast  flexibility of the instruments does not get in the way of  creating toetapping music that drags the listener along  through an upbeat journey. I like this stuff more than  most New Age; it proves that instrumental stuff need not  be tedious or insipid. \n\n(Mike Gunderloy, Factsheet Five #28, 1988)","title":"Autofocus","year":"1987"},"mode-gemini":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Mode Gemini","year":"1991"},"out-of-body":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Outward Signs","year":"1988"},"outward-signs":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Out of Body","year":"1988"},"planet-of-lovers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Planet of Lovers","year":"1984"},"playing-field":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Playing Field","year":"1990"},"seeking":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Seeking a New Frontier","year":"1989"},"the-present-link":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Present Link","year":"1987"},"trapped":{"image":"","label":"Great Orm Productions","review":"","title":"Trapped in the Hi-Fi Zone","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Keeler","entry_number":3},"other-skies":{"albums":{"clearing-at-dusk":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Clearing at Dusk","year":"1989"},"vistas":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This music consists chiefly of synthesizers and acoustic guitars, along  with lots of little touches (birdsongs, vocal murmurings, and whatnot). The  overall effect is wonderful. New Age music that isn't sappy or saccharine.  OS is Keith Keeler Walsh and Anton Tibbe, and this is a great argument  for collaborations, music that remains interesting despite the lack of lyrics  and drum kits. A good tape to close the day off with. \n\n(Mike Gunderloy, Factsheet Five #27, 1988) ","title":"Vistas","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Other Skies","entry_number":4},"port-said":{"albums":{"eve-of-departure":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Eve of Departure","year":"1983"},"through-veils":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Through Veils","year":"1982"},"travellers-companion":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Travellers Companion","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Port Said","entry_number":1},"port-said-and-anton-tibbe":{"albums":{"crossings":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Crossings","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Port Said and Anton Tibbe","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":337,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/keeler-500.jpg?alt=media&token=7f6f3642-454c-4095-9e57-0dc56e048fe1","last_name":"Walsh"},"keith-snyder":{"artist_name":"Keith Snyder","body":"Keith Snyder (born 1966) was a production artist based in Los Angeles when he recorded his sole electronic album, *Perseids*, named after the meteor shower. The album drew partly from Snyder's love of chimurenga and Afro-pop music with intricate, interlocking patterns on the first side of the tape, while the second side is more new age and ambient, with some unexpected stylistic shifts. The cassette was a popular seller in the early ‘90s among the Creative Musicians Coalition, a group of tech-savvy electronic music hobbyists that shared resources. However, that group’s footprint was still relatively small and Snyder estimates he sold only a few hundred copies. \n\nSnyder, who was married to an opera singer, relocated to new York in 1996 where he reinvented himself as an author, publishing four mysteries centered around Jason Keltner, an electronic musician from California, based very much on himself. Snyder, who had four children, became too busy to release new music for several decades, though he continues to think of himself as a musician first and writer second. He currently works as a graphic designer in Connecticut.","discography":{"keith-snyder":{"albums":{"perseids":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Perseids","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":428,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/keith-snyder.jpg?alt=media&token=22e4c9bd-82a9-4ef2-8c82-23790eeb5248","last_name":"Snyder"},"ken-clinger":{"artist_name":"Ken Clinger","body":"Like many in the cassette underground of the '80s, Ken Clinger was resolutely anti-commercial, both musically and economically.  To date he's released almost 200 albums, many as collaborations with others and all organized into various catalog numbers depending on the music format and lineup.  Although most of his music is experimental bedroom pop, he has sometimes incorporated ambient sounds into his work, either as album interludes or more deliberate, lengthier compositions like \"Oleh\". (In later years, Clinger often used \"Oleh\" as the B-side of custom made tapes for friends, making a true discography for him practically impossible.) Thankfully for ambient tape collectors, Clinger did release two cassettes in 1990 that just included his long-form ambient work (The *KC Ambient Series*), which are the most relevant for this site and probably the easiest to obtain.\n\nClinger was born in 1953 and was raised in a conservative farm town in Northern Indiana. He was a sensitive kid who often escaped into music such as the Nutcracker Suite as a young boy, and later, the Beatles. He took piano lessons and would occasionally use a reel to reel to record his own compositions or covers of songs he learned by ear. After college, he acquired a synthesizer and started composing more deliberately. He also got more skilled at home recording and would build up homemade studio creations, sometimes incorporating found sound or his friends poetry readings.\n\n\"The recordings were very lo-fi, but I started putting together a tape of what I was doing, at first just for my poet friends, and a few others who found them interesting,\" Clinger recalled. \"Someone mentioned (it must have been around 1983) that there were other people making experimental recordings on cassette, and trading them amongst themselves, and there was a magazine, OP, that was dedicated to it all, where I could find names and addresses of people to trade with. That's how it all really began.\"\n\nThrough OP magazine, Clinger learned about four-track cassette recorders and soon picked one up. Nearly all of his '80s material was recorded on cassette four track, including his occasional side-long ambient pieces.  His first all-ambient cassette was \"Oleh/Contemplation,\" released in 1984. The tape got a positive notice in OP magazine, but Clinger didn't record new ambient material again until 1988.  Most of his pieces would take up one side of a cassette, and were usually paired with a side of his poppier material on his custom made tapes that he traded with others.  Starting in 1990, Clinger began recording ambient material more often, utilizing a new setup with a Mac and a sound module. \n\nClinger has archived much of his earlier material on bandcamp [here](https://kenclinger.bandcamp.com/music). (He encourages users to put $0.00 in the field for payment.) He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA and records and releases music often.","discography":{"jim-oliver":{"albums":{"afternoon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Afternoon","year":"1990"},"contemplation":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Contemplation","year":"1984"},"dance-dream-afternoon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dance Dream/Afternoon","year":"1988"},"etheric-dance-ambient-version":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Etheric Dance (Ambient Version)","year":"1991"},"oleh-contemplation":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Oleh/Contemplation","year":"1984"},"reflecting-pool":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Reflecting Pool","year":"1989"},"shifting-sunday":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Shifting/Sunday","year":"1988"},"spiral-cycles":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spiral Cycles","year":"1988"},"starlight-flow":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Starlight/Flow","year":"1989"},"sunday-soft-sunday":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sunday/Soft Sunday","year":"1990"},"twilight":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Twilight","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":84,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ken-Clinger.jpg?alt=media&token=4a76ac1b-cd8d-43ba-a789-89f859ef2bc7","last_name":"Clinger"},"ken-moore":{"artist_name":"Ken Moore","body":"Electronic music is often a solitary pursuit. To maintain a vital lifeline to fans and fellow artists, many of the early composers relied on an underground network of magazines, cassettes, and radio shows. Ken Moore, a college dropout with a day job as a pinsetter mechanic, was not exactly the archetype in a scene that evolved out of minimalism, musique concrète and other modern classical forms. But for a few years in the early '80s, Moore was instrumental in the success of the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association), curating five compilation tapes that helped promote the organization's artists including [Jonn Serrie](\\jonn-serrie), [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), and [Emerald Web](\\emerald-web). Moore was also a prolific composer himself, although his music is a borderline inclusion for this site, as he focused more on experimental and prog rock sounds over the course of his 20 releases.\n\nMoore was born in Baltimore in 1954 to Lithuanian parents with strong ties to the local church. Moore asked to learn the piano early on and his parents bought him a baby grand to practice. Borrowing a tape recorder from his Dad, Moore began using it to record himself playing the piano and a toy zither, picking out tunes from commercials on the radio.  By the age of 12, Moore switched to organ, which he practiced often at church, trying out the organ's stops and choral effects. \n\nThe serene canvas of Moore's life was torn apart when his father died in 1968. His mother could no longer afford Catholic school and he found himself cast into an unforgiving public school system.  Moore, who had been spending more of his free time playing the organ, was entranced with the hard-rocking organ sound popular at the time. He liked Steppenwolf, Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly, but was particularly enamored with Jon Lord from Deep Purple, learning his solos note for note. After his father's death, Moore sold his piano to buy a portable Lowery organ.\n\nAlong with some friends, Moore formed a band in 1969  called Captain Felix, named after vocalist Mike Gilley's commander in Vietnam. An early version of the band mostly played a mix of prog and hard rock covers, but Moore started to integrate his own compositions in the mix like \"Invitation,” an early staple that later became a favorite of Peter Gulch from the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers). A later version of the band played mostly originals, and were spotted at a battle of the bands audition by a talent scout that led to a recording session. However, the band was dissatisfied with the results and nothing was ever released. After they graduated from high school, the group went their separate ways.\n\nMoore briefly enrolled at the University of Maryland in 1973 where he took a course in Electronic Music. \"That class changed my life,\" Moore said.  The professor played him Steve Reich and John Cage, and Moore recalls being especially dumbfounded by Morton Subotnick's experimental album *Touch,* played entirely on the otherworldly sounding Buchla synth. \n\nInspired by the limitless possibilities of synthesizers, Moore picked up a used MiniMoog and a Teac 2340 tape recorder. \"That deck got a lot of use, I'll tell you,\" Moore laughed. Moore later acquired other gear like a piano, organ, Arp string ensemble and a drum set and dived headlong into home recording. \"I didn't want to appeal to a mass audience,\" Moore said. \"I was never into the status quo.\"  \n\nSome of Moore's earliest recordings were with a rotating cast of friends in the area. The recordings that Moore made of the sessions eventually surfaced on later tapes like *Elixir*, which was drawn from sessions with Larry Jeter and Mark Chance, *Magnificat*, recorded with Chance and Mike Prezioso, and *Our Own Universe*, recorded with Chance and Stuart Rosenzweig. \"A lot happened in the 1970s,\" Moore remembered. \"It seemed a lot longer than it really was.\"\n\nRosenzweig was well plugged into the nascent electronic scene and introduced Moore to a resource called CLEM (Contact List of Electronic Musicians) where Moore learned about the IEMA, a collective of musicians formed by Jim Finch in the late '70s to promote electronic music. Moore signed up to be a member in 1980 and would take on a larger role a year later.\n\nMoore married his first wife around this time and moved from Ellicott City, Maryland to Towson in the Baltimore suburbs. His wife was a music teacher and recognized Moore's talents, pushing him to play live and send out demo tapes.  Moore's tapes were truly DIY, with hand drawn covers and hand written credits. For later versions, he started to photocopy the hand-drawn versions to save time. “I couldn't afford to press a record and no one was going to do it for me,” Moore said. “Tapes were the way to go.”  \n\nTo help sell his first tape, *Frame of Reference*, Moore contacted Archie Patterson in early 1980. At the time, Patterson ran Eurock, the preeminent distribution service for krautrock, space music, and other experimental sounds. Patterson wrote a kind rejection letter to back to Moore, saying that he wasn't accepting \"classical/electronic fusions\" at the time. However, a month later Patterson did accept the more experimental *Tempus Fugit*, which went on to be Moore's all time best seller. \" A lot of people ask me about that one,\" Moore said. \"It's funny, I consider it successful and it really only sold about 70 copies.\"\n\nLater in the year, Moore drove up to New Jersey for a meeting of the IEMA. Finch was busy launching a fanzine for the group and was filling orders late and testing the patience of paying customers. The other members, Lauri Paisley, Don Slepian, and Dave Dillman voted that Moore should take over as music director, curating the popular cassette samplers which featured the music of its members. \"I had established a reputation as an honest vendor with nice duplicating equipment, so I accepted,\" Moore said. \"It was the best thing I ever did!\"\n\nMoore was soon inundated with letters from all over the world. He made many new friends and traded tapes with other artists, building up a small but vital collection from the cassette underground (his collection ultimately ended up in the hands of Frank Maier.) Moore listened to everything that he got in the mail and if he liked it, it usually ended up on one of the samplers. He also made sure to include some of his own tracks too of course.\n\n1981 was a very busy year for Moore. After releasing his first two tapes in 1980, he issued seven more in the following year, starting with the live *Friday the 13th*, the prog/experimental hybrid *Sense of Recreation*, and the aforementioned *Elixir* tape. Eurock wasn't taking any more of his stuff, so Moore connected with Kent Hotchkiss' Aeon distribution in Fort Collins, Colorado for his sixth album, *To Come Into Being*. It sold almost as well as *Tempus Fugit*, ultimately moving about 65 copies. (Moore released a slew of other recordings for the next few years that are too numerous to list.)\n\nWhen returning from a music conference in 1981, Moore was devastated to find that his wife had left him, taking everything with her except the dog and her piano. \"That was a really depressing time for me,\" Moore said. \"Luckily Stuart Rosenzweig showed up after not seeing him for five years. I had a piano and an empty dining room, so we filled it with equipment and recorded every weekend for a month.\" (Many of those tracks were eventually released as *Eccentric Projections*.)\n\nBy 1983, Moore was getting back into rock music again and decided to leave the IEMA. (Finch took over the compilations, releasing Group Tape #7 and #8 before the organization slowly fizzled.)  Moore joined an instrumental band called Kameleon with his old friend Mark Chance plus Wayne Myers and Mark Mulvey . The group added a vocalist in 1985 but disbanded a year later.\n\nMyers and Moore continued to record, eventually putting together enough material for an album called *Reaching Beyond the Sphere*. Steve and Alan Freeman, who ran the experimental cassette label Auricle in the UK, had been corresponding with Moore and offered to release the album. It remains Moore's favorite release. The duo recorded a second album called *Nine Days Wonder* a year later sent it to the Freemans but it got shelved and forgotten for years. They parted in 1988.\n\nMoore married his second and current wife Carol in 1990, and moved most of his gear from the dining room into the basement. He and his family relaxed into a more domestic life. \"I didn't do much music in the '90s,\" Moore said. \"There are so many musicians - it's like grains of sand on the beach. Who am I to stand out in the midst of so many?\"\n\nSometime around 2006, Myers reached out to Alan Freeman and convinced him to finally release the second Moore/Myers album. A little later, Moore started to revisit his back catalog and post his old recordings on Bandcamp which is how Frank Maier, a passionate record collector from Germany, ended up finding and contacting Moore.  Maier ran a label called Vinyl-On-Demand at the time and put together four vinyl retrospectives covering the many phases of his Moore's career.  Moore's bandcamp page can be found [here](https://mooremyers.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"ken-moore":{"albums":{"chess-kingdom":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Chess Kingdom","year":"1986"},"elixir":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Elixir","year":"1981"},"for-the-duration":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"For the Duration","year":"1984"},"frame-of-reference":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Frame of Reference","year":"1980"},"friday-the-13th":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Friday the 13th, 1980","year":"1981"},"il-n'y-a-pas-de-quoi":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Il N'y a Pas De Quoi","year":"1983"},"in-a-pound-of-logic":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"In a Pound of Logic","year":"1983"},"loubi-stem":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Loubi Stem","year":"1981"},"prism-eye-glass":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Prism Eye Glass","year":"1985"},"sense-of-recreation":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Sense of Recreation","year":"1981"},"tempus-fugit":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Tempus Fugit","year":"1980"},"the-first-transfinite-infinity":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"The First Transfinite Infinity","year":"1983"},"the-jupiter-effect":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"The Jupiter Effect","year":"1984"},"the-plaster-anvil":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"The Plaster Anvil","year":"1984"},"to-come-into-being":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"Deep in his electronic music phase of the early '80s, Moore was still at heart a progressive rock composer, favoring restless thematic shifts, dissonance, and experimental methodology. Nevertheless, he knew the appeal of spacier, more ambient sounds and often opened his earlier albums with these more accessible tracks. The title track from *To Come Into Being*, \"Imaginary Expedients\" from *To No Avail*, and \"The Dream in E/C\" from *Tempus Fugit* all lead-off their respective albums with epic trips into the void. \n\nOf Moore's small handful of meditative tracks, \"To Come Into Being\" may be the best, a probing sci-fi floater that echoes the grandeur of early '70s Pink Floyd. The remainder of side one is a more cerebral trip, with Moore crafting a series of treated-percussion pieces that range from the metallic \"Reflections of the Light\" to the more austere \"Radius of Capture\" with Moore striking the strings of a piano with a metal stick. For me the most interesting of these is \"Telephone 13,\" a balaphone duet that sounds like a speed-addled Gamelan performance. \n\nSide two begins with the ominous \"Glass Shapes that Shatter in the Wind.\" In what may have been a first, the instrumentation is a rack of metal hangers that Moore recorded and then manipulated on his recorder.  The final track is the 25 minute \"Svit for 15 Oscillators,\" a krautrock-like collage of moog and organ. With shades of early Cluster or Morton Subotnick, the song traverses an unpredictable path between exploratory improvisation and more rhythmic passages. ","title":"To Come Into Being","year":"1981"},"to-no-avail":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"For listeners interested in ambient or spacier sounds, *To No Avail* is the one to get from Ken Moore. Unfortunately, it’s also hopelessly rare on cassette, with Moore able to name the 10 or 15 people who actually own a copy. Luckily, the second iteration of the cassette can be easily heard on Moore's [bandcamp](https://mooremyers.bandcamp.com/album/to-no-avail) page, or through the Vinyl on Demand reissue from 2015 (also now out of print.)  \n\n\"Imaginary Expedients\" starts off the album with a trancey organ piece that uses delay for a percussive, pulsing effect. Moore punctuates the song with an eerie, almost dreamlike solo and at eight minutes it all feels way too short. I could easily listen to a whole side of this.  Luckily the album features plenty more organ-based tracks in a similar style. This is followed by the title track, a typical Moore experimental piece on the Arp 2600 that doesn't quite register. After a short interlude featuring a backwards kalimba, \"For the Roots of the Dream\" is an excellent mood piece, again on the Lowery organ, that uses a wholetone scale to create a misty backdrop that sounds like an ambient version of something from *Carnival of Souls.* Moore ends the first side with another short piece, \"La Fontaine,\" a sort of post-industrial take on new age that replicates a country stream with the sounds of a lemonade fountain.  \n\nSide two features two songs composed on the Synergy Polyphonic keyboard on loan from [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), \"Experiment D6S\" and \"Intuition or Recognition.\" The digital, chiming sounds don't quite fit Moore's usual aesthetic, but they are pleasant and interesting nonetheless. The latter even radiates a Suzanne-Ciani-like emotional undercurrent rare for Moore, likely inspired by an intense, but short-lived relationship he had at the time.  \"Viscous\" which opens side two, is brooding organ piece which occasionally blossoms into playful arpeggios similar to [Daniel Emmanuel's](/daniel-emmanuel) work on *Rainforest Music.*\n\nThe first run of cassettes originally included some different material side two drawn from his earlier sessions with Stuart Rosenzweig. but Moore soon replaced those with the Synergy tracks. \"I struggled to get away from the depression that the Rosenzweig & Moore material represented and opted to be positive about my music,\" Moore recalled. \"It is also one of my favorites, and the tapes that were released after that one suffered from lack of enthusiasm in both the work put into the recording process, and the promotion of them for distribution.\"","title":"To No Avail","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Ken Moore","entry_number":1},"ken-moore-stuart-rosenzweig":{"albums":{"eccentric-projections":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Eccentric Projections","year":"1981"},"our-own-universe":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Our Own Universe","year":"1981"},"venus":{"image":"","label":"Anvil Creations","review":"","title":"Venus","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Ken Moore and Stuart Rosenzweig","entry_number":2},"moore-myers":{"albums":{"reaching-beyond-the-sphere":{"image":"","label":"Auricle","review":"","title":"Reaching Beyond the Sphere","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Moore and Myers","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":47,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ken-Moore-p-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1b239aad-2daa-4dc9-8041-ac77ac51cdfe","last_name":"Moore"},"ken-wolff":{"artist_name":"Ken Wolff","body":"Ken Wolff was an avid outdoorsman and musician who turned his love of nature into a series of books and new age albums in the early '90s. For many decades he ran a successful pottery business called Stirling Earth Works that sold handmade mugs to gift shops all over the US. After seeing new age tapes sold at these stores, he got the idea to make his own cassettes of electronic music, sometimes accompanied with similarly themed books of short stories and poetry.\n\nBorn in 1947 in San Jose, California, Wolff grew up in El Monte near Los Angeles. He started playing guitar in high school, inspired by a friend who played professionally at country and western bars. Wolff got into surf rock and garage, joining up with the Dirty Shames after they released their single \"I Don't Care/Makin' Love,\" performing with them all over the Los Angeles area until the band got burned out and called it quits.\n\nAfter studying electronics in college, Wolff got a job for the Burroughs Corporation, a large computer manufacturer in Pasadena. However, by 1975 he left that and started his own pottery business, Stirling Earth Works, named after the small mountain community he lived in at the time. At his peak, he was hand making hundreds of mugs a day and firing them himself. He sold his pottery at gift shops all over the west coast and they now turn up regularly on eBay.\n\nIn the mid-'80s, Wolff put some of his pottery money into building a home recording studio complete with digital synths, keyboards, drums, and guitar. From 1991 to 1992 he put out eight albums, sometimes pairing them with books of short stories and poetry. \"I was in the production pottery business and saw an opportunity to sell music to the gift shops I was selling to,\" Wolff recalled. \"Most gift shops sold new age music and I fit in nicely. The books along with the music provided a very nice display.\" \n\nWolff sold his tapes and books for years, but he wasn't interested in playing live or having a traditional music career. Outside of pottery, he mainly spent his time outdoors, riding on horseback in the wilderness or bowhunting elk in Idaho.","discography":{"ken-wolff":{"albums":{"finding-my-eyes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Finding My Eyes","year":"1992"},"indian-symphonies":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"If *Dances With Wolves* was scored by Jandek and the New Creation using the cheapest possible Casio keyboard from Circuit City, you might have something approximating this bizarre album that is out there even by Ken Wolff’s standards. With mumbled female vocals and head-scratching synth arrangements, these songs don’t develop so much as they unspool from Wolff’s unconsciousness. One moment a digital slap bass appears, only to fade a few seconds later into brassy horn blasts and a lone cymbal tap from a drum machine, followed by a deranged flute solo in a different key.  Incredibly strange music fans might love it, but this album is so fried it just might scare the kids straight.\n\n(MG, 2025)","title":"Indian Symphonies","year":"1991"},"losing-society":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Losing Society","year":"1992"},"lost-at-sea":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" One of the more normal-sounding albums in Wolff’s catalog, *Lost at Sea* is symphonic new age with a nautical theme. He maintains a pretty consistent mood throughout, with long stretches of quiet and pensive tracks like “Sleep” and “Messenger” with occasional moments of tension (“The Storm”) and sappiness (“Love on the Seashore\").\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Lost at Sea","year":"1991"},"sounds-like-love":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sounds Like Love","year":"1992"},"the-last-pack":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Last Pack","year":"1991"},"vacation-time":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Vacation Time","year":"1991"},"whale-quest":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Whale Quest*, despite the innocent drawing of a whale fluke on the cover, is a dark and brooding electronic album. A one note riff kicks off the album with an ominous tone, sounding more like a horror soundtrack than say, Jim Nollman or Paul Warner. Wolff peppers in ocean sounds and whale calls throughout, using gliding washes of synths to mimic the dark ocean expanse while occasionally brightening the mood with symphonic passages or brief major key melodies. Still, the overall mood is one of mystery and menace. Despite the dated-sounding digital synths and drum machines and Wolff’s strange, outsider approach to arrangement and composition, this hangs together pretty well as a mood piece if you listen to it as a whole. \n\n(MG, 2023)","title":"Whale Quest","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":266,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ken-wolff-640.jpg?alt=media&token=48a7d13e-f863-4f1b-8cc5-065e11ae2e9f","last_name":"Wolff"},"kenneth-jay-ross":{"artist_name":"Kenneth Jay Ross","body":"When New Age became a huge marketing force in the second half of the '80s, artists from all over the spectrum tried their hands at the genre. Concert pianists, rock musicians, experimental synth composers, folkies, and metaphysical healers all angled for a spot on this speeding train until it sputtered out in the early 90s. Ross had a jazz and classical background, but his first musical foray after college was with Kammer Musik, a no wave band on the fringes of New York's downtown art punk scene. Ross transitioned into composing in a more cinematic, electronic style after that. In 1988 he put out his first album, a limited cassette called *Moon Lagoon*, followed up a year later with a conceptual album about Juana Inés de la Cruz . By the end of the decade, Ross' career as a design director took off and he mostly left music behind.\n\nRoss was born in 1955 and grew up in Great Neck, NY in Long Island just over the border from Queens. His father was a Julliard trained pianist who inspired his son to start playing at an early age. But by the time he was 10, Ross fell under the spell of the Beatles and switched to guitar. He got into jazz and fusion during high school and took his first composing classes where he got a taste for orchestral writing.  Ross went to the University of Michigan where he studied composition with William Bolcom, graduating in 1978.\n\nAfter spending a year backpacking all over Europe, Egypt, and Israel, Ross moved to the East Village neighborhood of New York in late 1979. He loved the area's artistic vitality, still rife with the exploratory sounds of post-punk, no wave, and minimalism. Ross soon formed a band called Kammer Musik with bassist Mitch McNeil and vocalist Karen Geniece, later replaced with Linda Freitag. They recorded an EP called *Scent of Love* with producer Chris Lord-Alge in 1983 on their own Runway label, printing 5000 copies that they mostly gave away to friends or sold locally. After that, Ross formed an alternative pop band called China Davis and the Wild Palms and nearly signed a deal with Elektra but lost out to 10,000 Maniacs.\n\nWith his forays into pop music stalling out, Ross looked for a way to transition into scoring for film. Back in 1980 he'd scored a ballet called “In Our Very Own Zoo: A Parable in Two Acts” for a dance company. Ross continued to record instrumental electronic music through the '80s, and started shopping a demo around in New York looking for work. Nothing much materialized, so he opted to release the best tracks on cassette as *Moon Lagoon* in 1987, pressing up a couple hundred copies. \"I was really influenced by Philip Glass and some of the new age stuff at the time,\" Ross said. \"My intention was to see what happened if I tried something in that style.  But I was always into melody and my work didn't fit neatly within that genre.  That made it interesting to me but it didn't help from a commercial standpoint.\"\n\n*Moon Lagoon* is definitely of a late '80s vintage, using digital synths to create atmospheric and melodic music, much like early David Arkenstone or artists on the Private Music label. Ross reached out to labels to seek distribution, printing up a high quality head shot, but he never sealed a deal. He had already moved on to recording his follow up *Bells of Sor Juana* by this time, releasing it on cassette in 1988. The album again had a thematic feel, with Ross aiming to channel the spirit of Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican scholar and outspoken critic of misogyny and male hypocrisy. \n\nBy the end of the '80s, Ross got a corporate job as an art director and began to spend less time on music.  Ross currently lives in New York and works in front end web design and UX. You can hear some his music on his Soundcloud page [here](https://soundcloud.com/kennyross/sets).","discography":{"kenneth-jay-ross":{"albums":{"bells-of-sor-juana":{"image":"","label":"Runway Productions","review":"","title":"Bells of Sor Juana","year":"1988"},"moon-lagoon":{"image":"","label":"Runway Productions","review":"","title":"Moon Lagoon","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":63,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kenneth-jay-ross-640.jpg?alt=media&token=018129ce-97cd-434d-a8e9-6a6a89ea2865","last_name":"Ross"},"kerry-leimer":{"artist_name":"Kerry Leimer","body":"Kerry Leimer was a graphic artist and musician best known for the Palace of Lights label and his own unique take on ambient music that drew heavily from Brian Eno, but also incorporated elements of post-punk and the avant-garde. His earliest work was introspective and moody, with a painterly quality that made him immediately stand out among his peers. After a few years he began to incorporate more percussive elements into his music, as well as found sound and samples akin to *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts*. He established the Palace of Lights record label in 1979 and had a strong run of releases before taking a long hiatus to focus on his design work in 1983. He has since resurrected the label and is reissuing key releases from the back catalog.\n\nKerry Leimer was originally born in Winnipeg, Canada but his family moved to Seattle in the mid '60s.  In middle school, Leimer met Robert Carlberg and the two bonded over their interest in surrealism, Captain Beefheart and Henry Miller. They played music together briefly under the name Anode, though Leimer split off to do his own work. Influenced strongly by Cluster, Faust and Eno's early work such as *No Pussyfooting*, Leimer began recording with a Micromoog and a tape recorder, honing his sound by the mid '70s. By then, Carlberg started a label called Anode Productions and released Leimer's first two albums (he would also go on to review some of Leimer's later works in *Polyphony*.)\n\nIn 1979, Leimer started Palace of Lights.  In an [interview](http://the-attic.net/features/1549/kerry-leimer-_-the-neo_realist-of-savant.html) with the Attic he described the genesis of the label name: \"The name of the label Palace of Lights derived from countless nights sitting in these little homemade studios, after work, in the dark, peering at all the flashing, steady LED's and meters glowing when things worked and glowering when they didn't. It's actually a somewhat sarcastic name since there's nothing at all palatial about any of it. But I do have regrets about any new age implication - I can think of few forms I find less engaging than new age.\"\n\nTo distribute his releases, Leimer looked towards indies like Rough Trade as a model.  His first Palace of Lights release was the \"Fiction\" single, soon followed by a full-length called *Closed System Potentials* and Marc Barreca's vinyl debut *Twilight.* The title of his debut served as a statement of purpose, both for himself and the label. In the March/April 1983 issue of *OP*, Leimer elaborated: \"My background is in doing pieces that examine very limited sets of possibilities, three or four elements that interrelate. In some musical composition, the structure insists on some kind of radical change at one point or another, to keep people interested. But to me, ‘interest’ would be having five things and seeing how many different ways they can be put together in three minutes.\"\n\nThe following year, Leimer began composing a soundtrack in Miami for Alan Greenberg's 1982 documentary *The Land of Look Behind*. It remains his best selling work. He went on to release several other albums in 1983, including an ensemble project under the name Savant. For that album he used members of the band New Flamingoes as well as Barreca, some of the drummers from *Land of Look Behind*, his wife Dorothy Cross, and John Foster from Op Magazine. Leimer then took modular pieces from the live sessions and assembled the tapes.\n\nLeimer's final release on Palace of Lights was *Installation View*, a collection of unfinished material. After that, Leimer gave up music for a long period to focus on design work. He and his wife started their own company and remained busy for the next few decades. However, Leimer was able to start up his label again in 2002 to issue new music and reissue key releases from the back catalog.\n\nAll of Leimer's releases are now highly collectible and sought after. He currently lives in Maui with his wife.","discography":{"k-leimer":{"albums":{"closed-system-potentials":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"A cross-fertilization of Leimer’s usual Eno-esque tune writing with more conceptual tapework. Simple five-note tunes are slowed down and taken apart, leaving Moog, piano, and guitar chords to drift sleepily in a primordial brine.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, Jan/February 1981)","title":"Closed System Potentials","year":"1980"},"imposed-order":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"Leimer's best record so far. His music is made up of a number of simple ideas layered together to create a whole greater than the sum of the parts. On the first side, this usually involves a fast percussion ostinato with slower-moving synthesizer parts on top--it's Jon Hassell-like, with African and Asian traditional music influences. The second side is slower and dreamier, with much less use of percussion--very Eno-like. In making these comparisons, I don't mean to imply that Leimer's music is derivative or inferior; in fact this is a better record than anything Eno's put out in years.\n\n(Mark Sullivan, *OP* May/June, 1984)\n","title":"Imposed Order","year":"1983"},"installation-view":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"A collection \"comprised primarily of unfinished material or material that served as a point of departure for other pieces,\" the 21 pieces on this one-hour tape range from 8 seconds to 7 1/2 minutes long and date from 1977-1983. There is an overabundance of early material: 13 of the pieces date from 1977-1979, predating Leimer’s first album *Closed System Potentials*. This music tends to be sparser in texture than Leimer’s records, emphasizing synthesizer and piano (with guitars on two pieces). It’s similar to the gentle music on Eno's *Music for Films*. The music from 1980-1983 tends to be thicker-textured, frequently includes percussion, and sounds more \"finished.\" Leimer wisely chose not to program the pieces in chronological order, so packing holds the tape together despite the stylistic and chronological range. An enjoyable tape, though not recommended for newcomers to Leimer’s music; the *Land of Look Behind* album is a better introduction.\n\n(Mark Sullivan, *Option*, March/April 1985)","title":"Installation View","year":"1983"},"land-of-look-behind":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"Leimer departs from the more ambient sound of his earlier releases with *Land of Look Behind*, the soundtrack to Alan Greenberg's film about Jamaica. Many songs are built on skittering rhythms, clavinet riffs and spoken word samples. David Byrne and Brian Eno's *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts* is an obvious influence, with Leimer also drawing from dub and reggae to a lesser extent. Several percussionists guest on the album, including Kevin Hodges and David Keller who would also contribute to Leimer's similar Savant LP a year later.\n\nThe album works well as a whole, conveying a mood of spiritual vitality in the midst of uncertainty and chaos. For me the groove-based tracks like \"Testimony and Honor\" or \"Confusion in Belief\" work best, while more ambient moments like \"Outpost\" or the slow-building drama of \"This Land\" probably work better in the context of a movie than as standalone pieces.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Land of Look Behind","year":"1982"},"music-for-land-and-water":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"","title":"Music for Land and Water","year":"1983"},"natural-history-the-mind-and-its-likeness":{"image":"","label":"Anode","review":"Leimer's first cassette is presented as a pairing of two shorter works, *Natural History*, recorded in 1977, and *The Mind and its Likeness* recorded in 77/78. Though a bit tentative at times, these pieces are concise, yet experimental, like ambient punk haikus. Picture the instrumental tracks from *Another Green World* as performed by Young Marble Giants and you're almost there.\n\nThe embryonic elements of his signature sound are already in place for 1977's *Natural History*: soft-hued synths, minimalist percussion, haunting piano lines, and melodies that insinuate rather than bark. Perhaps the only knock on this is the lo-fi sound quality, with tape hiss nearly overpowering the music at times. But that is a minor quibble. Introspection has never sounded so alluring. \n\nThe sound quality is remedied somewhat on side 2's *The Mind and It's Likeness*, which features a better recording, but a somewhat less cohesive set of tunes. Opener \"Figure Eights\" seems a bit out of place with its forthright bubbliness and \"Ancient of Days\" gets  a little strident (for Leimer anyway), but these soon give way to four tracks of sublime beauty, especially the aptly titled \"Diminish\" and the sci-fi dreamscape \"Ground to Ground.\"\n\nListening to this tape and his even better follow-up, I'm amazed that more people didn't try to emulate this sound at the time. Perhaps this sort of bonsai-like music chooses you rather than the other way around. Either way, both of his tapes from 1979 are highly recommended for genre fans. And if you can't find it, check out the double LP compilation *A Period of Review* from 2014 which contains a few of these tracks.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Natural History/The Mind and Its Likeness","year":"1979"},"translucent-memory":{"image":"","label":"Anode","review":"After a few tentative steps on his mysterious and moody debut, Leimer delivers a masterful follow-up in *Translucent/Memory*. Sonically the tools are similar: hushed melodies, minimalist piano, probing basslines and atmospheric synth clouds, but every tune here is great, and for me just as good as anything Brian Eno did in his prime.\n\nPart of what makes this such a unique listen is the kaleidoscopic influences at play, whether it's the Byrds-ian jangle of the hazy \"Kirlian\", the post-punk bass lines on \"Sleep\" or the Raincoats-like innocence of \"Porcelain.\" This needs a reissue on vinyl ASAP. Easily one of my favorites in the US ambient field.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Translucent / Memory","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"K. Leimer","entry_number":1},"savant":{"albums":{"the-neo-realist-at-risk":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"Side one gets off to a slow start. The omnipresent string synthesizer and the clavinet give the music a fusion sound at times, but it’s still nice - very understated, with mysterious blips, pops, and noises appearing suddenly from amid the repeating drum and synthesizer patterns and then disappearing. The best piece on this side is the title song, which features a stop-and-go funk beat with rap vocal and unidentifiable atmospheric sounds on top. But the really good stuff is on side two. Almost all percussion (natural and synthetic) with some taped and other strange sounds thrown in for good measure, this side is 24 minutes or so of structured/unstructured sound. Some of it is so loopy and off-beat that I kept checking my turntable to see if the record was skipping! In addition to lots of metallics, the instruments on this side include \"plastic,\" \"wood,\" \"clay,\" and \"hollow object\" as well as more common instruments, played uncommonly.\n\nDave Mandl, *OP*,  July/August 1983)","title":"The Neo-Realist at Risk","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Savant","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":106,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/k-leimer-600-9.jpg?alt=media&token=d4f9bb7f-e27b-497e-a448-413ea8ae1468","last_name":"Leimer"},"kevin-braheny":{"artist_name":"Kevin Braheny","body":"Kevin Braheny was in the right place at the right time to become a major figure in early ambient music - California, the mid-'70s - but he never quite got the same recognition as peers like [Michael Stearns](/Michael-stearns) or [Steve Roach](/Steve-roach). Braheny had amazing technical skills with the Serge synthesizer, an early modular synth known for a steep learning curve and almost unlimited possibilities. He also had a deep well of musical talent and an enthusiastic backer in the influential radio host Stephen Hill. But Braheny may have ultimately lacked the competitive instinct required for more mainstream success. Still, his small body of work has plenty of fans, and is worth exploring for ambient listeners.\n\nBraheny was born into an Irish Catholic family in 1952 and raised in Chicago. He took up the piano at the age of five and went to school for music composition at Vandercook. He majored in woodwinds there, learning the oboe, saxophone, flute, and other wind instruments. After college, he began experimenting with an EML Electro Comp synthesizer, inspired by Walter Carlos' *Switched On Bach.*\n\nIn 1975, he moved out to Los Angeles, where his older brother John Braheny was living at the time.  The elder Braheny had released a rock album in 1968 that failed to connect with an audience, but he ultimately found success with a non-profit called the Los Angeles Songwriters Showcase. The organization helped aspiring artists in the music business and later grew to include conferences and a monthly magazine called Musepaper.  John helped open doors for his brother quickly upon arriving in LA, with Kevin soon able to pick up work scoring industrial films, commercials, and soundtracks. Braheny recalls his first paid gig soundtracking an Allergan Laboratories commercial about contact lenses.\n\nOne of his early mentors in L.A. was Malcolm Cecil, a British jazz bassist and early adopter of analogue synthesizers.  Together with Robert Margouleff, the two formed the experimental electronic band Tonto's Expanding Head Band, playing a huge synth called the TONTO.  Braheny helped Cecil out with the synth and also joined Cecil on his producing work to learn about audio engineering. Through Cecil, Braheny met Serge Tcherepnin who had invented his own synth called the Serge Modular. Braheny loved the instrument and developed his own giant version that he called the Mighty Serge.\n\nDuring his time in LA, Braheny began attending movement meditation classes at the Continuum studio where he met Michael Stearns and soon began creating music for classes there too.  Stearns later used Braheny's Serge on his early album *Planetary Unfolding.*\n\nIn 1978, Braheny recorded a long composition called \"Perelandra\" that he sent to Stephen Hill on a cassette.  Hill played the album on his Hearts of Space radio show for years and wrote about it in his 1981 book, *Music from the Hearts of Space*.  Hill, exasperated that Braheny never released it commercially, eventually formed his Hearts of Space label in part to release *Perelandra* in 1984.\n\nBraheny's first commercially produced work was recorded live on Stephen Hill's radio show in 1980. Fittingly titled *Lullaby for the Hearts of Space*, much of the music was hastily programmed on Braheny's synth moments before it aired.  \"If I remember correctly, the KPFA studio was pretty bare bones with just an exposed light bulb hanging and I had a hard time getting inspired there. Frustrated, I ripped all my patch cords out of the synth and put something together in 30 minutes before I was set to go on the air.\"  The slowly rippling song was meant to lull listeners to sleep as they neared the end of a marathon fundraising session.\n\nBraheny paired \"Lullaby\" with a track called \"After I Said Goodnight,\" done live at the Continuum studio and released his first album. He got some interest from distributors and was able to sell about 2,000 copies by his estimation.\n\nBraheny stayed busy with soundtrack and studio work in the early '80s, engineering electronic music for *The Right Stuff* and *Genocide* among other movies.  He often played live shows at the Comeback Inn in Venice and it was there that Steve Roach first approached him about collaborating. The two worked on a set of contemplative space music that they debuted at a show in Santa Monica, but it was never released.  They would later work together on several studio albums.\n\nIn 1984, Braheney would finally release his early composition \"Perelandra\" through Stephen Hill's Hearts of Space label. Since Hill needed something for Side 2, Braheny included a new composition called \"The Way Home.\"  Four years later, Braheny returned with *Galaxies*, a soundtrack he composed for the Hansen planetarium in Salt Lake City, and in 1990 he put out *Secret Rooms*. He also continued to collaborate with Roach and others on additional albums such as *Dreamtime Return*, *Desert Solitaire* and *Western Spaces*. \n\nIn 1992, Braheny became very ill and began backing away from the music business to focus on healing work and Tantra, as well as working with sexual abuse survivors. He moved to the San Francisco area in 1993, where he has been since. Braheny continued to compose, and though he did release two albums with Tim Clark, most of his work from this period was never released.  Braheny is going through the backlog now to release some of the music from this period.","discography":{"kevin-braheny":{"albums":{"galaxies":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Galaxies","year":"1988"},"lullaby-for-the-hearts-of-space":{"image":"","label":"Heartcall","review":"","title":"Lullaby for the Hearts of Space","year":"1980"},"perelandra":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Perelandra","year":"1984"},"secret-rooms":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Secret Rooms","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Kevin Braheny","entry_number":1},"kevin-braheny-and-tim-clark":{"albums":{"rain":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Rain","year":"1995"},"the-spell":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"The Spell","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Kevin Braheny and Tim Clark","entry_number":4},"steve-roach-kevin-braheny-richard-burmer":{"albums":{"western-spaces":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communication","review":"When three masters of meditative electronic music come together--sometimes singly, sometimes in duets, sometimes all three--the result has to be more varied than any one of them alone. *Western Spaces* does not disappoint. It's full of ravishing digital textures in billowy intermissions from the real world.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, May 1987)","title":"Western Spaces","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer","entry_number":2},"steve-roach-michael-stearns-kevin-braheny":{"albums":{"desert-solitaire":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Desert Solitaire","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, and Kevin Braheny","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":37,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/braheny.jpg?alt=media&token=cef5bd86-8fa5-459b-9601-2db45a07b8a7","last_name":"Braheny"},"kevin-keller":{"artist_name":"Kevin Keller","body":"Kevin Keller (b. 1967), is an electronic musician from San Diego who found early success with his 1993 ambient album *The Mask of Memory* which was championed by Stephen Hill and helped kick off a successful career writing scores for film, television, dance and planetariums. Most of his work falls outside the timeline of this site, but Keller's earliest cassette-only release, *Cavestones* was pressed in a small edition of 100 copies and is now collectible. Keller himself has disowned the album as derivative of Steve Roach and Robert Rich; he doesn't even mention it in his [bio](https://www.kevinkeller.com/bio).","discography":{"kevin-keller":{"albums":{"cavestones":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cavestones","year":"1991"},"intermezzo":{"image":"","label":"Zebra Music","review":"","title":"Intermezzo","year":"1995"},"the-mask-of-memory":{"image":"","label":"Zebra Music","review":"","title":"The Mask of Memory","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":341,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kellertemp.jpeg?alt=media&token=f65098da-6934-4d65-bfa3-7af4e208f972","last_name":"Keller"},"kevin-slick":{"artist_name":"Kevin Slick","body":"Based in State College, Pennsylvania, Kevin Slick released over twenty solo tapes in the '80s and early '90s that drew from a wide variety of influences including Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Robyn Hitchcock, Brian Eno, and Beethoven. (He kept his instrumental and ambient work separate from the rest, and those are cataloged below). Slick's tapes were usually aimed at the underground, though his best-selling album was a commission from Elly Leduc who created a video for infant massage using Slick's music.\n\nKevin Slick was born in 1958 and grew up in State College, Pennsylvania where his father was an electrical engineer at Penn State. The family didn't play any musical instruments but everyone sang. Kevin's father built stereos for a hobby and the family always had a lot of records. He listened to the radio all the time. After seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Kevin got a guitar and started making up his own songs. Soon he was recording them on a reel-to-reel or just making sound collages of birds and cars.\n\nSlick attended Penn State for college, earning a degree in art education. However, after graduation Slick ended up finding a job in radio where he worked for the next 10 years. He started out as an on-air deejay, moving to writing and producing commercials and a post-game show for Penn State football.\n\nIn college, Slick was in a variety of bands, mostly playing folk, bluegrass and old-time music. However, he also liked progressive rock and took an interest in ambient music after hearing Brian Eno's *Music for Airports*. In the early '80s, Slick got a Tascam recorder and began making music at home. \"Suddenly cassettes were the dominant form of albums,\" Slick remembered. \"I realized, I can put out a cassette myself. I can get j-cards printed and it kind of looks the same as the latest release by Dire Straits or Van Halen. Everyone had the capability to make their music and put it out there.\"\n\nSlick entered a prolific period starting in 1986, issuing several cassettes a year with a wide range of styles including rock, blues, folk, country, new age, and various hybrids of each. One of his earliest self-released tapes *Tap Dancing in the Middle Ages* scored a good review in St. Louis magazine *Jet Lag*, with the writer Brad Bradberry calling it \"one of my favorites in a long time.\" This would prove to be the first in a long line of reviews for Slick's tapes in underground magazines such as *Option*, *Sound Choice*, *Gajoob* and *Factsheet Five*. At one point, Slick worked as a music reviewer himself, contributing reviews to *Sound Choice* and *Jet Lag*.\n\nFrom 1987 to 1990, Slick released six tapes of instrumental music that fall somewhere between ambient and new age. After an initial 30 minute entrée into ambient work with *Songs From Solid Years*, Slick was recruited by friend Kevin Dremel to record a song for a child massage organization. \"They asked me to make a version of 'the Bengali Lullaby' at exactly 100 bpm,\" Slick recalled. \"Kevin sang it and I played the music. They liked the result and asked me to make an album they could sell at workshops.\" The resulting tape, *Lullaby Music* ended up selling very well, the best of Slick's career.\n\nSlick would later take one of the songs from *Lullaby Music* and expand it further, leading to *Lost Bells of Earth*. \"I liked that song and wanted to create more in that style,\" Slick said. *Lost Bells* earned strong reviews, with *Inside News of St. Louis* calling it \"beautiful.\" He issued other similar releases including *Gallery* and *The Farthest Shore*, both in 1990.\n\nIn addition to his many solo releases, Slick formed a band with his friend Mike Biddison in 1988 called Neo Pseudo, named after the musical hair-splitting he commonly encountered from music reviewers. \"Our name for it was tribal-folk-rock-jazz,\" Slick said. By 1991, Neo Pseudo had become a popular local live act in Philadelphia and the group was able to make a living from music for the next four years. They played CBGB's and put out nine albums on cassette or CD, but by 1995 the band stopped playing and recording as members moved to various parts of the country.\n\nSlick's next move was to put his college degree to work and he became an elementary teacher. He taught for six years and then moved to New York to teach as part of a reading and writing project at Columbia University. However, the job was too high stress for him and he ultimately decided to relocate to Boulder, Colorado and become an art teacher.\n\nThese days, Slick plays music for silent movies on DVD and performs with a bluegrass band. He also serves as the president of the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. Recently, Slick has made many of his old cassettes available to stream online at Bandcamp and [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/kevin-slick/sets/ambient-music) where you can check out some of his ambient releases.\n","discography":{"ed-nardi-and-kevin-slick":{"albums":{"phoenix-suite":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"Phoenix Suite","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Ed Nardi and Kevin Slick","entry_number":2},"kevin-slick":{"albums":{"gallery":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"Gallery","year":"1990"},"lullaby-music":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"Lullaby Music","year":"1988"},"songs-from-solid-years":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"Songs From Solid Years","year":"1987"},"the-farthest-shore":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"The Farthest Shore","year":"1990"},"the-lost-bells-of-earth":{"image":"","label":"Nu Vu Du","review":"","title":"The Lost Bells of Earth","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Kevin Slick","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":248,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kevin-slick-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0fe4ce33-b081-42ed-8901-105d7310f874","last_name":"Slick"},"kia-portafekas":{"artist_name":"Kia Portafekas","body":"Kia Portafekas is a musician, teacher, author and composer based in New York. She got her start in the minimal synth trio Anomy who put out one 7\" in 1981 before disbanding.  After that she embarked on a solo career inspired by new age and art rock, issuing the cassette *Ki'tai* in 1987 and then the CD *Kia* in 1992. Both got good reviews and some airplay at the time, but suffered from poor distribution. The Anomy 7\" has recently become collectible and interest in *Ki-Tai* is also on the rise. \n\nBorn in 1959, Portafekas grew up in the Bronx. She started out wanting to be a dancer but eventually transitioned to playing music. She took courses at the Mannes School of Music and earned a BA in music at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, in 1982. \n\nAfter graduating college, Kia started a synth band called Anomy with her sister Elany Portafekas and Linde Herman. All three played synthesizers. The band played in the New York area and put out one single on Michael Pollack’s Inner Landscapes label, though they reissued it on their own label the next year. After that, Kia went solo and produced a cassette called *Ki’Tai* in 1987 that was recommended in Heartsong Review, but wasn't well distributed nationally. Looking back, Portafekas cited influences including Kitaro, Windham Hill, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Andreas Vollenweider, Kraftwerk, and David Bowie, whose \"TVC25\" her earlier band had covered.\n\nKia returned five years later with her CD *Kia* in 1992  which garnered some radio play in the northeast and showcased a more polished and jazzy downtempo sound. While she was working on her music, Kia worked jobs in the restaurant industry and as an executive assistant for Time and Life magazine. so worked as an executive assistant at Time magazine. However, she eventually pivoted to become a music teacher full time, working with kids. \n\nIn 2001, Portafekas wrote a book called *Making Music With Your Child* geared towards parents and teachers regardless of musical knowledge. This book was published by MMB music, funded in part by a grant from NARAS. She also created a compilation CD of songs by her students called *Kia's Kids*. Kia is still active as a musician and teacher and maintains a website (https://www.musickia.com/).","discography":{"kia-portafekas":{"albums":{"ki-tai":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Much of this music speaks to the listener of the gentler side of nature. Hearing it from the heart, one can readily imagine some of the earth's small peaceful patterns. All the songs are instrumentals, most evoking some very nice imagery; the soft patter of a gentle rain shower is easily envisioned listening to the first selection, \"Synthea.\" And \"Frogs in Session\" is certainly an apt title for that mellow lily pond symphony. The entire second side, title \"Chakra\" is music designed to awaken the seven energy centers of the body by relating each to one of the keynotes of the musical scale. Chanting in rhythm is recommended to facilitate this.\n\nKia plays the synthesizers on this tape with smooth, simple grace. She also plays the bassoon and does percussion as well. A nicely applied flute enlivens and subtly enriches some pieces. In general, the music is peaceful without being lifeless or dull.\n\nAlthough the transitions in mood can seem a tad abrupt, this album is one that improves with every listening. Recommended as relaxing background for working, driving, and unwinding.\n\n(Jonathan Chandler, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, Spring/Summer 1988)\n","title":"Ki’tai","year":"1987"},"kia":{"image":"","label":"Kiamusic","review":"A jazzy and powerful listening experience, with lots of great diverse sound that all intertangles into a feat of fun. \"Kids on the Shobango\" has an Afro backcountry sound with gentle simple chanting, and an earthy feeling. \"Astra\" soars peacefully into synth outerspace with slow and deep beauty. Kia's compositional genius and keyboard finesse shines in \"Socrates\" with a light melody stretching beautiful fingers into the listeners' imagination. Jazzy and energetic, \"Monk on the Moon\" embodies great mysteries with a ponderous, heavy sound pumping toward crescendos of beauty and emotion. Full of discordant striving, \"Hitar\" is unusual; searching, touching parts of the listener's soul that long to be unearthed and reformed. Searingly sweet \"Mornings\" awakens us to calm reveries with pattering percussion and bright flute. Closing the album, \"Songs of the Heart\" is a delightful romp with bright percussion and wonderful jazz main melody. In this and other pieces, there is a somewhat abrupt, mechanical feel to the synth, like music for marionettes; it has it's own charm.\n\nKia's imagination reigns free, exploring many possibilities. It all holds together as an album because it's all fine and fresh, fiercely beautiful. Here's a great album for driving, partying, movement, picnicking, romping about doing housework.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* No. 13, Fall 92/ Winter 93)\n","title":"Kia","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":198,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Kia-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=12b935f0-0dc7-419f-b197-883c428ca9cd","last_name":"Portafekas"},"kip-kevin-setchko":{"artist_name":"Kip Kevin Setchko","body":"Kip Kevin Setchko (later Bodhi Setchko) is a composer whose flute and synth-based cassettes fit in well with the Northern California new age movement of the ‘80s. His breakout album was 1986’s *Cloud Etchings*  which combined meditative flute with Tibetan bowls and sold well at the time. Setchko also guested on albums by contemporaries like [Erik Berglund](/erik-berglund) and [Aeoliah](/aeoliah), and in 1987 formed a group project called Crystal Wind that played a more commercial smooth jazz sound. That group released two albums before breaking up in 1992. Kip eventually changed his name to Bodhi and continued to record throughout the ensuring decades.\n\nBorn Kip Setchko in Boston, 1953, his family moved west to Seattle when he was one year old and then settled in Berkeley in the ‘60s. His father was a minister, spiritual seeker and a free spirit while his mom was raising five kids in the suburbs. He started learning the accordion and piano at nine and also got into trumpet which he studied for eight years. But when a friend sold him a flute for five dollars, Setchko was hooked and practiced the instrument for three hours a day. By high school he was studying with Indian flute master G. S. Sachdev. In 1970, Setchko went Boston to study at the Berklee School of Music for a while, but didn't finish.\n\nHe returned the Bay Area and continued to study the flute with a teacher from the San Francisco Symphony while also playing in folk bands. He eventually went back to school at Sonoma State where he got a degree in Art and Jazz and Pop music. \"I was classically trained and can play Bach and Debussy, but I was a dilettante classical musician,\" Setchko said. \"I was more into improvisational flute. My whole vision was to play the silver flute like the shakuhachi and create my own sound.\"\n\nSetchko graduated from college in 1978 and began working as an elementary school music teacher for the next five years. During the summers he worked as a river guide on white water rafting trips in Idaho and Colorado. Setchko, who had been a nature lover since childhood, would row the boat and help set up camp along the way. Of course he also found time to play his flute and guitar. In 1980, Setchko released his first album *Born to Sing*, a collection of folky singer/songwriter material with backing from musicians including Kirk Harwood, Kit Newkirk, [Eddie Guthman](/eddie-guthman), Warren Dennis,  Daniel Jones, Pablo Rodriguez and Suzanne Bonnen. The album was on his own label, Lazy River records, aptly named after his river guide experiences.\n\nIn 1982, Setchko went back to school at Sonoma State to get a second degree in music engineering so he could learn how to record his own music. While there he learned about computer music and the Buchla synthesizer, incorporating both into his music. He recorded his second album *Flutronics* on a four track machine, with one side featuring a synthesizer piece and the other focused on flute.  Since his sound had changed a lot, he created a new label name for his releases, Crystal Wind. \n\nHis next cassette *Moon Waves* in 1983 followed a similar format. However, Setchko soon decided to make the flute his signature instrument and created a new compilation called *Ocean Whispers* that combined the two flute pieces from his prior cassettes. He sold a few thousand of this title. Setchko initially sold his tapes on consignment at book stores and gift shops, but in 1984 he appeared on Aeoliah’s *Light of Tao* album and started to get more recognition worldwide. He also recorded some tracks with Erik Berglund, the new age harpist.\n\nFor his next tape, Setchko worked with Janet Bray, a Sonoma County Tibetan bowl and gong player on *Cloud Etchings* which would go on to be his best selling album of the ‘80s. Setchko composed the music in tune with the Tibetan bowls and improvised the flute parts across the four extended pieces. \"Making that album was a meditative experience out in the hills of western California,\" Setchko said. \"I created a signature sound, playing my flute into a nine foot Steinway with the sustain pedal down. It has the magic of sustained strings – there is a 'Sonic Frosting' on the sound.\"\n\nThe album was a hit with the new age crowd and sales picked up quickly. New Dimensions radio, bookstores and yoga studios played it and distributors like Backroads , New Leaf, Willow, and Narada (Music Design) helped get it in stores. Setchko recalled: \"In the late 80’s, I played a lot of churches, psychology conferences and the International Shaman's conference. Whenever I played flute with Janet on the bowls and bells, we'd sell a good number of cassettes. It was successful run in the music business.\"\n\nAfter that, Setchko formed a band with Eddie Guthman, Paul Rodriguez, and Robin Zickel called Crystal Wind. The sound was more commercial than his previous work, a mix of smooth jazz and new age with a debt to the Paul Winter consort, Andreas Vollenveider and Shadowfax. The albums sold well and the band toured for five years. Their first release *Inner Traveler* sold 30,000 copies and the 1992 follow-up *Cafe Tropique* sold 20,000.\n\nDuring the '90s, the money dried up a bit as some distributors went under and others consolidated. Setchko continue to teach, play music, work as a river guide and released many albums that fall outside the scope of this site. One noteworthy album was his tribute to Paul Horn's landmark *Inside* album where Horn played flute inside the Taj Mahal; for his version, Setchko recorded a flute piece inside a military bunker and titled it *Inside* in honor of Horn.\n\nSetchko currently lives in Northern California and is the music director at the Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living. He also works as a teacher and sound healer.","discography":{"kevin-kip-setchko":{"albums":{"distance":{"image":"","label":"Crystal Wind","review":"","title":"Ocean Whispers","year":"1986"},"locale":{"image":"","label":"Crystal Wind","review":"Fine flute music combined with Tibetan bells and nature sounds, carrying the listener on a floating journey into relaxation. From Sonoma, and well done!\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Cloud Etchings (with Janet Bray)","year":"1986"},"synesthesia":{"image":"","label":"Crystal Wind","review":"","title":"Moon Waves","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Kevin Kip Setchko","entry_number":2},"kip-setchko":{"albums":{"upright":{"image":"","label":"Crystal Wind","review":"","title":"Flutronics","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Kip Setchko","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":111,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Kip-Setchko-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d529ca81-2d50-4370-a526-3a061ea61c67","last_name":"Setchko"},"kit-walker":{"artist_name":"Kit Walker","body":"Kit Walker was a part of the shift from meditative new age to more rhythmic and jazzy sounds that drew on fusion and prog in the late-'80s. He produced two albums for Windham Hill that exemplify this style, though prior to that he released a solo piano album on Fortuna and collaborated with flutist Schawkie Roth on *Golden Flowers*. \n\nBorn in 1951, Walker grew up on a dairy farm in Amherst, New Hampshire. He played piano and pipe organ throughout high school but only lasted a year studying music at the Oberlin Conservatory and then at the University of Michigan where he felt too confined by conservatory dogma. He returned to Boston where he got into rock and prog-rock, but eventually took an interest in Osho in the late '70s and that changed his trajectory.\n\n\"One thing I liked about Osho is that his meditations were danceable,\" Walker said. \"I went out to India and played music in the ashram, and then moved to Marin because it was a center of spiritual music.\" There, Walker met Ethan Edgecomb who ran Fortuna Records and ended up getting a job in the warehouse. Edgecomb heard an album of piano instrumentals that Walker was working on and put that out under the title Wind Follows the Tiger in 1983. The following year Walker appeared on his friend Schawkie Roth's album Golden Flowers.\n\nAfter that, Walker shifted his sound in the direction of [Mark Isham](/mark-isham) and Patrick O'Hearn. Andy Narell from Windham Hill heard some of his music and ended up signing him to the label for Dancing on the Edge of the World. \n\n\"I originally recorded *Dancing on the Edge of the World* by myself but Andy Narell wanted to put live players on it so we rerecorded it,\" Walker said. \"This was before smooth jazz really got started but then that album ended up getting a lot of regular rotation on the Wave,\" a station that soon synonymous with smooth jazz.\n\nWalker put out a second album on Windham Hill, but they dropped him before he could do a third. Walker continued to record throughout the '90s, including working with vocalist [Suresha Hill](/suresha-hill), a fellow Rajneesh follower, on her album *Oceanic* in 1993. He later went on to produce several volumes of Beatles piano instrumentals, but these and others are outside the scope of this guide. Today, he lives in Uruguay. His website can be found [here]( https://www.kitwalker.com).","discography":{"andy-shapiro":{"albums":{"journey":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Dancing on the Edge of the World","year":"1987"},"thoughts-and-harmony":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Fire in the Lake","year":"1989"},"tiger":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Wind Follows the Tiger","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"schawkie-roth-and-kit-walker":{"albums":{"golden-flowers":{"label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Golden Flowers","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Schawkie Roth and Kit Walker","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":386,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kit-walker-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=a56fe29e-db86-4a84-af39-f8299863bc13","last_name":"Walker"},"la-wendt":{"artist_name":"L.A. Wendt","body":"Based in Chicago, Lawrence Wendt was a classically trained composer who mixed acoustic instrumentation and field recordings for a series of releases in the late 80s.  Prior to that, he'd released the more electronic *Rainbow Centering*, recorded for an EST seminar, but he was unhappy with that and decided to compose for flutes, winds, and other \"real\" instruments, hence the name \"Real Music\" for his label. His final release *Embrace the Wind* earned some positive notices in *Heartsong Review* and *Option*, with writer Ken Egbert calling the latter \"pretty damn gorgeous.\" Wendt and his wife Catherine, who helped run the label, released a CD compilation of the three cassettes called *Quiet Times*, but this would prove to be their last as their IT consulting business had begun to take off by then and Wendt had less time to devote to music.\n\nLawrence Wendt was born in 1960 and grew up in the Chicago suburbs. He gravitated to music early, learning the French horn and playing in a rock band in junior high. (\"We did a cover of 'Sweet Emotion' by Aerosmith and I played accordion with an organ built in,\" he laughed. \"You work with what you got.\") His band often played gigs at weddings, and this was how he met his future wife Catherine who sang with the band.\n\nWendt graduated from high school early in 1977 and went on to earn a degree in music at Northern Illinois. However, he realized he would never become a professional French horn player and decided to go back to school and get a graduate degree in math and physics.\n\nIn the early-'80s, Wendt took an interest in EST and met instructor Jeff Paige who was looking for music for a seminar. Wendt offered to compose some new age music in exchange for a free class, resulting in his first cassette, *Rainbow Centering* which Paige sold for years afterward.\n\nInspired by the interest in *Rainbow Centering*, Wendt decided to start his own label and make a different form of ambient music. \"I hated *Rainbow Centering*,\" Wendt admits. \"I didn't like electronic music, so I named my label Real Music. I wanted to do albums with acoustic instrumentation and real sounds. I enjoyed collecting ambient sounds in nature that I added to the music.\" \n\nWendt's wife handled the business side of the operation and helped sell 5,000 copies of their debut *Forest Song* on cassette. \"We knocked on doors,\" Wendt said. The distribution was done by us personally.\" *Forest Song* was built around field recordings of the forest, and Wendt used a strong thematic unity on his next two cassettes as well, *Mountain Soliloquy* and *Embrace the Wind*. Wendt says he's the most proud of the latter and it earned good reviews at the time.\n\nBy the early '90s, Wendt's career started to take off. In 1986 he'd started an IT consulting business with his wife, and it was starting to grow, requiring them to hire more employees.  \"The income from computer consulting vastly outpaced the music income,\" Wendt said. \"And at the time, we also had two young kids, so I just had less time for music at that point.\"","discography":{"la-wendt":{"albums":{"embrace":{"image":"","label":"RealMusic","review":"","title":"Embrace the Wind","year":"1989"},"forest-song":{"image":"","label":"RealMusic","review":"","title":"Forest Song","year":"1988"},"mountain":{"image":"","label":"RealMusic","review":"","title":"Mountain Soliloquy","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"LA Wendt","entry_number":2},"la-wendt-jeff-paige":{"albums":{"rainbow-centering":{"image":"","label":"RealMusic","review":"","title":"Rainbow Centering","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Jeff Paige and L.A. Wendt","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":356,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/la-wendt-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d2b4634d-2d22-4024-b4be-ffa9a85cdd12","last_name":"Wendt"},"laraaji":{"artist_name":"Laraaji","body":"Laraaji is one of the most beloved and well-known figures in ambient music, first coming to prominence when Brian Eno discovered him playing his zither (actually a modified auto-harp) on the streets of New York. Before that, he was known as Edward Larry Gordon and spent nearly a decade working as a comedian and actor before pivoting to meditative sounds in the '70s.  Much of his work has been reissued in the past ten years on labels like Numero Group, All Saints, and Leaving Records. He'a also recorded new works for Warp Records and collaborated with contemporary artists such as Sun Araw and Blues Control.\n\nBorn Edward Larry Gordon Jr. in Philadelphia in 1943, Laraaji was raised in a strict household alongside two younger brothers. His father was a tailor and his mother was a registered nurse who often sang around the house. Laraaji first started playing the piano and violin in elementary school and stuck with it. He was a good student (sometimes even a \"teacher's pet\" he recalls) and was active in choir, the school band, and in theater. He recalls listening to Fats Domino and Little Richard, and enjoying the piano work of Oscar Peterson, André Previn and even Liberace.\n\nLaraaji attended Howard University in Washington D.C. on a scholarship and studied music theory and composition. He often practiced piano for five hours a day, though he admits half of the time was spent jamming with friends in more R&B and jazz styles. However, after four years in school, Laraaji decided to drop out and move to New York. During a previous summer, he'd had a successful comedy gig and decided to see if he could make it in New York as an entertainer. He got a good agent and landed roles for commercials and small plays. One of his longest lasting gigs was working as an MC at the Apollo theater from 1966 to 1972. He also landed a role in the mainstream movie *Putney Swope*, but it would be one of his last.\n\nAt a poetry reading in Harlem, Laraaji heard a pastor condemning *Putney Swope* and he started to have second thoughts about his career choice. He recalled the incident in an interview for [Red Bull Music Academy](http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/04/laraaji-interview) saying, \"How do you determine what you want to do in the mass media? Do you want to go for money and fame? Do you really want to take up a psychological, spiritual position? These questions came very strong for me. That's when I said, 'I want to investigate meditation.' The movie-acting business triggered my interest in knowing more about my internal, spiritual self.\"\n\nIn the mid '70s, Laraaji was playing electric piano in a jazz-funk band, as well some guitar on the side.  One day, he was selling his guitar at a pawn shop and he heard a voice telling him to get an autoharp instead. He took an unorthodox approach to the instrument, giving it an open tuning and playing it with small sticks to create a zither-like texture.  Living in Park Slope and working at a coffee house, he spent his free time perfecting his unusual style, busking on the sidewalks in Brooklyn and Manhattan with his zither hooked up to an amp and electronic effects. \n\n\"The music I was playing on sidewalks became attractive to people who were forming meditation centers or conducting yoga centers,\" Laraaji said. \"And they would invite me to exchange my music for classes and lectures. That's what opened me up even further. Over the years I studied with Patricia Sun, Ram Dass, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and Muktananda. I spent a lot of time at the Ananda ashram in upstate New York.\"\n\nAround this time, a lawyer named Stuart White heard Laraaji and offered to release an album which became his debut *Celestial Vibration* in 1978. The LP was issued on White's SWN label, and wouldn't be well distributed until a few years later when Vital Body Distribution took over. Laraaji started to release his own cassettes not long after, starting with *Lotus Collage* which he says he stills gets mail about today. \n\nOn *Celestial Vibration*, Laraaji was still going by the name Edward, but he adopted a new name the following year.  Some fellow members of the Tree of Life spiritual community suggested he try the name \"Laraaji\". The name, which is a portmanteau of his middle name and last initial, and with subtle references to hieroglyphics and sanskrit, appealed to him right away. \"The name was meant to represent devotion and respect for the divine nature of the sun,\" Laraaji said.\n\nBy the time Brian Eno encountered Laraaji playing in Washington Square Park, he was already a poorly kept secret in the New York area. But the album they recorded together would expose Laraaji's music to an international audience. The album appeared as the third in Eno's ambient series, and featured Laraaji's zither music supplemented with Eno's Eventide effects.  The album didn't lead to any deals with larger labels, but Laraaji continued to release cassettes on his own and others through smaller labels like Third Ear and Spirit Music. Many of these tapes were issued in small editions and were nearly impossible to find for decades until they started to get reissued more recently by labels like Leaving Records.\n\n\"I didn't start touring out of the local area until 1985,\" Laraaji said. \"At that point I started going south to Washington D.C., North Carolina, and eventually out to California. Around the late 1980s, Brian Eno's label Opal sponsored a tour of artists on his label and we went to Europe, Japan and the Canary Islands. We'd each play a set and then jam together.\"\n\nAfter his album with Eno, Laraaji put out two other higher profile albums in the mid-'80s. The first was with [Jonathan Goldman](/jonathan-goldman) on his Spirit Sounds label, growing out of some jam sessions the two had before a festival in Massachusetts. The other album was a one-off with Larry Fast's well-funded Audion label in 1987 called *Essence/Universe.* By then, Laraaji was treating his zither sounds so heavily that it sounded almost like a synthesizer. Both of these albums have been reissued recently.\n\nLaraaji continued to play and record in the ensuing years and has many releases beyond the scope of this guide, including a recent album recorded for British label Warp Records. Laraaji remains dedicated to music and his following is perhaps larger than it has ever been.","discography":{"edward-larry-gordon":{"albums":{"celestial-vibration":{"image":"","label":"SWN","review":"","title":"Celestial Vibration","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Edward Larry Gordon","entry_number":1},"laraaji":{"albums":{"ambient-3":{"image":"","label":"Editions EG","review":"","title":"Ambient 3","year":"1980"},"essence-universe":{"image":"","label":"Audion","review":"This LP contains two tracks that employ an apparently identical method: Laraaji improvises on his zither for about a half an hour, and Richard Ashman electronically shapes the melodious sound as light reflecting in undulating banks of mist and liquid. There's almost no means to identify any individual moment within each track; they are always changing, and always the same. Yet neither piece ever feels redundant or less than engaging. The overall effect is enigmatically mesmerizing. There is a strong sense of comfort and love evoked which is sustained throughout. The sound is never cloying, but simply natural and inevitable. \n\n(Paul M. Stout, 2014)","title":"Essence/Universe","year":"1987"},"flow-goes-the-universe":{"image":"","label":"All Saints","review":"","title":"Flow Goes the Universe","year":"1992"},"i-am-ocean":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"I am Ocean","year":"1981"},"lotus-collage":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lotus Collage","year":"1979"},"om-navah-shivaya":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Om Navah Shivaya","year":"1984"},"once-upon-a-zither":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Once Upon a Zither","year":"1986"},"one-all-loving-one":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"One All Loving One","year":"1985"},"open-sky":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Open Sky","year":"1985"},"rhythm-n-bliss":{"image":"","label":"Third Ear","review":"","title":"Rhythm N Bliss","year":"1982"},"sol":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sol","year":"1987"},"unicorns-in-paradise":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"90-minute Casio and zither bliss out, with plenty of delay and echo. While his later work tends to be more focused, these improvisations have a nonlinear, subconscious quality that makes for a more cerebral listening experience akin to something like Daniel Emmanuel.","title":"Unicorns in Paradise","year":"1981"},"urban-saint":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Urban Saint","year":"1987"},"vision-songs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Vision Songs","year":"1984"},"white-light-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Ethereal solo zither meditations. \"Peace\" on Side A has a mysterious quality, while \"Contemplation\" on Side B is more serene and dreamy.","title":"White Light Music","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Laraaji","entry_number":2},"laraaji-and-lyghte":{"albums":{"celestial-realms":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"As the title suggests, this music offers a journey to deep space. It consists of two long pieces that produce very different, yet equally altered states of awareness. The first work \"Equinox\" evokes the image of celestial wind chimes. Zither, bells, synthesizer and guitar slowly spin out diverse threads into a dense, vibrant fabric of sound. The resulting musical quality may be compared to the splitting apart of white light as it passes through a crystal. These diverse threads ultimately resolve into a subtle, repetitive and hypnotic melody. \n\nThe second and title piece \"Celestial Realms\" consists of plucked sounds of a sustained, pulsing background, creating a quieter, more intimate musical space. It evokes a natural organic quality like water dripping from a leaf; a simple meditation on nature. Although less interesting than its companion, this piece succeeds in producing a subdued, meditative state of mind, very pleasant even if not celestial. Excellent for relaxation, exploration of altered states, or background for dreaming.\n\nBradford Evans, *Heartsong Review*, No. 4, 1988)\n","title":"Celestial Realms","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Laraaji and Lyghte","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":24,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Laraaji-in-the-park.jpg?alt=media&token=db3e3885-7048-486f-8980-433d46ef3877","last_name":"Laraaji"},"larkin":{"artist_name":"Larkin","body":"Larkin is one of the better known new age flautists who released many cassettes in the '80s included his best seller *O'Cean*. He has long been  interested in the healing properties of sound, which emerged from a dark current of pain and trauma in his early life.\n\nLarkin's early childhood was relatively peaceful. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1948, Larkin grew up going to Church every Sunday where he fell in love with singing in choirs.  His mom played piano and his father loved jazz, and Larkin took up the accordion at the age of six. The family moved to Midland, Texas and later to Southern California when he was 12 and Larkin abandoned music for awhile and became a surfer. \n\nEverything changed at the age of 16 when Larkin's mother passed away, leaving him with an increasingly alcoholic father. \"He was never wrong,\" Larkin recalled. \"Especially when he had two martinis in him.\" At college at UC Santa Barbara, Larkin decided to take up the flute and found that music was a great way to moderate the pain. \"I lived in fear and flute music became my emotional language,\" Larkin said. \n\nAs a philosophy and religious studies major in college, Larkin spent a lot of time in deep thought about his place in the universe. He read many life changing books like *I Thou* by Martin Buber and *The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light* by William Irwin Thompson. But the real turning point for Larkin was the Esalen institute, where he attended a two week retreat in 1977, with one week spent in a seven day meditation with a Korean Zen Master. \"I came back totally open to spiritual energy and I did a lot of therapy to integrate the insights gained at Esalen.\"\n\nLarkin began playing his meditative flute improvisations at local coffee houses in the Palo Alto area around this time and found that his fans craved a physical release. He created a label called Wind Sung Sounds and self-released his first album, *Essence of a Candle* by pre-selling the album to fans.  Stephen Hill played *Essence of a Candle* on Hearts of Space, helping to raise awareness for Larkin in the new age scene in Northern California.  He also got a regular gig around this time at a San Diego psychology conference where he often sold out of his tapes.\n\nLarkin followed up his debut with the cassette only *Concert Journey* which was recorded live at his shows in the California are. The album didn't sell well, but Larkin soon followed it up with the biggest album of his career.\n\nWhile in Los Angeles for a mind/body conference, Larkin met kindred spirits [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) and his then wife Susan Harper. At the time the two were collaborating on their movement meditation practice which combined dancing and ambient music, often performed by Stearns on his Serge synthesizer.  Larkin also played flute sometimes for Susan's dancing and the trio decided to record an album with Stearns playing a drone on the synthesizer. The resulting album *O'cean* was a big hit, selling tens of thousands of copies in its first few years.\n\nThat album helped attract the interest of Narada, and label head John Morey flew Larkin out to his hometown of Milwaukee and set up a deal.  However, according to Larkin, Morey made some promises he didn't keep that ultimately lead Larkin to declare bankruptcy in 1985. Narada retained the rights to his first four albums except for *Moments Empowered* from 1983 which they didn't own. \n\nDespite his woes with Narada, Larkin remembers the time period fondly for the music he produced and the concerts he played. From 1983 to 1986 he performed concerts on three continents and in 15 countries. After parting ways with Narada, Larkin recorded his 1988 album *Blossoms in a Storm* in Boxmeer, Holland in a 300 year old cloister.  \n\nLarkin's musical output slowed greatly after that, and he and his wife decided to leave the US to get a fresh start in Mexico where they taught sustainable agriculture.  They also collaborated on a children's album called *To Catch a Falling Star* before his wife passed away. Since then, he has released two more albums, *Stairway to Emptiness*, dedicated to His Holiness the Dali Llama, and *Inside the Astoria Column,* another location-specific recording in the vein of his earlier *Blossoms* and of course Paul Horn's trendsetting *Inside the Taj Mahal.* \n\nLarkin still performs solo flute concerts and now lives in Washington.","discography":{"larkin":{"albums":{"blossom-in-a-storm":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Blossom in a Storm","year":"1988"},"concert-journey":{"image":"","label":"Wind Sung Sounds","review":"","title":"Concert Journey","year":"1979"},"moments-empowered":{"image":"","label":"Wind Sung Sounds","review":"\nThe disciplined, immaculate playing of Larkin makes this album a delight. His flute playing is flawless, as in \"From a Distance,\" with now deep, now flying upward into the light. There are vibrators of unearthly beauty, trilling to challenge the songbird (song birdsong is included in the background).\n\n\"Two Souls Dance\" is a viscerally vital audio trip provided by Serge synthesizer that really lifts and takes the listener away to higher places, where flutes duel beautifully for the listener's attention. This throbbingly alive piece suggests that an appropriate part of wholeness is the dance of love between man and woman. A unique number, \"Brothers' is a hearty vocal, all sun acapella, a celebration of universal brotherhood. Its simplicity, originally of concept and musical goodness are a welcome change of theme.\n\nThe songs are long enough to \"get into,\" a nice plus. Larkin is well named, with the musical soul of a bird…this is a consistently lovely, listenable, inspiring album, a good companion for any relaxing pastime.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* No. 7,  Fall 89/Winter 90)\n","title":"Moments Empowered","year":"1983"},"o'cean":{"image":"","label":"Wind Sung Sounds","review":"O’cean is a crowd-pleasing take on new age aquatica with two 20 minute pieces that are both timeless and beautiful. On side one, Larkin’s flute swims through a beatific deep-sea setting of soft organs, waves lapping overhead, and whale sounds.  Side 2 is airier, with reverb-drenched flute solos accompanied only by the sound of waves and the occasional seagull.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"O'cean","year":"1980"},"summery-savory":{"image":"","label":"Wind Sung Sounds","review":"","title":"Summer Savory","year":"1981"},"to-the-essence-of-a-candle":{"image":"","label":"Wind Sung Sounds","review":"","title":"To the Essence of a Candle","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Larkin","entry_number":1},"larkin-and-friends":{"albums":{"earth-light":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"New Age music isn't always minimal. Here for instance flutist Larkin (no first/last name, just Larkin) combines with dulcimers, acoustic guitars, synthesizers and nature recordings for a very full, peaceful journey.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, 1986)","title":"Earth Light","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Larkin and Friends","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":59,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/larkin-640.jpg?alt=media&token=10dd3137-e2a5-428a-ab0b-47070ad1d8df","last_name":"Larkin"},"larry-cooperman":{"artist_name":"Larry Cooperman","body":"After dropping out of high school, guitarist Larry Cooperman spent the '70s gigging throughout the Southeast in progressive rock and funk bands. Born 1951 in Savannah, Georgia, Cooperman eventually tired of the club scene and moved to Fresno in 1979 to finish his education. He studied classical guitar at Fresno State and completed a degree in performance/composition at Cal Arts. It was during this time that he released his sole new age album, *Night Story* on his own Elysian Fields label. It was sold in Lloyd Barde's Heartbeats catalog for several years but didn't sell well and is now hard to find. Cooperman taught at Fresno State for a decade and went on to found New Millennium Guitar Publishing which he ran from 2000 to 2018. An entrepreneur at heart, Cooper had earlier founded a sunglasses company called Eyedeal and later launched his own line of acoustic guitars called New Master Guitars, though it only lasted about four years.","discography":{"larry-cooperman":{"albums":{"night-story":{"image":"","label":"Elysian Fields","review":"","title":"Night Story","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":345,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/larry-cooperman.jpg?alt=media&token=8be9e599-9f67-4d21-b631-bef3b653dd62","last_name":"Cooperman"},"larry-kolota":{"artist_name":"Larry Kolota","body":"Larry Kolota is a lifelong progressive rock fan who had a brief period making electronic music of his own in the '80s. While he worked as an engineer by day, he channeled some of his influences like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis into his DIY tapes, though outside of a few press mentions, he made almost no other efforts at distribution and sold only a handful of copies. By 1990, he gave up his own music to pursue Kinesis, a progressive rock mail-order business which eventually became his full time job.\n\nBorn in 1958, Kolota was the oldest of seven brothers and sisters. He mostly grew up in Clifton Park, NY. He played various instruments in his childhood like piano and drums and played in the school band, but lost interest around 8th grade. Instead, he started collecting records, particularly progressive rock. Genesis was an early favorite.\n\nKolota earned a Bachelors degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1980 and then a Masters at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. After that, he moved to Los Angeles and worked for the space division of the Air Force.  By this time, Kolota's record collection numbered in the thousands, spanning many obscure corners of progressive music. He'd long been aware of electronic bands like Tangerine Dream and Synergy, but as the price of synthesizers and home recording dropped, he decided to try his hand at electronic music at home.\n\nIn the early '80s, an underground cottage industry was sprouting up around homegrown electronic music, supported by magazines like *SYNE* and *Electronic Musician*, which Kolota read at the time. Through *SYNE*, he sold copies of his first cassette *Abominations*, though he recalls only selling a handful of copies. He soon followed that up with another release *Second Order Effects* in 1986. He sent copies of that to magazines for review, and was surprised that one of the biggest outlets of the time reviewed it. \"Robert Carlberg gave it a favorable review in *Electronic Musician*, thus severely damaging his credibility in my eyes.\" Kolota quipped.\n\nAfter completing four years in the Air Force, Kolota moved back east to Maryland where he worked as an engineer for an NSA contractor. He continued to play music sporadically, but his final release just consisted of one long track called *Wargames* in 1990. Instead, he shifted his interest towards music distribution, setting up a mail-order company called Kinesis to sell progressive rock CD’s. That would remain a side gig for the next twelve years, but eventually Kinesis was making enough money that he left his engineering job to run his mail-order operation full time.","discography":{"larry-kolota":{"albums":{"abominations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"One thing's for sure: you’ll bust out laughing as you read Larry's liner notes and press release. Comments like \"Unauthorized reproduction encouraged\" and \"This cassette album is not intended to be judged on musical or technical value, but rather on the neatness of my printing,\" had me chuckling. Despite his biting self-critique, Larry's music must be heard to be appreciated. The production values, while limited, are very good. Using only a 4-track cassette, Larry combines his DX-7, Crumar Performer, Sequential Pro-1 and Roland Drumatix to paint Geneisis inspired progressive music. The moods range from contemplative to upbeat. The keyboard technique is good, and with only a touch of fine tuning, Larry could appeal to a wide audience. There is a lot of emotion in the melodies and I heard a few hooks here and there. Don't take Larry’s word for it, listen to it anyway!\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE*, Fall 85)","title":"Abominations","year":"1985"},"second-order-effects":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Second Order Effects","year":"1986"},"wargames":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Wargames","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":175,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Larry-Kolota.jpg?alt=media&token=c5bc6220-d658-4c6a-ac51-fede69e68851","last_name":"Kolota"},"laurence-galian":{"artist_name":"Laurence Galian","body":"Laurence Galian was a musician based in New York when he released two new age cassettes in the mid-'80s. Galian, who was then a Sufi and had long been interested in metaphysics and esoteric religion, imbued his music with spiritual undertones, especially *The Shaman's Ascent*. Galian worked for several decades as a dance accompanist at Adelphi and Hofstra, though more recently he has moved to Mexico where he’s authored five books that draw from his studies of Sufism, Alistair Crowley, and Gnosticism.\n\nLaurence Galian was born in 1954 and grew up in Hicksville on Long Island.  His adopted mother was a great pianist and got him lessons starting when he was six. He recalls playing a mix of classical and pop standards learned from his mother's fake books. By the age of 17 he learned how to improvise: \"It was late at night; I was sitting at the piano playing two chords, Em and C,\" he recalled. \"I would play sad things and make myself cry.\"\n\nIn his senior year of high school, Galian took a music theory class that inspired him further and he started playing music at bars and with wedding bands. In 1972, he enrolled at Hofstra to study music, but dropped out after two years. He then moved to Tampa to attend the University of South Florida where he studied Conducting and Theater Arts, but a budding relationship cut that short too. \"I had never had a girlfriend who actually wanted to live with me before,\" Gailian recalled. \"The experience was just so intoxicating that I lost interest in finishing my university education. I have also had a lifelong struggle with self-sabotage.\"\n\nGailian returned to Long Island around 1977 where he lived on the North Fork. By then, he'd discovered synthesizers via one of his favorite artists Todd Rundgren. He started reading Keyboard Magazine and taught himself to play synths at PASS (Public Access Synthesizer Studio) in Manhattan. \"That freed me up from chromaticism,\" Galian said. \"I took a course at PASS and started renting studio time.”\n\nWhen he was younger, religion played a big role in Galian's life. During high school he was a devout member of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. At the same time, he was also exploring Rudolf Steiner, metaphysics and esotericism. After he graduated, he joined a Lutheran church helmed by the \"Jews for Jesus\" youth minister Pastor Jack for a couple years until a strange experience inspired him to self-exile:\n\n\"I went to see a Marx Brothers movie alone,\" Gailian said. \"For some mysterious reason, I went and sat next to a beautiful woman…When the movie started, without saying a word to her I took her hand. We erotically held hands for a while, and then I kissed her, and we began making out with great passion. It turns out she was with a girlfriend, and her girlfriend said more people were watching us that looking at the movie! Still, I had not said a word to her. But while kissing her I felt a pendant or something around her neck. I pulled her and the pendant into the light coming from the projection booth. I gasped as I looked at the pendant. It was the head of Satan in ivory. At that moment I knew I was going to hell, and I also knew that I was going to make love to this woman. In other words, I knew that I was going to lose my virginity to this woman, breaking God's Law, and committing the sin of fornication. So, I never returned to the church, and never returned to visit my friends.\"\n\nLater on, Gaillian discovered that Pastor Jack was sexually abusing members of the clergy, further putting him off Christianity. \"When I began to read about a religion that supposedly did not have any priests, any pope, any intermediaries between me and God, I became very interested,\" Gailian said. \"This was Islam. I loved what at the time appeared to me to be the simplicity and directness of Islam. Thus, Sufism, which claimed to be a path to enlightenment through an ancient esoteric version of Islam, was extremely attractive to me.\"\n\nIn 1980, Gailian was initiated as a Sufi and took the name Abdullah. His music likewise took a spiritual turn. He got some initially promising feedback when he sent some early home recordings to WNYC and John Schaeffer played them on his \"New Music\" show. By the middle of the decade, he began working on what would be his first album.\n\n\"At that time, I was hanging out at new age center. I was seeing a psychologist and he was one of the first people I had met experimenting with hypnotism and affirmations. He would hypnotize me and give me affirmations and he got the idea to do something together. I made an album for self-actualization using the Yamaha DX-7 which had just came out. There were 7 steps, and each piece had a different timbre and emotional peaks. I was improvising layers of sound.\"\n\nGalian went on to release another album a year later, this time with a more varied sound and use of vocals on some songs. However, this would be his final release.  During the '80s, Galian was then working at Adelphi as a music accompanist for dancers. He'd started by working as a musical director for community theater but loved working with ballet dancers and found that he had a gift for improvised accompaniment. By 1990, he got a similar position at Hofstra which he held for 21 years.\n\nFor the past several decades, Galian has lectured on esoteric religion and is a frequent speaker at the Starwood Festival in Ohio.  In 2010, he moved to Mexico and began publishing books. Some of his titles include *Alien Parasites*, *666: Connection with Crowley*, and *The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis*. Galian currently lives in Mexico.","discography":{"laurence-galian":{"albums":{"the-birth-of-venus":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Birth of Venus","year":"1985"},"the-shamans-ascent":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Shaman's Ascent","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":216,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Laurence-Galian-small.jpeg?alt=media&token=b9e39d1b-a3da-42c0-8d3f-48eb7c78ad4f","last_name":"Galian"},"lauri-paisley":{"artist_name":"Lauri Paisley","body":"Lauri Paisley was a composer and musician who released ten albums from 1982 to 1989. Her discography includes a collaboration with [Don Slepian](don-slepian) (under the name Synarios) and another with [Dana Rath](https://ultravillage.com/d-andrew-rath). By her own estimation, Paisley's music was a mix of new age, Berlin-school, and neo-classical sounds. Paisley was the Vice President of the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association), as well as a later member of the Creative Underground, a New Jersey collective. Paisley wrote about electronic music in publications such as SYNE, the magazine affiliated with IEMA, and was an enthusiastic supporter of her fellow musicians, corresponding frequently with people like [Ron Slabe](/Ron-slabe), Peter Gulch of the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) and Yanni. However, Paisley grew disenchanted with her lack of success and left the music scene completely, selling her gear and cutting off contact with her fellow musicians and fans in the early ‘90s. Paisley's cassettes have become collectible in recent years, but she died of cancer in 2012, likely unaware of the resurgent interest in her life and work.\n\nLauri Paisley was born Lauri Levine in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1961. Her father ran a successful business servicing washing machines for apartment complexes in the North Jersey area, including a building Lauri later moved into at 812 Murray St. in Elizabeth, NJ. Paisley was classically trained on the piano, beginning her lessons at an early age. She remained enamored with classical music for most of her early childhood, but this was supplanted by an interest in singer/songwriters like Jackson Browne and John Denver in her early teens. Emulating the new style, she taught herself the guitar, proving to be a quick study and proficient player. \n\nBy the mid-'70s, Paisley started to get more into progressive rock, drawn to Keith Emerson's bombastic, neoclassical style. She joined a series of bands thereafter but grew frustrated that none were willing to make her compositions a focal point. Todd Rundgren, a favorite of hers, often played all the instruments himself on his records. Paisley realized that with synthesizers, she could play all the sounds of a band herself too, and record it all at home without outside input.\n\nAs Paisley fine-tuned her sound, an electronic scene in Philadelphia was taking shape, centered around WXPN radio show Star's End and a DIY trio called the Nightcrawlers. This scene helped to inspire a group of younger performers in nearby New Jersey, but Paisley was not yet aware. In an [interview](https://web.archive.org/web/20050220150248/http://thekeep.0catch.com/night/niterev7.htm) with Neal Callander in *Choice* magazine, she said: \"I didn't know of anybody else on the planet who was composing music that was just for synthesizer. I would often play the music for somebody and they would comment that it sounded good and it would sound even better if there were guitar and vocal tracks added. That was frustrating. For two years, I composed in a vacuum until one day I discovered an electronic music show, called Synthetic Pleasures, on WFMU in East Orange, New Jersey.\"\n\nPaisley sent a tape to Richard Ginsburg, the collector and deejay who hosted the show. He encouraged her to record in a better studio, and set up a recording session. In subsequent years, Paisley frequently appeared on his show for interviews or to play live.\n\nOne of Paisley’s earliest mentors and collaborators was Don Slepian, a fellow keyboardist who'd already had some success with a series of ambient tapes on the Plumeria label in the early '80s. Both were active members of the IEMA, an organization of electronic musicians run by Jim Finch from his base in New York. Together with Slepian, Paisley produced her first album under the name *Synarios*, releasing it as a cassette only.\n\nIn 1982, Paisley answered an ad in the back of *Polyphony* magazine from 26-year-old musician Rick Burgmeier who was looking for others to trade tapes with. He and Lauri began corresponding and met in person a few months later at an IEMA convention in New Jersey.  The two had different music styles, with Burgmeier preferring the extremes of experimental dissonance or more traditional synth-pop in contrast to Paisley's more progressive style. Nevertheless, the two had a strong romantic connection and Paisley moved up to Syracuse, NY to move in with him.\n\nTogether in their shared apartment, Paisley and Burgmeier's lives were completely centered around music . They shared a large collection of recording equipment and gear, including a \"his and hers\" rack of synths. \"I remember people would get completely freaked out when they came over,\" Burgmeier said. \"They'd walk in and stop dead in their tracks. Stagger backwards. 'Whoa!'\"  Lauri worked as a typist during the week but they'd spend most of their free time playing music. \"I have fond memories of the Sunday jam sessions we used to have,\" Burgmeier recalled. \"I'd fiddle around early in the morning with some electronics or a guitar riff, maybe a sequencer loop. Lauri would wake up--very late sleeper--, grab a cup of coffee and get on the keyboards. We'd play right up till dinner time. Then get back at it.\"\n\nDuring the period from 1983 to 1985, Paisley recorded and produced the bulk of her musical output. She hand drew all the covers and cassette labels and sent them out to radio stations and zines all over the world. She traded tapes extensively with a growing circle of fellow musicians and admirers, often including handwritten letters with excellent penmanship. All of Paisley’s cassettes were produced in small editions and are now sought after by collectors.\n\nAfter a few years in Syracuse, Paisley's relationship with Burgmeier began to deteriorate. She'd been missing her friends back home, and New Jersey was now in the midst of a robust electronic renaissance. In 1986, Paisley ended the relationship and moved back to New Jersey where her father helped find her an apartment in Elizabeth. Paisley's old mentor Don Slepian encouraged her to join the Creative Underground, a newly formed collective of New Jersey musicians that he'd helped fund. The group organized multi-media shows at a local firehouse and Paisley eagerly joined in.\n\nIn addition to her own shows, Paisley was a big supporter of other artists, frequently attending gigs in the area. At one Xisle show in Philadelphia, she met Dana Rath, an electronic musician who had just started releasing his own tapes under the name Control Voltage and would soon go on to join [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl) in a new incarnation of Xisle. The two musicians began dating, and though they frequently helped each other with their gigs, it took them several years to actually record music together. Another key contact that Paisley made at this time was [Patrice DeVincentis](/patrice-devincentis), a fellow musician who was currently putting together a home studio called Sonic Surgery and recording local artists.\n\nRath recalls his time with Paisley fondly and marveled at her work ethic. \"She put so much time and energy into contacting people in the indie electronic music scene, which she fiercely believed in,\" Rath said. \"She also wrote for a few underground music mags. Between all that, her music, and her day job, I don't know where she got the energy for it.\" Rath continued: \"All of the time we were going together she did temp work. She was a fast typist, around 115-120 words per minute, so she never had trouble getting office temp jobs.\"\n\nDespite her local popularity, Paisley had bigger aspirations: she wanted to make a living from her music. Yanni, who she’d championed early on when he was an unknown member of IEMA, had recently found national success with his album *Keys to Imagination* on Private Music, a new age label started by Peter Baumann from Tangerine Dream. \"She had a long conversation with Yanni,\" DeVincentis recalled. \"She felt there was a possibility she could make a living from music and her next album would be the first step.\"\n\nWith some of the money she'd made from her office work, Paisley went into DeVincentis' home studio to record her most hi-fi album to date, *Fire of Dreams*. Paisley pressed 500 copies on vinyl and began selling them at shows. However, the album never sold well, in part due to headwinds from a buying public now gravitating towards CD's, especially among electronic music aficionados. \n\nAnother issue for Paisley may have been her lack of an on-stage persona. She was extremely camera shy, refusing to pose for photos. \"Lauri wasn’t as socially comfortable as some of the others,\" DeVincentis said. \"Some of us later figured out that you need to play a role on stage, and be conscious of your image. Lauri would just walk up on stage and play.\"\n\nIn 1988, Rath and Laurie began working on an album together. They worked in fits and starts, and by 1989 had enough material for a full length album they titled *Truth or Consequence*. By that time however, their relationship was disintegrating and they broke up in July. Rath sent the album around to some reviewers like Michael Birtchet who gave it a solid review in his *Dreams Word* zine. However, Paisley was starting to sour on electronic music by then and didn't do much to promote the album. The two still remained in contact, and Rath recalls Paisley playing out for a few more years after that, until around 1992.\n\nPaisley had expressed cynicism in the past about the music industry. In the July issue of SYNE she wrote that \"...if you don't play the lottery and you aren't independently wealthy, and you are unwilling to compromise yourself...then quite possibly the making of your album is an impossible dream.\" However, it was still shocking to her friends when she gave up on music entirely.  According to author Bruce Atchinson, one of Paisley's many fans at the time, \"She had an episode on stage one night where her mind went blank in the middle of a piece. Therefore, she decided to end her musical career. She, who once begged correspondents to 'give her mail man a hernia,' now wanted nobody to write to her.\" DeVincentis, who'd grown close to Lauri after recording *Fire of Dreams* felt almost jilted. \"Lauri just gave up,\" DeVincentis said. \"It’s almost like when you break up with someone and you completely walk away.\" Paisley ended up selling all her musical equipment in the early '90s and going back to school to study science.\n\nPaisley's interest in science had begun long before, sparked in part due to her love of *Star Trek*.  Not only did she sometimes dress up in Spock ears and a Star Trek uniform, Paisley had a Starfleet name (Lieutenant T'Lena) and even took some courses with a Star Trek school that inspired her to enroll in real college courses. According to Rath, \"She always loved biology and most everything on the small and microscopic scale — 'little beasties' — she used to call them. She used to talk about going back to school to get a degree and get into lab work, which eventually she did.\"\n\nBy the mid-'90s, Paisley got married and changed her last name to Nielsen. She enrolled at Kean University and got a degree in science. However, neither the marriage nor the new career ultimately stuck. Paisley and her husband separated in the early 2000s, and Paisley reconnected with Rath, one of the few from the music scene who spoke to her after she cut off contact with everyone else. \"One of the last times that I spoke to her, she had gone back to doing office temp,\" Rath said. \"If my memory serves correctly, she came upon a street musician playing acoustic guitar, which intrigued her. The person had CDs for sale there and she bought one, sparking her interest in listening to music again. Last she told me was she was thinking of buying another acoustic guitar, not to pursue anything seriously again, just to play for herself.\"\n\nUnfortunately, Paisley was diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away in 2012. Many of her former friends and admirers from the music scene had no idea until much later. Don Slepian, who she reconnected with towards the end of her life, had to break the news to many of them. But some, like DeVincentis, took heart that Paisley's music is finally starting to get recognized: \"That is really all she ever wanted - for people to enjoy her music.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"lauri-paisley":{"albums":{"calcyon":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"","title":"Calcyon","year":"1984"},"channels":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"*Channels* is a strong entry in Paisley's discography, pairing her idiosyncratic take on Berlin-school space music with an improved recording quality and some of the best material of her career. Recorded during the end of Paisley's relationship with fellow synthesist Rick Burgmeier, *Channels* reflects the hope, anxiety, and sadness that accompany a major life transition. This shows up in song titles like \"Always on the Outside\" and \"Ohmega 5585\", with Omega denoting the end and 5-5-85 a personally significant date. The range of feelings is palpable from the first notes of the \"Temporium\" suite featuring one of her most emotionally resonant melodies. However, Paisley doesn't wallow long before segueing to the springlike \"Sunflower Return,\" the manic \"Forty Hours\" and concluding with the serene \"Seventh Subplane.\"  \n\nWhile \"Temporium\" is the highlight of side one, the 20 minute \"Ohmega 5585\" on side two is a better connected suite of songs that radiates fuzzy analog bliss. It is possibly the best thing she's ever done. The meditative mood brings it closer to new age than most of her other material, but the cerebral circuitry and sci-fi aesthetic mark this as a Paisley original. And just to underscore the finality, Paisley caps the song with an atomic blast, marking an emphatic end to the album and a period of her life she would soon leave behind.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Channels","year":"1985"},"continuity's-changes":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"Up from the cosmic electronic music underground comes this latest release by Lauri Paisley. It's impressive how much good music  is being made by composers recording at home, or on small, obscure labels, and this tape is no exception. Her music owes the obvious influence to Tangerine Dream, but it’s not particularly imitative. It’s inventive, holds your attention, and is full of nice little added touches.\n\n(Bob Morris *Option*, Sept/Oct 1985)\n","title":"Continuity's Changes","year":"1984"},"memor-exodus":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"Paisley’s debut is dense with ideas, a showcase for her singular compositions with shades of Todd Rundgren or Larry Fast in the chord voicing and cerebral playing style. Recorded in the midst of her move from New Jersey to Syracuse, the album has a split personality, with the material on side one focused on shorter, more progressive sounds while the second side includes longer, more introspective tracks. The overall theme seems to be centered around the passage of time and memory. In the liner notes, Paisley writes that \"time is perceived chronologically in sequence due to the limitations of our human minds…\" and the music, with its abrupt tonal and harmonic shifts, induces a sort of temporal uneasiness that serves her thesis well. \n\nPaisley's sound sources consist of just two or three keyboards that she multi-tracks on every song, with the Arp Omni most prominently featured. This adds a sameness that can make the album seem monochromatic (or at times abrasive), and her disjointed compositions can be jarring at first.  However, the zig zagging changes help to keep the album interesting and bring to mind the trippy adventurousness of Pauline Anna Strom's great *Trans Millenia Consort.* And the sketch-like quality of \"Perhaps in Another Lifetime\" or \"Distanced\" in no way stops the melodies from wiggling into your pleasure centers.  \n\nWith so much packed into the first side, Paisley somehow makes it all seem like an appetizer compared with the 22 minute title track that closes the album. A tour de force of spaced out drone, \"MemorExodus\" starts out sounding like a Stereolab demo before morphing into a vibrating squiggle of cosmic energy, like Keith Emerson on mushrooms. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Memor Exodus","year":"1983"},"real-to-reel":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"Paisley’s sophomore solo album is a transitional work that shows her trying some new directions and refining her idiosyncratic style into something a little more approachable than her debut, though with mixed results. Paisley still retains her characteristic sound, a sci-fi blend of progressive rock and krautrock experimentalism, but gone are the musical U-turns and surprise textural shifts that made her debut compelling. Instead, we get tracks like \"Kamaloka\" which add acoustic guitar to the mix, but don't really bring the goods in terms of melody or interest.\n\nAs with the debut, the album is split into two distinct sides, with the first comprised of four songs relating to the nature of reality. These tracks are the strongest, and songs like  \"Reality Go Round\" and \"Real to Reel\"  showcase her more minimal style, with movement and color laid over a more static foundation. The second side is a hodgepodge, with the 14 minute centerpiece, \"Lysergenesis\" already having been featured on the *IEMA Group Tape #5* from 1982.  It's well done, but the brash and dystopian sound doesn't sit well with the other material. The rest of the second side is comprised of two short interludes that sound like *MemorExodus* outtakes and \"[Deceleration Jello](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA79t9JIif4),\" a  collaboration with then boyfriend (and producer/engineer) Rick Burgmeier. It's a tentative step towards the more intricate arrangements of her later albums, but doesn't quite fit in here. This album may have worked better as an EP.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Real-to-Reel","year":"1983"},"skywords":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"Loaded with ‘80s sci-fi imagery, prog ambitions, and synth maximalism, Paisley’s sound is not for everyone. But it is unique, and *Skywords* shows a newfound confidence. Unlike her earlier work which usually featured longer pieces or suites, *Skywords* has an economical run-time and pop-like song lengths, which works well with her sometimes overwhelming style. Highlights for me were the blurpy opener \"Chronos/Inner Sanctum,\" the cheery 8-bit churn of \"Morning’s Twilight 2,\" and the dreamy title track with Neil Nappe adding some welcome outside influence to Paisley’s insular world.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Skywords","year":"1985"},"the-fire-of-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"A classically influenced pianists/synthesist, Paisley shows precise keyboard technique on this album of well-integrated synthesized sounds. Her material (all original) consists of simple tunes well arranged and harmonized and somewhat reminiscent of the Romantic era as well as the English progressive school of the early 1970s. The pieces show good development of musical ideas and excellent synthetic orchestration. The one selection played on twelve string guitar reminds me of the structure of Alex DiGrassi’s compositions but is marred by poor recording technique. The styles on this recording are dramatic but not malevolent.\n\n(Brian White, *Sound Choice* #10, Winter 1989)","title":"The Fire of Dreams","year":"1989"},"tributaries":{"image":"","label":"Methylunna Music","review":"","title":"Tributaries","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Lauri Paisley","entry_number":2},"lauri-paisley-and-d-andrew-rath":{"albums":{"truth-or-consequences":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Truth or Consequences","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Lauri Paisley and D. Andrew Rath","entry_number":3},"synarios":{"albums":{"celestial-vibration":{"image":"","label":"Don & Judy Records","review":"","title":"Uncontrolled Voltage","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Synarios","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":25,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Lauri-Paisley-640.jpg?alt=media&token=7d944d33-4411-4f64-bc98-34fd14607447","last_name":"Paisley"},"laurie-spiegel":{"artist_name":"Laurie Spiegel","body":"Laurie Spiegel was an important contributor in the field of computer music, most notable for her Music Mouse software and the track \"Music of the Spheres\" which was included on the *Golden Record*, a musical time capsule sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft.  Her recorded output is slim, comprising only three full length albums across a five decade career. Though her work was always revered in electronic and avant-garde music circles, the reissue of her debut in 2012 reignited interest in her work and led to fawning profiles in the New Yorker, Pitchfork and the New York Times, among others. More recently, her sophomore album *Unseen Worlds* has also been reissued.\n\nSpiegel was born in 1945 and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother worked as a math teacher and her father was an inventor and entrepreneur who taught her how to use a soldering iron at the age of 9. The same year, her grandmother gave her a mandolin which she used to make up songs and improvise. Later, she saved up money from babysitting and bought an acoustic guitar. Despite her later interest in electronic music, her folk roots continued to resonate. In an [interview](https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/laurie-spiegels-expanding-universe/) with Crack Magazine, Spiegel said \"In my book, whether it's conventional instruments or electronics, emotion is the essence of what music is for.\"\n\nAttending Shimer College, Spiegel studied anthropology and taught herself musical notation. She spent her final year at Oxford and then remained in England another year to study classical guitar and composition with John Duarte.  In 1968, she moved to New York where she lived in the Lower East Side above some jazz musicians who played constantly. She became friends with them, and one recommended she try out Julliard. She took him up on the advice and studied baroque lute and composition at Julliard with Jacob Druckman, Vincent Persichetti, and Hall Overton.\n\nIn 1969, Spiegel first encountered synthesizers when a fellow musician brought her to Morton Subotnick's studio. There she got to try out the Buchla 100, an early synthesizer which lacked a traditional keyboard to foster experimentation. Spiegel fell in love with it, [noting](https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/laurie-spiegel-grassroots-technologist/) that it allowed her to focus on texture and timbre instead of falling back on more traditional melody and harmony. At the time, most aspiring composers never heard their music in full until it was performed by an ensemble, but the synthesizer promised immediate gratification. \"The same way a painter works directly on the painting or a novelist works directly on the novel. You just turn a knob and you hear it. I love that,\" Spiegel [said](https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/laurie-spiegels-expanding-universe/).\n\nSpiegel began spending time with the Buchla and composing new music, which eventually resulted in her 1972 piece \"Sediment.\" The song, which Pitchfork later described as  \"primal, humming with anguish and dread\" would appear decades later in the movie *Hunger Games* and help spark new interest in her work. However, Spiegel tired of the Buchla after a couple years, fed up with its limitations like fluctuating pitch and a lack of memory. \"It really was obstinate technology, and you had to work hard to get music out of it,\" Spiegel [told](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9002-laurie-spiegel/) Pitchfork.\n\nThe next year, Spiegel started hanging out at Bell Labs, a research company in New Jersey. Since its launch in 1925, Bell Labs was an incubator for innovation that produced technology like the laser, transistor, and UNIX, among many others. There, Spiegel got the title of \"resident advisor\" and access to state of the art music equipment. Her mentor was Max Matthews who had developed the GROOVE (Generating Real-time Operations on Voltage-Controlled Equipment) system for interactive composition and real-time performance with computers. Compared to the Buchla, Spiegel thought it \"allowed much more complex, reproducible and stable control of sound.\" Spiegel spent years learning GROOVE and composing many of the tracks that would later appear on her album *The Expanding Universe*. After that, she also experimented with a video application of the software called VAMPIRE, but that was shut down before she could accomplish much.\n\nWhile she experimented  at Bell Labs, Spiegel earned her living composing soundtracks for film and video, as well as teaching. Some of her bigger clients included Spectra Films, Valkhn Films, and the Experimental TV Lab at WNET. She also worked on smaller commissions for artists and animators. \n\nIn 1976, Spiegel started her most famous piece, \"Music of the Spheres\" at Bell Labs. Two Yale professors had asked her to produce a theoretical composition written centuries earlier by Johannes Kepler called \"Harmonices Mundi\" in which planetary movement was translated into music. In the [book](https://books.google.com/books?id=dW90DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT90&lpg=PT90#v=onepage&q&f=false), *Vinyl Frontier*, Spiegel elaborated further: \"[Kepler's] idea of astronomical phenomena being made audible was a natural for me to want to try, and the computer made it possible, providing a bridge between physical reality and audio, with math as the translating Rosetta Stone.\" Using data from the Yale professors on planetary motion, Spiegel spent months writing software in Fortran IV that could bring Kepler's idea to life. The piece garnered attention from the New York Times and was subsequently added to the *Golden Record* album which was sent into space on the Voyager craft by NASA.\n\nAround the same time, Spiegel's song, \"Appalachian Grove,\" was featured on the 1977 compilation *New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media*. Harking back to her early folk days, the piece was inspired by a trip to North Carolina that got her thinking about the links between Baroque and bluegrass music, but rendered by a computer. It would go on to be one of her most beloved songs. A few years later, a friend introduced her to executives at the folk label Philo and they put out her debut *The Expanding Universe*, comprised of material recorded at Bell Labs. However, the album puzzled the label's usual listeners and it only sold a few thousand copies.\n\nAs Spiegel's star was rising in the late '70s, she started to perform in the New York area and become affiliated with the downtown music scene. However, she soon grew frustrated with what she [called](http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-laurie-spiegel/) \"too much pursuit of newness for its own sake.\" Instead, Spiegel focused her energy on developing her own algorithmic music software called Music Mouse, as well as consulting on others like Synaturi and McLeyvier, while teaching on the side at Cooper Union and NYU. She finally completed Music Mouse in 1985 and made it available on Macintosh, Atari, and Amiga computers. The software was intuitive and visually based, allowing amateurs and professionals alike to compose music on the computer.  \n\nHer first piece made with Music Mouse was \"Cavis Muris,\" released in 1986 on a CD from the Consortium to Distribute Computer Music. Later in the decade she completed others new works such as \"Three Sonic Spaces\" and \"Sound Zones,\" both of which showcased a somber, shadowy atmosphere. These songs and additional shorter works were included on her sophomore album, *Unseen Worlds* in 1991.  However, the album was released by Scarlet Records, a small new age imprint. The label had been founded by Ruby Rahn, the ex-wife of Eckart Rahn who'd founded Celestial Harmonies, but the label struggled to survive and folded after the release of *Unseen Worlds.* \n\nAfter that, Spiegel continued to teach, write, and work as a music consultant. Her thoughtful and probing articles on music and culture were published in Computer Music Journal, SEAMUS, Electronic Musician and many others. Asked later why she released so little music, Spiegel [said](http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-laurie-spiegel/): \"The part I'm good at and enjoy is actually making the music, even including the finishing work. But I completely bog down when it comes to making the music into a 'product' and then promoting and selling it. The idea of dealing with that whole stage of getting CD’s out is just about enough to make me not want to do music at all, except that I really do love and enjoy it.\"\n\nWith only a few albums to her name, Spiegel was never well-known outside of avant-garde music circles and electronic aficionados. That all changed in 2012. That was the year her piece \"Sediment\" appeared in the film *Hunger Games* and that *The Expanding Universe* was reissued by the Brooklyn label Unseen Worlds, prompting gushing critical praise and feature articles from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.  Writing for the NY Times, Steve Smith lamented that \"female composers of electronic and computer music have long been overlooked outside circles of scholars and record scavengers\" but praised Siegel's work as \"instantly approachable and emphatically musical.\" Other critics saw a vital continuum between her work and the present. Joseph Burnett wrote in Dusted that the title track of *The Expanding Universe* was a \"masterpiece\" and that her work \"points the way towards the minimal techno scene of more recent years.\"\n\nWith such renewed interest in her work, Spiegel’s original releases have increased in value significantly, with her debut now commanding close to $100, and original copies of her CD on Scarlet are becoming difficult to find as well. For those who just want to hear the music, however, it is easier to find than ever, thanks to the stewardship of [Unseen Worlds](https://unseenworlds.com/), which has now released vinyl reissues of her first two albums and made her music available on all streaming services.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\n   \n\n### Sources:\n- Burnett, Joseph. Album review of *The Expanding Universe* in Dusted Magazine.com, 2013. [Link](https://web.archive.org/web/20130218024641/https://article.wn.com/view/2012/10/24/Dusted_Reviews_Artist_Laurie_Spiegel_Album_The_Expanding_Uni/)\n- Fischer, Tobias. \"Interview with Laurie Spiegel.\" *Tokafi*, [Link](http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-laurie-spiegel/)\n- Mandel, Leah. \"Laurie Spiegel’s Expanding Universe.\" *Crack Magazine*, 2019. [Link](https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/laurie-spiegels-expanding-universe/)\n- Reynolds, Simon. \"Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music.\" *Pitchfork*, Dec. 6, 2012. [Link](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9002-laurie-spiegel/)\n- Scott, Jonathan. *The Vinyl Frontier*. Bloomsbury Sigma, 2019 [Link](https://books.google.com/books?id=dW90DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT90&lpg=PT90#v=onepage&q&f=false)\n- Smith, Steve. \"Rediscovering the Electronic Music Godmothers.\" *New York Times*, Nov. 23, 2012. [Link](https://web.archive.org/web/20121129093019/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/arts/music/rediscovering-the-electronic-music-godmothers.html)\n- Spiegel, Laurie. [Retiary.org](http://retiary.org/)\n- Walls, Seth Colter. \"An Electronic Music Classic Reborn.\" *The New Yorker*, Sept. 17, 2012. [Link](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/an-electronic-music-classic-reborn)\n","discography":{"laurie-spiegel":{"albums":{"the-expanding-universe":{"image":"","label":"Philo","review":"Composed in the mid-70s and released in 1980, *Expanding Universe* was radical for its time, as Spiegel used computers to play synths and sequences, a concept a decade ahead of its time. The music itself is an early example of American progressive electronic music with shades of Tangerine Dream, Cluster, and Phillip Glass, informed by echoes of folk and early music. Album opener “Patchwork” is an obvious highlight, with its bouncy sequencer riff and slow filter sweeps. The 30-minute title track is a more muted, ambient piece that creeps slowly like a glacier on the horizon.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"The Expanding Universe","year":"1980"},"unseen-worlds":{"image":"","label":"Scarlet","review":" While Spiegel’s soundscapes sometimes lacked warmth on her debut, she sets the thermostat to absolute zero on *Unseen Worlds*. Jeff Greinke seems an obvious reference point here, or Harold Budd at his most foreboding, but this is a bit more ethereal and existential. The tension is finally broken forty minutes in with two lovely solo keyboard tracks, followed by the Xisle-ish “Passage.” A head-scratcher for sure.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Unseen Worlds","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":174,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/laurie-spiegel.jpeg?alt=media&token=3c10cb75-ab83-47de-9ab5-ce6d4b851155","last_name":"Spiegel"},"laurie-z":{"artist_name":"Laurie Z","body":"A synthesist based in Santa Barbara, CA, Laurie Z made a splash with her self-released album *Window to the World* in 1991. The album typifies the more commercial new age sound, sometimes called contemporary instrumental music, that became dominant in the late-'80s. Laurie went on to produce two more albums, selling over 20,000 copies and getting sponsorship deals with Yamaha and Alesis. She passed away in 2006 after a stroke.\n\nLaurie Z was born Laurie Zeluck Carter in 1957. The family was originally from New York but relocated to Santa Barbara when she was young. Laurie took up the piano starting at the age of four and remained a diligent pupil through high school, learning to sight-read and joining the school band.\n\nAfter earning a degree in music from Cal State Northridge, Laurie played with various club bands in the area, mostly playing covers. She was very interested in digital technology and synthesizers, landing a job working with synth pioneer Malcolm Cecil's company EMPH (Electronic Music Publishing House). Together with Cecil, she produced MIDI versions of cover songs that were marketed as \"musidiscs,\" though the project proved to be short-lived. \n\nIn 1989, Laurie joined Discovery, a cover band that played at Disneyland and entertained parkgoers for the next five years. (See some cool period photos [here](https://lauriez.com/photo-gallery)). During this time, she was spotted playing by a UCLA professor who recruited her to record some music for an economic forecasting conference. Laurie ended up liking the recording so much, she launched her own Zebra Productions label to release it as her solo debut *Window to the World*. The album was a surprise hit with new age retailers, eventually selling over 10,000 copies.\n\nLaurie went on to release three more albums: *Life Between the Lines* (1995), a solo piano album *Roots* (1997) that earned eight Grammy nominations, and *The Heart of the Holidays* (2001). She also provided music for a guided meditation album by Ron Stubbs called *The Heart's Journey* in 2003. In addition to her recordings, she was a featured pianist for Yamaha and Peterbilt, a frequent speaker at industry conventions where she represented companies like Roland and Kawai, and a regular live performer in the LA area.\n\nLaurie married in 1999 but her husband passed away from a heart attack in 2005 and she died of a stroke a year later. She was remembered by her fans as a positive influence and someone with a fiercely independent, can-do spirit. In an interview with *Easy Reader*, Laurie said:  \"A lot of times, we allow life to happen to us as opposed to our creating what it is that we want in our lives. What I find is that people place these limitations on themselves. We say, 'I can't.' How do you know if you can't if you haven't done it? I hear 'I can't' more days of my life, from everybody around me, but the truth is, we can. And we do.\"\n","discography":{"laurie-z":{"albums":{"windows":{"image":"","label":"Zebra Productions","review":"Originally created for an economics forecasting conference, this album exudes late-'80s period charm with an upbeat tone, shiny digital synths, and well-crafted melodies and arrangements that keep the songs engaging, at least when Laurie's not taking ill-advised turns into ersatz smooth jazz (\"City Lights\") or sentimental fluff (\"A Reflection of Ourselves\"). The mood is reflective, with arrangements that are breezy yet focused, like a well-written beach read. I certainly wouldn't call it great, but I can see why It was popular at the time. For modern collectors of that proto-vaporwave sound or those who can stomach a heavy dose of cheese a la David Arkenstone, this easily acquired tape is worth a flier.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Window To the World","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":249,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/laurie-z.jpeg?alt=media&token=f988ac2c-7dec-4121-a0ea-608b3f6e550d","last_name":"Z"},"lee-stone":{"artist_name":"Lee Stone","body":"Lee Stone was an artist, musician, writer, and metaphysical counselor who was based in Wanchese, North Carolina for much of the '80s. During this time, he attended the Monroe Institute where he learned about Hemi-Sync and the idea that sound can alter consciousness or brain wave patterns. From 1987 to 1988, Stone self-released three cassettes of new age music, with two incorporating Hemi-Sync technology. These only attracted minor notice at the time, but are now sought after by collectors. Stone primarily worked as an artist and private therapist, offering \"empathic resonance\" through past life regression therapy, chakra balancing, meditation and crystal awareness. He also authored three poetry [books](https://www.orielisbooks.com/products/author/Stone,%20Lee).\n\nBorn Robert Lee Stone in 1945, Lee grew up in the South and was a talented artist as a child. After high school, he joined the army where he worked as an illustrator and then newspaper editor during the Vietnam War. During his duty, he was mostly stationed in Europe, and after he got out he stayed in Germany for a photography job and then spent time in Spain working on his art.\n\nReturning to the US, Stone became a news photographer at WKPT in Kingsport, Tennessee and enrolled in college at East Tennessee State University. Stone earned a degree in fine art there and then got a residency at the Wilkes County Cultural Arts Center where he taught workshops in pottery, painting, and drawing. Stone was also an amateur musician who played several instruments including flute, percussion and stand-up bass, which he played in an outdoor drama company.\n\nIn the late '70s, Stone moved to Wanchese on the outer banks of North Carolina where he painted seascapes and surfed. He showed some of his work at the gallery of a friend name Steve Andrus and joined the Master Artist Touring Association, a collective that traveled around the country selling their work at malls and art fairs.\n\nStone's music in the '80s would grow out of a longtime interest in yoga, meditation, and philosophy.  He'd explored past-life healing starting in the mid-'70s and developed a practice of guiding others in \"exploring their memories of other selves.\" His interest in healing sounds inspired him to create new age music in the mid-'80s, staring with his album *Light Body* in 1987. The tape was reviewed in *Heartsong Review* who noted its \"powerful expansive sound.\"\n\nStone would issue two more cassettes in 1988 before taking a long hiatus. He started taking courses at the Monroe Institute in Virginia, where he was eventually certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and clinical hypnotherapy. Stone began teaching at the Institute, as well as offering private sessions with clients in past life regression, chakra soundings, meditation and reiki.\n\nStone is also a writer who has authored three chapbooks of haiku and senryu poetry, such as *Now as Zen* and *Thought for Food.* For a few years in the early 2000s, he wrote music reviews for the North Carolina-based Innerchange Magazine, with all his work archived [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20040401212947/http://www.innerchangemag.com:80/musicreviews.htm). Around this time, Stone began recording music again, issuing a CD called *Dream Machine* in 2002, followed by a few others that he sold locally.\n\nStone currently lives in Kingsport, TN. ","discography":{"lee-stone":{"albums":{"instratum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Instratum* is designed as a \"multidimensional\" experience, utilizing Hemi-Sync technology to inspire new levels of consciousness. While I can't attest to the success of that, the music definitely has a trippy quality to it, with some zooming stereo effects and winding song structures that slowly inhale and exhale like time-lapse footage of nature. The three long pieces are mostly synth-based, though \"Water Wise\" starts with a ten minute section of nature sound effects and flute that recalls [Will Vukin](/will-vukin). The highlight for me was the epic \"Neuraxis\" on side two which is a meditative suite with astral ambitions.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Instratum","year":"1988"},"light-body":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" Grand spaciousness is the superlative quality of this electronic music, which carries a lot of movement within its powerful expansive sound. More intense, insistent, and varied than a lot of space music, it speaks of the infinite power in the natural forces, as in \"Solar Flare\" and \"Wind Weavings.\" The mind and heart are opened to other dimensions by the arrangements which seem to transcend and smooth over our everyday rhythms and frantic pace. It provides an escape into the higher self through relaxation and contemplation. Behind closed eyes, I perceived images of a quiet night, huge mountains, the otherworldly yet primal sounds of the deep woods and the vast steady drone of the stars. This music is multi-dimensional and headphones are recommended. Great for movement, background, and contemplation.\n\n(David Mitchell, *Heartsong Review* No. 6, Spring/Summer 1989)\n","title":"Light Body","year":"1987"},"sound-in-sight":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sound In Sight","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":214,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Lee-Stone-640.jpg?alt=media&token=dd4c6a8b-9461-4e9a-a819-980845b499f1","last_name":"Stone"},"lee-underwood":{"artist_name":"Lee Underwood","body":"Lee Underwood is a guitarist and music journalist, best known for his seven year stint playing with singer/songwriter Tim Buckley. However, to some new age and ambient fans he is better known as one of the more insightful chroniclers of the genre who helped introduce musicians like [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) and [Kevin Braheny](/kevin-braheny) to more mainstream listeners in magazines like *Down Beat* and the *Los Angeles Times*. Underwood's interest in ambient sounds inspired him to create a solo album of relaxing guitar music in 1988 called *California Sigh*, produced by [Steve Roach](/steve-roach).\n\n**Ultravillage: When were you born and where were you raised?**\nLee Underwood: I am in my Eighties now, born in Boulder, Colorado, where my folks were studying for their Master’s degrees. My childhood and teenage years were spent growing up in a number of different states. My father was a Veterans Administration hospital manager. Every time he got a promotion, we moved to another town, from Denver, to West Texas, to upstate New York, finally to Washington, D.C., from where I graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School.\n\n**What was your early childhood like?**\nBasically middle-class. Short hair, polished shoes, nice table manners, proper etiquette, etc. Nothing very interesting. My main interests in high school, were music and playing sports, especially football (a star running back) and track (gold medals in the 100 yard dash and broad jump).\n\n**How did you first get interested in music? What were some of your formative influences?**\nFirst inspired as a kid by listening to The Grand Old Opry on a plastic portable radio, under the covers on Saturday night. Had to listen quietly, as I was supposed to be asleep. I was thrilled by Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, Roy Acuff,  Minnie Pearl, and dozens of others. It was Chet Atkins who turned me on to guitar, although I didn’t start playing guitar until years later.\n\nIn high school, I started playing piano and listening to jazz artists. Pianists Dave Brubeck and Lennie Tristano blew me away. So did saxophonists Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins. Then I discovered Miles Davis, and much later on, John McLaughlin. Jazz was a major influence not just musically, but in terms of my whole outlook on life — energy, brilliance, and improvisation.\n\n**When did you start writing?**\nAll along the way, especially in high school. Wrote poems, self-consumed prose, just stuff to express myself. Nothing for publication.\n\n**Where did you go to college and what did you study?**\nUniversity of Colorado for a year and a half. Then San Francisco State College (English literature); then graduate school for a brief time at U.C. Berkeley (World Literature).\n\n**How did you first meet Tim Buckley and start playing with him?**\nWhile attending U.C. Berkeley, I got married, dropped out of school, started researching the incredible novels and poetry of Nikos Kazantzakis. I intended to write a book about him and his work. However, I also picked up a Martin guitar and began playing it. Pretty soon, I was not studying and writing about Kazantzakis, but listening to Doc Watson, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Spider John Koerner. I started writing my own songs and strumming and picking guitar. After a while, I had to leave the straight-life behind. I packed my bags, left my wife, split to San Francisco, then to New York.\n\nIn the Village, purely by chance, I met Tim Buckley. He heard me play guitar and sing, told me he had a six-week gig at the Night Owl club in the Village (and a recording contract with Elektra), and asked me if I wanted to play guitar on the gig and on the record. I said, Yes, and played and recorded and toured with him for the next seven years.\n\n**What was the dynamic in your relationship with Buckley?**\nWe were great friends as well as musicians who happened to work together. I was older than he, and had read a lot of books. He was younger, but very bright and astonishingly talented. He asked a lot of questions about writers, music, novels, philosophers, psychologists, etc. In my book about him (*Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered*), I talk about how he was brilliant, curious, and a kind of intellectual vacuum cleaner. He listened, he learned, he integrated intellectual and musical knowledge into his own mind and heart. \n\nHe was also extraordinarily creative. As a result, he evolved through some five different generic stages, writing songs (sometimes with his life-long friend and poet Larry Beckett) and moving from folk music, into folk-rock, into jazz, into avant-garde music, into mainstream pop. Along the way, he recorded nine albums while alive, and enough material for numerous posthumous albums as well. All of this before dying of an accidental alcohol and heroin overdoes at age 28.\n\n**What was the first job you got writing about music? How did that come about?**\nWhen I left Tim Buckley, I turned to my other love: writing. In order to pay the rent in L.A., I needed to earn money. I knew how to write and I knew music, so I turned to music journalism. At first, I wrote for the *L.A. Free Press*. That escalated to other publications, such as *Down Beat* (in 1975, for whom I became West Coast Editor), the *Los Angeles Times*, *Rolling Stone*, and numerous other publications.\n\n**What are some of your favorite pieces you published for *Downbeat*?**\nI had some great interviews, many of them cover stories. Some of my best interviews included guitarist Joe Pass, pianist McCoy Tyner, Quincy Jones, guitarist John McLaughlin, and pianist Chick Corea. \n\nJazz musicians for the most part are very bright, articulate musicians. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to their music and reading everything I could about them in preparation for my interviews, and then talking with them in person. Our conversations were usually highly insightful about life, about their music in particular, and about jazz in general. It was a great education for me, not only the conversations, but in the preparation and then in the process of writing the interviews for publication.\n\n**How did you start getting into new age music?**\nBy 1980, I had explored jazz to the hilt, the long tradition of jazz and the contemporary jazz of my own time. Things were becoming repetitious. I was at an intellectual standstill. And bored.\n\nMeanwhile, I had discovered a whole other kind of music — New Age Spacemusic, people like Michael Stearns, Steve Roach, and Kevin Braheny. They and many other synthesizer players and composers were often multi-instrumentalists as well – flutes, guitars, etc. \n\nThey were making music of an entirely different kind – not conventional radio-music based on emotional excitement, cliches, novelties, stimulation, “lower chakra” music, and not based on commercially conventional time-frames either. They were recording lengthy tracks, sometimes 15 or 20 or 30 minutes long, often based on hypnotic drones. They were exploring the human psyche and soul in terms of meditative tranquility, inner depths and heights, not charismatic ego-music, not erotically based escapist music, but non-verbal instrumental music based on psycho-spiritual principles often developed in ancient Eastern meditative traditions. This kind of music elevated my own psyche and soul to new heights. It took me inward to new and incredibly nourishing inner depths.\n\n**Tell me more about your book of interviews that never came to be?**\nI wrote a book of some 20-25 interviews with some amazing Spacemusic artists, including Harold Budd, Henry Wolff,  Jon Hassell, Georgia Kelly, Constance Demby, Steven Halpern, Terry Riley and numerous others. I entitled it *World Music and Inner Transformation*. Executive John Morey of Narada Records thought they were “the best interviews” he had ever read, and signed me up. After two years of my writing, he said he wanted to change concepts. Instead of lengthy, serious, highly evolved interviews about this new music and the psycho-spiritual inner life that we had agreed on, he pulled the rug out from under me. He wanted to edit the book down, make it “a little less intellectual, more personality-based, more accessible, maybe a coffee table book.” I refused. He wouldn’t budge. The contract was cancelled. The book never got published.\n\n**What can you tell me about *California Sigh*? How did that album come about?**\n*California Sigh* was recorded just when cassette tapes were going out and CDs were coming in. At that time CDs did not sound as good as cassette tapes, so I recorded my solo acoustic guitar pieces on cassette tapes. The music was part of the New Age dimension, mostly quiet, melodically lovely, peaceful, emotionally nourishing, and meditative in nature. I offered it to listeners as a gesture of love.\n\n It was not intended to be a smash hit, by any means. It was meant for people who wanted quiet, melodically lovely music, perhaps something to help them quiet them down after a tough day. It sold a few copies, but then CDs came in, and not a lot of folks wanted to hear still another New Age solo guitar album recorded on cassette tape, so not much happened with it. . . . Folks can check it out on You Tube and take a listen if they like. Many new listeners are enjoying it now.\n\n**Why did you leave California in 1990?**\nBy 1990, I had had enough of the urban life in general, L.A. in particular. So I and my second wife moved to a small adobe house in the mountains northwest of Santa Fe, with the National Forest as our back yard. For seven years, we explored northern New Mexico, drove up to Colorado and camped and fished in the mountains during the summers, lived pretty much in a New Mexico wilderness area with very little contact with other people and the urban life. Loved it. \n\nIn 1998 or so, we moved back to California, to Oakhurst, where we lived for 20 years in a wooden cabin in the forest next to a year-round stream. That’s where I wrote Blue Melody, and published a couple poetry books as well (Timewinds and Diamondfire). For the past three years or so, we have been living in Petaluma, California.\n\nIt's been a good life, all told. A lot of good books, some great music, some brilliant, talented people, and a host of multi-dimensional experiences. ","discography":{"lee-underwood":{"albums":{"california-sigh":{"image":"","label":"Cal Sigh Productions","review":"","title":"California Sigh","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":202,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Lee-Underwood-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fa25ae9c-35ac-40d4-8275-06f21fd2dcb7","last_name":"Underwood"},"levi-chen":{"artist_name":"Levi Chen","body":"Levi Chen is an ambient guitarist who drew from a variety of source material including reggae, Celtic music, classic rock, and noise rock, across a multi-decade career. He originally recorded under the name Liquid Gardens for his first cassette *Tao* which was recorded at home on four track, but after that, he began using his own name Levi Chen for all releases. He developed his signature sound by his second album *Meditation Of My Soul*, including the guzheng harp along with his ambient guitar. Chen initially promoted his music primarily by busking around the U.S. and Europe throughout the ’90s.\n\nLevi Chen was born in Indiana in 1963. His parents came to the United States for graduate school and settled in Ann Arbor. His mother worked as a librarian and his father taught political science at Wayne State.  “My passion for music comes from my father,” Chen recalled. “I grew up on a diet of the Weavers, Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary and classical.” \n\nChen started playing acoustic guitar in fifth grade and stuck with it, getting an electric guitar a few years later. (Fun fact: he took lessons from local guitarist [Will Vukin](/will-vukin) who would go on to release many new age cassettes in the ‘80s.) At the time, Chen’s main hero was Jimi Hendrix, who was known for playing a Fender Stratocaster, so in 1979 Chen got a Stratocaster that he still uses today. Chen lived in Ann Arbor until he was 17 when he was kicked out of public school and sent to boarding school in Switzerland.\n\nChen spent a year in Taiwan playing with a band called the Immigrants, then spent two years at Hampshire College, studying architecture and music. During a semester abroad in Florence, he busked for the first time. “That was a game changer,” Chen recalled. “I was playing the Chapman stick and a friend was singing. As I was standing there in the piazza, I realized I was part of a lineage of troubadours. We made good money, about $1500 a night. We were living large.”\n\nUpon his return to the States, Chen abandoned his college studies and lived nomadically, first a year in Boston working at a guitar store, then a year in France. When Chen’s parents divorced in 1988, Chen’s mother moved to Los Angeles and Chen eventually joined her in 1990, settling there permanently.\n\nIn Los Angeles, Chen got a job at Nadine’s music store, where his gift for gab made him one of the top salesmen. However, the economy hit a rough patch a few years later, and Chen was laid off. As he regrouped in Joshua Tree, Chen got the inspiration to record an ambient guitar album, inspired by Robert Fripp, Sonic Youth, and the classic rock of his youth.\n\n“At the time, I was bitter about my mother’s divorce and spent a lot of time playing guitar on the stairwell at our apartment with all this reverb and echo,” Chen said. “I didn’t know what new age music was at the time – it was not in my field of vision. I thought I was going to be the Chinese Jimi Hendrix. In my head, I’m playing rock music with a band, but it comes out as ambient music.”\n\nWith time on his hands, Chen recorded 16 hours of improvised ambient music at home with his guitar and a Digitech JamMan pedal. The whole thing took about a week. Then, while on a road trip with his father, they listened to all the music and narrowed it down to 60 minutes of material for his debut cassette *Tao* in 1993.\n\nTo promote his album, Chen drove around the country playing at bookstores, new age shops, and busking on the streets. It was enough for him to live on at the time, and he estimates he went on to sell 5,000 copies on CD and cassette over the years.\n\nTwo years later, Chen added the guzheng to his sound, playing it along with his ambient guitar to add texture and color. He documented his new sound on *Meditations Of My Soul* in 1995, also releasing an album of his poetry set to music the same year (*Haiku Moon*). By this time, Chen had established a routine of busking in Los Angeles, making enough money to get by. \n\nFor his fourth album, Chen traveled to Ireland, where an old musician friend from the Immigrants was living. There he learned to play jigs on the harp and met Tina Tourin, the Celtic harp player. That experience informed Chen’s next album *Celtic Zen* which featured [Michael Masley](/michael-masley) and [Lisa Franco](/lisa-franco) on some of the tracks, in addition to Tourin.\n\nChen continued to record new albums outside of the time frame of this site, including the CDs *Liquid Gardens* (1999), *Alhambra* (2002) and *Devocean* (2007). He is still active as of 2026 and maintains a website [here](https://www.liquidgardens.com/).","discography":{"lev-chen":{"albums":{"haiku-moon":{"image":"","label":"Yin Yang","review":"","title":"Haiku Moon and Other Assorted Sounds and Visions","year":"1995"},"meditations":{"image":"","label":"Yin Yang","review":"This is a big step up from his debut production-wise, with a nice clear sound and fuller arrangements that add the guzheng to his ambient guitar pieces.","title":"Meditations Of My Soul","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Levi Chen","entry_number":2},"levi-chen-lisa-franco-michael-masley":{"albums":{"celtic-zen":{"image":"","label":"Yin Yang","review":"","title":"Celtic Zen","year":"1997"}},"artist_name":"Levi Chen with Lisa Franco and Michael Masley","entry_number":3},"liquid-gardens":{"albums":{"tao":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Completely improvised four-track guitar ambience drenched in delay and reverb. *Tao* often feels tentative and disarmingly intimate, but that fragility works in its favor and helps convey his turbulent emotional state at the time. While it is mostly pleasant listening, there are some moments of dissonance, and at a glance this could almost be mistaken for something on a '90s micro indie label like Road Cone or Trackshun Industries if it weren’t for the packaging and occasional nature sounds, which put this a bit closer to new age.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Tao","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":441,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/levi-chen-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=da4cdd8e-8faf-471a-ac31-b1059b0a4626","last_name":"Chen"},"lg-mair":{"artist_name":"Lloyd Mair Jr.","body":"Born in 1948, Lloyd Mair, Jr. was an electronic musician who spent over a decade as the in-house bass player at the New York comedy club Catch a Rising Star. His friend George Calfa, who was a comic at the time, recalls Mair staying at the club every night until 4 a.m. in the morning, recording rhythm tracks and electronic pieces. Many of these ended up on a slew of underground cassette releases from 1987 to 1998, and Mair was also a frequent collaborator with other like-minded artists such as [Alien Planetscapes](/alien-planetscapes) and Hal McGee. Mair's music is often unwieldy and dense, but he did dabble in one pop-oriented project with Calfa called POP.3, and he also had a love of jazz, especially Duke Ellington. In the '90s, Mair (who often recorded under the name LG Mair, Jr.) relocated to Kentucky with his wife, and was still there by the time of his passing in 2019. Recently, English label chOOn!! has given Mair the deluxe reissue treatment with [two expansive volumes](https://lgmairjr.bandcamp.com/album/selected-rhythm-tracks-1988-1994-volume-i) of unreleased music.","discography":{"lg-mair":{"albums":{"Sacrament":{"image":"","label":"Ha","review":"","title":"Sacrament","year":"1994"},"electronic-dreamscapes":{"image":"","label":"IRRE","review":"","title":"Electronic Dreamscapes","year":"1991"},"ghosts":{"image":"","label":"Sépulkrales Katakombes","review":"","title":"Ghosts","year":"1994"},"in-the-caverns":{"image":"","label":"Sound of Pig","review":"","title":"In the Caverns of the Dead","year":"1987"},"isis-and-morgan":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Isis and Morgan","year":"1991"},"mediaeval":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Mediaevel Tales ","year":"1991"},"music-for":{"image":"","label":"IRRE","review":"","title":"Music for Winefride","year":"1992"},"music-from-the-tank":{"image":"","label":"Kentucky Fried Royalty","review":"","title":"Music from the Tank","year":"1991"},"parallel-universe":{"image":"","label":"Music and Elsewhere","review":"","title":"A Parallel Universe","year":"1993"},"pilgramage":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Pilgramage","year":"1992"},"plutonian":{"image":"","label":"Music and Elsewhere","review":"","title":"The Plutonian Vortex","year":"1995"},"shamans-dream":{"image":"","label":"S-Meta","review":"","title":"The Shaman's Dream","year":"1992"},"the-final-procession":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"The Final Procession","year":"1992"},"the-inner-chamber":{"image":"","label":"AudioFile","review":"","title":"The Inner Chamber","year":"1990"},"time-ghosts":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Time Ghosts","year":"1992"},"totentanz":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Totentanz","year":"1991"},"winefridge-within":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Media","review":"","title":"Winefride Within the Vortex","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"LG Mair, Jr","entry_number":1},"nomuzic":{"albums":{"news":{"image":"","label":"IRRE","review":"","title":"News You Can Choose","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Nomuzic","entry_number":4},"paracon":{"albums":{"watching":{"image":"","label":"IRRE","review":"","title":"Watching for a Sign of Spirit","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Paracon","entry_number":6},"pop-3":{"albums":{"pop-3":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Pop.3","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Pop.3","entry_number":2},"shape-memory":{"albums":{"shape-memory":{"image":"","label":"Microdot","review":"","title":"Shape Memory","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Amoraim/Lloyd Mair","entry_number":7},"slip":{"albums":{"slip":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"S.L.I.P.","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"S.L.I.P.","entry_number":3},"truma-syndrom-lg-mair":{"albums":{"feuerball":{"image":"","label":"Ebus","review":"","title":"Feuerball / Aradia ","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Trauman Syndrom / L.G. Mair, Jr","entry_number":5}},"entry_number":389,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/lg-mair-640.png?alt=media&token=b5ba7a1e-212a-42f4-b00f-0751936c0788","last_name":"Mair"},"lisa-franco":{"artist_name":"Lisa Franco","body":"Lisa Lynne Franco was a fresh face on the new age scene when she emerged in the early '90s, over a decade younger than established veterans like Andreas Vollenweider, [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly) and [Erik Berglund](/erik-berglund). After playing in a variety of prog and metal bands as a bassist, she taught herself harp and landed a deal with Klaus Schulze's Innovative Communications label which produced four albums. However, Franco was not happy with the label's glossy production and cheesy album covers.  So, she formed a back-to-basics acoustic duo with David Young called Celestial Winds that drew from baroque and medieval music, a style that was well-received on the arts and crafts circuit where she sold tapes and promoted her music. Eventually, she signed to Windham Hill in the late-'90s and changed her name to Lisa Lynne, going on to have a successful career that continues today. \n\nBorn in 1963, Franco grew up in Orange County in Southern California. He first instrument was the guitar and in her teenage years, she joined a garage band playing bass and performing at backyard parties. She went on to spend a year and a half at the Musicians Institute of Technology while she gigged with Top 40 bands. \n\nFranco eventually went on to play bass in a heavy metal band called [Riipshaa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CwY1HYIk5M), but she also took an interest in medieval music and began teaching herself to play the harp when she was 21. \"At the time, I was an assistant manager in a record store. When Andreas Vollenweider came out, that blew my mind. That's what got me playing the harp. I used to play along to his records. My style from day one was very influenced by him. It was a potent time to be working in a record store. I played that stuff in the store and people wanted to buy it.\"\n\nOnce she got good at the harp, Franco formed a progressive harp band called Bigger Than Blue with some German musicians. \"I never intended to be smooth jazz or new age,\" Franco said. \"My bands were influenced by Yes and Genesis and Kansas. When I learned harp, I was also doing stuff by Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin while writing my own original music.\"\n\nFranco sent demo tapes of Bigger Than Blue to labels and found a backer in Peter Seiler who was a former prog musician himself in the '70s. Now working as a producer and artist at Innovative Communications, a label founded by Klaus Schulze, Seiler wanted Franco as a solo artist, and her bandmate's visas were expiring soon anyway, so she forged ahead.\n\nFranco's experience with Innovative Communications however was a disappointment. \"Those albums were overproduced,\" Franco said. \" It wasn't really me. I wrote to various labels trying to get record deals and Peter Seiler responded. He took me under his wing and produced the albums, but he added a lot of keyboards and had a heavy influence on the sound. My version of \"My Way\" by Frank Sinatra was the worst. I cringe. I can't even listen to it. I wish I had the confidence to say no back then. After that, I broke it down and became simple again. I ended up on the Venice Beach boardwalk playing for tips and cassettes. That's where I met David Young. He was playing by himself and wandered over.\"\n\nRetreating from Innovative Communications, Franco and Young formed the duo Celestial Winds and played together for a few years. Their first album was the curious *Sweet Dreams* which featured Young playing recorder along with the previously recorded *Romantic Dreams* for Innovative Communications. They went on to release two more albums after that.\n\nStarting in the mid-'90s, Franco became a fixture on the art fair circuit where she played live and sold her cassettes. This led to her meeting kindred spirit [George Tortorelli](/george-tortorelli) and the two went on to perform together for 20 years. In their heyday, they would sell hundreds of CDs a day, pulling in significant income that helped her build her own recording studio and start a label called Lavender Sky Music. In 1998, Franco got a deal with Windham Hill and went on to produce many albums for the label under the name Lisa Lynne.  She is still active today.\n\nSource: Interview with the author","discography":{"celestial-winds":{"albums":{"celestial-winds":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Celestial Winds","year":"1994"},"oceans-of-love":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Oceans of Love","year":"1995"},"sweet-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sweet Dreams","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Celestial Winds","entry_number":3},"lisa-franco":{"albums":{"bigger-than-blue":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communications","review":"","title":"Bigger than Blue","year":"1992"},"my-way":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communications","review":"","title":"My Way","year":"1993"},"romantic-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communications","review":"","title":"Romantic Dreams","year":"1993"},"silken-wings":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communications","review":"","title":"Silken Wings","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Lisa Franco","entry_number":2},"string-art":{"albums":{"heaven-on-venice":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Heaven on Venice","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"String Art","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":299,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/lisa-franco.jpeg?alt=media&token=28a68534-33f5-4379-8fa6-637e7c13fc1f","last_name":"Franco"},"lisa-moskow":{"artist_name":"Lisa Moskow/Ishtar","body":"Ishtar was a trio of Northern California musicians that included Lisa Moskow on sarod (pictured left), Nicole Milner on piano (middle) and Douglas Caroll on cello (right). The group, formed in the mid-80s, came from varied backgrounds, with Milner a more conventional pianist while Carroll played free improv and studied with Stockhausen and Tony Braxton. Moskow, who studied Hindustani Classical music with Ali Akhabar Khan, helped bridge the two disparate worlds, creating a unique sound that helped the group secure a loyal following in the Bay Area at the time. The group disbanded after a few years and Moskow partnered with various other musicians on other cassettes such as  the Japanese influenced *These Still Waters* and *Yearning* with Robert Rich.","discography":{"Lisa Moskow-Genji-Ito":{"albums":{"these-still-waters":{"image":"","label":"Casting Spells Music","review":"","title":"These Still Waters","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Lisa Moskow & Genji Ito","entry_number":3},"ishtar":{"albums":{"rites-of-the-dolphin":{"image":"","label":"Making Waves","review":"","title":"Rites of the Dolphin","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Ishtar","entry_number":1},"lisa-moskow":{"albums":{"songs-for-sarod":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Songs for Sarod","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Lisa Moskow","entry_number":2},"robert-rich-lisa-moskow":{"albums":{"yearning":{"image":"","label":"Fathom","review":"","title":"Yearning","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Robert Rich and Lisa Moskow","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":393,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ishtar-640.jpg?alt=media&token=778895a0-d730-4932-b612-61519c330831","last_name":"Moskow"},"loren-nerell":{"artist_name":"Loren Nerell","body":"Many ambient musicians in the US drew inspiration from Tangerine Dream and the Berlin-school sound, but Loren Nerell was one of the few who was able to personalize and expand the genre. Using field recordings, samples, and elements of Balinese Gamelan and Harry Partch's microtonal music, Nerell created a unique hybrid that he honed throughout his career. He also made lasting and important connections in the ambient field, particularly with Richard Burmer and [Steve Roach](/steve-roach) who helped engineer and produce his debut album.\n \nBorn in Long Beach, CA in 1960, Nerell was a decade younger than many of the electronic trailblazers in the '70s and was indeed just a teenager when he encountered Tangerine Dream. \"Their album *Rubycon* was like nothing I had ever heard before,\" Nerell said. \"All of the Berlin school music seemed so futurist that I wanted to be a part of it.\" Nerell had already learned how to play the piano and trumpet by then, but was mainly focused on the tuba, which he played in orchestras, marching band and brass ensembles. Ultimately, electronic music proved to be far more alluring.\n\nNerell spent the next five years learning and studying everything he could about analog and digital synthesis. At San Diego State University, where he attended briefly as an undergrad studying music, he learned about Balinese Gamelan, a traditional style of ensemble music from Indonesia that is heavy on percussion.  \"Gamelan, when I was first introduced to it, seemed to me like it was the acoustic version of what Tangerine Dream and the other Berlin school folks were doing,\" Nerell said.  \n\nIn the course of his studies, Nerell ultimately attended three different colleges, trying out various programs, but never quite found the right one. Fed up, he used the rest of his savings to buy some keyboards and set up a studio of his own and try to make it in the music business. He found an early mentor in Steve Roach in 1982 and soon became his go-to engineer for recording live shows.\n\nAfter seeing Steve Roach play at the Electro Fest in 1982, the two struck up a friendship and Roach began giving him lessons. Nerell recorded much of what would become his debut album at Roach's studio in 1983 and 1984 and then spent several years trying to get other labels interested with no luck.  He eventually released his first album, *Point of Arrival* on his own as a cassette only release. He printed 600 copies and sold many on consignment and others through European distributors such as Andy Garibaldi's Lotus Records where there seemed to be more interest than back home.\n\nBefore the album's release, Nerell had been working at Oberheim as a music technician. (He actually used spare parts to make up the keyboard featured on the album cover that is buried in the ground.) At first, Nerell enjoyed spending all day testing out synths and sequencers, but it eventually became routine.  Nerell decided to go back to school and complete his BS at Cal-Poly Pomona, studying Anthropology and Geography.  From there he went to UCLA and studied ethnomusicology, writing his master's thesis on temple music in Bali. \n\nAt Cal Poly, Nerell recorded his sophomore album, *Book of Alchemy*. He pressed 500 copies of this release, although this time he used higher quality paper and cassettes, and interest locally was strong. He recalls a bookstore in Baltimore called Playing by Ear ordering 100 copies directly from him.\n\nAs the '90s dawned, many of Nerell's closest friends and collaborators like Roach and Burmer moved away. Nerell remained in Southern California, and sporadically released more albums throughout the 90s including *Lilil Dewa*, a powerful synthesis of Gamelan music and dark ambient sounds. The album remains the most well-known and best-selling of his solo albums, though he notes that a comp he was featured on called *Dali: The Endless Enigma* sold closer to 10,000 copies.","discography":{"loren-nerell":{"albums":{"book-of-alchemy":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"Pulling from various ethnographic regions, *Book of Alchemy* creates a tapestry of sounds from extensive field recordings, vocal loops, samples, synths, and much more. The album’s six tracks are more adventurous than most electronic world-music fusion albums of the day, with a unique cinematic and experimental approach. \n\nSide A is comprised of two long tracks that showcase Nerell’s expansive vision. Album opener \"The World Spirit\" transports the listener to the temples of Nepal. Buddhist chants weave in and out of African rites songs and didgeridoo drones before giving way to sustained guitars and digital percussion drenched in large plate reverb. \"The Crucible\" uses bird sounds, haunting synth pads, shamanic drums and ceremonial sound effects to create a deep, otherworldly atmosphere that slowly builds into a proto-downtempo trance track that could fit into a modern sunrise DJ set. With arpeggiated synth riffs and soothing chords, the track brings to mind Jon Hassell or K. Leimer.\n\nThe mystical atmosphere continues on Side B with \"Essences\" which is built around a Buddhist vocal loop augmented with Tovan throat singing. The slow, heavy breathing evokes a sense of euphoria, laying on the floor of the Amazon, looking up towards the jungle canopy above, in the throes of ceremony.  \"Iron Filings\" is next – a more rhythmic piece that starts with crystalline sounding bells and rain sticks. Building hand percussion continues the trance like state, followed by the foreboding \"Cinnabar,\" with modulating synths in 5/4 time that portend an unavoidable ego-death experience. \"Burned Alum\" lightens the vibe up with soft percussion and soothing triangular waveforms.\n\nUnlike other private electronic tapes from the 80's, the recording quality and mixes have a pristine sound quality which can add or detract from the nostalgia, depending on your taste. Thankfully the recordings aren’t so polished that they become sterile, nor do they adhere to  early digital era production trends. There is enough warmth, depth and nuance in there to keep the impact of the music from sounding dated. \n\n(Dahvin Bugas, 2019)","title":"Book of Alchemy","year":"1988"},"point-of-arrival":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"Synthesist Loren Nerell has two distinct but related styles: fast churning rhythms reminiscent of Gamelan music and broad gauzy drones, which he alternates and sometimes combines. Steve Roach and Richard Burmer provide additional keyboards--and presumably play them, too.\n\nRobert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, July 1987)","title":"Point of Arrival","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":15,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/LorenN.jpg?alt=media&token=f1a007d9-7f07-4f01-b5a3-8d441e5ffa18","last_name":"Nerell"},"lou-gigger":{"artist_name":"Lou Gigger","body":"Based in Maryland, Lou Gigger was the guitarist for Braille Party, a band that started out playing hardcore but evolved into a more alternative/college rock sound by the time of their 1984 [LP](https://www.discogs.com/release/2877082-Braille-Party-Welcome-To-Maryland). However, Gigger died in a car accident in 1988, cutting short his music career. Gigger’s mother posthumously compiled two cassettes of her son's four-track guitar experiments, with one focused on his more experimental work (*Music for People Who Hate Vocalists...*) while the other featured more ambient pieces (*Ambience for People Who Hate Distractions*).","discography":{"lou-gigger":{"albums":{"music-for-people-who-hate-distractions":{"image":"","label":"Lounacy","review":"","title":"Ambience for People Who Hate Distractions","year":"1991"},"music-for-people-who-hate-vocalists":{"image":"","label":"Lounacy","review":"","title":"Music for People Who Hate Vocalists/Noise for People Who Hate Music ","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":299,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/lou-gigger.png?alt=media&token=7d8269f0-1817-41e4-93aa-f6534263987c","last_name":"Gigger"},"maggie-martin":{"artist_name":"Maggie Martin","body":"Maggie Martin has spent the better part of her music career playing accordion, first in the San Francisco punk/polka band Polkacide throughout the '90s and more recently in her own group the Mad Maggies. Prior to that, she spent a few years in the late '80s running a theater company called Mixed Company, and during this time she put out an album of instrumental ambient pieces called *Limines* that may interest readers.\n\nBorn in 1950, Martin grew up in San Francisco in the heart of the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. She took piano lessons, sang in the church choir, and later went on to form an all-girl rock band at 15. In college, she studied opera and voice and ultimately earned a degree in music at Sonoma State University. While she thought the music department was stuffy, she loved having access to the recording studio and synths there.\n\n\"I loved playing synths because if you have the inclination, you can make the music,\" Martin said. \"You don't need 60 musicians with sheet music in front of them waiting to do it. It's egalitarian in a way.\"\n\nAfter graduating, she ran her own theater company in the Bay Area from 1988 to 1991. She put on several productions, doing everything including casting, performing, singing, dancing, and composing. For one of her shows, *Timepiece*, she composed each song in a different meter, hence the name. The soundtrack, which combined acoustic and electronic instruments, would become her first album of the same name, released in 1989.\n\nFor her next album, Martin used a Macintosh computer and synths to create her first and only electronic music album, *Limines*. She got one review for the cassette in *Heartsong Review*, but it has remained little known since. \n\nIn the '90s, Martin started learning the accordion and mostly left synths behind. She joined the punk/polka band Polkacide and remained with them for the next 13 years. In the early 2000s, she moved on to found her own band the Mad Maggies that fused polka, ska, and jazz elements. The band is still active and has a Bandcamp page [here](https://musicshop.themadmaggies.com/).\n\n","discography":{"maggie-martin":{"albums":{"limines":{"image":"","label":"Mixed Company","review":"","title":"Limines","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":306,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/maggie-martin-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1fa23812-bcd4-4023-a31f-6867eb89d39f","image_credit":"","last_name":"Martin"},"maitreya-stillwater":{"artist_name":"Maitreya Stillwater","body":"Michael Stillwater was a guitarist and songwriter who played spiritual folk music that drew on Native American and Hindu chants, as well as gospel. \"I always thought of my music as having healing quality and spirituality to it,\" he said. Much of his music is vocal-based, and thus outside the scope of this guide, but he did release one instrumental guitar album *Serenade* under the name Maitreya which he received from Swami Satchidananda. Stillwater passed away in 2026.\n\nMichael Stillwater was born in 1953 and grew up in Washington D.C. His first instrument was the clarinet which he played in the school orchestra. At 13, he borrowed his mother's Silvertone guitar and took that up, never looking back. He studied with Nils Lofgren and Frank Mullen, a top jazz guitarist at the time, and played in some local rock bands.\n\nWhen he was 17, Stillwater moved to California to finish high school at Pacific High in Santa Cruz. There, he discovered yoga and meditation and spent some time at the Integral Yoga Institute. His musical inspiration began to shift away from rock and towards more spiritual sources like Native American and Hindu chants, as well as Shaker and Gospel songs. He became interested in the teachings of Swami Satchidananda who gave Michael the name of Maitreya.\n\nStillwater went on to attend a few years of college in Oregon, but he didn't graduate. Instead, he ended up designing and marketing a line of greeting cards called Gracenotes that featured his pen and ink drawings. He traveled around for a few years, spending some time in Marin County studying arranging with [Allaudin Mathieu](/allaudin-mathieu) before moving to the area permanently in 1976. There he met flutist [Schawkie Roth](/schawkie-roth) who introduced him to many key musicians in the area's new age music scene like [Iasos](/iasos), [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews), and [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern). Stillwater ended up moving in with Roth and they formed the Mill Valley trio with a lineup of flute, guitar and cello.\n\nIn 1978, Michael met his wife-to-be Maloah when she moved in with Schawkie Roth too. The two became romantic and started playing music together immediately.  Maloah played the zither, Michael played guitar; they both sang.  The couple hosted regular meditation and music events initially called \"The Miracle Singing Experience,\" later known as the Heavensong Ministry. *A Course in Miracles* was a big inspiration.\n\nMichael and Maloah began releasing cassettes starting in 1978 with *Wings of Prayer*, featuring one of Michael's pen and ink drawings on the cover. The couple produced three cassettes during this time and they sold well at metaphysical book shops. The couple got married in Golden Gate Park (Joel Andrews and Schawkie Roth performed) and then moved to Maui where they continued to host their spiritual celebrations. It was there that Maloah released her only solo album*Shores of Paradise * in 1984 which featured solo zither backed with ocean sounds.\n\nDuring their time in Hawaii, the couple released four more albums and even toured internationally in 1985, playing in Switzerland, New Zealand, Greece and Australia. However, as the decade wore on, Michael and Maloah's marriage fell apart and they divorced in 1989. Maloah remained in Hawaii but Michael returned to the mainland.\n\nIn the 90s and beyond, Michael lived what he called \"a more isolated, hermit life\" in Seattle. However, he continued to write songs and developed a course in spontaneous composition that he called \"intuitive music\". He also created Songcare, a foundation that would bring songs of peacefulness to people who were dying. \"My focus became the healing power of music,\" Stillwater said. In 2000, he worked with Gary Malkin to produce *Graceful Passages, a Companion for Living and Dying* which he says sold over 100,000 copies and was his biggest success. This was followed by the similar *Care for the Journey*.\n\nIn 2005, Stillwater got remarried and moved to Switzerland to be with his new wife. He currently focuses his energy on filmmaking and has made three documentaries about music, but he still performs occasionally at conferences, retreats and workshops with an emphasis on health and transformation. He also works as a book illustrator.","discography":{"maitreya-stillwater":{"albums":{"serenade":{"image":"","label":"Inner Harmony Music","review":"","title":"Serenade","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":265,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/maitreya-stillwater-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f3211b3c-5fa9-466c-a653-b5c38052cef6","last_name":"Stillwater"},"maloah-stillwater":{"artist_name":"Maloah Stillwater","body":"Maloah Stillwater (right) was a part of Marin County's thriving new age scene in the late '70s, sharing a house with [Schawkie Roth](/schawkie-roth) and [Maitreya Stilllwater](/maitreya-stillwater) (left), while hanging out with [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews), [Iasos](/iasos) and [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern). She and Maitreya co-created Heavensong, a spiritual non-profit ministry inspired by *A Course in Miracles*. During their time together, she sang and co-produced thirteen recordings of their new age folk (which falls outside the scope of this guide), but she also released one instrumental solo album of zither and ocean sounds called *Shores of Paradise* that was their biggest hit.\n\nBorn in San Francisco in 1950, Maloah's given name was Linda Treat, which she changed in 1974. She is the oldest of six children and grew up in Menlo Park and Sacramento. Her father was the choir director in the Episcopal Church, and she and her brothers and sisters sang in four-part harmonies around the piano. \"I was raised with a global musical background,\" she said. \"My parents collected records from around the world. As a young girl I had a crush on Harry Belafonte and loved his Calypso record. His Christmas album is still a favorite.\"\n\nMaloah was always interested in spirituality and became a student of Ram Dass and Sri Swami Satchidananda in 1971 when living in San Francisco. She loved chanting with Krishna Das and Ram Dass at gatherings and attended Sonoma State University, where she earned a degree in Humanistic Psychology. She lived on a ranch in Sonoma County where she hosted and played zither at many spiritual retreats, in addition to playing zither and tamboura in a band called Rhythm and Bliss. The trio played many concerts and festivals but never released any recordings. \n\nIn 1977, Maloah met Schawkie Roth, a flutist who also played the zither. \"We were talking, and I told him I wanted to move to Marin,\" she said. \"He said there was a woman moving out of his house, so I went to visit the next day. As soon as I walked in, I knew that was my house. As it turned out, Michael [Maitreya] was his roommate. At that time Michael was working as an artist and had produced a line of greetings cards called Gracenotes. He played guitar and was writing pop songs that he hoped to get published. He was also a student of Swami Satchidananda, who gave him his spiritual name Maitreya. We began singing together the first day we met.\"\n\nMaloah introduced Michael to *A Course in Miracles*, and as a way to remember the daily lessons, they chanted them as mantras in the Indian tradition of group chanting. Together they created Heavensong, a music ministry based on the *Course*. They led celebrations in Marin and released their first cassette in 1978 titled *Wings of Prayer*, featuring one of Michael's pen and ink drawings on the cover. They married in 1979, and Joel Andrews and Schawkie Roth played at the ceremony. Two years later they moved to Maui, where they continued to host their weekly spiritual celebrations and lead workshops and retreats. It was there that Maloah released her solo album *Shores of Paradise* in 1984.\n\n\"We usually began our celebration with the zither and guided meditation. I loved playing the zither with the sound of the ocean, and thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice to record that?' And it went on to be our best seller. Later on, Swami Satchidananda asked if he could use my music for a  recording he wanted to do, entitled *Guided Relaxation and Affirmations for Inner Peace*. I was deeply honored by that.\"\n\nThe couple also traveled, performing at events and conferences with Ram Dass, Marianne Williamson, Shakti Gawain, Wayne Dyer, Marilyn Ferguson, Buckminster Fuller, and more. In 1985 they went on a year-long worldwide tour leading workshops, retreats, and celebrations. \n\nIn 1990 the couple divorced and Michael returned to California.  Maloah stayed in Hawaii and continued leading retreats and deepening her practice in Vipassana meditation. She returned to Marin to attend graduate school at CIIS in San Francisco, becoming an Expressive Arts Therapist with a MA in Counseling Psychology. She returned to Maui, where she is a therapist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and the founder of The Center for Loving Awareness.","discography":{"maloah-stillwater":{"albums":{"shores-of-paradise":{"image":"","label":"Heavensong","review":"","title":"Shores of Paradise","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":267,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-maloah-stillwater-640.jpg?alt=media&token=290d3d35-cb66-4269-bd85-20f714fb8c70","last_name":"Stillwater"},"manfred-saul":{"artist_name":"Manfred Saul","body":"An accountant by day, Manfred Saul was a lifelong music lover who played guitar in cover bands through the '70s and '80s. By 1984, he'd taken an interest in electronic music, influenced by Vangelis and Tangerine Dream, joining a large community of likeminded musicians in New Jersey's sprawling electronic music scene. Saul initially made a name for himself in 1984 with a series of self-released cassettes that earned him airplay on WFMU's Synthetic Pleasure radio show. Fortuna signed him for the more widely distributed album *Nature's Fantasies* in 1987, though it was mostly a re-release of his 1985 cassettes *Melodies of Nature*, with added vocals from Terry Kennedy, plus a few new tracks. Kennedy and Saul were briefly engaged and working on new material, but they broke up and Saul took a long hiatus from electronic music in the '90s to focus on other projects. He would eventually revive the Malaysian Pale name in 2000 for his album *No Boundaries*.\n\nBorn in 1951, Manfred Saul and his family immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1958 when he was 7. The family lived in Orange, New Jersey and eventually Saul moved to Whippany and has been there since. Saul's first instrument was the saxophone and he later took up guitar, like so many others, after hearing the early Beatles.\n\nSaul went on to get a degree in accounting at Drake, though he stayed active musically all through the '70s. He played guitar and bass in a variety of cover bands including Changewater, Shire, and the Crescents. By the '80s, Saul took an interest in electronic music and began self-releasing cassettes in 1984 starting with *Stardate*. These tapes found an audience with Richard Ginsberg, host of the electronic music show Synthetic pleasure, and Saul continued to hone his craft.  In 1985, Saul released the cassette *Melodies of Nature*, which was reviewed in electronic zine *Syne*, along with his soundtrack for a B-movie called *NY Models Centerfold Massacre*.\n\nBy this time, Saul had met Terry Kennedy and Steve Mecca, a couple who'd produced a cassette called *Maroon Afternoon*.  \"They were trying to emulate the Eurythmics,\" Saul recalled. \"[Don Slepian](/don-slepian) got me in touch with them. Terry came over and got interested in the stuff I was doing. Terry had a fabulous voice.\" Saul christened the project Malaysian Pale and reworked *Melodies of Nature* to add three new tracks and add Terry's vocals to others. He got distribution through Fortuna and it was easily his best selling album to date. \n\nSaul's new quartet didn't last long however. \"Terry and Steve were a couple, so it was like a Fleetwood Mac situation,\" Saul said. This rang even more true when Kennedy and Saul became romantically entwined and Mecca left the group. Saul and Kennedy worked on some new material they hoped to release on Fortuna, but the label went bankrupt and Saul and Kennedy's relationship soured. After that, Saul took a long hiatus from music, focusing instead on his work in finance. He returned in 2000 with a CD called *No Boundaries*, continuing to use the name Malaysian Pale.","discography":{"malaysian-pale":{"albums":{"nature":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Nature's Fantasies","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Malaysian Pale","entry_number":2},"manfred-saul":{"albums":{"day-in-the-life":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Day in the Life of a Traveler","year":"1985"},"melodies-of-nature":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Melodies of Nature","year":"1985"},"metamorphosis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Metamorphosis","year":"1984"},"stardate":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Stardate","year":"1984"},"the-day-the-earth-danced":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Day the Earth Danced","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Manfred Saul","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":381,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/manfred-saul.jpg?alt=media&token=61ffe859-58cd-40c3-a476-a2cda9e77beb","last_name":"Saul"},"manfred-schonauer":{"artist_name":"Manfred Schonauer","body":"Manfred Schonauer (born 1949) is a synthesist in the style of Vangelis and Klaus Schulze who released three cassettes of Berlin-school electronica between 1983 and 1985, all with minimal packaging that only included a business card for a cover. Schonauer was originally from Germany, but emigrated to the US in 1972 with a club band, eventually settling in Wisconisn. He played keyboards in various cover bands throughout his life, but had a passion for electronic music which he did on the side. He sold his tapes at his occasional electronic shows and through underground outlets such as CLEM. By his recollection, he sold about 100 cassettes total. Schnoauer went on to release additional ablums on CD in 1997 and 2006, but those fall outside the scope of this site. He is still active musically and maintains a website [here](https://www.manfredsmusic.com/photos.htm).","discography":{"manfred-schonauer":{"albums":{"opus-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Opus 1","year":"1983"},"opus-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Opus 2","year":"1984"},"opus-3":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Opus 3","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":401,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/manfred-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e2de9bd0-75c6-4773-bc3c-77d2aba94fa7","last_name":"Schonauer"},"marc-barreca":{"artist_name":"Marc Barreca","body":"In addition to a successful career as a bankruptcy attorney and judge in Seattle, Marc Barreca is also well known among ambient fans for a series of releases on the Palace of Lights label in the '80s. After a fifteen-year hiatus, he re-emerged with new work starting in 2006.\n\nBarreca was born in 1955 in Seattle and has remained in the area ever since. He grew up in a big Italian family and took up the accordion at an early age, continuing until eighth grade. He then switched to a combo organ and Hohner Pianet which he played in a series of local cover bands. After graduating high school, Barreca went to the University of Washington and earned a degree in psychology. During college, he became immersed in electronic music, learning how to play the Buchla synthesizer and frequenting a local gallery called \"and/or\" that hosted dance, theater, and avant-garde performances. Barreca soon assembled a small home studio comprised of synths and a four-track and started recording.\n\nWhile working at a day job writing civil service tests, Barreca put together his first release *In a Foreign Land* in 1977 which saw some limited distribution with Eurock. At the same time, he also joined up with James Husted and Roland Barker in a synth trio called Young Scientist that frequently played in the Seattle area. Young Scientist were active between 1977 and 1980 and released three cassettes that drew from Krautrock experimentalism and Eno-style ambient pieces.\n\nYoung Scientist broke up in 1980 when Barker left town with his other band the Blackouts in a stab at commercial success.  Barreca had also been releasing a series of solo tapes while in Young Scientist, so he put renewed energy into his own music. [Kerry Leimer](/kerry-leimer), who Barreca had met at a Young Scientist show, offered to start putting out Barreca's releases on his Palace of Lights label. This helped Barreca reach a wider audience with his first release for the label, *Twilight*. The album, which refined the approach of Young Scientist into something more personal and accessible, sold about 2,500 copies and wound up being the best seller of his career.\n\nAfter a short hiatus from music, Barreca joined Kerry Leimer as a session player for the Savant project *The Neo-Realist at Risk* in 1983. The album drew obvious inspiration from David Byrne and Brian Eno's *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts* album, with modular re-arrangements of sampled sound and discreetly funky grooves. Working on the Savant album inspired Barreca to do more with loops and 4/4 rock rhythms on his next album, *Music Works for Industry*. Released on cassette, that album has since garnered a strong reputation and has been reissued on vinyl by [Freedom to Spend](http://www.freedomtospend.org/catalog/fts002).\n\nBarreca continued on for a few more years and additional releases, but his legal career began to consume most of his free time. However, Barreca did return to music again in 2006, releasing new work on the revitalized Palace of Lights label. Barreca currently lives in Seattle.","discography":{"marc-barreca":{"albums":{"currents":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Currents","year":"1979"},"in-a-foreign-land":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"In a Foreign Land","year":"1977"},"music-works-for-industry":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"*Music Works for Industry* was a big departure for Barreca, eschewing ambient miniatures for a bolder critique of commercialism and corporatized modern life. With titles like “Glass and Steel, No. 1” and “Organized Labor,” Barreca creates suitably mechanistic tracks, adding found sound, vocal samples, and treated loops for additional 20th-century flavor. \n\nBarreca worked with many contributors and collaborators here, including Dennis Rea on guitar, Michael Bush and Phillip Hertz on drums, and Terry Morgan and Jay Hamilton on bass. Perhaps the best contributions are from saxophonist David Discher, whose funky, soulful playing provides the perfect contrast to the industrial clank of songs like “The Urge to Buy Terrorizes You.” The most obvious comparison would be Byrne/Eno’s *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts*, though there are also shades of YMO, the Residents, or even Devo. Still, this remains a wholly original, engaging work, and easily his most distinctive.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Music Works for Industry","year":"1983"},"raw-fish-and-green-tea":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"4-track electronic ambience, with a quasi-experimental feel. Eno, Kraftwerk, and T. Dream provide the basic template, which Barreca \"lovingly fucks with,\" as Mike Rep Hummel might say. The Seattle dankness seeps into a lot of tracks like the skin-tingling \"In a Foreign Land\" or the claustrophobic “A Compendium of Errors,” but there is enough creativity and spirit to balance things out, as on the Terry Riley-ish \"New Delhi Shuffles\" or \"At the Carnival,\" a gentle e-piano piece in the vein of Roedelius.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Raw Fish and Green Tea / Surrogate Religions","year":"1978"},"the-sleeper-wakes":{"image":"","label":"Intrepid","review":"Barreca serves up a series of short, discrete sketches in sound, using sampler and analog treatments. Most pieces fit into the 'near-music' category, hitting at melody and pattern, and gentle slipping in and out of musical focus. The sound components themselves often have intrinsic interest; many cannot be associated with any specific musical instrument, but have strong referential qualities, suggesting various instruments (usually percussive), ritual observances, and emotional states. Most of the sketches are much too short, however, and are never given time to work the magic they surely could. It's not that development is required; music of this sort doesn’t really need development Bu the listener needs sufficient duration to orient himself and acquire feeling for the territory.\n\n(Bill Tilland, *Sound Choice* No. 7, April 1987)","title":"The Sleeper Wakes","year":"1986"},"twilight":{"image":"","label":"Palace of Lights","review":"A difficult album to summarize - presents at least a dozen styles of electronic music, yet still maintains a strong coherency. Multi-dimensional tour de force of both keyboard and non-keyboard synthesizing.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, January/February 1981)","title":"Twilight","year":"1980"},"warble":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Barreca has returned from a period of silence with a new tape *Warble*. Unlike his earlier *Music Works for Industry*, *Warble* does not use any live recordings, as Barreca simulates a sort of alternative environment with his synthesizers. *Warble* is not a collection of tunes, but a set of possibilities, a way of looking at a keyboard as something other than a piano surrogate. Sounds, loops, drones, and samples flow into one another, never progressive from A to B, but establishing the existence of a non-tune-oriented music of organized sounds. Again, pioneers like Tod Docstader, Edgard Varese, and Bebe & Louis Barron made this particular intellectual exercise possible.(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, August 1989)","title":"Warble","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":137,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/marc-barreca-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=efd4a3d4-b3ab-4cdc-b415-41df2b467796","last_name":"Barreca"},"marc-tucker":{"artist_name":"Marc S. Tucker","body":"Marc Tucker was a writer, artist, and musician based in Manhattan Beach, CA. He'd been a fan of prog in the '70s and became interested in making his own electronic music in the early '80s. Using a Jupiter 6 keyboard, he recorded many tracks that his friend [Chris Simmons](/bluetoy) culled down for the cassette *11 Constructions* in 1986. Tucker didn't sell many copies, and turned his attention to *Camera Obscura* instead, a zine chronicling the underground electronic music scene. Tucker eventually folded the zine in the '90s but later appeared as a writer for the site Perfect Sound Forever. He passed away in 2017.","discography":{"marc-tucker":{"albums":{"11-constructions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"11 Constructions","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":298,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/marc-tucker-640.jpg?alt=media&token=29cf0e41-d989-42de-8251-2fe239c10f55","last_name":"Tucker"},"marcey-hamm":{"artist_name":"Marcey Hamm","body":"Marcey Hamm is a new age composer based in Dallas. Originally from Oklahoma, Hamm worked as an engineer at Vari-Lite in the early '80s, developing lighting software. However, a car accident in 1985 changed the trajectory of her life. During her recovery from what she called a near death experience, she began composing meditative, healing synth music starting with her cassette *Inward Harmony*. She sold the tapes locally at metaphysical fairs and bookstores, eventually gaining larger distribution and more fans in the '90s. All her releases came out on her own Music by Marcey label.\n\nMarcey Hamm was born in 1953 and grew up in Lawton, Oklahoma. She went to Catholic school and recalls learning to tap dance and play the piano alongside her sister. Hamm's father owned movie theaters across the country and Hamm worked at the theaters as a child (she later went on to manage one of them after high school). Hamm, however, wanted more than to work in the movie business. Hamm went to college in Lawton, earning a two-year degree in electronics, and then went on to the University of Texas in Dallas to get a degree in computer science.\n\nAfter college, Hamm worked at Vari-Lite where she built software for concert lighting. It was during this time that she was in a bad car accident and began recording ambient electronic music while recovering. \"John Catchings was a fabulous gentleman,\" Hamm recalls. \"He asked me to come to one of his psychic fairs to sell my tapes. He had the fairs once or twice a month. He said I'll be famous one day. So I had my little table with my cassettes and a headset so people could listen to it.\"\n\nHamm's tapes found an audience locally, and *Inward Harmony* built interest through word of mouth. \"There were people who were bedridden and would be healed, literally,\" Hamm says. \"People came from other cities because they knew I'd be at that fair and thank me for that music. I would just go home crying. I was not prepared for all that. I'm just a simple person from Oklahoma.\"\n\nHamm kept her catalog in print for the '90s, reissuing her old cassettes on CD alongside two new albums on CD only, *Maitreya* and *Innocence* that fall outside the scope of this site. She recently authored a [biography](https://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Life-Journey-Marcey-Hamm/dp/1304582639).","discography":{"marcey-hamm":{"albums":{"1-energize-your-life":{"image":"","label":"Music by Marcey","review":"","title":"Inward Harmony","year":"1986"},"anthem":{"image":"","label":"Music by Marcey","review":"","title":"Anthem to Soul","year":"1989"},"celestial-dance":{"image":"","label":"Music by Marcey","review":"","title":"Celestial Dance","year":"1987"},"dream-partner":{"image":"","label":"Music by Marcey","review":"","title":"Dream Partner","year":"1992"},"z":{"image":"","label":"Music by Marcey","review":"","title":"Z","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":399,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/marcey-hamm-640.jpg?alt=media&token=54ee30e1-e1ef-4388-a280-b04482b3c807","last_name":"Hamm"},"marden-pond":{"artist_name":"Marden Pond","body":"Marden Pond is a classically trained composer from Utah who has written over 300 pieces of music with an emphasis on scores for dance, which was the subject of his 1985 PhD dissertation. His work covers a wide variety of styles including ambient, jazz, classical, and choral. His debut LP *Castle Valley Impressions* has picked up collector interest lately, likely on account of the more avant-garde electronic pieces on side two (side one is fusion jazz). His most ambient work can be found on his CD *Environments* from 1996.\n\nBorn in 1950, Marden Pond grew up Mormon in Salt Lake City. His father was a credit manager and his mother was a piano teacher. His first instrument was the trumpet which he started learning in 5th grade, and three years later he had his own jazz quintet, playing a mix of bop standards as well as Cuban and Brazilian pieces. He loved Dave Brubeck's use of odd time signatures and polytonality and saw him play live several times. \"I was a little out of sync with my peers who were listening to rock tunes,\" Pond mused. \n\nIn high school, Pond attended jazz clinics with Doc Severinson and Henry Mancini. He also began composing and notating music, contributing a piece for jazz quintet and orchestra and doing some arranging for the school big band. Pond attended college at Brigham Young University where he continued to study composition and got his major in music education.  At BYU, Pond composed his first major musical work on commission from the college council, a work for orchestra and chorus called *The Atonement*.\n\nPond went on to get his Master of Composition at Arizona State University where he studied with Grant Fletcher, who Pond calls \"one of the most brilliant musicians I’ve ever known.\" He also studied with Ronald Lo Presti and learned about electronic music from David Cohen. Pond also began writing at this time, contributing articles on breath focus and calisthenics geared towards trumpet players like himself. \n\nAfter a brief stint studying orchestra conducting at Cal State Fullerton, Pond moved to Greeley to get his PhD at the University of Colorado. During this time, he taught at Eastern Utah University where he produced his first album, *Castle Valley Impressions*. Together with silkscreen artist Brent Haddock, the two mounted a show of work in 1980 inspired by southeastern Utah, known for geological formations like sculptural arches and rock monoliths. For the show, Pond self-released an LP of songs inspired by the area, with the material split between fusion jazz and electronic pieces. Pressed in an edition of only 300 copies, the record now trades for sums in excess of $200.\n\nIn 1983, Pond wrote his first ballet for a production of *The Little Prince*, as well as some solo piano pieces (these were later compiled on the MMC Chamber Music Series, Vol. 2 in 1997). For his PhD, Pond wrote his dissertation which included the music on the *Kinetic Variations* cassette and a supporting volume on composing for theatrical dance. \"That was early MIDI,\" Pond said. \"I got a Casio keyboard which I could actually afford, and a four-channel cassette recorder. I produced it all using that and a Commodore 64 with midi software. I made 500 copies and sold it in music stores and record stores around Utah.\"\n\nAfter getting his doctorate, Pond eventually landed a job at the Utah Valley community college where he taught music theory, composition, jazz, and conducting for the next 30+ years. He continued to be prolific writer, authoring a book about electronic music in 1991 and other articles geared towards music educators. He earned a steady stream of commissions for new musical work, including scores for modern dance, jazz ensembles, solo piano, and much more. He also produced his first album of ambient music, 1996’s *Environments* on CD. One of his more recent works in the style, *Sanctuary* garnered an Emmy in 2014.","discography":{"marden-pond":{"albums":{"castle-valley-impressions":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Castle Valley Impressions","year":"1980"},"environments":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Environments","year":"1996"},"footnotes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Footnotes","year":"1996"},"kinetic-variations":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Kinetic Variations is a series of electronic midi pieces meant to accompany dance, composed in a wide range of styles that includes space age pop, lounge jazz, and what we might now call video game music. Taken as a whole, the album comes off like an '80s update on the Stereophonic exotica of Dick Hyman or Enoch Light, where sonic novelty is the driving force and a healthy appetite for cheese is a requirement.\n\nStill, there are strong tracks to be found here, especially the first two: the bossa nova jazz-kitsch of \"Timeless\" and the minimalist \"Calimba\" with a faux woodblock arpeggio and wavering chords that sound like they were baked in the Utah sun. The rest of the tracks on side one are hit or miss, with some brassy synth pieces veering into novelty territory. Side two features a more consistent suite of songs, highlighted by a technicolor take on the Berlin-school sound with \"Prism.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Kinetic Variations","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":147,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Marden-Pond.jpg?alt=media&token=78f9ee5a-e503-4fa9-bcee-6923cf81a04a","last_name":"Pond"},"marian-tortorella":{"artist_name":"Marian Tortorella","body":"Marian Tortorella was a bohemian singer/songwriter in the NY area who spent decades trying to break into the music business but was ultimately too much of a resolute individualist to find success anywhere but an entrepreneurial niche like new age. Inspired by her friend Laraaji, she tried her hand at new age for her only released album *Dolphin Dialogue* in 1985 and then spent years promoting it before getting sidelined with the demands of life.\n\nIn the early '70s, Tortorella began writing and recording folk songs in a Joni Mitchell/Cat Stevens style and despite some interest from A&M and Warner Brothers, she never found a deal that she liked enough to sign.  By 1980 she became interested in Sufism and started to explore more meditative sounds in addition to her more commercial ventures. She still recorded more pop leaning material at times, even hooking up with Albert Buchard and Kenny Aaronson of Blue Oyster Cult to record some demos in 1985. \n\nDuring the recording of her pop demos, Tortorella met engineer and musician Zephryn Conte who joined on her *Dolphin Dialogue* cassette.  Tortorella wrote the songs and played autoharp and dulcimer and Conte played synth. \n\nTortorella (who also went by the name Fatima) worked tirelessly to promote the album over the next four years, going to industry shows and selling the tape on consignment at new age shops on the East and West coast, eventually moving around 2,000 copies in her estimation.  She hand colored the covers and applied the cassette labels herself in her one woman operation.  Distributor Narada approached her about getting the tape to a wider audience but again Marian wanted to do things her way. Unfortunately, this decision also ensured a deeper obscurity for her work, which is an excellent example of DIY acoustic ambient sounds.\n\nTortorella worked sporadically on a follow up with frame drum player Glen Velez during the second half of the 80s, but eventually the studio (The Record Plant) closed down and took the tapes with them, never to be seen again. Tortorella has only a rough mixdown to show for these sessions.\n\nBy the 90s, further medical issues slowed Tortorella down considerably and she and Conte lost touch. In the early 2000s, Tortorella tracked Conte down in Arizona to enquire about reissuing *Dolphin Dialogue* on CD, but was horrified to learn that Conte had already reissued it. Even worse, she retitled the work \"Spirit Dance\" and relegated Tortorella's name to a tiny side note. Decades later, Tortorella is still hesitant to collaborate with another artist because of this, though she did sometimes join Don Conro's collective group Mysterious Tremendom. (She finally released an official CD of *Dolphin Dialogue* in 2010.)\n\nMarian continues to work as an astrologist in the NY area as of 2018 and is still recording. Her most recent release was a guided journey called *Twelve Sign Symphony* which came out in 2017.  ","discography":{"marian-tortorella":{"albums":{"dolphin-dialogue":{"image":"","label":"Self-released","review":"","title":"Dolphin Dialogue","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":33,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Marian-tortorella-small.jpg?alt=media&token=d1e21ae7-8944-4e48-93a7-1321695343e5","last_name":"Tortorella"},"marienne-kreitlow":{"artist_name":"Marienne Kreitlow","body":"Marienne Krietlow was a singer/songwriter in the Boston area during the '80s, performing solo and in duos with Margo Grandfors and Dennis Pearne. After getting her BA in religious studies at the University of Minnesota, she moved first to San Francisco and then Boston where she frequently performed at piano bars and in folk clubs. She released her first album of original singer/songwriter material in 1984 with Good Company, a local folk collective, but it was her second album that will be of interest to readers of this site. 1987's *Heartroom* features a more meditative new age sound and was recorded as a final project while she was in massage school. After that, Kreitlow returned to her folk roots, releasing eight albums between 1989 and 2014. She is still active today.","discography":{"marienne-kreitlow":{"albums":{"heartroom":{"image":"","label":"Good Company Productions","review":"With incredible sensitivity, Kreistlow has paved the way for another excursion to the ethereal realm, a road often traveled these days, but seldom with such sincerity. She combines a modern jazz sensibility with a rambling folk quality and new age spaciousness to create a hybrid sound that's equivalent to an impressionistic landscape.  She has a keen grasp of her instruments, and her own talent is augmented by a marvelous work on the Celtic harp and zither by Christoperh Rowan. The compositions wander effortlessly from melancholy to joy and back again. The best moments come, however, in her work on the piano, especially when combined with her lustrous vocals on \"Her Mood.\"\n\n([Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Option* July/August, 1988)","title":"Heartroom","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":282,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/marienne-kreitlow-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=5117ce6d-0009-4490-942f-b31b146896c6","last_name":"Kreitlow"},"mark-baechtle":{"artist_name":"Mark Baechtle","body":"Based in Philadelphia, Mark Baechtle is an electronic musician who played with the trio Arttek in addition to self-releasing albums under his own name. He had a wide range of influences (Tchaikovsky, Coltrane, Klaus Schulze, and the Grateful Dead) evident in his ambitious and often improvised electronic pieces. He got some local airplay and press, with *AfterTouch* calling his work \"a tapestry of interweaving textures and colors\" while MAPP magazine said it \"conjures up astral images and surreal voyages\". He performed often with contemporary dance groups like Group Motion and Ausdruckstanz, and in the early '90s, he helped start an electronic performance series called Moon to Alpha Base 1 on the campus at Penn. He is still active under the name Binc Sonic.\n\nBorn in 1951, Mark Baechtle grew up in various places around New Jersey. His father worked for IBM and was an amateur painter. Like his father, Mark became an accomplished artist and also became interested in music. He started with the clarinet and then taught himself to play guitar and piano in high school. Later on, he learned scales and how to improvise. After high school, Bechtle initially went to art school but got discouraged after a few years and switched to engineering and then architecture.\n\nIn 1980, Baechtle moved to Philadelphia and worked as a carpenter until he managed to launch a business drawing blueprints for licensing and inspection work. Eventually, he started buying synthesizers and composing electronic music. He began performing in the Philadelphia area and at a show, he met musician Chris Cooper who was then in the duo Arttek with Guy Stauffer. The group used synths and samplers while combining elements of industrial, ambient, and EBM in a sound some labeled as cyberpunk. They invited Baechtle to join them and he guested on their album *Nuplat* and joined as a full-time member after that. \"Chris liked [the ambient radio show] *Echoes* and Gus was into industrial stuff, \" Baechtle said. \"But Gus was the idea man. I was bringing in sound textures.\" The group got reviewed in Synthesis, a local zine focused on electronic music, and got some airplay on WXPN and WMUH.\n\nBaechtle, who'd been playing on his own since the late '70s, decided to put out his first solo album in 1992, *Time and Space*. \"Klaus Schulze was my first influence,\" he recalled. \"But there were many others that inspired me like Jonah Sharp. I was a kid of the '60s and '70s, so I listened to everything from Coltrane to Tchaikovsky and the Grateful Dead.\" Baechtle often used samples in his work with subjects ranging from psychology and philosophy to politics.  In an interview with *AfterTouch* he said, \"I like to use sampled  tones on a bed of preset patches from a palette of synth voices, usually meditative but not always.\" Some of the pieces on his first tape grew from his work performing with the modern dance group Austruckdanz between 1990 and 1993.\n\nIn the '90s, Baechtle continued to play with Arttek and also helped start an electronic series called Moon to Alpha Base 1 on the Penn Campus. He eventually moved out of the city, first leasing a farm in Melverne, PA where he sometimes put on electronic shows, and then later settling in Bechtlesville where he currently lives now. He currently plays under the name [Binc Sonic]( https://soundcloud.com/user-651579761).","discography":{"arttek":{"albums":{"6-is-9":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"6 is 9","year":"1992"},"detox":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Detox","year":"1989"},"emission":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"E Mission","year":"1990"},"nuplat":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Nuplat","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Arttek","entry_number":2},"mark-baechtle":{"albums":{"sounds-of-1000-pictures":{"image":"","label":"Theatre of the Mind","review":"","title":"Sounds of 1000 Pictures","year":"1994"},"time-space":{"image":"","label":"Theatre of the Mind","review":"","title":"Time and Space","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Mark Baechtle","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":302,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/mark-baechtle-640.jpg?alt=media&token=dc1dd84e-4cb2-4e66-a8f8-f81fb3524859","last_name":"Baechtle"},"mark-banning":{"artist_name":"Mark Banning","body":"Mark and Helen Banning's *Journey to the Light* is one of the great one-off ambient albums of the '80s. Produced by Mark Banning as a side project to his various rock and blues bands, the album was inspired in part by Stephen Hill's radio show *Hearts of Space*, which Banning listened to late at night after putting the kids to bed. Hill ended up playing \"Sea of Glass” on his show several times and the cassette and LP were distributed through a popular new age distributor, but sales were modest, about 1,000 copies. Banning recorded a follow-up but left it on the shelf for decades until he was rediscovered by a new generation of collectors. Banning passed away in 2023.\n\nMark Banning was born in Pasadena, CA in 1953. He started playing guitar at nine and was already in his first band four months later. He listened to music constantly, starting with his first musical love, Elvis. He soon moved on to the Ventures, Beatles and Rolling Stones, and then the heavier sounds of Cream (his first live concert) and Hendrix.  Two of his early bands, the International Expression and Joint Session, got some studio time in the late '60s and recorded demos, but these were never released.\n\nAfter high school, Banning joined a bar band called Street Fog. The band was active for the next six years, playing six nights a week and rotating through a deep repertoire that spanned from Deep Purple and Focus to Pharaoh Sanders and country. Banning continued to devour music, developing a special fondness for progressive rock bands like King Crimson and Gentle Giant.\n\nIn 1976, Banning got married to Helen in their parents backyard and the couple moved to the much smaller town of Lodi in Northern California where her parents lived. Banning got a job at a steel plant making shelves. \"I hated it out there,\" Banning said. \"Moving from Hollywood to Lodi - it was culture shock. You’d see women driving around in trucks and wearing cowboy boots. It was a different world. But the rent was a lot cheaper.\"\n\nThe couple went on to have three kids between 1978 and 1982, and Banning's music took a back seat to parenting. He was getting bored of rock by then and started to dig deep into jazz, especially Eric Dolphy. \"I kind of flipped out when I heard [Dolphy's album]*Out to Lunch*,\" Banning said. \"I bought his records and tried to figure out his licks. I studied him a lot.\"\n\nAfter his third child was born, Banning started to get out and play again with a band. At home, he was developing some meditative guitar pieces, inspired in part by late night broadcasts of Stephen Hill's *Hearts of Space* radio show. Banning had first experimented with atmospheric music in the late '70s when he heard Fripp and Eno’s album *No Pussyfooting*. He had tried recording some primitive pieces back then, and he was newly inspired to start again after hearing Hill's show.\n\nBanning booked some studio time with Helen and recorded two long pieces of music, *Sea of Glass* and *Everlasting Moments.*” For the first song, Banning used an e-bow for an infinitely sustained, droning guitar sound and Helen played the zither, tuned to a polychord so there were no wrong notes and she could play intuitively. Then Banning added some ocean sounds. \"Everlasting Moments,\" which would ultimately grace the first side of the album, took much longer to produce and was a layered studio creation.\n\nBanning sent the completed album to Bob Cotterell who ran the label Creative Sound and he agreed to put it out on his label, printing 1000 copies on vinyl and 500 cassettes. Stephen Hill got a promotional copy and loved it, playing \"Sea of Glass\" several times on his show. Later, the Bannings played a live show on Hearts of Space as well.\n\nA few years later, Banning produced a follow-up with two long songs, \"Breath of Life\" and \"Lunar Eclipse.\" However, according to Banning he \"dropped the ball and left it on the shelf for decades.\" Banning and his wife divorced in 1991 and he eventually relocated to Castro Valley, California where he still lives today. He started to produce his own music again in 2002, and was rediscovered by new age record collectors a few years later. In 2013, a song from his never released second album, \"Lunar Eclipse\" came out in edited form on [*I Am the Center*](https://lightintheattic.net/releases/943-i-am-the-center-private-issue-new-age-music-in-america-1950-1990), a lavish new age retrospective on Light in the Attic. Soon after, *Journey to the Light* was reissued by [Students of Decay](https://studentsofdecay.com/post/66816025876/mark-banning-journey-to-the-light). Much of Banning's music is now available on many streaming platforms.","discography":{"mark-banning":{"albums":{"journey-to-the-light":{"image":"","label":"Creative Sound Productions","review":"","title":"Journey to the Light","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Mark and Helen Banning","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":161,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark-Banning-640.jpg?alt=media&token=68900596-bd2e-4f6c-a580-0747ff1ab973","last_name":"Banning"},"mark-dwane":{"artist_name":"Mark Dwane","body":"Mark Dwane was a guitarist based in Westlake, Ohio who produced a large catalog of sci-fi inspired progressive electronic and ambient music. Dwane had been experimenting with plugging his guitar into a synth in his '70s band Orb but after the band dissolved, he used a midi guitar and a home studio to create to dream up lush soundscapes that drew on the ambition and scope of bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis and the instrumental palette of late '80s new age like David Arkenstone or [Jonn Serrie](/jonn-serrie). Dwane passed away in 2025.\n\nBorn Mark D’Amico in 1954 in Ohio, Mark Dwane first got inspired to play guitar after seeing the Beatles perform on Ed Sullivan. Soon, he was playing in various bands and honing his skills as a lead guitarist. Dwane took an interest in progressive rock bands like Genesis, Yes and King Crimson in the ‘70s and formed a band called Orb that played a mixture of covers and Dwane’s originals. To get a more otherworldly guitar sound, Dwane hooked up a VCS3 synthesizer and a pitch-to-voltage converter to his guitar. (Orb never released anything at the time, but Dwane did posthumously release their album *Such Power Exists?*)\n\nBy 1981, Orb dissolved and some members including Dwane's brother relocated to Los Angeles. Dwane, who was married by then and made a living teaching guitar, decided to remain in Ohio. He shifted instead to home recording, initially recording several albums worth of pop and prog before moving into instrumental music with *The Myth* an album that combines new wave with hard rock guitar leads, a far cry from the more cinematic sound he became known for later.\n\nWhile *The Myth* wasn’t heard by many at the time, Dwane sent copies to labels and distributors, with one suggesting he do something more thematic. The result was *The Monuments of Mars*, based on the book by Richard Hoagland. Looking back, Dwane said the album was \"a musical journey through a hypothetical connection between ancient Martian and Earth civilizations. I wrote and recorded the entire thing in three months.\"\n\n*The Monuments of Mars* served as the blueprint for many of his future albums, such as the  sequel *Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes*. Dwane's early albums attracted radio play on Echoes and Hearts of Space and Dwane eventually went on to sell thousands of copies, many in Europe. He was able to get good distribution through Narada and, after releasing several more albums, also began getting work composing music for TV and film.\n\nDwane went on to release over 30 albums before his death of cancer in 2025. John Diliberto from Echoes wrote a nice tribute [here](https://echoes.org/2025/07/24/obituary-electronic-artist-mark-dwane-1954-2025/).","discography":{"mark-damico":{"albums":{"the-myth":{"image":"","label":"Luminary","review":"","title":"The Myth","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Mark D'Amico","entry_number":1},"mark-dwane":{"albums":{"angels-aliens":{"image":"","label":"Trondant","review":"","title":"Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes","year":"1991"},"atlantis-factor":{"image":"","label":"Trondant","review":"","title":"The Atlantis Factor","year":"1993"},"monuments-of-mars":{"image":"","label":"Trondant","review":"","title":"The Monuments of Mars","year":"1988"},"paradigm-shift":{"image":"","label":"Trondant","review":"","title":"Paradigm Shift","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Mark Dwane","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":425,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark-Dwane-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=5bb4d0e2-ebfa-4f08-8970-397ee69dafc4","last_name":"Dwane"},"mark-geisler":{"artist_name":"Mark Geisler","body":"Mark Geisler was a multi-instrumentalist based in Seattle during the '80s and '90s. During that time he released three solo cassettes. His debut (*Between the Worlds*, 1985) was all original singer/songwriter material, his second (*Soular Radiance*, 1987) was new age, and his third (*Gypsies Under the Moon*, 1990) was lively Celtic folk instrumentals. After that, he teamed up with the female vocal group Modern Angels for two releases in the early '90s. All of his work falls outside the scope of this guide except *Soular Radiance* which features meditative compositions for flute, hammered dulcimer, and harp that recalls [Daniel Kobialka's](/daniel-kobialka) '80s period. ","discography":{"mark-geisler":{"albums":{"soular-radiance":{"image":"","label":"I Am Unlimited","review":"","title":"Soular Radiance","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":295,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/mark-geisler-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9396705e-8bab-4e3e-94a5-509ac7b52cec","last_name":"Geisler"},"mark-isham":{"artist_name":"Mark Isham","body":"A composer and trumpeter with a distinctive style, Mark Isham is one of the more acclaimed new age musicians of the '80s. Prior to his solo debut *Vapor Drawings* on Windham Hill in 1983, he'd already logged a decade-plus of experience in symphonies and as a regular player with Van Morrison, plus two albums on ECM with Rubisa Patrol. After wowing audiences with *Vapor Drawings*, Isham began getting regular work as a composer for film and TV, which proved a perfect fit for his intuitive sense of mood and arranging skills. In 1988, Isham returned to solo work again, earning Grammy nominations for *Castalia* and *Tibet* before finally winning with his self-titled album in 1990. For his film scores, he would also garner numerous awards and accolades. Isham has remained busy in the ensuing decades and is still active today.\n\nBorn in 1951, Isham was raised in New York by professional musicians. He initially took up piano, violin and trumpet as a child, but the latter would become his primary instrument. His early talent led him to join a local classical symphony, though he also took an interest in rock and jazz, especially Miles Davis. In his late teens, the family relocated to San Francisco where he began playing with a variety of orchestras along with rock bands including the Beach Boys, as well as jazz artists such as Charles Lloyd and Pharaoh Sanders.\n\nAround 1974, Isham joined the Sons of Champlin, recording with them on their self-titled album and contributing a composition called \"Marp.\" During this time, he discovered electronic instruments and bought his first synth, an Arp Odyssey. After touring with the band, Isham departed to join pianist Art Lande's contemporary jazz group Rubisa Patrol who put out two albums on ECM. \"That became the first really exciting learning experience for me,\" Isham told Down Beat. \"The whole way that band worked together was at a much higher level than anything else I had done before.\"\n\nIn 1979, Isham joined Van Morrison's band, playing trumpet and fluegelhorn on *Into the Music*, now regarded as one of Morrison's best. Isham would continue to work with Morrison over the next four years, appearing on his next three albums *Common One*, *Beautiful Vision* and *Inarticulate Speech of the Heart*. Also in 1979, Isham formed his own band, Group 87, working with Frank Zappa veterans Terry Bozio on drums and Patrick O'Hearn on bass, plus session guitarist Peter Maunu. Instead of the usual improv-centric approach of jazz, the quartet composed their material, concocting a unique mix of progressive rock and art pop with elements of minimalism and funk. The band issued their debut in 1980 in Columbia and returned again in 1984 for one more album on Capitol.\n\nDespite Isham's solid résumé to date, he was still living modestly in a small house in Sausalito at the time. Things began to change when he released *Vapor Drawings* for Windham Hill in 1983, which Polyphony called \"a surprisingly mature and assured debut.\" The album sold well for the label and Isham felt like he was on his way. Soon, offers followed for soundtrack work and Isham scored a slew of movies over the next few years including *Never Cry Wolf*, *Trouble in Mind*, and *Made in Heaven*. Windham Hill, looking to capitalize on Isham's success, issued a collection of soundtrack highlights called *Film Music* in 1985.\n\nIn addition to his film work, Isham continued on as a sideman, playing with rock and pop artists like David Sylvian, Suzanne Vega and XTC, as well as jazz and new age artists including Liz Story and David Torn. Isham also rekindled his partnership with Art Lande for an album in 1987 on ECM.\n\nIsham returned to solo work in 1988 after signing with a new label, Virgin. His first album *Castalia* presented a summation of his wide-ranging interests with elements of fourth-world, ambient, and raucous bursts of jazz-rock. Isham would go on to earn a Grammy nomination for this and his next album, the more intimate and electronic *Tibet*, but it was his self-titled album from 1990 that finally earned him a Grammy win.\n\nIn the '90s and beyond, Isham burnished his reputation as a go-to film composer further with an Oscar nomination for *A River Runs Through It* in 1992 and a Golden Globe nomination for *Nell* in 1994. However, Isham later lamented that his constant soundtrack work came at the expense of more personal projects. While he did release a contemporary jazz album in 1995, that would prove to be his only album of (mostly) original music outside of his many soundtracks. In the press release for his Miles Davis tribute album *Miles Remembered* in 1999, Isham said: \"The soundtrack business is a lot of fun and I learned a tremendous amount about music by scoring films. But I've also seen over the years when I haven't kept my playing career alive that part of me starts to get a little wrung out. So I've made it a point to really keep it going and find specific projects like this which really excite me and make me insist that we keep gigs booked and we do some touring and make some records.\"\n\nSince 2000, Isham has worked with many big-name stars such as Morrisey on *Years of Refusal*, Brian Wilson on *No Pier Pressure*, and  Stanley Clarke on his 2018 album *The Message*. His soundtracks have also continued unabated, including scores for the Oscar-winning *Crash*, *The Black Dahlia*, *The Mist*, and most recently, the HBO series *The Nevers*.\n\n**Sources**:\n\n* Shelton, Sonya. \"Mark Isham Biography.\" *Musician Guide*. [Retrieved [here](https://musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001026/Mark-Isham.html)]\n* Huey, Steve. Mark Isham Bio. *All Music* [Retrieved [here](https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mark-isham-mn0000236246/biography)]\n* Columbia Media Dept. \"Mark Isham: The Silent Way Project.\" 1999\n","discography":{"group-87":{"albums":{"a-career":{"image":"","label":"Capitol","review":"","title":"A Career in Dada Processing","year":"1984"},"group-87":{"image":"","label":"Columbia","review":"","title":"Group 87","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Group 87","entry_number":3},"mark-isham":{"albums":{"castalia":{"image":"","label":"Virgin","review":"","title":"Castalia","year":"1988"},"film-music":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Film Music","year":"1985"},"imprint":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"","title":"Tibet","year":"1989"},"mark-isham":{"image":"","label":"Virgin","review":"","title":"Mark Isham","year":"1990"},"vapor-drawings":{"image":"","label":"Windham Hill","review":"Isham was brassman with Art Lande's forward-looking jazz group, Rubisa Patrol. Here he surfaces as a digital synthesist, with only the occasional horn line or jazz lick. This is a surprisingly mature and assured debut, best described as a cross between Tangerine Dream and Jon Hassell (who've both been at it a long time).\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1984)","title":"Vapor Drawings","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Mark Isham","entry_number":1},"mark-isham-art-lande":{"albums":{"we-begin":{"image":"","label":"ECM","review":"","title":"We Begin","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Mark Isham and Art Lande","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":246,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark-Isham-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1cd86267-52bc-4135-b435-05f688e32340","last_name":"Isham"},"mark-mccoin":{"artist_name":"Mark McCoin","body":"Mark McCoin was a composer and session musician based in Denver, Colorado. He only released one cassette, *A Circus of Lights* on the Endemic label in 1986 shortly before the label went under. Nevertheless, McCoin was very active in the local music scene, contributing to recordings for labels like Silver Wave and Sounds True, and playing drums and keyboard in Denver bands like the Aviators, Thinking Plague, Separate Lives, and the Bruce Odland Big Band. McCoin currently works as an associate professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio.\n \nMcCoin was born in 1957 in Hollywood. His father was initially drawn to the area with dreams of becoming a screenwriter, but when that failed to materialize he moved the family to Huntsville, Alabama. There he got a job as a manufacturer's representative for electric power supplies. McCoin's mother was an artist and proved to be a big influence on his eventual career path.\n \nAlthough McCoin showed an early interest in drawing like his mother, he also had a passion for rhythm. \"I was always hitting things as a kid,\" McCoin said. \"My Dad smoked a pipe and I made percussion set-ups with tobacco cans. My friends and I would improvise, record things and play them back. We’d make little productions and talk shows. Sound was something that fascinated me and still does.\"\n \nRadio in Alabama was not exactly inspiring, but McCoin had some hip relatives in Los Angeles who turned him on to bands like Led Zeppelin and Santana. In 1969, the family relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee and soon after McCoin got his first drum set. McCoin began teaching himself to play and exploring the outer reaches of the rock underground. He was especially fond of Alice Cooper. \"I saw them in high school,\" Mc Coin recalled. \"The theatrical aspect of that show was a revelation. I'd never seen anything like that. It proved to be a very strong influence by showing me what performance is and can be.\"\n \nMcCoin's parents divorced when he was 16 and in his senior year his mother remarried. McCoin and his sister moved with their mother and step-father to Denver. McCoin stayed there for college, attending the University of Colorado where he majored in music and even took some classes in music business to help ease his father's worries about his career choice. \"They had a recording program and that was where I learned about John Cage and musique concrète. That became my entrance  into composition. I worked with tape decks, reel to reel tape, cutting it and manipulating it. Then I got into synths. They had a modular Moog there and an Arp 2600. I studied electronic music and tape composition.\"\n \nBeing a drummer turned out to be a smart business decision. McCoin paid part of his tuition by playing in local country and rock bands. \"It was easy work,\" McCoin said. \"The music was usually straight 4/4 or a shuffle. Count it down, let's go. I was a good hired gun and made my living that way for most of my 20's.\"\n\nBy 1980, McCoin started getting work as a session musician at Balance Studios where he played drums on obscurities like \"She's a Cat\" by the Trouble Boys. In addition to his paid gigs with cover bands, McCoin also joined some bands that wrote their own material, though he concedes those were not money makers. These groups included the Aviators, Thinking Plague, Separate Lives (with Pin Rose), the Bruce Odland Big Band, and the Stardust Lounge House Band featuring Kenny Vaughn on guitar. Using some of the money from his regular gigs,  McCoin built a home studio and got to work on his own compositions.\n \nMany of McCoin’s friends in the Denver music scene were connected with the Endemic label which was founded by Arnie Swenson.  McCoin played on some Endemic releases in 1985 and then got his own deal for a solo album, initially planned for vinyl.  However, the label encountered financial difficulties and had to release it as a cassette only. Expecting wide distribution and exposure, McCoin put a lot of work into the album and it showed, earning a glowing review in Sound Choice (see below for the full review).\n \nAfter the album, McCoin continued to work as a studio musician in town, doing sessions with Tami Simon's newly created Sounds True label. One of his most memorable live gigs at the time was playing in Singapore with the Bruce Odland Band in 1987. While there he and two others from the band stopped over in Bali and he became mesmerized by gamelan music. After getting back, he got a grant to start a community gamelan group with instruments donated from the University of Denver. That group still plays to his day.\n \nMcCoin's percussive style, now influenced by gamelan polyrhythms, was well suited to dance, and he moved into composing for theater and dance companies in the ‘90s. He continued to work with Tami Simon and another local new age label called Silver Wave records as well. (That would later pay off with McCoin’s first Grammy Certificate for his work on Mary Youngblood’s 2002 album *Beneath the Raven Moon*). By the end of the decade, McCoin transitioned into composing for TV shows liked Animal Planet’s Busted and Ming’s Quest on the Food network.\n \nAfter five years of grueling TV work, McCoin was ready for a change.\"It was so intense. I had no life. You get the video on Wednesday, and you have to have the music done by the weekend. Then you get revisions.\" McCoin decided to go back to school and get his MFA in film and studio art from the University of Colorado, Boulder. This eventually led to a career as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he works now.\"I finally was a scoring composer, but was I happy? It was a resounding 'NO.' I found that the university system was the best place for me.\"\n \nAs for his lone cassette release from 1986, McCoin was surprised to hear that people are still listening. He lost his own copy long ago. \"I was never really ambitious about getting my own music out,\" McCoin said. \"It felt niche – it was instrumental and didn't come from a pop sensibility. I just didn’t know how to promote it. And my ambition never came from a place of needing to be heard or be famous.\"\n \n","discography":{"mark-mccoin":{"albums":{"a-circus-of-lights":{"image":"","label":"Endemic","review":"Effective blending of acoustic sound sources (percussion, hammered dulcimer?) with synths and samplers creating a haunting music evocative of the folk music of some long extinct civilization. Percolating rhythms, shimmering drones, and modal melodies merge into one of the most memorable home studio projects I've been exposed to in a long time. All except for the closing cut \"Underwater Music\" which is merely an extended wash of synth chording with no real direction...I suspect this was filler.\n\n([Allen Green](/allen-green), *Sound Choice* No. 9, Winter 1987) \n","title":"A Circus of Lights","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":140,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark-McCoin-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fde22463-13d0-4f26-85b4-f0c2809d9d49","last_name":"McCoin"},"mark-miceli":{"artist_name":"Mark Miceli","body":"Electronic music had thriving, tight-knit scenes in places like Los Angeles, Eugene and Central New Jersey, but nearly every major city still had a few musicians who experimented with new age or ambient sounds. This was especially true in the second half of the '80s when synths were cheaper, home recording more accessible than ever and the network of distributors and outlets had matured into a commercial force. Miceli, a guitarist based in Louisville, Kentucky, experimented with progressive electronic and new age sounds on a run of three cassettes from 1988 to 1992. None sold particularly well though, about 100-200 copies each.\n\nMiceli got his start twenty years earlier in 1968. After graduating high school, he was working as a studio guitarist with a band called the Keyes. The drummer for local legends Soul Inc heard Miceli there and recruited him for a new project called Elysian Field. The band soon secured a deal with Imperial.  Like Soul Inc, Elysian Field purveyed a hard hitting psych/soul hybrid, but their singles were more in a soft rock mold with lavish orchestration and poppy songwriting. When the first single written by band member Frank Bugbee failed to click, the band tried a tune by \"Buddie\" Buie and James Cobb who'd written hits for Classics IV like \"Stormy\" and \"Spooky.\" However, that single only sold marginally better and Imperial let the band go. (Much of their material later surfaced on a comp for Gear Fab in 1999.)\n\nAfter the demise of Elysian Field, Miceli formed the prog band Ester Island in 1973. The band recorded many demos, but none attracted the attention of a label and the band broke up around 1979. They didn't play live often during their career, but they did appear locally as the support act when prog bands came to town like Mother Gong or UK. Before calling it quits, Easter Island put together a self-titled album culled from their various demo sessions, in an edition of 300. The album is now rare and expensive.\n\nEaster Island had a keyboard heavy sound, dominated by the Minimoog and mellotron. Although Miceli didn't play keyboards himself, he had loved the Moog sound since hearing *The Minotaur* by Dick Hyman.  After his band broke up, Miceli eventually bought his own synth in 1983, a Prophet 600. He started composing in a less complex, more contemplative style, guided in part by his long simmering interest in things like the Silva mind control technique, active meditation, and creative visualization. \"I first got into meditation in the early '70s after reading *The Cloud of Unknowing* and books by Alan Watts and Ram Dass,\" Miceli recalled. \"By 1972 I became a vegetarian, and that's when the floodgates opened.\"\n\nMiceli spent much of the '80s composing in his spare time, when not working at his sales job. He finally released his first solo album *Je Suis* in 1988. For the shorter songs on side one, he drew from his archives of older material, but for side two, he created a long form piece intended for meditation. He followed a similar structure on his second album  *Secret Garden* in 1990.\n\nMiceli mostly distributed his tape locally, using his local fame from previous bands to help get the album played on the radio and sold through stores in the Louisville area.  Miceli did find some interesting customers nonetheless, like a clinic in Minnesota who reportedly used his tapes to relax their patients.\n\nIn 1990, Miceli got a role in an obscure film called *Good Cop Bad Cop* and briefly entertained the idea of becoming an actor. He also got commissioned to compose some music for isolation therapy tanks, but the company went under before the project was complete. Miceli  released the music anyway, putting out under the title *Therapy 1* as his final album.\n\nMiceli always maintained a day job during his musical adventures, but his career began occupying more of his time and he kept a low profile until 1996, when he reformed Easter Island. A few years later, the band recorded a new album called *Mother Sun*. Around this time, Gear Fab also put out a compilation of all the acetates and unreleased recordings of Elysian Field. These days Miceli says he makes more money from his music than he ever did before, playing cover songs at Bahama Breeze in Chicago as a one man show.\n\n\"I've always kept one foot in the real world and one foot trying to be creative,\" Miceli said.  \"I haven't been disappointed, I'm just have to be realistic.\"","discography":{"mark-miceli":{"albums":{"je-suis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Je Suis","year":"1988"},"secret-garden":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Secret Garden","year":"1990"},"therapy-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Therapy 1","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":78,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark-Miceli-640.jpg?alt=media&token=24390581-f634-42b6-812b-1697a4d12c92","last_name":"Miceli"},"mark-pritchard":{"artist_name":"Mark Pritchard","body":"Mark Pritchard is a classically trained composer who studied at Cal State Northridge and Cal Arts, exploring electronic music, gamelan, Indian music and more during his time there. He took classes from composers like Mel Powell, Lucky Mosko, and Morton Subotnick, eventually trying his hand at the emerging new age market with *Dancing and Dreaming*, a little-known, privately released cassette that may interest readers. Pritchard also wrote scores for the concert stage and collaborated with dancer and choreographer Yienan Song on dance concerts at Cal Arts and later in New York. \n\nBorn in 1951, Pritchard grew up in Los Angeles. He learned how to play the piano and guitar, with his earliest passions being classical music, folk and blues. He earned a BA in music at CSU Northridge in 1984, followed by an MA in Music Theory and Composition at Cal Arts in 1986. He recalls that two of his early influences in college were Beethoven and Brahms, though he took an interest in 20th-century composers like Bartok, Stravinsky, and Takemitsu as well.\n\nAfter graduation, Pritchard’s primary goal was to compose works for the concert stage. He’d written his first major composition \"The Passing of Winter,\" song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble that was performed at Festival Boulez in 1982, and composed seven more works from then until 1988. After that, Pritchard composed Dancing and Dreaming at his home studio, intending to capitalize on the emerging new age market. “I composed that in my first home studio with antiquated hardware on a Mac Plus,\" Pritchard said. \"I toured California’s new age shops, hawking it, and distributed maybe 100 copies, all told.\"\n\nIn 1990, Pritchard relocated to New York, taking a job at JP Morgan Chase as a business writer and later Associate Vice President. Prior to leaving California, Pritchard had been collaborating with Yienan Song, a dancer, and choreographer from Taiwan, on a series of dance concerts together, first at CalArts. The two would later continue their partnership in New York City as Ancient of Days Dance Theater.  \"Concert music receded into the background and live improvisation and music mixing for modern dance became the focus,\" Pritchard wrote.\n\nFrom 1990 to 2017, Pritchard was mainly focused on his career in business, though he did return to electronic music once again in 1996 with a CD called *Enchanted Forest* that was entirely improvised. In the early 2000s, he relocated back to the West Coast, settling in Washington, eventually returning to composing concert works such as \"Liberation Overture\" and \"6 for 5 - Suite for Wind Quintet.\"","discography":{"mark-pritchard":{"albums":{"dancing":{"image":"","label":"Transformer Productions","review":"","title":"Dancing and Dreaming","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":413,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mark%20Pritchard-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=92e0a795-303f-47e7-933c-cde2e56a71dc","last_name":"Pritchard"},"mark-sullivan":{"artist_name":"Mark Sullivan","body":"Mark Sullivan was a guitarist who sought to find a middle ground between avant-garde music and more minimal, meditative sounds. After performing for six years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he issued a tape called *Electronic Meditations* in 1983. Sullivan was also a writer, contributing music reviews to *Option* over a period of ten years. He continued to record and release music sporadically after his debut, though his later work falls outside the timespan of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1952, Sullivan grew up on the Northwest side of Detroit, Michigan. His older brother inspired him to start learning guitar at the age of 14. An early favorite was Bob Dylan, but by the time he joined his first rock band in high school, he tried to emulate guitarists like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.\n\nSullivan attended the University of Michigan for college where he ultimately majored in psychology. However, he spent many years taking classes in composition, music history, and theory. He became fascinated by norm-shattering classical musicians like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen at the time, though he would eventually conclude that he liked the form, but not the content of avant-garde music.\n\nWhile he was in college, Sullivan was still playing in various rock bands, but he also started to experiment with minimal and ambient music. He was influenced by composers like Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, as well as Fripp and Eno's work with guitars and tape loops. In 1976, Sullivan played his first show, using tape delay and synthesizers to create patterns of atmospheric sound with a heavy dose of improvisation. In a 1980 interview with newspaper Eastern Echo, he remarked: \"I'm interested in producing new music that sounds like music, kind of a middle road between old music done in a new style and new music that sounds only like bleeps and bloops. I'm definitely not an avant-gardist.\"\n\nSullivan enjoyed collaborating with other musicians, sometimes joining his school's Contemporary Directions Ensemble while also co-founding his own contemporary music series called the Sine-Wave Sessions. For his solo performances, Sullivan billed the shows as \"Electronic Meditations.\" \n\nAfter many years of performing, Sullivan decided to document the highlights on his first cassette *Electronic Meditations*, issued in 1983. The tape was a cross-section of his styles, including synth and guitar improv, a musique concrete piece, and a score for modern dance. The title, he felt, was an apt description of his style. \"If I had to describe my music in just one word, it would have to meditative,\" Sullivan remarked. \"Not that meditative always means quiet and slow, it can be loud, but I think that is the word that fits best.\" Sullivan only made about 20 to 30 copies in all, but it earned a positive review from Op Magazine that called it \"intriguing and satisfying.\"\n\nBy the mid '80s, Sullivan was getting tired of Michigan winters and took a job in Charlotte, North Carolina, working as a business librarian at UNC Charlotte. After finishing his undergraduate studies, Sullivan had gone on to earn his MS in Library Science and get a job working in the college library. Sullivan also started working as a writer, mainly contributing music reviews for music magazine  *Option*.\n\nNot long after arriving in Charlotte, Sullivan and his wife had a son in 1987 and they ended up staying permanently. Sullivan got deeper into jazz and reggae in the '80s and one of the first bands he joined in Charlotte was a free jazz band called Cornerstone. After that, he started the Mark Sullivan Trio with some of the same members to play his own pieces like \"The Skronk\" as well as jazz standards.\n\nSullivan finally released the solo follow-up to his debut cassette in 2002. Titled *A Lot of Noise with One Guitar*, the CD consisted of new tracks and ones recorded several years prior. A live album followed, recorded at Café Bisous. More recently, Sullivan has been writing album and concert reviews for the website *All About Jazz*. He has also made some of his old music, including *Electronic Meditations* available on his [Bandcamp](https://marksullivan.bandcamp.com/) page.\n\nSources:\n* Author interviews, 9/21/20\n* Brown, Bill. \"Musician Experiments with Electronic Forms\", *The Ann Arbor News*, Saturday, March 19, 1983\n* W.B. \"Electronic Blends Invite Meditative Sound,\" *Eastern Echo*, July 23, 1980","discography":{"mark-sullivan":{"albums":{"electronic-meditations":{"image":"","label":"New Electronic Works","review":"","title":"Electronic Meditations","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":210,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/mark-sullivan-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fe635de3-3d66-4ab5-9be3-58d61588eaa6","last_name":"Sullivan"},"marten-engle":{"artist_name":"Marten Ingle","body":"Marten Ingle is a bassist, composer, and producer who spent the first three decades of his life in California before relocating to Paris in the eighties. He lived in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1983 where he studied bass and composition at Cal Arts, played in various punk and new wave bands, and ran his own Fish Ranch label. He began a full-length album while there, borrowing equipment from the Oberheim factory where he worked. The result was *Specific Pacific Archipelagos*, a wide-ranging album of experimental ambience, dubbed-out grooves, and new wave art pop. After that he went into session work, producing and performing. Ingle currently lives outside of Paris. \n\nBorn in 1955, Ingle grew up in San Mateo, California. He and his brother Christian both took piano lessons and would go on to become musicians. Christian stuck with piano and eventually became a synth player, while Marten learned guitar and then bass, joining his first rock band, Fresh Garbage, at the age of nine.\n\nIngle attended junior college at the College of San Mateo in the mid-‘70s, where he studied music. While there, he honed his bass skills with the jazz band and produced multimedia art projects. After two years, he transferred to Cal Arts in Los Angeles where he studied bass further with Buell Neidlinger and also took classes with Morton Subotnick.\n\nIngle ultimately left college to pursue a life as a professional musician. He launched his own label Fish Ranch in 1977, releasing a soft rock single called “Crazy Eyes” which aimed for a commercial sound. However, Ingle had wide-ranging tastes and also found room on his label for his brothers’ post-punk band Christian Lunch, and Atila, a pan-ethnic experimental group with bizarre lyrics. \n \nIngle’s main band at the time was the Innocents, a new wave group who released one album on Neil Bogart’s Boardwalk Entertainment label. He also held down a day job at Oberheim from 1978 to 1982, as a music tech, helping to assemble the company’s synthesizers. (Other musicians from this site worked there too – see [Loren Nerell](/loren-nerell) and [Mike Christopher](/mike-christopher). \n\nBorrowing equipment from Oberheim and an 8-track reel to reel tape machine, Ingle began recording electronic pieces at home, inspired by maverick artists such as Terry Riley, Brian Eno, and Harry Partch. After the Innocents failed to gain traction, Ingle was ready for something new. During a summer trip to Paris, he fell in love with the city and decided to stay. \"When I got to France, a lot of stuff just opened up,\" Ingle said. \"I was playing live jazz, recording with Mike Zwerin and ZIP for Universal Jazz and collaborating with Ramuntcho Matta, among many other projects.\" In 1984, Ingle released a disco single, \"Heartbreak Side of the Night\" on French pop producer Orlando's self-named label.\n\nIngle soon settled down in France and finally completed the album of music he'd largely recorded back in the States. The cassette, *Specific Pacific Archipelagos*, was a co-release on his own Fish Ranch label with French music journalist Pascal Bussy’s label Tago Mago. The cassette presented the full range of Ingle's interest in punk, ambient music, dub, and art rock, packaged in an oversized clamshell case with evocative song titles like \"Desperation in Funk\" and \"Land of Shadow,\" just to name two. \n\nOver the next decade, Ingle stayed busy recording film scores, performing live, and doing session work in France. One of the highlights was his collaborations with Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, with Ingle playing on various singles and co-producing Allen's 1989 album *Afrobeat Express*. \n\nIngle finally got around to releasing a second solo album in 2008 called *Faraway Radioland*, which can be found on his Bandcamp site [here](https://marteningle.bandcamp.com/). In the early 2020s, Ingle saw a resurgence of interest in *Specific Pacific Archipelagos* when collectors began reaching out to ask him about it. He had about 30 leftover tapes with no covers from the original run, which he soon sold out. A vinyl reissue is in the works.","discography":{"marten-engle":{"albums":{"specific-pacific":{"image":"","label":"Fish Ranch/Tago Mago","review":"","title":"Specific Pacific Archipelagos","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":407,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/marten-ingle-640.png?alt=media&token=bd85ece8-a6c1-4ac9-a4a9-de2c83715b57","last_name":"Engle"},"martin-o-connor":{"artist_name":"Martin E. O'Connor","body":"Martin E. O'Connor (left) was a Nashville synthesist with a penchant for orchestral electronic sounds in the mold of Vangelis and Kitaro. He self-released two cassettes in the mid-'80s, but only sold them locally. By his estimation, he sold about 100 copies of each at the time, though stock copies of *Alterations* have been found and now turn up regularly on the secondhand market.\n\nBorn in 1955, O'Connor grew up listening to classical music. He took up the trumpet and played in the marching band and concert band at school. He went on to study music education in college, eventually earning a Master's Degree. During this time, he discovered electronic music when he took a course with [Gil Trythall](/gil-trythall). \"We had a Moog IIIP synth. I was smitten with it, even though it was always out of tune.\"\n\nO'Connor went on to teach electronic music in college and compose his own work, often with an orchestral approach. He played at some of [Tony Gerber's](/tony-gerber) Space for Music electronic concerts in the mid-'80s and put together his first cassette *Alterations* to sell there. The following year he made another album, *Stars of Jade* which showed a strong symphonic flavor. The albums helped him get a job as a composer in residence at the local planetarium, but he primarily made his living doing sound for live shows at Opryland, where he worked for many years. After that, he trainsitioned into a career as a photographer.\n","discography":{"martin-o-connor":{"albums":{"alterations":{"image":"","label":"Martech","review":"","title":"Alterations","year":"1985"},"stars-of-jade":{"image":"","label":"Martech","review":"","title":"Stars of Jade","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":273,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/martin-o-connor-640.jpg?alt=media&token=405b7ee0-7c68-4c70-bd83-82d577005b2e","image_credit":"","last_name":"O'Connor"},"martin-scott":{"artist_name":"Martin and Scott","body":"Martin & Scott are a married duo who began recording and releasing music soon after meeting in 1988. Based in Davis, California, they released two instrumental cassettes in 1989 that they sold at art fairs for years, moving about 1,000 copies of each by Scott's estimation. In the mid-90s, Scott fell in love with the didgeridoo and began incorporating the instrument into their mix of synths and flute starting with their 1996 CD *Ancient Runes*. They eventually relocated to Georgia and started a company called Gnarled Tree Didjeridoos and Music, where they sell their own handcrafted didgeridoos, music, and more.\n\nBorn in 1949, Preston Scott was originally from San Diego and gravitated to rock music early on, playing drums in bands during his teenage years. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in music and a master’s in electronic music composition at the University of California in Davis. He stayed in the area after graduation, building his own recording studio and working as a composer.\n\nDeborah Martin, born in 1953, grew up in the small town of Princeton, Indiana and started singing in church starting at the age of six. She eventually made her way to California, trying to make it as a singer/songwriter. Martin self-released a cassette of her folk material called *Looking Back* in 1986 and was working on her second when she met Scott at one of her shows.\n\nMartin and Scott were initially active in several bands, trying their hands at rock and folk, but they noticed that musician friends seemed to be having a lot of success selling new age music at art shows and craft fairs. The couple soon pivoted to making instrumental music, releasing the jazzier *Images* and the more new age *Reflections*, both in 1989. Soon, they too were active on the craft fair circuit, kick-starting a multi-decade career in the field. However, those would be the only two cassettes they released as they switched over to CDs by the time they went on a prolific run, putting out five albums from 1996 to 2007.\n\n","discography":{"martin-scott":{"albums":{"images":{"image":"","label":"Nightengale","review":"","title":"Images","year":"1989"},"reflections":{"image":"","label":"Nightengale","review":"","title":"Reflections","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":419,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/martin-scott-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=35868873-06d6-4e4b-b9fb-c01a26b9d1d0","last_name":"Martin"},"marvin-peterson":{"artist_name":"Marvin Peterson","body":"Marvin Peterson worked as a computer programmer and engineer but had many other talents including writing, magic, art, videography, racecar driving, and electronic music. He was self-taught and never performed live, but he churned out many tapes of homebrew electronic music covering a wide range of styles in the '80s. He sold many titles on cassette through Synthetic Pleasure's magazine but seems to be largely unknown even among electronic cassette collectors. An ex-girlfriend sold all his master tapes and musical equipment after his death in 2011 and his full discography remains unknown.\n\nPeterson's personal life was not easy. He was born in Montana in 1935 and his mother died when he was 9. His father left with another woman and he was adopted by his aunt and uncle. After high school, he enlisted in the Air Force where he served until 1962. After he got out, he got married and adopted two children, believing that he wasn't able to have his own.\n\nIn 1977, Peterson remarried Beverly who he met while going back to school. The newlyweds moved to Rhode Island where they remained for the rest of their lives. During this time, he recorded and released many cassettes of electronic music. He never had his tapes professionally duplicated, instead preferring to make them to order. They were listed for sale in *Synthetic Pleasure* catalogs from 1985 to 1986, but have no mentions anywhere else.\n\nIn 1988, Peterson and his wife unexpectedly had a daughter, Kori. She remembers her father as endlessly creative, always making music even though he possessed only rudimentary knowledge of the piano. She recalls him always having the latest computer and even a Sony Playstation when it first came out. After the cassette era was over, Peterson continued to write music, later adopting the moniker Q and making CD-Rs of his music. \"As a kid, I named a lot of the songs myself,\" Kori recalled. \"He would have me listen to them and say, what does this make you think of? My favorite I called \"Guppies in the Mud.\" For work, Peterson worked as a computer engineer, though his wife was never totally sure what exactly he did. \"He retired from General Dynamics,\" Kori says. \"He also worked for NASA at one point. I know he traveled for work, but he was a very private person, a lot of mystery.\"\n\nIn addition to music, Peterson was quite the renaissance man, who also enjoyed art, performing magic, racing formula one cars, and working as a wedding videographer. \"He was amazingly artistic,\" Kori said. \"He would take a photo of the church where the couple got married and do a pencil drawing of the location. Then he'd fade to the same image on video. He also wrote and starred in musicals. He was quite creative.\"\n\nSource: Author interview with Kori Weisser, 8/24/21","discography":{"marvin-peterson":{"albums":{"1-day-of-the-rice-god":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Day of the Rice God","year":"1984"},"2-the-aerobic-cobra":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Aerobic Cobra","year":"1984"},"3-on-the-run":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"On the Run","year":"1984"},"4-guadeloupe":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Guadeloupe","year":"1984"},"5-preview":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Preview","year":"1984"},"6-give-the-poor-guy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Give the Poor Guy in the Back Row a Break","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Marvin Peterson","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":277,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Marvin-Peterson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=09cab3ff-5320-4228-bddb-b9a8ef2332dd","image_credit":"","last_name":"Peterson"},"matthew-young":{"artist_name":"Matthew Young","body":"Matthew Young is a musician from New Jersey who put out two private electronic albums in the '80s. The first one drew from his experience with computer music while his second album incorporated a hammered dulcimer and folk elements into the mix. Both lp's are sought after by collectors and have been reissued in the past decade.\n\nBorn in 1950, Matthew Young grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. His father was a banker and his mother a former Olympic athlete who gave swimming lessons to local kids. She took Matthew and his siblings to see live shows often, and he recalls seeing jazz luminaries like Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie. His parents bought an upright piano, and he took lessons starting at around age 10, when he showed early talent.\n\nAfter high school, Young attended school in England and then Hamilton College, but he didn't graduate. After various jobs, he was hired as editor of a free local newspaper, the Princeton *Spectrum*. By then his musical tastes leaned to outsiders and iconoclasts like Harry Partch, Brian Eno, Can and Harmonia. One of the highlights of his newspaper tenure was interviewing John Cale. \n\nIn 1976, Young took a summer seminar on electronic music at Princeton where he was taught by Richard Cann, a graduate student and computer music composer, whose track \"Bonnylee\" was featured on the compilation *Electronic Music Winners* from Columbia. Inspired, Young bought his own EMS Synthi and a Revox tape recorder and began working on electronic music at home, some of which he contributed to local theater productions. \n\nYoung found computer music to be both fascinating and tedious. \"It takes so much time and so much concentration to make music on a computer,\" Young told the *Trenton Times*. \"There's an incredible amount of experimentation, too… A computer can make gimmicky pop music, or very obscure experimental music with very little emotional appeal You can play for cheap effect or get lost in it. So you have to try to strike a balance.\"\n\nAfter learning that he could privately release his own record, Young issued his debut *Recurring Dreams* in 1981. Released on his own Full Moon label, he pressed 1,000 copies and sold them through New York distributor NMDS. Both Cann and Young were featured in an article in the *Trenton Times* that year, with the paper describing *Recurring Dreams* as \"an album of liquid, effervescent keyboard tones, tingling, trembling notes, and surprising, occasionally bizarre, effects.\"\n\nThe same year that his debut came out, Young also co-produced an electronic music festival along with Cann, Princeton music professor Paul Lansky and other grad students. The event, held at Alexander Hall, featured recorded music set to a slide show. However, this was as close as he ever came to playing live electronic music. Despite his dedication and interest in music, playing live made him nervous and he preferred to focus on composing and recording.\n\nThis began to change when Young heard a hammered dulcimer at a friend’s wedding. In much the same way that he took to electronic music, Young became obsessed with the instrument and was inspired to create a new album in 1986 called *Travelers Advisory*. The album featured the dulcimer prominently, along with electronics and tape effects, plus vocals on a few tracks. Again he sold it through NMDS, though this time he only pressed 500 copies. The album got good reviews and exposure on radio, and was even the #1 album for a week on WXPN.\n\nSince the dulcimer was more conducive to live performance than electronics, Young did some live shows locally and in Massachusetts to promote the album. However, this release would prove to be his last for decades, as his career was demanding more time. After working for a period as an editor at ETS (Educational Testing Service), he later got into advertising and copywriting and, more recently, book design and editing. He has authored two books: *Field & Tuer* (2010) and *The Rise and Fall of the Printers' International Specimen Exchange* (2012).\n\nStarting in the early 2000s, a new generation of collectors began rediscovering Young's work. Poet Carson Arnold [rhapsodized](http://www.longhousepoetry.com/young.html) about *Traveler's Advisory* in 2003, calling it \"a home-recorded masterpiece worn by the velvet-beam of electronic-folk and anywhere else the beyond could go.\" Later, Yoga Records owner Douglas Mcgowan helped bring the music to a new audience with reissues of both albums co-released on his label and Drag City. (There's a video profile of Young by Mcgowan which can be viewed [here](https://youtu.be/MH7nKiQuwcc)).\n\nYoung currently lives in Hopewell, New Jersey. He continues to compose and record, and some of his more recent music can be heard on SoundCloud [here](https://soundcloud.com/matthew-young-785778652).","discography":{"matthew-young":{"albums":{"recurring-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Full Moon","review":"","title":"Recurring Dreams","year":"1981"},"traveler's-advisory":{"image":"","label":"Mt. Rose","review":"","title":"Traveler's Advisory","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":184,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Matthew-Young-640crop.jpg?alt=media&token=198abc18-88f5-4a3e-b143-bae00e274b5d","last_name":"Young"},"meg-bowles":{"artist_name":"Meg Bowles","body":"Based in Connecticut, Meg Bowles was an investment banker who reinvented herself as an ambient musician in the late '80s, going on to release a series of electronic space albums on her own label Kumatone from 1993 to 1999. This coincided with her burgeoning interest in shamanism, Jungian psychology, and psychoanalysis which informed her music along with her own vivid dreams. In the late '90s, Bowles became a psychoanalyst and had a child with husband Richard Price, resulting in a long musical hiatus, though she returned with new music in 2011 and has been active since.  However, most of her music falls outside the timespan of this guide.","discography":{"meg-bowles":{"albums":{"inner-space":{"image":"","label":"Kumatone Records","review":"","title":"Inner Space","year":"1993"},"solstice-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Kumatone Records","review":"","title":"Solstice Dreams","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":319,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/meg%20bowles%20640.jpg?alt=media&token=8e5766b8-32ad-4150-b2a1-6c77743a8036","image_credit":"","last_name":"Bowles"},"melissa-hasin":{"artist_name":"Melissa Hasin","body":"Melissa Hasin is a classically trained cellist who has performed with symphonies and theater productions in addition to film scores and recording sessions with artists such as Tori Amos and No Doubt. \"I was known for going in without a chart,\" Hasin said. \"I could just listen to a track and start playing parts to sweeten it up.\" Hasin had been meditating since she was a teenager and brought in two musician friends on flute and synth to help her record a new age cassette in 1985, *Cellistic Visions.* The album was completely improvised. Hasin was happy with the result and self-released it, selling a few thousand copies by her estimation. \"I'd been involved in so many projects and I just wanted to try something more freeform,\" she said.\n\nBorn in 1954, Hasin grew up around Los Angeles, eventually settling in Newport Beach. She started playing the cello at the age of six and went on to major in music at Cal State, Long Beach. \"My whole life revolved around cello,\" she said. After graduating in the late '70s, she began performing with jazz and rock bands, eventually joining the Greene Street Quartet in 1985, releasing a few albums with them before departing in 1992 when she had a daughter.\n\nBy then, Hasin was an in-demand cellist for recording sessions, performing on albums by a long list of notable artists such as The Smithereens, Victoria Williams, Steve Wynn, and Tori Amos. Her most lucrative session was writing the string parts for No Doubt’s hit song \"Don't Speak\" which still earns her residual payments in 2022.\n\nIn 2010, Hasin went back to school and got a master's degree in counseling psychology. Prior to that she'd been working for 15 years as a show musician at the Hollywood Pantages theater and was looking for some new mental stimulation.","discography":{"melissa-hasin":{"albums":{"cellistic-visions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cellistic Visions","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":289,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/melissa-hasin-500.jpg?alt=media&token=34177061-38a1-4b0e-8fed-819296c4d0ea","last_name":"Hasin"},"melissa-morgan":{"artist_name":"Melissa Morgan","body":"Melissa Morgan was a harpist based in San Diego, California who rode the instrument's wave of popularity in the California new age scene throughout the '80s. Although she never achieved the commercial heights of people like [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly) or Andreas Vollenweider, she found some minor success with her cassettes *Heart* and *Invocation to Isis.*\n\nEver since she was a young child, Morgan had wanted to play the harp.  Her family was not receptive initially, but they eventually gave in and got her lessons starting at age 8. By the age of 15, she finally got her own troubadour harp one Christmas morning. Morgan never gave up on the instrument and still continues to play it to this day. \"The harp is my like my friend,\" she said.\n\nAfter college, Morgan got married and moved to Guam with her husband, but their union was not a happy one.  Morgan played the harp to escape, and while in Guam recorded improvisations that would eventually become her first album, *Gateways*.  In 1979, Morgan moved to San Diego and began gigging frequently at the Old Time cafe in Leucadia where she met other like-minded musicians such as flutist Diane Clarke, who she would later collaborate with on *Invocation to Isis*.  Morgan self-released *Gateways* in 1980 and began to tour for the next few years.\n\nDistributor Narada, hungry for harp music due to the success of Georgia Kelly, heard *Gateways* and signed on to distribute the tape.  Then, they released her next album, *Heart* as a part of their Vital Body series which was sold in a special case at bookstores and gift shops. The main melody of the recording resembled a heart when notated on paper, hence the title.  Morgan followed this up with an album of traditional Celtic music on Kicking Mule called *Erin's Harp* in 1982.\n\nMorgan became pregnant a year later and began thinking about ways to celebrate femininity for her next release.  Together with Diane Clark, they began working on an album titled *Invocation to Isis*. The release sold 5,000 copies and was Morgan's best-seller.  The album included nature sounds, a popular idea at that time, but Morgan laughs as she recollects why they were there in the first place. \"I was 8 or 9 months pregnant when we recorded that album and you could hear me breathing like Darth Vader.  We actually added the nature sounds to mask all that noise!\" \n\nMorgan incorporated a much larger band for her next release, *The Artist* in 1986. She included many of the jazz and folk players she had met at the Old Time Cafe, composing songs about her friends and extended family there.  She designed a cover with a buddha in crystal on the cover, but Narada thought it was too dark and was hurting sales.  They retitled it *Happenstance Dance*, but even then it still only managed a few thousand copies.  Morgan, who had stopped touring after 1984 when she had her son, slowed down the pace of her music output greatly after that.  Morgan currently runs a website called [Healing Rocks](http://healingrocks.info/).","discography":{"melissa-morgan":{"albums":{"gateways":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Each side starts and ends with ocean sounds, but this tape is not another post-Georgia Kelly harp soundtrack for heaven's waiting room. Sure, there are plenty of ethereal moments, but this is largely stream of consciousness free-improv, with an undercurrent of brooding intensity. At the time, Melissa Morgan was dealing with the end of a relationship and you can  hear her working through her emotions. In spirals of dense arpeggios, she rarely lets a tune linger for long, instead attacking the harp with alternating ferocity and tenderness.  It's an effective portrait of personal struggle and grief, but a tough listen overall.  It’s not surprising that her other releases went on to sell better. \n\n(MG, 2019)","title":"Gateways","year":"1980"},"heart":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Heart","year":"1982"},"invocation-to-isis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Invocation to Isis","year":"1984"},"the-artist":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Artist","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":96,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/melissamorgan.jpeg?alt=media&token=b865c75e-41d6-4c3c-a576-86da089bb4fa","last_name":"Morgan"},"mercury-max":{"artist_name":"Mercury Max","body":"A childhood prodigy, Mercury Max spent his young adult life as a professional musician backing up famous musicians like Little Richard and Ronnie Spector on revival tours. Upon \"retiring\" to Santa Cruz, California in the early 1980s he changed his name to Mercury Max and released several New Age cassettes, producing them in his \"Wizard's Workshop\" studio and self-releasing them on his own Plant L imprint. In the late '80s he teamed up with Tri Yoga maven Kali Ray and together they have released 23 albums of relaxation and healing music to accompany her specially designed yoga system.\n\nThe musician known as Mercury Max started playing saxophone at age five and went on to learn flute, piano, drums, and bass guitar. By the age of 14 he was working in rock 'n' roll bands as a professional musician and singer. In the early '70s he was hired to play saxophone on the Richard Nader Rock and Roll Revival Tour, backing up stars like Chuck Berry, Ronnie Spector, the Shirelles, Chubby Checker, the Coasters, and Bo Diddley, playing large venues and arenas like Madison Square Garden. He remembers throwing in a few John Coltrane licks into his solo one night and an agitated Little Richard shouting out, \"Play funky!\" \"At least he was listening!\" Max recalls.\n \nMax also worked with John Belushi and Chevy Chase on the teener spoof \"Pizza Man\" from the National Lampoon comedy record Lemmings and had a gig as the house pianist at the original Comedy Store in Hollywood. In the early ‘80s Max “retired” from commercial music and moved to Santa Cruz where he put together a couple small jazz combos to play local clubs and weddings and picked up work as a sideman with a popular local country and western band. \n\nIn his free time, Max began experimenting with New Age music, purchasing a Korg DSS synthesizer and setting up a home studio he called the \"Wizard's Workshop\" in his apartment, trying not to disturb his neighbors. \"Luckily,\" he says, \"I was playing soothing music.\" He utilized real flute, woodwinds, and sax along with the synthesizer. The results, which Max describes as \"somewhat spacey,\" were recorded to a reel to reel Tascam tape machine. The first tape he put together, *Journey to Nada*, was completed in 1987, and *Himalayan Garden* quickly followed eventually moving on to an E-mu system that let him use more pre-recorded sounds. (E-mu incidentally was founded in Santa Cruz by a student from UCSC who started making modular synthesizers like the Audity in 1979 and later the digital sampler Emulator III, which is how Max got the shakuhachi and other real instrument sounds on his tapes.)\n\nThe artwork for both tapes was bought from a visionary artist named Bruce Ricker whose work he'd seen in Monterey at a craft fair. Ricker's work also graces the cover of a couple of [Emerald Web](/emerald-web) tapes, though Max wasn't aware of that and says he didn't really have any contact with other area New Age musicians. He was however, aware of and inspired by the success of [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern), whose music seemed to be everywhere. \"So how do you go about getting your product made and hustling it?\" he wondered at the time. Luckily Max was not only an accomplished musician, but he also had a degree in Marketing which he put to use. His first strategy was creating his own brand.\n\n\"The name Mercury Max came to me out of the blue,\" Max recalls. \"Well sort of. I was going to a clairvoyant and mentioned I wasn't satisfied with my birth name, I knew nobody would ever remember it. The clairvoyant said he felt the vibrations of Hermes from me. I said Hermes? that sounds like a disease.\" Max thought about it some more and read that Hermes Trismegistus was considered to be the father of hermeticism or Western Magic and that Mercury is basically the Roman version of Hermes. \"So I was like, I'll be Mercury Max!\" hence the alliteration subtitle on his tapes, \"Magical Music by Mercury Max.\"\n\nMax got a PO Box in town and released the tapes through his own label, Planet L Records, the L standing for Lakshmi, \"the goddess of wealth, fortune, power, luxury, beauty, fertility, and auspiciousness (who) holds the promise of material fulfillment and contentment.\" Along with producing his own tapes Max worked with his friends at the Academy For Future Science, a group of well-educated, ancient wisdom spiritual seekers over the hill in San Carlos.  He can be heard playing on and arranging one of their releases, the 1986 Burning Bush cassette tape *Songs of Ascent/Realms of Light*. Max sold his tapes at the Gateways Bookstore in downtown Santa Cruz which was run by the spiritual retreat Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville. At first tape sales \"weren't that great\" but as it progressed he was able to focus less on club and bar gigs and more on his own \"Magical Music\" and new scene. “I liked that lifestyle,\" he says. \n\nDuring this period Max met Kali Ray who ran a successful yoga studio called Tri Yoga in an old church in downtown Santa Cruz. Kali wanted to expand her business by making and selling relaxation tapes and asked Max to provide the music. She sometimes played harmonium and the two sang together in the weekly Chant Club. They became business partners with Max creating the music while Kalissi did recitation over it. Tapes were sold to students and as Tri Yoga branched out that market base got larger and larger. \n\nKali Ray was a follower of His Holiness Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji, a world-renowned Nada Yogi from India known for his keyboard playing and healing Bhajan music therapy sessions/music concerts which drew large crowds worldwide. When Swamiji visited California in 1990 Kali converted her house into a \"hOMe-ashrama\" for the guru and his entourage to use as their base. Although Swamiji had \"a very deep knowledge of music, scale systems and usage of music for divine purpose,\" Max was able to add a \"professional shine to his concerts\" by sitting in on drums and doing sound.\n\nIn 1992, Kali and Max flew to Russia as ambassadors of Tri Yoga where they taught a huge Kriya yoga class, and then led the group in Sanskrit chants and dancing well into the night.  To date, Max has done 23 albums with Kali and his music is \"an essential part of the Tri Yoga program.\"\n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2021)","discography":{"mercury-max":{"albums":{"himalayan-garden":{"image":"","label":"Planet L","review":"Meandering, floaty synth rich in background nature sounds; streams, loon calls, mountain bird cries, whooshing wind. The cyclical, intoxicating music on Side 1 wraps the listener in formless sweet, soft tones with breathy wooden flute, and occasional repeated mantric phrases. \"Waiting for the rushing stream of through to cease,\" says Max on the cover.\n\nOn Side 2 the relaxaing and transporting style and tones remain, with a soothing magical alchemy for a weary mind. There's a lot of rich bubbly sound that seems to give an enhanced sense of well being. The overall expansive, airy quality here seems grounded with its soft water sounds., The overall choice of warm and deliciously sensual synth sounds is otherworldly and uplifting. There is a lot of movement to the music, using understated hypnotic rhythms. Good for massage, meditation or action, or mediative action. Very healing.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review* No.14, Spring/Summer 1993)\n","title":"Himalayan Garden","year":"1988"},"journey-to-nada":{"image":"","label":"Planet L","review":"","title":"Journey to Nada","year":"1987"},"om-ramaya-namah":{"image":"","label":"Planet L","review":"","title":"Om Ramaya Namah","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":220,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Mercury-Max-crop.jpeg?alt=media&token=1ae8b3f3-6b8d-4ec2-969c-90f148df2ec5","last_name":"Max"},"michael-boddicker":{"artist_name":"Michael Boddicker","body":"Michael Boddicker (born 1953) is an electronic composer and session musician who played synth on numerous hit songs by Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Whitney Houston, and Olivia Newton-John. He got the bug for synths in high school and went on to study electronic music at various colleges in the Midwest in the early ‘70s. He relocated to LA in 1974 and furthered his studies on the job with [Paul Beaver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Beaver). Boddicker soon made his way into film scoring, working on *Battlestar Galactica*, *The Wiz*, and *Saturday Night Fever*. He was also an in-demand session musician, gaining fame for synth work on Michael Jackson’s *Off the Wall* and later *Thriller.* *The Magic Egg* was his score for a computer animated film of the same name that he sold through ads in *Keyboard* magazine at the time, but the tape is now rare. Boddicker has remained active up to the present and runs a studio in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles where he lives today.","discography":{"michael-boddicker":{"albums":{"magic-egg":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Magic Egg","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":391,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/boddicker.jpeg?alt=media&token=e81c3d86-bbf0-4e02-8f6d-eb6998e1f70a","last_name":"Boddicker"},"michael-chocholak":{"artist_name":"Michael Chocholak","body":"Once called \"a Salvador Dali of music,\" Michael Chocholak was one of Oregon's most prolific electronic musicians in the '80s, releasing over 25 tapes between 1985 and 1992. Based in Cove, far from the bigger cities of Portland and Eugene, his music was wide-ranging and experimental, slowly evolving from a more delicate and curious approach to a more confrontational stance later in his career. Many of his tapes were released on his own M&M Music label he ran with his wife Misha Nogha, though some were released on other labels like Generations Unlimited or Underwhich Editions. Chocholak was a big contributor to cassette culture at the time, writing music reviews for *Option*, *Sound Choice*, *Ice River*, and *Factsheet Five* while trading actively with like-minded musicians on the scene. Although he eventually discontinued his M&M label, he has continued to write and record music into the present.\n\nMichael Chocholak was born in 1951 and grew up an only child in the suburb of Madison, New Jersey. His father was an optometrist, but he retired early when Chocholak was 17 and moved the family west to Cove, Oregon to live on a 40-acre cherry orchard. Chocholak soon left for college, attending the University of Oregon in Eugene where he earned a degree in psychology. \n\nAfter graduating from college in 1973, Chocholak returned to live on his family's farm in Cove. There he began experimenting with tape loops while \"living as a recluse in an abandoned 19th-century house surrounded by cattle bones, plow discs, pieces of wood and glass and other sonic objects suspended from the ceiling,\" as he wrote on his website. Chocholak eventually got a job working for the state as a social worker where he remained for the next forty years. \"I did everything there from employment specialist to outreach worker, community liaison, eligibility work, and branch manager,\" Chocholak recalled. \"Before that, I'd had different jobs like moving furniture and moving entire houses - dangerous dirty work. I knew a good thing when I saw it.\"\n\nMusic had always been an important part of his life, with Chocholak taking up the guitar in high school and jamming along with heavy rock bands like Cream and Jimi Hendrix. By college, he got more into fingerstyle guitar a la Sandy Bull, as well as fusion jazz like the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But his key musical breakthrough came at the local library. \"One day I went with my dad to get roofing supplies and wandered into the library. I found a double album by Edgar Varese and he looked like a character. So I sat there and listened to \"Poème Electronique\" and I just thought, \"there are no fucking rules. There are the laws of physics but that's it.\"\n\nIn 1980, Chocholak formed his first band Stoneground with a friend at work and some others he knew from the area. The group played all original songs, a mix of folk, rock, blues, and country. Stoneground played live fairly often, and Chocholak met his wife Misha when she organized a fundraiser where the band contributed a set. Misha, who was a talented flutist herself, eventually joined the band too, though the band didn't last much longer after that.\n\nAfter Stoneground broke up, Misha and Chocholak got married and began running the cherry orchard. By 1984, they decided to raise horses instead. In their spare time, the couple became interested in mail art and cassette culture, and Chocholak began putting together a small home studio to record his music. \"I bought a portable Panasonic tape recorder that I wore everywhere around the farm and at work,\" Chocholak said. \"I have tons of tapes that just say 'stuff' and are full of airplanes, garbage trucks, conversations at city hall. Those were the basis for a lot of my compositions on cassettes. I'd dump those sounds into the sampler, add effects, and go from there.\"\n\nChocholak put out his first cassette in 1985, *Skomorokhi*, featuring a mix of sample-heavy experimental pieces and piano duets with his wife Misha  (then credited as Michelle Chocholak) playing flute. The tape got a nice review in Electronic Musician, with reviewer Robert Carlberg praising the \"delicate, thoughtful synthesizer work.\" Chocholak continued to release many more albums for the next five years, though his earlier work is generally better known. \n\nReviews for Chocholak's work were consistently positive, with Eurock calling his music \"some of the most evocative soundscapes you could imagine\" and Soundchoice calling it \"ambient music of an involving, organic nature.\"  Chocholak himself is particularly fond of his dark third album *The Latest Models*:  \"In many ways, this is one of my favorite cassettes that I released,\" he said. \"I was reading a lot of  KW Jeter, JG Ballard, and RE-search magazines at the time.\"\n\nChocholak and Misha each had a different approach to their instruments, which gave the music an experimental edge. \"I don't believe in taking music lessons,\" Chocholak said. \"I always thought lessons would make me play like somebody else. As opposed to Misha who is classically trained, but can improvise like nobody's business. She can play Edgar Varese's 'Density 21.5' one of the most difficult flute pieces ever written.\"\n\nDuring his cassette era, Chocholak composed over 25 albums, some for soundtracks (*Alligator Alley*, *Neo-Canton Guy World Tour*), books (*Blood Music*, *Red Spider White Web*) and many more of his own creations. Most were released on his own M&M label, though some like *Owl Man Dreams* (Underwhich Editions) and *All Fires the Fire* (Generations Unlimited) came out on other labels.\n\nIn addition to his own music, Chocholak was an active tape trader, exchanging cassettes with Conrad Schnitzler, David Lee Myers, Richard Truhlar, and Carl Juarez. He also wrote music reviews for various underground magazines of the time like Option, Sound Choice, Factsheet Five, Electro Scene, and Ice River. \"At first, I acted more as a critic and not a reviewer,\" Chocholak said. \"I learned how to review the sonics of a tape without getting judgmental about it.\"\n\nBy the early '90s, Chocholak entered a quieter period musically. \"I don't think my enthusiasm ever abated,\" Chocholak said. \"The constraints were usually in terms of time and energy. Sometimes I took a break to find a new direction.\" Although he didn't release physical media for a long period, Chocholak embraced the new mp3 technology and computers in general during the latter half of the decade. \"I was sick and tired of marketing my own stuff,\" Chocholak said. \"There used to be a site called Artistserver where you could upload and sell your music, though I gave mine away for free.\" \n\nStarting in the 2000s. Chocholak began a new period of music making, collaborating with artists like David Farewell, [Richard Dunlap](https://ultravillage.com/richard-dunlap) and Johann Meier, world music vocalist Pandia, electronic composer Ooy, and Misha. He never did resurrect his label though, choosing to release his music with other labels like Triple Bath, Echo Music, Howski Industries, and Small Doses. Of these newer works, Chocholak is most proud of \"Albion\" from his 2005 *Hollow Bodies* album. \"That was a feedback piece I did on the computer,\" Chocholak said. \"It's probably the  best thing I ever did.\"\n","discography":{"leather-smile":{"albums":{"insect-hands":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"Fairly unique instrumental tape. Each of these pieces is constructed around a simple guitar riff, adding synth, percussion and bass for atmosphere. Sometimes the effect is quite driving, other times it's more subtle and just as effective. The guitars are treated to a nice, roomy reverb which tends to make the room as important to the songs as the instruments themselves. As it is, this is a very good tape with a style all it's own; variety in arrangements and song structures is lacking which make future possibilities intriguing. I’m interested to see where these guys go from here.\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #4, 1989)","title":"Insect Hands","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Leather Smile","entry_number":2},"michael-chocholak":{"albums":{"all-fires-the-fire":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"Chocholak covers a number of ambient/industrial possibilities here, and covers them well (he's way past the dabbling stage), but I least like the several purely industrial soundscapes. I can understand the fascination with sound itself, but typically, such pieces don’t really go anywhere or have much emotional strength. Also less than totally satisfying are several pieces with aggressive, metallic rhythms, where the simplistic, rigid patterns don't really have enough inherent interest to carry things from start to finish. That aside, there are several pieces that are very good, and several more that are positively stunning. The title track features an ethereal guitar riff, percussion, and elusive muted trumpet-like drones which also function at times as legitimate solo voices. The effect is vaguely ethnic, almost Tibetan. Perhaps even better is \"Back on the Inside,\" which utilizes a high variable whine with just enough shape to suggest intent, and an almost regularly, quietly menacing bass pulse.\n\n(Bill Tilland, *Option* #27, 1989)\n","title":"All Fires the Fire","year":"1989"},"alligator-alley":{"image":"","label":"Morrigan","review":"","title":"Alligator Alley (soundtrack)","year":"1989"},"blood-musics":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Blood Musics (soundtrack)","year":"1990"},"creative-memory":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Creative Memory","year":"1986"},"das-devonian-tag":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"This evocative mix of electronics, processed and found sound, as well as acoustic instrumentation, conjures up pictures of our primordial origins that range from somber beauty to sobering brutality. Here is ambient music of an involving, organic nature, thick with activity. While most of the pieces are arhythmic or ethereal, a track such as \"Molodoy Rassodock\" unexpectedly offers strangely incipient funk. The melancholy flute playing on \"Tsuki Mangetsu\" acts as counterpoint to a threatening bass rumble, effectively suggesting cautious coexistence. Only on \"C'est Ca\", a predictable combination of piano, jazz guitar noodling, and percussion, do the sounds fail to elicit interest. While the terrain covered on this release is not entirely new, it offers welcome relief from mechanical and uninspired use of electronics, and points squarely to a wholly human approach.\n\n(Arthur Potter, *Sound Choice* #10, 1989)","title":"Das Devonian Tag","year":"1987"},"date-with-kali":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"Subtiltled, \"a soundtrack to the forthcoming adventures of Nik Ryogan, zen private-eye, as created by Mark Biloku and Misha,\" this tape does have sort of a private eye charisma about it. Misha sings some poetic vocals on a few cuts, but this is really instrumental in nature. When you think of soundtracks, perhaps you envision incidental mood music, but *Date with Kali* should be approached on its own terms. These pieces are diverse and are loaded with character. I especially like the guitar interplay on \"Death O' The Oil Kind.\" Highly recommended.\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #5, 1990)","title":"Date with Kali","year":"1989"},"ear-tracks":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Ear Tracks","year":"1986"},"epidaurus":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Epidaurus","year":"1988"},"future-selves":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"*Future Selves* sets the tone for Chocholak's mid-period work, alternating between unsettling and serene ambient pieces based on non-metric loops, treated field recordings, and an idiosyncratic approach to synth and guitar.  Not everything quite registers, with tracks like \"Conscience Denied\" feeling like unfinished sketches. Elsewhere, Chocholak successfully paints elegant and moody sound portraits on pieces like \"Somnambulance\" or the Rothko-like \"Harps and Ribbons\" which sounds suspended in mid air. Another highlight is the almost conventional sounding \"Egg,\" which is like a neo-primitive take on Tangerine Dream. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Future Selves","year":"1986"},"hot-wired":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Hot Wired","year":"1990"},"les-oiseaux":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"A noticeably less obtuse release from Chocholak, scaling back the abstraction and focusing more on short, melodic sketches. Some of the tracks have an almost new age feeling to them, more in mood than tone, but tend to steer clear of the traps of the genre. One of Chocholak's best and most consistent recordings from his mid-late 80s heyday.\n\n(Jed Bindeman, 2019)","title":"Les Oiseaux","year":"1987"},"owl-man-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Underwhich Audiographics","review":"Surprisingly effective electronic texture poems from an artist who professes the belief that the \"laws of musical technique and compositions are more valuable if discovered rather than learned.\" Such lofty statements tend to put me off, but Chocholak’s grasp of his chosen subject matter is firm and effective. Most of the textures employed sound quite acoustic (sampled?) Except for frequent acoustic piano passages, though, the sources are largely unidentifiable. The real flute on \"Buto\" is particularly effective.\n\n(Allen Green,  *Sound Choice* #9, 1987)\n\n\n","title":"Owl Man Dreams","year":"1986"},"prayers-of-steel":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Prayers of Steel","year":"1986"},"red-spider-white-web":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Red Spider White Web (soundtrack)","year":"1990"},"skomorokhi":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"Chocholak has, by his own admission, been composing electronic music for some 14 years, and lists his influences as Varese, Cage, and Le Caine. His pieces are definitely in that academic tradition, about half being abstract percussion montages, the other half piano duets with his flautist wife Michelle. His delicate, thoughtful synthesizer work underlies both.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, May 1987)\n","title":"Skomorokhi","year":"1985"},"stray-dogs":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Stray Dogs","year":"1987"},"subterranean-rage":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"With cover art (by Mark Bilokur) of a screaming face, you can tell right away this is not going to be gentle background music or even a return to the relatively accessible *Les Oiseaux.* Instead, with his go-to arsenal of oblong tape loops and jarring samples, Chocholak delves into industrial and dark ambient territory.  Tracks like \"Still Life with Playground\" clang with rage whereas others like \"The Light That is Darkness\" create an air of menace and desolation. Thankfully Chocholak is able to balance the mood with moments of relative calm and beauty, like the shadowy sprawl of \"Kikeibutsu\" or \"Metal Vision\" with Chocholak using violin to paint a blurred ambient piece. \n\nNote: *Subterranean Rage* was inspired by Misha's novel *Red Spider White Web*, and Chocholak considers this album a companion piece to a later album that was actually named after her book.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Subterranean Rage","year":"1988"},"the-latest-models":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"*The Latest Models* is a cinematic and moody work, conjuring desolate landscapes and suburban ennui across nine foreboding and engaging set pieces. Chocholak leans heavily on field recordings and loops as he juxtaposes the mundane with the bizarre, stranding TV dialogue in locked grooves (\"The Red Shoes\"), or luring hungry seagulls to a landlocked guitar deconstruction (\"Mechanical Beach.\")\n\nThe album begins and ends with tracks dedicated to the Koori, an indigenous population from Australia. \"Alchera\" is appropriately ominous, with percussion creeping like a murderer's footsteps while drones buzz in and out like menacing insects. This is followed by the stellar \"Omens of Departure\" which is highlighted by a metallic guitar solo that sounds like Michael Rother in slow motion. The tension coils even tighter on \"RUNESequence\" with its frantic tempo, but relaxes into something more mysterious and nocturnal on \"1 to 999\" with wife Misha (then credited as Michelle) guesting on flute.\n\nSide two plays out like an ambient travelogue across the first two tracks, recorded by Chocholak during a business trip to Portland.  \"Rm 264\" includes snippets of Chocholak alone at his hotel, drinking and going to the bathroom, while bluesy guitar licks bounce off the cement walls (this track also popped up on a *Cassette Mythos* comp). This is followed by \"Fossils of the Future\" with Chocholak getting takeout from Burgerville and getting gas. The album closes with another tribute to the Korri, \"Smooth the Dying Pillow\" which sounds like a sci-fi theme on a warped VHS tape. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"The Latest Models","year":"1986"},"yellow-jacket":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Yellow Jacket","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Michael Chocholak","entry_number":1},"michael-chocholak-and-conrad-schnitzler":{"albums":{"concho":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Concho","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Michael Chocholak and Conrad Schnitzler","entry_number":5},"michael-chocholak-and-john-shirley":{"albums":{"minds-in-collision":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Minds in Collision","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Michael Chocholak and John Shirley","entry_number":4},"michael-chocholak-and-richard-truhlar":{"albums":{"smoking-face":{"image":"","label":"M&M Music","review":"","title":"Smoking Face","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Michael Chocholak and Richard Truhlar","entry_number":3},"ron-post":{"albums":{"head-wounds":{"image":"","label":"Birdo'pray Records","review":"Murky, churning soundscapes that channel a post-apocalyptic future populated with mutants and robots. Fans of Faust or Throbbing Gristle may enjoy.","title":"Head Wounds","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Ron Post","entry_number":6}},"entry_number":123,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Chocholak-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=ed848f59-bd4d-4ffa-b928-a4d475eead16","last_name":"Chocholak"},"michael-garrison":{"artist_name":"Michael Garrison","body":"Michael Garrison was one of the earliest U.S. practitioners of the Berlin-school sound popularized by Tangerine Dream, and his melodic style helped him establish a cult fanbase with his privately released debut *In the Regions of Sunreturn*. Garrison stayed true to this sound for the remainder of his career, and he held on to his analog gear longer than most, finally switching to digital with 1989’s *Earth Star Trilogy.* Garrison did occasionally experiment with his signature sound, most notably on *Eclipse* and *Point of Impact* which incorporate female vocalist Shari Barna. Garrison struggled with depression and alcoholism and died of liver failure in 2004 when he was only 48.\n\nBorn in 1956, Michael Garrison grew up in Klamath Falls, Oregon. One of his early musical obsessions was prog rock, especially Keith Emerson who inspired him to take piano lessons. In an interview with *Dreams Word*, Garrison said, \"He did some such complex incredible stuff. He did some keyboard techniques that to this day I am baffled as to how he did them.\" Another key inspiration was Gershon Kingsley, an early adopter of electronic music whose *Switched on Gershwin* LP fascinated Garrison.\n\nIn an [interview](https://www.furious.com/perfect/michaelgarrison.html) with Mark Tucker, Garrison explained that music helped provide an escape from familial burdens and what he later acknowledged as depression: \"Both my parents were very ill when I was growing up and I used happy musical themes to escape day-to-day problems taking care of them. Obviously, it was a labor of love but no child should have that kind of weight on his shoulders. Today, I don't know how I got through those times. Music was my outlet.\"\n\nIn high school, Garrison had a friend named Larry who was a great guitarist and record collector who turned Garrison on to prog rock bands like Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull and Hawkwind. Larry encouraged Garrison to buy a synthesizer so they could form a band. When he was 16, Garrison and his parents split the cost of an EML 101 synth and he started to learn how to play, sometimes practicing for six hours a day. Larry and Garrison soon put together a band and played a few local shows before breaking up after high school. Garrison decided to go solo after that, acquiring recording gear and setting up a small studio at home.\n\nGarrison attended college at the University of Idaho, studying psychology and music. After graduation he began to work on his first album. Garrison recorded three songs of electronic music and sent them to various labels but got rejected by all. So he decided to record and release the album on his own, starting his own Windspell label and pressing up 500 copies on vinyl. The sound he developed for his debut would remain his trademark for the rest of his career with only slight variations – mid tempo sequencer riffs, softly pulsing e-drums, and catchy synth melodies.\n\nGarrison drove all around California distributing demo copies at record stores and told the owners to contact the popular importer JEM if they wanted to buy more. Of course, Garrison had no distribution with JEM at all, but the ploy worked and soon stores started calling. Garrison suddenly got orders for thousands of copies and had trouble keeping up with the demand, especially from Europe. So he partnered with CBS and Ariola to press and distribute future copies.\n\nWith all the money now flowing in, Garrison bought a house in Bend, Oregon and got an eight track recorder and built a new studio. He spent six months recording his second album *Prisms* and released that in 1981 on Ariola. The results were similar to his debut, though slightly mellower overall.\n\nGarrison gestured towards new wave for some songs on his third and fourth albums *Eclipse* and *Point of Impact* by adding female vocalist Shari Barna for selected tracks such as \"Take a Chance\" and \"Colors.\"  The vocals are treated almost as another synth, with a sweet, but robotic intonation not too far off from Stereolab’s work circa *Mars Audiac Quintet* or early Magnetic Fields.  Still, he didn’t fully commit to the style, and other songs on both albums still sported his usual sequencer based material.\n\nDespite the surprising addition of vocals, *Eclipse* sold very well for Garrison. However, *Point of Impact* had extremely limited distribution, with only 500 copies ever made. Some fans feel that it is one of his strongest since the debut, but Garrison didn’t agree. In an interview with *Dreams Word* he relayed his frustrations: \"I really felt pressured to release [*Point of Impact*], even though it wasn’t what I wanted. That was the most frustrating album of my life. There was so much new equipment that I bought. I was trying to get it all situated in my studio. When you are doing that, you can’t record. I think in most artists careers there is always one album that they later just go 'ugh.' That album was made during a transition period after *Eclipse*.\"\n\nAfter feeling rushed on *Point of Impact*, Garrison took his time with *Images* and released it two years later in 1986. By that point, Garrison ended his experiments with vocals and returned to the similar waters of his debut for this and all remaining albums. Despite demand from his fans, Garrison was slow to embrace CD's, though he did finally repress on all of his albums on the format in 1991, even *Point of Impact*. Garrison continued to work in the '90s, but his pace slowed down greatly. He played some planetarium shows and made a few appearances at European festivals, and he released two collections and a couple live albums in 1995. His final album was 1998’s *Brave New Worlds*. \n\nGarrison, who admitted to dealing with depression and emotional issues, had a problem with alcohol that wasn’t well known to his fans during his heyday. In 2004, Garrison died from acute liver failure.","discography":{"michael-garrison":{"albums":{"an-earth-star-trilogy":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"An Earth-Star Trilogy and Songs from Earth-Star","year":"1989"},"aurora-dawn":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"Aurora Dawn","year":"1982"},"eclipse":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"On his third album, Garrison has his style down to a \"T\" — very fluid sequenced bass and percussion, with a string synthesizer arpeggiating chords over it. It's very mild, almost elevator music with no surprises — except the four numbers featuring a female vocalist. But she sings in unison with the lead instrument (the way most instrumentalists write vocal music) so she doesn't really change the music that much.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":"Eclipse","year":"1982"},"images":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"Images","year":"1986"},"in-the-regions-of-sunreturn":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"Michael Garrison was one of the earliest musicians to bring the Berlin-School sound to the US, showcasing a faithful adaptation of T. Dream, Schulze, and Jarre on his private press debut. However, unlike many of the subsequent musicians in this style ([Ron Slabe](/ron-slabe), [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl), [Jeff Carney](/jeff-carney), [Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark) et al), the album actually sold well, landing him a label deal with Ariola and European distribution. While some collectors may see this album as too derivative, I think it manages to distinguish itself with a bit of dramatic flair and even some catchy melodies, which is pretty uncommon for this field as a whole.\n\nOne note - this one is easy to find on vinyl as it sold thousands, but it is pretty rare on cassette.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"In the Regions of Sunreturn","year":"1979"},"point-of-impact":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"Point of Impact","year":"1983"},"prisms":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"Prisms","year":"1981"},"the-rhythm-of-life":{"image":"","label":"Windspell","review":"","title":"The Rhythm of Life","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":89,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Garrison-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=bdcde2a4-c003-409f-84d0-9e22b7ae4c38","last_name":"Garrison"},"michael-harrison":{"artist_name":"Michael Harrison","body":"Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist from Eugene, Oregon who studied with two titans of minimalism (Terry Riley and La Monte Young) and wrote one of the better-known solo piano tracks (\"In Flight\") of the new age era. After a move to New York City in 1987, he joined the ranks of that city's contemporary classical scene, releasing one more album on New Albion and starting a business buying and refurbishing old Steinway pianos. Harrison passed away in April 2026.\n\nMichael Harrison was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1958. When he was six, his family relocated to Eugene, Oregon where he spent his childhood. He loved spending time outdoors and grew up skiing, hiking, and mountain climbing. He first started the piano at six but hated his strict lessons and quit after a couple years. However, he would return to the instrument later when he started to get into the Beatles and other pop music.\n\nHarrison's father was a mathematician who also knew music theory, and he taught Harrison the basics about chord relationships and harmony so he could improvise. Harrison began writing his own music and studying classical and jazz. For high school, Harrison attended the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. While there he began transcendental meditation, inspired in part by a trek to the Himalayas when he was 15. He also started gigging with bands, playing progressive rock. \n\nFor college, Harrison returned home to attend the University of Oregon School of Music starting in 1976. While working towards a degree in composition, he also studied Buddhism and began hanging out with the local Sufi community. Hazrat Inayat Khan’s writing on music made a profound impact on him, as did a world music class he took in his freshman year.\n\nIn 1979, Harrison went to the Omega Institute, an alternative learning center in upstate New York, to study with Pandit Pran Nath, a renowned Indian vocalist. Harrison continued private lessons over the years with Pran Nath as well as Terry Riley and La Monte Young, both major figures in minimalist music. Young's influence would loom particularly large, as he introduced Harrison to the complex system of piano tuning known as just intonation. \n\nInspired by his new mentors, Harrison developed a new solo piano style and put out his first cassette of material in 1980. A year later he released a chamber jazz project with a band, Crystal Flame, drawing on the Paul Winter Consort and artists on the ECM label. In addition to creating his own music, he began spending extended periods in New York as La Monte Young's protégé, studying composition and performance, as well as Indian classical music. \"I came to New York regularly from 1979 to 1987 to work with La Monte,\" Harrison said. \"He needed someone to tune his piano for [his composition] 'The Well-Tuned Piano.' It takes a course of at least two days to tune. I tuned his piano to levels probably never achieved before with extremely precise resonances.\"\n\nIn 1983, having completed his Bachelor of Music in composition, Harrison sent a demo of his piano music to Windham Hill and they loved the Terry Riley influenced track \"In Flight.\" The song was used as the leading track on *The Windham Hill Records Piano Sampler* from 1985 and the compilation was a huge success. The track was subsequently added to other compilations on the label as well.\n\nEthan Edgecombe, the owner of the influential new age label Fortuna, heard \"In Flight\" and was eager to work with Harrison on an album. However, by the time it came out in 1987, Fortuna was close to bankruptcy and would soon be taken over by its distributor Celestial Harmonies. The album was largely neglected.\n\nHarrison moved to New York after the album's release and began studying privately with Stanley Wolfe at The Juilliard School. He began focusing more on contemporary classical music, taking in New York's sprawling New Music scene. Over the following years, he worked on his next album, *From Ancient Worlds,* which came out on New Albion in 1992. It was produced by the Colorado musician Stephen Scott, who was a fan and helped make the deal happen.\n\nWhile Harrison made a substantial amount of money from \"In Flight\" royalties through Windham Hill, he still needed regular income and started working as a legal proofreader part-time. After doing that for several years, Harrison started a business buying and selling used Steinway pianos. His well-honed piano tuning skills and diligent work ethic helped his business thrive for several decades as he became one of the area's go-to experts for restored Steinway pianos.\n\nDuring the '90s, Harrison taught at the Omega Institute. There he directed a program called \"Spiritual transformation through music and dance.\" For these classes he drew on his extensive background in Indian classical music through singing. He also started developing a new piece called \"Revelation,\" which featured a tuning just as complex as La Monte Young's \"The Well-Tuned Piano.\" That was released on CD in 2007. \n\nHarrison currently lives in New York and continues to compose, perform, and work in the piano business. \"In addition to composing, I still practice raga an hour or more every day,” he said. “For the first 30 years I did it with a tanpura and singing. Now I do it with just intonation piano and singing. That’s my morning meditation. It’s a source for new ideas and inspiration.\"","discography":{"michael-harrison":{"albums":{"collected-piano-recordings":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Collected Piano Recordings","year":"1980"},"crystal-flame":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":" Crystal Flame","year":"1981"},"from-ancient-worlds":{"image":"","label":"New Albion","review":"","title":"From Ancient Worlds","year":"1992"},"in-flight":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"In Flight","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":160,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-harrison-press-photo-640.jpg?alt=media&token=329a78ef-587b-42bc-b8db-0e17042eb10f","last_name":"Harrison"},"michael-logue":{"artist_name":"Michael Logue","body":"Based in Santa Cruz, California, Michael Logue released two cassettes during a burst of creativity and inspiration in 1987. At the time, he was the sound tech at Unity Temple, where he had access to sound-recording equipment, as well as pianos, synths, and sequencers. Using the in-house setup, Logue recorded two albums: a solo piano album called *Beginnings* and a meditative synth album called *Openness*. The tapes were mainly sold at the temple and are now rare. \n\nMichael Logue remembers thinking as a child, “I should learn to play the piano”. Alas, not until age 22 did that dream finally manifest. Nonetheless, Logue did have quite a musical childhood growing up in the Chicago suburbs, joining the school choir from 4th grade onward. His draw to vocal music lasted through adolescence and high school, leading Logue to attend Southern Illinois State University to study contrapuntal music and choral harmony. Fortunately, music majors were given piano lessons, taught by Donald Beattie, a renowned piano teacher who encourages his students to first play and improvise, exploring the instrument intuitively prior to learning the formal side of music, such as notes and scales, etc. This approach would make an impression on Logue and thus would begin a lifetime of intuitive, real-time musical expression on the piano and beyond. \n\nUpon graduating in 1982, Logue would be drawn out west to Santa Cruz, California, where his mother was the florist for the Unity Temple of Santa Cruz, a non-denominational “metaphysical community, respectful to the many paths to the One Source of all creation”. Logue started attending the Sunday meditation services under the ministry of Emily Sanford, who took quite a shine to Logue. Only after a few months in the community, he was asked to be the live-in caretaker and maintenance man at the Unity Temple. In this new position, Logue would also become the tech for the temple, running sound and maintaining the tape recorders, microphones, and soundboard as each Sunday meditation service was recorded, dubbed onto cassette, and available for purchase the following Sunday.\n\nHaving access to the whole Temple, he would often play the piano alone in the sanctuary space, would improvise, play intuitively, hear the overtones, and express. Michael’s first recorded offering was born from this practice. *Beginnings* (1987) is a work of solo piano recorded in the Temple, made quite easy with the microphones and tape machines already set up. \n\nAfter years of dedicated service and a growing musical reputation with the release of *Beginnings*, Logue would eventually start playing music at the Unity Temple, bringing his intuitive music approach, his ear, his talent, and some updated ways to accompany the Sunday services. The Yamaha DX7 was released in 1983 and the temple had bought one to replace their organ a few years prior. Under his new direction, he started acquiring more synthesizers to play during the meditations, an Akai AX70, Yamaha DX100 and Yamaha QY20 sequencer. Logue would improvise music in real time on the various synthesizers to accompany Emily Sanford’s meditations. He found he had a talent for accompanying the spoken word, listening to the sentiments communicated by word and also aware of the underlying tonal qualities, reacting musically in real time. He realized the role of sound in people's ability to focus and heal.\n\nAs with *Beginnings*, with the new synthesizers and the same technical setup in the temple, Logue was inspired to record *Openness* later in 1987, an example of the kind of intuitive music he was a channel for in the Unity Temple. Only made 200 copies, sold them at the Unity Temple.   \n\nLogue left the Unity Temple in 1993, around the same time as Emily Sanford did. *Beginnings* and *Openness* remain his only recorded offerings, choosing to prioritize playing music in the moment. \n\nRealtime musical expression remains a big part of his life. He plays often for sound baths, meditations, sound ceremonies in the Santa Cruz area. \n \n(Connor Maguire, 2026)","discography":{"michael-logue":{"albums":{"beginnings":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Beginnings","year":"1987"},"openness":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Openness","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":444,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-logue-640.jpg?alt=media&token=bdadd661-7efd-452e-8bf9-051757b0e400","last_name":"Logue"},"michael-masley":{"artist_name":"Michael Masley","body":"Michael Masley was a Berkeley musician who came to prominence in the '80s through a series of albums that featured the cymbalom. The instrument, which looks like a large box with strings stretched across it, is typically struck with hammers, but Masley devised his own homemade \"bowhammers\"  that could strike or bow the strings like a violin. For decades, Masley made his living as a street busker, where he collected tips and sold his home made tapes and CD's. For a period in the '80s he worked closely with the guitarist [Barry Cleveland](/barry-cleveland) as part of the duo Thin Ice.\n\nBorn in 1952, Masley grew up in Elks Rapids, Michigan which had a large immigrant population. One of his friends had a father who played the cymbalom and Masley was hypnotized by the instrument. He borrowed one from the friend and started teaching himself to play. However, he avoided playing in what he called the \"traditional, macho style\" that relied on speed. After high school, Masley attended Northwestern Michigan College to study creative writing. At one point, he got a job as a caretaker at a fishing lodge and spent his free time communing with nature and writing poetry. He also refined his cymbalom technique, experimenting with using a bow on the strings or attaching hammers to each finger giving him greater melodic range. \n\nMasley started busking on the streets in Ann Arbor around 1981 to make some extra money.  But when a friend convinced him to move out to Palo Alto, California, Masley started busking as a full time occupation. \"It was rough at first,\" Masley said. \"After school I thought I was going to write poetry for life, but then I started making money from music. That was a surprise.\"\n\nIn late 1983, Masley met the guitarist Barry Cleveland, another east coast transplant.  \"One night I was walking at midnight and heard this crazy sound,\" Cleveland said. \"I followed the sound of the music and discovered him playing there. I was totally knocked out.”  Cleveland remembers being impressed by Masley's ingenuity in creating the bowhammers. \"He created the original ones out of beer cans, hobby rods, vacuum cleaner bags, and violin bow hair tied with fishing line, I think. It took him forever to make these things. He could strike or bow the strings on the cymbalom with eight fingers, and then he had picks on his thumbs. It's singular. There's nothing even remotely like it and there probably never will be again.\"\n\nCleveland and Masley became musical collaborators, forming a duo called Thin Ice that played at festivals and art fairs around California. They recorded their first album at Spark Studios in Oakland, and then later did a live album as well. Masley also played on Cleveland's album *Mythos*, and Cleveland helped produce Masley's *Cymbalom Solos* that went on to be his best seller. \"People still come up to me and say they've loved that tape for years,\" Masley said. \"I probably sold 40,000 copies of that over the years.\"\n\nMasley moved to Berkeley in 1985 and continued to release new albums including *Moments River*, *Bells and Shadows*, *Mystery Loves Company* and *Sky Blues* the latter displaying a fuller sound with percussion, flutes, and cymbalom. He remained active throughout the '90s, although his output slowed considerably as he focused more on busking and building up his home studio.  He contributed the soundtrack to the film *Geronimo: An American Legend* but had to sue for credit and compensation after his name was omitted initially.\n\nAt his height, Masley was selling 20-30 albums a day on the street, and sometimes hundreds when he played at large festivals or fairs. According to Cleveland, \"At those festivals, we would sell thousands of dollars of stuff. It almost didn't matter what you had. Mike referred to it as 'a salmon run' on the river. You put out your hand and there's a fish.\" However, the dot-com collapse in 2000 gutted Masley's sales he says it never returned to the same level. Nevertheless, he has continued to play on the streets ever since.\n\nMasley is the subject of a planned documentary called *Art Officially Favored* and maintains a website [here](http://www.artistgeneral.com).","discography":{"cosmosis":{"albums":{"cosmosis":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Cosmosis","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Cosmosis","entry_number":3},"michael-masley":{"albums":{"bells-and-shadows":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"Another solo cymbalom tape from Masley, showcasing his impressive technique on the stringed, zither-like instrument.  The improvised pieces have a drifting, hypnotic feel, with over half of the songs running past six minutes. Masley gets a surprisingly full sound from the instrument, using one hand to sketch out arpeggiated drones and the other to pluck ghostly, bell-tone melodies that glisten like sunlight on a pond.","title":"Bells and Shadows","year":"1989"},"cymbalom-solos":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Cymbalom Solos","year":"1985"},"life-in-the-vast-lane":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Life in the Vast Lane","year":"1993"},"mystery-loves-company":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Mystery Loves Company","year":"1990"},"sky-blues":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Sky Blues","year":"1992"},"the-moments-river":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"The Moment's River","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Michael Masley","entry_number":2},"thin-ice":{"albums":{"first-frost":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"First Frost","year":"1984"},"thin-ice-live":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Thin Ice Live","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Thin Ice","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":26,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-masley-photo.jpg?alt=media&token=ee7118bc-164c-47ce-aa36-a2be18be950b","last_name":"Masley"},"michael-morningsun":{"artist_name":"Michael Morningsun","body":"Michael Morningsun was a bamboo flute maker based in Eugene, Oregon when he released his sole album, *American Zen* with then girlfriend Brenda Kline. He sold the tapes alongside his flutes for many years at craft fairs until tapes eventually went out of favor and he sold it as a CD. He also played bass in several Eugene bands including Liv and Let Live in the '80s and more recently the Blue Owens Band.\n\nBorn Michael Thulin in 1947, Morningsun grew up \"a nice Mormon kid\" in a family of eleven in Salt Lake City, Utah. His first instrument was the piano, soon followed by the sax and then the guitar starting at ten. His big inspiration at that age was the Kingston Trio, and he took lessons to learn how to play folk music.\n\nWhen he was still in high school, Morningsun got married. \"I was raised by a pious Mormon family,\" Morningsun recalled. \"One day my mom came down to wake me up and caught me with a girl in my bed. The girl had snuck into my room the night before and we both fell asleep. This was not a good thing, and so I had to marry this girl.\" To provide for his new family, Morningsun enrolled in the Army and they sent him first to Germany and later Vietnam.\n\nHis third day in Vietnam, Morningsun tried marijuana for the first time. He started taking LSD too, and by the time he returned back to the US, drugs were a regular part of his life. For his final year in the Army, he was stationed in Georgia. While there, he was busted for drug possession and sent to prison in Leavenworth, Kansas for a year.\n\n\"I was in the same cell that General George Custer stayed in,\" Morningsun remarked. \"When I was at Leavenworth, they had a 35 piece jazz band that I joined. We had a great band – it wasn't a bad thing to do. And while I was in there I was able to put it all together and really understand what I was doing all those other years with music.\"\n\nAfter he got out of prison in 1970, Morningsun was basically living on the street. His wife had left with the kids and he turned to drug dealing to make a living. \"I started selling marijuana on a street level in Salt Lake City, which is a really stupid thing to do. Sure enough I got busted. They put me in the Utah state pen for a year and a half for selling $7.50 of marijuana to a narcotics officer.\" While he was in jail, Morningsun was able enter a rehab program where he learned how to be an auto mechanic. This enabled him to smoothly transition into full employment at a VW dealership as soon as he got out of jail in 1974.\n\nWith a new career underway, Morningsun would soon take on a new identity as well. The following year he attended the Rainbow Gathering in Utah where he met a Native American man named Medicine Story. \"He was naked except for a loin cloth,\" Morningsun recalled. \"I sat down and he started teaching me all kinds of incredible things. We stayed up all night long and in the morning he looked at me and said 'Morningsun, that is the name you should go by.' I've used it ever since.\"\n\nA few years later, Morningsun relocated to Eugene, Oregon where he found a job working for Toyota. It was there he got his first flute from a customer who wanted to exchange the instrument for a new roof rack. The instrument was actually a xiao, an ancient bamboo flute that originated in China. For Morningsun, the flute became a vessel for spiritual expression. He'd been meditating since the early '70s when he met his guru Kirpal Singh. \"He was 81 years old when he initiated me and then he died a year later,\" Morningsun said. \"I asked him for knowledge. He said you have to promise you'll be a vegetarian the rest of your life. I was 23 then and I have been a vegetarian since.\"\n\nAfter Kirpal Singh's death, Darshan Singh became Morningsun's new guru. Darshan offered trips to India for his followers and Morningsun joined him for three trips to India in the early '80s. \"I brought my flute with me to the Taj Mahal, but I didn’t have the money to bribe the guards like Paul Horn,\" Morningsun said. \"It's a burial crypt and a shrine too, so you can't play in there. I got a few good licks in before they told me to be quiet.\"\n\nAt the same time he was learning more about the flute, Morningsun also played bass in various bands around Eugene. He mainly played blues, and fondly recalls many Rooster's Blues Jams at the Eugene Hotel. There was even a session in the late '70s when Animal House was being shot in Eugene when Jim Belushi and John Ackroyd showed up during the first set and discovered Robert Cray. However, Morningsun didn't get to meet them because he had to play the second set that night. \"It's a recurring theme in my life,\" Morningsun said. \"I have bad timing.\" Morningsun continued to work as a mechanic until 1988 when he started to get allergic to the solvents and decided to retire.\n\nMorningsun looked to his flute for his next career move. He learned from a local flute master how to make his own instruments out of bamboo and he started selling them at arts and crafts fairs. He was successful enough that he ended up making flutes for the next 20 years. To help promote his business, he created an album in 1989 called *American Zen* with his then girlfriend Brenda Kline.\n\n\"I happened to have a rock and roll band at the time and all the equipment was at my house,\" Morningsun said. \"I had instruments around and had an idea. It's fortunate when you have a piece of art come out the way you plan. I recorded that tape on a Fostex 4 track. I used ocean and wind sounds to cover up the tape hiss originally. Creative, don't you think? It was my first attempt. A lot of that was beginners luck. Over the years I probably sold a couple thousand copies.\"\n\nBy the mid-'90s, Morningsun got an opportunity to tour Europe and Amsterdam with a band he was in. He ended up staying in Europe for two years and learning how to speak Dutch. He had no plans to leave until he met a girl from Florida there and they eventually returned to the US and got jobs as commercial drivers. They ended up moving to Hilo, Hawaii for four years, originally hoping to get driving jobs there, but when that didn't pan out, Morningsun went back to flute making. He returned to Eugene in 2004.\n\nMorningsun finally retired from flute making in 2008 when he started to find the process too tedious. Still, he estimates that he probably made over four thousand of them over the years. Morningsun currently lives in Eugene and still plays flute, as well as bass. He currently plays in the Blue Owens Band.","discography":{"michael-morningsun":{"albums":{"american-zen":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Very slow, formless and wandering, like a fog in the early morning. Shakuhachi flute, temple bells, harps, guitar, some percussion and ambient vocal chanting all breathe together, echoing, dreamy and random. For mediation and relaxation, not for attentive listening.  \n\n(*Heartsong Review*, No. 8, Spring/Summer 1990)","title":"American Zen","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Michael Morningsun with Brenda Kline","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":191,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Morningsun-640.jpg?alt=media&token=30d0e4bc-f4d9-4e65-8727-f0a22bd2011b","last_name":"Morningsun"},"michael-morrongiello":{"artist_name":"Michael Morrongiello","body":"Michael Morrongiello earned positive reviews in the underground press for his handmade ambient tapes, but was never able to capitalize on it due to the commitments of family life. After leaving his band the Coolies in 1981 to focus on his own music, Morrongiello produced three instrumental cassettes in the early '80s. However, by the time his work was getting noticed, the duties of marriage and fatherhood beckoned, eventually forcing him to shelve his artistic pursuits for a time. He continued to record in his spare time, and eventually released a CD in 1998 of some unreleased recordings from the early-'90s.\n\nBorn in 1954, Morrongiello grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn. He began taking guitar lessons at the age of ten, inspired by the Beatles. By high school he and some neighborhood friends like Richard Ricchiuti formed bands to play at block parties, but nothing was ever formalized. After graduating, he started listening to David Bowie albums and Brian Eno’s *Here Comes the Warm Jets*. The latter in particular made a big impression. \"When I put it on, I didn't know what I was hearing,\" Morrongiello said. \"It had a strange sound to it, but it grew on me and I really got into it. I was proud that I found something nobody around here knew at the time.\"\n\nIn 1978, Morrongiello formed the Coolies, joined by Ricchiuti and the rhythm section of Richie Losquadro and Dave Mandl. Morrongiello sang and played the Octave Kitten synthesizer, though he admits he was never too proficient. The band played live often in the downtown New York scene at places like CBGB's and got an offer from Mitchell Hacker to put out an EP. The band recorded four songs with Dug Pomeroy and released it as *Government Time* in 1981. They pressed 1,000 copies and the EP earned some positive reviews from underground magazines like *Op*.\n\n\"We never made much money,\" Morrongiello said. \"That was part of the frustration and reason for breakup. I was also tired of downtown new wave scene and wanted to do quieter, more ambient stuff. The rest of band didn't wanna do that so I left and continued to work on my own.\"\n\nWorking in his small home studio, Morrongiello's first solo tape was *Dancing With a Cool Head* which continued the new wave art pop of his previous band. After that, he began delving into more ambient instrumental sounds. He liked Laraaji's extended zither meditations, so he tried making his own zither by removing the keys from an autoharp. After taking a a trip to the New Hampshire mountains, he recorded his first tape of zither music called *Down the Mountain*. He duplicated a small number of copies and made a simple cover with type written text. He sent it out to *Op* which had already reviewed his Coolies EP and his first tape, and they gave it a brief, but complimentary mention.\n\nMorrongiello's next tape, *Airscapes*, was a more produced and layered album with guitars and synth that channeled Eno. \"He was a big influence on me,\" Morrongiello recalled, \"but I couldn’t live up to his quality. I had a new family and kids coming. It was just a bad time for me to spend money so I couldn’t go to a studio. Instead I recorded on home equipment.\"\n\nMorrongiello released one more album, *Travels and Places*, in 1985, which was the culmination of his earlier ambient period, showcasing a crisper recording and more refined compositions. The tape got a strong review in *Sound Choice* from [Gregory Taylor](/gregory-taylor), who called it \"lovely\" but added: \"What this cassette is missing seems almost silly; a little packaging that makes Michael's recording  seem less tentative.\" While perhaps true, this comment highlighted an inherent flaw of the cassette underground's DIY ethos: most musicians just aren't good at marketing and distributing their own music. And without that, many deserving musicians like Morrongiello struggle to get heard.\n\nIn the same year that he put out *Travels and Places*, Morrongiello and his wife Vicki had their first child, followed by another a year later. Morrongiello continued to write music when he was able and in 1989 he booked some studio time to record a planned album called *Music for Newborn Babies*. \"That album was gentle piano pieces, like Harold Budd,\" Morrongiello said. \"But I wasn’t happy with it. Sometimes I hear things so many times, then I get critical of it.\" A few years later, Morrongiello tried recording other children's music at C&J Sound, this time in a folk-pop mode. Three of those songs eventually saw the light of day on  a three song EP called \"Kiss the Booboo\" in 1998.\n\nMorrongiello stayed busy with family and work in subsequent years, and music faded more and more into the background. Back when he first got married in 1982, he got a union job working as a maintenance worker. The job was stable, and it allowed him to eventually retire fairly young in 2013. Since then, he's been working as a gardener and playing music again, now using the name Planet Be.","discography":{"michael-morrongiello":{"albums":{"airscapes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"I like this tape. I've had it for a couple of weeks and I haven't tired of it; in fact, I've played it so much it surprises me. A descriptive review would not do justice here; Morrongiello's notes are what you need to see. I'll only mention that this music is as far from heavy metal as anything I've heard. I believe Morrongiello has succeeded elegantly in carrying out his intention as a composer--\"I have tried to make this air as uncluttered and pleasant as possible.\"\n\n(Tim Walsh, *Op*, May/June 1984)","title":"Airscapes","year":"1984"},"down-the-mountain":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Down the Mountain","year":"1983"},"travels-and-places":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Travels and Places* is the exact opposite of many cassette culture products that show up in a fancy package festooned with color Xeroxes or razor blades and convince you upon hearing that the package was much more interesting than the contents. This one showed up with a cassette card lettered in ball-point pen and little fanfare. It's the sort of thing that one of your reticent friends who \"makes tapes now and then\" might slip you at a party. The nice surprise here is that Michael has done his listening and research well, and really knows how to make a lovely recording.\n\nThe note he enclosed with the cassette refers to the work as being \"economically recorded and composed,\" and there is every indication that he remains unseduced by the lure of expensive, high-tech gadgetry. Not much here but a monophonic synthesizer, a digital delay, and the occasional bass, guitar or voice, but *Travels and Places* gets a lot of mileage from this humble equipment. It isn't at all difficult to hear slow block chording and the insect-like effects of *On Land* period Eno, and the gentle reedy textures reminiscent of *Another Green World*. The short pieces unfold a bit more rapidly, and are mostly built around simple I-V and I-IV chordal progressions. Morrongiello's recordings are also strongly reminiscent of Cluster in their simple and straightforward construction. What this cassette is missing seems almost silly: a little packaging that makes Michael's recording seem less tentative.\n\n([Gregory Taylor](/gregory-taylor), *Sound Choice* No. 3, 1985)","title":"Travels and Places","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Michael Morrongiello","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":192,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Morrongiello-500.jpg?alt=media&token=d4c25d83-4769-427c-85f6-16fdf6c961cc","last_name":"Morrongiello"},"michael-pendragon":{"artist_name":"Michael Pendragon","body":"Michael Pendragon was the pseudonym of Michael Noll, a guitarist based in Salem, MA. He released a series of cassettes in the '80s including three volumes in his *Pentagrams* series as well as two other releases *13 Moons* and *DragonTales: Music for Magick*. Pendragon worked at occult shops during the '80s and ran his own store with Therese Bell from 2002 to 2011 called the Oracle Chamber. In addition to selling occult items, the couple also gave astrological and tarot readings, performed divinations, and offered spiritual counseling.\n\nNoll was born in 1958 and grew up in Topsfield, about 30 minutes away from Boston. In his early teen years, he rebelled against his Christian Scientist parents and became interested in paganism and the occult, reading Aleister Crowley and Dorian Valiente. In the late 70s, he played in guitar in bands around Boston, including a stint with Jonathan Shade’s group Tennie Komar and the Silencers, appearing on their 1980 EP *Future Stories*. (Later, Jonathan Shade would revert to his given name [Jonathan Goldman](/jonathan-goldman) and change his focus to new age music.)\n\nAround 1980, Noll moved to Salem, Massachusetts in search of a romantic connection. According to Bell, “He saw me in *National Geographic* with the Laurie Cabot Black Dives Of Isis coven (April, 1979). When Michael was looking at the group he said a light was over my head and he instantly lost his power over all women. So he kept taking trips to Salem in search of me for an entire year till he found me at a mutual friend’s Imbolc celebration and it was instant recognition when we laid eyes on each other in the most magnetic way that either one of us ever felt.”\n\nOnce settled in Salem with Bell, Noll worked at a now-defunct store called Crystal Chambers and also continued playing music occasionally with Goldman. The two joined up under the name Spirit Sounds on the cassette *Windows of Light, Windows of Sound*, a guided meditation based on the book of the same name by Randall and Vicki Baer. Noll played synths and a Korg guitar synth. The tape sold well, and Goldman followed it with an instrumental version called *Windows of Sound*.\n\nNoll began using the name Michael Pendragon at some point in the ‘80s, using that name for a series of ambient *Pentagrams* cassettes. He primarily sold the cassettes through White Light Pentacles, a local witchcraft supply store where he claims to have sold thousands of copies.\n\nPendragon continued to release music on CD, putting out two titles called *13 Moons* and *Dragon Tales*, though more information is needed on these.\n\nPendragon currently lives in Pennsylvania.","discography":{"michael-pendragon":{"albums":{"13-moons":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"13 Moons","year":"199?"},"Pentagrams-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Pentagrams Vol. 1","year":1985},"dragontales":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dragontales: Music for Magick","year":"1988"},"pentagrams-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Pentagrams Vol. 2","year":1985},"pentagrams-3":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Pentagrams Vol. 3","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Michael Pendragon","entry_number":1},"spirit-sounds":{"albums":{"windows-of-sound":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Windows of Sound","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Spirit Sounds","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":433,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-pendragon-640.png?alt=media&token=aeca86f7-7d0b-45a7-89f5-5aad1ac713d3","last_name":"Pendragon"},"michael-riversong":{"artist_name":"Michael Riversong","body":"Michael Riversong was a Colorado musician who espoused the healing properties of music. Over several decades he released 30 cassettes and CD's, many featuring the harp which he taught himself to play at the age of 35. His material covers a wide range of styles including new age, folk, Native American flute music, and country. Some of the releases were part of his *7 Keys to Health* series with albums designed for massage, therapy, communion with nature, and even \"navigation in time and space.\" \n\nBorn Michael Doran in 1952, Riversong was raised in Denver, Colorado. His father was a professional jazz musician, and his mother was a violinist and trained opera singer. His family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming after he was born, though they returned to Denver 10 years later. Like his father, Riversong played many instruments, starting with the drums at eight and later learning the guitar and recorder. By 13 he was already playing drums in a local rock band. He also wrote poetry and set it to music.\n\nAfter graduating high school in 1970, Riversong attended college at the University of Colorado in Boulder. There he studied Chinese, anthropology, and religion.  According to his sister Alison, he was interested in eastern religion and long held a dream to be an ambassador for China since he was in high school. \n\nAfter graduating from college in 1978, Riversong got married and tried a few jobs including selling solar panels before starting his own computer business. On the side, he was always playing music, picking up gigs at weddings, bar mitzvahs, or anthing else that came up.\n\nIn 1982, Riversong began doing research into the healing properties of music.  After a few years of study, he started putting out tapes under the name Michael Riversong. His first release was a solo guitar album using open tunings (*Dreams and Dances*)  and his second was a solo flute album (*Healing Flute*). \n\nRiversong would later write about his thoughts on ambient music for an article on his Biblical Bards [site](http://www.biblicalbards.org/AmbientJoy.html): \"Some people find contemporary ambient music annoying because melodies can be indistinct and underlying structure is often subtle. Others find these same characteristics to be relaxing. Many experiments have determined that this type of music has many specific uses in healing practice, ranging from massage therapy all the way to treating people in comas.\"\n\nRiversong would go on to release 28 more albums on tape and CD, exploring a wide swath of musical terrain including new age, folk, Celtic, native american, blues, and country. Seven of the releases were part of his *7 Keys to Health* series with albums designed for massage, therapy, communion with nature, and even \"navigation in time and space.\" Riversong's sister Alison, an accomplished illustrator, drew some of the album covers.\n\nAround 1987, Riversong taught himself how to play the harp. His first release to feature the instrument was *Harp of the Bards* in 1988. In a nod to his Irish heritage, the songs are all in a celtic style. As he got older, Riversong became so fond of the harp that it became his primary instrument and the one his friends most associate with him.\n\nIn addition to music, Riversong had many other interests including physics, meteorology, and Feng Shui. He was able to combine some of these into a new career as an environmental building inspector and he published a book called *Design Ecology* in 1996 that focused on his learnings from the field.\n\nRiversong, who was a big fan of Nikolai Tesla, founded the [Tesla Academy](http://www.teslaacademy.info/) non-profit in 2006 as a resource for environmental health, alternative energy, and other related topics. At the same time, he also created [Biblical Bards](http://www.biblicalbards.org) with the intention of integrating \"the arts of history, healing, and music in the service of humanity.\"\n\nBy the early '90s, Riversong's marriage was dissolving and he moved to Cheyenne. He remarried a decade later and had two more children, but that marriage also ended in divorce.  Riversong was always a spiritual person in life. According to Dr. Victoria Gardener, who he met in 2006, \"he explored all religions. He was a truth seeker. He was even into scientology for a while until he found out what they were really about. In his later years he became a devout Christian and belonged to the Mennonite church. But he could see the truth in all religions.\" \n\nAfter a serious foot infection around 2005, Riversong was homeless for a period and could no longer travel the country promoting his music and working for environmental health. So he became a substitute teacher and lived in Gardener's basement apartment. He played on many CD's of Gardener's around this time, and continued to record music on his own, albeit at a much slower pace. Riversong's health began to fail in 2014, in part due to complications from diabetes, and he passed away in 2015.\n\nDetailed descriptions of his music can be found [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20031009195703/http://home.earthlink.net/~rivedu/disco.html).\n\nSources:\n- Biblical Bards website\n- Author interviews with Alison Doran, August 7, 2019\n- Author interviews with Dr. Victoria Gardener, February 16, 2020\n- Michael Riversong obituary retrieved [here](https://www.svpwiki.com/Michael-Riversong)","discography":{"michael-riversong":{"albums":{"angels-in-the-attic":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Angels in the Attic","year":"1997"},"angels-in-the-basement":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Angels in the Basement","year":"1987"},"ascension":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ascension","year":"1997"},"balance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Balance","year":"1991"},"balance-within":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Balance Within","year":"1995"},"celestial-wonder":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Celestial Wonder","year":"1989"},"celtic-collection":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Celtic Collection","year":"1996"},"dreams-and-dances":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Dreams and Dances","year":"1984"},"emotional-motion":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Emotional Motion","year":"1991"},"flamenco-azul":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Flamenco Azul","year":"1993"},"foundation":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Released as part of his \"7 Keys to Health\" series, *Foundation* is an album of solo harp instrumentals, with four songs recorded outdoors. The compositions have a light, airy feel and are generally upbeat or mid-tempo, meant to accompany working or exercising as background music. Riversong's genial persona really comes through in his playing, but his frequent glissandos can be a bit distracting. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Foundation","year":"1992"},"golden-hearts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Golden Hearts","year":"1990"},"gypsy-fire":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gypsy Fire","year":"1996"},"harp-of-the-bards":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The unadorned solo harp music on this mild, simple album is usually improvised, meandering, and explorative. None of the tunes are traditional, yet they carry hints of the bardic harp of old, moving with a moderate tempo with streams of plucked notes and trills. Although the tunes are not distinctive, the inherently beautiful sound of the harp makes this a pleasant, sweet listening experience. A recorder is added briefly on \"Irish Nest.\"\n\nMy favorite on this tape is \"Harp Salad.\" It depicts a feeling of traveling with your eyes closed through a spring-green mossy forest, feeling with your toes as the harper does with his fingers. This music is best for background use. It's good for relaxing and letting go because of its formlessness.\n\n(Glenn Falkenberg, *Heartsong Journal* No. 6, 1989)","title":"Harp of the Bards","year":"1988"},"healing-flute":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Healing Flute","year":"1984"},"healing-flute-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Healing Flute 2","year":"1988"},"kindness":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This album is like a delightful, mellow evening concert with a very talented, multi-faceted musician. Skilled with guitar, dulcimer, harp, and recorders, Michael treats us to lovely, simple compositions, and a mood of friendly, straightforward comfort. This is not a remarkable album in any fantastic way, but is a wonderful listening experience for those who enjoy the pure sounds of these instruments, mostly solo. Played with a sure touch and spinning lovely, sweet compositions that are flowing and earthy, the music is rhythmic and real.\n\n\"Angelo's\" is, of course, done angelically on harp. Classical guitar delights in \"Affirmation in E Flat,\" \"Getting Over\" and \"Move Right\" are excellent, spunky folk guitar. \"Roberta's Dream\" sets the pace with bright guitar and flute. A dulcimer delight, \"She Walks Softly Through the Purple Nebula\" is magically lovely, unusual. A crystalline clear recorder slowly creates an otherworldy mood in \"Somewhere Else.\" One short vocal song, \"Silence\" ends the album.\n\nFor the ear that grows weary from complex possibilities of contemporary music, the tunes are \"down home\", warm, reassuringly vibrant and robust, good for relaxing background almost anytime.  Yes, it is a kindness to have such a simple sweet musical guest.\n\n(Acacia, *Heartsong Review*, No. 11, 1991)","title":"Kindness","year":"1987"},"lysistrata":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lysistrata","year":"1990"},"music-from-the-borderlands":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music from the Borderlands","year":"1997"},"nature":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is playful music, carefully designed to enhance your relationship with planet Earth. Harp, guitar, and flute recreate the peace and beauty of the natural settings that inspired these songs. Guest artists sit in on synth and percussion on a few pieces. Many tunes are Celtic in flavor, with bright harp notes dominant, and all are light and delicate. The imagery of sunny days in mountain meadows comes to this reviewer's mind's eye.\n\nThere is a quality of sparkling water and sweetness to these flowing melodies. Simple, meandering and innocent, it feels good like a fresh breeze on your face. Ideal for guided imagery, gardening, yoga, massage, tai chi, picnicking or chain butterflies. Listen to \"River Dream,\" \"Pageant Forest Dance,\" \"Cathedral of Aspens\" and dance along. These tunes will have you stepping lightly through the wildflowers.\n\n(David Mitchell, *Heartsong Review* No. 10 Spring/Summer 1991)\n","title":"Nature","year":"1990"},"navigators":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Navigators","year":"1992"},"one-heart":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"One Heart","year":"1999"},"pioneers-in-the-universe":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Pioneers in the Universe","year":"1991"},"planetary-sanity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Planetary Sanity","year":"1994"},"spirit-keepers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spirit Keepers","year":"1986"},"unified-field-aston-fitness-tape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Unified Field - Aston Fitness Tape","year":"1988"},"you-will-always-remember":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"You Will Always Remember","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":143,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Riversong-620.jpg?alt=media&token=2e5c1d1b-ddf5-447c-ad0a-c715198602ee","last_name":"Riversong"},"michael-rose":{"artist_name":"Michael Bheema Rose","body":"Based in Sarasota, Florida, Michael Rose earned his Sanskrit name Bheema on a trip to India in the '70s, following the same spiritual journey as his hero [Paul Horn](/paul-horn) who went there to study transcendental meditation. While there, Rose got the idea to launch his own incense company called Blue Rose which is still active today. As he built up his business in the early '80s, he also released two albums of meditative flute improvisations that he sold to many of the same retailers buying his incense. By the second half of the decade, he relocated to Gainesville, Florida where he opened a store called Crystal Forest. His final two releases were a children's album called *Moondreams* and a more intricately arranged new age album called *Imagine*.  \n\nMichael Rose was born in 1948 and grew up in Coral Gables, Florida. His mother was a teacher, and his father was an accountant. His father played flute and Rose decided to follow in his footsteps. Starting at age nine, Rose started flute lessons with Victor Goldring and joined the school band. He set his sights on being a classical flutist. \n\nIn his first year at New College in Sarasota, Rose continued to practice flute seriously. However, after he graduated in 1969 he couldn't get into some musical programs he applied to and he decided that he didn't have the sight reading skills or drive to become a classical flutist. So instead, he gravitated to jazz and improvisation. When he heard Paul Horn's contemplative flute album *Inside*, he realized that could be a better template for his new direction.\n\nIt wasn't just Horn's music that inspired Rose. Like Horn, he was also interested in meditation too. In the '70s, Rose took a trip to India with a meditation group and while there he was anointed with a new Sanskrit name, Bheema, from his guru Muktananda. Also, on this trip Rose and some others decided to start an importing company in the US to sell incense. In 1977, Rose and the other partners founded Blue Pearl which is still active today.\n\nAfter spending time at five different colleges, Rose eventually earned a graduate degree in Psychology in 1976 at Goddard College in Vermont. After that, he moved back to Sarasota and worked to get his massage license and set up a practice that he ran in addition to Blue Pearl.\n\nIn the early 80s, some of Rose's friends in his meditation group were producing music for meditation. He decided to record one of his live improvisations at a new age conference in Miami and released that as his first album *Amazing Grace*. The album consisted of two 30 minute tracks that were deeply meditative. He sold them through distributors and through Blue Pearl as well since many of his customers were meditation centers. But he concedes, \"It was never a big commercial hit of any kind.\"\n\nThe next year, Rose put out another tape in a similar style called *Samadhi* that added some synth textures. That one sold a bit better, but Rose eventually let it go out of print along with his debut.\n\nBy 1983, Blue Pearl was doing well, and Rose bought out his partners and took over the business. It grew to a point that he was no longer doing massage therapy and focusing solely on Blue Pearl, which expanded to also sell organic hair coloring along with incense.  By 1988, he had relocated to Gainesville and opened a retail store called Crystal Forest that sold books, gifts and jewelry.\n\nWhile in Gainesville, Rose put together what he considers his best album *Imagine*. \"I really prepared for that one,\" Rose said. \" I took music theory courses, and it was much more sophisticated than the previous two albums.\" He was particularly proud of the track \"Peace Ascending\" recorded with Dave Smadbeck who'd previously appeared on the Trance Form LP with fellow Gainesville-resident George Tortorelli.\n\nRose released one more album, *Moondreams*, which was intended for children. After that, he mostly focused on his growing business. He also branched out to become a licensed nutritionist in Florida and work with homeless shelters in Florida. More recently, Rose moved to Israel and self-published a book called * Bipolar Wellness* in 2018.","discography":{"michael-rose":{"albums":{"amazing grace":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Amazing Grace/Jyota","year":"1983"},"moondreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Soothing flute music evoking the innocence and joy of childhood. Extended improvisations and interpretations of classics like \"Swing Low Sweet Chariot.\"\n\n(*Heartsong Review*, No. 5, Fall/Winter 1988)\n","title":"Moondreams","year":"1987"},"peace-meditation":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Peace Ascending","year":"1987"},"remote-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Imagine","year":"1988"},"samadhi":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A sweet, delicately lyrical recording, with a definite Eastern flavor given by the drone of a tamer under the fluttering flute improvisations. Side one's \"Mantra\" is a meditation on the melody of a Sanskrit mantra which means \"I honor my own inner being.\"  Side two's \"Mahimna\" includes the entire melody pattern from an ancient Sanskrit hymn. Both pieces have the same consistent sound throughout; loving, quiet meandering flute over a vibrant drone. Very nice for massage, movement and gentle background.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review*, No. 4, Spring/Summer 1988)\n\n","title":"Samadhi","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":241,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-rose-640.jpg?alt=media&token=5bdf7a90-42fc-4d1b-b0fd-90ae68801264","last_name":"Rose"},"michael-stearns":{"artist_name":"Michael Stearns","body":"Michael Stearns is a key figure in the field of ambient music, known by many for his work in films like *Baraka* or early classics like *Planetary Unfolding*.  He was one of the lucky few able to make a lifelong career out of music, primarily through film scores. \"I've never gone for any kind of formula,\" he said. \"I've just always done what I've wanted to do.\"\n\nBorn in 1948, Stearns grew up in Tucson, Arizona. He started out playing guitar at 13 in a surf band called the Breakers and moved on to other rock bands after that, including a band in college called the Universal Joint. In 1968 he dropped out of college and was inspired to begin creating his own unique music.  With the Vietnam draft looming, Stearns decided to join the Air Force, where he worked as a Spanish and then a Haitian Creole linguist. During his enlistment, he played acoustic guitar, sang in coffee houses and put together a kit of electronic instruments and recording equipment.  \n\nAfter his discharge in 1972, Stearns joined a Las Vegas style revue band called Magic, working on his own music in a bedroom/studio in his downtime at home.  However, a few years later he began studying with a Sufi master and was planning to give up music and all his possessions to pursue a spiritual path.  But that all changed when his girlfriend and later wife, Susan Harper, took him to a workshop led by Emilie Conrad. \n\nIn an interview with [Dream Circle](http://www.dreamcircle.com/archive/dreams-word/dreams-word-10-winter-1990-91/michael-stearns-interview), Stearns recalls this pivotal event: \"The workshop was a series of meditations, ritual exercises and movement exercises. It was all accompanied by music that was being played by Gary David. He was playing the same kind of music that I had been developing! Gary had taken a little snippet of sound from a 1958 album called *Word Jazz* by Ken Nordine, slowed it down to half speed and was playing it backwards, as a loop. He was playing things over the top of this sound on his Mini-Moog synthesizer. After the meditation, I walked over to him and said, 'That's absolutely incredible! How could you think to have taken that eight-second piece of music, slow it down to half speed and to play it backwards?' He looked at me with a strange look on his face and said, 'You are the only other person in the world that would know how I did that, let alone know where I got the material from!'\" \n\nTwo weeks later, Stearns and Harper drove out to LA, camping out along the way in a VW van. While in San Diego, he met Susan's friend Leilani Bost who later creating the cover art for Stearns' first two albums. Once in LA, Stearns began taking classes with Emilie Conrad and soon enough was playing music for the meditation classes along with Gary David, Fred Stofflet and Don Preston of the Mothers of Invention. According to Stearns, a lot of that material was used as the basis for *Planetary Unfolding* a few years later.\n\nThrough Emilie's studio, Continuum, Stearns met [Kevin Braheny](/kevin-braheny), who showed Stearns how to use the Serge synthesizer, a modular synthesizer with no keyboard and a steep learning curve. He also met child actor and musician Craig Hundley (later Huxley) and the two formed a fast friendship and writing partnership that lasted until 1984.\n\nTo produce his first album, *Ancient Leaves*, Stearns began composing on a Mini-Moog. Once the music was ready, he recorded all the parts at Track Record in Hollywood and pressed records and cassettes on his and Susan's own label, Continuum Montage. Stearns was an active promoter for his own music, going to New Age fairs and setting up booths for people to listen and buy. He remembers [Constance Demby](/constance-demby) and Steven Halpern doing the same thing, seeing them at all the events.  \"I didn't connect with New Age,\" Stearns says. \"But it gave me a way to connect with an audience.\" At these fairs, Stearns would frequently sell hundreds of copies.\n\nFor his next album, the cassette only *Sustaining Cylinders*, Stearns recorded most of the album in his kitchen, using audio effects to treat and process sounds from pots and pans, turning them into singing bowls and gongs.  \n\nMeanwhile, Stearns and Huxley had been working together on film soundtracks and experimenting with new sounds.  They were both fascinated by an instrument called the beam, developed by Jon Lazelle in the early '70s. The instrument was a long extruded iron 'C' beam strung with wires and amplified with a guitar pickup. Huxley created a version of the beam made out of aluminum and was able to get it featured on the first *Star Trek* movie, Michael Jackson's \"Beat It\" and more. Stearns worked with him on other synth-based movie scores such as *Schizoid* from 1980, and built his own beam.\n\nDuring a break from the soundtrack work in 1979, Stearns released his third album, *Morning Jewel*. Gary David had introduced Stearns to music theorist Erv Wilson's microtonal scales and instruments, and Stearns used a special set of vibes with a 20 tone scale called the Eikosany for the track \"Jewel.\" For the other piece on the album, \"Morning\", Stearns made field recordings in the Tucson desert at sunrise and in the Mexican jungle village of Yelapa, and wove these into synthesizer and vocal tracks.\n\nIn 1981, Stearns released *Planetary Unfolding*, all composed on the Serge synthesizer and developed in movement meditation classes. This would become one of his best-selling albums. For 1983's *Lightplay*, Stearns began to slowly move in a more commercial direction with shorter songs and more conventional structures.  Unfortunately, the cassette is very hard to find and when it does appear, often sells for over $100.\n\nStearns was working as an engineer at Huxley's studio The Enterprise at the time, and one of their main clients was legendary film compose Michael Jarre who was working on scores for the movies *Firefox* (1982) and *Dreamscape* (1984).  In 1984 Ron Fricke, coming off being cinematographer for the film Koyaanisquatsi, offered Stearns the opportunity to write the score for his IMAX film *Chronos*, Stearns jumped at the chance and left his engineering gig.\n\nStearns still maintained a relationship with Huxley, who started a label called Sonic Atmospheres and reissued *Planetary Unfolding*, a new version of *Lightplay\" called *M'Ocean* and Stearns' next three albums. When Huxley's label went bankrupt, Stearns moved to Stephen Hill's Hearts of Space label, releasing three records there. Stearns continued to stay active in the industry, releasing album and film scores up to the present day, with his most notable recent score being another Ron Fricke film, *Samsara* (2011).","discography":{"michael-stearns":{"albums":{"ancient-leaves":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"Within the limited realm of this trance music, the two works on this early record by Stearns are quite different. Of the two, \"Elysian E\" is the more hypnotic, with a single droning pitch sustained throughout the work, though it is continually altered in its timbre, register, and dynamic level; always the same yet constantly changing. On this is built a pulsing fabric of subtly changing textures and electronic sounds, with occasional voices.\n\nThe piece \"Ancient Leaves\" is far more varied. There seems to be no preconceived structure to the work, as changes occur gradually, though in a spontaneous manner. The overall effect is like that of other minimal synthesizer music, though its eclecticism gives it a unique slant. Various elements include repeated figures, Gregorian chant-like passages, women's chorus a la Ligeti, and many other devices.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, *OP*, March-April 1983)","title":"Ancient Leaves","year":"1977"},"chronos":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Chronos","year":"1984"},"encounter":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"Electronic new age / ambient album released in 1988. Everything you want from this type of album is here – chilled drones filtered through endless delay, minor-key chords that swell and unfold and ring out with a masterful sense of pace. It's relaxing but has a sense of movement. Where it's \"dark\" it summons the cold dead spaces between stars, not, like, uhhh... the soundtrack to *Silent Hill* or something. The tendency toward syrupy melodies inherent to new age stuff pops up but is constrained by deep throbbing hums, cosmic wind sounds, and those great drones. Also, and I don't want to pick a fight or anything, but the straight-faced UFO-encounter theme and Boston-like cover art push this into \"better than every Lustmord and Labradford record combined\" territory. This thing's a monster. \n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Encounter","year":"1988"},"floating-whispers":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"","title":"Floating Whispers","year":"1987"},"lightplay":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"After a series of deep meditative albums, *Lightplay* offers an airier batch of tunes and more stylistic diversity conducive to bite size listening. The mood shifts can be dramatic at times, as with the transition from the hallucinatory chants of \"Vicki's Dance\" into the whimsical \"Fireflights Delight\" with its pinwheels of arpeggios bouncing from ear to ear. \n\nFor some reason, Stearns reissued the album a few years later with a new cover, new title (*M'Ocean*), and a revamped running order, though the songs are all the same. For me, *Lightplay* better conveys the tone of the album, and the song itself is probably the best thing here. What starts out sounding like a rehash of *Planetary Unfolding* transforms into a transcendent, psychedelic choral symphony of ear candy that never sounds the same twice.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Lightplay","year":"1983"},"lyra-sound-constellation":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"*Lyra Sound Constellation* was a collaboration between Stearns and artist George Landry who built a giant stringed instrument with wires stretched floor to ceiling. The strings were tuned microtonally, meaning that there are notes in between the usual twelve notes of a Western scale, and them amplified to create atmospheric, subterranean wails of sound. A few pieces are adorned with clouds of soft vocals, while others are stark, minimalist drones with dissonant overtones, somewhat similar to his earlier release *Sustaining Cylinders*.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Lyra Sound Constellation","year":"1983"},"morning-jewel":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"The production is divided into two side-long tone poems, \"Morning\" on side 1 and \"Jewel\" on side 2, hence the title. \"Morning\" has a lot of appropriate natural sounds, choir, transient voices, and synthesizer that gently metamorphose. The piece is gentle and meditative without being static. Nice, spatial mix. \"Jewel\" is a shimmering synthesizer and choir composition that is ethereal and warm. All in all, a quality production with enough nuances to keep it from being boring.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE*, Fall 1985)","title":"Morning Jewel","year":"1980"},"planetary-unfolding":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"This beautiful album places Stearns squarely between Tangerine Dream from their *Rubycon* era (their finest for my money) and Eno's *Music for Airports*, taking the textures and timbres of the former and the sheer opulence of the latter. However, I do not consider this music to be purely derivative. Stearns has managed to assert his own musical personality. So far I've liked everything that I've heard by this composer. The music strikes that delicate balance between repetition and variety. While musical figures may be repeated, there is a continual shifting of the musical fabric. While many of Stearns' recordings are of an environmental genre, this is definitely music to be listened to and not just heard.\n\n(Dean Suzuki, 1983)","title":"Planetary Unfolding","year":"1981"},"plunge":{"image":"","label":"Sonic Atmospheres","review":"After an amazingly consistent run through seven releases, Stearns wades into dubious waters here, smothering his compositions in '80 excess: digital synths, blaring saxes, in-your-face arrangements, Robert Cray-like blues guitar licks, and stylistic odd couples.  While it's certainly a fun, exuberant album, it is often exhausting, and a far cry from Stearns' earlier meditative efforts.\n\nMultiple listens help to ease the culture shock, revealing some interesting curios like \"Space Grass,\" the hitherto unknown intersection of Camper Van Beethoven and Bela Fleck. \"Penguins on Mars\" is a charming take on chamber jazz, and the title track seems to channel the desolate sophistication of the Blue Nile. But elsewhere, tracks like the honking \"Splash\" and the overwrought \"Entry\" quickly wear out their welcome. This odd record may perhaps be the aural equivalent of the [Memphis Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group). \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Plunge","year":"1986"},"sustaining-cylinders":{"image":"","label":"Continuum Montage","review":"*Sustaining Cylinders* features Stearns on the Eikosany Vibes, a microtonal instrument that creates soft, metallic overtones similar to Tibetan bowls.  The first side is ultra-minimalist, like a Donald Judd painting rendered as music, a singular pulsing column of sound that is somehow unnerving and calming at the same time. \"Sleeping Conches\" is similar, but with added ocean sounds to help ground the listener in the real world. Intended for low-volume, meditative listening.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Sustaining Cylinders","year":"1977"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":5,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michael-Stearns-700.jpg?alt=media&token=5dd843d1-c8ef-468b-8190-6478207a83e0","last_name":"Stearns"},"michael-thomas":{"artist_name":"Michael Thomas","body":"Michael Thomas (not to be confused with Michael Lee Thomas) was an Atlanta synthesist and composer who got his start playing drums in local bands as a teenager. After discovering Vangelis he got into keyboards and eventually put together a demo of recordings in 1992 that he shopped around in search of a record deal. He got signed by local new age label Rising Star who used some of his pieces on three various artist compilations such as [*Forest Cathedrals*](https://www.allmusic.com/album/forest-cathedrals-mw0000109244) and [*Seashore Solitude*](https://www.allmusic.com/album/seashore-solitude-mw0000095961) that they issued on CD with plentiful nature sounds. The label had a repertory of local players who contributed to the compilations such as Barbara Taylor, Tim Wheeler, Rob Albertson, and George Skaroulis. Thomas eventually tired of this style and got into Orbital and more ambient sounds. He began using his full name Michael Thomas Roe and formed a duo with James Combs called TouchxTone that released several CDs starting in 2003. Soon after that he began collaborating with Conrad Schnitzler on many experimental albums until his death in 2011. \"It was a dream come true,\" Thomas recalled about working with Schnitzler. \"I held him in the highest esteem.\"\n","discography":{"michael-thomas":{"albums":{"michael-thomas":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Michael Thomas","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":317,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-thomas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=ba73a73b-a2cc-4bf6-b83d-f41f4b232a05","last_name":"Thomas"},"michale-mantra":{"artist_name":"Michael Mantra","body":"Michael Mantra was a pseudonym for Michael Stoffan (born 1951), an Oakland-based electronic musician and photographer whose work often combined synth drones and field recordings. His work was rarely melodic or musical, instead geared to therapeutic uses or to alter the listener's consciousness. After a debut album featuring Tibetan gongs and bells (*Bell Born*), he embarked on a prolific period of releasing cassettes on his own Tranquil Technology label under various pseudonyms such as John Now, Enid Lopez, The Solutionist, and Bhagavad-X. He made good money and was able to procure several bedrooms worth of expensive gear. He eventually dropped his other pseudonyms except for Michael Mantra after issuing an album on a higher profile indie label, Silent Records, in 1994. (The album, called *Sonic Alter*, was actually a remix of *Sonic Transform*). No longer needing the other aliases, he collaborated with a few actual musicians such as Rod Modell and Kevin Tikker. Mantra's earlier tapes were mainly marketed to new age audiences, but starting in the late '90s he began issuing his work through indie labels like Hypnos and Silentes, though his sound stayed the same. Stoffan regularly practiced tai-chi, ate healthy food, and never touched drugs, but the end of his life saw him struggling and homeless before his death in 2014 of cancer.","discography":{"Enid-lopez-and-Bob-Darwin":{"albums":{"catalyst-forest":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Catalyst Forest","year":"1992"},"catalyst-sedate":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Catalst Sedate - Brain Tuning Tape","year":"1992"},"catalyst-serene":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Catalyst Serene - Brain Tuning Tape","year":"1994"},"catalyst-vision":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Catalyst Vision - Brain Tuning Tape","year":"1994"},"catalyt-oasis":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Catalyst Oasis - Brain Tuning Tape","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Enid Lopez and Bob Darwin","entry_number":5},"bhagavad-x":{"albums":{"cathedral-within":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Cathedral Within","year":"1990"},"elysian-beaches":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Elysian Beaches","year":"1989"},"sunrise-over-samaria":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Sunrise Over Samaria","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Bhagavad-X","entry_number":2},"enid-lopez":{"albums":{"clear-coherence":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Clear Coherence","year":"1992"},"deep-delta":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Deep Delta","year":"1991"},"dual-delta":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Dual Delta","year":"1991"},"ultra-alpha":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Ultra Alpha","year":"1994"},"ultra-theta":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Ultra Theta","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Enid Lopez","entry_number":4},"flowing-steam-trio":{"albums":{"forest-of-the-Mountain-Within":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Forest on the Mountain Within","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Flowing Stream Trio","entry_number":3},"kevin-tikker-michael-mantra":{"albums":{"kevin-tikker-michael-mantra":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Lakes of Movement","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Kevin Tikker and Michael Mantra","entry_number":6},"michael-mantra":{"albums":{"bell-born":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Bell Born","year":"1987"},"rna":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"RNA - Ribonucleic Ambience","year":"1994"},"sonic-alter":{"image":"","label":"Silent","review":"","title":"Sonic Alter","year":"1994"},"sonic-journey":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Sonic Journey","year":"1994"},"sonic-satori":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-mantra-sonic-satori-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b8d6d074-9e63-4474-b3cb-ae432b8f97b6","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"Ultra minimalist synth drones with faint ocean waves and heavy deep bass tones. May interest fans of *Tibetan Bells* by Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings or Karma Moffett's more minimalist works.","title":"Sonic Satori","year":"1991"},"sworn-to-the-bell":{"image":"","label":"Tranquil Technology","review":"","title":"Sworn to the Bell","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Michael Mantra","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":351,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/michael-mantra-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e1c5ea41-1118-48fb-b1f5-345fcbe0b50a&_gl=1*1ef068s*_ga*MTk3MDM4OTE1NS4xNjg1NTcwMjMz*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY4NTczMDI0NS4zLjEuMTY4NTczMDI2NC4wLjAuMA..","last_name":"Mantra"},"michele-mercure-musser":{"artist_name":"Michele Mercure Musser","body":"Michele Mercure is an artist and musician from Pennsylvania who released five minimal electronic albums from 1983 to 1990.  all are now highly sought after and collectible. She originally recorded under her married name of Michele Musser but went back to her maiden name after her divorce in 1986. In addition to her recorded output, she also composes music for TV, film, and theater.\n\nBorn in 1957, Mercure grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts and started playing the guitar at the age of 12. She wasn’t a great student at school, but she loved music (especially the Stones and Beatles) and started writing her own songs, often in unconventional tunings. In her teens, she started to get deeply interested in painting as well. \n\nIn 1977, Mercure moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where she circulated with a small crowd of artists. During a 6 month visit to Eindhoven in the Netherlands, she hung out at record shops and listened to the radio where she discovered the Kosmiche music of ‘70s Germany. One of her favorites was Conrad Schniztler, and she later started a mail correspondence with him. \n\nOnce back in Harrisburg, Mercure started working more seriously on her own electronic music. She had originally made tape loops for art projects, but was now composing abstract electronic pieces that were more developed.  Harrisburg didn't have much going on, but Mercure discovered through magazines like Op and Eurock that the US had its own percolating scene of electronica influenced by the same sounds she had heard abroad.\n\nAt the time, Mercure worked as a cel painter for a local animator, working for long stretches on the same drawing with slight variations. Her music featured repetition and variation too, with songs like \"De Dunk\" from her debut showing a knack for mixing catchy riffs with more unexpected textures. Mercure sent some of her early recordings to Archie Patterson and he liked what he heard and agreed to help her distribute her first tape *Rouge and Mint* through Eurock. Mercure pressed 200 copies on cassette only and began trading with other artists like [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers), and [Ricky Starbuster](/ricky-starbuster). \n\nThrough some of her new contacts, Mercure was invited to play her first show in 1984 at a WFMU Synthetic Pleasure benefit with Lauri Paisley and Don Slepian. In the same year, she also got her first scoring opportunity, composing music for a local production of *Waiting for Godot.* This would eventually lead to more work composing for theater, commercials, and later, film.\n\nMercure released her sophomore album *A Cast of Shadows* in 1984, pressing 300 copies. The pieces were better recorded than before and featured more sophisticated development. She got even better reviews this time around, with IEMA readers voting it one of the best of 1984, and *Electronic Musician* calling it a \"well-above average effort - even among current high standards.\" Mercure soon followed this up with *Dreams Without Dreamers* which included some of her recent commissioned works like the theme to the PBS show \"Secret City\" and a piece for performance artist Mary Gast. Reviews were again favorable.\n\nEncouraged by the good response to her music, Mercure decided to release her next album *Eye Chant* on vinyl, always a risky proposition for artists since you have to pay for everything up front. Mercure pressed a modest 500 copies and created her own label and publishing company called Quick Shower. The album was no more commercial than her other work, but it's playful experimentalism has aged well. Once again, the album included some of her commissions including music for a PBS special and two created for performance art. \n\nIn 1989, Mercure started working on creative projects with indie filmmaker Mary Haverstick and together they launched Haverstick Films.  With Haverstick as writer/ director and Mercure as resident composer and sound engineer, they produced commercials, short films, and feature films.  In addition to her own creative projects, Mercure also worked as a sound designer and composer for film companies and engineered recording projects for bands and musicians.\n\nMercure released her last completely electronic album in 1990, *Dreamplay*. She stayed busy with film work in the '90s, with Haverstick Films releasing a feature in 1993 (*Shades of Black*) and another in 1996 (*Christmas  Dinner*).  She returned to playing guitar more, and for a period fronted a rock band called Like Houdini. \n\n*Eye Chant* was reissued by [Freedom to Spend](http://www.freedomtospend.org/catalog/fts001) in 2017, helping to re-introduce Mercure's music to a new audience. The label followed it up a year later with *Beside Herself*, a compilation of material from her long out of print cassettes, and Mercure returned to playing electronic music live. Mercure currently lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.","discography":{"michele-mercure":{"albums":{"dreamplay":{"image":"","label":"Quick Shower","review":"","title":"Dreamplay","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Michele Mercure","entry_number":2},"michele-musser":{"albums":{"a-cast-of-shadows":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"A Cast of Shadows","year":"1984"},"dreams-without-dreamers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dreams Without Dreamers","year":"1985"},"dreamtime":{"image":"","label":"Quick Shower","review":"","title":"Dreamtime","year":"1988"},"eye-chant":{"image":"","label":"Quick Shower","review":"","title":"Eye Chant","year":"1988"},"rouge-and-mint":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rouge and Mint","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Michele Musser","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":64,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Michele-Mercure-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d608e17c-ace8-4674-8b99-c2a61e7a94d2","last_name":"Musser"},"mike-christopher":{"artist_name":"Mike Christopher","body":"Mike Christopher's lone album, *Suspended Thoughts*, is a little known minimal electronic gem from 1983.  Born thirty years earlier, Christopher had been honing his skills in rock bands for decades before leaving home and moving out to LA to work as a laser light technician and later at Oberheim. Most of his songs for the album were composed while doing quality control at the plant, and he also briefly worked with Steve Roach in a short-lived duo called OffOn.\n\nDespite his music background, Christopher's main claim to fame is actually as an actor in George Romero's *Dawn of the Dead*, a role he'd landed because of his band connections.  In 1976, his six piece band Fluid was working on a theatrical space-themed rock show at the Leona Theater in Pittsburgh. The group members all beamed onto stage in plexiglass tubes, had bald heads, sci-fi stage names, and keyboards outfitted with geodesic crystals.  Through contacts made at the theater, George Romero saw a Fluid promo photo and offered several of the band members roles in his upcoming movie.  Christopher was the Hare Krishna Zombie.\n\nDue to the complexity of their stage set up, high overhead and dwindling funds, Fluid was short lived. They did manage to release one single in 1976 and perform once at the Leona Theater before calling it quits. They also contributed soundtracks for two experimental movies by the Lies Brothers in 1977.\n\nAfter Fluid folded, Christopher enrolled in trade school in 1978 to learn electronics. He landed a job at Laserium doing light shows, initially at the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh. The company moved him out to Los Angeles a year later to work on higher profile projects like film shoots, trade shows, and laser displays. One of his personal highlights was doing the lights for Tangerine Dream's show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.\n\nIn 1982, Christopher got a job at the Oberheim plant in Santa Monica as an audio technician. He started out doing simpler tasks, but rose up to be the head of quality control.  While testing synthesizers and sequencers, he would compose music and some of those songs would later appear on his cassette, which was composed almost entirely on Oberheim gear.\n\nWhile living on Venice Beach, Christopher met artist Richard Levy who lived next door. Levy enjoyed coming over to hear Christopher's music and offered to allow him to use one of the paintings for an album cover. Levy also introduced Christopher to the owner of Inner Perceptions, a metaphysical store in Studio City that helped fund and distribute the release.  Christopher recalls a press size of 1,000 copies, and that the tape was mostly sold at the store. To promote the album's release, Christopher performed the album in its entirety live at the store, but didn't follow up with any additional dates there or elsewhere.\n\nWhile at Oberheim, Christopher met [Steve Roach](/steve-roach) who had just purchased an Oberheim system for his home studio. The two became friends and worked together late at night at the Capitol studios where Christopher knew the head engineer. According to Roach, \"The music was all instrumental, very rhythmic and melodic. It had a kind of Kraftwerk on steroids feeling.\"\n\nAlthough not a part of the OffOn project, Christopher also recalls working on a commercial with Roach for Thom McAnn that sounds like Devo covering the Dead Milkmen. Beloved by weirdos at the time, the song is sung by comedian Dale Gonyea and features lyrics like \"I'm not a football fan/I like Duran Duran/I got my shoes at Thom McAnn!\" (You can listen to the song on Christopher's Reverb Nation page [here](https://www.reverbnation.com/mikechristopher))\n\nChristopher and Roach dissolved the partnership soon after. \"Steve was great,\" Christopher said. \"But we had two different styles and it never quite jelled.\" Christopher drifted away from music after this and sold most of his audio gear to get video equipment. He began to work as a quality technician for Kurzweil before colorizing black and white movies, then worked as a quality control technician for laser disc mastering.\n\nChristopher continued to make music occasionally in the intervening years but never released anything else commercially. In 1996 he moved to Florida where he still resides now. ","discography":{"mike-christopher":{"albums":{"suspended-thoughts":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"Visions of cyborg zombies, deserted streets at midnight, and blurred fever dreams abound in Mike Christopher’s sole release, *Suspended Thoughts*. The music's forward-facing rhythms and strong visuals recall mid ‘70s Kraftwerk and there are also notes of John Carpenter's sinister melodicism. At times it sounds eerily like Autechre, though they didn't even form until several years later and likely never heard this album.\n\nAll four tracks are over ten minutes, and each paints an evocative, atmospheric portrait of alienation.  The mood is inward and dark, but never oppressive as Christopher tempers the mood with hypnotic, gentle melodies that pirouette off one another in graceful arcs. Album opener \"Science\" establishes the mood with ten minutes of neon-lit bliss, dropping the listener alone on the streets of Chinatown at midnight. A short interlude of synthetic wave noise transitions into \"Philosophy,\" upping the menace factor with cybernetic sequencer patterns underneath some brassy leads.\n\nSide two's \"Religion\" is the album's highlight for me, beginning with a pulsing drone that sounds like it's bouncing off the walls in a long hallway to nowhere. But then the song gradually opens up into a motorik locked groove of minimal melodies that finds a hitherto unknown sweet spot between Krautrock and Balearic. Christopher lets the mid-range sequence play out just a little longer as the song fades out, casting a spotlight on the song’s beating heart before finally fading to black.  Christopher goes big on closer \"The Great Machine\" with a suite-like piece featuring multiple movements and a more complex structure than the other tracks, but retaining the same post-apocalyptic mood. ","title":"Suspended Thoughts","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":31,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/mike%20c1.jpg?alt=media&token=75fbf28e-62ed-48b2-9cec-4cf93596f3e8","last_name":"Christopher"},"mike-vargas":{"artist_name":"Mike Vargas","body":"Mike Vargas (born 1954) is an experimental composer who began self-releasing cassettes in the early '80s that drew on ambient and industrial sources, as well as 20th century classical composers like John Cage and Stockhausen. For readers of this site, his work might bring to mind [Ken Moore](/ken-moore) or [Philip Perkins](/philip-perkins), with his electronic miniatures that layer acoustic sounds, field recordings, synthesizers and percussion, with a tendency towards contemplative abstraction.\" I did my darndest to be uncategorizable,\" Vargas said. \n\nBorn in 1959, Vargas spent his early years in New York City before the family moved to Colorado when he was ten. He went on to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder, majoring in German. Although he'd playing piano since he was five, much of his formative musical education came outside of the classroom.\n\n\"I worked for 4 years in record stores in Colorado, including Peaches Records and Tapes, where I was the buyer for the international section,\" Vargas recalled. \"That was a musical education. I was listening to Klaus Schulze, Cluster, and Brian Eno. \n\nIn 1978, Vargas began playing regularly as an accompanist for dance performances. He enjoyed the work and would go on to compose over 125 commissioned dance scores over the next four decades.\n\nAs cassette trading became popular in the underground, Vargas began issuing cassettes of his music and traded tapes with fellow DIY composers or selling them at shows (one of his tapes, *Information, the New Sugar* was recorded live). \"I exchanged cassettes with people through the mail around the world,\" Vargas recalled. \"The tapes would go straight from someone's living room to yours. I thrived in it. I was living on the Lower East Side and going to listen to John Zorn playing duck calls in a glass of water. A friend of mine was friends with Fred Frith. There were a lot of influences flying around.\"\n\nVargas' musical output continued well beyond the scope of this guide, though the cassettes tapered off in the late '80s. In addition to his solo work, he sometimes collaborated with fellow NYC musicians including avant-garde guitarist Chris Cochrane, bass clarinetist Paul Hoskin, and vocalist Vickie Dodd. In later years, he worked closed with dancer Nancy Stark Smith and also began teaching workshops.\n\nThough all of Vargas 'early albums are long out of print, he has made some of his '80s material available online in compilations such as *Relentless Paintings* and *A Friendly Nod*, both of which can be found readily.","discography":{"mike-vargas":{"albums":{"adding-to-the-chatter":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Adding to the Chatter","year":"1987"},"capricious-ambiguity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Capricious Ambiguity","year":"1983"},"gray":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Gray","year":"1984"},"i-am-small-tribe":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"I Am A Small Tribe","year":"1986"},"information":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Information, the New Sugar","year":"1985"},"music-for-small-speakers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Small Speakers","year":"1985"},"rebel-without-a-brain":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rebel Without a Brain","year":"1984"},"saccharin-quilt":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sachharin Quilt","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":396,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/vargas-uprez.png?alt=media&token=820a045d-cdb3-43ef-b17d-f85a645fe7cb","last_name":"Vargas"},"mindspace":{"artist_name":"Mindspace","body":"Mindspace was the studio project of Kellan Fluckiger, a studio owner based in Phoenix, Arizona. The first cassette, which was written as a film soundtrack, has since become collectible. His second cassette was inspired by NASA's Voyager spacecraft and plies a similar sound as the debut, a mix between new age and minimal synth electronics. Fluckiger recorded many projects at his Arizona studio, including \"Finally\" by CeCe Peniston, before moving into business more permanently in the '90s and leaving music behind.\n\nBorn in 1955, Kellan was raised in the Bay Area. He grew up in a strict, Mormon household, the second of six children. His mother was a piano teacher and began lessons for him when he was five. He went to Brigham Young for two years, and then went on a mission in Belgium for the church.\n\nBy the late '70s, Fluckiger’s seemingly normal life began to unravel. \"All the terrible things my mom thought would happen, did,\" Fluckiger said. \"I left my first marriage, I left the church, and I was angry,\" Fluckiger said. \"I was in a band for a while starting in 1980 and then I started a recording studio. In 1981 I saw *Thief* which had the Tangerine Dream soundtrack and that had a big impact on me.\"\n\nWhile he was still in California, Fluckiger worked as a power systems dispatcher for various electric companies. The hours were flexible enough to allow him to run his recording studio on the side. In 1982, he relocated to Phoenix and got a similar day job and built an even bigger studio, using the name Wizard Electric. At first he recorded local acts of all genres, including Tom Moore's [Voyager](/voyager) project, but by the late ‘80s he became best known for R&B and hip hop productions including the now collectible private funk LP by the Tutt band. His most well-known recording was CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” in 1991. From 1982 to 1992, Fluckiger worked 16 hours a day juggling his music and career.\n\nNaturally Fluckiger used his own studio to record some albums of his own electronic music, which shows a strong Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk influence. His first cassette, *Distant Shores* was originally written as a soundtrack for a film with his friend Bill White. Fluckiger was happy with the work and decided to release it on cassette in 1985. His next cassette was *Moons of Jupiter* in 1987, which was inspired by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft.  This time he played a live show in Sedona to support the album release.\n\nBy 1992, Fluckiger was running out of gas, working long hours as he juggled the studio and a day job. \"My family thought I was turning into drug addict running a studio,\" Fluckiger said. \"After the studio closed I got into management. I decided I was going to be a corporate warrior. I did more travel and worked longer hours.\" Fluckiger went on to become a high level executive with several energy companies and then pivoted to a career as a business coach and motivational speaker.\n\nMore recently, Fluckiger has dipped back into music again. He re-opened his studio and started recording EDM with vocals. In 2016, he became a writer, authoring his first book *Tight Rope of Depression*, a memoir about his life. \n","discography":{"minspace":{"albums":{"distant-shores":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Distant Shores","year":"1985"},"moons-of-jupiter":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Moons of Jupiter","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Mindspace","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":376,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/kellan-temp-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c82f3309-bd65-4a66-b5f1-49a666222241","last_name":"Mindspace"},"mosaic":{"artist_name":"Mosaic","body":"Mosaic was a new age/fusion duo comprised of brothers Doug and Matt Brody.  Based in Phoenix, Arizona, they started jamming together in 1981, combining Doug's interest in progressive electronic music with Matt's interest in jazz. They recorded their music at home, eventually incorporating midi and computers to sequence the tracks. While duplicating copies of their self-released debut, studio owner Liv Singh liked what he heard and offered to re-release the album on his own label Invincible. Singh was well-connected with the new age scene and Mosaic's albums enjoyed fairly wide distribution and good reviews for a few years, even though their music never quite fit in with the genre. They went on to produce three cassettes for Invincible before shelving the project. Doug went on to compose commercial music in Seattle while Matt worked as a session musician in Austin, playing with Ministry, Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, and more.","discography":{"doug-and-matt-brody":{"albums":{"invincible":{"image":"","label":"Invincible","review":"","title":"Form and Illusion","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Doug and Matt Brody","entry_number":2},"mosaic":{"albums":{"eastern-landscape":{"image":"","label":"Invincible","review":"","title":"Invisible Landscapes","year":"1987"},"landscapes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Landscapes","year":"1985"},"new-blue":{"image":"","label":"Invincible","review":"","title":"New Blue","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Mosaic","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":252,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/mosaic-640.jpg?alt=media&token=791c2f19-face-4adc-ab04-5ca0b88c8620","last_name":"Mosaic"},"musik-werks":{"artist_name":"Musik Werks","body":"Musik Werks was the duo of Jack Schrage and Lew Demetri Corelis. Based in Moline, Illinois, they formed in 1976 and released two LP's before Corelis departed to Northern California in the early '80s. Schrage continued on for two limited-run cassettes, with Corelis making occasional appearances.  Schrage had a successful career as a photographer, but became a serious music fan in the late '60s and eventually was inspired to create electronic music at the ripe age of 43 when he first met Lew. Schrage passed away in 2019 and Corelis died in 2010 at the age of 57.\n\nBorn John Edward Schrage (Jack was his nickname) in Illinois in 1932, Schrage turned a childhood interest in photography into a full-fledged career, working for Deere and Co. in Moline, Illinois as a photographer and color lab technician from 1952 to 1985. He exhibited his work in various shows throughout his life, preferring landscapes and abstract imagery.  Corelis was born in 1953, also in Moline, Illinois. He later relocated to California where he got married and started a family, but he returned to live in Moline at a few points in his life.\n\nCorelis was a formally trained musician whereas Schrage was largely self-taught. Corelis started with the piano at eight and went on to study organ, drums, bass viola and music theory. By the age of 12 he was already playing in bands professionally. Schrage took some limited piano lessons himself as a child, but grew disinterested and stopped. He took up the instrument again when he was 21 and started to compose music, but he soon got married and had a family which sidelined his music.  \"I grew up with swing, jazz, and classical,\" Schrage wrote in *SYNE* magazine, \"but about 10 years ago I discovered GOOD rock and realized that was where the innovations and creativity was at.\"\n\nBy the time Schrage and Corelis met in 1976, Schrage was a record collector and big fan of prog rock and electronic music, especially the bands Yes and Kraftwerk, though his tastes were diverse and wide ranging.  The two met at a show of one of Corelis' bands, and the the two bonded and eventually created their own duo called Musik Werks.\n\nCorelis and Schrage bought an eight track recorder and set up a synth studio in Schrage's basement. Together, they released two abstract electronic LP's, *Songs You've Never Heard Before* and *Intersketches*. In the liner notes for both releases, Schrage wrote that \"Our music is based more on emotions than structure. We're exploring the whole tapestry of sound...dynamics, texture and tone color. Many of the things we're doing are in the stream of consciousness...running with an idea...playing with it.\"\n \nThe first two albums were released on Schrage's River Musik Werks label and distributed by Eurock and other underground distributors at the time. The label was named for the two rivers that bordered Moline, the Mississippi and the Rock river. The Musik Werks records typically got good reviews in magazines of the time like *OP* and *SYNE*. Comparing *Intersketches* to their debut, Schrage wrote: \"This album in particular is more introspective. Each piece is the product of our feelings at a certain time. Nearly all were realized in one day. We find that the initial impetus and emotion is there for only a short time and we must capture it THEN.\"\n\nSchrage hosted his own local radio show on WVIK starting in 1982 that ran for many years. Through that show, as well as his membership in the International Electronic Music Association (IEMA), Schrage networked and traded tapes with many other musicians in the scene.  One of Schrage's contacts was [Forrest Fang](/Forrest-fang), a composer then based in Illinois, who recorded some piano parts for his third album *Migration* with Schrage.\n\nCorelis moved to California sometime in the early '80s, but the two continued to record under the Musik Werks name and put out two more cassettes, *Explorations* and *1984*, though the latter was mostly a solo effort by Schrage. By 1985, Schrage moved to Fort Collins, Colorado to retire, a place that he'd always loved since vacationing there in the '60s.\n\nWhile in Colorado, Schrage continued to exhibit his photography, and he played with two local bands Diagonal Ascent and Sonic Anomaly. It's not yet known if any material was released though some was recorded. Schrage continued to enjoy his retirement for decades after that, but he never released any more solo music. He passed away in July, 2019.\n\nSources:\n- Author Interview with Nicholas Schrage, March 22, 2019\n- Author Interview with Jack Schrage, May, 2019\n- Musik Werks \"Fact Sheet\" press material circa 1982\n- *SYNE*, April 1979","discography":{"musik-werks":{"albums":{"1984":{"image":"","label":"River Musik Werks","review":"Musik Werks is veteran IEMA member Jack Schrage, one of the most original electronic music composers in America. He's moved from Moline, IL to the land of John Denver, and this complex production pays homage to his new home. Jack creates a symphony of sounds on this unusual tape. Synthesizers, effects, media bits, and natural sounds are interspersed with spoken word and other musical elements that result in a hodgepodge of ideas and concepts that constantly change shape. Abstract, but very listenable. The funniest piece is something called \"Washing Our Genes\" which use the sound of the agitation cycle in a washing machine as a rhythm element mixed with a whimsical vocoder bit. All in all, very innovative and thought -provoking without being abrasive in any way.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE* Fall 1985)","title":"1984 (Colorado Suite/Musik Werks at Home)","year":"1984"},"anthology":{"image":"","label":"River Musik Werks","review":"Unlike most anthologies, the compositions on this tape represent some of the best material RMW has done. An interesting insight into RMW's evolution and history. All tracks previously unreleased. Compositions veer from classical, improvised jazz to purely reactive electronics.\n\n(Aeon Catalog, Winter/Spring 1984)","title":"Anthology 77-81","year":"1983"},"explorations":{"image":"","label":"River Musik Werks","review":"","title":"Explorations","year":"1983"},"intersketches":{"image":"","label":"River Musik Werks","review":"An album of beauty and simplicity created by a duo of electronic musicians who have been working with synthesized music since 1976. The album, created entirely with various keyboards and effects, consists of six richly textured, delicately melodic pieces which range from the lilting beauty of “Rolling” to the ominous undulation of “Piece for Polymoog.” Often times melodic synthesizer music is either syrupy mush or bombastic bullshit. Musik Werks however, maintains a sense of vitality and delicacy that helps to make *Intersketches* a beautifully satisfying aural experience.\n\n(Paul Lemos, *Sound Choice*, Fall 1985)\n","title":"Intersketches","year":"1981"},"songs-you've-never-heard-before":{"image":"","label":"River Musik Werks","review":"","title":"Songs You've Never Heard Before","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":131,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/musik-werks-640rev.jpg?alt=media&token=5d9f6071-bc4d-4f0d-adc9-e3993105c81e","last_name":"Musik Werks"},"nathan-griffith":{"artist_name":"Nathan Griffith","body":"Based in Eugene, Oregon for most of the ‘80s, Nathan Griffith is a musician, photographer, and freeform radio host who released three cassettes of DIY ambient and electronic music during this time.  He was also a frequent contributor to *Option* and *Sound Choice* where he wrote an estimated 100+ album reviews. After getting his Master’s in art history from the University of Oregon in 1988, Griffith moved away for a period to get his phD, but ultimately returned to the Northwest, settling in Seattle in 1999 where he worked for decades as the fine art editor at Corbis.\n\nGriffith was born in 1956 in Morgantown, West Virginia. His family moved to Elyria, Ohio after he was born but had to relocate to the warmer climate of Phoenix when he was 10 due to his health. Griffith's father had worked as psychologist and medical supply representative but was also a big music fan. \"My dad had a great music library with all kinds of stuff,\" Griffith said. \"That's part of why I think I'm so into music. I learned from him. We'd listen to Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte, lounge music, a lot of jazz.\"\n\nWith his father, Griffith would watch classical music performances on Sundays and he especially enjoyed Barry Tuckwell, a master of the French horn. By 4th grade, Griffith got a French horn and started taking lessons. Later he taught himself to play other instruments like the harmonica, recorder, and keyboard. \n\nThe introverted Griffith was also a lover of photography and painting. He got his first camera at 7 and recalls poring over photography magazines ever year. One image that he saw in a photo annual remains seared into his brain to this day. \"It was portrait of woman, a hippie with groovy clothes and wavy red hair. I fell in love with her.\"\n\nIn 1976, Griffith began attending college at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He studied painting for a few years and developed a style centered on soft colors and abstract compositions. During this time, Griffith got married briefly to a woman he met at school. He also got his first taste of freeform radio, hosting a show at the campus radio station for most of his tenure. However, he didn't finish his degree and dropped out in 1979 before his senior year. \"The profs didn't like me very much,\" Griffith said. Later he decided to try art history.\n\nAfter many years in a desert climate, Griffith headed to the rainy, perennially green Eugene to attend the University of Oregon. There he worked towards a B.A. in art history, though he continued to paint and take photos as well. He wasted little time making contacts at the campus radio station, getting back on the air about 6 months after arriving.\n \nJobs were hard to come by in '80s Eugene, but Griffith landed a job at the school cafeteria where he was in charge of student employees. \"That’s how I met Brian Magill,\" Griffiths recalled. \"He was working a custodial job and he had to clean the eating areas. One day I wore my Brian Eno shirt to work and he saw that, and we started chatting. Next thing you know we're great friends.\" Magill introduced Griffiths to other area musicians such as Peter Thomas and Derryl Parsons, and they all started jamming together, with a shared love of electronic music. They formed a loose ensemble, though they only played live together as a group once when Griffith was in the band.\n\nFor Griffith, it was the first time he started playing original music seriously. \"Once we got the studio and the ensemble, I started getting into it. I’d already spent a whole lot of time listening to music,\" Griffith said. \"My collection was ridiculously large. I always say I like everything but Chinese opera.\"\n\nTogether with Magill, Thomas, and Parsons, the four musicians formed the Eugene Electronic Collective, also drafting the more-experienced [Peter Nothnagle](/peter-nothnagle), as well as Magill's roommate [Carl Juarez](/carl-juarez). Magill handled most of the outreach and organization. \"We met at Peter Nothnagle’s house to talk about it,\" Magill said. \"We thought of ourselves as an equal collective where everyone had an equal vote. Our first idea was to put out a compilation that featured our music. Our first tape, *Free Fall* was pretty successful. I sent it to radio stations and magazines, and it got some notoriety. I think we pressed a few hundred, but only sold about 40-50 copies. The rest we traded.\"\n\nIn addition to the first compilation, each artist in the collective also produced a solo release in 1984, with Griffith contributing *Waiting for Toast.* At the time, Griffith lived next door to Magill and Juarez, and they pooled their gear together to create a huge arsenal of instruments. Griffith's debut introduced his sound, a homebrew take on Eno and Schulze that alternated between driving sequencer pieces and atmospheric synth pieces. On his follow-up, *Walking Thru Walls*, Griffiths ramped up the tension with his most anxious, abstract album.\n\nThe EEMC advertised often in underground magazines, with Juarez designing the ads and Magill handling PR.  They attracted a lot of interest quickly, and soon their PO box was flooded with tapes by other musicians. Griffith and Magill, who both had their own radio show together, played these tapes on their shows, as well as their own music. With his natural enthusiasm as a listener, Griffith also started writing music reviews for underground magazines like *Sound Choice* and *Option* and amassed a large collection of indie electronic tapes.\n\nIn the mid-'80s, Griffiths joined a band called Bagist Lag, playing keyboards. He continued to be a part of the Eugene Electronic Music Collective, though he released his final tape with them in 1986, the more ambient *Story of God*. By that time, he was considerably busier with school, working towards a master’s degree. Soon after his graduation in 1988, Griffith departed Eugene and the collective altogether while he dealt with some health problems and trying to figure out his next step. \n\nFor a while, Griffith lived in Pullman, Washington and taught art at Washington State University. In 1993 Nathan moved to Ann Arbor to get his PhD at the University of Michigan. During this stressful time he began seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with depression. Things began to turn around as he neared completion of his degree, meeting his second wife, a grad student with red hair that reminded him of that photo he saw as a child. After completing his dissertation on the light and space movement, the couple moved to Seattle. \n\nIn Seattle, Griffith decided not to go into teaching. \"I got sick of academia pretty quickly,\" Griffith said. \"I love teaching and the students, but the faculty and bureaucracy were ridiculous. It didn't feel right, so I stopped.\" Instead, Griffith got a job as the fine art editor at Corbis, a stock photography agency. For a while, times were good. But after a few years, he and his wife went through an ugly divorce that left him bitter for a long period. \"I’m done with redheads,\" Griffith quipped.\n\nDespite the ups and downs of his life, Griffith never lost his interest in photography and radio. He has been on the air as a radio host consistently for the past five decades, and since 2015 he's worked as the music librarian at Ellensburg community radio. There he hosts two shows, a Tuesday morning show and a freeform show on Thursday evenings. He currently lives in Ellensburg, WA.","discography":{"nathan-griffith":{"albums":{"story-of-god":{"image":"","label":"Eugene Electronic Music Collective","review":"Nathan’s third release through the Electronic Music Collective delivers ambience with substance. Vast deserts of shimmering refraction, vaulted cathedrals, and neuromantic tides which meld the majestic with the ethereal. This isn't music that rivets you with its aural intricacies and complexities. Instead you are seduced by a style reminiscent of Japenese brush technique, which largely defines its subjects by what is not included. Clean and supple lines which complete themselves in your mind.\n\n([Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholak), *Option* Nov/Dec, 1987)","title":" Story of God","year":"1986"},"waiting-for-toast":{"image":"","label":"Eugene Electronic Music Collective","review":"*Waiting for Toast* features a home-brew take on Schulze and Eno, recorded exclusively on analog synths. Unlike his more relentlessly tense second album, the mood is more balanced here, alternating between upbeat sequencer pieces and atmospheric melancholy like \"Mise en Jeux\" and \"Enamae Barut.\"  It's a bit tentative in places, but should please fans of artists like [Arnold Mathes](/arnold-mathes) or early [David Prescott](/david-prescott).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Waiting for Toast","year":"1984"},"walking-thru-walls":{"image":"","label":"Eugene Electronic Music Collective","review":"After a more exploratory debut, Griffiths bears down with a claustrophobic take on the Berlin-School sound with *Walking Thru Walls*, sounding like Klaus Schulze on two cups of coffee. The songs are constructed with two or three synth patterns throbbing at cross-currents, while wisps of melody squirm between. Occasionally, light peeks through the machinery, as with the relatively serene \"The Punishment Room,\" but the rest is a nerve-wracking trip into the void. \n\n(MG,2021)","title":" Walking Thru Walls","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":150,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Nathan-Griffiths-EEMC-crop-new.jpg?alt=media&token=558e3a81-8a4c-44b6-bec3-b0bf267f91e0","last_name":"Griffith"},"natopus":{"artist_name":"Natopus","body":"Natopus was a one-off project from Jimi Bertucci who relocated to Los Angeles from Canada in 1981 after getting a record deal with A&M. Prior to that, Bertucci had a successful career in Canada with the band Abraham's Children. In L.A. he became friends with [Robert Slap](/robert-slap), then an in-house producer at new age label Valley of the Sun. On Slap's request, Bertucci recorded an album's worth of material under the name Natopus  that was billed as \"Inner-harmony music created to be used in a Lamaze birthing environment\" or for \"massage, meditation or lovemaking.\"\n\nBorn in 1951, Bertucci moved to Toronto, Canada at the age of six from Italy.  His father gave him lessons on the accordion, flute, and guitar, and by high school was jamming with his friend Ron Bartley. Together they formed the band Abraham's Children and Bertucci wrote their first top ten hit \"Goodbye-Farewell.\" The band produced more hits and toured widely, but Bertucci decided to leave in 1976. During this time he got a record deal with United Artists and began producing some local Toronto bands like Space Patrol and Angel. He also formed a new band but it would prove to be short-lived.\n\nIn 1978, Bertucci moved to New York for a few years to make it as a solo artist. He secured an album deal with A&M Canada and put out *Jimi B* in 1981, featuring a mix of power pop and pop-rock tunes. According to Bertucci, the album got good reviews but didn't sell well. His label suggested he book some shows in Los Angeles and Bertucci liked it so much he never left. \n\nWhile kicking around Los Angeles, Bertucci met Robert Slap, a journeyman producer with a similar history to Bertucci. The two would check out shows together and Slap invited Bertucci to play on some of his new age albums for Valley of the Sun such as *East of West* and *Caverns of Your Mind*. Soon, Bertucci got a chance to do his own album of meditative music. \n\n\"I got married in 1984 and we were expecting our first kid. I chose the name Natopus as a combination of 'nato,' which means birth in Italian, and the word 'opus.' I wanted Natopus to be new age album, but have more musicality and a bigger sound. A lot of the music was improvised.\" On the press release, Valley of the Sun touted the album as \" the most mellow, soothing metaphysical musical album we have ever offered. It is the ultimate anti-stress music; use it for massage, meditation or lovemaking.\" According to Bertucci, the album sold well in Japan (likely via the Wiseman label who licensed the Valley of the Sun catalog there).\n\nBy the late '80s, Bertucci was spending less time on music as he started his own businesses including Jimi B's Italian Restaurant in Orange County where he would sometimes host large concerts. But he still played shows in Canada sporadically and recorded some music for commercials. In the early 2000s, Bertrucci reformed Abrahams' Children and toured Canada. He maintains a website [here](http://www.jimib.com/aboutjimib.html).","discography":{"natopus":{"albums":{"transition":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Transition","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":244,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jimi-Bertucci.jpg?alt=media&token=fba92f4e-14cb-4401-9055-244b5b206c5c","last_name":"Natopus"},"neil-kvern":{"artist_name":"Neil Kvern","body":"Neil Kvern was a writer and self-taught experimental musician loosely affiliated with the Eugene Electronic Music Collective, though he actually lived in Seattle. This connection stemmed largely from his close friendship with EEMC members Carl Juarez and [Brian Magill](/brian-magill) who helped encourage him to play music in the first place. Kvern produced a small body of work from 1983 to 1987 that has recently started to get attention from collectors.\n\n Kvern was born in 1958 and grew up in a tiny town in Northern Idaho. He was the second of four kids and spent most of his early life outdoors. His father taught high school and his mother was a librarian and teacher. His grandmother, who lived down the road, was the organist at church and was an early music influence, helping Kvern get interested in playing the family piano.\n\nDuring his teen years, Kvern got into science fiction and fantasy literature and began writing stories of his own. He went on to study English, History and Philosophy at Whitman College in Southeast Washington state. Although he didn't study music at the time, he started to absorb the adventurous sounds coming out of Europe like Gong, Magma, and Brian Eno. He also recalls being blown away by Keith Jarrett's *The Koln Concert*.\n\nKvern left college and moved to Seattle in 1979 and began working a series of publishing and printing jobs. On a trip to the Bay Area with his brother, he met Carl Juarez and Brian Magill in Eugene and was introduced to the vibrant experimental music scene there. This inspired him to start playing music of his own and recording it with friends, improvising everything and then adding overdubs.\n\nKvern was self-taught, and his early recordings show an artistic leaning which emphasized spontaneity and freshness. Kvern used piano, recorders, guitars, saxophones, marimba--whatever he could get his hands on. Kvern followed up his debut soon after with the more ambitious, 90 minute *Doctor Dancing Mask*.\n\nKvern sold his tapes mostly through word of mouth, though *Doctor Dancing Mask* was reviewed in *Op*. For his third album, Kvern got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and produced *Ancient Cities/Future Ruins*.  While working for the *Rocket* in Seattle, Kvern got to know many other musicians, though he remained closest to Carl Juarez and Brian Magill. His final release was a split cassette with Magill (who recorded under the name Phyllyp Vernacular) in 1987. After that, Kvern continued to record but never released anything else.","discography":{"neil-kvern":{"albums":{"ancient-cities-future-ruins":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ancient Cities/Future Ruins","year":"1984"},"doctor-dancing-mask-pianoisms":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Neil Kvern's tape of \"pianoisms\" provides a contemplative experience, with little modulation. The mystical (?) undertones and beautiful presentation help to offset the excessive length.\n\n(Graham Ingels, *Op*, Jan/Feb. 1984)","title":"Doctor Dancing Mask: Pianoisms","year":"1983"},"house-of-hearts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"House of Hearts","year":"1983"},"let's-play":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This split release was the final album for Kvern and the last solo release by Brian Magill under his pseudonym Phyllyp Vernacular. It doesn't seem to have been widely-distributed at the time, and is seldom heard today. On the release, each artist is allotted one half of a 60 minute tape; Kvern's side is \"Let’s Play\" and Magill's side is called \"The Red Bag.\"\n\nAlthough both sides are a bit of a hodgepodge quality wise, there is consistency in their musical approach of mixing treated percussion with ambient textures a la Byrne/Eno. In the liner notes, Magill explains that he collected \"rhythmically based music\" recorded at home from 1984 to 1986, all using the Roland TR707 drum machine \"either as audible sound or inaudible control, or both.\" On some songs like \"Monkey House\" or \"Eye Like a Camera,\" the rhythms are more forthright, whereas on others like \"Utah Road,\" they are faintly sketched in like a pencil backdrop for colorful washes of synth. The most texturally interesting is probably \"Spartan Horse,\" a spray-painted sound collage that includes fractured piano samples, and cut-and-paste drum fills. \"Three Changes\" sums up his ethos most succinctly in one varied song, with the first movement probably the most appealing moment of his whole oeuvre.\n\nKvern's side includes plenty of treated percussion too, though his approach is more introspective and primitive, yet oddly affecting. A good analog would be Arthur Russell’s mid '80s experiments, with songs like \"Umbrella Music\" attempting the same kind of dubby art pop distilled from downtown New York sources. Kvern is less sure-handed than Russell though, and his wobbly sense of time adds tension and uncertainty to prettier melodies like \"Cowboy Detective\" or \"Blue Room.\" And yet, as the songs seem on the verge of unraveling, they creak with an all-too-real human ache that connects with the listener in surprising ways.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Let's Play","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":120,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/neil-kvern-640.jpg?alt=media&token=5f2cc065-63cb-4580-aae0-266e99e3f933","last_name":"Kvern"},"neil-nappe":{"artist_name":"Neil Nappe","body":"Neil Nappe was a key member of the Creative Underground collective – an affiliation of artists in the Somerset, New Jersey area who put on electronic music shows between 1986 and 1990.  Nappe and the others tapped in to a burgeoning appetite for instrumental and experimental music and helped create a vital scene. Nappe, who was a technical wizard and early adopter of the Roland synth guitars, wowed audiences early on with his \"Nova\" composition and released his debut solo album to capitalize on the demand from the collective's frequent shows.\n\nNappe has spent his whole life in New Jersey, born in Matawan and raised in Jackson. There he was surrounded by 60 acres and a cranberry bog and got his main exposure to the outside world through TV and radio.  He got his first electric guitar at the age of six and showed an early proclivity for DIY electronic projects.  After getting into prog and seeing what could be done with synthesizers, he began looking for ways to expand the sonic possibilities of the guitar.\n\n\"I became an effects junkie,\" Nappe said. \"Any kind of stomp box, you name it, I tried it. But it was always frustrating, because with the guitar you are somewhat limited by the instrument's natural volume envelope [the string’s vibration duration].\"\n\nNappe brought his unorthodox guitar sound to a series of bands in the '70s, culminating with a three year run by a prog band called Origin.  Formed in 1979, the four-piece band made a pact early on to not rely on covers and compose all their own material, a brave decision in the bar scene of New Jersey.\n\nAs his Origin project was winding down, Nappe encountered an instrument that would transform his sound completely. At a King Crimson concert at Rutgers, he saw the Roland GR300, an instrument that finally made possible his dream of creating synth-like sounds with a guitar. Nappe maxed out his credit card to buy one, and hacked his Les Paul to accommodate the circuitry. \"It changed my life,\" he said.\n\nAnother turning point for Nappe was his introduction to [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), who he met at a music store in Edison, New Jersey. Slepian gave Nappe a copy of his album *Computer Don't Breakdown* and one song in particular blew him away. \"As a young, long-haired rock & roller, I remember being utterly humbled by 'Sonic Perfume'\" Nappe said. \"That was my initiation to ambient music proper. Before that I hadn't even heard Tangerine Dream or any of that genre.\" Slepian was well-connected in the Central Jersey EM scene at the time, introducing Nappe to other locals, like [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), [Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark), and Dana Rath (of Xisle).\n\nBy 1984, Nappe had updated to the latest guitar synth (the Roland GR-700) and began collaborating with Slepian, who became something of a mentor. Slepian invited Nappe to play an early version of \"Nova\" at one of his live shows and introduced him to Richard Ginsburg, who hosted the Monday night WFMU radio show Synthetic Pleasure. The popular show, along with Craig Kozan's Beta Waves on WRSU was a big booster for many of the local artists and helped promote the fledgling Creative Underground concert series, initially held at a local firehouse. \n\nLarry Fast, then known for his progressive electronic music under the name Synergy, attended one of the Creative Underground shows in 1985. Like many others there, he was impressed by \"Nova\" which was the centerpiece of Nappe's live act at the time. Nappe had already released an early version of *July* on his own label to capitalize on fan interest, but Fast was so impressed that he re-released it on his newly minted Audion label, giving Nappe a huge leap in visibility worldwide. Fast also got Nappe a job as an assistant engineer at the New Jersey recording studio House of Music. Prior to that, Nappe was working mainly as an electrician.\n\nAfter the album's release, Nappe continued to play locally, recording many jam sessions with an assortment of local artists that were never released. He also began work on his sophomore album. However, the once-vibrant scene began slowing down as the decade waned, and audiences thinned out. To make matters worse, Audion suddenly went under when parent label JEM went bankrupt. Nappe was discouraged, but eventually released some of the unfinished songs from his second album plus a few of his collaborations on a tape called *Loose Ends, Vol. 1*. By the early '90s, the collective disbanded. Slepian went into a long hiatus, the Nightcrawlers broke up, Paisley quit music altogether, and Nappe mothballed his entire studio setup.\n\n\"After JEM went bankrupt, I put my music on the back burner for a lot of reasons,\" Nappe said. \"But I never sold the gear and never lost the dream. Music was my first love. You can't NOT play.\" Nappe began to spend more of his creative energy on photography, and also transitioned into a career as an IT consultant. More recently, he has started recording and performing live again and has many unfinished projects he is trying to revive and release.","discography":{"neil-nappe":{"albums":{"july":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"July","year":"1985"},"loose-ends-vol-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Loose Ends, Vol. 1","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":62,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Neil-Nappe-640.jpg?alt=media&token=bc2c849d-ab84-403d-9e09-2f9943f69603","last_name":"Nappe"},"neu-electro":{"artist_name":"Neu Electro","body":"Neu Electro was the project of Bob Neumann, a synth player based in Chicago. Born in 1958, Neumann started out on the organ, playing in jazz and rock bands in high school. By the late '70s, he got into synths and eventually built a small studio in his house. One of his key influences were Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Vangelis. By the early '80s, he acquired the full Oberheim system (pictured above), a then state-of-the-art synth workstation. He recorded two cassettes to showcase his sound, *Early Reflections* which is instrumental and experimental, and *Shake Your Body 'Lectric*, which is more dance-oriented. The tapes got positive notices at the time and went onto sell about 1,000 copies each, but Neumann took a long hiatus from music to focus on a career in IT project management. He eventually returned with new work in the early 2000s under his given name. Neuman has a website [here](http://www.neuelectro.com/contact.html).","discography":{"neu-electro":{"albums":{"early-reflections":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Early Reflections","year":"1986"},"shake":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Shake the Body 'Lectric","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":388,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/neu-electro-640.jpg?alt=media&token=470d7531-dff6-4207-8fbd-71c72f34d859","last_name":"Neu Electro"},"newton-wayland":{"artist_name":"Newton Wayland","body":"Newton Wayland (1940-2013) was a composer, arranger and conductor who frequently produced pop programs for symphonies across the US. Starting in 1963, he worked with orchestras in cities like Houston, Rochester, and Denver, becoming best known for frequent appearances with the Boston Pops where he conducted and performed on piano and harpsichord. During his time in Boston, he worked with PBS affiliate WBGH, writing music for PBS shows like *Nova* and *Zoom*.  There he met Mary Jane Soule, a sound-recordist who hired him to compose music for the Baltimore Aquarium where she was installing a soundtrack of underwater sounds. She featured Wayland's piece \"Coral Reef Rhapsody\" on a loop as visitors walked down a spiral staircase through a three-story tank, surrounded by fish. The gift shop got so many requests for the music that Soule produced the cassette *Atlantic Coral Reef Music and Bubble Tubes* which featured Wayland's piece, as well as some ARP 2600 bubble sounds provided by Mark Styles. Wayland later released a version on CD with just his music called *Coral Reel Rhapsody*. ","discography":{"newton-wayland":{"albums":{"atlantic-coral-reef":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Atlantic Coral Reef and Bubble Tubes","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":355,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/newton-wayland-640.jpg?alt=media&token=a47415e9-feb2-4d49-b165-d01c930ebf4a","last_name":"Wayland"},"nightcrawlers":{"artist_name":"Nightcrawlers","body":"The Nightcrawlers were an electronic trio from Camden, New Jersey who recorded many of their early albums live in band member Tom Gulch's garage on a boombox. Their can-do spirit endeared them to many in the underground electronic music scene, and they were featured often in fanzines and underground publications at the time. The band put out three proper LP's and over 35 self-released cassettes during the '80s, most of which could be had for $4 at the time. \n\nThe Nightcrawlers were formed in 1979 by brothers Tom (born 1946) and Peter Gulch (born 1945) after hearing the electronic sounds emanating from Germany such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. \"The music really struck a chord with us,\" Peter explained to [Vice](https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/rpykn8/the-nightcrawlers-remain-an-obscure-but-great-80s-electronic-band). \"[We] couldn’t get enough of it so we decided to try and do it ourselves.\"\n\nThroughout the band's existence, the Gulch brothers had day jobs - Tom was a letter carrier, like his friend [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl), a fellow synthesist and deejay for Philly space rock show *Star's End*. Peter was a chemist. In late 1981, the duo recruited David Lunt first as a guest player and then as a regular band member. Lunt, like Tom, was a classically trained pianist with an interest in analog synths.  He was 22 at the time, about fifteen years younger than the other brothers.\n\nThe band churned out a rapid succession of tapes, averaging around six per year in their heyday. Most of their early work was recorded live on a JVC boombox and the band primarily improvised their music, enabling such a productive pace.  \"In the beginning,\" Peter said, \"We were quite content to stay in our little garage and just enjoy the music and play.\" The group's pragmatic attitude was reflected in their distinctive cassettes which always had black and white xeroxed artwork and hand-drawn labels that could be churned out at home, on demand.  Though the quality was not premium, it fit the band's aesthetic perfectly. \"I  like the high end nice and dull,\" Peter was known to say.\n\nThe band rehearsed and played live in pitch darkness, with only a blinking LED light to set the mood. Early releases like *Narcolepsis* and *The Fallen Sparrow* were more freeform, all atmosphere and dark ambience in the mold of Tangerine Dream's *Phaedra*. However, around 1982 they began to incorporate the pulsing rhythms of Schuzle and the Berlin-school on albums such as *Synthimania* and *Tanzwut*. They would mostly stick to these two modes for the rest of their career.\n\nThe Nightcrawlers played live sporadically throughout the '80s, usually with like-minded artists including [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley) and [Jesse Clark](/Jesse-clark).  Sometimes they improvised everything from scratch, but after a while they began plotting out their shows a bit more. In a July 1985 interview with *SYNE*, Peter Gulch described their process: \"Usually for a concert with two sets and an encore, we work up about eight different pieces. Most of the time we do them all but always slightly different since we never write down any musical notes like a regular band. We do everything from memory and leave lots of room to space out and improvise. \" Early on, the band brought a huge inventory of equipment to the shows, though they began pairing it down in the mid-'80s.  Lunt remarked: \"The concerts were usually at colleges and churches (for the ambience and visuals rather than any reason associated with church). We didn't mind if people fell asleep during our concerts. As a matter of fact it was a compliment.\"\n\nThe Nightcrawlers finally put out their first vinyl release titled simply *Nightcrawlers* in 1984 on their own Synkronos label. In the same interview with SYNE, Peter Gulch said, \"We had tons of music laying around and chose to pick four pieces that everybody liked. We recorded them in about a month at Dave's studio and had it mixed down at a private studio for $50 an hour. We didn't like the final mix altogether, but didn't have any more money. So we said screw it. It doesn't sound that bad.\"  The band shelled out $3,000 on the effort, far more than usual for their tapes. After releasing several more tapes in 1985 the band put out their second studio lp *Spacewalk*, this time spending three months in the studio. \n\nThe Nightcrawlers continued on for the rest of the decade, though their pace slowed down considerably as the various members worked on solo projects or other bands, such as Xisle which both Tom and Peter joined in different iterations. By 1990, the band finally broke up, never achieving much more than underground accolades, a fate they didn't deserve.  However, collectors have been rediscovering them in the past decade, and their tapes, which used to sell for $4 in the back of many underground zines, have gone up in value significantly. A double LP retrospective was released in 2016.","discography":{"goricon":{"albums":{"cryptosphere":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cryptosphere","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Goricon","entry_number":2},"nightcrawlers":{"albums":{"2031-ad":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"One of myriad dual-track releases recorded by The Nightcrawlers during the mid-80s, *2031 A.D.* could be seen as a transient emission from Lynch’s *Eraserhead* universe.  \n\nThings commence with slow crests of oozing, glissando drones, which eventually give way to a thread of warm, low-frequency pressure-bursts; suggestive of subterranean gears turning in the deep distance.  The primitive modernity of this struggle between steam and steel is relieved by the presence of Tibetan bowls (synthesized?) flitting in and out of the aural frame, and dissipating the sweltering gloom.  Here we perceive a substrate of light generated just beyond the auricular horizon; subtle surges of tubular bells resisting the darkness --a bizarre chamber piece of lonely sublimity. \n\nThe second side is a more linear affair, attended by the subtle pulse of minimal cosmic dub, and checkered by random, listless swells of rolling cymbal.  Both pieces seem to exist slightly outside the here and now. This is music of other spaces.\n\n(Jesse Woodcock, 2019)","title":"2031 A.D.","year":"1984"},"alone-after-dark":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Alone After Dark","year":1989},"barriers":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"1991 marked the end of an incredible run for the Nightcrawlers, capped off with this epic, though not always satisfying, 2-hour sendoff. By this time, the Nightcrawlers had moved on from the analog synths and lo-fi musical seances of '80s releases like *Hallucinatory Executions* and *Narcolepsis*. Instead, *Barriers* presents crisply recorded digital pieces that hint at where the trio might have been headed if they continued on. There is percussive new age (\"Twisted Spaces\"), glassy space music a la Jonn Serrie (\"Lazarus\"), sinister downtempo (\"Barriers\"), and bombastic theme music (\"Rapid Rover\").\n\nStill, something is missing here besides just the tape hiss. The Nightcrawlers’ forte has never been memorable melodies or clever arrangements, but a full body commitment to mood-setting and freewheeling improvisation no matter how creepy, confounding or supernatural. So for listeners who know their past, a piece like \"Feathery Dusk\" from *Barriers* can seem strangely antiseptic and even aimless. It is as if the Nightcrawlers have ventured too far from the fertile soil and into the light. Like their namesake earthworms, perhaps this trio best thrives underground.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Barriers","year":"1991"},"chop-n-hop":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Like *Crystal Loops*, this one is more like an EP with a lighter mood overall and just two ten-minute tracks. \"Chop Sticks\" features the outlines of a downtempo groove adorned with crystalline synth lines that gently shimmer. \"Hopscotch\" on side two sounds a lot like Cluster circa *Zuckerzeit* with a softly propulsive beat and string synth melody lines.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Chop N Hop","year":"1984"},"crystal-loops":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"[Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark)’s favorite Nightcrawlers album is one of their shortest outings, featuring two 12-minute pieces built around short loops that bear down with the insistency of techno. \"Crystal Loops 1\" is a bit prettier, with a chiming 2-bar loop and polyrhythmic layering a la Fela Kuti, while \"Crystal Loop III\" grows outward like a nautilus shell from a tightly coiled loop at the center.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Crystal Loops","year":"1983"},"cybersun-231":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The Nightcrawlers aim to create a “time warp” effect on this release, with two explorations of dissonant, eerie soundscapes. It’s not bad, but there are so many similar albums in theri catalog that by 1984 this style was starting to wear a bit thin.","title":"Cybersun 231","year":"1984"},"energy-transfer":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Energy Transfer* is a possible sleeper candidate for one of their most distinctive and endlessly replayable albums. The trio explores some new territory here, building a gamelan-like groove with ethereal synth textures on the title track, while \"Patterning\" is one of the more peaceful, meditative pieces in their catalog, and probably their closest to genuine new age. Great recording quality, too.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Energy Transfer","year":"1988"},"evening-repose":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"On *Evening Repose*, the Gulch brothers and Dave Lunt conjure a memorable and swirling head trip with a very special guest: a chorus of crickets. Side one's \"Cricket Lullaby” is the main draw here, with layers of droning synths, a blur of feedback, and a sprightly violin-like solo, all backed with the complex polyrhythms of crickets.  \"Zeitgeber\" on side two achieves a similar mood on a smaller scale.  At one point, the interweaving synth parts seem to morph into a synthetic approximation of cricket sounds that recalls \"Cricket Lullaby.\" By the time the song fades out at the end amid shuffling footsteps, you realize that the sound of crickets are still there, gently murmuring themselves to sleep.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Evening Repose","year":"1983"},"floating-premonition":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Two long, dark ambient mood piece with horror-movie overtones.","title":"Floating Premonitions","year":"1989"},"hallucinatory-executions":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"One of many thematic albums in the Nightcrawlers canon, *Hallucinatory Executions* depicts two nightmarish  “encounters” with some kind of malevolent force and the unnerving aftermath. One of their most extreme, tense recordings. Probably not recommended for listening alone on a dark highway to nowhere.","title":"Hallucinatory Executions","year":"1981"},"hidden-pictures":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Hidden Pictures","year":"1981"},"hor-doeuvres":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Hors D'Oeuvres","year":"1982"},"listen-live-in-concert":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Listen Live in Concert","year":"1983"},"memory-bubblz":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This short tape comprises two selections performed live at the Philalectric Sound Concert in Philadelphia, feb 24, 1984. Peter Gulch, his brother Tom, and Dave Lunt are the performers. Side 1 is \"Memory Bubbles,\" an exotic contemplative piece with Arabian themes. Side 2 is \"Geistenblitz,\" a moody, sequencer driven space music improvisation.\n\nGone is the characteristic Roland 808 percussion and the band relies more on their own inner rhythms to make the music flow and vibrate. It’s amazing how tight they sound when performing live. The Nightcrawlers have established themselves as the American Tangerine Dream among many enthusiasts, and their sound has grown more and more proficient through the short years of their career. Unfortunately, the long awaited LP remains in limbo, but their cassette albums (more than a dozen now and all of them recorded live) remain quite popular in the independent market. The trio’s music still retains originality, creativity, and personality and therefore I give it four stars [out of five].\n\n(James E. Finch, *SYNE*, July 1984)\n","title":"Memory Bubblz","year":"1984"},"midwinter-daydream":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" Amorphous, ambient soundscapes inspired by \"wandering through a snowstorm at midday.\" While some of their similar work from this era could be dissonant and tense, this album has a frosty grandeur and cinematic scope to match the awe-inspiring power of nature.","title":"Midwinter Daydream","year":"1983"},"narcolepsis":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Narcolepsis* is an atmospheric mood trip intended to represent “two out-of-the-body aural experiences at night” titled “Alpha State” and “Beta State.”  Droning, ominous, and unrelenting.","title":"Narcolepsis","year":"1982"},"nightcrawlers":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Comprised of fan-favorites, the four songs here showcase the Nightcrawlers' sound in higher fidelity and with shorter run times. While hardcore fans may miss the tape hiss and unpredictability of their full-lengths, this is still a worthy primer and at this point, much easier to find than the tapes.  \"Traveling Backwards\" and \"Modulus Four\" are unique to this release, both mid-tempo pieces in the vein of Tangerine Dream's *White Eagle* album or Crystal’s *Rainbow Voyagers.* The other two pieces, the shadowy \"Tanzwut\" and pulsating \"Spring Torsion,\" are new versions of tracks included on earlier tapes (*Tanzwut* and *Spring Holiday*, respectively).","title":"Nightcrawlers","year":"1984"},"nightwalk":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is their 23rd independent cassette since 1980, so these guys must enjoy making music together. And while I can't speak for the other cassettes, this one is very good indeed. It's an entertaining blend of environmental, minimal, new age, classical avant-garde, and fourth world/ethnic. There are lots of reference points, including Brian Eno's *On Land* and perhaps Klaus Schulze's *Mirage*, but *Nightwalk* is not an imitation of anything. It's a mature and distinctive recording. Side one begins as an effective but standard environmental sound collage, but gradually evolves into sounds of electronic animals in a not-quite-real forest. This gives way to melodic fragments played over a high chime tone, but the chimes have a dissonant element which give the piece a nice edge. The side ends with a short piece of free electronics - a neat contrast to the more structured material which has come before. Side two begins with a lovely simulated gamelan piece, and eventually winds its way into a muted but very catchy nocturnal march. The listener is instructed to play the cassette \"softly at night-time,\" but it works for me any time I'm in a thoughtful mood. \n\n(Bill Tilland, *Soundchoice*, 1985)","title":"Nightwalk","year":"1984"},"ombra":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Ombra*, which means the gradual shading from light to dark, is an apt title for this album which includes sections of brooding ambience, hypnotic trance, a two-chord lament, and a mesmerizing Philip Glass-ish opener (the first ten minutes of “Questra.”)\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Ombra","year":"1984"},"oscillation zone":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Oscillation Zone","year":"1985"},"painted-bride-concert":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Painted Bride Concert","year":"1985"},"particle-mist":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Particle Mist* is a strong outing from the Nightcrawlers featuring two pretty different tracks on each side. The title track envelops the listener in a warm glow of gentle synths, perfect for listening on your boombox in the break room at Cloud City. The second side is a cinematic suite with sections of Berlin-school propulsion, eerie abstraction and a shimmering synth-pop ending a la OMD or New Order.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Particle Mist","year":"1986"},"planetary-expedition":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"True to its title, this tape takes the listener on a sci-fi journey through the cosmos circa 1980 in four phases: “Discovery And Approach,” “Orbital Descent,” “Landing Interlude” and “Surface Exploration.” While later releases would explore progressive electronic sounds with drum machines and sequencers, this is abstract and free-form, filled with bleeps, bloops, laser sounds, pulsing synths, and plenty of extraterrestrial atmosphere.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Planetary Expedition","year":"1980"},"poltergiests":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Poltergeists*, which means \"noisy ghosts\" in German, features five long songs that sustain a sinister, supernatural atmosphere, like Tangerine Dream collaborating on a John Carpenter '80s horror soundtrack.  \n\nThe bulk of *Poltergeists* is centered around  \"Dance of the Elves\" and \"Baba Yaga’s Flight,” both of which use staccato synth figures and harmonic minor leads to create an air of tension and foreboding. Other tracks include the abstract \"Foxfire\" which sounds like howling wind and \"Fairy Ring\" which pairs an airy harp loop, a metallic synth line and a drum machine to build a shadowy groove not far off from ‘90s trip hop. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Poltergeists","year":"1982"},"shadowless-veil":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Minimalistic, droning lo-fi ambience originally billed as an “ethereal drifting of the soul in the netherworld.\" On side one's \"Shadowless Veil,\" space is the key element throughout, with the trio using a slow breathing drone as a foundation. \"Fleeting Tapestry,\" which commands the second side, is another gripping mood piece, though less musical and more experimental. In the place of drones we get a collage of abstract synth burbles and rumbling gong-like tones not so far off from early Nurse with Wound or Zoviet France.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Shadowless Veil","year":"1983"},"shadows-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Another group known for dreamlike improvisation has been the Nightcrawlers, made up of Dave Lunt, Tom Gulch, and Pete Gulch. Like [Robert Rich](/robert-rich), they've been at it for almost a decade, getting incrementally more complex and sophisticated with each release. Their latest, *Shadows of Light*, continues the slow steady climb, utilizing a roomful of synthesizers and a bagful of ideas. They're finally crawling out from beneath the shadow of Tangerine Dream (where all synthesizer trios are inevitably born) to emerge into their own light, developing a slow, ponderous, almost grandiose style all their own. It's a light that should spark a burst of new growth--that is, if nightcrawlers produce chlorophyll.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, June 1988)","title":"Shadows of Light","year":"1987"},"space-ritual-at-st-marys":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The addition of Darren Kearns on guitar adds a lot to the Nightcrawlers sound on this live release, bringing to mind Steve Hillage as a reference point in addition to the usual Cluster and Tangerine Dream comparisons. The regular Nightcrawlers members play a supportive role to Kearns here, using their synths as an ambient backdrop for his solos which range from tasteful and melodic to outright shredding.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Space Ritual at St. Mary's","year":"1985"},"space-shuttle":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Space Shuttle","year":"1984"},"space-walk":{"image":"","label":"Atmosphere","review":"Nightcrawlers LPs are a great place to start for the unitiitated due to the better recording quality and more accessible material (though in this case the nearly 50-minute runtime isn’t exactly optimized for vinyl; most copies have surface noise). \n\nThe centerpiece here is the 25-minute title track, which features the trio’s usual blend of shadowy ambience with uptempo Berlin-school sounds that invites the inevitable T. Dream comparisons, though the Nightcrawlers are far more than clones. Outside of the title track, *Space Walk* also includes the swaggering \"Digitalis,\" the cinematic \"Ombra\" (which bears little resemblance to the earlier cassette version), and the pensive “November Evening” with wind sounds and percussive e-piano textures that is one of my personal favorites.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Space Walk","year":"1985"},"spring-holiday":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"1983 saw the Nightcrawlers starting to move away from the amorphous synthscapes of earlier releases for a more propulsive style reminiscent of Klaus Schulze and the Berlin-School. Here we get two motorik bangers, including the churning, Brainticket-like \"Spring Torsion\" and the frenetic \"Froggy's Holiday\" with bloopy croaks and soaring keyboard leads. \"Spring Torsion\" was later re-recorded for their self-titled LP and also featured on their retrospective comp in 2016.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Spring Holiday","year":"1983"},"subliminal-sailing":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Once of the group's rarest titles, *Subliminal Sailing* features slow-burning, charcoal-hued ambience punctured by bursts of spacey sound effects and zooming trails of noise. At times, you wonder if the tape is still even on, and if that gurgling sound is just the refrigerator fan humming in the other room. Finally, around 30 minutes in, we get to the main musical motif, a low bass drone paired with a mysterious minor key melody that insinuates into your subconscious before dissolving in a puff of smoke.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Subliminal Sailing","year":"1983"},"synthimania":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Synthimania* is the latest tape by brothers Peter and Tom Gulch and proves to be different than earlier efforts in terms of structure, melody, and equipment. Using an arsenal of synthesizers, keyboards, and devices too expensive to mention, they recorded all the works in real time.\n\nSide 1 starts with \"Forced Field,\" a T.Dream-esque song with transposing sequences and a light, airy melody. “Radiation Burns” is a low key soundscape which calls to mind their early works, evoking visions of charred flesh. “Turtle Trot” is a catchy one to pick up your spirits with dual sequences, rhythm machine and string improvisations. A snapper may have difficultly dancing to it, but I don't. \"Serpentine Sunset\" is a contemplative piece with strings and synth lines flowing around a throbbing bass note. Very much like Cybotron (the Australian group) in the string chord parts.\n\nSide 2 opens with \"Peculiar Timing,\" a heavily rhythmic cut reminiscent of Peter Bauman's early work. Solo lines switch from instrument to instrument in a dense wave. \"Luv-li-musik\" is a very cyclic song with a cascading sequencer and repeating string lines which gives an almost tape-lopp effect. Very \"luv-li\" indeed. \"Machine-Head\" features Dave Lunt as guest playing Crumar CS-2 poly-synthesizer, playing against a very machine-like background. One could picture gears and cogs turning a music machine. \"Qwak-gwak\" has a duck walk beat (almost Oom-pah) and is cute with quack like chords.\n\nThe tape should appeal to T. Dream and Berlin School fans alike. Pretty good sound quality-wise. They also have a half dozen others available, which are very good and well worth $4. These guys are good.\n\n([Ron Slabe](/ron-slabe), SYNE #8204, 1982)\n","title":"Synthimania","year":"1982"},"systema-naturae":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The Nightcrawlers interpret the living world on this fascinating think-piece named after Carl Linnaeus's book of the same name that introduced the two-part scientific naming system for plants, animals, and minerals. The album starts at the bottom of the food chain with musical interpretations of bacteria and working their way upward through the kingdoms of life, ending with the Earth as the largest living system. The six pieces reflect the subject matter in often subtle ways, with \"Monada (Bacterium)\" using order and repetition to reflect single-celled, simplistic life, or the droning synths of \"Fungi\" which grow slowly and spread like their namesake. With the arrival of \"Animalia,\" the music becomes more human and familiar, with a classically inspired melody and violin-like synth leads, evolving into a new variation on the same theme for the concluding \"Biosphere.\"\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Systema Naturae","year":"1982"},"tanzwut":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Literally translated from German, *Tanzwut* means \"dance rage\" and comes from the dancing manias of the 16th century, where people danced uncontrollably for days. While this isn’t exactly a rave night at Sound Factory, it shows the group using steady 4/4 rhythms to drive their synth improvisations with three shorter pieces on side one and the title track on side two.  While the group nearly flirts with a synth pop sound on opener \"Wandering Waves,\" both \"Beckoning Beacon\" and \"Cross Currents\" find the trio in their more typical nocturnal, skygazing mood, buffeted by gentle beats. The group would later revisit the second half of \"Tanzwut\" for a superior version on their 1984 self-titled LP with higher fidelity and a shorter run time.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Tanzwut","year":"1982"},"the-fallen-sparrow":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Even by Nightcrawlers standards, *The Fallen Sparrow* is grainy and ominous, with guest Bob Stevenson adding some skin-crawling violin flourishes and harmonica textures to the Gulch brothers’ synthscapes. This lacks the development and variety of later releases as the group sticks to pure atmosphere and mood-building throughout the 47-minute runtime.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"The Fallen Sparrow","year":"1980"},"the-forbidden-monastary":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Forbidden Monastery","year":"1983"},"the-largo-tree":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Good, atypical electro-ambience. It's largely improvised, with occasional hypnotic sequences and industrial flavored swoops and swells. One complaint however: the recording quality. It sounds Iike it was recorded with one mic in the middle of the room....i.e. poor overall frequency response and strange, extraneous sounds (switches?). Also a noticeable amount of tape hiss. P.S.: Great drum machine work on \"Transonic\"...real gutsy.\n\n([Allen Green](/allen-green), Option, Nov/Dec, 1986)","title":"The Largo Tree","year":"1986"},"transluminance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Billed as “two contrasting images of lights and shadows” the two 28 minute pieces on *Transluminance* are more like shades of dark gray and black. Side one’s \"Iridescence\" is a slow burn of astral synths and sound FX that builds up to a maniacal one-bar loop. Side two’s \"Phosphorescence\" doesn’t develop it all, instead marinating in a droning soup of low rumbles, synth gurgles, and what sounds like bowed cymbals or gongs.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Transluminance","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Nightcrawlers","entry_number":1},"steve-brenner-and-peter-gulch":{"albums":{"stellar-tunnel":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Collaboration between Peter Gulch and Steve Brenner that explores Euro-space/sequencer dominated music that flows very well. Intriguing effects, a kind of spontaneity, and polish throughout the two very short, side-long tone poems. There's nothing radically different here, but the music gels and is very pleasant material. Short but sweet.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE* Fall 1985)\n","title":"Stellar Tunnel","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Steve Brenner and Peter Gulch","entry_number":4},"synbion":{"albums":{"cybernetic-dancing":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"","title":"Cybernetic Dancing","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Synbion","entry_number":5},"tom-gulch":{"albums":{"darling":{"image":"","label":"Synkronos","review":"Tom Gulch is the lead keyboardist for what has become known as America’s answer to Tangerine Dream, The Nightcrawlers are a New Jersey trio who have been making music together for about 7 years. Tom puts out some very melodic space electronics here, occasionally sounding a touch like Jarre in his Euro-influenced orchestration and emotional intensity. The synthesizer sounds ebb and flow, swirl and gradually change shape, one of the nice trademarks of his style. The timbres are often very unusual and certainly thought provoking in the way he utilizes them throughout each of the side-long tone poems on this album. One can get lost in all the textures and spaciness of this production and that’s the formula that works every time.\n\n(Jim Finch, *SYNE*, July 1985)","title":"Somnility","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Tom Gulch","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":23,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Nightcrawlers-new-640.jpg?alt=media&token=defe5233-6e32-4dd4-a94a-b1ca7f9c0793","last_name":"Nightcrawlers"},"ojas":{"artist_name":"Ojas","body":"Steve McLinn arrived on the first wave of new age in the late '70s, getting signed to the influential label Unity Records for his debut *Seven Levels of Man*. Although his relationship with the label soured, he went on to put out many cassettes on his own Ojas Music label throughout the '80s. His initial influences were German space-rock bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, but he also used a background in meditation and psychology, along with a love of tape loops, to create cosmic, meditative music at his home studio. While *Trance Tape* was his bestseller, many of Ojas' albums have become collectible in the past decade.\n\nMcLinn started out as a bass player, playing Cream and Hendrix covers in rock bands in the late '60s at his high school in Edmond, Oklahoma. He eventually moved on to studying jazz, but a chance encounter with the book *Autobiography of a Yogi* set him on a new path. By 1972, he changed his major to psychology and moved into an ashram.\n\nAfter college, McLinn split his time between child psychology and music. Strongly influenced by Tangerine Dream's albums *Phaedra* and *Rubycon*, he began acquiring synths including an Arp 2600 and started work on his debut album *Seven Levels of Man*. McLinn adopted the name Ojas (which means \"energy\" in Sanskrit) and self-released his debut in an edition of 300 copies on his own Ojas label in 1978.\n\nUnity Records picked up the first album for re-release, ensuring better exposure. It also led artist Jonathan Meader to discover that McLinn was using a drawing of his on the cover without credit, which McLinn happily fixed on subsequent editions. Like some other artists on Unity, McLinn was unhappy with experience there and opted to self-release everything else himself after that.\n\nFor his next album, *Lotus Songs*, McLinn worked with harpist Susan Walker. Some retailers thought the cover art with a fairy woman was too sexual, but for a reseller in Las Vegas, it may have been a plus. McLinn recalls his surprise when he kept getting orders for hundreds of cassettes at a time from one particular brothel whose clients loved the tape. In the end, McLinn sold 10,000 copies of the release.\n\nIn 1982, McLinn recorded *Rebirth*, which was intended to accompany the birth process. With white noise and oscillators, he attempted to mimic the sounds a child would hear in the womb.  He even played the tape when his son was born eight years later. In the same year as *Rebirth*, McLinn also released his best-selling album *Trance Tape*. At the time, he had a friend at Oklahoma University who designed a homemade digital sequencer which McLinn used to create the album. Through his work as a psychologist, McLinn had been asked to create medical tapes by a local doctor for use on hyperactive patients who weren't responding to other forms of therapy.  According to McLinn, his client said it was actually hypnotizing people and  \"changing their brainwaves.\"  The tape sold over 50,000 copies with the help of Fortuna's distribution and enabled McLinn to quit child psychology and start touring to his support his music.\n\nAfter several years of playing live and honing his craft, McLinn began to slow down at the end of the decade.  He did release one final album in 1988. Titled *Faces of Ever*, the album showed his continued fascination with tape loops as each side is based around one long loop. \n\nBy 1990, McLinn stopped touring when he became a father. He continued to teach music or perform locally sporadically, usually as an artist in residence. Tragically, in December 2007 there was a fire that destroyed all of McLinn's master tapes and left a deep singe across his life. \"A part of me died in that fire,\" McLinn said. However, McLinn does still have copies of most of his cassettes in his archives that he sells to fans for $15 each.","discography":{"ojas":{"albums":{"faces-of-ever":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Faces of Ever","year":"1984"},"live-82":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Live '82","year":"1983"},"lotus-songs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lotus Songs","year":"1979"},"lotus-songs-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lotus Songs 2","year":"1980"},"rebirth":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Rebirth","year":"1982"},"seven-levels-of-man":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Seven Levels of Man","year":"1978"},"trance-tape":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"The Trance Tape","year":"1982"},"trance-tape-2":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Trance Tape 2","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Ojas","entry_number":1},"steve-mclinn":{"albums":{"songs-from-the-heartcave":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Songs From The Heart Cave","year":"1983"},"where-the-circle-begins-it-ends":{"image":"","label":"Ojas Music","review":"","title":"Where the Circle Begins It Ends","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Steve McLinn","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":3,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ojas%20Studio%201981.jpeg?alt=media&token=6e69b1a2-52b3-448e-bb21-b3a4fb491963","last name":"Ojas"},"paris-rubiks":{"artist_name":"Paris Rubiks","body":"Paris Rubiks was the musical project of Eric Hayden, an electronic composer from Fulton, New York. In 1992, he released a self-titled cassette of quirky electronic pieces, describing his music at the time as \"cyber jazz.\" (If made today, it might be classified as [digital fusion](https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/digital-fusion/)). He estimates that only about 100 copies of his album were sold, though reviews at the time were positive. He went on to release two more CDs under different names but they are outside the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1960, Hayden started playing the trumpet in elementary school and stuck with it until high school. However, after his older brother turned him onto Todd Rundren’s group Utopia, Hayden forgot about the guitar and became a synth head.\n\nIn college at SUNY Potsdam, Hayden spent a lot of time in the electronic music lab, learning how to play the Buchla synth, even taking a class from Don Buchla himself. At the same time, he honed his home recording skills by layering tracks with a monophonic synth on a TEAC reel to reel. Hayden ultimately dropped out of college after a few years, taking a job as a banker and spending time with a local jazz fusion band influenced by Frank Zappa, Weather Report, Pat Metheny, and George Duke.\n\nBy the late ‘80s, Hayden switched careers to work in video production, a field better suited to his creative sensibility and musical skills. In addition to composing music for commercials and TV shows, he also worked as an editor and animator. By this time, he’d built up his home recording expertise and decided to release a more professionally packaged cassette of the electronic music he’d been developing for much of the decade. The result was the Paris Rubiks tape, which got a few complimentary reviews at the time from *Recording Magazine* and in *Aftertouch*. \n\nHayden went on to release two additional CDs, though he never used his name on the projects. In 1996, he released a rare CD called The Ultimate Charm and in 1998 another called Sound Defects. However, he didn’t put as much effort into promoting these at the time as his career was keeping him more preoccupied.\n\nCurrently, Hayden lives in Liverpool, NY, and continues his career in the video field.","discography":{"paris-rubiks":{"albums":{"paris-rubiks":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"\nWith its vintage laser grid cover art and titles like \"Halfsies on a Harem\" and \"Spazzem Neg. Vibes,\" this tape could be mistaken for a vapor wave cassette from the 2010s. Of course, while artists in those genres cheekily aim to skewer 'corporate' electronic music from the early '90s, Hayden was a true DIY artist, conjuring unique worlds from his synths and computer that were as far from corporate America as Captain Beefheart. If anything, this is more like an audio postcard from the utopian and experimental early internet era.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2025)","title":"Paris Rubiks","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":323,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paris-rubiks-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0f0940c1-9b44-40a6-a1dd-f8170baeaad9","last_name":"Paris"},"patrice-devincentis":{"artist_name":"Patrice DeVincentis","body":"Patrice DeVincentis was a music educator, writer, and classically trained composer from New Jersey who released two new age albums in the ‘80s before shifting her focus to studio work. One of her key mentors was Bill Rhodes who released both of her tapes on his own Jazzical label. She was a member of the Creative Underground, a collective of electronic musicians in the area including [Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark), [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), and [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley) among others. DeVincentis also played in a series of bands playing both covers and originals, including a Pink Floyd cover band called the Wall that she played in for 20 years.\n\nDeVincentis was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and raised nearby in New Milford. She started playing guitar at 13, but became enamored with synthesizers during a Moog demonstration at her high school.  Her parents didn't support her musical interests, but DeVincentis went on to study music at college anyway, attending Westminster Choir College and then getting her masters at Temple.  During college she bought her first keyboard, the EMS Synthi, inspired in no small part by Pink Floyd who used the same instrument on *Dark Side of the Moon*, a favorite of hers. \n\nAfter graduating from Temple in 1980, DeVincentis moved out to California and joined a new wave band called Indelible Ink. By then, DeVincentis had upgraded to the Prophet 5. The band landed a contract with Polydor but it ultimately fell through and DeVincentis moved back to New Jersey in 1983. \n \nSettling in Union Beach, DeVincentis joined a new band called Front Page and started teaching music in elementary and middle school full time. At one of her shows with Front Page, local musician Bill Rhodes approached her and gave her some oblique advice: \"Try using 10ths.\" The two began a friendship and DeVincentis studied with Rhodes for several years. He also helped her to meet other electronic musicians in the area like Don Slepian and the duo Noble Gas (Mike and Lori Lutgen) who were composing their own music and playing live. \n \nDeVincentis soon joined the Creative Underground, a New Jersey electronic music collective who put on shows at a local Firehouse. She also got a twelve track recorder and began putting together a studio at home called Phaze IV (later changed to Sonic Surgery). There, she recorded her  first album *Dichotomy* which was released in 1986 on Bill Rhodes Jazzical label in an edition of 2000 copies. \n \nWith her home studio in place, DeVincentis recorded some local bands like Quark Pair, and she eventually took a leave of absence from her job due to all the demand. In addition to recording, she did MIDI tracks for games, audio editing, mastering (including projects for Slepian and Noble Gas), and composed for commercials and meditation tapes. In 1988, she put out her second cassette, the emotive *Opulence*, but it didn’t sell too well and is now rare. She also spent a great deal of time helping Lauri Paisley record her vinyl debut *The Fire of Dreams* with Paisley's perfectionism dragging the process on for over a year.\n \nThrough the '90s, DeVincentis stayed busy with Sonic Surgery, eventually recording projects for over 250 local bands. She continued to composer her own music, performing regularly in the area, and taught music at various universities including Monmouth University, Bloomfield College and Bergen Community College. In 2013, she got her doctor of Musical Arts at Boston University. \"Other people got older and had to deal with their lives,\" DeVincentis said. \"I decided to make music my life and found a way to use my talents to make a living.\"","discography":{"patrice-devincentis":{"albums":{"dichotomy":{"image":"","label":"Jazzical","review":"","title":"Dichotomy","year":"1986"},"opulence":{"image":"","label":"Jazzical","review":"DeVincentis is a skilled engineer and composer, capable of crisp soundscapes and emotive melodies that recall Jonn Serrie or Suzanne Ciani. The former is evident in the symphonic grandeur of the title track, while songs like \"Timescape\" showcase a yearning, lyrical quality reminiscent of Ciani's  *Velocity of Love*. \n\nOn side 2, DeVincentis brings in some Berlin-school moves, building up layers of brassy or choral synths over sequenced patterns. That's not to say this is meditative; her pieces are developed with a classical sensibility, with changes in mood and distinct themes. A case in point is something like \"In the Hands of a Child\" which starts off sounding like a stark Cluster track from *Zuckerzeit* before morphing into fairytale new age a la Emerald Web.\n\nIt's all executed with precision and careful thought, though her digital palette has an icy sheen that undercuts the warmth of her compositions. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Opulence","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":110,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Patrice-DeVincentis-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3b79e95c-b410-49ed-ac71-63fb2755dea4","last_name":"DeVincentis"},"paul-adams":{"artist_name":"Paul Adams","body":"Paul Adams is a new age musician and instrument builder based in Peoria, Illinois who had a minor success with his first album *Various Waves* which was picked up for national distribution by Nature Recordings. While he held a day job as a case manager in the mental health field, he went on to release many more albums in the '90s, ranging in style from new age acoustic guitar (*A View from the Plain*) to ambient synth meditations (*The Property of Water*) and contemporary instrumental music (*Wonder Dancing on Global Bop*).  However, it was Adams' more recent albums, like *Flute Meditations for Dreaming Clouds* in 2004 and the award-winning *Imaginings* in 2015 that won him a larger audience from streaming services. As of 2013, Adams was able to dedicate himself to music full time.\n\nPaul Adams was born in 1951 and grew up in Rock Island, Illinois near the border of Iowa. He was the youngest of three children. Although he started playing trumpet and guitar when he was 12, he was too insecure to perform live until much later in life. Instead, he became a passionate music listener, absorbing the music of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and lots of jazz.\n\nAdams attended college at Southern Illinois University where he got a degree in ethnomusicology, followed by another degree in mental health at Western Illinois. One of Adams' hobbies during the '70s was building his own instruments. He started with dulcimers and banjos and then made harps and guitars. \"I've made guitars for some well-known players,\" Adams said. \"That was when I was too shy to do music, so building instruments was my vehicle.\"\n\nAdams worked in mental health for many years after college, but it soon became apparent that he had issues of his own. \"I had anxiety and felt disconnected,\" Adams said. \"Spiritually it was a dark night of soul, an existential crisis. It got so bad in the mid-'80s that I decided to see a psychiatrist and take medication. I didn't think it would help, but within ten days I started feeling normal.\"\n\nIn 1987, Adams met a friend who encouraged him to play live in his band the Neurons and he started to gain more confidence in his musical skills. However, this was at the same time when technology had advanced to the point that Adams could build a studio at home and record professional sounding music by himself using midi and a computer.\n\nPeoria was a big testing market for ad agencies, and one of Adams friends helped him get work composing music for commercials. He did pieces for Chrysler, Nordica ski boots and John Deere while also working on music of his own. In 1990, Adams released his debut *Various Waves* on his own Lakefront label, showing a wide range of sounds influenced by minimalism, jazz, and new age. The cassette caught the ear of new age label Nature Recordings who licensed the album, gave it a new cover, and distributed it nationally.\n\nAdams' relationship with Nature Recordings didn't last long however. When it was time for his second album he wanted to try a more commercial, jazzy style and the label wasn't interested. So he released his second album *Wonder Dancing on Global Bop* himself in 1992. \"I found a manager in New York City and he liked what I was doing. But the album failed,\" Adams said. For his third album, Adams created the mostly acoustic *View From the Plain* which drew on the Windham Hill sound via Will Ackerman and folk traditions. He surprised listeners again on his fourth album, which was his most meditative and environmental work yet, composed using recordings of water paired with Laurie Spiegel's Music Mouse Software.\n\nThroughout the '90s, Adams continued to release music and work in mental health as a case manager. \"You learn so much about the human condition working in that field,\" Adams said. \"It was probably just as influential as any scholastic work I did. I also did music therapy in addiction groups.\"\n\nAdams started to enjoy wider success in the 2000s and beyond, earning over a 100 million streams on Pandora. His 2015 album *Imaginings* went on to win some awards and was called a \"classic\" by the New Age Music Guide and Roots Music Report. With his success, Adams was able to quit his day job and support himself through music. Not that he was getting rich, but he could finally admit to himself that music was what he wanted to do. \"And thankfully, living in Peoria is cheap,\" Adams mused.","discography":{"paul-adams":{"albums":{"a-view-from-the-plain":{"image":"","label":"Lakefront Productions","review":"","title":"A View From The Plain","year":"1994"},"the-property-of-water":{"image":"","label":"Lakefront Productions","review":"","title":"The Property of Water","year":"1997"},"various-waves":{"image":"","label":"Lakefront Productions","review":"","title":"Various Waves","year":"1989"},"wonder-dancing-on-global-bop":{"image":"","label":"Lakefront Productions","review":"","title":"Wonder Dancing on Global Bop","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":263,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-adams-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d12d9e61-4d3c-43bd-8174-4ed2de1fadcb","image_credit":"","last_name":"Adams"},"paul-avgerinos":{"artist_name":"Paul Avgerinos","body":"Paul Avgerinos is a Grammy winning new age composer from Connecticut who began releasing albums in 1986 and has been active ever since. Before he started releasing albums, he was a classically trained bassist who'd performed with symphonies and operas starting in 1980. After recording three now lesser known titles with New World Productions, Avgerinos had his first success with *Maya the Great Katun*, which debuted in full on the radio show *Hearts of Space*. Other releases followed, and Avgerinos was able to stake out a career in music, supplementing his own albums with soundtrack work and library music.\n \nPaul Avgerinos was born in 1957 and grew up in Wilton, Connecticut, a serene suburb of New York with thick foliage and beautiful mid-century homes.  His father was a Greek immigrant who came to the US originally to work for an English shipping company. Paul's older brother played the saxophone and encouraged him to learn the bass, which he did starting at age 12. He proved a quick study, learning the upright bass and playing with a jazz band and the local theater company. While his brother preferred more traditional jazz, Paul was excited by the more adventurous sounds of Chick Corea and John McLaughlin.  \n\nAfter a year off to study at the Pablo Casals Institute in Puerto Rico, Avgerinos got a scholarship to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore starting in 1977. While there, he played shows with the Annapolis symphony and Baltimore opera, in addition to playing jazz at parties and singing in the choir. \"I felt an obligation to work extra hard,\" Avgerinos said. \"Before school ended I heard about an audition with the Hong Kong orchestra in Philadelphia and they hired me to play classical bass violin. But I started to burn out and lose passion for that world. It seemed like I would be playing Bach and Brahms forever.\"\n\nAfter leaving the orchestra, Avgerinos toured with Charles Aznavour and Buddy Rich, but eventually put down roots back in his home state of Connecticut. He bought an old three family home in Bridgeport and rented out the top floors while he lived on the first and built a state of the art digital studio in the basement starting in 1984. One of his jobs in Connecticut was mastering Ken Davis albums for New World Productions, a UK label that had set up a US base in Torrington, Connecticut.  Trine Wilcox, who was repping the label there, encouraged Avgerinos to submit some work for the label and he ended up recording four albums for them starting around 1986.\n \nThe first album he created for New World was *Celestial Voyage*, with songs created around the themes of each planet in our solar system. Avgerinos produced two more cassettes for the label, but none sold particularly well, and the US division was dissolved sometime in the late '80s.\n \nLuckily for Avgerinos, another label reached out just as the New World deal was fizzling out. Roger \"Ozzie\" Lax was a New York-based writer who'd written an expansive guide to the history of popular song called *The Great Song Thesaurus.* Lax had gone new age and wanted to have Avgerinos as his first signing along with Oregon composer Todd Barton.\n \nAvgerinos put out two cassettes for World Room in 1988. The first was the more conventional *Balancing Spheres*, a progressive/rhythmic new age record in the mold of Private Music. The second was the more mystical *Maya the Great Katun* which drew from the tribal sound of Steve Roach and found a receptive audience. “The concept of that album was channeling Mayan culture,” Avgerinos said. “The first 30 minutes represents dawn to dusk of a Mayan ritual day. The second side is nightfall going into dawn with people chanting all night in the temple. It’s a pretty heavy scene. It resonated with me at the time – it had a very powerful and earthy groundedness.\"\n \nLax sent the album to Stephen Hill who hosts the syndicated radio show *Music From the Hearts of Space*, and Avgerinos heard that it was going to be featured on air. \"I tuned in to hear it and he started the show with *Maya*,” Avgerinos recalled. “After 20 minutes he's still playing it. The whole show was my album.  He later asked if I could do my next album for his label.\" *Maya* went on to sell 5,000 copies, the most of his career so far. \n\nFor his debut on the Hearts of Space label, Avgerinos put out *Muse of the Round Sky* in 1992. Like *Maya*, the album had a strong central theme, this time based on Homer’s *Odyssey.* Each piece was intended to musically portray a story from the book, like when Ulysses is hypnotized by the witch. \"I felt like that was the beginning of my new age career,\" Avgerinos said.  Again, the album sold about 5,000 copies but this time it got more airplay outside of Hearts of Space. *Muse* was also played on the syndicated show Echoes and pretty much every broadcast outlet that played new age music during this period.\n \nAfter this release, Avgerinos started to get soundtrack work that helped to pay the bills as he rolled out new albums of his own music. He also began composing library music that he sold for commercial purposes which eventually turned into a key income driver for him starting in the early 2000s. The remainder of Avgerinos' albums fall outside the scope of this project, though many titles such as *Bliss*, *Love*, and *Gratitude Joy* were among the best selling of his career. In 2016, he won the Grammy for best new age album with *Grace.* Avgerinos currently lives in Redding, Connecticut.","discography":{"paul-avgerinos":{"albums":{"1-celestial-voyage":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Celestial Voyage","year":"1988"},"2-island-sanctuary":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Island Sanctuary","year":"1988"},"3-tropical-paradise":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Tropical Paradise","year":"1988"},"5-balancing-spheres":{"image":"","label":"World Room","review":"","title":"Balancing Spheres","year":"1988"},"6-maya-the-great-katun":{"image":"","label":"World Room","review":"","title":"Maya the Great Katun","year":"1988"},"muse-of-the-round-sky":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Muse of the Round Sky","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":55,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Avgerinos-small.jpg?alt=media&token=79a2b380-f020-4ebc-8c48-77dc42a7badb","last_name":"Avgerinos"},"paul-cornell":{"artist_name":"Paul Cornell","body":"Paul Cornell is a prolific composer based in Maine who has released over 200 albums on his own Maine Made Music since the early '80s. He's worked in many styles including folk-pop, contemporary classical, Latin, and new age, just to name a few (only his instrumental albums are listed below). He made a living for decades selling his albums at arts and crafts fairs across the Northeast and in Hawaii during the winters. Much of his music was nature-inspired, such as *Maine Meditations* which was sold during the '80s at the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport, Maine. He is still active today and releasing new music.\n\nThe youngest of three children, Paul Cornell was born in 1953 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio before later relocating to Youngstown. His father was an engineer and his mother was a pianist and singer. His older brother was a gifted pianist who practiced constantly, filling the house with classical music. Cornell started playing young, first learning the trumpet and then moving on to the drums after hearing the Beatles. \n\n\"I was always playing one instrument or another,\" Cornell said. \"One day I heard Herbie Mann play flute and I said, 'Oh that's next.' So, I started taking flute lessons. When I went to college, I had been groomed to be a physician by my father and I started pre-med. But I then I read the curriculum and realized this wasn't for me. I wanted to do what I love. So, I dropped out and went to the Dana School of Music. My dad said, 'You're on your own.'\"\n\nAfter three years of college, Cornell felt like he'd learned enough about composition and music to do what he wanted to do. He got married and left Ohio to live on a 50-acre organic farm in Maine. He'd already tried recording on a reel to reel in high school, but in Maine he upgraded to a four-track and now had all the tools to play music on his own. \"I had the luxury of being able to stay home and raise our daughter,\" Cornell recalled. \"I spent my time tending the cow and chickens and making music\" \n\nInitially, much of Cornell's music was pop-oriented. He would sometimes perform at local lounges in Maine and in 1982 he put out his first cassette *How Bout Tonight* to sell at shows.  However, after getting remarried soon after, he recalls a night when he discovered a completely new approach to music. \"I was lying in bed one night, stressed out, and I heard *Music From the Hearts of Space*. That was the first time I heard Steve Halpern and that kind of thing. I thought 'Anybody could do this, but it feels so good.' So far, I had done all this pop stuff with strict beats and pop orientation. But all of a sudden there's no rhythm, just playing a Fender Rhodes and letting it ring out. That's where I jumped on that train.\"\n\nBy 1984, Cornell put out his first cassette of more meditative sounds *Forest Seasons*, incorporating recordings of nature. He followed that up with a self-help album in 1985 (*Adult Child*) and then two instrumental albums in 1986. When people started to show interest in his work, Cornell opened the floodgates in 1987 starting with a solo flute album, *Fuefuki No Tamasi*, followed by an album of organ instrumentals (*Presence*), an uptempo instrumental album, and a solo piano album *Bridges*. He continued to release albums of vocal-based material sporadically as well (those are not included in the discography below.)\n\nCornell was even busier in 1988 and 1989, issuing twelve cassettes of instrumental music, including a sequel to his solo piano album *Bridges*, a sequel to his solo flute album, and other new works such as the baroque *Variations* and *Water Music*, another album inspired by nature. One of his most popular new age releases at the time was *Maine Meditations*, which was sold at the LL Bean Store in Freeport, Maine.\n\nWith a growing back catalog, Cornell started selling his cassettes at craft fairs around the Northeast and sales were brisk. By the early '90s he was working full time on the circuit and had a printed catalog that people could also order from. In order to get into the shows, he also had to make an actual craft, so he made his own flutes, though he admits music was the main attraction.\n\nCornell continued to make his living this way for the next several decades. In the early '90s he switched to CD's instead of cassettes, and he produced less vocal music since those tended to not sell as well. In the winters he would often tour the craft fair circuit in Hawaii and he liked it so much that he eventually moved there in 2010 after getting a divorce from his second wife. However, sales had been declining for a while and then suddenly evaporated. \"One year I made 100K a year selling CDs at craft fairs. The next year I made $9,000.\" Now Cornell is starting to move his catalog to streaming services, though a huge chunk of his catalog has yet to make the transition to digital. As of 2015, Cornell has returned to Maine where he continues to live today.","discography":{"paul-cornell":{"albums":{"aural-hygiene":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Aural Hygiene","year":"1988"},"bridges":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Bridges","year":"1987"},"bridges-2":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Bridges 2","year":"1988"},"bridges-3":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Bridges 3","year":"1989"},"bridges-4":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Bridges 4","year":"1991"},"classics":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Classics","year":"1988"},"cry-of-the-loon":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Cry of the Loon","year":"1993"},"forest-seasons":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Forest Seasons","year":"1984"},"from-the-ashes":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"From the Ashes","year":"1986"},"fuefuki-no-tamashi":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Fuefuki No Tamashi","year":"1987"},"fuefuki-no-tamashi-2":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Fuefuki No Tamashi 2","year":"1988"},"further-in":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Further In","year":"1989"},"gratitude":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Gratitude","year":"1988"},"healing-waters":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Healing Waters","year":"1994"},"maine-meditations":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Maine Meditations","year":"1988"},"out-of-the-blue":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Out of the Blue","year":"1995"},"outside-in":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Outside In","year":"1986"},"presence":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Presence","year":"1987"},"radiance":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Radiance","year":"1988"},"release":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Release","year":"1987"},"the-view":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"The View","year":"1989"},"variations":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Variations","year":"1989"},"water-music":{"image":"","label":"Maine Made Music","review":"","title":"Water Music","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":243,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-cornell-610.jpg?alt=media&token=4f8017ee-528f-4cb3-8433-67b9438cd135","last_name":"Paul Cornell"},"paul-dresher":{"artist_name":"Paul Dresher","body":"Paul Dresher was a guitarist and composer who got his start with the psych band Touchstone, but re-emerged in the late '70s with a unique take on minimalism using guitar loops.  After getting his master's in music from UC San Diego in 1979, Dresher entered a busy period creating commissioned pieces for dance (such as \"Channels Passing\") and works of his own with funding from arts councils. In 1981 he joined the George Coates Performance Works as a composer and performer, penning music for experimental theater such as *The Way Of How*. Dresher eventually created his own ensemble and hit a commercial peak with *Slow Fire*, a rock-based theater production that toured for 11 years. The Dresher Ensemble is still active today and he continues to compose and perform. \n\nBorn in 1951, Dresher grew up in a middle class family in Los Angeles. His father was a mathematician and a great music lover who took his son to see many operas, Bill Evans, Don Ellis and Jimi Hendrix. Dresher's mother played piano and his sister played both piano and cello.  He started piano lessons at the age of eight and by his early teens took up the guitar, inspired by the blues revival and British rock invasion. He started out on the acoustic guitar playing folk blues and then moved to the electric guitar inspired by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Albert King and BB King. In high school, he started to invent his own musical instruments and eventually discovered the work of composer and instrument inventor Harry Partch. While his first instruments were variations on existing instruments like the guitar and sitar, Partch inspired him to experiment with entirely new instruments that ultimately led, a few decades later, to the Quadrachord and the Hurdy Grande, which are now his main concert instruments. \n\nIn the fall of 1968, Dresher moved to Berkeley to be with his girlfriend who was going to school there. Dresher took some classes but was not really motivated by school at the time. Instead, he joined the Rubber Duck Company, a group that began life as the backing band for Joe McCord, a mime. McCord was working on a play called *Tarot* and he performed parts of it in the Bay Area with musicians including Tom Constanten and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. *Tarot* premiered in New York in 1970 and then moved to an extended off-Broadway run.  The backing band morphed into Touchstone (sans Garcia) and released a soundtrack album for the show on United Artists. The album sold poorly and Dresher, disillusioned by the experience, moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area.  \n\n\"I really wanted to do more in the contemporary classical world,\" Dresher said. \"The whole record company thing felt awful and had nothing to do with the music. It was all about what was marketable what would make money. I wanted to experiment in ways that were not part of the rock and roll world.\" During this time, Dresher began informally taking classes at Mills College, studying with Terry Riley and Robert Ashley, discovering the music of classic minimalists such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. One of the students he met there was Craig Hazen who introduced Dresher to Riley's tape delay system. Dresher began experimenting with feedback loops and delay to create an early piece in 1973 called \"Music for Two Glass Instruments and Synthesizer for Liquid and Stellar Purposes.\" \n\nAround this time, Dresher began studying sitar and North Indian classical music with Nikhil Banerjee at the Center for World Music. \"It was intense study,\" Dresher said. \"Nothing was notated and it took two hours to learn one minute of music. But it improved my musicianship enormously.\" Steve Reich was also teaching there and Dresher joined his ensemble playing piano and marimba, though he notes that it was relatively simple compared to what he was learning with Banerjee.  Dresher composed another early piece in 1974 called \"Guitar Quartet\" inspired by Terry Riley's minimalist landmark *In C*.  He considers this work, which is still performed by guitar quartets today, as his first actual composition. \n\nDresher decided he was ready for more formal education and enrolled at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1975.  He studied music history and theory and then went on to graduate school at UC San Diego for composition, studying with Pauline Oliveros, Roger Reynolds, Bernard Rands and Robert Erickson. In early 1979, Dresher put together a custom analog tape loop system with sound technician Paul Tydelski. The unit included foot pedals to control all record, playback and mixing functions, keeping his hands free to play guitar or keyboard. He spent six months designing and building the system and debuted it at the Festival d’Automne in Paris later that year.  The show got a positive review in the New Yorker and helped to reassure Dresher's skeptical father. \"My father was my biggest fan,\" Dresher said, \"But he also grew up during the Depression and for him, a college degree was the one way to secure your future. Until I went back to college he was very uncomfortable.\"\n\nAfter the festival, Dresher got some grants from the California Arts Council and National Endowment of the Arts and set off for London where he composed most of what would later become *Night Songs*. After finishing that, he traveled further in India and Southeast Asia, absorbing the cultural traditions and local performing arts. In the fall of 1980, he accepted an offer to teach at Cornish Institute in Seattle and came back to the US. \n\n1981 was a busy, fruitful period for Dresher. In the early winter he finished up *Night Songs* and premiered it at the Cornish Institute in the spring. When that album was released a few years later, it also included a score composed for modern dance called \"Channels Passing\" that he wrote for Nancy Karp in the same year. Dresher also premiered the final version of *Liquid and Stellar Music* at the New America Festival in San Francisco. In addition to all this, plus teaching at the Cornish institute, Dresher collaborated with tenors John Duykers and Rinde Eckert, movement artist Leonard Pitt and director George Coates, creating  *The Way of How*, an experimental theater production. That show premiered in September 1981 at the New Performance Gallery in San Francisco and was an immediate success, touring for several years.  \n\nTo cap off his busy year, Dresher self-released 1000 copies each of *Liquid and Stellar Music* and *The Way of How* on cassette. For the B-side of *Liquid*, he used a live recording from the Festival d’Automne of the French piano duo of Katia and Marielle Labeque playing his composition \"This Same Temple.\" Dresher recalled that \"When I wrote it, it was pure minimalism. But Katia and Marielle approached it differently, with big dynamics and crescendos, almost like a romantic piece.  It changed my idea of what could be done emotionally with minimalism.\" While Dresher would have preferred to have his recordings on a bigger label, it didn't seem like an option at that point. \"I did the first ones on cassette because you could do it quickly. And there was a network of distributors like Wayside already set up for independent releases like mine.\"\n\nDresher's tapes got some nice reviews and sold fairly well, but by then his time was mostly consumed with *The Way of How* and creating new projects. Along with Eckert and Duykers, the show toured for the next three years in Europe and the US.  Dresher and Coates premiered two other pieces during this time including  \"are are\" and \"SeeHear\" but by late 1984, Dresher and Coates were going in different artistic directions and Dresher departed to form his own ensemble with Rinde Eckert. \n\nThe Paul Dresher Ensemble made its debut in late 1984, and by 1987 they'd put out two cassettes, *Shelf Life* and *Dark Blue Circumstance* on Dresher's MinMax label. However, their most successful piece was *Slow Fire*, a more overtly rock-influenced album inspired in part by the Talking Heads *Remain in Light*. The ensemble debuted the first act of *Slow Fire* in 1985 in LA and toured it extensively for the next 11 years. \"We never got tired of it,\" Dresher said.   In 1988, Dresher released a cassette of the full *Slow Fire* performance which sold well and went through three different printings.\n\nDresher still leads the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and has remained busy since the '80s, composing works such as *Double Ikat* (1990), *Fail Safe* (1993), the \"Cage Machine\" violin concerto (1996-7), and *Elapsed Time* (1998). Dresher currently lives in Northern California and maintains a website [here](https://www.dresherensemble.org).","discography":{"paul-dresher":{"albums":{"liquid-and-stellar-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Liquid and Stellar Music","year":"1981"},"night-songs-channels-passing":{"image":"","label":"Albion","review":"","title":"Night Songs/Channels Passing","year":"1984"},"the-way-of-how":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Way of How","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Paul Dresher","entry_number":1},"paul-dresher-ensemble":{"albums":{"dark-blue-circumstance":{"image":"","label":"Minmax Music","review":"","title":"Dark Blue Circumstance","year":"1987"},"shelflife":{"image":"","label":"Minmax Music","review":"","title":"Shelflife","year":"1987"},"slow-fire":{"image":"","label":"Minmax Music","review":"","title":"Slow Fire","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Paul Dresher Ensemble","entry_number":2},"paul-dresher-ned-rothenberg":{"albums":{"opposites-attract":{"image":"","label":"New World Records/Countercurrents","review":"","title":"Opposites Attract","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Paul Dresher and Ned Rothenberg","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":49,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Dresher-640.jpg?alt=media&token=1452038f-72c6-4d36-8001-c10c77ceaabf","last_name":"Dresher"},"paul-ellis":{"artist_name":"Paul Ellis","body":"Based in Portland, Oregon, Paul Ellis is an electronic musician who has been active since the late '80s. Born in 1961, Eliis got his start playing guitar in bands but was a longtime fan of the Berlin-school sound and eventually abandoned guitar and took up synths. While he did release one solo album early on [Daniel Crommie](/daniel-crommie)'s New Weave label, much of his early work was in groups. He initially played with the five-piece Dumpster before starting a duo with his friend and Dumpster member Jeff Vasey (Tribal Machine) that expanded into a trio later called Dweller at the Threshold in the '90s. His solo career took off in the 2000s as he began issuing albums on established labels like Hypnos, Groove Unlimited and Spotted Peccary. ","discography":{"dumpster":{"albums":{"designed-for-daily-use":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Designed for Daily Use","year":"1988"},"do-not-play-in-or-around":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Do Not Play in or Around","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Dumpster","entry_number":1},"paul-ellis":{"albums":{"paul-ellis":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"An opportunity to crawl within and be surrounded by \"Cyberspace\" - an unfurling of synth effects. Ellis' capacity as musician intercedes to keep this spacey sounding ramble from expanding off to the realm of inaccessible synth experiments. It has some fine mystical moments with mostly minor keyed innovations that really hit the spot- somewhere short of weird but not quite all-out wonderful. A synth exploration both magnetic and truly musical while playful. Good for spacing out, relaxing tempo, exotic themes to release one from the familiar rut.\n\n(*Heartsong Review* #12, Fall 1991/Winter 1992)","title":"Secret Fire","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Paul Ellis","entry_number":3},"tribal-machine":{"albums":{"tribal-machine":{"image":"","label":"New Weave","review":"","title":"Tribal Machine","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Tribal Machine","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":339,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-ellis-640.jpg?alt=media&token=692521b1-b564-4b7c-bcc5-ff5fdb9a761c","last_name":"Ellis"},"paul-horn":{"artist_name":"Paul Horn","body":"Woodwind player Paul Horn was one of the most influential musicians on the development of new age music. Countless artists including [Dean Evenson](/dean-and-dudley-evenson), [George Tortorelli](/george-tortorelli), [Steve Winfield](/steve-winfield), [Judith Tripp](/judith-tripp), [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin), [Kip Setchko](/kip-kevin-setchko), and [Larkin](/larkin) emulated his style of eastern influenced improvisation in environmental settings. Horn's key release was the zen-like *Inside* from 1968 that was a dorm room staple in the '70s and went on to sell a million copies. Horn got his start in jazz, but he showed a restless spirit throughout his career, playing big band, chamber music, English folk tunes, new age synth-scapes, Indian classical music, and even a \"jazz mass\" that won him a Grammy. Horn is best known for his flute work, as featured on *Inside* but he was equally skilled on sax and clarinet. Horn died in 2014.\n\nPaul Horn was born in 1930 in New York. His mother Frances Sper was a talented musician who sang with Irving Berlin and had her own radio show. After Paul's birth, she gave up her music career, but helped Paul get started on the piano and also served as an intellectual role model throughout his life. Horn's father was lower-key, working as a wholesale liquor salesman who loved to crack jokes.\n\nHorn's family moved to Washington D.C. when he was four.  While there, he began to get into jazz, especially Benny Goodman. Emulating his hero, Horn took up the clarinet and started playing in combos and big bands in the area. In his teen years he also started playing the saxophone too.\n\nIn addition to his love for music, Horn took up karate in his senior year. \"I did not want to be the ninety-eight pound weakling on the beach getting sand kicked in his face by the local bully,\" Horn wrote in his memoir, *Inside Paul Horn*. \"When you're considered short and you're not an all-star athlete, you tend to compensate. You push harder for recognition and respect. So I lifted weights to look good and to get bigger and stronger; I smoked cigarettes to be included among my peers, and for twenty years smoked a pack and half a day. I dug into music, mostly for the music's sake, but also to ingratiate myself with other people and win their approval.\"\n\nAfter high school, Horn went to college at Oberlin and got a degree in music, studying the clarinet further and also taking up the flute. The program was extremely rigorous, with Horn studying classical music by day and playing in Frank Williams's jazz band on the weekends.  Horn went on to get his master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music after graduating from Oberlin. While there he studied flute with Fred Wilkins and clarinet with Simeon Billenson. When he graduated in 1953, Horn spent the next three years in the Army, teaching at the Navy School of Music. During his time in the Army, he met his first wife Yvonne and they got married in 1955.\n\nOnce out of the Army, Horn got a spot in the Sauter-Finnegan band and played on his first professional recording session for *Under Analysis*. Horn then moved out west to join the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1956, playing with them for a couple of years. Cellist Fred Katz wrote most of the group's music and he was one of the first people to tell Horn about zen meditation and eastern philosophy.  Horn released his first solo album *House of Horn* in 1957 on Dot Records, using most of Hamilton's band. He followed it up with another album a year later on the same label.\n\nStarting in 1959, Horn became a studio musician, recording with luminaries like Tony Bennett, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra in addition to many commercial sessions like the Surf-Men's exotica cash-in *Sounds of Exotic Island*. Around the same time, Horn struck up a friendship with Miles Davis and for a period they hung out nearly every day and ate barbecue, swam in the pool, and discussed music theory. In his memoir, Horn described how Davis expanded his musical vocabulary: \"Sitting with me at my piano, Miles got into music, showing me different voicings. He taught me how to work with fourths and augmented fourths, strange sounding chord intervals that enable a soloist to step outside conventional harmonic frameworks. In this context, any note is right, and no note sounds wrong.\" Miles also suggested Horn form a new band, and shortly after he put together the Paul Horn Quintet.\n\nThe Paul Horn Quintet was responsible for one of Horn's best early albums, *Something Blue* which showed Davis' modal jazz influence, as well as an interest in unusual instrumentation and time signatures.  But as his career was taking off, his personal life was unraveling. Two years after the birth of their first child, Horn and Yvonne separated in 1959 while she was pregnant with their second son. Horn moved out of the house but got a new place nearby and stayed closely involved as a parent.\n\nHorn detailed in his memoir how he coped with the dissolution of his marriage: \"During those years there was a lot of wine and many women. The rough and traumatic separation and final divorce from Yvonne took its toll. It hardened me. I was bitter for many years. I didn't see women as people, but as conquests. I'd see a pretty girl and want to go to bed with her, just to see if I could, and most of the time I could and did.\" However, Horn also coped by turning to alternative spirituality and mysticism. He was particularly drawn to Edward Cayce's book *There is a River* which dealt with reincarnation and past lives. Horn sought out a trance channeler in the area named Betty McCain who made a lasting impression.\n\nHorn continued to release jazz albums throughout the '60s, including his Grammy-winning *Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts* that he composed with Lalo Schifrin. By 1966, Horn was ready for a change and took a trip to India with his friends Henry and Nadine Lewy to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Horn spent months at an ashram there in early 1967, and felt rejuvenated by the experience. His life soon began to revolve around teaching and practicing Transcendental Meditation.\n\nHorn returned to India again in 1968, this time as the producer of a documentary on Maharashi, but was taken aback by the media circus now surrounding the Indian guru who had attracted celebrity followers like the Beatles and Donovan. The movie's production was chaotic, and Horn clashed with the film's executive producer Gene Coleman who hated Horn's vérité approach. The film was eventually shelved.\n\nAmidst this backdrop of turmoil, Horn took a day trip to see the Taj Mahal and unwittingly recorded the most important album of his career. \"It was a magical moment, absolutely spontaneous, completely pure and innocent. I simply wanted to play solo flute music in that gorgeous environment and take a tape home mode myself and a few friends,\" Horn wrote. He had been meditating every day since his last trip to India and was able to channel a newfound purity. \"While events about me raged, I stepped inside, to the center of the cyclone, where everything was calm. In the act of recording *Inside the Taj Mahal*, I saw how my spiritual practice has helped me evolve.\"\n\nEpic released the album originally as simply, *Inside*, in 1968 and it was a surprise hit, ultimately going on to sell over a million copies.  Horn toured with Donovan for a year and then, finally fed up with LA, moved to Toronto with his new wife Tryntje where he remained for the rest of his life.\n\nDuring the '70s, Horn kept up with the changing sounds of jazz, recording fusion, jazz-funk, an Afro-Cuban album (with a bizarre album cover that Horn hated), plus two more entries in his *Inside* series, *Inside II* and *Inside the Great Pyramid*. The former was a studio creation that presaged late '70s new age with its mix of pre-recorded nature sounds combined with free-floating improvisation, a long suite based on the five elements, and even a duet with Haida the whale. The album was another hit for Horn, selling 300,000 copies. His other entry in the series was *Inside the Great Pyramid* from 1977 which found Horn playing his flute deep inside the king's chamber while guards kept watch outside.\n\nWith the success of his *Inside* series, Horn looked to start his own label in the early '80s called Golden Flute.  He released eight albums, many geared more towards the new age audience such as *China*, recorded inside Peking's Temple of Heaven, another at a cathedral in Russia, and *Inside the Magic of Findhorn*, recorded in Scotland with harpist [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews). Horn worked hard to learn a new side of the record business, designing covers and dealing with distributors, but he found it stressful and not particularly profitable - by his own estimation he only broke even in the end.  So by 1986, Horn moved back to a record label, Global Pacific, to release the Grammy-nominated *Traveler*, recorded with synth player Christopher Hedge.\n\nOne of Horn's biggest supporters was Eckart Rahn from German label Kuckuck and its US outpost Celestial Harmonies. Rahn had reissued some of Horn's key titles in 1983 and had always wanted to sign Horn to his label. When Global Pacific went under shortly after the release of *Traveler*, Rahn finally signed Horn to a ten-year deal worth $1 million dollars.  Horn continued recording throughout the ensuing years for Rahn and other labels but those mostly fall outside the scope of this site. Horn passed away in 2014.","discography":{"paul-horn":{"albums":{"china":{"image":"","label":"Golden Flute","review":"","title":"China","year":"1982"},"inside":{"image":"","label":"Epic","review":"","title":"Inside","year":"1968"},"inside-ii":{"image":"","label":"Epic","review":"","title":"Inside II","year":"1972"},"inside-russia":{"image":"","label":"Golden Flute","review":"","title":"Inside Russia","year":"1984"},"inside-the-great-pyramid":{"image":"","label":"Mushroom","review":"","title":"Inside the Great Pyramid","year":"1977"},"inside-the-magic-of-findhorn":{"image":"","label":"Golden Flute","review":"","title":"Inside the Magic of Findhorn","year":"1983"},"inside-the-taj-mahal-2":{"image":"","label":"Kuckuck","review":"","title":"Inside the Taj Mahal II","year":"1990"},"jupiter-8":{"image":"","label":"Golden Flute","review":"This odd duck is a mix of studio-treated solo flute pieces and computer-assisted cheeseball electronica, which must have sounded better at the time. Ralph Dyck was a synth player who’d already known Horn for years before this, and he developed a controller for the Jupiter 8 synth that allowed them to create automated music with a drum machine and analog keyboards that Horn could solo over. Most of the songs attempt a futuristic jazz fusion, but now sound like the soundtrack to an '80s mall infomercial. Luckily, the four \"Voyager\" pieces, featuring Horn's spiraling flute solos with cavernous delay and reverb, save the album from being no more than fodder for vaporwave samples.","title":"Jupiter 8","year":"1983"},"the-peace-album":{"image":"","label":"Kuckuck","review":"","title":"The Peace Album","year":"1988"},"traveler":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"Traveler","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Paul Horn","entry_number":1},"paul-horn-and-david-friesen":{"albums":{"heart-to-heart":{"image":"","label":"Golden Flute","review":"","title":"Heart to Heart","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Paul Horn and David Friesen","entry_number":2},"paul-horn-and-steven-halpern":{"albums":{"connections":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Connections","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Paul Horn and Steven Halpern","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":11,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Horn-bw.jpg?alt=media&token=fa0081ef-300a-43eb-aab1-20df2c90ab44","last_name":"Horn"},"paul-lloyd-warner":{"artist_name":"Paul Lloyd Warner","body":"Paul Lloyd Warner is a pianist best known for releasing a series of solo piano tapes starting in the late '70s when he lived in Hawaii. Even as he evolved his sound to neo-classical electronic in the early '90s, he always drew his inspiration from nature, with a particular interest in waterfalls and whales. By his estimation he sold over a million albums over the years, with his most popular release being his debut *Waterfall Music*. However, contemporary collectors seem to prefer his 1981 collaboration with violinist Steve Kindler, *Lemurian Sunrise*. Warner remains active today.\n\nBorn in 1938, Warner grew up in Los Angeles surrounded by a family of composers. His uncle was a leading composer of Jewish liturgical music and his cousin Yehudi Wyner was a classical composer who went on to win a Pulitzer. Warner started piano lessons at 7, encouraged by his mother to play, and he stuck with it through high school. \n\nWarner attended UCLA where he majored in literature with an art history minor. “I didn't have much money at the time,” Warner recalled. “I was working at an airline and helping to support my mother and brother. I studied Debussy and Ravel and fell in love with impressionists. I wouldn't play Chopin or Schubert, they were too sentimental. Debussy was poetry and beauty.”\n\nAfter college, Warner and his French girlfriend moved to Paris, much to his family's chagrin. The relationship didn’t work out, so he hitch-hiked to Italy and settled in Florence for the next three years. There he studied art history, lived cheaply, and played a rented piano. \"I ate on 40 cents a day,\" Warner said. \"I taught English to supplement my income and did nude modeling too.\"\n\nWarner then moved to New York in 1963 where he worked for TWA doing international reservations using his French language skills. As the cultural revolution got underway, he welcomed it with open arms.  \"Thousands of people came to the Central Park ‘Be-In’ in 1967 - it was really eye opening,\" Warner said. \"The social mores before 1960 were very rigid and people started to break from that rigidity. New age was born from the realization that we're all brothers and sisters: one humanity, a global world.\"\n\nBy 1968, Warner was fed up with New York. He sold everything he owned and moved to Hawaii on the advice of a stranger he had met on the Brooklyn Promenade. \"Sure enough, when I got there, all these flower children were moving there from all over. I lived on the east side of the island and became a vegetarian. I went swimming in waterfalls nearly every day, got tan, and lived a natural lifestyle.\"\n\nA few years later, Warner started selling a new kind of candle that his friend invented. The candles were made of driftwood and sand, with a flame that illuminated a scene behind the candle like stained glass. Warner sold them at art shows and swap meets, while also teaching photography on the side.\n\nWarner had long stopped playing the piano by this time but a meeting in 1973 got him inspired to play again. \"I was already a flower child, doing yoga, meditation, natural medicine\" Warner said. \"A friend convinced me to go see a woman who got me into metaphysics.  That gave me spiritual truth and I connected to it intellectually. During a lesson at her home, she told me to manifest something you wanted, and I manifested a grand piano.\"\n\nWarner bought himself a piano and started playing music inspired by his nature hikes around the island. He was captivated by the waterfalls and used syncopated arpeggios to mimic their movement. He put together his first solo piano tape called *Crystals* in 1975 and gave copies to friends. \"At that time, I had no plans to do a release. I saw myself as a poet, but I never believed I could become a composer.\"\n\nAnother big inspiration for Warner was dolphins and whales. While doing yoga by a stream, he met the artist, John Perry, who’d made a name for himself sculpting fiberglass seagulls, and he told Warner he was working on a movie about whales with a guitar soundtrack. Warner convinced him to try piano instead, and they hauled a piano on a boat (see photo above) and sure enough, the whales responded. To help raise awareness for his whale movie, Perry set up a concert with Paul Horn headlining. Although Warner played, he wasn't allotted much time to his annoyance. And, he notes, the movie never did materialize.\n\nIn 1977, Warner recorded his second album *Zen Waterfall*. He'd always been fascinated by the shakuhachi so he partnered with his friend Eliot Joshu who had studied the instrument in Japan. He issued that release in 1979 on his own Waterfall Music label, followed  in 1981 by a collaboration with violinist Steve Kindler. These tapes got into the hands Howard Sapper who had just started Global Pacific, a Hawaiian record label. Sapper approached Warner and signed him to a three album distribution deal that included *Waterfall Music*, *Zen Waterfall* and *Lemurian Sunrise* with Steve Kindler. According to Warner, the tapes sold well, with *Waterfall Music* in particular being a perennial best seller.\n\nMeanwhile, Warner was spending a lot of his time researching whales and dolphins. He went on to write a book from a whale’s perspective called *The Oracle of Whales*. He also titled his next album *The Miracle of Dolphins* which was inspired by his research and included the sounds of humpback whales. Issued on cassette and vinyl, the album was dedicated to \"whales, dolphins and people everywhere.\"\n\nBy 1983, Warner had relocated to the US, settling in Santa Cruz, California. He produced four more albums of solo piano during the ‘80s but as the decade closed he embarked on a new chapter. He bought his first synthesizer and a Winnebago and began living a nomadic life for several years, driving around the US attending where he attended arts and craft shows to sell his music. On his journeys, he set up a mobile studio and recorded symphonic pieces outside with his synthesizer, surrounded by nature. He went on to produce a set of five albums in the style with titles such as *Deserts*, *Mountains*, and *Oceans*, all inspired by their respective locales. After *Waterfall Music*, these were his second biggest sellers. \"The beauty of nature touched my soul and out came the music,\" Warner said. \n\nWarner continued to release music through the '90s and early 2000s and is still active. He maintains two websites [here](https://healingmusic.us) and [here](https://waterfallmusic.com/).","discography":{"paul-lloyd-warner":{"albums":{"1-waterfalls":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"Waterfalls","year":"1992"},"2-oceans":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"Oceans","year":"1992"},"3-rainforest":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"Rainforest","year":"1992"},"an-american-symphony":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"An American Symphony","year":"1993"},"crystals":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Crystals","year":"1975"},"deserts":{"image":"","label":"Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"Deserts","year":"1991"},"earth":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"Earth","year":"1995"},"lemurian-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Waterfall Music","review":"","title":"Lemurian Sunrise","year":"1981"},"live-in-concert":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live in Concert","year":"1984"},"mountains":{"image":"","label":"Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"Mountains","year":"1991"},"oriental-belles":{"image":"","label":"Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"Oriental Belles","year":"1988"},"reflections-in-water":{"image":"","label":"MPI","review":"","title":"Reflections in Water","year":"1994"},"the-miracle-of-dolphins":{"image":"","label":"The Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"The Miracle of Dolphins","year":"1983"},"the-spirit-of-puget-sound":{"image":"","label":"Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"The Spirit of Puget Sound","year":"1986"},"to-maui-with-love":{"image":"","label":"Miracle of Dolphins Music","review":"","title":"To Maui With Love","year":"1986"},"waterfall-music":{"image":"","label":"Waterfall Music","review":"","title":"Waterfall Music","year":"1979"},"zen-waterfall":{"image":"","label":"Waterfall Music","review":"","title":"Zen Waterfall","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":190,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Lloyd-Warner-whales.jpg?alt=media&token=ed2dd235-7a5a-4535-9303-95ff18256dab","last_name":"Warner"},"paul-temple":{"artist_name":"Paul Temple","body":"Paul Temple was a new age musician based in Vermont in the early '80s. At the time, he released two cassettes with the Sun Ray Meditation Society, a spiritual group led by Native American teacher Dhyani Ywahoo. He also backed Ywahoo on many of her cassettes of chants and spiritual teachings such as *Our Hearts and the Heart of the Earth Are One* (1984). By 1985, Temple had returned to his home state of Massachusetts, where he transitioned into a career as a concert booker and manager in the music business, working for new age label White Swan Records.\n\nBorn in 1954 in Millis, Massachusetts, Temple grew up singing and playing the piano and banjo. He would go on to study voice and composition at Bennington College in the '70s. After graduation, Temple became interested in meditation and spirituality, following the teachings of Osho and Tibetan Buddhism. He sang with the new age choral group On Wings of Song and attended workshops on sound healing. At a seminar, he met Dhyani Ywahoo, a Native American teacher who was also interested in Osho.  The two had a strong connection and Temple moved to Vermont to work at her Sun Ray Meditation Center.\n\nDuring his time with Ywahoo, Temple produced many cassettes for her, playing the flute and other musical backing for her Native American chants and meditation.  He also released two albums of his own. *Gifts from the Crystal Mountain* was song-oriented with chants and new age-themed lyrics backed with acoustic guitar, flute, and sitar drones. His key release for readers of this site is the instrumental *Gentle Healing*, where Temple's flute is joined by fellow Dhvani student Margie Joy Walden on zither. Both cassettes were mainly sold through Ywahoo's organization and sold only a few hundred copies according to Temple.\n\nIn 1985, Temple moved back to Massachusetts to live on the family farm. He got married and had children, returning to school to earn an MBA in 1989. Temple began working in the music business as a concert booker and manager, working for the new age label White Swan Records and serving as manager for the singer Deva Premal.\n\nTemple moved to Colorado in the mid-'90s and continued to explore different musical genres including classical and electronic music. More recently, Temple has been playing under the name [Radiance Matrix](https://www.radiancematrix.com), performing meditative pieces with Tibetan bowls.\n ","discography":{"dhyani-ywahoo":{"albums":{"our-hearts":{"image":"","label":"Sun Ray Meditation Society","review":"","title":"Our Hearts and the Heart of the Earth Are One","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Dhyani Ywahoo","entry_number":2},"gentle-healing":{"albums":{"voyage":{"image":"","label":"Sun Ray Meditation Society","review":"","title":"Gentle Healing","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Paul Temple and Margie Joy Walden","entry_number":3},"paul-temple":{"albums":{"gifts-from-the-crystal-mountain":{"image":"","label":"Sun Ray Meditation Society","review":"","title":"Gifts from the Crystal Mountain","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Paul Temple","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":406,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-temple-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c339fcfb-8464-4699-a5ee-7ee9692f47ca","last_name":"Temple"},"paul-vornhagen":{"artist_name":"Paul Vornhagen","body":"Paul Vornhagen was a flute and saxophone player based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He played jazz for the majority of his career, but after meeting Inner Light owner John Ashbrook in the mid-'80s, he recorded three albums for the fledgling new age label. Both albums feature him collaborating with other musicians: synth player Stefan Kukurugya on his debut and multi-instrumentalist Paul Sihon for the other two. However, Inner Light proved to be short lived and Vornhagen returned to making jazz and working as a music teacher.\n\nBorn in 1950, Vornhagen grew up in Cincinnati and New Jersey. He attended college at the University of Michigan, initially planning to major in psychology. However, during his second year, he had an experience which altered the course of his life.\n\n\"In my second year, I took a semester off, and I was walking back to work one day,\" Fair recalled. \"I heard a woman playing a flute in the back of a pickup truck. I was just mesmerized by the sound.  She handed it to me, and I'd never played an instrument before other than a few piano lessons when I was eight. I blew notes out of it right away. She said, 'You have a nice tone, maybe you could be a flute player.' Two weeks after that, I was hitchhiking outside of Aspen and I heard this flute echoing down into this valley and I thought, there it is again. It was like this epiphany about playing the flute.\" Vornhagen heeded the calling and bought a flute and taught himself to play for the next five years. Then he learned the sax too. He never finished school, embarking on a life of music instead.\n\nIn 1977, Vornhagen moved to San Francisco and took some classes at City College of San Francisco to learn the basics of music theory. He also took piano classes and some lessons from a flute player for the San Francisco Symphony. As he got better, he joined a jazz trio and started gigging locally, specializing in bossa nova. To make money, he painted Victorian homes in the area, a skill he'd learned back in Michigan.\n\nVornhagen returned to Ann Arbor five years later. There, he'd frequently play at the Bird of Paradise where he happened to meet John Ashbrook, a music store owner who'd launched his own new age label Inner Light. Ashbrook asked Vornhagen if he wanted to record an album with pianist/synth player Stefan Kukuruga and he agreed, despite not really knowing much about new age at all. The result was *Enlightened Sector*, which the two musicians wrote and improvised together.\n\nSoon after that first album, Vornhagen met Paul Sihon at a guitar store in Ann Arbor. Vornhagen told him about Inner Light and the two decided to try recording their own new age session. They gave the tape to Ashbrook and he loved it. He put out the album, followed by another, *Lavender Blue* by the same lineup in 1988.\n\nIn addition to their album sessions, Sihon offered Vornhagen a job teaching lessons at his music store. \"That was a turning point for me,\" Vornhagen said. \"I found out that I liked teaching and working with kids. That provided a steady income so I could concentrate on being a musician instead of painting houses.\"\n\nAfter his three new age albums, Vornhagen returned to playing what he knew best, jazz standards. He put out many jazz CD's in the '90s and currently has a Latin jazz group called Tumbao Bravo that he formed in 2004. They've put out five albums and won some Detroit Music Awards. Vornhagen maintains a website [here](http://paulvornhagenjazz.com/).","discography":{"stefan-kukurugya-and-paul-vornhagen":{"albums":{"enlightened-sector":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"Easy listening instrumental duets for piano and sax/flute. The modal changes give a slightly jazzy vibe, but the predominant mood is sentimental and restrained, with an emphasis on emotive melodies.","title":"Enlightened Sector","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Stefan Kukurugya and Paul Vornhagen","entry_number":1},"vornhagen-sihon":{"albums":{"lavender-blue":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"Lavender Blue is the first CD release by Paul Vornhagen and Paul Simon. They make a sort of electronic folk music by setting flutes, saxophones, tablas, and guitars against synthesizer backdrops. It works well on the title track, with a synthesizer cycle running under multiple guitars and tablas. Sihon solos melodically on acoustic guitar, supported by Vornhagen's reed shadings. The pieces with more elaborate orchestrations seem to work better than the sparse works with extended flute solos that drag on with little thematic development. \n\n(John Diliberto, Feb/March *JazzIz* 1989)","title":"Lavender Blue","year":"1988"},"whispers-in-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"","title":"Whispers in the Wind","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Paul Vornhagen / Paul Sihon","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":261,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-vornhagen-640-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=468f61d1-e4dd-421e-a3be-8c3bc01d66e0","last_name":"Vornhagen"},"pauline-anna-strom":{"artist_name":"Pauline Anna Strom","body":"Although a fringe artist in her time, San Francisco synthesist Pauline Anna Strom is now one of the more popular electronic musicians of the '80s. Interest in her work has been on the rise with collectors since the early 2000s and picked up momentum when taste makers MGMT included one of her songs on a mixtape. By 2017, the renewed fan interest culminated in a lavish retrospective on RVNG and frenzied bidding wars for her rarer cassettes on eBay, selling for up to $600 each. Strom passed away in 2020, just after finishing her first new album in over thirty years, *Angel Tears in Sunlight*.\n\nRaised in Louisiana and Kentucky, Strom was born blind and grew up on classical music like Bach and Chopin. She learned to play the organ and took an interest in sci-fi in her teens. In the early '70s, she moved to the Bay Area with her military husband where she would remain for the rest of her life. There she became a fan of the emerging Berlin-school sound, especially Klaus Schulze. She purchased several analog synths and a four track to complete a modest studio and began creating music of her own. Working late into the night, she composed tracks for her 1982 debut LP, *Trans Millenia Consort*, which was initially marketed as new age much to her dismay.\n\nThe label behind the album, Ether Ship, was a curious and short-lived enterprise run by avant-garde musicians Michael Lemon DeGeorge and Willard Van De Bogart who played together for many years under the name Ether Ship in San Francisco.  They briefly ran a label under the same name, but besides Strom’s first LP, they only released a handful of other self-help tapes and then folded. Still, despite their inexperience, and an estimated pressing size of only 1000 copies, the album made an impression on those that heard it.\n\nAfter Ether Ship folded, Strom released all subsequent albums under the name Trans-Millenia Consort. 1983's *Plot Zero* extinguished any lingering new age association with its dark, pulsing music and titles like \"Freebasing\" and \"Mushroom Trip.\" *Spectre*, from 1984, was perhaps her darkest and most mysterious, and along with her debut often regarded as her best.\n\nAfter *Spectre*, Strom took a hiatus from playing music, spurred on by a confluence of factors including her husband's death and an attack from her pet iguana that nearly severed one of her thumbs.  She was also frustrated at her lack of broader success and had grown disenchanted with the music business in general.  Strom retreated inward for several years, emerging to release more music primarily at the behest of Archie Patterson, who ran the Eurock distribution company and magazine, and was a big fan of her work.\n\nWhat she ultimately produced for Patterson was a trove of four cassettes packed with inventive ideas and distinct themes, like the eastern-inflected *Japanese Impressions* and the eerie beauty of  *Aquatic Realms*. All were released in 1988 on cassette only in small editions of 50.  The releases were also packaged with black and white covers, a step down from the higher production values of her previous three albums, all of which had also come out on vinyl.   After these releases, Strom sold her musical gear and left the music business entirely. \n\nStrom passed away in December, 2020.","discography":{"pauline-anna-strom":{"albums":{"trans-millenia-consort":{"image":"","label":"Ether Ship","review":"With good distribution and energetic backing from startup label Ether Ship, *Trans-Millenia Consort* kick-started Pauline Anna Strom’s career. Although cloaked in a new age aesthetic, the cozy analogue synths and cascading melodies give way to surprising detours and textural shifts that impart a loose, experimental feel.  The frayed edges can be a bug or a feature depending on your vantage point, but I find this album charming and original.\n\nStrom eases the listener in with \"Emerald Pool,\" a delicate, harp-like tune that conjures images of a swimmer in peaceful solitude. In place of traditional melodic development, the songs glide quickly from variation to variation, as if bringing new sounds into focus while others decay. Strom uses this technique throughout the album, and on less memorable tracks like \"Phantom Dancer\" or \"Energies,\" the fluctuations help to smooth over fleeting moments of discord when rhythms veer off track.  \n\nLike much of her later work, Strom saves the best for last. On the penultimate \"Century C,\" she channels Bach, one of her earliest influences, while album closer \"Gossamer Silk\" is serene and beautiful.  \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Trans-Millenia Consort","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Pauline Anna Strom","entry_number":1},"trans-millenia-consort":{"albums":{"aquatic-realms":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"Strom establishes a clear theme out of the gate on *Aquatic Realms* with a fifteen minute collage of electronic eel screams and dolphin squeaks, capturing a sense of beauty and dread in the deep expanse. We finally get a taste of melody on \"Sea Play,\" a gently rolling [Naegele](/david-naegele)-style piano meditation somewhat obscured by overly loud seagull sounds and oceanic white noise. \n\nSide two is more musical overall, with \"Amber Shadows\" and \"Sun Wash\" using sound effects and minor key synth lines in eerie, impressionistic pieces that recall the work of [Bernard Xolotl](/bernard-xolotl). Strom closes with \"Rain on Ancient Quays,\" a mesmerizing and boldly original piece that hearkens back to her early style. As a horror-movie piano riff snakes through caverns of dripping stalactites and sudden booms of cacophony, Strom shows once again how surprising electronic music can be.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Aquatic Realms","year":"1988"},"japanese-impressions":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"One of four cassettes Pauline Anna Strom self-released in 1988 before withdrawing from music indefinitely, *Japanese Impressions* is true to its title: delicate Asiatic synthesizer miniatures channeling impressions of the Far East gleaned from audio books. Although its exoticism is often unsubtle (as are the song names: \"Jasmine And White Ginger,\" \"Bonsai Terrace,\" \"As The Silk Unfolds,\" etc.), the starkness of Strom's palette pairs well with her melodic instincts, emphasizing fragility, finesse, and restraint.\n\nThis is New Age as tea ceremony soundtrack: hushed modal harmonies traced over tiptoes of synthetic percussion, speeding up and slowing down according to its role within the ritual. A few tracks stray closer to Strom's more familiar mode of lunar lullaby and twinkling stardust daydream but the bulk of *Japanese Impressions* skews elegantly earthbound, modeled on bamboo flute and wood blocks Zen meditation music. As an aesthetic exercise the album largely succeeds, though some listeners may find the moments of overt Orientalism a bit heavy-handed. \n\n(Britt Brown, 2020)","title":"Japanese Impressions","year":"1988"},"mach-304":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"Though loosely themed around the notion of flight and air travel, as a whole *Mach 3.04* feels unusually remote and unromantic for the Trans-Millenia Consort catalog. Opening with a murky seven-minute field recording of a San Francisco International Airport terminal, the album floats through various states of high altitude vibration, resonance, and hypnosis, at times resembling some sort of inter-dimensional audio test pattern. There are echoes of her Berlin School-influenced 1983 LP, *Plot Zero*, but the synthesizer purism here is more esoteric and experiential rather than expansive. \n \nThat said, there's an eerie sense of mystery to the blankness of these pieces, evoking the thin air melancholy of abandoned satellites or lost pilots in the night. It's a music of machines and low-lit corridors and unpopulated spaces, where warbling wind currents carry cosmic dust to some new nowhere. Strom's musical predilections typically tend towards the mystical and melodic but *Mach 3.04* is a welcome reminder of her colder circuitry oracle side. One can't help but wish her career spanned more years so she could have explored this path further. \n \nAs with the rest of her self-released 1988 tapes, *Mach 3.04* is obscenely rare and only appears on the open market a couple times per decade.\n\n(Britt Brown, 2020)","title":"Mach 3.04","year":"1988"},"plot-zero":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"","title":"Plot Zero","year":"1983"},"spectre":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"","title":"Spectre","year":"1984"},"the-moorish-project":{"image":"","label":"Trans-Millenia Consort","review":"Thematically, *The Moorish Project* is a Middle Eastern companion piece to *Japanese Impressions*: dusky minimalist synthesizer vignettes evoking shadowy passageways and distant desert encampments, inspired by books ranging from *Arabian Nights* to histories of ancient civilizations. Her playing here is dexterous but spare, almost like a piano recital, with very little textural or spatial manipulation. Most of the pieces consist of a single keyboard performance, snaking and spiraling through quiet labyrinths of melody, occasionally counterbalanced by a discreet overdub of a different synthesizer setting.\n\nThere's a wispiness and whispered quality to the collection that’s both stylistically appropriate but slightly unsatisfying, as if more vivid versions of these compositions could have been captured with more time or additional means. And as with *Japanese Impressions*, the inherent exoticism of the cassette’s premise results in certain motifs that veer more snake-charmer pastiche than hidden temple transcendence.\n \nEven so, it's a substantial and ultimately heady work with lots of liminal zones and enchanted atmosphere that rewards repeat visitations – if you're able to bribe someone for the files that is, as they're currently nonexistent on the internet and last time a physical copy closed at auction it sold for over $300.\n\n(Britt Brown, 2020)","title":"The Moorish Project","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Trans-Millenia Consort","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":8,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Pauline-Anna-Strom-638.jpg?alt=media&token=c9df4157-ea1b-4d0b-9049-ea34a889341a","last_name":"Strom"},"pc-davidoff":{"artist_name":"PC Davidoff","body":"Based in Philadelphia, PC Davidoff was a multi-instrumentalist who co-owned the Garland of Letters new age bookshop and the record label of the same name. Through his label, he released five cassettes from 1989 to 1996, sometimes using his store as a focus group to test out his songs. On the side, Davidoff has worked as a gemologist starting at the age of 27. \n\nPhilip Davidoff was born in 1955 and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He had a younger brother and a much younger sister (by 18 years). His mother was an accountant and his father owned a real estate firm.  Later on, Philip would dabble in real estate himself, though as a teen he fell headlong into hippie culture, dropping acid and listening to King Crimson, Santana, and the Grateful Dead. He taught himself to play guitar and flute along the way, jamming with his friends informally.\n\nDavidoff attended college at Temple briefly, but decided to drop out and sell native American jewelry instead. \"I had a friend who'd go to reservations and purchase jewelry, and then I'd sell it here. I'd have huge parties with women in the evening and they'd try jewelry on and buy it up. It was fun. I was always attracted to gemstones - there was something about it that appealed to me.\"\n\nIn the late '70s, Davidoff moved to Colorado for several years. During this time, he got into yoga and meditation. He attributed his interest back to childhood: \"One of my teachers in seventh grade noticed that I had trouble concentrating, and they said, 'Read this book about yoga.' So I learned breathing techniques and that helped me to focus my attention. Then when I was 25, I started taking yoga classes and learning about postures. I also read Bhagwan [Rajneesh]’s book and he blew me away. When I went to India, I visited Pune [where Rajneesh had an ashram]. That was a real happening place, lots of music going on. But the Indians hated him.\"\n\nDavidoff continued to travel throughout his twenties, touring Europe and Asia. In Thailand he saw some rubies and became entranced with them. He brought some back when he returned to the US and decided to make a career in the gem industry. He attended the Gemology Institute of American in New York and earned his degree at the age of 27. He then went to work for Jerry Robins for many years in Philadelphia on 8th and Walnut in Center City.\n\nHanging out in Center City, Davidoff discovered a new age book store called Garland of Letters, founded in 1981 by Candy Smith. The two became friends, and Davidoff helped her buy crystals for the store. Eventually, he became a part owner and worked there while selling diamonds on the side.\n\n\"They were inviting people from all over to have seminars, like Ram Dass and Tim Leary,\" Davidoff said. \"Then Candy started doing concerts at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, booking artists from Windham Hill, Andreas Vollenweider, and Ravi Shankar.\"\n\nWhile working at Garland of Letters, Davidoff saw firsthand how certain songs captivated shoppers and compelled them to buy. He started recording music of his own at home on a four track, and playing it at the store to see how people reacted. If they asked what it was, he'd know it was good.\n\nDavidoff's first tape was *Santosh*, released in 1989 on his own label, which he decided to call Garland of Letters. The tapes were nationally distributed and sold fairly well, and later on he repressed his catalog on CD. For his second tape, *Sage*, Davidoff played mainly flutes and synth, taking cues from the Native American trend then getting traction with artists like [Dik Darnell](/dik-darnell) and R. Carlos Nakai.\n\nThe best-selling tape that Davidoff produced was his third album, *Raku*. \"That was my breakthrough,\" Davidoff said.  \"I played koto and low flutes, as well as my guitar using pentatonic scales. That sold really well and is one of my favorites.\"\n\nDavidoff opted for a trendier sound on *Secrets of the Jade* which was more influenced by Andreas Vollenwieder. \"We were selling so much of his music, his stuff flew out of the store,\" Davidoff said. \"The Yoga Research Society in Philadelphia had concerts and they asked me to pull some music friends together and do a concert at their festival. So I got five or six friends and spent the next six months putting together the music and named it *Secrets of the Jade*. The tape isn’t a concert, but it’s the songs we played. After the concert we went into studio and cut it.\"\n\nDavidoff continued to release music well into the CD era and into the present, though he sold his share of Garland of Letters around 2010. He'd left Philadelphia ten years before that to be closer to his parents in Del Ray Beach, Florida. There he sold supplies to Yoga studios and started a new company called Merchant Advocate that helped businesses reduce credit card processing fees. Davidoff still has a label, though he later changed the name to [Music of the Healing Arts](https://www.davidoffhealingarts.com/cds). His catalog now includes 18 albums, many of which can be heard on his Bandcamp page [here] https://pcdavidoff.bandcamp.com).","discography":{"pc-davidoff":{"albums":{"bamboo":{"image":"","label":"Garland of Letters","review":"","title":"Bamboo","year":"1996"},"raku":{"image":"","label":"Garland of Letters","review":"With a quote from Tsu-Ssu on the inside sleeve, Davidoff clearly states his intention with *Raku*: \"Nothing is more manifest than the hidden; nothing is more obvious than the unseen.\" Translated to music, we get Eastern instrumentation (shakuhachi, Chinese koto) coupled with synths in these four 10-15 minute ultra minimalist zen koans. For me, this is his best album - \"Falling Water\" and \"Breathtaking\" are simply gorgeous.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)\n\n\n","title":"Raku","year":"1992"},"sage":{"image":"","label":"Garland of Letters","review":"Using a similar template to his debut, *Sage* comprises one long meditative track, but shifts the thematic inspiration to Native American music instead of the Eastern moves of *Santosh*. The main instrument is the flute, backed by subtle synths and wind chimes. An open-air feeling pervades, evoking a “calm and tranquil environment” that vibrates with a mythical quality.","title":"Sage","year":"1990"},"santosh":{"image":"","label":"Garland of Letters","review":"Santosh, which means \"contentment,\" is a strong debut featuring one long minor key improvisation stretched over two sides of a tape. The music is spacious and still, with an eastern-influenced harp line that gently insinuates in short melodic phrases. Contemplative, yet mysterious.","title":"Santosh","year":"1989"},"secrets-of-the-jade":{"image":"","label":"Garland of Letters","review":"On *Secrets of the Jade*, Davidoff tailors his music ever so slightly to the prevailing winds of the day, incorporating a sort of \"global cafe\" mentality on this album, though always with tasteful restraint. While more diverse stylistically than past releases, several songs incorporate his established motifs, with the native-flute sounds of \"Rising Sun\" and \"Native Nights\" calling back to *Sage*, while a piece like \"Lotus Eyes\" echoes the Taoist tranquility of *Santosh*. Elsewhere, Davidoff broadens his palette to include the percussive groove of the title track or the wistful nostalgia on “Jade Sea” which sounds more like ‘70s soft rock than his usual haiku-like music. Though a bit of a let-down from the great *Raku*, this is still very good and thanks to the shorter song lengths may actually be a good introduction to his work for the less patient listener.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Secrets of the Jade","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":195,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/PC-Davidoff.jpg?alt=media&token=4854747d-a17d-4897-ab7b-5b981cfd8ec2","last_name":"Davidoff"},"penny-little":{"artist_name":"Penny Little","body":"Born in 1960, Penny Little is a pianist and harpist who began writing songs when she was five years old. She studied film and music at Sangamon State University in Illinois. After graduating in 1981, she spent a year performing as a solo pianist in coffee houses before settling in Hawaii. There, she joined up with Hawaiian native Ben Hurley and formed a duo that played a mix of folk, new age, and cover songs at churches, galleries, and hotels. The group was spotted at a concert by cellist [Bob Kindler](/bob-kindler) and he signed Penny Little to a deal on Global Pacific that yielded one album, the instrumental *In a Light Garden*. \n\nRecalling *In a Light Garden*, Little cites Debussy and Ravel as influences on some of her pieces such as \"Tributaries,\" while Hurley brought in some Hawaiian influenced pieces with slack key guitar and a guitar jamming sensibility on a few tracks. According to Little, the cassette sold pretty well for a few years due to its inclusion in the Columbia House record club, but by then the duo had left for England where they reinvented themselves as the rock band Little Feather and self-released one single in the UK (\"Lucky In Love\"). The band added a drummer and recorded demos for Warner Brothers but nothing came of it and Little eventually moved back to the US where she worked in the arts as a director, editor and producer and various films and commercials. She has also authored books and currently serves as the executive director of the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice.","discography":{"penny-little":{"albums":{"1-energize-your-life":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"","title":"In a Light Garden","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":424,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/penny-little-640-rose.jpeg?alt=media&token=5e68a0b0-e110-4b8a-8e1f-e7533b20ee96","last_name":"Little"},"pete-peirce":{"artist_name":"Pete Peirce","body":"Pete Peirce was a multi-instrumentalist based in New York who spent the ‘70s playing in the country rock band Old Salt, releasing one self-titled album on their own label in 1976. However, after the band broke up in 1983, he relocated to Palo Alto and released a curious one-off cassette called Banjo Synthesizer that features synthesized banjo and slide guitar (courtesy of his brother David Peirce). The album is hard to describe, with elements of progressive electronic, bluegrass, and downtempo midi pop.\n\nPeirce was born in 1947 and grew up in Huntington, NY.  Inspired by folk boom artists like the Kingston Trio and Pete Seeger, he got a banjo in the early ‘60s and started learning to play. He attended Cornell where he majored in art history and played lacrosse. After graduating in 1969, he wanted to stay out of Vietnam so he got a job teaching algebra and then working as a probation officer in Woodstock, New York.\n\nDuring his time as a probation officer, Peirce started playing music with one of his clients, Dick Leschhorn, who had been busted for marijuana. Together, they formed the country rock band Old Salt. \"We started doing well right away,\" Peirce recalls. \"We had a good manager, and we got shows opening up for the Byrds, Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings.\" The band had a solid run for over a decade but broke up in 1983 when the money started to dry up.\n\nSoon after quitting Old Salt, Peirce got a job in California working at a horse stable. It was around this time that Peirce hit on the idea of creating a banjo synthesizer. To do this, he took a Roland Guitar Synth and swapped out the guitar neck for a five string banjo neck. Peirce recorded an album worth of tracks at his home studio, with his brother Dave playing slide guitar on his most tracks. Peirce printed 500 copies by his estimation, but he didn’t market the tape much at the time. (It was listed for sale in the December 1985 issue of Synthetic Pleasure.)\n\nPeirce continued to play music with various groups in Northern California, sometimes jamming with musicians like Herb Moore and Ed Ceremiel. He released one more cassette of country rock material in 1987, but music became more of a hobby as he got married, had kids and focused on his career as a tile contractor. Peirce has remained in the Menlo Park area ever since.","discography":{"pete-peirce":{"albums":{"banjo-sythesizer":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Banjo Synthesizer","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":427,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-peirce.jpg?alt=media&token=1a6ee66e-dbad-4afe-af69-c0e75a3485db","last_name":"Peirce"},"peter-buffett":{"artist_name":"Peter Buffett","body":"The son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, Peter Buffett is a composer and synthesist who released a string of new age electronic albums on Narada Mystique starting in 1987. Buffett (born 1958) had previously attended Stanford, but dropped out and started a recording studio called Independent Sound in San Francisco that he ran with his wife Mary throughout the '80s. He produced many local disco and new wave acts and also worked as an engineer for a variety of artists including Sylvester and [Pauline Anna Strom](/pauline-anna-strom). After writing and recording commercial music for some brands like Levi's and Coca-Cola, he segued into composing new age electronica in the mold of David Arkenstone. He later signed with Hollywood Recordings in the '90s and began incorporating influences from Native American music and culture prominently.  More recently, Buffett has written a self-help book called *Life is What You Make It*. ","discography":{"peter-buffett":{"albums":{"lost-frontier":{"image":"","label":"Narada Mystique","review":"","title":"Lost Frontier","year":"1991"},"one-by-one":{"image":"","label":"Narada Mystique","review":"","title":"One by One","year":"1989"},"the-waiting":{"image":"","label":"Narada Mystique","review":"","title":"The Waiting","year":"1987"},"yonnondio":{"image":"","label":"Narada Mystique","review":"","title":"Yonnondio","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Peter Buffett","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":353,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/peter-buffett-1987.jpeg?alt=media&token=66b2107f-b42f-489c-8808-940ccda50e0e","last_name":"Buffett"},"peter-davison":{"artist_name":"Peter Davison","body":"Peter Davison was an early success in the new age market, self-releasing seven albums through his own Avocado records that were staples in metaphysical book stores for the early part of the '80s. In 1987, he connected with a much bigger audience when he was hired to create the soundtrack for instructional videos like \"Massage for Health\" and the 6 million-selling \"Yoga For Beginners.\"  This led to a raft of new albums in his *Adagio* series in the '90s, though surely most of his new listeners were blissfully ignorant of the musician's wild past. Careening from stints in rockabilly and blues bands to modern classical symphonies awash in dissonance and Homer references, Davison's life resembles a strange and wonderful hero's journey. \n\nBorn in 1948 to ultra-leftist beatnik parents, Davison was primed for the path less taken from the beginning. He grew up surrounded by art books and records, and recalls enjoying Stravinsky's \"The Firebird,\" Carlos Chavez's *Yaqui Indian Music* and Groucho Marx's \"Funniest Song in the World.\" His parents had a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills, with the Weavers as frequent visitors and blues singer Odetta as his babysitter.\n\nThis idyllic period was brutally cut short when Davison's father was investigated by the House of Un-American Activity and blacklisted for teaching Marxism at the People's Educational Center in Echo Park. \"A pall fell over our family, and some of my father's friends committed suicide,\" Davison said. The family sold the house and moved to the Fairfax area.\n\nAround the age of six, while attending the Hancock Park School, Davison remembers seeing a flute player in the orchestra and being fascinated by the instrument. The teacher gave him a flute and by second grade Davison became something of a child prodigy and joined the LA City Orchestra. \n\nIn middle school, Davison began learning guitar, bass, and tenor sax. He began studying jazz. Inspired by Miro's memoir, he decided to live a simple life centered around making art and domestic tranquility. Around 1964, Davison began playing sax in local greaser combo the Ramrods, doing covers of rockabilly tunes like \"Twine Time\" and playing shows every Saturday night for a biker gang in Sylmar. He also began collecting early electronic records by Edgar Varese and blues records by Pink Anderson, Rev. Gary Davis, and more. \n\nIn 11th grade, tragedy struck when Davison's mother unexpectedly passed away. He stopped going to school and spent a lot of time alone listening to Gregorian chants. The grief finally began to subside after a memorable trip to New Mexico when Davison served as a music counselor at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch. Although he loved his job, he ended up spending more time hanging out with the local Tiwa Navajo people nearby, doing peyote and helping them make adobe bricks. The stay culminated with a memorable walkabout in which the Indians instructed him to go on a journey with just a horse and some food, walking along the Rio Grande for days in silence. \n\nAfter graduating from high school, Davison's father told him it was time to leave the nest and Davison was briefly homeless until he got a job at the KitKraft hobby shop in Studio City. Davison was able to save up some money and get back on his feet. \n\nDavison was a regular at the Ash Grove music venue around this time, and there he hooked up with Bernie Pearl to play bass in a band called Dirty Rice. They frequently backed up touring acts and for Davison it was a dream come true playing on stage next to blues masters like Lightnin' Hopkins, Albert King, and Etta James. But when the pioneering electronic rock group United States of America played at the club, the blues suddenly felt outdated and pedestrian next to such bold experimentalism. Davison quit Dirty Rice soon after and resolved to get a degree in music composition. \n\nFate had different plans once again, and Davison was confined to his bed for nearly a year recuperating from a bout of hepatitis. Once he was finally better, he enrolled at Valley College and began working towards his undergraduate degree. \n\nIn 1969, Davison met Serge Tcherepnin, the Cal Arts teacher who was prototyping his own synth inspired by Don Buchla. Tcherepnin introduced Davison to Buchla and the latter gave Davison a synth to experiment with. Davison was able to figure it out on his own and was soon teaching synthesizer classes at his college, California State University, Northridge. \n\nIn addition to his teaching, Davison also served as the conductor of the new music ensemble at CSU Northridge. He graduated in 1973 and then proceeded on to get an MFA too, winning outstanding student composer of the year for his Odyssey inspired \"Polyphemus,\" a bombastic work of modern classical that was recorded, but remains unreleased. \n\nAfter graduating, Davison built a small studio at his house in Santa Monica and began picking up work scoring educational films like *If You Could See Me Now*, *The Park That Kids Built* and *Lydia the TV Mouse*. By his estimation, Davison scored over 100 of these 16mm films, providing a steady income in addition to his work at the music publisher Life Line Music. \n\nDavison recorded his own music in his spare time, much of which would later make up his debut album. He hadn't thought to even release it until a friend played him a self-released new age album and Davison realized he could do that too. Naming his label Avocado after an amazing avocado tree in his backyard, Davison released his first album *Selamat Siang* in 1979. With help from Pyramid Distributors, the album sold surprisingly well, moving 25,000 copies and earning Davison enough to keep the label going. For the next five years, Davison releases a series of albums on Avocado, many themed to specific environments and moods with *Glide* (1981) and *Forest* (1982) being the most popular. \n\nIn 1987, Healing Arts founder Steven Adams reached out to Davison to see if he could score an instructional video called \"Massage for Health.\" The video was a success and the two embarked on other projects, including \"Yoga for Beginners,\" which went on to sell over 6 million copies and help usher in the yoga craze in America. With all those fans, people began clamoring for just the music, and Davison obliged by releasing all the music from his instructional videos in the Adagio series on Healing Arts.  \n\nDavison continues to be active as a film composer and artist.","discography":{"peter-davison":{"albums":{"Mountain":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"","title":"Mountain","year":"1983"},"forest":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"","title":"Forest","year":"1981"},"glide":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"*Glide* elaborates on the \"non-drone\" sections of *Selamat Siang* in a very positive way. There is still a fair amount of flute soloing over synthesizer, but the Serge seems to have been pushed a little harder this time out, producing some lovely sitar-like accompaniment, some birdcalls, some wind and surf synthesis. The balance is exactly opposite from the first album, with the majority given over to non-drone compositions for flute, harp, piano, marimba, and tape echo which owe equal allegiance to Riley, Glass and Reich's phase music and the French Impressionists Ravel, Debussy, and Faure. One track provides a virtual reading of Faure's \"Pavane,\" symbolizing the album as a whole - delicate, respectful of the past, and very up-to-date. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1982)\n","title":"Glide","year":"1981"},"salamat-siang":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"","title":"Salamat Siang","year":"1980"},"star-gazer":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"","title":"Star Gazer","year":"1982"},"traces":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"Pleasant, floating, peaceful New Age music. Lots of gentle flutes and synthesizers. Song titles like \"Orchid,\" \"Lotus\" and \"Grass Weaving in the Wind.\" Unlike too much new Age music, this one has some depth and substance. \n\n(Bob Morris, *Option*, May/June 1985)","title":"Traces","year":"1985"},"winds-of-space":{"image":"","label":"Avocado","review":"","title":"Winds of Space","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":17,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/davison%20serge.jpg?alt=media&token=6507392a-437f-49e5-b9d6-e13c8b2e3e38","last_name":"Davison"},"peter-gullerud":{"artist_name":"Peter Gullerud/Uzima","body":"Peter Gullerud was an animator at Disney's animation studio in the '80s when he and two friends formed the group Uzima to play a mix of ambient and art-pop on a series of self-released cassettes. All were reviewed favorably in underground magazines like *Sound Choice* and *Option*. Gullerud went on to release an album with Flim and the BB's drummer Bill Berg as well as four solo albums, continuing the eclectic and quirky approach of Uzima.\n\nBorn in 1957, Gullerud grew up the youngest of six in Eau Claire Wisconsin. \"I have five older sisters and my Dad was a minister,\" Gullerud recalled. \"He was always off doing preaching stuff and I was kind of a loner. The way I entertained myself was drawing. We weren't rich, so I couldn't go to art school. I was entirely self-taught.\"\n\nIn high school, Gullerud started getting into progressive rock, especially Yes. He remembers seeing Rick Wakeman surrounded by keyboards and wanting to get his own someday. He'd already tried piano lessons, but like with his art, he opted to teach himself instead. After graduating high school, Gullerud went to college to study theology, but dropped out after a year and worked at some factory jobs briefly before landing a gig at Hanna Barbera. After two years, he switched over to Disney, a dream job. His first movie was *Tron* and he would go on to work on many more popular titles for the studio.\n\nFinally making some good money, Gullerud bought a Juno 60, his first synth. Soon he added a recorder and built a small studio in his garage. After a few years, he put together some recordings and sent tapes out to deejays he liked, such as Diedre O'Donohue. \"She had a national radio show, *Breakfast with the Beatles* plus another one called *SNAP*,\" Gullerud said. \"I sent her a cassette on a fluke, and she wrote me back. She said, 'Try to make the music a little louder.' She played it on the air, and I went 'Oh my god, this is heard all over LA.'\"\n\nGullerud started playing with a friend from Disney named Joe Lanzisero, a percussionist. Together they formed a band called Uzima, named after an African term for the spark of life. The duo put out their first tape, the half-hour *Through the Hoop* in 1985, taking inspiration from Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson. The tape got more local radio play, notably by Dean Suzuki who used to play \"War Monsters\" on his show Discreet Music. \n\nUzima expanded to a trio for the next album *Travel Light*, joined by another Disney friend on synth, Bruce Woodside. By this point, the group had a more eclectic sound, alternating ambient pieces with art-rock, always with a quirky sensibility. They sent the tape to underground magazines such as Sound Choice and Option, with the latter earning one of their best pull-quotes of their career: \"Similar to Eno's *Music for Films* except that—dare I say it? —this is better.\" Uzima occasionally played live at places like Nova Express and Stage Left in Glendale and went on to release two more cassettes.\n\n1987 was Gullerud's most prolific year, seeing the issue of his first solo album *In the Thicket*, as well as a collaboration with Bill Berg, a studio drummer with the band Flim and the BB's who approached Gullerud to work together. He released one more solo album in the same year, but his pace began to slow down after that.\n\nMeanwhile, Gullerud's animation career at Disney was progressing nicely. He started out cleaning up rough drawings and worked his way up to visual development and character design on the movie *Aladdin*. However, that would be his last project at Disney, which he left in 1990.\n\nGullerud continued to play music on his own, and one song he produced called \"Why Not\" got some local airplay after the Rodney King riots on KCRW. Following that, he issued his first CD, *Cowboy in Eden* in 1992.\n\nAfter leaving Disney in 1990, Gullerud went on to work at WB Animation and as a freelance illustrator. He maintains a Soundcloud page [here](https://soundcloud.com/uzima) where he's archived a fair amount of his old work from the '80s.","discography":{"peter-gullerud":{"albums":{"cowboy-in-eden":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Cowboy in Eden","year":"1992"},"in-the-thicket":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"In the Thicket","year":"1987"},"muck-and-beetles":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Muck and Beetles","year":"1987"},"stirring-motions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Stirring Motions","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Peter Gullerud","entry_number":2},"peter-gullerud-bill-berg":{"albums":{"new-world-ordered":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"New World Ordered","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Peter Gullerud and Bill Berg","entry_number":3},"uzima":{"albums":{"2-travel-light":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Uzima makes ambient music that is just as rewarding when listened to actively as passively. The interplay between synthesizers and percussion, the expansive illusion of \"space,\" the occasional bird chirp or sound effect, and the overall flawless audio quality set this trio apart from almost everyone else. Uzima's last tape *Through the Hoop* fully realized its C30 format, and happily they have not flaked out within the 60 minutes here. 19 compositions, most of them under three minutes, each cut unique without disturbing the overall flow of the music. Similar to Eno's *Music for Films* except that—dare I say it? —this is better. Professional and bizarre packaging also. \n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option*, July/August 1986)\n","title":"Travel Light","year":"1986"},"3-bedtime-stories":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This fourth release from Peter Gullerud and company is yet another grand excursion into Uzima's ambient-synth netherworld. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it's beginning to sound like the boys are \"jamming\"—throughout these longer cuts the guitars, synths, and digital percussion all seem to be following one another in protracted musical conversations. About the only downside to all this is the robot drummer, with the keyboards becoming more lively, the impersonal electronic metronome is sometimes painfully obvious. On the upside, the nifty whistling solo in \"Long Walk Home\" and the cricket-drenched solemnity of the title cut deserve special mention.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option* 1986)","title":"Bedtime Stories","year":"1986"},"birdsongs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Birdsongs","year":"1985"},"new-age-oldies":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"New Age Oldies","year":"1990"},"omniumgatherum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Omniumgatherum","year":"1987"},"through-the-hoop":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Through the Hoop","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Uzima","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":231,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Gullerud-640.jpg?alt=media&token=a9f830c3-5528-47a5-bf4c-9b6625d6a56f","last_name":"Gullerud"},"peter-kardas":{"artist_name":"Peter Kardas","body":"Peter Kardas was a musician based in Arcata, CA (and later Seattle) who released four cassettes. The first two releases (credited to Thomas Kardas) were experimental ambient fare and garnered solid reviews at the time, though sales were minimal. After attending Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft workshops, Kardas switched to a blend of prog and folk with his next band the Folkoffs and then two cassettes under a new recording name, Peter Kardas. In the '90s, Kardas moved to Seattle and was involved with new group projects Stop That and Anubis, but he didn't record anything else under his own name.\n\nBorn in 1959, Peter Kardas was raised in Havertown, a suburb of Philadelphia. His birth name was Tom, but he started going by his middle name at the age of 30. His father was a public defender who loved Martin Luther King and had a strong sense of right and wrong, though he was also hard on the kids at times.  Kardas' older sister Temi became a young activist, attending rallies and fighting for equal rights beginning in high school and extending into her adulthood. Kardas' parents loved the arts, were good dancers and had strong singing voices. \"I was born singing,\" Kardas said. \"Everything else has been hard work.\"\n\nWhile Kardas' parents preferred classical and big band music, both he and his sister were enamored with the Beatles. \"Around first grade,\" Kardas said. \"I remember hearing my sister playing ‘She Loves You’ and thinking that is the greatest thing I've ever heard.\" At 13, he started playing guitar and was especially drawn to female singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins and Bonnie Raitt.\n\nKardas was the co-captain of the track team in junior high school, and he performed with the school chorus as a tenor soloist. He also found time to join a cover band and started writing original music too. By high school he was participating in national singing competitions and performing in school plays like *Fiddler on the Roof*. He attended Gettysburg College for a couple years where he continued to sing choral music, but he was studying for a career outside of music focusing on psychology and philosophy.\n\nAfter a few years working towards a philosophy degree, tragedy struck when his sister died. “That redirected my life,” Kardas recalled. \"She died when I was 19 and I felt extremely vulnerable and naked. My sister had wondered why I was studying philosophy instead of music. I was preened by my parents to be a professional and they wanted me to be middle class - marry young and start a family. But after my sister died I realized that wasn't me. I'm an artist.\"\n\nKardas moved home for a while and finished his schooling at Villanova, still numb from the shock.  While there he worked in social services, including two years at Pennsylvania School of the Deaf. \"When you talk with deaf people, you have to look at them 100% of the time or else you’re not listening” Kardas said. “I learned a lot from the deaf population.\"\n\nAt 24, Kardas and his best friend planned to drive across the country and back. Their west coast destination was Arcata, California where a mutual friend was attending Humboldt State. Once he arrived, Kardas fell in love with the area and decided to move there and make a go of it. \n\nAfter arriving, Kardas met some new friends at a performance art class at the college.  “I absolutely loved them,” Kardas said. “One of the people, Martin Schmidt, had beautiful Roland keyboards and played music like Brian Eno. He had a four track and a digital delay. A little while later, I ended up buying a four track and a digital delay like his. I was just learning how to record, listening to *Remain in Light*, Eno’s *Music for Airports*, *Another Green World* those were big influences. Also Frippertronics, King Crimson’s *Discipline*, and Laurie Anderson.”\n\nFor the next few years, Kardas worked social services jobs including a locked Psychiatric unit or at restaurants, usually on a part-time basis. He had plenty of free time to hone his skills on the four track, and he created a large body of music from 1985 to 1987 that he would compile onto two cassettes, *Right Belief* and *Right Action*. \n\n“Those [releases] were basically a double album,” Kardas said. “It was the same time period, working with same ideas. It started to change after that.” He sent hundreds of copies of both tapes to radio stations and new age labels, as well as magazines like Option, Sound Choice and Heartsong Review. His Sound Choice reviews were particularly good, with reviewer Frank Gunderson citing the “warm, personable sound” of *Right Belief* and Michael Chocholak calling *Right Action* “peaceful and contemplative with moments of majesty.” However, critic Robert Carlberg of *Electronic Musician* wrote a dismissive and short review in Electronic Musician that seemed to miss the point.\n\nLocally, Kardas got some airplay as well as appreciative coverage from local music critic Douglas MacDaniel in the Times Standard, who wrote a feature on him in 1988. By that time, Kardas had moved on from his earlier releases and was playing guitar in a progressive folk band called the Folkoffs who occupied a territory somewhere between Frank Zappa and XTC (or perhaps the lesser known Mommyheads). Led by songwriters Grant Rieder and Paul Erlandson with Mark Weston on drums and background vocals, the band put out several releases from 1988 – 1991, with complex melodic interplay and a quirky sensibility. \n\nKing Crimson was a longtime favorite, and a friend encouraged Kardas to attend the new Guitar Craft Seminars led by Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp.  Kardas began attending the events in West Virginia for the first time in 1987. Fripp’s combination of discipline, meditation, and wisdom was a revelation. “That was completely life altering,” Kardas said. “After a two and a half day course I learned a year’s worth of knowledge.”  \n\nWith the new techniques in hand, Kardas composed new material with a stronger progressive influence (particularly the quieter side of Gentle Giant and Yes), and more concessions to typical rock and pop.  In 1989 he released a cassette called *Eastern Landscapes* that featured a mix of instrumentals and more commercial sounding tracks like \"Blue\" that feature his yearning, sincere voice that sounds a bit like Kerry Minnear. A few years later, Kardas put together another cassette in a similar vein called *Dream Journal* with all the music and lyrics coming directly from his dreams.\n\nBy 1991, Kardas was getting frustrated with life in Arcata and went into Jungian therapy for guidance. According to Kardas, he realized he should move to Seattle, pursuing a dream of a woman he knew he’d meet there. (He did meet a woman there soon after arriving, Janette, and the two would later marry.) Plus, the move made sense practically: it was a music mecca and the city was booming. Kardas did a lot of temping for various corporations, and continued taking seminars with Fripp every year.  \n\nKardas started a new band in Seattle called Stop That with friends Jim Peppan and Greg Paxton. Taking cues from the Beatles, Juliana Hatfield, and grunge, Stop That put out two cassettes in 1994 and 1995. The three of them even got a chance to record in Brian Wilson's home studio, producing two tracks “Entwined” and “With Janette”. Kardas also formed a music project called Anubis with his wife that featured her spoken word poetry. They put out one cassette in 1997 called *Get Sirius*. Kardas’ final project of the decade was a compilation of local unsigned bands called *Bread Alone Project* that included tracks from both Stop That and Anubis.  The mission statement was to create a non-profit project in which 50% of the profit earned goes to charities that benefit the homeless.\n\nKardas and Janette divorced in 2000 and he left Seattle for Long Beach, CA where he became a high end bartender. At this point he stopped playing music and put his energy into learning to surf, riding motorcycles and ecstatic dancing. In the summer of 2015, he moved back home to Philadelphia to take care of his mother, whose health was failing. It was nearly 33 years after he’d first left.\n\n\"By then I was divorced, bankrupt, taking care of my mom, unemployed, not doing any music, single, buying cockatiel food. Then I get a call from Douglas Mcgowan, an A&R guy [from Numero Group]. He asked me about a song I did called 'Other Playgrounds.' I thought this must be either a scam or a prank but it was neither. It was only the second time, in my life, I’d gotten a call like that. And thank God, too. It was a blessing!\" Mcgowan would ultimately include Kardas' song \"Other Playgrounds\" on a compilation he produced for Numero Group called *Switched on Eugene*.  Along with the label Echo Ocho, Mcgowan also co-released a compilation on his own Yoga Records culled from Kardas' first two cassettes in 2019.\n","discography":{"peter-kardas":{"albums":{"dream-journal":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Dream Journal","year":"1991"},"eastern-landscape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Side A is composed of \"Paintings (synthesizer, drums), and Side B \"Drawings\" (acoustic guitar). The two sides reflect the difference between a multicolored painting and a sketch which tells the story, however in a simpler manner. Side A moves from the discordant paintings of near chaos to pure alien territory. \"Blue\" uses a combination of chanted and spoken words written by Joanne Sullivan, and an almost Middle Eastern flavor of synthesizer and drums. \"The Challenge\" is a very fast paced song, reminds me of moving through a busy day on crowded streets. At times redundant, it would be good for driving or background music.\n\n(Shelly Warner, *Heartsong Review* No. 9, 1990)","title":"Eastern Landscapes","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Peter Kardas","entry_number":2},"thomas-p-kardas":{"albums":{"right-action":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A series of passive and active trance states, eloquent in their simplicity of form, and extravagant in their variety. The majority of sounds are created through synthesis and treated vocals, with a minimal addition of bass, guitar, and drums throughout. An abundance of sound colors combine within each piece to form melodies and countermelodies that weave in and around each other. Most cuts offer minimal movement, creating an atmosphere conducive to introspection. However, \"Difficult Times,\" the most active piece on the tape, is the most successful, delivering a third world netherland strikingly reminiscent of Jon Hassell and his Malaysian expeditions.\n\n[Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), *Option* Nov/Dec, 1987)","title":"Right Action","year":"1987"},"right-belief":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Dreamy echo-laden sketches with a 'home' new age feel. Finely crafted performance-arty tape loops, ethereal voices, space guitar, honking sax and bongo. A warm, personable sound.\n\n(Frank Gunderson, *Sound Choice*, 1986)","title":"Right Belief","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Thomas P. Kardas","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":145,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Kardas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b0e64646-2ab5-496e-9c3c-35bc81224da9","last_name":"Kardas"},"peter-nothnagle":{"artist_name":"Peter Nothnagle","body":"Starting in the '80s Peter Nothnagle began a long career as an engineer and producer of live recordings, with a particular affinity for classical and Baroque music. He had been playing the violin and recorder since childhood but also became interested in electronic music in his early teens. After a move to Eugene in the late '70s, he hosted an electronic radio show and scored a few local plays, one of which formed the basis of his sole electronic cassette *Rashomon*.  That cassette was released with the Eugene Electronic Music Collective, a loosely aligned group of young experimental musicians that lasted for nine years and spawned three compilations and solo releases from most of the members.\n\nPeter Nothnagle was born in 1955 in Montana but mainly grew up in Iowa City, Iowa. He first studied violin and moved on to the recorder in his early teens, joining the University of Iowa's early music ensemble. He also became interested in electronic music in the late '60s, especially Morton Subotnick.  *Silver Apples of the Moon* and *Wild Bull* [both by Subotnick], still make my hair stand on end,\" Nothnagle recalled. \"The effect on me remains deeply emotional and moving. And this is from a guy who likes 17th-century North German masses and stuff like that. It just speaks to me.\"\n\nIn 1978, Nothnagle moved with his girlfriend to Eugene where she was attending the University of Oregon (\"The girlfriend dumped me by the way,\" he quipped.) He soon started hosting two radio shows, a classical show and an electronic show called \"New Dreamers\" at the community-run station, KLCC.  By then, he'd become interested in the electronic music renaissance in Europe, especially artists such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Steve Hillage, and Vangelis.\n\nTo make money, Nothnagle did carpentry, recorded concerts at the University and taught some electronic music classes at Lang Community College. One of his early mentors was Rajneesh disciple Steve Rappaport, a songwriter who'd had a hit with his song \"Martian Hop\" back in 1963 but was now going by the name Devarahi. He'd built an electronic music studio with an Arp 2600, a Prophet 5, and other state-of-the-art gear.\n\nDuring his time in Eugene, Nothnagle also befriended a younger group of electronic musicians who came together to form the Eugene Electronic Music Collective. The group, which included [Brian Magill](/brian-magill), [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith), [Peter Thomas](/peter-thomas), Derryl Parsons, and [Carl Juarez](/carl-juarez), all lived in the surrounding area. \"We met at Peter Nothnagle’s house to talk about it,\" Brian Magill recalled. \"We thought of ourselves as an equal collective where everyone had an equal vote. Our first idea was to put out a compilation that features our music. Our first tape, Free Fall was pretty successful. I sent it to radio stations and magazines, and it got some notoriety. I think we pressed a few hundred but only sold about 40-50 copies. The rest we traded.\"\n\nIn addition to the first compilation, each artist in the collective also produced a solo release in 1984, with Nothnagle releasing his soundtrack from a locally produced version of *Rashomon* which originated on Broadway. This was his only cassette for the collective, though he did also compose the music for a local children's play called *Under the Shadow of the Golden Key*.\n\nBy 1985, Nothnagle moved away to Iowa City to take a job as a recording engineer at the University of Iowa School of Music. There he recorded student recitals, operas, commercials, and many orchestra and band concerts. However, he realized he didn't like having a boss and went freelance after four years, recording live classical performances around the world, even if it did come with one key downside. \"I helped hundreds of performers record live shows and produced classical recordings, but it took up a lot of time and pushed aside my own music performance,\" he acknowledged. Nothnagle is still active as an engineer, recording about 50-60 concerts a year as of 2023.","discography":{"peter-nothnagle":{"albums":{"rashomon":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"","title":"Rashomon","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":362,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/peter-nothnagle-640.jpg?alt=media&token=091512be-e900-45fc-b506-89c9cdda4c06","last_name":"Nothnagle"},"peter-phippen":{"artist_name":"Peter Phippen","body":"Based in Wisconsin, Peter Phippen played bass in the AOR/hard rock band Airkraft throughout the ‘80s before a chance encounter with a bamboo flute sparked a new musical direction. He recorded three cassettes in the late '80s and early '90s on his own Primal Music label, each awash in multi-layered tracks of flute with some percussion and synths. He was signed to Canyon Records in the ‘90s where he released his biggest seller, *Night Song*, in 2002. Phippen remains active today on Projekt Records.\n\nBorn in 1956, Peter Phippen grew up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York on a 300-acre farm. His father was a truck driver who encouraged his son to learn how to hunt deer at the age of 10, but Phippen wanted a guitar instead. He taught himself to play and then learned bass too, joining a local band playing covers at a bar three nights a week until he was 18.\n\nAfter high school, Phippen attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied bass. After a few years, Phippen dropped out and joined a traveling show band playing all over the US. In the early ‘80s, he was discovered by the AOR band Airkraft in Wisconsin and soon was a key member, playing bass and co-writing some of the band's songs. Airkraft would go on to put out two albums on their own Ark label before getting signed to Premiere Records, where they issued two higher-profile hard rock albums in 1988 and 1990.\n\nWhile he played rock with Airkraft and looked the part with his long hair, Phippen also loved ECM records and spacy jazz. One day, while buying a couch, he found a wooden flute and became enamored with the instrument. This would lead to him adopting a very different sound for his solo career.\n\n\"My mother used to take me on picnic lunches on our farm and she'd tell me to listen to the sounds around me, like the winds in the grass,\" Phippen said. \"When I started playing the flute I realized everything my mother taught me was relevant. Later on, when I started playing shakuhachi, I knew that everything I wanted was in that wooden tube. I didn't need a band or a guitar player. I just need a reverb unit and an echo and I'm home.\"\n\nPhippen began experimenting with flute music at home in the late-'80s, putting together his initial recordings on a cassette called *McDonough Dreams*. He would make 10 to 15 copies at a time and the reception was good so he kept going. By the early ‘90s, Phippen recorded new improvisations at his band’s 24 track studio for a higher fidelity sound. These became his breakthrough cassette *Breath/Pulse*.\n\n\"I’d lay down 20 tracks of flute and bounce down to two tracks and then I would play percussion or whatever else I felt was needed,\" Phippen recalled. \"However, I ran out of money so it became more of an EP.\" Phippen brought some copies of *Breath/Pulse* to a local giftshop where he’d been selling his other cassette and they proved popular. He went on to make 500 copies and a CD version as well. He spent some time afterward touring Europe playing bass with a folk musician, and he would sell lots of cassettes there too. \n\n\"After the ep took off, people asked me to play flute for them,\" Phippen said. \"Suddenly I was a solo artist and a flutist. It’s debatable if I really am a flutist. All I do is improvise. My philosophy is I play nothing. I separate myself from music and tap into universal flow. I try to get myself out of the way of the music.”\n\nUpon returning to the US, Phippen quickly planned a follow-up, the full-length album *Darker Instincts*, which had a similar sound to *Breath/Pulse*. Both albumsalso  had artwork by Phippen’s mentor, Tiit Raid, a professor of art at UWEC. \n\nIn 1996, Canyon Records signed Phippen on the basis of his cassettes, and he went on to record three CDs for them as the only non-native flutist on the label. The first two CDs didn't sell too well, but his third album for Canyon, *Night Song*, which was recorded on antique shakuhachi flutes, proved to be his best-selling album yet and helped firmly establish his recording career. \n\nPhippen has released a total of 27 flute albums by his estimation. Around 2022, he signed began a partnership with [Sam Rosenthal](/projekt-electronic-amerika)’s Projekt Records which was issued at least five albums of archival work so far. ","discography":{"peter-phippen":{"albums":{"breath-pulse":{"image":"","label":"Primal Music","review":"","title":"Breath/Pulse","year":"1993"},"darker-instincts":{"image":"","label":"Primal Music","review":"","title":"Darker Instincts","year":"1994"},"mcdonough-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"McDonough Dreams","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":421,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Phippen-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=81429415-30a3-4cd9-aa66-c3988dfc5df4","last_name":"Phippen"},"peter-rudolfi":{"artist_name":"Peter Rudolfi","body":"Peter Rudolfi (born 1946) was a classically trained cellist based in San Francisco. After completing a master's degree in music at the University of Alberta, he went on to establish a music booking agency for four decades, placing bands for corporate events and weddings. He released two cassettes in the '80s that may be of interest to readers here. The first was *Rudofi*, which featured six minimalist piano pieces that *Electronic Musician* called a cross between Terry Riley and George Winston. His second cassette was electronic new age that paired melancholy cello sounds with synth and drum machine. The tape was distributed through New Leaf and sold a few hundred copies by Rudolfi's estimation, but he never released anything else after that. After living in San Francisco for several decades, he and his wife relocated to Mexico in 2015.","discography":{"peter-rudolfi":{"albums":{"cellos":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Peter Rudolfi was last reviewed in EM in the July 1986 issue for a tape of solo piano compositions. His new tape, *Cellos* is quite different. It features (surprise!) the instrument of the title, with DX7 and Roland TR-505 drum accompaniment. The cellos, with its long, drawn-out bow strokes, tends toward a David Darling ECM mournful jazz, while the drum programs and synthesizer add elements of an uptempo new age fusion. Rudolfi keeps varying the textures all the way from Neo-classical overdubbed cello ensembles to straight new age synthesizer, so even though the tape doesn’t break any new ground, it doesn’t run the music into the old ground either.  \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, June, 1988)","title":"Cellos","year":"1987"},"rudolfi":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Six tracks, five on piano and one on synthesizer, which fall somewhere stylistically between Terry Riley and George Winston. Rudolfi’s compositions, played here by Mark Holland, tend to repeat little sections until you think the cassette deck's skipping.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician* July, 1986)","title":"Rudolfi","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":355,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/peter-rudolfi-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9b970de4-68ab-41dc-908d-619ac4b1e4b7","last_name":"Rudolfi"},"peter-spoecker":{"artist_name":"Macrofusion / Shining Lotus","body":"Peter Spoecker was an eccentric artist who forged an unpredictable path through life. Whether it was rock climbing, psychedelic films, jewelry making, airbrushed space art, synthesizer programming, or promoting didgeridoos, Spoecker lived by the mantra \"If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.\" Along the way he rubbed some the wrong way with his unfiltered opinions, but he also impressed others with his passionate interests and brilliant mind. In the early '80s he put out a stream of computer music albums under the name Macrofusion before pivoting to nature-inspired new age as Shining Lotus in the mid-'80s. In the next decade he reinvented himself as a didgeridoo expert, even starting the Joshua Tree Didge festival in 2000. Spoecker died tragically in 2005 during a hike in the Sierras when he fell into a frozen lake and drowned, weighed down by his heavy photography gear.\n\nBorn in Germany in 1941, Spoecker had a brother Robert who was two years younger and they remained close throughout their lives. After the war, their father Walter was recruited to come to the US where his engineering skills were in high demand. The family arrived in 1953, eventually settling in Oakhurst, CA near the Sierra Mountains.  \n\nSpoecker used to love hiking on challenging trails, and he often dared his brother to follow him until one day his brother nearly died attempting a stunt. Spoecker himself later got into mountain climbing, and had a bad accident of his own during a daring climb in Yosemite in 1965. A huge boulder broke off and crushed his femur, necessitating a helicopter air lift to a hospital.  (You can read a full account [here](https://www.climbing.com/people/everyday-hero-5-ordinary-climbers-who-saved-a-life-part3/).)\n\nSpoecker continued to be an avid outdoorsman after his climbing accident, but he also began making art and got into filmmaking. Somehow, he orchestrated the creation of an abstract experimental film called *Potpourri* with a crew of animators who were tripping on LSD.  Around the same time, he began selling jewelry and art at Jay Thelin's Psychedelic Shop at 1535 Haight St. in San Francisco.\n\nIn 1970, Spoecker got married for the second time (details on the first marriage are unavailable) to a woman named Janet. Together they lived in the funky desert community of Joshua Tree, CA where Peter met other locals like Jim and Joanie Jordan. Joanie recalls that Spoecker was a silversmith and made his own necklaces and bracelets, often traveling all over to buy precious stones for his rings.  Another of Spoecker's friends during the era was [David Blonski](/david-blonski), who he met in 1973. Blonski was just out of college and making a living selling candles at art fairs. Spoecker was selling his jewelry at the same circuit and the two became lifelong friends. \n\n\"Peter was really frugal,\" Blonski said, \"except when it came to his art.  This is a guy who would never go to a laundromat and wash his clothes. He would take a shower with his clothes on. If frozen pizza was on sale, he'd buy 20 of them and eat them for 2 weeks.  But when he got into something, he was into it 150%. If he made any money he spent it all on art, not on himself. And he did all kinds of stuff: painting, sculpture, electronic music, jewelry making. He was just kind of an odd character.\"\n\nSpoecker and Janet's marriage only lasted four years--by 1974 they were divorced. After that, Spoecker got closer to friends like Blonski and the Jordans. Spoecker taught Jim how to make jewelry and for awhile Jim took over Spoecker’s business, giving him a cut of the sales. Spoecker used the opportunity to pivot to painting and music.  At that time, his paintings were swirling airbrushed canvases that looked like outer space scenes and he began selling those at art fairs too. He also started to get into synthesizers, building his own from kits to see how they worked. According to Joanie, tennis also became a huge obsession, with Spoecker building a half-tennis court near his house so he could practice.\n\nAfter many years in Joshua Tree, Spoecker moved back in with his family in Oakhurst, California. While there, he refocused all his energy on synthesizers, and in 1982 he convinced his parents (who had plenty of money) to help him  acquire a state-of-the-art Synclavier II that used actual sound samples and was powered by a computer. The instrument was way ahead of its time and the price tag reflected it. Spoecker's brother, who was by then a talented engineer, helped write a program so Spoecker could enter notes into a computer and have it play back the score since Spoecker admittedly had no musical skills.\n\nIn 1983, Spoecker began releasing his computer music under the name Macrofusion, selling the tapes in magazine classifieds and through the art fair circuit he'd been traveling for over a decade. Some of the earliest cassettes had full color j-cards with Spoecker's art and detailed liner notes, but he soon abandoned that and just put stickers on the tape cases. His Macrofusion discography covers a wide gamut of sounds, from straight-ahead renditions of classical music played on synthesizers to abstract space excursions. Some were uncategorizable and bizarre, such as *Powerbytes* and  *Compufunkola*, both of which he recommended for kids (!). \n\nShortly after creating the Macrofusion series, Spoecker moved back to Joshua Tree. Although his previous cassettes generated some sporadic interest, he noticed that his friend David Blonski was having more luck with the nature-inspired music he'd recorded with Ed Van Fleet's Synchestra.  Spoecker saw an opportunity and decided to start doing field recordings of nature sounds that he could add to his growing stockpile of recordings, and he adopted the name Shining Lotus.\n\nSpoecker didn't play all the music on his tapes, often paying other musicians in the area like Blonski or others to play for him (see tape reviews below for more detail). He'd record the music and then add his own instrumental or environmental sounds on top. When he was doing Macrofusion tapes, he could just program the notes on a computer, but with Shining Lotus, he needed more organic playing and that wasn't his forte. \n\nUnder the name Shining Lotus, Spoecker released a trove of material starting in 1984. His frugality is evident throughout his catalog, as he would often re-use album covers and older music on his new releases. He xeroxed the cassette covers, printed tape labels on a dot matrix printer and even used cheaper adhesive for them. He also put labels on only one side of the cassettes.  Some of the earlier Shining Lotus tapes like *Water Trance* and *Harmony* were produced during the transition from Macrofusion to Shining Lotus and actually came out under both names, or as hybrid releases. Spoecker continued to work in many styles, ranging from didgeridoo and synth drones (*Deep Song*), solo flute pieces (*Ocean Journey*), abstract noodling (*Mountain Magic*) and sound-art collages with no music at all (*Forest Walk*).  The quality varies greatly, but his idiosyncratic approach has made him a favorite with collectors.\n\nSpoecker sold the tapes in his usual unorthodox fashion, setting up tables at various universities in California and making the rounds of art fairs. But his skill was not in marketing, and he eventually grew frustrated at his lack of success. His father's health started to fail in the late '80s and Spoecker moved back to Oakhurst for a short while. After his father passed in 1989, Spoecker returned to Joshua Tree and brought his mother back with him. By 1990 he was back in the studio again, churning out a new series of tapes, though he stopped even adding covers at all, now down to a single black and white label on one side of each tape.\n\nBy the early '90s, Spoecker really began focusing on the didgeridoo which had served him so well on *Deepsong*. \"When he found the didgeridoo, that became his passion,\" Blonski recalled. \"I think he found himself musically.\" In light of his musical limitations, it's not hard to see why Spoecker took to the instrument, which exists outside the usual western musical idioms. It also requires strong breathing techniques, and Spoecker had been meditating since the late '60s (he shared a guru with his old pal Jay Thelin) so he was already a master at breath control. Soon enough, Spoecker became one of the instruments biggest evangelists in the U.S.\n\nSpoecker stopped using the name Shining Lotus after 1993 and either recorded as Soaring Spirit or under his own name for releases such as *Aboriginal Etudes* or *Digeridoo and Other Primitive Instruments.* He began to import various didgeridoos from Australia and sold them through the mail. He even went on a trip to Australia to play with indigenous people, riding across the country on a bicycle and running his recording equipment off solar power. In 2000, along with Graham Doe, he helped to start a festival called the Joshua Tree Didge Fest that lasted for many years. Spoecker remained more of a silent backer, though he did sometimes perform there.\n\nSpoecker's death was a surprise to many of his friends. One of his longtime hobbies was landscape photography,  and he was known to do anything for the perfect shot. Many of his images adorned his Shining Lotus album covers, and as with everything he did there is an off-kilter sensibility. In 2005, Spoecker was hiking in the Sierra Mountains and was later found dead in a frozen lake. Presumably his heavy photography equipment caused him to sink through the thin ice, though by most accounts it was too late in the season to be on the ice at all. His friends back home were shocked - Spoecker was incredibly healthy for his age. He used to even joke with his brother Robert, who was less health-obsessed, that Peter would outlive him easily. Spoecker had no children, but he is something of a cult legend in the Joshua Tree area, and will always be remembered for his uncompromising dedication to his unique, original vision.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","discography":{"Macrofusion":{"albums":{"classics":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Classics","year":"1983"},"compufunkola":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Sounding like 8-bit classical music powered from a corroded car battery, this is computer music out of some kind of desert-fried k-hole. Most of the compositions on side one are reworked from Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, etc. and occasionally lapse into coherence. Side two, however, features some unique and bizarre originals best classified as incredibly strange music or chiptune at its most demented. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Compufunkola","year":"1983"},"flow-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Flow 1","year":"1983"},"flow-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Flow 2","year":"1983"},"harmony":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Like *Water Trance*, *Harmony* was a transitional release with Macrofusion labels and a Shining Lotus tape cover with a 1984 date. However, unlike *Water Trance* this is not particularly good.  The long tape features endless electric piano noodling in a neo-classical style.","title":"Harmony","year":"1984"},"italian-baroque":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Italian Baroque","year":"1983"},"natural-voices-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is yet another Macrofusion tape of classical and Baroque tunes played via computer with off-kilter timbres and inhuman sounding precision. At the time this must have sounded pretty futuristic but now it’s more of a period curiosity. As with the other Macrofusion cassettes, the cover artwork is fantastic - a colorful, sci-fi-inspired painting of a mountain landscape.\n\nConfusingly, Spoecker re-used the *Natural Voices* title for a later Shining Lotus release. He may have also re-used old labels from the Macrofusion cassettes initially, further confusing the matter. But that album is completely unique, featuring Spoecker's collaborations with David Blonski and a more fairytale/nature theme.","title":"Natural Voices 1","year":"1983"},"natural-voices-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Natural Voices 2","year":"1983"},"new-faces":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"New Faces","year":"1983"},"new-spaces":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"All original tracks from Spoecker, who calls this \"pretty far, but still anchored to home.\" A medieval influence dominates on side one for tracks like \"Nature Trip\" and \"Steppes\" which sound like an 8-bit cover of *Switched on Bach* played on a Fisher Price turntable.  The almost Berlin-school \"Very Natural\" is probably the pick here, with Spoecker on vocoder, a pulsing bass and manic Synclavier leads. \"The Dark Continent\" commands all of side two and is bookended by long stretches of driving percussion and deranged melodies, only to segue into a four minute baroque interlude of double-time harpsichord that at best sounds like an outtake from *Uncle Meat*.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"New Spaces","year":"1983"},"olde-english":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Olde English","year":"1983"},"oriental-fantasies-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Spoecker attempts a sort of computerized raga here but the tape begs the question – why exactly do we need an 8 bit simulation of sitars and flutes anyway? Sure, the approximation of Hindustani styles and sounds is pretty impressive, but the quantized melodies and bizarre arrangements put this firmly in the world of incredibly strange music. For Spoecker that comes with the territory but I shudder to think what sort of bad trip this could have brought on for an unsuspecting hippie at the time.","title":"Oriental Fantasies 1","year":"1983"},"oriental-fantasies-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Oriental Fantasies 2","year":"1983"},"powerbytes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Powerbytes","year":"1983"},"space-trance-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Space Trance 1","year":"1983"},"space-trance-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Space Trance 2","year":"1983"},"spaced-out-1":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The *Spaced Out* tapes were some of Spoecker’s better sellers from his computer music phase, though they are far from commercial. Always a fan of odd timbres and juxtapositions, Spoecker's compositions are abstract and even cartoonish, with mathematical arpeggios overlapping and fading in and out, like the Shaggs covering Perry and Kingsley.\n\nOn side one, organic textures add some life to the sometimes maddening ADD style, with phased water sounds and distorted voices breathing a tinge of humanity into the alien soundscapes. Side two holds together better as a piece, as Spoecker adds tribal drums and Indian chanting to the mix while building up a wall of noodling into a nice groove where all the pieces come together. ","title":"Spaced Out 1","year":"1983"},"spaced-out-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spaced Out 2","year":"1983"},"spanish-baroque":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spanish Baroque","year":"1983"},"spanish-masterpieces":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spanish Masterpieces","year":"1983"},"water-trance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This appears to be music recycled from his more relaxing and meditative Macrofusion tapes, such as *Space Trance* and *Flow* with added ocean sounds.","title":"Water Trance","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Macrofusion","entry_number":1},"shining-lotus":{"albums":{"deep-song":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"Dark, droning and hallucinogenic, *Deepsong* is built around didergidoo drones and minor key flute/synth melodies to convey the brooding intensity of a deep sea world. One of his more consistent releases and one that sits perfectly in his comfort zone.","title":"Deep Song","year":"1986"},"deep-space":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Deep Space","year":"1987"},"desert-moods":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Desert Moods","year":"1992"},"earth-tribe":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*Earth Tribe* is an all percussion album featuring the music of Brent Lewis, an LA drummer. Lewis created his own unique style with 22 drums tuned to piano notes so he could play musical phrases on top of the usual rhythmic foundation. The album features extended improvisations with a distinctive African influence and a lively, group setting. Spoecker was not involved musically and Lewis issued the tape under his own name as well with the title *Earth Tribe Rhythms*.","title":"Earth Tribe","year":"1990"},"folk-themes":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Folk Themes","year":"1989"},"forest-walk":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*Forest Walk* is a collage of field recordings edited together to resemble a hike through the woods. Likely recorded in the Sierras where he hiked throughout his life (and where he ultimately died), Spoecker paints a cartoonish portrait of nature teeming with woodpeckers, huge flocks of singing birds, occasional footsteps, and softly running streams. Spoecker's heavy handed approach should be familiar to listeners of his earlier Macrofusion tapes, but the nonstop sonic close-ups leave few moments for silence or reflection.","title":"Forest Walk","year":"1987"},"irish-fantasies":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"These tracks seems to be repurposed from his early '80s computer music era, though it's unclear which tapes they originally appeared on. The music is all written by the famous Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan, with Baroque arrangements that unfortunately lack the weirdness and unpredictability that makes something like *Rhythmelodic Fun* a more interesting experience.","title":"Irish Fantasies","year":"1992"},"mountain-magic":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*Mountain Magic* opens with Satie-flavored electric-piano sketches over a recording of heavy rain that’s surprisingly natural sounding – I’m not sure I ever thought much about the sterile, ersatz nature of so many \"natural\" sounds typically used in new-age recordings prior to cueing this up but hearing something so organically chaotic in this context is quite bracing.\n\nThe sparse note-by-note exploration starts taking structure a few minutes in, alternating brief repetitive melodies and arpeggiated runs that quickly coalesce and fall apart commensurate with the introduction of rather aggressive wind sounds. Strangely, considering the natural sound of the rain, the wind here is wholly unconvincing, just straight Hammer Films horror-flick sound-library stuff. The overall effect is more than a little discomforting and doesn’t get any less so as water and instrumentation transform into what sounds a bit like Dracula rinsing blood off his harpsichord in a large river. From there we get more wind, stretches of rain, the artist – a maniac, I am convinced, or maybe just a bad person playing tricks on me – running through various flute and horn presets on their 1982 Casio Befuddler keyboard as nature goes totally apeshit around them. \n\nThe goofiest pack of wolves imaginable makes an appearance, brief yet unwelcome, before being run off by a swarm of terrifyingly robotic chirps that sound like someone tried to crossbreed birds with a ring modulator. Electronic burbles that are difficult to differentiate from the bird noises rise in the incomprehensibly shifting mix, electronic burbles that are not difficult to differentiate from the bird noises push them out, perhaps because Dracula has harnessed the infernal power of that storm to fully evolve those birds into predatorial robots at his command.\n\nIf you're trying to make small children unhappy and need a soundtrack to your gothic, incompetent puppet show this would make a swell soundtrack. Me, being a normal person who just want to get along in life with few complications, well, I am deeply uncomfortable with this recording and suspicious of the motivations behind making and releasing it. Wasn't Shining Lotus a Peruvian terrorist organization?\n\n(Patrick Hughes, 2020)","title":"Mountain Magic","year":"1986"},"natural-voices":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*Natural Voices* is a collaboration between Spoecker and David Blonski comprised of classically inspired computer music mixed with more naturalistic synth and flute work from Blonski. Spoecker augments the tracks with field recordings of streams and birdcalls, creating a whimsical, fairy tale atmosphere. Blonski fans may enjoy it, but it is missing the surprising weirdness typically associated with Spoecker.","title":"Natural Voices","year":"1986"},"ocean-journey":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"Lonesome native-american flute solos (likely from David Blonski or Michael Margolis) bounce off the walls of a dramatic sea cliff while ocean waves crash on the deserted beach below.","title":"Ocean Journey","year":"1992"},"ocean-moods":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"Peter Spoecker serenades a flock of shorebirds and sea lions with piano and synth meditations on some desolate west coast shoreline. Unlike other tapes such as *The Elements*, the songs feel more developed, with gently layered arrangements of synths, flute, and piano that draw from his love of classical music while staying in a new age mode throughout. In other words, no Macrofusion weirdness seems to be tacked on this time. [Blonski](/david-blonski) may have been involved.","title":"Ocean Moods","year":"1986"},"ocean-moods-2":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Ocean Moods 2","year":"1987"},"piano-fantasies":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Piano Fantasies","year":"1992"},"rhythmelodic-fun":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"This is a compilation of Spoecker's more uptempo songs from his early Macrofusion tapes. Styles include middle eastern, bluegrass, African, classical and countless others, sometimes mashed together in the same song with jarring timbral shifts. The album certainly lives up to its title, but Spoecker's maximalist approach and zany melodies can wear down the listener's patience. In small doses, certain songs manage to shine and could impress even the most jaded collector. Flautist Michael Margolis is credited on the tape label, but he only appears on the more middle eastern flavored tracks.\n","title":"Rhythmelodic Fun","year":"1990"},"samadhi":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Samadhi","year":"1984"},"spirit-journey":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Spirit Journey","year":"1992"},"star-drive":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*Star Drive* was a repackaged set of the Macrofusion cassettes *Spaced Out 1* and *Spaced Out 2* under the new Shining Lotus name.","title":"Star Drive","year":"1985"},"storm-environment":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"Like *Forest Walk*, *Storm Environment* is just ambient field recordings of nature, though this time less edited and seemingly just one long take of a rainstorm.\n","title":"Storm Environment","year":"1987"},"surf-environment":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Surf Environment","year":"1986"},"the-dawning":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"One of the rarest titles in his discography, released at the tale end of the cassette era. There's no field recordings to speak of, just trad-sounding folk tunes played on synthesizer and acoustic guitar by fellow Joshua Tree resident Dave Tarnowski.","title":"The Dawning","year":"1993"},"the-elements":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"*The Elements* features Spoecker’s usual hodgepodge of source material: portamento synth improv, Daniel Emmanuel-ish organ interludes, computer-programmed flutes, guitar and piano duets, plus other half-finished tunes, all combined with “elements” of nature like rain and wind. Spoecker’s ham-fisted production style is evident throughout with intermittent bursts of tape hiss, nature sounds that are mixed too loudly, and a running order seemingly assembled through games of chance. Side two is a bit more cohesive, with one longer call-and-response synth and flute piece that is memorable amid a slew of filler. This could be compared to Aiki Domo's *Twilight Walk Along a Creek*, though there is nothing quite like Peter Spoecker who remains one of the most unique oddballs in the field of new age.","title":"The Elements","year":"1986"},"way-of-peace":{"image":"","label":"Shining Lotus Productions","review":"","title":"Way of Peace","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Shining Lotus","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":105,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Spoecker.jpg?alt=media&token=4e69e47c-ce88-475e-a9b3-8789d8d52f5d","last_name":"Macrofusion"},"peter-stenshoel":{"artist_name":"Peter Stenshoel","body":"Peter Stenshoel was a keyboardist and composer from Minneapolis who released a series of cassettes in the '80s and early '90s on his own Numazu label. Starting at a young age, he gravitated to avant-garde and contemporary sounds such as Cecil Taylor, Steve Reich, and Henry Partch, using those influences to craft a sound that straddled the worlds of jazz, ambient, and experimental music. In addition to his solo work, he was a part of the Minneapolis trio Intuitive Bikers in the '80s, as well as a series of '70s bands he documented on his sprawling archival release *Strangely Colored Map*.\n\nBorn in 1954, Peter Stenshoel grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When he was 11, the family moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota where his father got a job teaching at Augsburg college. Stenshoel had two older brothers and a younger sister. \"My parents loved Bach,\" Stenshoel recalled. \"We belonged to The Musical Heritage Society and listened to hymns at church. They played me Heifitz playing Prokofiev’s \"Second Violin Concerto\" while I went to sleep.\"\n\nAll of the kids in the family took piano lessons from a young age. His brother Eric played the cello and his other brother David took up the violin, later joining Irish punk band Boiled in Lead. Peter didn't stick with his piano lessons long (\"I didn't want to miss *Mighty Mouse*,\" he says) but he took snare drum lessons and taught himself to play the piano, guitar, and, much later, mandolin. Brother David also taught him blues and boogie-woogie.\n\nPeter and David were avid music fans who read *HiFi/Stereo Review*, listened to weird radio and already knew about John Cage in their teens. \"When I got my driver’s license at 14,\" Stenshoel recalls, \"I made the rounds of libraries to get records of different genres. I devoured funk, jazz, rock, experimental sounds. When I got my first money from babysitting I bought Cecil Taylor’s album *Unit Structures*. It was like freedom, but something more, an applied sonic experience.\"\n\nIn high school,  Stenshoel began playing in local bands, which he later described in the liner notes of *Strangely Colored Map*: \"Growing up on a diet of twentieth century classical, top-40’s radio, baroque music, jazz and blues made it impossible for me to stay put as a musician within only one genre. I remember the wonder of high school music room sessions, 1970-1972 where perhaps Mark Freeman would bring his flute or electric guitar and I would pound piano. Once, as I was imitating a certain Bartok piano concerto I’d heard, the band director threw me out for 'banging on the piano.' I should've showed him my Cecil Taylor imitation.\" In his final year of high school, Stenshoel spent a year in England with his relatives. There he joined The Microtonal Freedom band, who played \"In D,\" an homage to Terry Riley and free jazz. \n\nAfter returning from England, Stenshoel formed a fusion band called Sky King and later joined a new version of the Infinity Art Unit, a favorite from his high school days. \"They sounded like Cream reared on Karl Berger's music theory,\" Stenshoel wrote. \"It was the most hair-raising sound I think I've ever heard, then or now.\" That band incorporated some of the new sounds Stenshoel had heard in England, like Henry Cow, Gentle Giant and Hatfield and the North. By 1976, that group evolved into a new band called Air that played more atmospheric jazz, covering David Holland, McCoy Tyner, Alice Coltrane, Carla Bley, and Duke Ellington. \n\nIn the late ‘70s, Stenshoel and his friends formed an improv comedy program on KFAI called *Little City in Space.* The group was influenced by Firesign theater and based their show on a community of people orbiting in space. Besides being one of the hosts, Stenshoel would contribute sound effects and music for their productions, which lasted all the way to 1990.\n\nStenshoel's various band projects were put on hold when he and his wife moved to Japan in 1981 for a couple years. While there, he crafted homemade music by layering instrumentals and field recordings on a reel to reel recorder. \"I was always fascinated by Steve Reich’s [tape loop] piece 'Come Out',\" Stenshoel said. \"That caught the imagination of my brothers and me at an early age. In Japan, I was already familiar with that idea and was fascinated with how tape motors ran at different speeds.\" When he got back to Minnesota, Stenshoel used these tapes as the basis for his album *Manifest Ecstasy*\n\nIn 1985, Stenshoel met two local musicians, Bob Zander and Todd Harper, and they recruited him to join their jazz-rock group the Intuitive Bikers. \"Peter is a creative and fun-loving guy so he fit right in,\" Zander said. \"We all liked jazz and improvised music and some rehearsals just started from scratch.\" They recorded their practices, and some of their improvised pieces coalesced into songs.\n\nFor their first gig, the Intuitive Bikers did a three person acoustic and electric piano improvisation. They performed a few other times in 1986 and released their tape, It's Just Everything largely drawn from live shows and rehearsal recordings. The band grew to include bassist Carl Posz, trumpeter Andy Shultz, violinist David Stenshoel, and flautist Max Swanson. The Intuitive Bikers went on to release two more cassettes, both in 1987. The following year, each member issued solo cassettes: Harper's *How to Make Thing Without Name*, Zander's *Friend for Life*, and Stenshoel's *Strangely Colored Map*.\n\n*Strangely Colored Map* was Stenshoel's second album, though it was really more of an archival work. While he worked at Federal Express during the day, Stenshoel worked into the night assembling the best moments from his vast archives of band rehearsals and live shows from the '70s and '80s. It was packaged in a manilla envelope and spread across two tapes, with a thick booklet accompanying it rich with information.  The album got good reviews and was selected in The Minnesota Daily as being the best tape of the year; Zander's *Friend for Life* came in second and the Bikers’ tape *Ancient Circus Music* was picked for third.\n\nBy 1989, Stenshoel moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. During his time there, he released two more cassettes, *Codex for the Trickster* and *Smile of Pythagoras*. As usual, these were diverse outings that spanned many genres and made him hard to pigeonhole. After earning his degree Sound Design for Theater, he started working in theatrical sound design for the next three decades before retiring more recently. He also worked part time for public radio as a sound engineer. \n\nStenshoel has continued to record into the present, recording six CD's from 1998 to 2014 not listed below. While he continued to flirt with myriad styles like free improv and even acid jazz, his music became more relaxed starting with the piano-driven *Luminous Hosts Among the Notes* in 1998. His next CD *Things in Heaven and Earth* even contains some full blown new age.  Looking back, Stenshoel sees a wealth of inspiration in his music. \"I acknowledge Alice Coltrane, Cinema Sonore, LaMonte Young, Osamu Kitajima, and astrologer and composer Dane Rudhyar. Without drug culture, a lot of this stuff wouldn't have come about, though meditation achieves a similar thing.\"","discography":{"intuitive-bikers":{"albums":{"1-bikin-into-it":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"Bikin' Into It","year":"1987"},"2-ancient-circus-music":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"Ancient Circus Music","year":"1987"},"it's-just-everything":{"image":"","label":"Kuklos","review":"","title":"It's Just Everything","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Intuitive Bikers","entry_number":2},"peter-stenshoel":{"albums":{"codex-from-the-trixter":{"image":"","label":"Numazu","review":"","title":"Codex from the Trixter","year":"1993"},"manifest-ecstasy":{"image":"","label":"Numazu","review":"","title":"Manifest Ecstasy","year":"1984"},"smile-of-pythagoras":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/peter-stenshoel-smile-of-pythagoras-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c3f15ed5-6e93-43cc-8d9c-827aed326bfb","label":"Lonely Whistle Music","review":" If Frank Zappa just had a four track and a Casio, it might sound like this album. Harmonically dense, intricate fusion instrumentals vie for space with live cocktail jazz, lonely keyboard ruminations, video game music and some Glassian minimalism.","title":"Smile of Pythagoras","year":"1992"},"strangely-colored-map":{"image":"","label":"Numazu","review":"","title":"Strangely Colored Map","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Peter Stenshoel","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":187,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Stenshoel.jpg?alt=media&token=2e83be14-3cb5-4e89-ac82-0ecc21eeafc7","last_name":"Stenshoel"},"peter-thomas":{"artist_name":"Peter Thomas","body":"Peter Thomas was a classically trained guitar player based in Eugene, Oregon who also had an interest in electronic music that led him to join the Eugene Electronic Music Collective.  During that time he produced a tape of ambient synth music called *The Hours Away* and contributed tracks to the group's compilations as well. However, his main focus was classical guitar, and he made his living performing around town and giving lessons. He released two cassettes of his guitar repertoire that drew on influences such as Ralph Towner and Egberto Gismonti. In the early nineties he combined his two interests when he joined the band Mythic Sky playing synth and guitar.\n\nThomas was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1956 and grew up in East Chatham, NY in a house filled with music. \"My father had a beautiful singing voice,\" Thomas said. \"His mother died young and his father disappeared, but all through his life he sang. He was very sensitive to music.\" Peter wanted to play an instrument and saved up his money from mowing lawns and bought a plywood guitar at the age of 12. His parents saw that he was serious about it and got him lessons for the next eight years.\n\nStarting out, Thomas studied basic chords and old folk tunes. But when his father gave him an album by Spanish guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia, Thomas switched to classical guitar. \"I didn't play anything else until I was in my twenties,\" Thomas said. \"I played a lot of Bach and Spanish guitar music. I'd get up early and play before school, practicing three hours every day.\" In addition to his studies of classical guitar, Thomas was also a fan of progressive rock like ELP and the early electronic music of Walter Carlos.\n\nAfter graduating high school in 1974, Thomas spent two years living at home. He got a music scholarship to SUNY Buffalo but just before he started school, his father died. \"When I left, everything I'd known before was over,\" Thomas said. At school he practiced guitar more than ever and took classes in composition. He became good friends with fellow student Michael Lazar who first turned him on to Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, which would later inspire him to make electronic music of his own. However, he ultimately decided not to finish his studies. In late 1979, Thomas headed for Eugene, Oregon where his older brother was already living.\n\nIn Oregon, Thomas got a job as a tree planter alongside his brother. \"We made $100 a day and lived off that money in the off-season,\" Thomas said. \"It was a lifestyle thing. You'd stay in a motel, get out at dawn and travel to different places like Idaho, Montana. It was manual labor, but I had been pretty athletic in high school – primarily swimming and baseball.\" When he wasn't working, Thomas diligently practiced his guitar and continued to take lessons and master classes. \n\nOne of Thomas' early friends in Eugene was Steve Rappaport, a songwriter who'd had a hit with his song \"Martian Hop\" back in 1963 with his band the Randells. By then, Rappaport was going by the name Devarahi and had built an electronic music studio with an Arp 2600, a Prophet 5 and other state of the art gear.  At the time, Devarahi was working on a book that would ultimately become *The Complete Guide to Synthesizers*. Thomas recalls hanging out at Devarahi's house during this time where he learned a lot about synthesis.\n\nThomas met other musicians interested in electronic music while he was living in Eugene,  like [Brian Magill](/brian-magill) and [Peter Nothnagle](/peter-nothnagle). Thomas took a ten-week class in recording from the latter, and he recalls Magill recruiting him to join the Eugene Electronic Collective that also included [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith) and Derryl Parsons. Magill, who handled outreach for the group, recalled: \"We thought of ourselves as an equal collective where everyone had an equal vote. Our first idea was to put out a compilation that featured our music. Our first tape, *Free Fall* was pretty successful. I sent it to radio stations and magazines, and it got some notoriety. I think we pressed a few hundred, but only sold about 40-50 copies. The rest we traded.\"\n\nIn addition to the first compilation, each artist in the collective also produced a solo release. Thomas put out *The Hours Away* which showed an influence from early Tangerine Dream and was recorded at Devarahi's studio and at home where he had a Korg MS-20. Thomas sold some copies of the tape at Perelandra, a local new age bookstore, and the collective also actively traded with others in the scene like Michael Chocholak.\n\nThroughout this period, Thomas remained active as a classical guitarist. He regularly played gigs at restaurants and weddings while also teaching lessons.  In 1987 he put out a cassette release of his classical guitar music called *Tradition and Imagination* featuring his standard repertoire and original compositions. For his guitar music, Thomas has cited Egberto Gismonit and Ralph Towner as two of his big influences. \n\nIn 1991, Thomas joined a band called Mythic Sky that helped bridge his interests in classical guitar music and synthesizers. The band was founded by David Helfand who played harp, mandocello and guitar, and also included Joey Kimzey on drums and Dennis Pearman on bass. \"We were all-original electro/acoustic folk space music,\" Thomas said. \"I started playing synthesizers and later played some classical guitar. It had some of the feel of rock but it was all instrumental.\"\n\nMythic Sky put out one self-titled CD in 1995 and lasted until 1998 when Helfand left the band. The group then morphed into a trio called Vishravas and Thomas abandoned the synth to play only guitar as the band went in a heavier prog direction. Thomas continued to occasionally release guitar albums, such as his *Confluence* CD in 1994 and *Discovery* in 2004 with flautist Alan McCullough. He also did some collaborations with Derryl Parsons between 1998 and 2001, composing synth parts as a backdrop for Parsons' poetry.\n\nMore recently, Thomas has started composing electronic music again, inspired by the interest of the Numero Group who released *Switched on Eugene*, a compilation of artists affiliated with the EEMC including Thomas. ","discography":{"peter-thomas":{"albums":{"the-hours-away":{"image":"","label":"EEMC","review":"","title":"The Hours Away","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":205,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Peter-Thomas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9e8162e8-fd83-40a1-b0f1-cc0b2bcb8c65","last_name":"Thomas"},"philip-perkins":{"artist_name":"Philip Perkins","body":"Philip Perkins is an experimental musician and filmmaker based in San Francisco. He often incorporates urban field recordings in his work such as *Drive Time*, imparting an ambient quality that Sound Choice once called \"aural impressions.\" His primary musical influences were \"Blue\" Gene Tyranny and the Residents, both of which he knew and worked with in different capacities. In the case of the Residents, Perkins initially worked as their cinematographer but later became a part of their live show in the late '70s and early '80s. Perkins has released over 20 cassettes and LPs on the Fun Music label, including some by other musicians such as Scott Fraser, “Blue” Gene Tyranny and David Ocker. Some of his work has been reissued recently, such as *Drive Time* on Body Double and *King of the World* on [Choon!](https://choooon.bandcamp.com/artists).\n\nPerkins was born in 1951 and grew up in various places across the US before landing in Los Angeles where he finished high school. He attended college at the University of the Pacific and the University of Oregon. During college, Perkins enjoyed hanging out with experimental artists and filmmakers, setting his sights on a career in film. He spent much of the '70s making short films and co-founded the Eugene Filmmaker's Cinematheque in Oregon. Many of his early films were made with his friend Scott Fraser such as *Rain (1974)*, *Moon* (1974), *Metronomie* (1974), and *A River* (1975). \n\nPerkins moved to San Francisco in the mid-'70s, drawn there in part by Canyon Cinema, an early distributor of independent and avant-garde films and the home of the Canyon Cinematheque shows at the SF Art Institute.  In time, Perkins got some of his work shown there such as *Gila* (1979), *Patchwork* (1977), and [*Time Passes*]( https://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=239) (1978) .\n\nPerkins' film experience led to a career as a sound recordist, sound editor, and re-recording mixer for documentaries, commercials and indie features, which became his main source of income over the years and an inspiration for his music too. But Perkins also found the process of filmmaking to be slow and expensive, and he became drawn to music as another means of self-expression. \"I might be able to afford to do one four-minute film per year, but I could screw around endlessly with audio tape,\" Perkins recalled.\n\nPerkins launched the label Fun Music with Scott Fraser in 1980, starting with a 45 (\"Tool's Paint\") that he initially sold at stores like Rough Trade and Tower Records. He released some early cassettes in small editions, but he began getting more notice when he started issuing LPs such as *Neighborhood with a Sky* and *King of the World*. Both got positive reviews in the underground press, with *Op* appreciating his \"playful electronic music\" while Sound Choice lauded his \"finely polished concept albums.\" \n\nIn addition to Perkins’ music, Fun Music was home to releases by David Ocker, Scott Fraser, and \"Blue\" Gene Tyranny.  Like Perkins, Fraser was interested in field recordings and one of his cassettes was comprised entirely of water sounds. As the label matured, Perkins utilized the cassette format often for longer works such as  *The Flame of Ambition* or *Hall of Flowers*, though he also excerpted both on a vinyl compilation. Some of his releases, such as *The Rosetta Stone* and *Virgo Ramayana* were cassette only.\n\nIn the '90s, Perkins focused on the Bifurcators, a duo with Scott Fraser that released two CD's on Artifact Recordings between 1995 and 2001, (*Gang of 2*, and *Like A Bird In The Wilderness*) while continuing to produce solo works, remaining active into the present. Much of Perkins' music is available on Bandcamp [here](https://philipperkins.bandcamp.com/).  His later work, as well as that of The Bifurcators, has mostly been released through [Artifact Recordings](https://artifactrecordings.bandcamp.com/).\n\nSource: Author Interview, 12/31/22","discography":{"philip-perkins":{"albums":{"a-new-work":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"A New Work","year":"1992"},"apartment-life":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Apartment Life","year":"1980"},"drive-time":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Drive Time","year":"1985"},"flame-of-ambition":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Flame of Ambition","year":"1986"},"hall-of-flowers":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"Everyday sounds of kids, birds, sirens, conversations, fireworks, etc. are developed into collages of evolving loops. At times these are melded with Perkins’ own musical additions: appropriately light touches that enhance or blend successive movements of sound. His intent here was to create a radio piece that could be appreciated in short segments or as a whole and he succeeds. It is also flexible in terms of either ambient or active listening and has a delicacy and balance that is absent from a great deal of work in this genre. Divided into three parts of increasingly complex processing and mix, the piece takes a set of sonic elements which are then combined and recombined resulting in an effect similar to a sonic kaleidoscope crossed with a mobius strip; you get the same constants, but in different arrangements and perceived from different perspectives. An interesting concept as well as a good listen.\n\n([Michael Chocholok](/michael-chocholak) Sound Choice #10, 1989)","title":"Hall of Flowers","year":"1987"},"king-of-the-world":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"King of the World","year":"1983"},"neighborhood-with-a-sky":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Neighborhood with a Sky","year":"1987"},"pacal":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Pacal (The Shield)","year":"1983"},"rosetta-stone":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Rosetta Stone","year":"1986"},"say-again":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Say Again","year":"1991"},"shapiro":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Shapiro, Vermeer, Florida, and San Francisco","year":"1991"},"surface-to-air":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Surface to Air","year":"1991"},"tapework":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tapework","year":"1980"},"the-remotes":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"The Remotes","year":"1990"},"virgo":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Virgo Ramayana (And Other Works for Radio)","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":328,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Philip-Perkins-480.jpeg?alt=media&token=c77ef273-b001-4327-bdf0-b8f53e330cec","image_credit":"Claudia Kunin","last_name":"Perkins"},"projekt-electronic-amerika":{"artist_name":"Projekt Electronic Amerika","body":"Sam Rosenthal made his name as the founder and primary member of darkwave band Black Tape for a Blue Girl, but he is also a longtime promoter of electronic music, first through his own fanzine (*Alternative Rhythms*) and tape compilations, and later through his successful Projekt label, which by the late '90s had become one of the premiere indie labels in the US for goth, ethereal, and ambient sounds. Rosenthal's early cassettes such as *The Old Lake* and *The April Rain* were his most overtly ambient works, though he continued to support the genre, signing ambient luminaries like [Steve Roach](/steve-roach), [Forrest Fang](/forrest-fang), vidnaObmana and Alio Die as Projekt became more successful in the '90s.\n\nSam Rosenthal was born in 1965 and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His mother was Swiss and felt like a fish out of water in humid, tropical South Florida. Rosenthal felt similarly out of place and retreated into a world of music, reading Creem magazine and digging into Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and Tangerine Dream. Fascinated by the electronic sounds overseas, he bought his own synth, a Moog Concertmate MG-1.\n\nThrough magazines like *Op* and *Sound Choice*, Rosenthal learned about cassette culture and the emerging network of independent musicians creating and distributing their own music in the US. In 1981, he started his own fanzine called Alternative Rhythms and put out free issues every 2 months for the next five years. At its height, the circulation was 8,000 copies with issues distributed throughout the Southeast. The magazine covered a range of underground bands and genres but mostly centered on new wave, college rock, and punk.\n \nThrough his magazine, Rosenthal began trading tapes with other collectors and also started making connections with like-minded bands in Florida. He especially liked Radio Berlin, a Ft. Lauderdale synth pop band who released an EP in 1982, as well as Futurisk, who would go on to appear on the cover of Alternative Rhythms. To help support the scene, Rosenthal started a record label called Projekt in 1983 and put out a compilation of Florida bands called *Projekt Electronic South Florida Vol. 1*, soon followed by a second volume.\n\nMeanwhile, Rosenthal was working on music of his own, releasing his first album *Round Trip*, in 1984, closely followed by two more. The songs tended to alternate between lo-fi ambient and minimal wave synth pop. Rosenthal recorded by bouncing tracks between two tape recorders, leading to plenty of tape hiss. The tape covers were black and white on colored card stock and the tapes were store bought blanks. \n \nAfter this initial burst of productivity, Rosenthal upgraded to a four track and re-recorded some earlier pieces for his most high profile release to date, *Tanzmusik*. Issued on vinyl in an edition of 250 copies, the album showcased a similar sound as his earlier work but with better fidelity. Rosenthal advertised the album in Sound Choice and Option as 14 songs of \"electronic mood music with influence from Tangerine Dream, Eno, and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark.\" Reviews were generally good, with Option calling it \"peaceful, pleasant, and well produced\" and Synthetic Pleasure echoing the sentiment. \n\nRosenthal soon went on to put out five additional full-length cassettes in 1985, evolving his sound somewhat by the end of the year to include other instrumentation like violin and vocals on *Islands.* \"Back then I just made music, put it out, made music, put it out,\" Rosenthal said. \"I dubbed them as needed and probably never made over 100 copies of anything.\" In addition to his prolific output, Rosenthal still ran his magazine, the record label, and even found time to write the occasional music review for Sound Choice.\n \nIn January of 1986, Rosenthal left Florida to attend Chapman College (later Chapman University) in Orange, California. Continuing in the direction of *Islands*, he formed a new studio project called Black Tape for a Blue Girl, a gothic ambient band with ethereal vocals. Their music falls outside of the scope of this guide, though early albums like *The Rope* did contain a number of ambient pieces.\n \nAfter graduating from college, Rosenthal got a job demonstrating software for a computer company. He continued to run his Projekt label as a hobby, but by 1991 he was faced with a choice. \"I was working out of town a lot and couldn’t deal with running a business and traveling,\" Rosenthal said. \"The bands [on my label] had albums that kept doing well and we grew to four employees.\" Rosenthal decided to go all in.\n \nBy 1996, Rosenthal relocated to Chicago. His label finally had reliable distribution through Ryko and he started the annual Projektfest featuring various goth, darkwave and ambient artists. The best-selling artists were Lycia and Love Spirals Downward, as well as Black Tape for a Blue Girl, who by then had found an appreciate audience. In a few years they would even mount their first tour. By the next decade, Rosenthal’s label was still going strong, and he was able to sign some of America’s more well-known ambient composers to Projekt, including Steve Roach and Forrest Fang. As of 2019, Projekt has put out over 350 albums. Rosenthal now lives in Portland, Oregon.\n","discography":{"doppler-shift":{"albums":{"live-at-the-guggenheim":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"Recorded at the Guggenheim Gallery in Orange, CA, this begins with a series of noise sweeps and swishes which gradually give way to its own sound - a Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze pulse with eerie high sustains. Although Shifters Walter Holland and Sam Rosenthal are not breaking any new ground here, this is still very listenable, perfect for those quiet times. All of the pieces appearing here are intelligently conceived and planned out. Although this is live, one would never know it, the recording is first-rate. It would be nice if the bulk of new age electronic music carried the textures and dynamics Doppler Shift achieve in their sound.\n\n(A. Produce AKA Barry Craig, *Option*, Jan/Feb 1987)","title":"Live at the Guggenheim","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Doppler Shift","entry_number":2},"projekt-electronic-amerika":{"albums":{"an-hour-of-ambience":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"An Hour of Ambience","year":"1985"},"before-the-buildings-fell":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"Before the Buildings Fell","year":"1986"},"diving-into-cool-water":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"For his second album, Rosenthal looked to add a bit more structure to his ambient electronic pieces. The twenty songs featured here are still a far cry from the ethereal, goth-inspired sound he developed a few years later, instead drawing more from mid-'70s Kraftwerk or the more minimalist side of Vangelis. Rosenthal's style has a DIY appeal, with all the songs built up in his small home studio using layered synthesizers with occasional light percussion.\n\nThe cover bills this as \"90 minutes of electronic mood music,\" and it's certainly not wrong. The moods in question vary from jittery Berlin-school arpeggiation (\"3 a.m. Perimeter Road,\" \"We’re Proud of This?\") to impressionistic pieces with slower tempos and a more meditative feel (\"The Mesozoic\", \"Dolphin Cove\"). The long run time gives Rosenthal room to experiment with atypical sounds, like the Middle Eastern accents of \"Cairo\" or backwards sequencing on the refreshingly weird \"Canvas Plateau.\" \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)\n","title":"Diving Into Cool Waters","year":"1984"},"islands":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"Sam Rosenthal’s circular synth composition \"Islands\" is spread over two sides of this tape. His current points of reference seem more Reich-inspired than Eno-esque, creating a pleasant sustained soundscape with slick self-assurance. Many unexpected touches grace the composition, notably a grand violin solo on the first side and baroque vocals introducing the second. The sound quality is excellent and the packaging extraordinarily professional; unfortunately Rosenthal also included a booklet crammed with so much self-congratulatory blather that I was led to expect more than I got. Yes, the textures are pleasing, but the composition itself is a bit too obvious and repetitive to be the truly \"intriguing and challenging\" work Rosenthal claims it is.\n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option*, May/June 1986)\n","title":"Islands","year":"1985"},"round-trip":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"Round Trip","year":"1984"},"secret-flight":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"The liners to this tape explain that this is film music to a movie that doesn't exist yet, and may never exist. However, you are to feel free to watch the movie inside your head with atmospheric mood music that probably would make a competent, if not overly exciting soundtrack. Peaceful ambient solo synth music by Sam Rosenthal who, judging by this and other releases, could develop into a major talent in time, but who could be more adventurous and less derivative next time around.\n\n(Bob Morris *Option* Nov/Dec, 1985)","title":"Secret Flight","year":"1985"},"statique-ballet":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"Statique Ballet","year":"1985"},"tanzmusik":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"Tanzmusik","year":"1985"},"the-april-rain":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"","title":"The April Rain","year":"1985"},"the-old-lake":{"image":"","label":"Projekt","review":"This ambient cassette by synthesist Sam Rosenthal contains some of the most soothing and peaceful textures I’ve heard in awhile, alongside some of the most haunting and disturbing textures I’ve heard. Side A is a 15 minute piece called \"The Old Lake.\" Soft and meditative tones intertwine in a constantly shifting tapestry of sound. A quite enjoyable experience. Side B consists of three works: \"Spotlight Marsh\" has an eerie, nightmarish feel; \"Reagan Song\" and \"Last November\" do an admirable job of capturing audibly the blackness that was in the hearts of the 37,000,000 Americans who went to the polls and voted against R.R. [Ronald Reagan] last November.\n\n(Allen Green, *Sound Choice* No. 3, 1985)","title":"The Old Lake","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":109,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Sam-Rosenthal-alt.jpg?alt=media&token=ce1092f9-d72f-4521-8a4c-4f99bac895d1","last_name":"Projekt Electronic Amerika"},"quark-pair":{"artist_name":"Quark Pair","body":"While most '80s electronic music was the product of twenty-and-thirty-something baby boomers, Quark Pair was a rare exception: a precocious duo of Gen X teenagers who met at Stuyvesant high school in New York. The band was formed by Golan Levin (above left) and Mark Rhodes (above right) during their sophomore year, bonding over a shared interest in electronic music and science. Their two-self-released cassettes were pressed in editions of 500 and were only sold at shows or on consignment at the time and are now scarce.\n\nLevin was an only child, born in 1972 and raised in Staten Island. His parents divorced when he was ten and he stayed with his mother, an abstract expressionist painter. Levin was interested in mathematics and also loved to draw. He got into electronic music via the Eurythmics, whose song \"Paint a Rumor\" featured an extended electronic section without vocals. \"I wanted more music like that,\" Levin said. \"I had a hard time finding instrumental electronic music. I just wanted the machines. Then I went to summer camp and some older guy told me about Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre.\"\n\nRhodes was born in 1971 and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father was Lawrence Rhodes, a famous ballet dancer then working at NYU as a teacher and chairman of the dance department. His mother had been a dancer as well. Rhodes had a background in classical music and knew how to play the oboe.\n\nBy the time the two met in 1986, Levin was a regular listener of *Beta Waves*, Craig Kozan's electronic music show on WRSU. Levin had his own synthesizer but was self-taught and unaware of proper playing technique. Instead, he was focused on the technical aspect of the instrument. Once Levin and Rhodes became friends, Levin moved his gear into Rhodes' bedroom, and they had a mini-studio with an Amiga computer, a Korg Poly 800-II, and a Roland JX-3P. They would soon add more.\n\nThe two aspiring musicians would sometimes host what they called \"sequencer parties\" at Rhodes' apartment.  \"We had a loop on the sequencer, and someone would lay down a monophonic bass line, and then another person would do a different track over the bass line. Then, we'd mute the bass line, and a new person would only listen to second track, like an exquisite corpse. At the end of the evening, we'd listen to all the tracks stacked up. Usually there was something where someone interpreted the song in the wrong key.\"\n\nThe duo picked a name–Quark Pair–and got to work on their debut album *Relativity*,  combining material they had written separately, plus a few songs they wrote together. Levin recalls that they had somewhat different influences, with him drawing more from Jean Michel-Jarre while Rhodes liked Yanni and Mannheim Steamroller. \"In retrospect, I don't think I had good taste in music,\" Levin muses.\n\nQuark Pair's first album was recorded at [Patty DeVincentis'](/patrice-devincentis) studio, Phaze IV, in Union Beach, New Jersey in December 1987.  \"Patty's boyfriend, Brian Van Korn, was our sound engineer,\" Levin said. \"Mark's dad drove us down and we recorded the whole thing to DAT. We had already sequenced everything at Mark’s apartment and it only took two days to record. One thing I remember - there was a fragrance factory nearby and outside it smelled like a mixture of aftershave and peach flavoring.\"\n\nOnce the recordings were done, the duo pressed 500 copies of the cassette and sold them on consignment at the new age shop Star Magic, as well as record stores like Bleecker Bob’s. They had been going to electronic music shows already in New Jersey, and they networked with other musicians like [Don Slepian](/don-slepian) and [Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark) who were both a part of the Creative Underground collective.  Slepian got the kids their first show, playing at the Alternative Music Festival in Hazlet, New Jersey. Their next concert was at NYU, which Mark’s father set up. They invited Slepian and put on a solid show, but it would be their last. \"When we played live, we just hit a button,\" Levin said. \"We felt like we were faking it. We performed some simple parts, but it didn’t feel right as a live performance. We stopped performing after that and dug into the studio.\"\n\nThe duo’s next album was the more sophisticated *Observatory* in 1989, which garnered a review in *EAR Magazine* that called them \"whiz kids\" whose music \"sits comfortably in the realm of the accessible but remains nonetheless stimulating and exotic.\" Just before that, they'd been profiled in *Keyboard Magazine* where their age was again highlighted. Golan remarked, \"The older musicians have been really supportive–but we don't tailor music for young or older audiences, we just play and see what happens.\"\n\nBy the time of their second album, Golan and Rhodes were already high school seniors, and the two decided to end the project. Rhodes went on to attend Oberlin College to study in the TIMARA electronic music program and is now a software developer. Levin went to college at MIT to get a degree in media arts, and then obtained a master's degree there in the field of Aesthetics and Computation. He is now a full professor at Carnegie Mellon. ","discography":{"quark-pair":{"albums":{"observatory":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Observatory","year":"1989"},"relativity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Relativity","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":169,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/quark-pair-640.jpg?alt=media&token=5c4f97b7-7d3a-4c5f-98d7-d8ac8851de82","image_credit":"Lone Rhodes","last_name":"Quark"},"r-carlos-nakai-william-eaton-will-clipman":{"artist_name":"R. Carlos Nakai","body":"Arizona flutist Raymond Carlos Nakai (born 1946) is one of the big success stories in new age and remains the best-known Native American Flutist in the genre. Nakai, who is of Navajo and Ute descent, initially played the cornet but taught himself to play a cedar flute in the early '70s during a dark period after returning home from a stint in the Navy. Nakai would eventually earn his Bachelor’s degree at the end of the decade at Northern Arizona University and later went on to earn a Master's Degree in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. In the early '80s, he got married and began recording solo flute pieces on cassette while he worked as a high school teacher. His self-released album *Changes* caught the attention of Canyon Records who went on to issue 40 albums from him over a multi-decade career that yielded 11 Grammy nominations and a platinum-selling album of solo flute (*Canyon Trilogy*). Many of his albums had multiple pressings and are easy to find, but some of his early albums like Jackalope's debut or *Cycles* may be of interest to readers.","discography":{"jackalope":{"albums":{"boat-people":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Boat People","year":"1993"},"jackalope":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Jackalope","year":"1986"},"weavings":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Weavings","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Jackalope","entry_number":2},"r-carlos-nakai":{"albums":{"canyon-trilogy":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Canyon Trilogy","year":"1989"},"changes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Changes","year":"1982"},"cycles":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Cycles","year":"1985"},"desert-dance":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Harmonies","review":"","title":"Desert Dance","year":"1990"},"earth-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Earth Spirit","year":"1987"},"emergence":{"image":"","label":"Canyon","review":"","title":"Emergence: Songs of the Rainbow World","year":"1992"},"journeys":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Journeys","year":"1986"},"sundance-season":{"image":"","label":"Celestial Harmonies","review":"","title":"Sundance Season","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"R. Carlos Nakai","entry_number":1},"r-carlos-nakai-william-eaton-will-clipman":{"albums":{"ancestral-voices":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Feather, Stone and Light","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"R. Carlos Nakai, William Eaton, Will Clipman","entry_number":4},"william-eaton-carlos-nakai":{"albums":{"ancestral-voices":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Ancestral Voices","year":"1992"},"carry-the-gift":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Carry the Gift","year":"1988"},"winter-dreams-for-christmas":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Winter Dreams for Christmas","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton and R. Carlos Nakai","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":322,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/carlos-nakai-crop-640.png?alt=media&token=7eb78b35-216d-4cb9-a949-0375feffa517","last_name":"Nakai"},"r-s-kline":{"artist_name":"R.S. Kline","body":"After serving eleven years in the Army, Randy Kline was discharged and returned home to Lebanon, Pennsylvania where he set up an electronic studio and put out a cassette called *In The Forest* in 1991. Inspired by Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream and Frank Zappa, he built on decades of experience playing in cover bands and writing arrangements for the Army band. He got some limited distribution from *AfterTouch* magazine, but he didn't sell many copies and the tape remains largely unknown. Kline now works as a software engineer and still records music at home, though he has yet to release a follow-up.","discography":{"r-s-kline":{"albums":{"a-look-in-a-forest":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"A Look In A Forest","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":269,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/randy-kline-640.jpg?alt=media&token=87edac12-fec1-4c6e-b7b4-5b4c2893fc3b","last_name":"Kline"},"radhika-miller":{"artist_name":"Radhika Miller","body":"Radhika Miller (born 1957) is a flutist and music educator who has been a member of the Integral Yoga community since her teenage years. In the early '80s, Swami Satchidananda encouraged her to record music for relaxation and meditation; Miller responded with *Lotus Love Call* in 1983. The cassette eventually found an audience outside her community, and she went on to self-release over a dozen albums that drew from early music, spirituals, and choral works. Miller's decorous and refined style could be compared to [Daniel Kobialka](/daniel-kobialka) or Tingstad & Rumble, but like Kobialka she does have moments of deeper introspection such as \"Peace\" on *Lotus Love Call*. Her official bio can be found [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20180818194346/https://radhikamiller.com/bio/).","discography":{"robert-rich":{"albums":{"blossoms-in-the-snow":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"Blossoms in the Show","year":"1990"},"gems":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"Gems of Grace","year":"1990"},"here-and-faraway":{"image":"","label":"Real Music","review":"","title":"Here and Faraway","year":"1992"},"laughing-waters":{"image":"","label":"Real Music","review":"","title":"Laughing Waters","year":"1993"},"lotus-love-call":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"Lotus Love Call","year":"1983"},"origins":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"Origins","year":"1989"},"sunlit-reverie":{"image":"","label":"Real Music","review":"","title":"Sunlit Reverie","year":"1985"},"the-larks-bride":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"The Lark's Bride","year":"1987"},"within-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Radhika Miller Music","review":"","title":"Within the Wind","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Radhika Miller","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":327,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/rhadika-656-a.jpeg?alt=media&token=04496498-341e-4f81-aba3-ae0d9007d579","last_name":"Miller"},"ramana-das":{"artist_name":"Ramana Das","body":"Paul \"Ramana Das\" Silbey (or R.D. as he was known to his friends) was a musician, writer, and entrepreneur who began recording mystical, spiritually motivated music starting in the early '70s with his jazz fusion group Collective Star. By 1977, he gave up his \"cardboard\" life in New York to move to California where he thrived in the burgeoning new age San Francisco community, landing a job as music editor of the influential Yoga Journal. His first release using the name Ramana Das was the chant-heavy *American Mantra*, followed by the debut of his group project Angelsong four years later. After getting married in 1982 to [Uma Glick](/uma-silbey), the couple put out five tapes on their own U-Music label.  When they divorced in 1988, Ramana Das continued his artistic pursuits with his next wife Marilena, including tantric sex albums and many solo piano works. Ramana Das passed away in 2016.\n\nBorn Paul Silberstein in 1938, he grew up on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, leading a comfortable life as the son of a doctor. His parents were Russian immigrants who first met at a dance in New York and became naturalized citizens in 1928. In his youth, he shortened his last name to Silbey. He and his older brother Serge took classical piano lessons which he continued throughout high school, culminating with shows at New York’s Town Hall and Carnegie Hall.\n\nSilbey's early adulthood was fairly traditional - he got married at the age of 20 to Ruby Lee Manischewitz (a wine heiress) and worked various jobs in the corporate world after graduating from Columbia. The couple went on to have three kids and lived in the East Village. At a playground one day in the late ‘60s, he had a chance encounter that would radically alter the course of his life.\n\nAccording to Ramana Das' widow Marilena, \"His young family had moved to the East Village. He was with his youngest child, standing next to another dad at the swings. They started talking, and he learned about their baby sitting co-op in the area. He was very interested in that and it turned out the group was avant-garde and they called themselves the Group Image. So he started hanging out with them and smoking pot and he learned about another life he had no idea about before. He used to call this period his cardboard life.\"\n \nIn the next few years, Silbey took an interest in Sufism, meditation, and the emerging new age spirituality. He became a follower of Neem Karoli Baba, as well as Joya Santanya (born Joyce Green in Brooklyn). Joya was a spiritual teacher and Neem Karoli Baba devotee who used her powerful charisma and a flare for melodrama to amass a large following in the New York area, including Ram Dass for a brief period. (Dass would later call her a fraud in a *Yoga Journal* [article](http://www.kashiashram.com/egg_on_my_beard.pdf).) According to Marilena, Joya was the one who gave Silbey the name Ramana Das.\n\nAlso in the mid-'70s, Silbey formed a band called Collective Star, producing two albums of fusion jazz that integrated Sufi chants and eastern spirituality. Silbey wrote most of the music and self-released the lp's on his Unanimous Anonymous label, even securing cover art for the debut from Mati Klarwein, a renowned artist whose work had already adorned popular works by Miles Davis and Santana.\n\nBy this time, Silbey and his wife had grown so far apart that a divorce seemed unavoidable. He accelerated the split when he decided to move to California with a group of Joya's disciples and some members of the Group Image.  According to Marilena, Silbey was dosed by someone in the Grateful Dead's circle the day of his arrival: \"He was on the back of a motorcycle going over the Bay Bridge when he started to come on.\" Once in San Francisco, he and other spiritual travelers established a satsang in an old mansion in Pacific Heights.  Apparently Joya Santanya asked Silbey, now going by Ramana Das, to be silent for an entire year and he also took a vow of celibacy for six months.\n\nIn 1977, Ramana Das first met Rama Vernon, one of the co-founders of the Yoga Journal. \"I was hosting Joya and 50 of her disciples at the time,\" Vernon recalled. \"Ramana Das was with her and he was dressed all in white and he was brown and tan and glistening. He looked so healthy and robust. They all stayed with me for 10 days. It was a very long 10 days. After that, he came over all the time to play our grand piano and I had him do music for some of my yoga groups for the next five decades. He loved to chant and sing 'Hanuman Chalisa.'\" \n\nThe same year, Ramana Das began a tradition of hosting Tuesday night music sessions with chanting, drumming and dancing. He also put out a live cassette of devotional music, calling it *American Mantra* in 1977.  For income, he started teaching at the Family Light Music School, and also contributed to the Yoga Journal as a freelance writer. He would later go on to become the music editor there where he flourished, publishing a column each month. He reviewed tapes of the emerging new age music scene, including artists like Bob Kindler, [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), [William Aura](/William-aura), [Kevin Braheny](/Kevin-braheny), and [Michael Stearns](/Michael-stearns).\n\nWhile living with Joya's followers in the satsang, Ramana Das had a relationship with one of her fellow devotees and fathered a child named Joya with her. However, this union was brief as the woman soon left the group with the child. Ramana Das himself seems to have severed ties with Joya not long after. \n\nAfter leaving the satsang, Ramana Das hooked up with a gypsy songwriter named Teressa Angelsong who had recently moved to California from Texas. She had an otherworldly voice somewhere in the vicinity of Margaret Morgan from These Trails or Kate Bush at her freakiest.  With Ramana Das on vocals, keyboards and ectar, the sound was further augmented by Dallas Smith on winds, [Eddie Guthman](/Eddie-guthman) on bass, and two percussionists. The mix of Indian rhythms, spacey synths and minor key melodies often sounds like Steeleye Span or Pentangle if they'd relocated to Marin County and went new age.  Angelsong gigged in the area from 1979 to 1982 until Teressa moved to Santa Cruz and joined a new project with [Aziz Paige](/aziz-paige).\n\nA few years later, at a musical gathering in Los Angeles, Ramana Das met his next wife Uma, who then owned a small jewelry shop. The two had an immediate connection and Uma moved up to San Francisco to live with Ramana Das who finally had his own apartment. Ramana Das wanted Uma to help pay the rent, so the two of them worked together on her jewelry business, now called UMA. Having worked as a marketing executive before his spiritual awakening, Ramana Das used his skills to help Uma get her jewelry into new age book shops and metaphysical stores. The business took off, with sales doubling each year, and before long Uma’s business had revenues in the millions. \n \nIn 1985, Ramana Das and Uma released their first three cassettes, *Wakan-tanka*, *Helios*, and *Crystal Path* on their own U-Music label. The first two releases used percussion like bells, gongs, and rattles to create a primal, heavy atmosphere. *Crystal Path* was a more relaxing affair, with Silbey contributing  guided imagery on the healing properties of crystals. Their fourth release from 1986, *Crystals, Colors, Chakras* was similar.\n \nIn 1986, Uma and Ramana Das separated, though they remained close. Their last album together was appropriately titled *Flying Free*.  By the time of their divorce, the couple had a nice house in Mill Valley with a brand new music studio that Ramana Das had built. He got to keep the house, but it took him a few more years to rebuild his studio and release new work. In 1989, he provided a score to Return of the Goddess for the New Millennium, an erotic dance performance featuring Jamie Miller. The VHS was released on U-Music. Shortly after, Ramana Das released a new cassette *Millenium Dance* that aimed for a synthesis of \"rock, disco, jazz, world music and classical elements\" according to the tape cover.\n\nRamana Das remarried to Marilena in 1991, and they continued his tradition of hosting weekly musical gatherings on Tuesdays. The couple was also interested in tantric sex and released albums like *Ecstatic Sounds* and *Ecstatica 1: A Soundtrack for Lovers* that show an influence from Enigma and other ‘90s electronic/new age hybrids. The couple also produced a VHS video  called *Intimate Secrets of Sex and Spirit: How To Worship Each Other in Bed.*  The video presents \"sexually explicit, spiritually expansive techniques to 'expand your envelope of pleasure' while sharing with your beloved... or all by yourself.\" By this time, Ramana Das was using the name Paul R.D. for his work.\n\nBy 2000, Ramana Das returned to playing solo piano, performing in a spontaneous, channeled style that he called \"streaming.\" He released many albums in this style until his health started to fail. Before his passing in 2016, Ramana Das was honored in a heartfelt gathering created and attended by his large circle of friends and family. Looking back at the life of Ramana Das, Rama Vernon reflected: \"I respected him for the music he did. He was so open hearted and he had an energy that was spiritually powerful. He was loved by many people and was always giving and serving and people love that.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\nSources: \n-  Author interview with Rama Vernon, Jan 4, 2020 and Feb 8, 2020\n-  Author interviews with Marilena Silbey, Nov 26, 2019\n-  Author interviews with Uma Silbey, Ocobert 23, 2018\n-  NY and California public records\n-  Yoga Journal\n-  Various Ramana Das bios (likely penned by himself), retrieved from Cdbaby.com, Amazon.com,  and [here](https://www.meetup.com/onenesschicago/messages/boards/thread/10089253)","discography":{"angelsong":{"albums":{"soaring":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Soaring","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Angelsong","entry_number":3},"collective-star":{"albums":{"garuda":{"image":"","label":"Unanimous Anonymous","review":"","title":"Garuda","year":"1976"},"music-of-the-mantric-wave-vol-ii":{"image":"","label":"Unanimous Anonymous","review":"","title":"Music of the Mantric Wave Vol. II","year":"1975"}},"artist_name":"Collective Star","entry_number":1},"paul-rd-and-marilena-silbey":{"albums":{"ecstatic-emergence":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Ecstatic Emergence","year":"1998"},"ecstatic-sound":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Ecstatic Sound","year":"1992"},"ecstatica-1-a-soundtrack-for-lovers":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Ecstatica 1: A Soundtrack for Lovers","year":"1994"},"remember-light-decree":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Remember Light Decree","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Paul RD and Marilena Silbey","entry_number":5},"ramana-das":{"albums":{"american-mantra":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"American Mantra","year":"1977"},"millennium-dance":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Millennium Dance","year":"1989"},"sound-power":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Sound Power","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Ramana Das","entry_number":2},"uma-and-ramana-das":{"albums":{"crystal-path":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Crystal Path","year":"1985"},"crystals-chakras-color-and-sound":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Crystals, Chakras, Color and Sound","year":"1986"},"flying-free":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"Both sides are guided meditations from Uma scored with gongs, synths, and bowls. ","title":"Flying Free","year":"1986"},"helios":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"Billed as \"a powerful live experience leading to deep states of healing, inner peace, and meditation,\" *Helios* is thirty-plus minutes of mostly acoustic, percussive sounds courtesy of The Lovers, Ramana and Uma. \n\nKicking off with some large-sounding gongs beaten by slow mallets, the pummeling quickly becomes more aggressive, building to several chakra-clearing crescendos before subsiding briefly to \"rest.\" It's an orgiastic, ecstatic revelry far less concerned with technique than a Frank Perry or Wolff & Hennings composition. Not really \"musical,\" I get a little bit of the \"you had to be there\" vibe but I'm a sucker for these kinds of real-life documents and in the candidness of the recording, you can almost picture the pair enthusiastically performing this \"ritual,\" sweating, shaking and totally in the moment. \n\nSide two has a little more variation, easing in with some rim-rubbing resonance and tinkling bells. But before long it's right back to the power of the big gong—\"Total sound!\" they call it. Eventually the pair eases into gentle rhythmic tapping on Tibetan bowls and watery cascading sounds, but not a lengthy respite and soon we're treated to the \"fiery and/or nourishing warmth\" of metal on metal clanging. This wouldn't do in a dental office but sometimes relaxation isn't enough and we need something that \"disintegrates and reintegrates the vibrations associated with the physical, mental, emotional, psychic, and auric bodies that make up our being.\" \n\nRecorded live at [Emerald Web’s](/emerald-web) studio in Oakland with some synthesizer programming by Bob Stohl.\n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2020)","title":"Helios","year":"1985"},"wakan-taka":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Wakan-taka","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Uma and Ramana Das","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":142,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ramana-Das.jpg?alt=media&token=695519a4-c149-44d8-bb56-b8c2090fbb4a","last_name":"Das"},"randall-crosby":{"artist_name":"Randall Crosby","body":"Nōwa Randall Crosby is a long-time Vermont resident known to locals for his finely crafted mandolins and other stringed instruments. He is also a seasoned musician who has long been a fixture on the local scene, playing jazz, folk, and country. Born in 1958, Crosby started playing violin when he was 10 years old and took private lessons for years, learning how to improvise. While working a series of odd jobs, Crosby played in bands including his main project Crossbow which specialized in a style he called \"traditional original.\" The group self-released one album, *By the Road*, that was produced by Ken LaRoche (of the group Do’A) and  got distribution from Rounder at the time. Later, while working part-time at a bakery, Crosby met a woman who was looking for music for her yoga class which resulted in his lone new age album *Watertation* which he sold locally in an edition of about 100 copies. Crosby maintains a website [here](https://randolin.com/) for his instrument building business. In 2009, Crosby became a Zen Buddhist priest and now goes by the name Nōwa.","discography":{"re-crosby":{"albums":{"watertation":{"image":"","label":"Brookwood Music","review":"","title":"Watertation","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"R.E. Crosby","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":422,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Randall-Crosby-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=74f96e0f-e675-49c9-a99f-e90c925211be","last_name":"Crosby"},"ray-cheser":{"artist_name":"Ray Cheser","body":"Ray Cheser enjoyed a brief career during the late-'80s new age boom, self-releasing his debut *Secrets* followed by two cassettes on New World Productions. Based in Connecticut, Cheser styled a mix of progressive electronic and downtempo, with an emphasis on mood vs. melody. His music had a cerebral quality, not surprising given his background as a technical director in the healthcare industry.\n\nBorn in 1947 in Louisville, Kentucky, Cheser grew up in San Antonio, Texas, surrounded by a family of passionate, self-taught musicians. While he enjoyed playing piano and guitar with family and friends, he focused primarily on academics, earning a BS and MS in Chemistry at Texas A&M University.  Following graduation, he worked at Dow Chemical near Houston, TX, as a research chemist. In 1977, he relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, to take a position with Johnson and Johnson.\n\nAlready a fan of prog bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Genesis, and Yes, Cheser became interested in progressive electronic and ambient artists such as Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, and Vangelis.  Determined to try his hand at electronic music, he built a homemade variable oscillator which he used to record a primitive collage of harmonic tones.  This early electronic music got some airplay on the local Princeton University radio station encouraging him to continue composing and recording.\n\nIn 1980, Cheser's career advancement prompted a relocation to Connecticut, where he built a small home studio with synths and drum machines.  He eventually took the best of these pieces and self-released a cassette of his songs called *Secrets* in 1986. While mastering it at a local studio, the recording engineer suggested he send a copy to New World Productions, a newly launched US label in Torrington, CT, that specialized in New Age music.  Trine Wilcox, who ran it, went on to put out Cheser's next two albums, *Soft Motion* and *Illusions*.\n\nCheser continued to play music in the '90s and beyond alongside his technical management career. He eventually moved to Naples, Florida where he resides today. Cheser has posted some new music, as well as remixes of old music, on Soundcloud [here](https://soundcloud.com/user-348908872) and on Spotify.","discography":{"ray-cheser":{"albums":{"holograph":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Soft Motion","year":"1987"},"merlins-cave":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Illusions","year":"1988"},"secrets":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Secrets","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":326,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ray-cheser-390.jpeg?alt=media&token=28782ecb-bde0-4b1f-b1f9-5325dba0e555","image_credit":"","last_name":"Cheser"},"raymond-daniel-platt":{"artist_name":"Raymond Daniel Platt","body":"Raymond Daniel Platt is an L.A. based keyboardist and composer who found success with his *Fields of View* cassette in 1986. Prior to that he'd played with college friends Van Alpert and Bernie Sirelson in two one-off experimental projects, but those were pressed in tiny quantities and now nearly impossible to find. By 1990 he took the surname Powers and continued to release music.\n \nRaymond Daniel Platt was born in 1958 and raised in Mission Hills in Los Angeles. His father was a Polish immigrant who’d shortened his name from Plaskovski to Platt and was by then a flight navigator. His mother was a speech pathologist who loved to sing and play piano. Platt started playing piano at a young age though didn’t seriously stick to it. Singing , at that time, was his primary interest. In fifth grade, he started playing trumpet in the school band. He continued to play for several years playing songs by Herb Alpert and learning TV themes of the era.\n \nWhen he was 15, Platt first heard *Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* by the Beatles and saved enough money from his first job to buy a reel to reel recorder. These were his first explorations into music production and sound experimentation. By his senior year in high school he started to get into analog synthesizers and the more complex sounds of prog rock. He recalls one particularly memorable experience seeing Genesis during the tour for their theatrical rock opera *The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway*. Around the same time, he discovered the classical music of Stravinsky, Debussy and Bartok. He found in their music the similar odd meters he loved so much in Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, and others.\n \nPlatt went to summer camp during his early teens where he had a few key experiences the changed the course of his life.  The first was his introduction to meditation practices he learned from his counselor, which is still part of his daily discipline. A few summers later, Platt met Van Alpert, a music-obsessed record collector with similar tastes: \"I met Ray when he was 15 or 16,\" Alpert said. \"His hair was longer than mine, so I had to find out who this guy was. He was into music and we shared appreciation for the band Yes.\"\n \nAfter graduating high school, Platt auditioned as a vocalist at Cal State Northridge and was awarded a scholarship. Parallel to his studies there, he took theory classes to hone his skills as a composer as well. The school had a computer music lab with analog synths and Platt spent some time there learning how to play and program them.  At Cal State, Platt met another music student named Bernie Sirelson and they started collaborating on class projects. Sirelson happened to be friends with Alpert, Platt’s old friend from summer camp a few years before, and the trio all became a circle of friends, bonding over their love for Brian Eno’s, *Before And After Science*, at a party in 1977. Platt moved in with Alpert and the two spent many nights listening to music and recording together. \"I credit Van as being my musical guru,\" Platt said. \"He turned me on to Jon Hassell, Steve Reich and African music. Van was always a music fan first though has become quite prolific as a musician in his project Telescope.\"\n \nGraduating from college in 1981, Platt spent some time as a vocal teacher in the area. Alpert meanwhile was working at Linn Electronics, the company founded by musician and technology pioneer Roger Linn, and got Platt a job there too in 1982. At the time, the company had launched its popular drum machine with realistic sounding samples and an easy to use interface. Alpert, who was not a trained musician, would bring the machine home and program unorthodox rhythms and Platt would compose music to it.\n \nSirelson, Platt, and Alpert played together enough that they decided to write and record together, though they treated it more as a one-off album project. Alpert was pushing hard for the name Victims of Circumstance but they decided to go with *Sculpture Splash* for the band name and album title. Alpert and Platt created a record label called Paradise Boutique and pressed 100 copies, each tape featuring a unique cover design with Alpert’s art. Though many were sent out for review, not much came of it.\n \nThe trio soon regrouped for another one-off project called DMZ. Again, they pressed a hundred copies and sent them out for review, this time getting a favorable write up in Sound Choice and even some local airplay from KCRW deejay Brent Wilcox. \"I remember I was driving in the car with Bernie and we heard 'Touchdown in Cancun' on the radio,\" Alpert said. \"That was one of those breakthrough moments for me. I realized we were actually doing something that is presentable.\"\n \nFor his next album, Platt wanted to do something different and record under his own name. \"Bernie and Van liked to improvise a lot but I wanted to try composing and arranging with theme and variation,\" Platt said. \"So I made a more conventional album that was focused more on melody and orchestration.\" The result was *Fields of View*, and it arrived just as Los Angeles was experiencing a love affair with all things new age.  Local station The Wave kicked off the craze when they switched over to an all new age format, and Suzanne Doucet capitalized on it with a new age record store that gave local artists an outlet for the suddenly in-demand music. The *Fields of View* album sold about a thousand copies by Platt's estimation.\n \nIn addition to his own music, Platt also played keyboards with bands during the '80s, including a new wave band he joined with college friends called 20,000 leagues. When that band went acoustic, Platt answered with his own acoustic new folk record, *Archer and the Muse* that was the final release on Paradise Boutique in 1991. The record featured him on vocals, guitar and keyboards with assistance from drummer Scott Callison. Platt also worked as a writer, contributing to *Meditation Magazine*, and *Better World* magazine in the mid '80s and then working with LA new age record label Higher Octave writing press materials and liner notes.\n \nAfter winding down Paradise Boutique as a label, Platt began working with a metaphysical theater group called Invisible Theater Made Visible. He worked with them for six years, composing electro/acoustic music for their shows. Each production was based on a thematic premise such as Rumi, tarot, astrology etc. He also scored some independent films and shorts during this time. \n \nBy the close of the decade, Platt had reinvented himself as a life coach and moved to Ojai, California in 1999. He continued to release music sporadically including two CD’s in the early 2000s on Creekside Crafts Productions. He also formed a new band with his old friend Van Alpert called Hair, No Hair, and released a live recording. More recently he put out *Sound Odyssey* and *Valley of the Moon* in 2016, a native American flute album called *Gift of the Water* in 2017, and *Sage* in 2019, an exploration of iPad music making. \n\nIn late 2017 the Thomas Fire engulfed the outskirts of the Ojai Valley and Platt lost his home and studio in the blaze. This inspired a dance/film/music project called *Tears of the Sun* which he received a grant for and premiered in Santa Barbara, California. His website can be found [here](http://www.raypowers.com).","discography":{"dmz":{"albums":{"dmz":{"image":"","label":"Paradise Boutique","review":"","title":"DMZ","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"DMZ","entry_number":2},"raymond-daniel-platt":{"albums":{"fields-of-view":{"image":"","label":"Paradise Boutique","review":"","title":"Fields of View","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Raymond Daniel Platt","entry_number":3},"sculpture-splash":{"albums":{"sculpture-splash":{"image":"","label":"Paradise Boutique","review":"","title":"Sculpture Splash","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Sculpture Splash","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":124,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Raymond-Daniel-Platt-edit.jpg?alt=media&token=af860726-dc68-444c-a80f-dc6a4d7162ad","last_name":"Platt"},"reed-maidenberg":{"artist_name":"Reed Maidenberg","body":"Based in Santa Rosa, California, Reed Maidenberg created two albums of midi-based new age that span his wide-ranging tastes in jazz, classical, and ambient sounds. His debut *Poppies* sold well and got good reviews, but his second got less distribution and proved to be his last.\n\nMaidenberg was born in 1948 and grew up in Marion, Indiana. He loved folk boom acts like the Kingston Trio and the Chad Mitchell Trio, teaching himself to play guitar along with their songs. He became a full-blown hippie doing LSD in the '60s, expanding his musical taste to include Love, the Byrds, Mothers of Invention, the Beatles and lifelong favorite Bob Dylan.\n\nAfter dropping out of college, Maidenberg spent some time in California before traveling around Europe and playing gigs where he could. He eventually returned to Indiana where he bought some farmland near Bloomington and settled there with his first wife Peggy. However, that union only lasted about three years and Maidenberg joined a communal group that followed Indian philosopher Dr. R.P. Kaushik. That group moved to Santa Rosa in 1978 and Maidenberg followed.\n\nMaidenberg adopted a clean lifestyle in the late '70s and early '80s, helping his group run a chain of clothing stores called Harmony and Lotus. However, after a trip to Hawaii, he tried LSD again and became entranced with Hearts of Space and new age synth music like Ray Lynch, Brian Eno, and Danna & Clement. When he returned, he sold his shares in the business and used the proceeds to build a studio with MIDI and digital synths.\n\nMaidenberg's first album was *Poppies* in 1986. He experimented late at night, teaching himself to use the equipment and programming all the synths with MIDI since he wasn't a keyboard player. \"I sent the tape out to a lot of people when it was done,\" Maidenberg recalled. \"But some people - like Ethan Edgecomb of Fortuna - said it had too many styles on it. Some tracks have drums, some sound like folk, some are world music. My big break was the Nature Company who bought 5,000 cassettes and sold them at their stores.\" The album got radio play and good reviews from *New Age*, *Yoga Journal*, and *Meditation Magazine*. The latter called *Poppies* \"full of rhythmic interest and reflective odes\" while another reviewer praised it as \"well done new age pop.\"\n\nIn 1987, Maidenberg went back to school at San Francisco State and earned a degree in Broadcast and Communication Arts. Meanwhile, he beefed up his arsenal of sounds, buying some new keyboards like the Roland D-50, S550 Sampler, and Korg M-1R while continuing to compose and record. \n\nMaidenberg's second album *Unexpected Beauty* was more musically complex and ambitious. However, the Nature Company was out of business by then and other sales channels had dried up for him. During his time at San Francisco State, Maidenberg met his second wife Sarah, with whom he had a child later, in 1995. (Their daughter Emma part of an electro-pop duo called PRXZM.)\n\nOnce he graduated from college, Maidenberg got work as a sound engineer, doing archival work at George Lucas's Skywalker Sound, sound mixing, and live sound and stagecraft for the local chapter of the IATSE Union, which he had joined while working at Lucas's ranch. \"I had more albums in me, but life circumstances changed with the family situation and I got involved in a job that required a lot of my time,\" Maidenberg said. \"I'd gone back to school, got married to Sarah, and music wasn't paying the bills.\" \n\nMaidenberg continues to write and record original material, some of which is on the major streaming services, along with *Poppies* and *Unexpected Beauty.*","discography":{"reed-maidenberg":{"albums":{"poppies":{"image":"","label":"RhythMythology Music Productions","review":"","title":"Poppies","year":"1986"},"unexpected-beauty":{"image":"","label":"RhythMythology Music Productions","review":"","title":"Unexpected Beauty","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":313,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Reed-Maidenberg-640.jpg?alt=media&token=012ad2d8-efce-416a-96ce-454792f43fb6","last_name":"Maidenberg"},"repetition-repetition":{"artist_name":"Repetition Repetition","body":"Repetition Repetition was the duo of keyboardist Ruben Garcia and guitarist Steve Caton. Active throughout most of the '80s, they put out three cassettes on their Third Stone label, the first with electronic treatments from Garcia's friend [Harold Budd](/harold-budd) (center in the photo above). Garcia (above left) was entirely self-taught and was the driving force of the band, while Caton (right) had some other projects of his own and later played with Tori Amos. Garcia won the lottery in the late '80s and relocated to the Southwest, putting an end to the project, though he continued recording solo piano works until his death in 2013.\n\nBorn in 1957, Steve Caton grew up in Los Angeles surrounded by music. His father was Roy Caton, a session trumpeter with Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew who played on hundreds of famous records like *Pet Sounds* and *Forever Changes*. Caton's family also ran a sheet music duplication business out of their home in Studio City. When he was 7, Steve used to help out with the family business and recalls copying sheet music for \"You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling\" by the Righteous Brothers, a #1 hit in early 1965.  Caton started playing guitar when he was young, but eventually abandoned the instrument to focus on surfing, not returning to music again until he was 18.\n\nGarcia was born in New York in 1954 to Puerto Rican immigrants. By the time Caton met him in Los Angeles in the early '80s, Garcia was living in Commerce, CA with a woman and her two teenage kids. \"He lived in a back room and had all this gear,\" Caton recalled. \"He had an Oberheim system with a drum machine, and a flanger. He had a [Roland TR] 808 too. We just started playing and it worked out really well. He was always wanting to record.\"\n\nGarcia was a big fan of minimal and ambient music, especially Brian Eno. Harold Budd, who'd recorded with Eno, lived in Los Angeles and Garcia began corresponding with him and the two struck up a friendship. Budd recorded with the duo at various times around 1984 and some of those recordings made it onto the duo's first self-titled cassette in 1985. They got some airplay on KCRW and the Budd connection helped raise their profile in the underground. \"Garcia was very aggressive in promoting us and meeting people,\" Caton recalled. \"The name came from both of us. He came to me with the name of Repetition and I said it should be Repetition Repetition.\"\n\nAfter putting out three cassettes, Garcia won the lottery and moved away, buying property in Nevada, Arizona, and later, New Mexico. Caton found some initial success with a song of his that was included in the credits for the movie *Point Break*, but his big break came when his friend Matt Sorum (later the drummer of Guns 'N' Roses) introduced him to Tori Amos. Caton wound up playing on *Little Earthquakes*, *Into the Pink* and was a part of Amos' live band for over a decade. \n\nIn 1992, Garcia recorded his most widely-known work with Harold Budd and Daniel Lentz on the album *Music for Three Pianos* (1992). By this time, he was mainly composing piano works that he released on his own label Close Tolerance, named after the close tolerance machine work he'd been doing for decades, even after his semi-retirement.  Caton recalled that Garcia once made him a metal guitar slide for Caton as a gift. (\"It felt like it weighed about ten pounds,\" Caton laughed).\n\nTowards the end of his life, Garcia was pretty isolated, living outside of Albuquerque. He struggled with alcoholism and passed away in 2013. Caton largely retired from music making in the early 2000s to focus on building acoustic guitars.","discography":{"harold-budd-ruben-garcia":{"albums":{"music-for-3-pianos":{"image":"","label":"All Saints","review":"","title":"Music for 3 Pianos","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia, Daniel Lentz","entry_number":2},"repetition-repetition":{"albums":{"lakeland":{"image":"","label":"Third Stone Music","review":"","title":"Lakeland","year":"1987"},"repetition-repetition":{"image":"","label":"Third Stone Music","review":"","title":"Repetition Repetition","year":"1985"},"the-machinist":{"image":"","label":"Third Stone Music","review":"","title":"The Machinist","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":342,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/repetition-640.jpg?alt=media&token=3a27a117-fa71-48bf-acec-2f0135994adf","last_name":"Repetition Repetition"},"rex-bozarth":{"artist_name":"Rex Bozarth","body":"Rex Bozarth is a classically trained bassist from Texas who put out one new age electronic album in 1990. Bozarth got his start playing in cover bands in high school and by college had taken an interest in classical music like Debussy and Stravinksy in addition to prog. Bozarth ultimately earned a Master’s degree in musical performance at the University of North Texas and went on to play with the Dallas Opera and the Dallas Ballet.  His musical resume is long and multi-faceted, including stints in the prog band Hands in the late ‘70s, a new wave group called Hai Tex in the mid-80s, and various local jazz bands.  After learning other instruments such as the keyboard and shakuhachi, Bozarth put together his only new age album, *Unison* in 1990. He sold the cassettes in AfterTouch and got a review in Heartsong Review, selling about 500 copies by his estimation. Bozarth is still active, and recently released an album of treated shakuhachi pieces called [*Mediations for an Industrial Age*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8BHp3HWA40) on YouTube.","discography":{"rex-bozarth":{"albums":{"unison":{"image":"","label":"Qi","review":"Very slow, sedate music. \"El Yunque\" has a slow, ponderous beat, and booming thunder rolling under echoing flutelike synth with bell tones; a journey through the mountains of the Puerto Rican rain forest. In \"Stratus,\" \"mysterious movements of the clouds allow brief glimpses of the sun\" as a warbling flute synth tone floats along. Side B, \"Incantations,\" is a 28-minute journey through slow, hovering clouds of sound, infinitely spacious and otherworldly. It will unhook your mind from the pull of gravity, and send you drifting into other realms, where ancient spirits are summoned to join in song. No melody, no rhythm, little variation; for going very deep, sleeping and trancework.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* #12)","title":"Unison","year":1990}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":435,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/rex-bozarth-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=5c74cb95-81a7-4d4e-8e0e-fcee7b70f411","image_credit":"","last_name":"Rex Bozarth"},"ric-kaestner":{"artist_name":"Ric Kaestner","body":"Ric Kaestner was a multi-instrumentalist and record store owner who created two albums of eastern influenced relaxation music, initially spurred on by requests from a nearby massage school in Gainesville, Florida.  After selling his store in 1986, Kaestner moved to San Diego, where he worked as the director of an art gallery and later as the owner of his own art business. He continues to play music solo or with friends locally and released an album of bluegrass music in 2010 with his band, The Hilltop Ramblers. \n \nBorn in Queens, New York, Kaestner’s parents divorced when he was two. Together with his mother and older brother, Kaestner moved to Warren, Ohio. There he grew up surrounded by steel mills and other blue collar industries, but he never considered a life in the factory. \"When I was in fourth grade,\" Kaestner began, \"I knew a kid who had a guitar and he got in front of an assembly at school and played 'Ticket to Ride.' I was so impressed I started hanging out with him more. I was a big fan of his.\"\n \nAt 15, Kaestner got his first guitar. By then, he’d moved on from the Beatles to folk and blues, listening to things like John Fahey and Mississippi Fred McDowell. His family didn't have a lot of money or a real stereo so he'd often listen with friends at their houses.  In the meantime, he made some spare money by working as a busboy or caddying at a country club.\n \nAfter graduating from high school, Kaestner moved to Columbus where he worked as a lighting operator at the Agora ballroom. He also occasionally audited classes at Ohio State but never officially enrolled. At a New Years Party, he met a grad student named Bob McPeek and the two clicked. Together they formed a zany band in the mold of satirical English group the Bonzo Dog Band, with intentionally flubbed lyrics, mashed together songs, and bizarre song titles like \"Blind Lemon Pledge.\" They also changed their band name for every performance. At the same time, Kaestner played more serious folk material at local coffee houses too, usually an array of obscure covers by Ry Cooder, Townes Van Zandt or Steve Earle.\n \nWhen McPeek graduated, the two decided to move to Gainesville, Florida to open a record store they called Hyde and Zeke, taken from one of their many band names. Kaestner's roommate back in Ohio had managed his own record store called Moles, and they figured they could try their hand at it too. In addition to getting the store up and running, McPeek began building a studio in his garage that started with an eight track recorder. As McPeek made more money from the store, he put it into his studio until he had one of the nicest spaces in town. He called it Mirror Image.\n\nIn the early '80s, Kaestner and McPeek began recording songs together with local pianist Dave Smadbeck, who at the time was composing scores at the local theater, the Hippodrome, and recording them with McPeek. They also recruited some others from the Gainesville scene to help out with the album, including George Tortorelli, a cosmically inclined bassist and flautist who had recently moved to the area from Miami. Tortorelli gave the band its name, Trance Form, and contributed a couple songs to their debut album, *Stranger in the Same Land*. The album was a diverse blend of folk and progressive influences and included song writing contributions from four members.\n \n\"We recorded that album over the course of a year and thought, let's press it and sell it in our store,\" Kaestner said. \"We made 1000 copies and it sold well locally. We performed around Gainesville at the Great Southern Music Hall and the Hippodrome. We were like big fish in a little pond. But Bob and Dave had some personality conflicts and Dave may have had other plans for his career.\" The band fell apart soon after.\n \nAfter Trance Form split up, both Tortorelli and Kaestner recorded solo albums with McPeek. \"George and I were branching out in the same direction,\" Kaestner said. \"A friend of mine [Lee Joseph] owned the Florida School of Massage and students came in to the store looking for music to play for their patients. At first I made them mix tapes of Paul Horn or Gary Burton but then I started thinking maybe I could do something that is more than just nice sounding. So I read about music therapy and tonal qualities and vibratory rates and started working on *Music for Massage*.\" \n \nOnce the album was done, Keastner sent it around to various labels like Windham Hill to find someone to distribute. Narada loved the album and offered to put it out on cassette and give him a good royalty rate.  Kaestner signed on and Narada sold about 5000 cassettes by his estimation. For a label like Narada, with strong distribution and clout at that time, those numbers were likely a disappointment. Kaestner admits that because he played all the instruments, he never really considered touring to support it, and he didn't play that type of music live. The album's prescriptive title may have also limited its audience somewhat.  However, the album has acquired a strong cult rep over the years and is starting to assume its rightful place as a classic.\n \nAfter recording *Music for Massage* in 1982, Kaestner moved to Nashville soon after and helped to build a studio there. He also worked as a lightning designer for a few years and then moved to Portland, Oregon where he continued to work in lightning design as well as video production.  Eventually, Kaestner and McPeek realized they were ready to sell the record store, so Kaestner returned to Gainesville to run the store for awhile while they prepped for a sale.  \n \nBack in Gainesville, Kaestner decided to record another album of massage music with McPeek. He'd already contacted Narada about his plan to do new material and they were on board, even with Kaestner's ambitious pitch to do a 90 minute album.  Kaestner recorded the album at home, allowing him to put a more personal touch on the music and experiment with a wider variety of sounds. This time however, the label marketed the album solely to massage therapists and related companies, and sales figures were much lower than for the debut, around 500 according to Kaestner.\n \nKaestner and McPeek sold the record store in 1986, and Kaestner moved back to Oregon briefly before settling in San Diego. He continued to play folk-oriented material solo at coffeehouses or with live bands locally.  He eventually became the director of an art gallery and then went on to start his own art company that made custom replications of classical paintings. \n \nKaestner's *Music for Massage II* was recently reissued on vinyl, CD and cassette by [Sifted Sand](https://siftedsand.com/) Records.  The original reel to reel master tapes were too damaged to remaster, but the label was able to transfer the material from a cassette, using digital mastering to retain the original sonic quality. Kaestner currently lives in California with his fiancé and two cats.","discography":{"ric-kaestner":{"albums":{"music-for-massage":{"image":"","label":"Amethyst Music","review":"A classic of new age healing music, *Music for Massage* has transcended it's humble origins to become something much more. \n\nOriginally released on his own Amethyst Music, the tape was soon picked up by Narada for wider distribution. In the liner notes, Kaestner signals his intentions with hat tips to notable sound healers Steven Halpern and John Beaulieu, and he lists keynotes instead of song titles.  Though I'm sure it works well for its intended purpose, this album can easily be appreciated as a standalone piece of music - an epic journey through thousands of years of musical tradition that taps into our collective unconscious. And the intense collector interest that has built up around this and Kaestner's follow-up attests to its staying power with younger generations.\n\nThe album opens up slowly with a gentle drone accompanied by wordless vocals, reminiscent of Joanna Brouk or Constance Demby's more mystical pieces. From there, Kaestner brings in a wealth of other influences and sounds, including jaunty marimba pieces,  somber organ meditations, wandering flute solos,  electro/acoustic think pieces, and gently melodic sound baths of synths. Kaestner winds the album down with another droning piece with wordless vocals, taking the listener out on an ambiguous note - perfect!  This album is an absolute delight, and a mandatory listen for anyone curious about the genre.","title":"Music for Massage","year":"1982"},"music-for-massage-ii":{"image":"","label":"Eastern Sun","review":"","title":"Music for Massage II","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":79,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ric-Kaestner-640.jpg?alt=media&token=51656e92-6268-4d61-b55a-22bf000c5ca2","last_name":"Kaestner"},"richard-allen-and-kirby-shelstad":{"artist_name":"Richard Allen and Kirby Shelstad","body":"Richard Allen and Kirby Shelstad were a duo of Nashville musicians who put out three new age albums over the course of a decades-long partnership. Allen was a craftsman who made and sold his own flutes and bamboo saxophones at craft fairs, while Shelstad was a trained musician who played in rock bands and composed film scores. The two met in the early '80s and initially created an album of music for Allen to sell at craft fairs. However, the album sold better than expected and soon distributors picked it up, earning sales of 30,0000 copies by Shelstad's estimation. Their next two albums made increasing use of electronics and midi, as well as a higher fidelity recording. Shelstad also released one solo album in the '80s before going on to co-produce many scores for the *Ernest* films in the '90s.\n\nRichard Allen was born in 1952 and Kirby Shelstad was born in 1955. Shelstad grew up in Morehead, Minnesota and started playing drums as a teenager. He attended two years of college where he planned to major in music, but he landed a gig with a show band in Kentucky playing nightly at a hotel and decided to drop out. However, he was fired after a few months and decided to try his luck in Nashville. Soon he was joined by a friend from Minnesota named Bruce Arnston.\n\nIn the early '80s, Shelstad worked in restaurants and joined up with a local rock band the Nerve. He met Richard Allen at a craft fair and was impressed with his instrument making skills. At the time, Allen lived in the country outside Nashville and made his living on the craft fair circuit, selling instruments like a bamboo saxophone, flute, and whistle. Allen taught himself to play some basic tunes on the instruments to help advertise them at the fairs. When he met Shelstad they decided to work together and make an album Allen could sell to his customers.\n\nThe first album was issued with the band name and title *Peaceful Solutions*, featuring a monochromatic cover. Sales were more robust than they expected, and they went on to do a second pressing. Eventually, the album was picked up by all the major new age distributors and they made a new version with a full color cover and issued a cassette pressing, credited to their own label Love Circle Music. They also included their own names more prominently as artists instead of just using the Peaceful Solutions moniker.\n\nThe next year, Shelstad recorded and released a solo album on their label. For the second album with Allen, Kirby booked a 24 track studio, giving the tracks a higher fidelity sheen.  By this time, Shelstad started getting work as a session drummer and percussionist, appearing on bluegrass albums by Bela Fleck and Mark O'Connor. A few years later, he was able to quit his day job at restaurants as he began getting regular work co-producing film music with his old friend Bruce Arnston for the Ernest movies such as *Ernest Goes to Jail*. \n\nAfter one final album together, *Peaceful Solutions From the Heart*, Shelstad and Allen ceased recording, though Shelstad did later release more solo albums in the late '90s and early 2000s such as the spacey *Temple of Thunder*.\n\n\n","discography":{"kirby-shelstad":{"albums":{"as-above-so-below":{"image":"","label":"Love Circle Music","review":"","title":"As Above, So Below","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Kirby Shelstad","entry_number":3},"peaceful solutions":{"albums":{"peaceful-solutions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Peaceful Solutions","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Peaceful Solutions","entry_number":1},"richard-allen-kirby-shelstad":{"albums":{"from-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Love Circle Music","review":"","title":"Peaceful Solutions From the Heart","year":"1992"},"peaceful-solutions-ii":{"image":"","label":"Love Circle Music","review":"","title":"Peaceful Solutions II","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Richard Allen and Kirby Shelstad","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":270,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/peaceful-solutions-lp.jpg?alt=media&token=6bed9e39-6c8a-4184-9147-d0a42332695f","last_name":"Allen"},"richard-burmer":{"artist_name":"Richard Burmer","body":"Richard Burmer was a popular synthesist known for his melodic and pristinely recorded progressive electronic albums in the '80s and early '90s. After a critically acclaimed debut on Fortuna, Burmer followed that up with a collaboration with label mate [Steve Roach](/steve-roach) that yielded his best-known track \"Across the View.\" He went on to issue two more big sellers *Bhakti Point* and *On the Third Extreme*, earning frequent airplay on KTWV in Los Angeles and syndicated shows *Echoes* and *Hearts of Space*. However, after returning to his home state of Michigan in 1988, his output began to slow down as Burmer struggled with a drinking problem and drug addiction. Eventually, his addiction led to divorce and an early death from heart disease at the age of fifty, marking a sad ending to a once-promising career.\n\nOriginally from Michigan, Burmer was born in 1955 and showed an early interest in music. He tried taking apart the piano in his house, taught himself sitar, and spent his junior high years exploring a wide range of music ranging from middle eastern music to progressive rock like the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd. He studied music theory and composition in college for a few years and then left Michigan for Los Angeles.\n\nIn California, Burmer got a job as a sound designer for E-Mu systems, creating sounds for their early sampling keyboard, the Emulator. At the same time, he put together a small home studio and began producing his own music using synths and sequencers to build vivid \"electronic vignettes\" that showed an affinity for the dynamics of progressive rock. He got a deal with Fortuna who released his debut *Mosaic* in 1984 to glowing reviews, strong sales, and radio play on Hearts of Space, then the most widely distributed new age radio show.\n\nWith his first album a hit, Burmer became friends with label-mate Steve Roach who collaborated with him and Kevin Braheny for the album *Western Spaces* in 1987. Burmer's track \"Across the View\" from that album ended up in constant rotation on LA new age station the Wave and went on to be a big fan favorite. The same year, Burmer released his second album, *Bhakti Point*, again to strong reviews and sales. However, Fortuna soon went under and Burmer had to pivot to a new label, Gaia for his third release.\n\nWhile Burmer's career was heating up, he had a child on the way with his wife Debra and the couple decided to return to Michigan. There, Burmer continued to create music, putting out an album with American Gramaphone, the label founded by Chip Davis of Mannheim Steamroller. He followed that with another album on Miramar. However, the latter didn't sell well and would be the last thing he ever released. In the last ten years of his life, Burmer descended into drug and alcohol addiction that sapped his creativity and eventually ended his marriage. He died in 2006 of heart failure.","discography":{"richard-burmer":{"albums":{"bhakti-point":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Burmer’s sophomore album is less eclectic than his debut, and now sounding more of his time than ahead of it. Nevertheless, he’s crafted something of a signature sound here by jettisoning the genre experimentations and fully leaning into the adventurous and cinematic, aiming to craft a “journey to an imaginary paradise.” Jaded listeners may find it cheesy, especially the orientalist “Reunion” or the overly melodramatic “Willow Song,” but those looking for orchestral, electronic music with plenty of emotion and melody will probably like it.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Bhakti Point","year":"1987"},"invention":{"image":"","label":"American Gramaphone","review":"","title":"Invention","year":"1992"},"mosaic":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Along with Ray Lynch and Yanni, Burmer was an early progenitor of the new age 2.0 sound, melding ECM jazz, progressive electronic, cinematic classical, and art pop into a uniquely ‘80s hybrid. *Mosaic* doesn't fully synthesize those elements into a cohesive sound, instead taking an eclectic approach. \"Physics\" leads with vocoder vocals and twinkling digital synths while the two tracks with Burmer's wife Debra apply technicolor bombast to ‘70s era prog moves. There are also a few quieter, ambient pieces such as the beautiful \"Under Shaded,\" the more ominous sounding \"The Hill,\" and the flute-led \"Winter on the Wind\" which sounds closer to something on Unity than Private Music. An interesting and compelling debut.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Mosaic","year":"1984"},"on-the-third-extreme":{"image":"","label":"Gaia","review":"","title":"On The Third Extreme","year":"1988"},"sounds-of-bodyplay":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sounds of BodyPlay","year":"1994"},"treasures-of-the-saints":{"image":"","label":"Miramar","review":"","title":"Treasures of the Saints","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Richard Burmer","entry_number":1},"steve-roach-kevin-braheny-richard-burmer":{"albums":{"western-spaces":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communication","review":"When three masters of meditative electronic music come together--sometimes singly, sometimes in duets, sometimes all three--the result has to be more varied than any one of them alone. *Western Spaces* does not disappoint. It's full of ravishing digital textures in billowy intermissions from the real world.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, May 1987)","title":"Western Spaces","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":242,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/burmercrop.jpg?alt=media&token=9309c5cd-4dc7-4127-b707-6839238f8459","last_name":"Burmer"},"richard-dunlap":{"artist_name":"Richard Dunlap","body":"Inspired by dada art and free improv, Richard Dunlap is a Los Angeles electronic musician who released an experimental album on cassette in 1992, *Tales from the Vinyetvin Nagret*. The tape was produced in a small edition of 100 copies and hasn't been heard by many, but Dunlap resurfaced in the early 2000s to create Dadala, an online music project featuring a rotating cast of musicians he collaborates with online.\n\nRichard Dunlap was born in 1958 and grew up in Los Angeles. His mother loved jazz and took Richard and his brother to see Don Ellis whose weird time signatures and esoteric approach proved to be an early influence. As a teen, Dunlap's friend Dan Bartlett introduced him to progressive rock and ECM jazz, and the two began checking out shows together. After seeing a Nels Cline free improv show, Bartlett, Dunlap and others began recording their own free improv sessions on tape. The two would continue recording off and on for the next decade.\n\nBy the mid-'80s, Dunlap got some keyboards and taught himself to play and record at home. By the time he added a sequencer at the end of the decade he had all the pieces to make his own electronic music and in 1992 he produced a solo album called *Tales from the Vinyetvin Nagret*. He had no idea how to promote his tape until he discovered *AfterTouch* magazine, a resource for other DIY electronic musicians. However, the circulation was small and Dunlap only recalls selling a handful of copies out of the 100 he made.\n\nDunlap continued recording for the next four years, but never released anything else. In 1997, Bartlett passed away and Dunlap took a break from playing music for a few years. In the early 2000s he reconnected with the music community online and began reworking and remixing old recordings. Dunlap, who is a big fan of dada art, loved to use improvisation during both the recording and mixing process, letting chance play a role in the outcome.\n\nIn 2004, Dunlap founded Dadala, his new project, which found him collaborating with musicians all over the world (including [Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholak)) and working by trading music files online. He has produced many albums in this style since and is still active. Dunlap maintains a website [here](https://dadalamusic.com/) where you can read more.\n","discography":{"richard-dunlap":{"albums":{"tales":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tales from the Vinyetvin Nagret","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":250,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/richard-dunlap-657.jpg?alt=media&token=b89ba870-2c9d-4d1d-86a8-70069bb7ec63","last_name":"Dunlap"},"richard-kinsey":{"artist_name":"Richard Kinsey","body":"Richard Kinsey was a Broadway actor, singer, and composer who released two new age cassettes in the mid-to-late '80s before embarking on a long run playing Javert in *Les Misérables* all over the world. \n \nKinsey was born in Huntington Park, California in 1954. When he was eight, the family moved to Placentia, then a more rural area in Orange County. His mother was a soprano vocalist and Kinsey began singing as early as two. Sometimes his family would bring him to retirement homes where he would delight the seniors by singing portions of songs he'd heard his mother perform. \n \nWhen he was 15, Kinsey joined an R&B rock band with horns called the Shades of Time. With the band, Kinsey sang popular tunes of the day by Santana, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago, and soul acts like Sam and Dave. The band gigged for four years and made good money playing at local dances in the area also winning several battle of the bands competitions.\n \nIn addition to his rock pursuits, Kinsey was interested in madrigal groups and choir in high school. He used his singing talents to earn a scholarship to attend California State University at Fullerton where he studied vocal performance. His acting career started to take off when he was cast at 19 years old as Lancelot in Camelot for an outside company during college.\n \nKinsey moved around a bit after college, acting in musicals and writing his own plays. He played in some bands in L.A. and got session work playing a solo recorder piece. Kinsey had played clarinet as a kid and later picked up the recorder when he was 18, but the album that really inspired him in this genre was Paul Horn’s *Inside the Taj Mahal.* \"I thought that was brilliant,\" Kinsey recalled. \"I loved the lyricism, simplicity and spirituality of it.\"\n \nSoon, Kinsey got interested in the new age movement. \"I met with some gurus and read books,\" Kinsey said. \"I was an idealist. I thought this was a way we can unify and finally make some peace in the world. When you grow up in the '60s and '70's you can't help but have been affected by it.\" Kinsey would sometimes play recorder or piano improv at ashrams and other alternative gatherings, and there met Ken Mackenzie who became a mentor and good friend. He encouraged Kinsey to do some new age material and the two of them created a guided meditation tape using one of Kinsey’s recorder pieces.\n\nMeanwhile, Kinsey’s acting career was on the upswing. He landed his first role in an off-Broadway show in NY playing Joey in *The Most Happy Fella*. He also got a commission to write the music for a *Robin Hood* musical playing at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera for which he was awarded the ASCAP popular composition award.  After that, Kinsey started working on what would become his first album, *Through the Veil*, which came out in 1985. Mackenzie helped get the tape in stores through national distributors like New Leaf, and the tape sold a few hundred copies, maybe more, by Kinsey's estimation. \"*Through the Veil* was meant to be conceptual, like a living watercolor,” Kinsey said. \"I wanted that album to open people’s hearts and minds to some new vistas.\"\n\nKinsey continued to write musicals and put together his next album *Starseed Suite* which came out in 1988. He’d gotten a new synth for that one, a Korg DW-8000 and he was listening to a lot of Tangerine Dream, so it has more of an ambient, spacier sound than his previous release. It was also more thematic, much like a \"tone poem\" in his words. \n\nBy the time his sophomore album was in stores, Kinsey had landed the biggest role of his career playing Javert in *Les Misérables*. He initially performed the role in San Francisco and went on to play the role in various cities including New York, Chicago, L.A. He toured most of the continental United States, as well as parts of Canada before later heading overseas to play the role in the International Tour which played in Hong Kong, Singapore, North Korea, South Africa and beyond. During that time, he also got married and had his first child. \"I was so busy doing shows and raising my family that I put music composition aside for a while,\" Kinsey said. \"I was at the height of my profession.\"\n\nWhen the tour ended in 1997, Kinsey and his family eventually made their way back to the US, settling in Long Beach, CA where they remain today. Kinsey still does a great deal of acting and performing and has had roles in several feature films. He has also  been working as an illustrator for several published children’s books: *Lucky*,  *Mr. Prickle Bear* and *Meditation Made Easy*. (Some of his work can be seen here: https://zencatfish.com/book-illustrations). \"I've always done visual art in conjunction with my other pursuits,\" Kinsey said. \"I do pen, ink, watercolor, and thematic paintings. Sometimes there is social commentary and sometimes it is whimsical and silly. The creative process in all artistic disciplines is symbiotic for me.\" \n\nKinsey is teaching these days as well, working with the actors and singers of tomorrow at the Orange County School of The Arts in their Acting conservatory. He is also attending California State University in the Philosophy Degree program.\n\nReflecting on his life of artistic endeavors, Kinsey said, \"All the music I’ve done came from a spiritual source inside me. I really was writing from my heart. I felt it was something I was supposed to do and shall continue to do.\"","discography":{"richard-kinsey":{"albums":{"starseed-suite":{"image":"","label":"Pathways Enterprises","review":"","title":"Starseed Suite","year":"1988"},"through-the-veil":{"image":"","label":"Pathways Enterprises","review":"","title":"Through the Veil","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":104,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Richard-Kinsey-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0f4b7230-e33e-43ce-b0f3-34c3c10020e1","last_name":"Kinsey"},"ricky-starbuster":{"artist_name":"Ricky Starbuster","body":"Wisconsin synthesist Ricky Starbuster came out of nowhere in 1983 with three cassettes that captured the interest of the underground music press. However, he pivoted to a career in the Navy two years later and had much less time to market or produce his music. After two more cassettes, the synth-pop influenced *Live the Dream* and the more new agey *Ocean Sand* in 1988, Starbuster left music behind for a career in competitive intelligence.\n\nBorn Rick Hauser in 1958, Rick grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. He took ten years of piano and trumpet lessons, learning how to play by ear and improvise well. However, he had no illusions about making a living from music and attended the University of Wisconsin to get a degree in business.\n\nAfter graduating, Hauser worked for a year at a bank in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. “It was a very conservative town,” Hauser recalled. “And they axed me because I didn’t go to church (though I happen to be religious) and cohabitated with my girlfriend. I was devastated. But then I saw Michael Iceberg playing a Prophet 5 at a concert in Madison and I thought, man, I gotta get one of those, I could make some mind-blowing stuff.” Selling some stock that his father had given him, and pooling together money from jobs, Hauser bought a Prophet 5. He eventually picked up some other gear and a four track and got to work on his debut album *Starburst* in 1983.\n \nHauser adopted the artist name Ricky Starbuster, taking a cue from Luke Skywalker since his music seemed to share similar galactic aspirations. His debut release was crammed with 90 minutes of short songs that drew from classical, synthpop, new wave, and even included a six-minute ad-libbed rap from his niece Anna Fleer.  “*Starburst* was designed to partially warp your brain and make people think of the immensity of the universe,” Hauser says. \n\nAfter sending out his debut to various press outlets, Hauser followed it up with two more 90-minute albums, *ESP* and *Protosyn*, in 1983. *Protosyn* was somewhat similar in style to the debut, but included some vocals from Hauser on a few tracks, plus a ten minute radio play about \"being transported in a high tech spacecraft with people on pleasure medications.\" For *ESP*, Hauser adopted more of a synth-pop sound, and brought back Fleer to rap on songs for the whole first side after many writers had singled her out in reviews for his debut. \"I called the album *ESP* because it seemed like she had ESP. She would hit endings lyrically without even knowing where the ending was ahead of time,\" Hauser remembered. \n \nFor someone with no previous track record, Hauser's tapes were well-reviewed and admired by outlets such as *SYNE*, *CLEM*, *Synthetic Pleasure*, and *Op*. most writers compared his music to Vangelis, Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre. Robert Carlberg from *Polyphony* even called it the \"debut of the year\" in his end of the year column and cited high hopes for Hauser's music.  As a result, these early tapes sold pretty well for independent releases with no distribution, with Hauser recalling sales of around 200 for each, maybe a bit more for *Starburst*. \n\nAround this time, the label Arcal contacted Hauser about licensing some of his instrumental tracks for their \"Mood Series\" of library music, resulting in a now scarce compilation LP from 1984. In the same year, Hauser began thinking about a career change. \"I met a Navy recruiter and he convinced me that I could live my dream by flying in the F-14 Tomcat jet fighter,\" Hauser said. \"This was just prior to *Top Gun* coming out. But I got sent back because my eyes weren't good enough. I went back to join as an intelligence officer so I could get at least one joy ride in the F-14, which I did.\"\n\nDuring his time in the Navy, Hauser was stationed in Virginia Beach. While there, he recorded his next cassette, *Live the Dream* which featured a drawing of himself in a flight suit with two jets in the background. According to Hauser, he didn't have much time to market and sell it and only sold 50 copies. A few years later he recorded his final album, the more new age *Ocean Sand*. Musician and radio host [Ben Kettlewell](/ben-kettlewell) was an early fan of the album and he played it in full for an episode of his radio show in early 1989.\n\nDuring his time with the Navy, Hauser worked in defense intelligence and earned his first medal helping to stop the war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir in 1988. He also went to the middle east during Desert Storm where he earned five more medals. After the war, Hauser worked for companies like Helene Curtis in the early 90s doing competitive intelligence, which he describes as \"ethical and legal creative information collection and analysis on the competitors to identify their plans and strategies.\" Later in the decade he worked for Motorola in a similar role.\n\nIn 2002, Hauser started his own real estate company and did well, staying in the business until his retirement in 2015. Hauser kept his musical gear but didn’t play much during the 90s and 2000s. However, he started recording again in 2009, releasing an album called *Passione Italia*. He also started to play his trumpet again, sitting in with many blues bands in Chicago and even touring abroad in 2017.\n\nIn 2020, [Orbeatize]( https://www.orbeatize.com/about.html ) released a re-mastered compilation of *Starburst* and *Protosyn* on vinyl.  Hauser has a Soundcloud site where he is archiving some of his new and old material [here](https://soundcloud.com/rick-hauser-778192600).","discography":{"ricky-starbuster":{"albums":{"esp":{"image":"","label":"Starbuster Productions","review":"Another hour and a half with a star of the future. This time the whole first side features 6-year old Anna Fleer on improvised vocals, and she might end up being a bigger star than Ricky! For now she's most effective in small doses. The second side is divided into \"Music for Relaxation\" and \"Music for Crazyness\" (sic), and as before, Ricky's synthesizer work is an inspiration. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":" ESP","year":"1983"},"live-the-dream":{"image":"","label":"Starbuster Productions","review":"","title":" Live the Dream","year":"1985"},"ocean-sand":{"image":"","label":"Starbuster Productions","review":"","title":"Ocean Sand","year":"1988"},"protosyn":{"image":"","label":"Starbuster Productions","review":"","title":" Protosyn","year":"1983"},"starburst":{"image":"","label":"Starbuster Productions","review":"The first release by one who intends to \"make a career in this stuff or starve to death\". He's got a better chance than most, with enjoyable pieces consisting of everything from introspective mood drones to punk rock (featuring the voice of his 6 year old niece). The majority have a quiet soloing over a repetitive background, not unlike Michael Garrison, although Ricky's pieces are shorter and generally more daring. His equipment is top notch: Prophet 5, Pro-1, and Roland drum unit (all self-programmed). A very full 90 minutes.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, Aug. 1983)","title":"Starburst","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":149,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ricky-Starbuster-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=f5a66505-66e6-4548-8ee4-53919cfa494d","last_name":"Starbuster"},"riley-lee":{"artist_name":"Riley Lee","body":"Riley Lee is one of the preeminent shakuhachi players in the West, putting out over 60 albums across a four-decade-plus career. While a college student at the University of Hawaii in the early '70s, Lee first discovered this 16th-century Japanese flute. Soon, he moved to Japan for seven years to study the instrument while joining Ondekoza, a drum group and commune on Sado Island. Upon returning to Hawaii, Lee kicked off his music career with an album of solo shakuhachi on Folkways, followed two years later by *Oriental Sunrise*, his breakout album on the Hawaiian new age label Plumeria. This album sold so well that one of Plumeria's main distributors, Narada, signed Lee and issued eight albums by him in the '80s, including a re-recording of *Oriental Sunrise*. In 1986, Lee moved to Australia where he earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Sydney. While he put recording projects on hold during this time, he returned to making albums again in the '90s and beyond. \n\nBorn in Texas in 1951, Riley Lee's family moved to Oklahoma when he was six and then to Hawaii in his early teens. His father, who was a biologist, initially brought the family there for a year-long sabbatical while he did research, but Lee fell in love with the area and refused to leave when it was time. \"One of my friends in high school, Norb, said we could get a sailboat and live there. I said, 'Yeah, that sounds cool.'\" While he didn't end up living on a sailboat, Lee did convince his parents to let him stay behind with his mother until his father could return.\n\nDuring college, Lee took a trip to Japan and became enamored with the shakuhachi flute and traditional Japanese music. He started taking lessons and really dedicated himself to learning the instrument's intricacies and nuances. He'd already dabbled in music as a child, taking lessons in piano and French horn before moving on to play bass in a rock band inspired by the Beatles (that band, called the Workouts, still plays in Hawaii occasionally nearly 50 years later).\n\nLee eventually moved to Japan where he joined Ondekoza, a drumming group and commune founded by Den Tagaysu on Sado Island. The group transformed traditional taiko drumming from folk art into a performance art form, dazzling audiences in Japan and later, all over the world. The members all lived together and studied taiko in addition to instruments like the shamisen and koto, as well as learning traditional dance. \n\nWhile Ondekoza was on tour in Paris, Lee met Patricia who would soon become his wife. She returned with him to Japan but they settled more permanently in Hawaii starting in 1978. The couple had twin daughters and Lee began teaching shakuhachi at the University of Hawaii and offering private lessons as well. He also performed periodically for tourists or at conventions. In 1980, the legendary Folkways label released his debut, *Shakuhachi Honkyoku*, which featured a traditional Japanese repertoire. In the same year, Lee attained the rank of Dai Shihan (grandmaster) in shakuhachi, a rare designation for a western musician.\n\nLee's album on Folkways caught the attention of Tim O'Hanlon and Gary Terrell who had started the island's first new age label Plumeria, initially to release Terrell's music. According to O'Hanlon, Terrell and Riley participated in a seven-hour, overnight recording session at their friend David Backstrom's music room and they edited the results into two albums. *Oriental Sunrise* featured the lighter 'day music' and *Satori* the 'night music.' On the pieces, Lee played shakuhachi and Terrell played koto like a hammered dulcimer. Confusingly, Terrell used the name Gabriel Lee on the album, leading some listeners to believe the two musicians were related. Nevertheless, *Oriental Sunrise* went on to be the biggest seller for the label, getting distribution in the US through Fortuna and Narada.\n\nNarada initially distributed Lee's albums but they proved to be popular enough that they signed him for their own label around 1982. Lee went on to release eight albums for Narada between 1983 and 1990 on their subsidiaries Sona Gaia and Antiquity. His early album *As the Water Flows* (later retitled *Buddha's Dream*), did very well, as did a re-recording of *Oriental Sunrise*. (They also re-recorded *Satori*). According to Lee, this proved to be a major undertaking as the originals were improvised and he had to laboriously notate the entire thing before going into re-record the album with new musicians.\n\nIn 1986, Lee and his wife moved to Australia so he could begin a PhD fellowship in ethnomusicology at the University of Sydney. The degree ended up taking him 8 years to complete, but in the meantime, he continued to give lessons and perform. However, he took a few years off recording in the late-'80s before embarking on a prolific period of recording in the '90s, putting out over a dozen new albums for labels such as Tall Poppies, Oreade and New World Productions, the Australian outpost for the long-running UK label New World Company. \n\nIn Australia, Lee worked hard to set up a professional presence for traditional Japanese music, founding the Australian Shakuhachi Society and co-founding TaikOz, a Japanese festival drum group. Lee has remained active in the ensuing years, going on to release over 60 albums.","discography":{"riley-lee":{"albums":{"As-the-water-flows":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"As the Water Flows","year":"1984"},"breath-sight":{"image":"","label":"Tall Poppies","review":"","title":"Breath-Sight - Yearning for the Bell","year":"1992"},"dream-within-a-dream":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Dream Within a Dream","year":"1990"},"empty-bells":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Empty Bells","year":"1984"},"evening-mist":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Evening Mist","year":"1983"},"memories-of-japan":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Memories of Japan","year":"1984"},"memories-of-my-home":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"Memories of My Home","year":"1982"},"mountain-valley":{"image":"","label":"New World Company","review":"","title":"Mountain Valley","year":"1994"},"oriental-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"A classic from Hawaii, with two long pieces and two shorter tunes of improvisatory duets between Riley Lee on Shakuhachi and Gabriel Lee on koto.\n\n(*Heartbeats*, Summer 1987)","title":"Oriental Sunrise","year":"1985"},"rainforest-reverie":{"image":"","label":"New World Company","review":"","title":"Rainforest Reverie","year":"1994"},"shakuhachi-honkyoku":{"image":"","label":"Folkways","review":"","title":"Shakuhachi Honkyoku","year":"1980"},"water-music":{"image":"","label":"Tall Poppies","review":"","title":"Water Music","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"riley-lee-andrew-macgregor":{"albums":{"nesting-of-the-cranes":{"image":"","label":"Oreade","review":"","title":"Nesting of the Cranes","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Andrew MacGregor","entry_number":7},"riley-lee-andrew-matthew-doyle":{"albums":{"wild-honey-dreaming":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Wild Honey Dreaming","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Matthew Doyle","entry_number":7},"riley-lee-andy-rigby":{"albums":{"nalu":{"image":"","label":"New World Music","review":"","title":"Nalu","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Andy Rigby","entry_number":10},"riley-lee-aneesh-pradhan-alan-posselt":{"albums":{"mixed-spice":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Mixed Spice","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee, Aneesh Pradhan, Alan Posselt","entry_number":11},"riley-lee-gabriel-lee":{"albums":{"Satori":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"Satori","year":"1980"},"oriental-sunrise":{"image":"","label":"Plumeria","review":"","title":"Oriental Sunrise","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Gabriel Lee","entry_number":2},"riley-lee-geoff-ween-vermazen":{"albums":{"the-eagle-and-the-ocean":{"image":"","label":"Tall Poppies","review":"","title":"The Eagle and the Ocean","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Geoff Ween-Vermazen","entry_number":5},"riley-lee-jim-franklin":{"albums":{"fountain-of-light":{"image":"","label":"New World Company","review":"","title":"Fountain of Light","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Jim Franklin","entry_number":6},"riley-lee-michael-askill-michael-atherton":{"albums":{"shoalhaven-rise":{"image":"","label":"Black Sun","review":"","title":"Shoalhaven Rise","year":"1995"},"voices-of-the-night":{"image":"","label":"New World Productions","review":"","title":"Voices of the Night","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Michael Atherton","entry_number":9},"riley-lee-mike-ryan":{"albums":{"bush-clover":{"image":"","label":"Antiquity","review":"","title":"Bush Clover and the Moon","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Riley Lee and Mike Ryan","entry_number":4},"riley-lee-ralph-samuelson":{"albums":{"japanese-music-for-two-shakuhachi":{"image":"","label":"Lyrichord","review":"","title":"Japanese Music for Two Shakuhachi","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Riley Kelly Lee and Ralph Samuelson","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":281,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/riley-lee-640.jpg?alt=media&token=4ca281a5-bda9-4f98-81d7-876f3ed54ac3","last_name":"Riley Lee"},"riley-mclaughlin":{"artist_name":"Riley McLaughlin","body":"Riley McLaughlin (1944-2024) was a multi-instrumentalist based in the Bay Area until his early forties when he relocated to Olympia, WA in 1987. McLaughlin had studied music at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1966. After a stint in the Army, he worked as a writer and illustrator at his mother’s newspaper and later worked as a multimedia artist at Hewlett Packard. McLaughlin’s interest in synthesizers and electronics led to him working with Dr. David Deamer, a professor at UC Davis who studied DNA. To create the music, McLaughlin assigned musical notes to the 4 bases of DNA  (Adenine = A, Cytosine = C, Guanine = G, and Thymine = E), and created pieces based on DNA sequences. Two years later, McLaughlin expanded two of the shorter pieces from *DNA Suite* to create the meditative and dreamy *DNA Music* from 1985. McLaughlin never released any further electronic music though he remained involved with the local music scene in Olympia, playing in a country band and jazz band.","discography":{"riley-mclaughlin":{"albums":{"dna-music":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"DNA Music","year":"1985"},"dna-suite":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"DNA Suite","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":414,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/riley-mclaughlin-604.jpg?alt=media&token=9b25b0cf-3b09-461b-88fd-baffc6bcd15f","last_name":"McLaughlin"},"rob-woo":{"artist_name":"Rob Whitesides-Woo","body":"Rob Whitesides-Woo was a Taiwanese-American new age artist who came to prominence with the release of *Miracles*, the audio accompaniment to Jim Moeller's audio version of Helen Schucman's 1976 new age book *A Course in Miracles*. His symphonic, classically-oriented style was popular at the time and he went on to release more albums on Moeller's label, including his best-selling album *Mountain Light* in 1990. \n\nBorn Robert Du-An in 1950, Woo spent his first two years in Taiwan. When he was three, his family emigrated to California where he has remained since. He took up the guitar when he was 12 and showed a gift for the instrument, performing and teaching soon after he began. \"I loved folk music, that's what first turned me on,\" Whitesides-Woo said. \"I also liked classical and avant-garde music. I had olden ears.\"\n\nAfter graduating high school a year early, Whitesides-Woo went to college at UC Berkeley where he studied writing and classical guitar. On the side, joined a band called Snakepit that played blues and free improv jazz. \" My blues hero was BB King,\" Whitesides-Woo said. \"One time we got a job playing a nightclub in an Oakland ghetto and guns were checked at the door. There were cages for the performers, and it was packed. I was just an uptight Chinese kid and very repressed.\"\n\nWhitesides-Woo transferred to Cal Arts in Venice where he majored in music composition. He began exploring world music, learning how to play the shakuhachi flute and studying Indonesian gamelan, sacred dances, and solkattu, a classical Indian drum language. After college, Whitesides-Woo began picking up sporadic work composing music for educational and industrial films. His wife, who he married in 1971, worked in the industry and the two eventually founded their own production company called Light-House Productions. \n\nIn the early '80s, former Top Gun pilot Jim Moeller was a recovering alcoholic who wanted to produce an audio version of Helen Schucman's 1976 new age book *A Course in Miracles*. He heard some music that Whitesides-Woo had composed for the Movement of Spiritual inner Awareness and hired him to compose the background music. Many listeners wanted to hear just the music so Moeller issued *Miracles* as a standalone instrumental album on his Search for Serenity label. \n\n\"My music is perceived through motion,\" Whitesides-Woo said. \"When I was doing *Miracles*, I spent a lot of time hiking or being in nature and that inspired the architecture of certain pieces.\" The album went on to sell well and kicked off Whitesides-Woo's new age career.  \n\nFollowing the success of Miracles, Whitesides-Woo put out a second album called *Heart to Crown* that was in a similar style as his other works.  In the same year, Woo recruited his friend Scott Fitzgerald to work on an album together called *Sojourn* with Fitzgerald composing the music and Whitesides-Woo doing the orchestration.  \"He had no formal training, but he played beautifully on piano,\" Whitesides-Woo recalled. \"He was a rock climber who I met through a martial arts friend. During *Sojourn*, we took a month break because he was scheduled to climb the half dome at Yosemite, and he nearly died.\"\n\nWith Whitesides-Woo's work getting popular in new age circles, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness unearthed some recordings that he'd produced in the early '70s when he was a member of the group and released it on cassette under the title *Sacred Journey*.\n\nAfter a few years off, Whitesides-Woo returned with *Mountain Light* in 1990 and it was the best-selling album of his career, spending some time on the Billboard new age chart in 1991. \"The year *Mountain Light* came out, nature consciousness took hold,\" Whitesides-Woo recalled. \"That tape was sold at Natural Wonders at the mall so that was a big factor in the sales.\"\n\nWhitesides-Woo continued to release albums over the next years, including a Christmas album in 1993 and *Traveler* in 1995. After that, he mostly retired from putting out albums, instead focusing on his work as a healer and spiritual guide.\n","discography":{"rob-whitesides-woo":{"albums":{"from-heart-to-crown":{"image":"","label":"Search for Serenity","review":"","title":"From Heart to Crown","year":"1986"},"miracles":{"image":"","label":"Search for Serenity","review":"","title":"Miracles","year":"1985"},"mountain-light":{"image":"","label":"Search for Serenity","review":"","title":"Mountain Light","year":"1990"},"sacred-journey":{"image":"","label":"Now Productions","review":"","title":"Sacred Journey","year":"1987"},"winters-dream":{"image":"","label":"Search for Serenity","review":"","title":"Winter's Dream","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Rob Whitesides-Woo","entry_number":1},"scott-fitzgerald-rob-woo":{"albums":{"sojourn":{"image":"","label":"Search for Serenity","review":"","title":"Sojourn","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Scott Fitzgerald, Rob Whitesides-Woo","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":279,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Rob-Woo-temp.jpeg?alt=media&token=cfb6dd71-affb-46fd-8350-d18de25c9ff1","last_name":"Whitesides"},"robert-aeolus-myers":{"artist_name":"Robert Aeolus Myers","body":"Robert Myers was a multi-instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist who was given the name Aeolus by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in 1978.  Aeolus, the son of Hippotes, was referenced in Homer’s Odyssey as the \"Keeper of the Winds\" and Myers was a classically trained bassoonist. Myers made a strong push into the new age music scene in the '80s, touring around his home base of Hawaii and beyond, recording two albums for Global Pacific, producing shows and collaborating with other artists. However, he only found modest renown outside of Hawaii. Myers released two more albums independently before abandoning live performances and moving to Portland, Maine in 1997.  \n\nMyers was born in 1953, growing up in Ohio until the family moved to San Diego when he was fourteen. He started taking bassoon lessons in junior high school and was a drum major for the marching band in high school.  Myers continued his drum studies at San Diego State University for a few years before transferring to the University of Hawaii in 1975, ultimately switching his major to ethnomusicology. Through the program he was exposed to Hawaiian, Japanese, Indian, Javanese, and Middle Eastern music, all of which would go on to profoundly influence his own music a few years later.\n\nHawaii would be Myers’ home for the next 22 years. He loved the island life and spent much of his free time surfing and hiking in the lush landscapes.  But he characterized his time there as that of a starving artist, trying to support his music career through a variety of jobs including cab driving, dance accompaniment, and even running day cares and after school programs for private schools.\n\nMyers joined the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra in 1978 and played with them for eight seasons.  It was there that he met and befriended cellist Bob Kindler, who later started his own label Jai Ma Music, which released Myers first cassette *Aeolian Melodies* in 1982. In the same year,  Kindler brought Myers on tour in support of his own debut album *Music from the Matrix.* \n\nMyers bought his first synthesizer, a Roland 100/101 system with a sequencer in 1978. He had been experimenting with compositions influenced by Philip Glass, minimalist composer John Adams, Vangelis, and Giorgio Moroder at his small home studio, but for his debut album he opted to record at Kindler's Hawaii Artists Recording Studio in Wahiawa. \n\nMyers pressed very few copies of the original *Aeolian Melodies* before Howard Sapper's Global Pacific label offered to reissue it.  (Kindler had already signed to Global Pacific Records and he had helped Myers get a deal there too.) For the new version, Myers opted to re-record \"On Angels Becoming Human,\" the long track on side two. \"Musically, the original version was terrible,\" Myers laughed. \"It was just 23 minutes of fluff.  So I redid It, taking advantage of the studio environment and sculpting an ambient modal journey as my first venture on the label.\"\n\nFor his follow-up, Myers recorded *Rays*, a more complex and sophisticated production. \"There was a popular station in LA at the time called the Wave and I tried gearing my music specifically toward their demographic,” Myers said. \"'Archangel Michael' and 'Rays,' the title cut, were just such works.\"  While Myers was happy with *Rays*, the label was subsumed by Sony Records shortly after its release and the planned marketing was scaled back. The album only came out on cassette in the US and CD in Japan.\n\nAll the while, Myers was developing his live act, performing at festivals, shopping malls, public parks, and retreats.  He incorporated story telling into his shows, in his words recounting \"tales of man, myth, and magic – volcanoes, the gods and goddesses, and the paradise mythos.\"  After moving on from Global Pacific, Myers opted to digitally record his live act for his next two independently produced albums, 1989’s *The Magician* and 1993’s *High Priestess*. The latter was recorded in Hawaii after Myers met his second wife at the 1992 World Expo in Seville, Spain.  Over the next few years in Honolulu, Myers performed, attended grad school, and worked full time in mental health.  Myers and his wife moved to Portland, Maine in 1997.  \n\nAlthough Myers kept a small studio, he mostly retired from live performance until 2017, when Aloha Got Soul released a retrospective compilation of his work and Myers played some shows to support it. The same label plans to reissue his album *Rays* in 2019. Myers maintains a website [here](http://www.robertaeolusmyers.com).","discography":{"Robert-ÆOLUS-Myers":{"albums":{"high-priestess":{"image":"","label":"Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"High Priestess","year":"1993"},"the-magician":{"image":"","label":"Dragon Productions","review":"","title":"The Magician","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Robert ÆOLUS Myers","entry_number":2},"aeolus":{"albums":{"aeolian-melodies":{"image":"","label":"Jai Ma","review":"","title":"Aeolian Melodies","year":"1982"},"rays":{"image":"","label":"Global Pacific","review":"*Rays*, dedicated to the transformation of man, offers a wide range of emotions, colors, and states of consciousness through the use of synthesizers, recorder, double ocarina, kalimba, and subtle vocalizations.\n\n(Patti Jean Birosik, *New Age Music Guide*, 1989)","title":"Rays","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Aeolus","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":30,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/myersright.jpg?alt=media&token=0cf30773-b39c-488a-86b4-d7f968aea3ab","last_name":"Myers"},"robert-carty":{"artist_name":"Robert Carty","body":"Robert Carty (born 1963) was a latter-day space ambient musician, building on the sounds of electronic artists like Tangerine Dream, Jonn Serrie, and Steve Roach in the '90s. While he never achieved the same level of recognition, he has remained committed to the genre, even as he stretches it to include elements of rock and world music. His closest analogue may be [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl), who shared a similar commitment to the genre, and has almost exclusively self-released his own music. Carty released his first four albums on cassette, before switching over to CDs and CD-Rs. His output really ramped up from 1997 to 2003, on par with the [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) in their '80s heyday. Initially based in Kansas City, Carty has since relocated to Utah. His Bandcamp page can be found [here](https://robertcarty.bandcamp.com).","discography":{"robert-carty":{"albums":{"atmospheres":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Atmospheres","year":"1991"},"natural-wonder":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Natural Wonder","year":"1992"},"skyhearts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Skyhearts","year":"1994"},"soulscape":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Soulscape","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":352,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/robert-carty-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=c6e2e660-2ada-49b8-a34d-aab369dbc41d&_gl=1*ike7op*_ga*MTk3MDM4OTE1NS4xNjg1NTcwMjMz*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY4NTc5Nzc1Mi40LjEuMTY4NTc5Nzk5Ny4wLjAuMA..","last_name":"Carty"},"robert-duskis":{"artist_name":"Robert Duskis","body":"These days Robert Duskis is better known as the founder of the world music label Six Degrees Records, but from 1984-1986 he released three cassettes of experimental ambient music. At the time, Duskis was just getting started in his career in the music business, working for Windham Hill in marketing before moving into A&R by the late '80s. His cassettes got strong reviews in *Option* magazine but Duskis sold through mailorder only and the tapes are now scarce.\n\nRobert Duskis was born in 1959 and grew up in the comfortable New York City suburb of Sysosett in Long Island. His brother, who was seven years older, left Robert his records when he went away to private school. \"It was a killer collection,\" Duskis said. \"There was John Cale, Terry Riley, the Mothers of Invention, King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra. I was 12 or 13 and they literally frightened me. But I became fascinated by them.\" Robert soon took up the guitar and by the age of 16, joined a prog cover band performing songs by bands like Genesis and Jethro Tull.\n\nFor college, Duskis attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He'd already gotten into radio at his high school where they had a small station, and in college he quickly rose up the ranks of that station too. After graduating in 1981, Duskis got a job at a local rock station WIBA where he deejayed the late night shift. There he met fellow deejay Pete Mueller who turned out to be a kindred spirit. \"He deejayed after me and one night I was playing Brian Eno's 'St. Elmo's Fire.' He said, 'Damn I was gonna play that tonight.' We just became fast friends and started trading tracks back and forth.\"\n\nAfter two years there, Duskis moved to Seattle and began working for Windham Hill. The label was well on its way to becoming a commercial behemoth, but Duskis still had an ear tuned to the underground, avidly reading *Op* magazine. In 1984, Duskis decided to self-release a tape of his own experimental ambient pieces influenced by Fripp and Eno, among others. \"I saw that other people were doing bedroom recordings,\" Duskis said. \"I realized that I didn't have to go to studio and spend money. All of a sudden it was doable.\" \n\nIn 1985, Duskis moved again, this time to New York where he served as the East Coast marketing manager for Windham Hill. He was still making his own homespun ambient pieces, and he decided to put out two new tapes. The first one was a collaboration with his old friend Mueller on an album called *A Hawk and a Handsaw* under the name Pete 'N' Bob. At the same time, he produced another solo tape called *Open Doors* and sent them to Option along with his debut. He got a glowing, if backhanded, review for *Things to Remember*, with writer CW Vrtacek calling it \"miles ahead of many I receive\" though also lamenting that the style had \"been mined very heavily already.\" Additionally, Duskis got some airplay on John Schaeffer's influential radio show New Sounds in New York.\n\nTo capitalize on the good press, Duskis took out a full page ad in Option and sold a few hundred copies of each tape by mailorder.  However, by this time his career was starting to take off and he stopped releasing his own music. \n\nIn 1989, Duskis moved to San Francisco and got a job in A&R at Windham Hill. He continued there until 1996 when he launched a new label called Six Degrees with his friend Pat Berry. The label primarily focused on world music with the motto, \"everything is closer than you think\" and went on to a long and successful run that continues today. ","discography":{"pete-n-bob":{"albums":{"a-hawk-and-a-handsaw":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Route","review":"Ambient, moody electronics with more than a surface resemblance to Fripp/Eno stuff. Pete and Bob play several bizarre instruments including rubber bands, E-bow, cheap plastic harmonicas, and plastic bubble sheet. Soothing and contemplative, though my favorite piece, \"The Other Day I Met a Man,\" has voice loops mixed so sneakily that for a while I thought somebody was in my house. \n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option*, Jan/Feb 1987)","title":"A Hawk and a Handsaw","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Pete 'N' Bob","entry_number":2},"robert-duskis":{"albums":{"open-doors":{"image":"","label":"Alternate Route","review":"19 short compositions, ranging stylistically from new age ambient to Frippertronic techno-pop, featuring hundreds of fuzzed, echoed, and treated guitars. Surprisingly (actually it's sort of a relief), synthesizers play an extremely tiny part in the proceedings. Don't mistake this for a droning snore-fest, however, Duskis obviously wants you to have fun with his limitless guitar trickery, blithely shifting moods and textures while throwing in whatever seems to work (backward leads, speed changes, historic vocal warbling), and usually succeeds. Side two even begins with a loop-based cut called \"Living to the Beat\" which conjures up visions of an errant Beefheart riff maniacally sampled and related ad infinitum. Duskis is an inviting reminder of the electric guitar's staggering possibilities. \n\n(Dino DiMuro, *Option*, March/April 1987)","title":"Open Doors","year":"1986"},"things-to-remember":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Things to Remember When You're Falling Asleep","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":223,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Robert-Duskis-640temp.jpg?alt=media&token=10d19dd1-b470-4743-ba44-5c48aa3b381b","last_name":"Duskis"},"robert-fair":{"artist_name":"Robert Fair","body":"Robert Fair (above right) was a teacher at NYU who'd originally moved to the city to be a jazz pianist but fell in love with synthesizers instead. He and Terence Thomas (above left), a friend at NYU, self-released a split album *Forces* in 1983. Pressed in an edition of 500 copies, the electronic album has started to attract collector interest in recent years. Each musician composed a side of music for the LP. Fair went on to write many scores for TV, film, and dance projects, in addition to working as a sound designer and recording engineer.\n\nBorn in 1952, Robert Fair mostly grew up in Oklahoma. His first instrument was the trumpet which he started at ten, but he dropped that in junior high and decided to play football. He got back into rock and pop music in high school and got a Farfisa organ and started learning to play.  In 1970, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma where he majored in music.\n\nBy the time of his graduation, Fair had become a big fan of jazz and Miles Davis and decided to move to New York City with the dream of being a jazz pianist. After starving for a year, he went to NYU to get his master's degree in music composition. \"All the music I wrote at Oklahoma was for small ensembles,\" Fair recalled. \"But when I got to NYU, I took a class in analog synthesis and I just fell in love with the sound. I spent a ton of time hanging out at PASS (Public Access Synthesizer Studio), whenever the lab was free. It was a fertile time.\"\n\nIn 1980, Fair started teaching sound design at NYU, a job he'd continue for the next 12 years. During this time, he also got some work writing music for dance projects and scoring student films. But the main surviving document of his work is his privately released album *Forces* which came out in 1983. \n\n\"Terence Thomas was technical supervisor at NYU in 80s,\" Fair recalled. \"His father passed away and he said, 'I’m inheriting money and not sure if I want to build a studio or put out a record. Would you want to be involved?' I said, yeah, why don’t we do an album and record for free at my place. I recorded that on a Teac 4 track.\"\n\nThe album showed some influence from Berlin-school artists like Tangerine Dream, as well as Tomita and Morton Subotnick. They pressed 500 copies and sold them through NMDS, but Fair was hoping it would be a stepping stone to a bigger label deal. He did initialy get some interest from Private Music, but they ultimately thought Fair's music was not commercial enough. \"I was originally thinking the next record would be where I’d put my best work. But that never happened,\" Fair mused.\n\nFair continued teaching at NYU until 1992 and then moved to Los Angeles to teach at USC. Although he never put out any other electronic music, he has scored some TV documentaries for the History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic. He also scored films like *Sub Atomic Voyage* which he has excerpted on his YouTube page [here](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDK0h5zdrQ5J6T8uPwbBTLw). Fair currently lives in Washington DC.","discography":{"terence-thomas-and-robert-fair":{"albums":{"forces":{"image":"","label":"Interface Productions","review":"","title":"Forces","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Terence Thomas and Robert Fair","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":258,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/robert-fair-r-640.jpg?alt=media&token=86bc82c8-9d3a-430e-9fc9-bd8b1cb25b99","last_name":"Robert Fair"},"robert-fritz":{"artist_name":"Robert Fritz","body":"Based in Boston, Robert Fritz was a successful writer and management consultant who focused on how structural relationships can determine human behavior, writing a series of books beginning in 1984. His most popular book was *The Path of Least Resistance* which went through many printings and led to spinoffs such as *The Path of Least Resistance for Artists*. For a brief period from 1986-1987, he released three electronic cassettes on his own Goddess Muse label, basing each on visual motifs like a rainy night or a hot air balloon. He sold most through his workshops or new age stores at the time, but his writing and consulting career soon eclipsed his musical work and he didn't release anything else. Fritz currently lives in Vermont and still leads workshops.\n\nRobert Fritz was born in Cambridge, MA in 1943. He was always enamored with music, first playing violin before moving on to clarinet which became his main instrument.  \"When I was maybe 12 or so, my parents brought us to a concert where I heard \"Marriage of Figaro\" by Mozart. I immediately knew I wanted to be a composer at that moment,\" Fritz recalled. Later, he got more into jazz, especially Dave Brubeck.\n\nFritz went on to get a bachelor's and Master's in music composition at the Boston Conservatory of Music, completing his studies in 1968. He then moved to New York where he joined a band playing electric clarinet and working as a studio musician. He also spent some time in Hollywood, playing with Dave Brubeck's son Darius.\n\nEventually, Fritz returned to Boston and took up teaching at his alma mater. While teaching, he hit on the idea that underlying structures in life can determine human behavior, much in the same way that musical structure works. He eventually cofounded a management consulting firm and shaped his ideas into a series of books. His best-seller, *The Path of Least Resistance*, was first published in 1984 and has since gone through many printings and translations.\n\nWhile leading a workshop in Atlanta, Fritz learned about a program called Digital Performer, an early digital audio workstation. As a composer, he loved that idea that he could use this new tool to bring his compositions to life all on his own. Soon he installed a home recording studio and got a Yamaha DX-7 and began work on his first cassette, *Nectars of Mu*. The next year he put out two more cassettes, spending nearly five months on *Rainy Night on the Highway* and then quickly banging out *Air Sings* in a week. He released the tapes on his own label Goddess Muse label and distributed them to his network of students.\n\n\"If a piece is successful, you can live in that universe,\" Fritz said. \"Each album had its own universe. I always start with a visual frame of reference, like *Rainy Night on the Highway* was film noir. I just imaged a rainy night and what that should sound like.\" He sold the tapes to his network of students mostly, though he also sold them at new age stores at the time. However, his work was more influenced by jazz, pop, and film soundtracks than new age. \"I was not into what people were doing in New Age music, it really bored me,\" Fritz said. \"There was a lot more going on in pop music.\"\n\nBy the late '80s, Fritz's book *The Path of Least Resistance* was picked up a larger publisher, Ballantine, and sales began to take off. Although he continued to compose, especially modern classical pieces, he didn't release any additional albums after the first three. He continues to give workshops and write to this day and maintains a website [here](https://www.robertfritz.com/).","discography":{"robert-fritz":{"albums":{"1-rainy-night":{"image":"","label":"Goddess Muse","review":"","title":"Rainy Night on the Highway","year":"1987"},"2-air-signs":{"image":"","label":"Goddess Muse","review":"","title":"Air Signs","year":"1987"},"nectars":{"image":"","label":"Goddess Muse","review":"Fritz serves up a buffet of styles on his debut, including percussive electronics and Eastern motifs (“Nectars of Mu”, “Kisu”), contemporary instrumental mood pieces (“Once Upon a Night”, the bluesy “Cafe Barcelona”), new age piano balladry (\"Sketch of Rosalind”) and one dubious Caribbean pastiche (“Summer Love”). The stylistic diversity puts this closer to progressive electronic than new age, and many of the complex melody lines help elevate some of the lesser tracks while supercharging the better ones such as the stellar title track and “Duet” whkich sounds like Paganini with a DX-7.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2024)","title":"Nectars of Mu","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":395,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/fritz2.jpeg?alt=media&token=8d721cfc-bcab-45d3-af7c-0896f83d5c3d","last_name":"Fritz"},"robert-rich":{"artist_name":"Robert Rich","body":"Robert Rich is one of the more well-known and respected ambient artists from the '80s, fusing disparate sources like space rock, industrial music, Gamelan, prog, and minimalism into a unique hybrid. He self-released his first three albums on cassette in small editions but soon found a wider audience with the enthusiastic support of Stephen Hill and other labels in Europe. His first big success was *Rainforest* on Hearts of Space in 1989. Since then, Rich has remained active, releasing vital music for the past four decades.\n \nRobert Rich was born in 1963 in Menlo Park, California, and has lived nearby for most of his life.  His father was a west coast jazz guitarist and helped instill a love of music into this son. “I was into jazz like my Dad, but I was a bit rebellious, so I gravitated towards noisy jazz like Sun Ra or Chicago Art Ensemble,” Rich recalled.\n \nRich took up the viola in fifth grade, but he didn't enjoy sight reading and gave it up. He began playing the piano instead, trying to emulate the expressive, risk-taking style of Keith Jarrett. By 1975, Rich discovered Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream and went on a frenzy of import buying, picking up albums by Gong, Klaus Schulze, and other artists on record labels like Egg and Brain. He wrote to an address on the back of a Synergy album and received in return a copy of Polyphony magazine, which inspired Rich to build his own synths. By pooling his gardening and paper route money, Rich began assembling modules for his own primitive synthesizer. “It sounded like a tortured mosquito,” Rich recalled. “It took me years to realize I would never sound like Klaus Schulze with this thing.”\n\nAlong with friends John Spencer and Rick Davies, Rich started an experimental improv band called Quote Unquote in 1980. At the time, Davies was working at Sequential Circuits, a synth company who had just produced a very popular polyphonic synth, the Prophet 5. However, because the first version turned out to be highly unstable, the company offered upgrades to early purchasers, freeing up many of the Rev. 1 units for employee purchase. Rich, Davies, and other lucky souls were able to get Rev 1's cheaply this way (Rich's had been owned by Joe Zawinful.)\n \nIn 1981, Rich enrolled at Stanford University where he ultimately earned a degree in psychology. In addition to his more experimental music with Quote Unquote, Rich was also interested in the minimalist and ambient sounds he was hearing on radio shows like Stephen Hill's *Hearts of Space* and Charles Amirkhanian's *Morning Concert*, both on KPFA.  At Stanford, Rich began composing music in a floating style with no tempo that he first performed at his \"sleep concerts.\" These were all-night performances in which he played quiet, droning music meant to inspire altered states while sleeping.  Although Rich initially saw these events as Fluxus-style art projects to create a sort of public ritual, he soon decided to record and release some of the material from these shows for his debut cassette *Sunyata* in 1983. \n \nRich recorded *Sunyata* at home and released it on his own label, Soundscape Productions, printing 500 copies. \"I had no confidence in my commercial potential and just wanted to get the music out there,\" Rich said. Thankfully, Rich viewed his cassettes as an archival artifact and insisted on high-quality duplication and printing.\n \nRich's next two releases, *Drones* and *Trances* were both recorded in 1983, and like his debut were ambient, long-form works meant to be played at low volumes.  Rich's releases had fans in both the new age and industrial community, a rare feat in those days when the experimental underground and new age movements seemed to have opposing world views, despite both relying on a DIY ethos. “I think the commonality with those two cultures is the belief that music is a form of magic,” Rich said. “I was interested in a sort of 21st-century shamanism in which music could create a state of mind and transform your brain.\" \n\nRich sent some of his early tapes to Stephen Hill and was delighted when he heard his music actually played on the air. *Hearts of Space* had gone into syndication in 1983 and Rich's music suddenly had a much larger audience. Hans Fahlberg, a Swede who ran the label Psychout Productions, heard Rich's music and offered to release a live album on cassette in 1984. Fahlberg also released Rich's next album *Numena* but that would not be until three years later (and after Psychout changed names to Multimood).\n\nIn the intervening years, Rich formed a band with Davies and bassist Andrew McGowan who, like Davies, also worked at Sequential Circuits. Calling themselves Urdu, the trio played live in the area and released a cassette in 1985 of experimental art rock. \"That was a way to get out my most psychotic tendencies,” Rich said. “It was extravagantly weird.” By Rich's estimation, they only pressed only 50-100 copies of the cassette and it is now extremely rare. During this time Rich also created sound environments for a Hollywood theater production of Somerset Maugham's play *Rain*, and performed live at the famed Anticlub on Melrose Ave. \n\nAlthough Rich never got a degree in music from Stanford, he did take additional classes at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics there. He composed two pieces there on a mainframe computer, and generated pitch references for the just intonation tuning tables he was developing at the time.\n\nBy the time *Numena* came out in 1987, Rich's sound displayed a new maturity and complexity, darker and more tribal than before. In the mid-'80s, Hill had introduced Rich to [Steve Roach](/steve-roach) and the two bonded immediately. \"We both loved Hawkwind and we both had iguanas as pets,\" Rich recalled.  Both also shared an interest in ethnic and tribal sounds, which Roach explored on his *Dreamtime Return* (using Rich's percussion on two tracks) and Rich showcased masterfully on his 1989 album *Rainforest*. Using thumb pianos, marimbas, and gamelan textures, Rich creates an evocative portrait of this mysterious, ancient environment. Rich and Roach collaborated together for two subsequent albums, Strata  (1990) and Soma (1992), the latter which is one of  Rich's favorite works in his catalog.\n\nRich continued to record and release albums, but most are outside of the scope of this project.  Although Rich had finally started to see some money with his *Rainforest* album, he continued to keep a day job for several years. In addition to writing product reviews and articles for magazines such as Electronic Musician and Music Technology, Rich also helped design a lucid dreaming device called the DreamLight for Stephen LaBerge's Lucidity Institute, which came to market in the early '90s.\n\nRich maintains a website [here](https://robertrich.com).","discography":{"robert-rich":{"albums":{"drones":{"image":"","label":"Soundscape","review":"","title":"Drones","year":"1984"},"gaudi":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Gaudi","year":"1991"},"geometry":{"image":"","label":"Spalax","review":"","title":"Geometry","year":"1991"},"inner-landscapes":{"image":"","label":"Auricle","review":"","title":"Inner Landscapes","year":"1988"},"live":{"image":"","label":"Psychout","review":"","title":"Live","year":"1984"},"numena":{"image":"","label":"Multimood","review":"","title":"Numena","year":"1987"},"rainforest":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Rainforest","year":"1989"},"sunyata":{"image":"","label":"Soundscape","review":"","title":"Sunyata","year":"1983"},"trances":{"image":"","label":"Soundscape","review":"*Trances* lives up to its title with two side-long ambient pieces meant to be played at low volumes. The mysterious, minor-key \"Cave Paintings\" slowly builds to subtle crescendoes of swirling melodies a la Terry Riley before subsiding into winds of insect burbles and synth drones. \"Hayagriva\" on side two is even darker, creating an atmosphere of fog and menace akin to Jeff Greinke's early work.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2022)","title":"Trances","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Robert Rich","entry_number":1},"robert-rich-and-steve-roach":{"albums":{"soma":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Soma","year":"1992"},"strata":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Strata","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Robert Rich and Steve Roach","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":12,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Robert-Rich-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b21a2dcc-ce0a-4f79-a63d-c93a253ba270","last_name":"Rich"},"robert-scott-thompson":{"artist_name":"Robert Scott Thompson","body":"Most of Thompson's well-known ambient works were produced in the '90s, but he actually began making electronic music decades earlier, starting in the late '70s at the University of Oregon, where he attended with the like-minded David Stout.  He self-released many cassettes on his own Aucourant label in the '80s in small editions before signing a deal with Oasis/Mirage later.\n\nBorn in 1960 in Los Angeles, Thompson was exposed to music early as his father was an amateur composer with a tape recorder and piano. In elementary school, Thompson made fake radio shows using the recorder and by high school was becoming interested in electronic music.\n\nAt boarding school in the UK, Thompson got into progressive rock, especially Roxy Music and Brian Eno's *Another Green World*. Once he enrolled at the University of Oregon, Thompson spent a lot of time in the music lab tinkering with their Moog in an effort to get that Eno sound. One day, Stout walked in to hear what was going on and the two developed an artistic partnership that culminated in two late '70s reel-to-reel releases *Perhaps Art is a Woman* and *Other Rhythms of the Evening*.\n\nAfter getting his music degree in 1981, Thompson moved to San Diego to attend UCSD and work on his masters and later a PhD in composition. There he studied with the famous electronic composer Pauline Oliveros and also worked at the Computer Audio Research Lab, helping visiting composers with their computer music projects and other research. \"I didn't have much of a social life at the time\" Thompson recalled of this period. \"I was in the studio pretty much all the time.\"\n\nThompson began releasing cassettes while in San Diego, oscillating between progressive electronic, soundtrack-style pieces, and dark, ambient soundscapes.\n\nAfter getting his PhD in 1990, Thompson moved to Atlanta where he became a professor of music composition at Georgia State. He continued to record electronic music throughout the 90s, including his better-known works *Silent Shore* and *Forgotten Places*.","discography":{"jim-oliver":{"albums":{"Heart-to-heart":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Heart to Heart","year":"1986"},"air-friction":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Air Friction","year":"1988"},"alcyone":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Alcyone","year":"1986"},"amorphia-computer-music":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Amorphia Computer Music","year":"1995"},"anodyne":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Anodyne","year":"1985"},"as-in-the-dark-all-cats-are-grey":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"Taken from a Benjamin Franklin quote, the title *As in the Dark, All Cats Are Grey*, allegedly refers to Franklin's preference for older women. However, Thompson's interpretation of the line seems more literal, as the album conjures a dreamlike, nocturnal mood over the course of eleven tracks. Like many of his other early cassettes, Thompson draws inspiration from a variety of UK sources like Bill Nelson, Dead Can Dance, and Brian Eno as well as the more colorful and airy sounds of Patrick O'Hearn.  \n\nAlready well-versed in compositional theory, Thompson shows an assured touch on the opening track \"As in the Dark,\" beckoning the listener with a stately, thematic melody before plunging into murkier waters with the three atmospheric tracks that follow.  However, even as the ethereal mood builds, Thompson often punctures the stillness with unexpected accents like the random squiggles of flute on \"Grey\" or the dissonant cascades that flutter across \"The River of Forgetfulness.\" \n\nOn side two, the icier soundscapes give way to more tribal, up-tempo tracks. The percussion is heavily treated, making it more insinuating and hypnotic while also adding texture and uplift to the melancholic melodies. The inventive use of rhythm culminates with album highlight \"Pictures of Moments,\" a puzzle of staccato keyboard lines and an 8-bit beat that presages Autechre's early sound by five or six years. ","title":"As in the Dark All Cats Are Grey","year":"1987"},"deeper-in-the-dreamtime":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"Inspired by totem animals on Native American Medicine shields, this music ranges in mood from expansive lush symphonic sound to fast polyrhythmic primal beats. It touches those unconscious, buried, half awake moments, sometimes blurred and strange, other times transcendently lovely. Generally quiet and shadowy, with echoes of other worlds.\n\nWahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* No. 11, 1992)","title":"Deeper in the Dreamtime","year":"1991"},"ginnugagap":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Ginnugagap","year":"1993"},"in-ruins":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"In Ruins","year":"1982"},"moving-with-fire":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Moving with Fire","year":"1988"},"psychic-life":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Psychic Life","year":"1988"},"pure-vision-through-the-looking-glass":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Pure Vision Through the Looking Glass","year":"1986"},"rst-1985":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"RST 1985","year":"1985"},"shadow-gazing":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Shadow Gazing","year":"1994"},"shimmer-in-the-night":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Shimmer in the Night","year":"1988"},"soul-rejoinder":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Soul Rejoinder","year":"1986"},"stonefly":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"Stonefly","year":"1988"},"the-strong-eye":{"image":"","label":"Aucourant","review":"","title":"The Strong Eye","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":85,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Robert-Scott-Thompson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=7e3c3d60-a984-449c-8a14-3a42a92d0489","last_name":"Thompson"},"robert-slap":{"artist_name":"Robert Slap","body":"Robert Slap served as the in-house music producer for [Dick Sutphen's](/dick-sutphen) Valley of the Sun label from 1983 to 1993. During this time, he composed or produced over fifty cassettes for guided meditation, relaxation, or visualization. By then he was already a music industry veteran capable of any style the task demanded. Towards the end of his tenure at Valley of the Sun, Slap went back to school to learn composing for film and transitioned into a career making music for movie trailers, books on tape, and other projects. Numero Group, who recently bought the Valley of the Sun label, has begun to reissue some titles from his back catalog.\n\nRobert Slap was born in 1951 and grew up in Detroit. He started out playing the trumpet in 4th grade but dropped it for the guitar after the Beatles came along. His parents had a record collection and a nice stereo, and Slap spent time taking it apart to see how it worked. He soon got into soul and R&B music which was then thriving in his home town. \"We lived in an integrated community and I went to school with black kids,\" Slap recalled. \"It was great experience that effected my whole life. I never looked at people different.\"\n\nWhen he was 15, Slap joined a local band called the Tidal Waves as their bassist. The group scored a hit with their first single \"Farmer John\" in 1966  that went on to sell 900,000 copies. The band subsequently toured with Mitch Ryder, Bob Seger, the Animals, Dave Clark Five, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, though things screeched to a halt when they couldn't replicate the success of their first hit. \"That was a great learning experience,\" Slap said. \"Early on in my career I learned how record companies and manager screw you.\"\n\nAfter his taste with fame, Slap returned to normal teenage life in high school. He started getting into theater and acting, and landed the lead role in his school's production of *Bye Bye Birdie*. He got a scholarship to study theater at Oakland University but decided to focus on music instead. \"I was pretty rebellious,\" Slap said. \"I left home a couple months after high school and never went back. I started playing with black groups like David Ruffin, the Magic Tones, and the Drifters. My folks wanted me to go to college and be doctor or lawyer. But in 1969, that's not where my head was at.\"\n\nIn 1973, Slap moved out to Los Angeles with his songwriting partner John Angelos and they put together a band called Mighty Quick. They stayed together for four years and recorded some demos but never got signed. Slap paid the bills as a guitarist with show bands in Las Vegas, Reno and Southern California. At one point he even worked at a waterbed store near the famed Goldstar Studios where he'd sometimes pop in and try to learn more about engineering.\n\nSlap returned to Detroit for a few years in the early '80s to join Secrets with ex-members of the MC5. They recorded some singles, but they missed expectations and Slap headed back to California, this time settling in Malibu.\"Back then, Malibu was nothing like it is now,\" Slap recalled. \"It used to be place where people rode horses. I lived right on the beach in a cottage and my rent was $400 a month. I saw an ad in the local paper that Dick Sutphen's company [Valley of the Sun] needed help and I got a job working in the mailroom.\"\n\nIn his first year there, Slap met in-house producer [David Naegele](/david-naegele) who'd developed the label's signature sound with meditative classics like *Temple in the Forest*. However, Naegele left the company a year later and Slap stepped in to fill the role. \"For that whole period from 1983 to 1993, Dick was the idea man and I was the producer,\" Slap said. \"I'd record his voice and do the research and recording. I used to sleep very little in those days. We were on a three month schedule. Every three months we'd put out the magazine *Master of Life* that we sent to 250,000 people. And every three months we'd have new tapes by Dick, plus another one or two new age music releases.\"\n\nDespite his prolific output, Slap only credited himself as an artist on releases that he personally developed. Instead of trying to mimic Naegele's introspective style, Slap purveyed a cinematic sound that drew on progressive rock and featured more guitar. \"I'm a very visual person,\" Slap said. \"The ideas was to put the music on a take a trip.\"\n\nLike Sutphen, Slap tried out a range of musical styles and moods on his tapes, including Asian-inspired fusion (*East of West*), prog rock (*Caverns*), jazzy new age (*Atlantis: Crystal Chamber*) and even a Miami Vice inspired rock album *Drive*. For some of his other tapes, Slap credited himself solely as the producer, such as on *Astral Massage* by Upper Astral, a series of tapes designed for movement (*Fitness Walking*), and one of the label’s all-time best sellers *The Eternal Om*, which was simply just Slap chanting. However, all featured his own music exclusively.\n\nOne of Slap's biggest projects as a producer was working on the \"Musical Sounds of Relaxation Series\" commissioned by the Great American Audio Corporation from Valley of the Sun. Slap contributed   eleven cassettes, all with distinct themes like *Snow Dreams* or *Oriental Gardens*. \"For those albums, I took a lot of stock music that was available by Upper Astral or other music we owned and remixed it into different arrangements,\" Slap said. \"I hired some musicians outside and used some of my own music too. Since I was producer, I had a lot of freedom about spending money.\" (Four of those albums would go on to be repackaged in Canada as *The Ultimate New Age Experience*.)\n\nAfter ten years of non-stop recording and producing with Valley of the Sun, business went into a decline in the early '90s. However, Slap had already made plans for his next move. In 1990 he'd gone back to UCLA to study film scoring which led to freelance gigs composing for books on tape, video productions, and movie trailers and films. He did record one final album for Valley of the Sun, *Zen Morning* which came out in 1996 on CD.\n\nSlap continued to do production music for GMP music, TM Productions, and Bongo Boy Records for the next several decades while still collecting (admittedly diminishing) royalties from Valley of the Sun. His parents and extended family back east were having health issues so he and his wife relocated to Chicago in the late '90s where they still reside today.\n\nRecently, the Numero Group bought the rights to Valley of the Sun's catalog and plans to reissue some of Slap’s releases as a part of their campaign. The first one released was Slap's somewhat uncharacteristic *Drive* from 1990, which Slap considers the beginning of a new era. However, Slap notes that all the label’s original masters were lost or destroyed during Sutphen's divorce.","discography":{"robert-slap":{"albums":{"ascension-to-the-all-that-is":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Ascension to the All That Is","year":"1987"},"atlantis-crystal-chamber":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Some of the smoothest meditational music this side of heaven, created on guitar, electric piano and digital synthesizer, with one of the best shakuhachi patches this side of Japan. Slap's \"new age\" orientation inspires him to write about crystals, rainbows and healing vibrations, but on a purely musical level it's on this side of tolerable.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, August 1987)","title":"Atlantis: Crystal Chamber","year":"1986"},"atlantis-healing-temple":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Atlantis: Healing Temple","year":"1990"},"caverns-of-your-mind":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Caverns of Your Mind","year":"1984"},"east-of-west":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"East of West","year":"1984"},"mystic-memories":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Mystic Memories","year":"1983"},"search-for-utopia":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"\"Progressive\" New Age music, which means that in addition to the usual pentatonic keyboard noodles, Slap also slips in some synthesizer white noise effects, some David Gilmour electric guitar strums, and a few power chords as befits his rock and roll past.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, November 1986)","title":"Search for Utopia","year":"1988"},"sedona-the-psychic-vortex-experience":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Sedona: The Psychic Vortex Experience","year":"1986"},"zen-morning":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Zen Morning","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Robert Slap","entry_number":1},"robert-slap-and-steve-powell":{"albums":{"drive":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Drive","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Robert Slap and Steve Powell","entry_number":4},"robert-slap-and-suzanne-ghiglia":{"albums":{"shared-blessings":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Shared Blessings","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Robert Slap and Suzanne Ghiglia","entry_number":3},"robert-slap-productions":{"albums":{"a-emerald-green":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Emerald Green","year":"1989"},"b-ocean-echoes":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Ocean Echoes","year":"1989"},"c-snow-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"All original music by Slap, working here in an appropriately icy mode, with crystallized arpeggios and stately synth leads that float like the aurora borealis. A wintry mix of nature sounds punctuate the long tracks, with snatches of snow, rain and wind helping to set the mood. ","title":"Snow Dreams","year":"1989"},"d-you-are-the-sea":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"You Are the Sea","year":"1989"},"e-oriental-gardens":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Oriental Gardens","year":"1989"},"f-tranquilities":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Tranquilities","year":"1989"},"g-nightwinds":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Nightwinds","year":"1989"},"h-celestial-whispers":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Celestial Whispers","year":"1989"},"i-aquamarine":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Aquamarine","year":"1989"},"k-high-as-a-kite":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"High as a Kite","year":"1989"},"l-topaz":{"image":"","label":"Great American Audio Corp","review":"","title":"Topaz","year":"1989"},"new-age-gregorian-chants":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"New Age Gregorian Chants","year":"1986"},"the-eternal-om":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Eternal Om","year":"1986"},"the-sounds-of-nature-reflections-of-reflections":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"The Sounds of Nature: Reflections of Reflections","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Musical Sounds of Relaxation","entry_number":5},"upper astral":{"albums":{"astral massage":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Designed for massage, this album features Slap's graceful playing and airy arrangements. The two sides have distinct moods and themes, though both are relaxing and gorgeous. For the first side, he uses his keyboard like a flute, repeating short phrases and embellishing them while the sound of waves punctuates each movement. The flip side takes inspiration from Chinese classical music with pentatonic melodies woven on bells, piano, chimes, and synths.","title":"Astral Massage","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Upper Astral","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":201,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Robert-Slap-crop-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8c82b451-53cf-4a3f-a23a-180eb508299f","last_name":"Slap"},"roberto-soviero":{"artist_name":"Roberto Soviero","body":"Roberto Soviero is a flute player based in South Carolina who released a new age cassette in 1992 called *Whispers of Love* that prominently featured his pet canary. Since the '70s, Soviero has played jazz, blues and meditative music throughout the south, spending time in a yoga ashram and living on a boat off shore near Coconut Grove, FL. His father was Donaldo Soviero, a music business entrepreneur who managed Ray Charles and Otis Redding, owned the Lenox School of Music during the '60s, and later founded the Cooking School of Umbria in Tuscany.\n\nBorn in 1958, Roberto Soviero grew up in Pittsfield and Lenox, Massachusetts, where his parents ran the Music Inn, a storied arts colony known for jazz and folk workshops as well as summer concerts. Roberto's father first got his start in the music business when he founded Shaw Artist corporation in New York City, going on to represent many music legends of the 50's and 60's. Roberto recalls standing backstage as a kid and watching artists like the Modern Jazz Quartet and Otis Redding play live.\n\nRoberto's life was turned upside down in the late '60s when the Inn went bankrupt and his parents got divorced while planning a move to Spain. Roberto’s mother decamped to Florida with his younger brother Donato while Roberto and his older brother Dino moved to Palma De Mallorca with their father. There Roberto studied as an apprentice chef for the next several years where 12-14 hour shifts a day were common. While Dino would go on to be named Chef Grillardin by the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, Roberto  was less enthusiastic. During his time off he pursued his interest in art and music, teaching himself flute, harmonica, and guitar.\n\nBy the time he was 14, the brothers moved back to the U.S. to live with their mother in Puerto Rico before settling more permanently in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. High school didn't suit Soviero and he dropped out after ninth grade though he eventually got his GED. Overall he found Ft. Lauderdale to be a stark contrast to a cosmopolitan island such as Mallorca. He spent his days playing harmonica and flute while also writing songs on guitar with vocals. \"I used to go to open jam sessions in Florida with many well-known jazz and blues players and sit in on harmonica,\" Soviero recalled. \"That was helpful to me formatively.\"\n\nAt 20, Soviero moved to Miami and got a job as first mate delivering fleet yachts to the Caribbean. The following year he started his own tree service. As a natural born tree climber, the job suited Soviero well and his business would eventually blossom into a full time career as an arborist. Initially though, it was just a way to sustain himself while he focused on his music and spiritual interests.\n\nDuring this time, Soviero bought a boat and lived off the coast of Miami for four years. He had been doing yoga since he was a teen, and decided after his time on the boat to move into an ashram called the Temple of the Universe in Gainesville, FL. \"Our daily practice was meditation and chanting,\" Soviero said. \"Flute playing became a spiritual vehicle for me. I was blessed to be around a lot of great musicians, and some key influences were Hubert Laws, Dave Valentine, Joe Farrell, [Paul Horn](/paul-horn), Nestor Torres, and Ira Sullivan.\" The latter in particular made an impression on Soviero during jam sessions at a local Unitarian Church: \"They’d throw out some bean bags for us and he would play alto flute that would take you on a magical journey from laughter to tears. It was so powerful.\"\n\nSoviero continued to work in Florida as a tree surgeon but it wasn't until he moved to South Carolina in 1989 that he finally put out an album, *Whispers of Love*. As he recalled, the album was inspired in part by his time in Spain: \"I remember when I was a kid, when you walked into our apartment in downtown Palma, it was Moorish décor with an aviary and canaries flying around, like out of an Elizabethan novel. For years I thought, I'd love to get a bird. So one day in South Carolina, I looked in the newspaper and it says 'Canary: $60, doesn’t sing.' I called him and said, 'Bring the bird over here.' Well, he did, and when I grabbed my wood flute and played, the bird starts singing to me! There's this mystic thing where the flute is just an opening that allows the universe to come through me. Of course the guy wanted more money immediately, and I gladly paid it. Every morning the bird would riff and I would play my flute. I decided to sit down and record that album on a little island off Folly Beach, South Carolina. The music is call and response in real time, with the bird and me.\"\n\nSoviero self-released *Whispers of Love* in a small run initially and sold it at his occasional new age performances, like the Spoleto festival in Charleston, South Carolina. He quickly sold out of the tapes and went through several more runs, eventually selling around 2,000 copies by his estimation. In addition to his new age music, Soviero continued to play jazz in Charleston, usually a mix of original compositions along with Brazilian songs and jazz standards. However, he never did release any more music.\n\nSoviero continues to run his tree business in South Carolina, and hopes to soon re-release *Whispers of Love*. He also has two albums in the works, one with open tuned auto harp and another with lever harp. Both naturally also feature flute.","discography":{"roberto-soviero":{"albums":{"whispers-of-love":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Whispers of Love","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":188,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/roberto-soviero.jpg?alt=media&token=445fc082-abc6-4aa4-8e13-9c03f442463e","last_name":"Soviero"},"rocco-notte-and-richard-bush":{"artist_name":"Rocco Notte and Richard Bush","body":"*Elysian Fields* was an ambient studio project by Rocco Notte (left) and Richard Bush (right) who were previously in the Philadelphia power pop band The A's. They released two albums on Arista to good reviews but slow sales, and Arista dropped them in 1982. Bush and Notte began working on new material for the next few years in different incarnations, but nothing stuck. Then Notte spotted a newspaper ad from Mu-Psych searching for ambient music.  The duo got signed on the basis of a demo and put out *Elysian Fields* in 1985. For the album, the duo adopted Brian Eno's style of collaboration, with Notte composing all the music and Bush serving as the producer and architect of the overall sound. ","discography":{"rocco-notte-and-richard-bush":{"albums":{"elysian-fields":{"image":"","label":"Mu-Psych","review":"[Harold Budd](/harold-budd) and Brian Eno are the obvious reference here, with Notte playing soft-hued synths and electric piano lines that Bush treats with reverb, delay and other atmospheric effects. As with [The Ghostwriters](/ghostwriters) *Remote Dreaming* on the same label, there is one killer track that jumps out at you right away, side one closer \"Wake Up in Baby's Room.\" The two tracks that precede it are much more minimal, with long breaths of silence separating Zen piano fragments that glisten and vanish into the echoing stillness.  Compared to those, \"Baby's Room\" sounds more developed, building on Notte's watercolor-like synths with a looped bird call, treated percussion, and dreamy wordless vocals from Bush. \n\nThe second side continues with two serene pieces in the established [Halpern](/steven-halpern)-via-Eno vibe of side one, with occasional bursts of layered vocal harmonies from Bush. \"Rite on the Beach\" closes the tape with ocean sounds, chimes, and a flute-like synth patch from Notte that provides a nice counterpoint to the sometimes melancholy feel of his electric piano work.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Elysian Fields","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":158,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Notte-Bush-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b6aa01e5-045e-413b-860a-2b600254aadc","last_name":"Notte"},"roland-barker":{"artist_name":"Roland Barker","body":"Roland Barker was an electronic musician from Seattle who joined one of the area's earliest synth groups, Young Scientist, in 1979. The trio, which included [Marc Barreca](/narc-barreca) and James Husted, only lasted a few years, but Barker also released some side-projects with Husted in addition to three solo cassettes informed by German groups like Kraftwerk and Neu. While all of this music was underground and self-released, Barker felt he had a shot at wider success with his art rock band the Blackouts who landed a deal with Wax Trax for one EP in 1985. However, the band broke up soon after and most of the members, including Barker, went on to join Ministry's live band starting in 1986.\n\nBorn in 1957, Roland Barker grew up in Seattle. He played saxophone in the school band and took an electronic music class in his senior year. \"There was a teacher who convinced the school to buy a synthesizer. I was already listening to Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd so I was primed for that,\" Barker recalled. Afterwards, Barker moved to Oakland to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts and remembers experimenting with a Moog synth at Mills College. When he came back to Seattle, he'd rent time at an electronic music studio in town, hoping to save up to buy his own synth. \n\nOne day while hitchhiking, Barker met James Husted, a fellow musician who also liked electronic music. Husted got the idea to form a trio called Young Scientist and brought in Marc Barreca. The group got together and improvised much of their music, preferring an unstructured approach. They got some gigs playing around town via Husted's roommate Terry Morgan and released three cassettes between 1979 and 1980 that show a strong influence from the European electronic scene.\n\nDuring his tenure with Young Scientist, Barker also played synth and sax in an art rock band called the Blackouts. They released two singles and an EP from 1979 to 1981 before moving to Boston with the goal of making it big.  While Barker admits they were never too popular there, they did meet Al Jourgensen who liked the band and ultimately produced their 1985 EP for Wax Trax, *Lost Soul's Club*.\n\nDuring the '80s, Barker self-released some solo cassettes starting with *Vortexes* in 1979. Unlike his work in Young Scientist, the pieces were more rhythmic and melody driven, comparable to Kraftwerk or Neu. His final solo cassette, *The Salamander's Friday*, is the rarest of the bunch.\n\nThrough a mutual friend's mother, Barker was introduced to Nicki Scully, a metaphysical speaker and shamanic priestess who was married to Rock Scully, the Grateful Dead's manager. Barker provided ambient tracks for some of Nicki Scully's guided meditation tapes such as *The Cauldron Teachings*  and *Cauldron Journey for Healing*, the latter of which also featured Jerry Garcia. \"I wasn't a fan of the Grateful Dead,\" Barker mused. \n\nNot long after their Wax Trax EP, the Blackouts broke up. However, Al Jourgensen recruited Barker,  bassist Paul Barker, and drummer Bill Rieflin to join him on the tour for Ministry's 1986 album *Twitch*. Paul Barker (Roland's brother) would go on to be a key collaborator with Jourgensen, appearing on several more albums while Rieflin played drums with the Revolting Cocks and on Ministry's breakout album *The Land of Rape and Honey*. Roland Barker, however, only played live with the band.\n\nIn the '90s, Barker moved to Kauai where he still lives and works today.","discography":{"roland-barker":{"albums":{"the-eternal-optimist":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Anything with a cat on the cover is usually a good sign. On this short and likable album, Barker crafts five distinctive slices of minimal wave pieces with creative arrangements. While this genre can be cold and mechanical, Barker brings a more restless and experimental art school approach that makes this closer to something like Marten Engle than say, Absolute Body Control.","title":"The Eternal Optimist","year":"1982"},"the-salamanders-friday":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Salamander's Friday","year":"1989"},"vortexes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Vortexes","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"Roland Barker","entry_number":1},"sequencer-people":{"albums":{"live":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at Roscoe Louie","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Sequencer People","entry_number":3},"young-scientist":{"albums":{"live-sciences":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live Sciences","year":"1980"},"over-low-trees":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Over Low Trees","year":"1979"},"results-not-answers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Results Not Answers","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"Young Scientist","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":367,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/roland-barker-crop-600.jpg?alt=media&token=ed953a8e-c104-42c9-a30a-69aaa0b2f579","last_name":"Barker"},"ron-konzak":{"artist_name":"Ron Konzak","body":"Ron Konzak was a designer and architect who loved to build his own instruments. There was no challenge he wouldn't try, and his most audacious creation was a 23 foot tall wind harp he installed on a cliff above Puget Sound. To document his creation, he recorded the sound of the giant instrument and released it as *Harps in the Wind* on his own label in 1985. Konzak played with many folk groups throughout his life, and one group, Pierymplezak, had previously scored a minor hit in 1972 with a novelty song called \"The Gooey Duck Song\" about geoducks.\n\nBorn in 1934, Konzak grew up in Detroit's Polish American community. He was a good artist and went on to study architecture at Wayne State University and Lawrence Institute of Technology. After college, he spent some time in the Air Force. It was during this time that he first visited Japan which would become a big influence on his life. He had a son and got married in 1959, settling down on Bainbridge Island near Seattle.\n\nKonzak worked as a designer and architectural draftsman, commuting to work by bicycle, then a pretty unusual thing to do. His primary hobby was music, both playing it and building his own musical instruments including a string bass, a gajda (Balkan bagpipes), a Peruvian harp, and a Macedonian kaval (a large flute). In the late '60s, he was the leader of the Koleda Group, whose music was inspired by Balkan folk music and featured a troupe of dancers. Konzak loved working with his hands and was also slowly renovating his own home in a Japanese style complete with a bamboo patch.\n\nIn the '70s, Konzak unsuccessfully tried to establish a local radio station in Bainbridge, and he also continued to play in a series of bands including soft rock trio Pierymplezak and Irish folk group Pratai. The former wrote most of their own material and even released a novelty pop single about geoducks called \"The Gooey Duck Song\" on Konzak's own Acme Storm Door and Co. label. The song got some local airplay and charted locally and strangely, in Australia.\n\nOne instrument that Konzak especially loved was the harp, which he sometimes played at weddings, funerals, and other gatherings. As he recalled to the Tacoma *News Tribune* in 1985, one day he set his harp down at his house and \"it started playing all by itself. There was a lyrical quality to the sound.\" This led to him coming up with his most audacious musical creation yet. \"It was in 1982 that I first began to think about building a giant wind-harp,\" Konzak later wrote. \"I envisioned a harp over twenty feet tall, perched on the edge of a cliff where the prevailing winds could create music on the strings.\" Konzak worked closely with engineer Ed Hagemann to build and install the 23 foot tall instrument on a cliff high above Agate Pass where winds could approach 100 mph. \n\nKonzak documented the sound of his wind harp on a self-released cassette called *Harps in the Wind* which was also on his own label.  The outsized instrument helped him garner some press at the time and eventually led to a commission from the St. Louis Science Center to construct a wind harp outside their building. The instrument was somewhat smaller at 13 feet and fabricated in aluminum.  Despite Konzak's frequent musical activity, his *Harps in the Wind* was the only album he produced until Pierymplezak finally released a CD in the late '90s.  \n\nKonzak was also an author, self-publishing three books. His first was a short self-help book called *Life Graph* in 1986, followed by *The Book of Ramen* in 1993 which featured recipes and a history of ramen. His final book, *Across the Sound: A Guide to Interesting Places West of Puget Sound*, was written with his third wife Mickey Molnaire and published in 2003. Konzak is also remembered locally for his many custom homes, so often inspired by Japanese design. He and Molnaire even opened their own \"Futon and Breakfast,\" complete with a bamboo patch, at 12580 Vista Drive NE in Bainbridge Island. The couple ran the business until his death from cancer in 2008.\n\nSources:\n* Konzak.com Archives. (Retrieved [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20010215161806/http://www.konzak.com/))\n* \"Giant Harp Captures Songs in Breeze of Bainbridge island,\" *The News Tribune* March 17, 1985\n* Konzak, Ron. \"Harp Spectrum: Exploring the World of Harp.\" (Retreived [here](https://www.harpspectrum.org/non/konzak_short.shtml))\n* Ronald Henry Konzak Obituary. (Retreived [here](https://www.cookfamilyfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Ronald-Henry-Konzak?obId=9537321#/obituaryInfo))","discography":{"ron-konzak":{"albums":{"harps-in-the-wind":{"image":"","label":"Acme Music and Storm Door Co.","review":"The first side features Konzak's giant Puget Sound harp which features low, rumbling tones conjured by the wind as it blows randomly through the strings. The second side features a Celtic harp in a similar environment, though this time with a higher range of frequencies that could pass for a soundtrack to a forgotten '70s thriller in the vein of Alan Pakula.  One wonders what this might have sounded like if the harp had been tuned to pentatonic scales or something a bit more pleasing. As it is, it makes for an unsettling listening experience.","title":"Harps in the Wind","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":261,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ron-konzak-640.jpg?alt=media&token=83501541-7aa9-459e-ab94-b1adcea305c5","last_name":"Konzak"},"ron-slabe":{"artist_name":"Ron Slabe","body":"Ron Slabe was a synthesist from Ohio who was active in the cassette culture underground during the '80s. His primary sound was Berlin-school, but he also worked in tribal, experimental, and more contemporary styles. During his active years, Slabe released two solo albums and two collaborations, all on cassette, plus several compilation appearances. During the CD era, Slabe mostly went dormant, though he emerged in 2016 with an electro/acoustic album with legendary tape music composer Halim El-Dabh.\n\nRon Slabe was born in 1960 in Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. His mother played classical piano, and the family had an organ at home that Slabe loved to play. By high school, he got into more progressive music like ELP, Deep Purple, and Pink Floyd and figured out how to play along on the organ. By 1975, he was fully immersed in the UK music scene, reading Melody Maker  and searching the back of album jackets for clues about how the new electronic sounds were being made.\n\nAfter high school, Slabe bought his first synth, a homemade PAIA kit. It was never too reliable, and he eventually resorted to renting more professional gear to start recording under the name Cerberus. He joined the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association) and was inspired to submit some of his own music when the newsletter announced they were seeking demos for a group tape.  Slabe must have been pleasantly surprised when [Ken Moore](/ken-moore), who was then compiling tape #2, used six of his tracks on the final product.\n\nAfter that, Slabe began putting together his first cassette release *Advent Guard* in 1982. He loved the ostinato electronic sound of the Berlin-school, but didn't have a sequencer at the time and played all his arpeggios by hand. He advertised the album in *SYNE* (the IEMA newsletter) and even got it played on the local college radio station in Kent, Ohio.   He also began trading tapes with other musicians that he met through IEMA events such as [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley) and he struck up mail correspondences with others around the country like [Nathan Griffith](/nathan-griffith) and [Pauline Anna Strom](/pauline-anna-strom).\n\nFor his next album, Slabe partnered with Bill Trivison, a local musician who'd heard *Advent Guard* on the radio and reached out to Slabe. The two traded tapes and eventually got together to produce an album called *Better Music Through Electronics* in 1984. Both played keyboards on a diverse set that included minimal synth, experimental and brooding soundscapes in the vein of Italian horror-maestros Goblin. A few months later, Slabe released his next solo album *Zagadka*, featuring a more consistent  style, though at times lacking the dynamic chemistry of his work with Trivison. Slabe advertised these two cassettes in Op and Sound Choice, and both sold about 20-30 copies of each (though Slabe estimates closer to 100 each including his many trades.)\n\nFor the next few years, Slabe's networking paid off as magazines and label owners reached out to include his music on compilations, including *From Across This Gray Land* (Projekt), two compilations from Tim Ski, two on Epitapes, and a track on one of Robin James' *Audio Alchemy Digest* comps. \n\nAround 1985, guitarist Paul Keefner contacted Slabe to join his band the following year at MusicStar and Starwood, two new age festivals organized by The Association of Consciousness Exploration (ACE). Keefner was a disciple of Robert Fripp who'd been playing with his group Dr. Entropy at the festival for the past few years. That first show didn't pan out, but Slabe and Trivison did end up playing a set to a mostly empty room at MusicStar in 1986. The next year, Slabe regrouped with Keefner as a duo and played both festivals in 1987. The material from MusicStar, plus one song from the Trivison show, was released in 1988 under the title *Ya Can't Trust Gravity.* The album includes a wide ranging set of songs that encompass space music, jazz-funk, Indian ragas, and a visceral tribal jam that sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. \n\nKeefner moved away in 1988, but Slabe continued to work with the Starwood Festival and ACE, producing multimedia presentations. He has done these every year ever since, often featuring music, fireworks, dance, and fine art. To help promote Slabe's music, ACE not only sold copies of *Ya Can't Trust Gravity*, but also made new copies of *Zagadka* and *Better Music for Living* that they sold for decades afterward (they may still have some for sale.) \n\nSlabe continued to write and record through the '90s, creating about 30 new minutes of music a year. However, he never made any of the music available to the general public. During the cassette era, duplication was cheap and an easy way to share his music on a smaller scale. However, when CDs became the format of choice, Slabe felt like there was just too much risk.  \"I guess I had imposter syndrome, where I was never really satisfied with anything I'd done. I didn't want to get stuck with boxes of CDs,\" Slabe said.\n\nOf course, one could still hear Slabe's music in the '90s at Starwood. By then, he was going by the name of Pyrosonic, which he still uses on his Bandcamp page.  He also played music with a black light theater group called the Subliminals, worked with performance artists like Ron Link and the Nova Lizard Group, and wrote some music for modern dance. \n\nSeveral decades later, with the emergence of digital file sharing, Slabe began to archive and release his large backlog of music to fans. He also put out an album of new music in 2016 with Halim El-Dabh, an Egyptian-American composer who recorded some of the earliest musique-concrète pieces in the '40s and later went on to study at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music center. The two had met at Starwood where El-Dabh was a regular, talking for years about recording an album together before it finally happened. It was just in time, too, as El-Dabh passed away a year later.\n\nSlabe's Pyrosonic bandcamp page can be found [here](https://pyrosonic.bandcamp.com/) and his collaboration with El-Dabh [here](https://halimel-dabhandronslabe.bandcamp.com/releases).","discography":{"cerberus":{"albums":{"submergings":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Cerberus AKA Ron Slabe produces music a la early Tangerine Dream, with frequent experiments in acoustics also (chiefly in a piece called \"Aquaerotica,\" which makes use of actual water sounds and kalimba –an African thumb piano). Most of the music makes good use of counterpoint in the melodic structure, but the keyboard technique needs a touch of fine-tuning. His choice of sounds are frequently on the tinny side, but he is a good conceptualist.\n\n(James E. Finch, *SYNE*, Issue #8205, 1982)\n","title":"Advent Guard","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"Cerberus","entry_number":1},"ron-slabe":{"albums":{"out-pop-options":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This is a very listenable presentation of synthesizer \"trance music\" (the composer's term). Most of the 11 pieces use a layering technique which skillfully weaves together various repetitive rhythms, melodies and drones, while maintaining an overall hypnotic effect. Some pieces are quite spare - almost minimalist - while others are rich and complex and even have a suggestion of baroque counterpoint, especially when a harpsichord sound is approximated. A thumb piano is used effectively on several cuts, and one of the best pieces employs a strange, sustained vocal muttering as a drone. The dominant ambience of the cassette is not exactly gloomy, but there is an appealing aura of distance and mystery. The last cuts on each side of the cassette (\"Known But to God I & II\") are more linear and ponderous.\n\n(Bill Tilland, *Sound Choice* No. 3, Fall 1985)","title":"Zagadka","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Ron Slabe","entry_number":2},"ron-slabe-bill-trivison":{"albums":{"windfalls":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Straight electronics mostly derivative of the German school with Tangerine Dream orchestration and Cluster-like rhythmic structures. Most of the pieces are built upon a straightforward major chord sequence are not very daring, but good production and competent musicianship keep it interesting. The tape's best moments come when the duo takes some chances and cracks the mold as in \"Graverobbers II\" and \"Social Collapse and Ensuing Bedlam\" that uses an interesting major/minor sequence structure that is slightly unnerving and creates the tapes most interesting song.\n\n(Nathan Griffith, *Sound Choice*, No. 3 Fall 1985)","title":"Better Music Through Electronics","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Ron Slabe and Bill Trivison","entry_number":3},"ron-slabe-paul-keefner":{"albums":{"living-in-the-distant-present":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Ya Can't Trust Gravity","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Ron Slabe and Paul Keefner","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":43,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Ron-Slabe-600-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=bbf92408-f776-4109-bf9f-f9ae6d851311","last_name":"Slabe"},"rosalind-richards":{"artist_name":"Rosalind Richards","body":"Based in San Diego, Rosalind Richards put out a cassette of improvised solo flute pieces in 1984. She'd initially been inspired to pick up the instrument after hearing Herbie Mann but stuck with it and made the instrument her livelihood. [William Aura](/william-aura), who she met in the early '80s, encouraged her to record and produced her debut *Goldwind* which went on to sell 2,000 copies by her estimation. While she continued to perform, she didn't release music again until the 2010s when she resurfaced with a series of new albums that drew on world music influences.\n\nRosalind Richards was born in 1948 and grew up in White Plains, New York in Westchester County. Her mother loved listening to jazz on the radio and that was how Rosalind discovered Herbie Mann who inspired her to get a flute in high school. She taught herself how to play and would go on to perform live and teach the instrument for the rest of her life. Richards initially studied psychology in college but later switched to music and moved to California to study at the University of California, San Diego.  After that, she went on to earn a master's degree in music history and began working as a teacher at a community college. \n\nIn 1984, right around the time Richards graduated, she went into the studio to record her debut album *Goldwind*. The improvised solo flute pieces owed a debt to [Paul Horn](/paul-horn), but also to her producer William Aura who then had a burgeoning career in the new age. \"William Aura was actually the one who encouraged me to do it,\" Richards said. \"He really liked my music and helped produce it. I love jazz. Jazz is improvisation and flute is essential to my being.\" Richards released the album on cassette and sold them on consignment at local new age stores. Eventually, she got distribution through new Leaf and Pyramid and went on to sell about 2,000 copies. \n\nAfter several decades, Richards resurfaced to release several new albums on CD. Confusingly, she titled the first one *Goldwind*, though it was very different than her debut, combining elements of fusion jazz and world music and focusing more on electric and acoustic piano than flute. She folloted that with additional CDs such as *World Flute Kaleidoscope* which continues the world music influence. She later issued her 1984 cassette on CD, but changed the title to *Flutewind*.\n\nRichards is still working on new music today, and she also offers private lessons in addition to teaching at the Rhodes school. \"Why did I do it? It's spiritual I think,\" Richards said. \"The flute is so essential to my being. I've stuck with it since high school and I'm still performing.\"","discography":{"rosalind-roberts-richards":{"albums":{"goldwind":{"image":"","label":"Goldwind Music","review":"","title":"Goldwind","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Rosalind Roberts-Richards","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":301,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/rosalind-richards-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d878bd12-24d4-47e6-b02c-8c3fa650877e","image_credit":"","last_name":"Roberts-Richards"},"sally-daley":{"artist_name":"Sally Daley","body":"Sally Daley (1941-2020) was a synthesist who worked for decades as the musical director at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Chicago.  Before that, she taught humanities at the City Colleges of Chicago. Daley released over 15 cassettes in the late '80s and early '90s, incorporating a range of influences from early music and classical to avant-garde and ambient. Her *Preludes* cassettes, which drew from Gregorian chants and early music were a popular seller at her local church and inspired multiple sequels and compilations. However, other albums featured twelve-tone compositions, experimental free improv, electronic impressionism and religious-themed ambient music. \n\nDaley was closely affiliated with the Creative Musicians Coalition (CMC), promoting many of her cassettes through their *AfterTouch* catalogs starting in the early '90s.  By all accounts, she was a joyful, humorous person who loved cats. She was also deeply spiritual, belonging to a branch of the Franciscan order that vows poverty, chastity, and serving the poor. (Her label name Tau Spirit refers to the Greek letter T which was associated with Saint Francis of Assisi). Daley had been married earlier in life, but it was an unhappy one. She chose to be celibate after that, devoting her life to the church and teaching music. On her passing, many of her friends and former students fondly remembered their time with her. \n\nBelow is an essay Daley wrote for *AfterTouch* Volume Six, the newsletter for the CMC:\n\n\"Church music was a field for which I was never headed. Sure, I was always very close to God and loved him very much, but I believed that I was to do recital work in conjunction with teaching piano and music theory in a college. I was always fascinated with musical composition, especially with the way in which I could arrange sounds on acoustic instruments to make them sound like new sounds.\n\nGradually I became bored with the piano and the flute, my main instruments, and switched to the organ. The organ brought me even closer to God, and through my playing of it I was able to give him praise unlike anything I could have given him before. The mighty 4-manual Moller Pipe Organ at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pa., was to me the ultimate. Later I realized that it was not how many sounds I had at my disposal, but how I felt about what I was doing that enabled me to praise God through music. The feelings were caused by a very strong belief in the power and love of God.\n\nLet me back up a little. I was a graduate student at Northwestern University, headed in the direction of college teaching and recital work, when my father died of leukemia. I then had to work to put myself through school the rest of the way. Although I was a Lutheran at the time, I was given the task of playing and singing the morning Masses at St. Athanasius’ Catholic Church in Evanston, IL. I studied Catholicism and found that it better coincided with my basic beliefs than did Lutheranism, so I converted. I also found out later that I enjoyed my duties as a church musician far more than I did those of a Humanities/Music Professor in the City Colleges of Chicago, so I chose to go in that direction.\n\nAfter a few years I met Sr. Evelyn Brokish, and became her assistant at a church in Winnetka. She really made me aware of all the new directions church music was taking, and gave me experience in working with children’s choirs. I continued studying the organ at DePaul University, and my skill in this area grew.\n\nAs I had not been trained specifically in church music, Sr. Evelyn made sure that I became involved with the National Association of Pastoral Musicians whose workshops and conventions I attended regularly.\n\nIn March of 1982, I was called to be the Director of Music Ministry at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Chicago. At first, I was to just play the Sunday Masses and direct the Adult Choir, but gradually I found myself doing more and more things including composing and arranging music for Mass plus founding and directing a children’s choir. I became immersed in my work at IHM, and a part-time position grew into a full-time one. I even became a pioneer in using electronic instruments at Mass.\n\nI am very glad that things in my life happened the way they did because I am so happy in church music that I would never want to do anything else with my life. There is something so far greater than creating and performing music just for one’s own self-glorification. That means nothing to me; creating music and performing it for the honor and glory God is everything.\"\n\n","discography":{"sally-daley":{"albums":{"collected-liturgical-pieces":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Collected Liturgical pieces","year":"1995"},"from-death-to-life":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"Composed in the wake of Daley's mother’s death, this album uses a mix of low drones, deep organ tones and windswept synth fields to convey an atmosphere of grief and reflection. Along with *My God and My All*, this is one of her most cohesive and consistent ambient works, though the awe of that album is replaced with a more somber mood and a nagging dissonance that looms like an approaching storm cloud.\n\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"From Death to Life","year":"1990"},"fun-time":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Fun Time","year":"1992"},"garden-of-contrasts":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"","title":"Garden of Contrasts","year":"1991"},"improvisation-on-a-neo-baroque-theme":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Improvisation on a Neo Baroque Theme","year":"1988"},"mirages":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"","title":"Mirages","year":"1990"},"moonscape":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"Atonal, spectral synth music with little discernible structure, careening from one bizarre melody to the next, similar to EJ Gold or Sozra. The most palatable track here for me is the more ethereal album closer “Return to Earth,” so perhaps this listener isn’t quite ready for alien music just yet.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Moonscape","year":"1993"},"more-preludes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"More Preludes","year":"1994"},"my-god-and-my-all":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"*My God and My All* lives up to its title with an immersive and billowy synth trip into the eternal wonder of creation. While Daley went on to try many genres and styles over the decades, she has never sounded so engrossing and natural as she does on the majority of this album, channeling deep religious convictions into sumptuous waves of gratitude and awe. Unfortunately, she seldom returned to this milieu, which clearly suited her so well. As if to emphasize the point, Daley ends side two with a pair of western-hued pop tunes that awkwardly gallop and stride, pulling the listener out of this heavenly dream and back onto the open road.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"My God and My All","year":"1990"},"on-the-lighter-side":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"","title":"On the Lighter Side (Compilation)","year":"1996"},"prayer-of-a-penitent-soul":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Prayer of a Penitent Soul","year":"1991"},"preludes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Written as music to be played before the Catholic Mass, these pieces are performed live rather than sequenced. The “Preludes” were composed after a group of parishioners at Sally’s church in Chicago complained that the organ played before Mass interfered with their private prayer. At first the Pastor told Sally not to play anything, but that did not sit well with her, so she suggested these Preludes. The music was accepted enthusiastically and some of the complainers actually called her and asked her to continue with them. The Preludes are not necessarily written for electronic instruments. Sally says that at her church they have used solo violin and flute as well as piano and organ. There are a total of 10 Preludes on the tape. \n\n(Ron Wallace, *AfterTouch*, Vol. 6)","title":"Preludes","year":"1992"},"preludes-vol-2":{"image":"","label":"Crossroads Music","review":"","title":"Preludes Vol. 2","year":"1993"},"spirit-alive":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Spirit Alive","year":"1988"},"symphony-of-sources":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Symphony of Sources","year":"1992"},"today-the-heavens":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Today the Heavens","year":"1988"},"twenty-preludes-for-live-performance":{"image":"","label":"Crossroads Music","review":"","title":"Twenty Preludes for Live Performance","year":"1997"},"urban-sketches":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Urban Sketches","year":"1990"},"workout":{"image":"","label":"Tau-Spirit Music Productions","review":"","title":"Workout","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Sally Daley","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":447,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/sally-daley-crop.jpeg?alt=media&token=d2eb5973-dc0b-4f81-b747-d46bd7d08dec","last_name":"Daley"},"sam-mcclellan":{"artist_name":"Sam McClellan","body":"Sam McClellan is a musician and acupressure practitioner who had a brief music career in the early '80s spanning three albums of healing music. He spent years working on the methodology underpinning his 1982 debut, *Music of the Five Elements*, an influential album that built his reputation in the new age world. However, McClellan had already left the music business by 1984 when his subsequent sequels failed to match his stunning debut. Instead, he pivoted his focus to a budding acupressure practice and the needs of his growing family. McClellan's three cassettes (the first was available on vinyl) are now collectible.\n\nMcClellan was born in Boston in 1958 and raised in Norwell, MA. He grew up in a large, boisterous family with lots of music echoing across the halls. His oldest brother was a skilled guitarist who inspired Sam to take up the instrument himself with a hand-me-down student model. McClellan started out playing Monkees and Beatles songs and later got into the earthier sounds of Neil Young and Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac.\n\nIn 1975, McClellan started college at Hampshire, an unorthodox school that allowed students to design their own majors. For his undergraduate studies, McClellan took a memorable course in music theory with Professor Randall McClellan (no relation) who first introduced him to the concept of sound healing. It would later have a profound impact on his own work.\n\nAfter a few years in school, McClellan took time off to hitch hike to San Francisco and live in the everlasting now. While there, McClellan learned about acupressure and started taking classes. By the time he returned to Hampshire, he was now deeply immersed in the practice and was thinking about a possible connection between music and acupressure. “Randall McClellan taught me about the pentatonic scales of Greek and Chinese music,” McClellan said. \"That's when I came up with the idea for what became my first album.\"\n\nMcClellan had been reading the *Huangdi Neijing* an ancient Chinese medical text commonly known in the US as *The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine*. The text mentioned five elements, and McClellan realized that there were also five notes in the pentatonic scale. While some new age musicians like Steven Halpern equated individual music notes or keys to chakras, McClellan was more interested in intervallic relationships between the various notes. \"I sat there and played pentatonic scales over and over and matched it up with the feelings each evoked, and from there what Element it was associated with. If you play a tonic note with the second, that’s warm, expansive. It’s fire. Fire in Chinese medicine relates to the heart and warmth and emotion. Each interval related to an element.\"\n\nUsing these principles, McClellan began composing music for what became his first album. The music was largely improvised. \"When I was in college I went to concert in Brattleboro and saw the Jazz/World Music band, Oregon. I was blown away by them,\" McClellan said. \"I've always been a pretty undisciplined musician. I was not great at actually following a melody. I really enjoyed just playing improvisationally.\"\n\nOnce he had enough material, McClellan tested out his ideas with actual experiments. He found that different tones could help restore imbalances in his patients. He knew he was onto something, but the album wasn't complete yet. \"The first side of my album was a part of my final project at school,\" McClellan said. \"But people said that the album made them feel unstable because it was going backwards through the elements. So, I made the second side of my album moving forward through the cycle. It was all meant to be one piece, but I had to split it up on two sides of a record.”\n \nWhile making his final project, McClellan heard about a group of other locals interested in sound healing and went to one of their meetings. There he met Jonathan Goldman, a former soft rock deejay and journalist turned label owner who’d recently had an epiphany about the restorative properties of sound. Although he'd initially started his label Spirit Music to release his own band’s material, Goldman now wanted to use McClellan’s senior project to relaunch his label as a hub for healing music.\n\n\"I knew nothing about the music business when I started,” Goldman recalled. “I called up a distributor, Lloyd Barde, and told him about the album, and not only did he distribute it, he gave me the name of six other distributors too.\" The album went on to sell several thousand copies and remained one of the most popular on Goldman's label throughout the '80s. \n\nWith *Music of Five Elements* generating some heat for Goldman, he wanted a follow up to capture the momentum he'd built. McClellan ultimately delivered two more sequels but he wasn’t satisfied with his work. Customers noticed the drop-off in quality, and sales were considerably slower than the debut. \"I felt typecast,\" McClellan recalled. \"I was trying to make music that I thought he [Goldman] wanted, but I don't think my second or third album expressed what either of us wanted.\"\n\nBy 1984, McClellan got married and started his own school to teach acupressure. He began traveling constantly for work, teaching classes, mostly in Massachusetts, on the west coast, and in Europe.  He had little time to create original music, even though he’d built a small studio for himself around the time of his third album. McClellan never did release any music again.  He wound down his practice in 1997 to write a book called *Integrated Acupressure* that was published the next year. McClellan continues to work in the field, and his landmark debut was reissued in 2018 by Canadian label [Séance Centre](https://www.seance-centre.com/shop/sam-mcclellan-music-of-the-five-elements-lp).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2018)","discography":{"sam-mcclellan":{"albums":{"music-of-the-five-elements":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"It's easy to get caught up in the backstory of this album, which McClellan created to heal listeners using principles of Chinese medicine and five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. But it works just as well going in with no preconceived notions too.  If this was packaged as an unknown Krautrock album, it'd still be an amazing trip through dualities like birth and death, yin and yang, acoustic and electronic. The closest analogue might be some of the early work by David and Steve Gordon, but this album stands alone as a masterpiece of early American new age. \n\nFor side one, McClellan beckons gently with the first of four \"Wood\" tracks that bookend both sides.  The song finds McClellan in a pastoral place, channeling UK folk a la Pentangle with minor key acoustic guitar. This gives way to a short \"Metal\" movement that locks in with tense piano chords and an acoustic guitar solo before opening up to \"Fire\", a bridge that supplants the previous tension with a steady drone, lulling the listener into a meditative state. As the guitars fade out, the journey peaks into a beautiful ethereal space with the track \"Water,\" evaporating into a psychedelic haze of electronic delay and wordless, feminine vocals that are utterly timeless. \"Earth\" descends from the upper atmosphere to something more grounded and baroque, yet spiritual, followed by a short return to \"Wood.\"\n\nThe second side reverses the order of elements for a cyclical experience, and thankfully McClellan does not repeat himself, including Joanna Brouk-like piano reveries, open tuned guitar passages, and another breath-taking \"Water\" section with more vocal drones. Overall, not quite as memorable or inspired as side one, but a fine counterpart nonetheless for this essential release.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Music of the Five Elements","year":"1982"},"music-of-the-five-elements-ii":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"A delightful expression of warmth and love, creating a flexible mood state. The purpose is to allow free, balanced expressions of all aspects of the self. The five pieces, corresponding to the five elements in Oriental medicine, are a series of insightful prayers. Some songs offer lyrics, which are sung with the smooth voices of several vocalists.\n\n(*Heartsong Review*, No. 5, Fall/Winter 1988)","title":"Music of the Five Elements, Volume II","year":"1983"},"music-of-the-five-elements-iii":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":"Music of the Five Elements, Volume III","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":82,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Sam-McClellan.jpg?alt=media&token=c6f49f9a-86e2-4381-948c-b93ddb3fd60e","last_name":"McClellan"},"sanford-ponder":{"artist_name":"Sanford Ponder","body":"Sanford Ponder was a guitarist and synthesist based in New York when he released two moderately successful new age albums from 1985 to 1986. After that, he relocated to Los Angeles where he worked a series of jobs as a sound designer and launched a new project called Botanica to produce music inspired by fractal algorithms. Ponder went on to work at Microsoft until the dot-com collapse and has since charted an unpredictable and interesting course. Since the 2000s, he invented a new kind of folding geodesic dome, worked as a biodynamic healer, and currently works as a farmer.\n\nBorn in 1957, Sanford Ponder grew up in a military family. At the age of 18 he moved to New York City with a guitar in the hopes of starting a music career. \"From about the time I was ten years old I wanted to be a Rock Star,\" Ponder wrote on his website. \"As I grew up, that dream matured into the desire to be a capable musician and composer.\"\n\nIn New York, Ponder worked odd jobs like driving a taxi and a bakery truck while he played with bands such the Radiant Boys and wrote music. But he also took an interest in electronic music and began spending a lot of his time at the PASS studio (Public Access Synthesizer Studio) in Manhattan. There he learned about digital synthesis, sampling and digital recording using the Fairlight Synthesizer, then an extremely expensive synth which few knew how to use. Ponder was able to parlay his Fairlight skills into recording sessions with big name artists like Nile Rodgers and the Psychedelic Furs and he started to make a name for himself.\n\nPonder's talents landed him a deal with was the newly formed progressive electronic label Private Music founded by Tangerine Dream's Peter Bauman. For his first album *Etosha*, Ponder grounded his digital synth melodies in organic textures and samples that he'd recorded himself. The album garnered good reviews and sales and led to a second album, the more progressive and commercial Tigers are Brave. However, that album didn't sell quite as well and would be his last. Still, according to Ponder he sold 150,000 albums during his heyday. \n\nIn 1987, Ponder and his wife Alanna drove across the country by motorcycle and settled in Los Angeles.\"I was making an OK living, but I got into my 30s and realized I wasn't going to get rich being a rock star, Ponder said. \"I didn't have the Hollywood connections to make it as a film composer, so I ended up being a sound designer.” Ponder worked at a series of jobs including Lorimar Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Sony as a sound designer and editor before landing a lucractive job at Microsoft as a creative audio manager in 1994.\n\nWhile Ponder worked at day jobs, he continued to work on his own music, launching a new project Botanica in the late '80s. He released two albums under that name, basing the compositions on fractals and mathematic algorithms. The group's debut *Garden of Earthly Delights* was initially released on cassette, but Ponder formed his own label Deep Music to release the album on CD, as well as the follow-up *Strange Attractor* in 1991. He recorded both albums in Santa Monica with Chris Rhyne, a keyboardist he'd first met on the sessions for *Tigers Are Brave*. As Rhyne recalls, \"He showed up with a programming friend, Bryan Winge. He was a kid with taped up broken glasses. He invented the fractal program and most of the main synth lines came from the computer. I would listen to it and improvise my parts in one take. He also hired a friend of mine, Ara, who added percussion and sax and he was improvising 100% as well.\"\n\nAfter putting out one final album in 1995 with vocals called *Prometheus*, Ponder left music making behind as his career in the tech world took off and he started making good money at Microsoft. However, this came to an abrupt halt during the dot-com crash.\n\nLooking for his next move, Ponder stumbled onto the idea of a folding geodesic dome while doing origami. He patented his design and incorporated the business, earning many plaudits along the way from Time, Wired, and GQ. However, the company would eventually fold by 2006 and Ponder would reinvent himself yet again, this time as a practitioner of structural integration, a type of healing. Most recently, Ponder bought a farm and works as a berry farmer in Arkansas.\n\n(Sources: [1](https://web.archive.org/web/20080705025415/http://www.sanford-ponder.com/Pages/music.html), [2](https://web.archive.org/web/20190911085819/http://www.hidesertstar.com/))","discography":{"botanica":{"albums":{"garden-of-earthly-delights":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Sanford Ponder and computer programmer Bryan Winge were the main architects of Botanica, with Winge translating mathematical fractals (more specifically, Julia Sets) into musical notes to trigger Ponder’s various MIDI synths. This output was then used as a foundation for improvisations by keyboardist Chris Rhyne and saxophonist Ara Tokatlian.\n\nMusically, a few tracks do seem to bear a resemblance to fractals, especially the eerie, yet gorgeous \"Ice Crystals,\" but there are many iterations on the concept throughout, ranging from alien synth soundscapes  (\"The Visitors\") to more serene new age with organic instrumentation and group dynamics. Two examples of the latter are \"City of Jewels\" and \"Garden of Earthly Delights,\" both of which feature Rhyne’s delicate, inquisitive piano lines which nicely balance the sometimes harsh synth tones.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Garden of Earthly Delights","year":"1989"},"strange-attractor":{"image":"","label":"Deep Music","review":"Botanica’s sophomore album again uses fractals as inspiration for their music, though the results are more uneven. Some pieces like \"A Sensitive Dependence\"  and \"Ocean Way\" sound similar to the debut, mixing live instrumentation with the pre-programmed MIDI output based on mathematics. However, attempts at broadening their sound sometimes fall flat, as with the abrasive, atonal title track that is based on IFS fractals instead of the more pleasing-sounding Julia Sets that inform album opener \"Flatlands.\" Even more of a mood-killer is the inexplicable \"Sardukar\" with its booming electronic drums, police siren FX, and hair metal guitar riffs which seem inspired more by Tin Machine than fractals or mathematics. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Strange Attractor","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Botanica","entry_number":2},"sanford-ponder":{"albums":{"etosha":{"image":"","label":"Private Music","review":"Using Fairlight and nature recordings, Ponder layers sounds both real and imagined into vignettes of uncommon sensitivity. The music doesn’t really develop into tunes, just little atmospheres of faraway places.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, January, 1986)","title":"Etosha - Private Music in the Land of Dry Water","year":"1985"},"tigers-are-brave":{"image":"","label":"Private Music","review":"Ponder eschews the meditative moods of his debut for a technicolor take on cyber-era digital fusion that often sounds more like Cryptovolans or James Ferraro than his peers on the Private Music label. Even his photo on the back shows a man reborn, now with spiky hair and a brightly patterned blazer.\n\nThe curious mix of period charm and obvious musical talent has won the album a small contemporary fanbase including Diego Olivas at Fond/Sound and Sam Goldner at Tiny Mixtapes, though listeners need to be ready to follow Ponder’s muse into corporate smooth jazz, 90s infomercial soundtracks, and whatever you call the dive-bombing guitar hot-licks mixed with tribal beats on \"Fugawe.\" For those intrepid souls, this album can be rewarding, especially when Ponder tempers the bombast a bit, as on the gently percussive \"Thunder Bay\" or the silky \"Lluan Lun.\" Ponder can also be surprisingly evocative, as with the two-part \"Wyoming\" which corrals Ponder's Fairlight samples into a convincing simulacrum of Great Plains majesty. \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Tigers are Brave","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Sanford Ponder","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":284,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/sanford-ponder-640.jpg?alt=media&token=a8a5ad1a-d8d7-4b36-a991-848277ea51d2","last_name":"Ponder"},"sarah-benson":{"artist_name":"Sarah Benson","body":"By the time she released the popular album *Flutes of Interior Time*, Benson was already in her fifties with decades of musical experience behind her. The Boston-based teacher and musician got her start playing with the trio Clearing in the late ‘60s, recording two charming folk albums that have since acquired a cult following. She went on to guest with numerous artists including Robert Gass, Carolyn McDade, and Molly Scott. By the early '80s, Benson became a mentor to [Jonathan Goldman](/jonathan-goldman) who would eventually release her best-selling album *Flutes of Interior Time* in 1989. Benson passed away in 2007.\n\nBorn in 1935, Sarah grew up in Ely, Minnesota alongside two older sisters. Her parents owned a grocery store and later ran the Forest Hotel situated on a lake. As a child, Sarah loved canoeing there and listening to the loons. She was a sensitive and shy soul, drawn to nature and music.\n\nFor college, Benson attended Northwestern University where she earned a BA in Music and then went on to earn a Master's in music from the University of Minnesota. Her primary instrument was the piano but she was also a gifted flautist. \n\nIn her early twenties, Benson had her first child, though the marriage was an unhappy one that she soon escaped. She had another child with her next partner, though she didn't remarry until meeting Norman Benson. The couple settled in Chelmsford, Massachusetts near Boston and went on to have two children in the mid-'60s. At this time, Benson worked as a music teacher and became active in the Unitarian church along with her husband. \n\nBenson's first album came about through connections at the church. They were looking to recruit some musicians to record Unitarian hymns and Benson agreed to record the songs along with Joan Minkoff and Jeff Brewer. The trio took the name Clearing and released *Who is In My Temple* in 1970. A few years later, they put out a self-titled album on their own Aberdeen Acme label featuring original music, including a few of Benson's songs.\n\nAt some point in the early '70s, Sarah and Norman decided to move to the more rural city of Charlemont, Massachusetts. It was there she met Molly Scott, a former model and actress who'd left behind her life in New York to get some fresh air and concentrate on her music. \"We first met when I had a commune down the road,\" Scott said. \"We immediately began to play together. She came up to visit a lot while she was building a house down the road. She was up here more than not for many years. And we would go on to do workshops and concerts together for 30 years. Our first one was a workshops about finding your voice which we did in 1975.\"\n\n\"Sarah was a deeply tuned person,\" Scott continued. \"We thought music was a vibratory force that can change matter, like a Soprano singing a note that breaks a wine glass. We would work with people's traumatic material, taking their story and moving it vibrationally into body and voice, singing spontaneous words.\"\n\nBenson and Scott went on to form a group called Sumitra along with cellist Cam Sawzin. That group put out an album called *Honor the Earth* on Philo subsidiary Fretless in 1980. The songs were all Scott's compositions and she accordingly was featured on the cover. Scott went on to release another album of her songs in 1984, though this time Benson only contributed to a few tracks. A few years later, Benson and Scott traveled to Europe with their friend Tori Rae where they recorded an album of chants and vocal improvisations in caves, cisterns and chapels. \"We just sang the music that arose,\" Scott remembered.\n\nBy the late '70s, Benson was no longer teaching music, and she spent her time conducting workshops, playing music, and working with a local theater group. One of the groups she regularly met with was a sound healing group, and Boston-based musician Jonathan Goldman joined on a whim for one of the meeting. It would change his life.\n\n\"I was floored by her,\" Goldman said. \"They were doing an exercise called 'Song of the Soul' and I had a transformational experience.\" Benson told him they were winding down the group and he decided to become the new organizer, christening it the New England Sound Healers which lasted for several decades and had three thousand members at its height.\n\nBenson became a mentor to Goldman, and he would later release her most well-known album, *Flutes of Interior Time*, named after a poem by Kabir. By this time, Benson had remarried to Donald Beaman, a professor of theatrical design at Boston University who she'd met at the theosophical society.  Beaman had designed his own tarot deck based on Egyptian imagery, and contributed a stunning cover to *Flutes of Interior Time*. The two of them also formed the Earth Light Sound Society.\n\nBenson continued to play music with Molly Scott and others into the '90s and beyond. She and Scott put out an album of ethereal vocals in 1994 that may interest readers called *Sound of Light*. She also composed more traditional songs and made some recordings with Jim Ballard in the late '90s. Her last recorded appearance was with Goldman, appearing on *Celestial Reiki* in 2002.\n\nBenson passed away in 2007 of cancer, leaving behind legions of admirers and fans. \"She radiated the glow of love,\" Goldman said. \"Once you met her, she changed you, just by her presence.\"\n\n**Sources**:\n- Author interview with Jonathan Goldman, 10/20/20\n- Author Interview with Molly Scott, 10/29/20","discography":{"sarah-benson":{"albums":{"flutes-of-interior-time":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"","title":" Flutes of Interior Time","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1},"saruah-sarah-benson":{"albums":{"healing":{"image":"","label":"Bodywell 2000","review":"","title":"Healing","year":"1995"},"opening":{"image":"","label":"Bodywell 2000","review":"","title":"Opening","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"Saruah Sarah Benson","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":212,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Sarah-Benson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=20299aef-643a-4e78-9abd-de61f2d57ee2","last_name":"Benson"},"schawkie-roth":{"artist_name":"Schawkie Roth","body":"Schawkie Roth was a saxophone and flute player who emerged in the first flowering of California new age, along with contemporaries like [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern) and [Iasos](/iasos). Roth first met Iasos in 1969 and the two played together in a band for the next three years. After that, Roth appeared as a guest musician on some early Halpern albums before issuing a string of his own works that sold well over the next fifteen years. However, as new age shifted to a more digital and commercialized sound, Roth's organic sound fell out of favor and he pivoted to working as a music teacher in the '90s.\n\nBorn in 1943, Schawkie Roth grew up near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was a Swiss émigré who grew up poor but was able to build wealth through real estate. While Schawkie's brother followed in his father's footsteps, Schawkie was more like his mother, who was an artist. \"I was the only free thinking person in the household,\" Roth said. \"Nobody read books. I was the only person who became an intellectual.  I revolted against the Republican agenda of war.\"\n\nRoth's parents got divorced when he was 11 and the experience troubled him deeply and led to him becoming an atheist.  He coped by psychoanalyzing his parents and turning towards eastern spirituality. He learned how to meditate and devoured books by Alan Watts and Nietzsche, but the book that made the biggest impact was *Zen Flesh, Zen Buddhism* which contained a description of the \"10 Bulls,\" a series of poems about enlightenment. The sixth stage  is about music,\" Roth said. \"I thought, oh man, I found my religion.\" Meanwhile, Roth started playing the saxophone, first in the school band and then with various local groups, anything from rock and roll to polkas. \n\nRoth attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he majored in philosophy. He became deeply involved with Buddhism and tried LSD, heeding the call of Ram Dass to 'Be here now.' \"I didn't take it casually,\" Roth said. \"I had a guide so I could go on a deep journey. I had incredible experiences. But my whole principle was to never abuse any substance or food, cigarettes, drugs.\"\n\nAfter graduating college in 1967, Roth headed out to California with a friend, inspired by a roommate visited and raved about it. \"We drove across the country and stopped at the Grand Canyon,\" Roth said. \"My friend took me directly to Big Sur. Once I saw the ocean and the sun through the forest behind rocks, I'm going, 'This is it. I'm never going back.' I was done with Wisconsin and Wisconsin weather.\"\n\nRoth ended up living in Berkeley and then spent a year living in Santa Barbara with a philosophy professor. He was meditating, playing jazz, and experimenting with drugs, though he stopped in 1969. He moved back to San Francisco where he taught himself to play the bamboo flute.\n\n\"I met Iasos at that time,\" Roth said. \"He had a band called Thalassa which means 'sea' in Greek. It was meditation music and hot Latin dance music with four female dancers and a light show.\" Roth played with Thalassa for the next three years. \"Iasos had incredible knowledge of theory. He was a mentor to me. He was fantastic pianist and great flute player. He would dress in primitive clothes and pound a staff on the floor and yell. You couldn't believe the sound that would come out of his body. That band went on for a while, but he couldn't get perfection. In the end, he just wanted to play music by himself.\"\n\nThrough his meditation practice and musical interests, Roth would soon meet other key figures in the San Francisco scene, including author Alan Watts, harpist [Joel Andrews](/joel-andrews), and Steven Halpern. His first appearance on record was on Halpern’s *Zodiac Suite* in 1977, which led to more sessions with Halpern such as *Eastern Peace*. \n\nAfter *Zodiac Suite*, Roth put together his first cassette called *Dance of the Tao* on his own label Heavenly Music. The tape was commissioned by the teacher of his tai chi class in San Rafael. \"I borrowed money from the students and went into the studio to make the album,\" Roth recalled. \"My teacher went all over the country and told people about it and got pre-orders. There was so much support for it. Copies just flew out. Eventually, Fortuna distributed the tape and I was able to pay back everyone.\"\n\nSoon after, Roth came out with his second album *Heaven on Earth*. The tape was a big seller and his first released on vinyl. This was followed by another hit *You are the Ocean*. \"Those albums are the most unique expressions of my voice,\" Roth said. \n\nFor his next releases, Roth collaborated with Joel Andrews, a forefather of the new age movement in the Bay Area. The first was a live recording called *Love the Earth* that was mostly directed by Andrews. \"Joel was a person who wanted to be in command,\" Roth said. \"He had amazing harmonic complexity. On that recording, I didn't know what key he was in from moment to moment. I would ask him to show me what he was going to play and he said, 'All the notes are okay.' I had to listen at an unbelievable level and play one note at a time and see how it laid down when he did a key change.\" As a result of his insecurities, Roth never rated that one highly until years later when he revised his opinion.\n\nAndrews also joined Roth for *Mother of Pearl* and this time Roth called the shots. \"I begged Joel to play within the key for all these pieces,\" Roth said. \"Normally you couldn’t control him. He’d just smile and go his own way. But for *Mother of Pearl* I needed to be secure harmonically.\"\n\nRoth continued to put out new albums regularly in the '80s, mostly on cassette, though his jazz album *Fortune* also made it to vinyl along with *You Are the Ocean* which remained a steady seller. Roth admitted he could be a perfectionist, and when certain albums didn't meet his standards he let them go out of print (*Visions* and *Rainbow Ray of the Masters* for example).\n\nFrom 1978 to 1994, Roth's business was successful and he sold about 200,000 albums combined, an impressive feat for an independent artist.  He was able to make a living from music, in part because he also licensed his music to international publishers. However, he says everything collapsed in 1994. \"The market was flooded. There were 2,500 titles and my stuff was considered to be old fashioned. I started getting all these returns. There was a whole new crowd of people and they wanted something else. I was just a one person business, I couldn't compete.\"\n\nRoth cut his overhead, rented out part of his house, and took a job working behind the counter at a music store. Times were tough for a while, but he managed to hold on to his house, though his marriage did break up in the '90s. Eventually, Roth transitioned into teaching music, and he put out his first new album in a while in 2000 called *Zen Flute of Interior Time*.\n\nThese days, Roth still lives in his same house in Marin County, next door to his daughter who became a massage therapist. He's put out a few new albums like *Music is a River* and *Love and the Mystical Truth*, but he lives a simple life and doesn't have a computer or cell phone. \"I try to take care of the earth in the things I do and the way I live,\" Roth said.","discography":{"joel-andrews-and-schawkie-roth":{"albums":{"love-the-earth":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Love the Earth","year":"1979"},"mother-of-pearl":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Mother of Pearl","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Joel Andrews and Schawkie Roth","entry_number":2},"schawkie-roth":{"albums":{"1-you-are-the-ocean":{"label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"You Are the Ocean","year":"1979"},"calling-the-angels":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"Usually an album with \"angels\" in the title is a bit of a red flag for me, but this one is a classic zither bliss-out in the tradition of William Aura's *Aurasounds* or David Michael's *Sierra Suite*.  Side one has a fuller sound, augmenting the zither soundscapes with harp accompaniment from Deborah Henson-Conant. But both sides feature plenty of cascasing arpeggios drenched in reverb for that heavenly, meditative sound that harkens back to Roth's early albums while upgrading the fidelity.","title":"Calling the Angels","year":"1993"},"dance-of-the-tao":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Dance of the Tao","year":"1979"},"flute-and-harp-for-christmas":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Flute and Harp for Christmas","year":"1986"},"fortune":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Fortune","year":"1978"},"golden-flowers":{"label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Golden Flowers","year":"1984"},"heaven-on-earth":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Heaven on Earth","year":"1978"},"hymns-for-all-seasons":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Hymns for All Seasons","year":"1986"},"rainbow-ray-of-the-masters":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Rainbow Ray of the Masters","year":"1981"},"visions-of-eternity":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"Visions of Eternity","year":"1980"},"you-are-the-ocean-ii":{"image":"","label":"Heavenly Music","review":"","title":"You Are the Ocean Vol. II","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Schawkie Roth","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":203,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/schawkie-487.jpg?alt=media&token=d246e5c1-78ba-443d-85d2-15f86e25ea2e","last_name":"Roth"},"scott-bruder":{"artist_name":"Scott Bruder","body":"Scott Bruder was a medical student at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s when a track from his self-released new age cassette started getting airplay on influential new age station The Wave. Soon after, his music was picked up for distribution by Narada and Bruder took a leave of absence to focus on music. However, a potential label deal with Narada never materialized and Bruder returned to his studies, going on to a career in product development in biomedical engineering. Years later, Bruder’s music found a new audience among collectors, sparking renewed interest in his work. \n\nScott Bruder was born in 1962 and grew up in Cleveland until the age of 10 when his parents divorced. As a teenager, he loved Pink Floyd, Jean-Michel Jarre and Kraftwerk. While he attended Brown University as a pre-med student in the early ‘80s, he was eager to take electronic music classes too and was soon spending time in the lab learning modular synthesis on the ARP 2600, FM synthesis on the Yamaha DX7 and sampling with the a Synclavier II.\n\nAfter earning his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, Bruder enrolled in Medical School at Case Western Reserve University.  While he worked on his degree, he continued to experiment with electronic music, recording at home with various synths, effects, and a Macintosh computer.  \"When on stage, I used to say that my bandmate was ‘Mac’,\" Bruder recalled. \"He’s not on drugs, he doesn’t have a problem with his girlfriend, and he’s always on time. I used to show audiences how you can produce and record music with a computer live on stage.\"\n\nSome of Bruder’s friends heard what he was up to and encouraged him to put out an album. The result was 1989’s *Stolen Moments*. After one of the songs got national airplay on the popular new age station “The Wave,” Narada began distributing the cassette. He soon sold out of the first run of tapes with black and white covers and made a new version with a full color cover. He got some positive press coverage locally and also opened up for Narada artist David Lanz at some shows in the Cleveland area. However, Bruder was torn about whether to pursue music further or focus on school.\n\n\"Narada was interested in signing me and kept asking for more music,\" Bruder recalled. \"So I went to the Dean and said, ‘I’ve had this dream of playing music’ and I took a leave of absence. However, over time, I realized the business of music – like handling order fulfillment without the support of a label - took away the fun of music.\" Bruder talked to some other new age musicians like David Arkenstone and [Fred Simon](/fred-simon) to get advice and most warned him that the business was tough. \"I realized I’d be better off being a surgeon with music on the side than being a musician and trying to have surgery on the side,\" Bruder joked. \n\nBefore returning to school, Bruder met his future wife, and they moved away upon his graduation in 1992. With a freshly minted medical degree and a PhD in molecular biology, Bruder moved to the Northeast and worked in product development at various companies like Johnson & Johnson, BD and Stryker. He and his wife eventually settled in New Jersey, raised two daughters with similar musical passions, and now lives on Long Island, NY.\n\nBruder’s work has recently garnered attention from collectors, with the label Paradise is a Frequency including one of his pieces on the compilation *The Style of Life* in 2025.  As he plans his retirement from a career in health care, he is building a new studio and is eager to return to his creative roots of sculpting sound textures and composing music \"just for the fun of it,\" as he puts it.\n","discography":{"scott-bruder":{"albums":{"stolen-moments":{"image":"","label":"Scott Bruder Music","review":"While early digital music often emphasized its inherent mechanical nature, musicians like Scott Bruder, [Charles Ditto](/charles-ditto), and Keope sought to bring a greater depth of human emotion to computer music and MIDI in the late '80s. For cynical Gen X analog purists, this often represented the worst of both worlds, and much MIDI music circled the drain of irrelevance for decades. Recently, however, this style has been revived by a younger, computer-native generation that can look past the shiny surface and connect with its underlying emotional character.  \n\nIn terms of tone, Bruder fits nicely between the more cerebral Ditto and the sentimental Keope. Album opener \"Susie's Challenge\" was the pick hit at the time on the Wave with its hi-fi sheen and upbeat tempo, but Bruder's more reflective tracks are the standouts for me, such as the Mark Isham-ish \"Spectrum Drops\" and the yearning album closer \"Hyaloid 49\" which stretches out to the listener like a warm, fuzzy hug.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Stolen Moments","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":447,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Scott-Bruder-640.jpg?alt=media&token=6a202443-2523-4058-8f26-f123eaecd5e1","last_name":"Bruder"},"scott-fraser":{"artist_name":"Scott Fraser","body":"Scott Fraser is a sound engineer and musician based in Los Angeles who released two intriguing small-run cassettes in the early '80s on Fun Music, a label he co-founded with [Philip Perkins](/philip-perkins). His most well-known album is *Architecture*, a mix of chamber jazz and experimental ambient pieces influenced by Brian Eno and Penguin Café Orchestra. The album sold modestly at the time but has been rediscovered by collectors more recently who have been selling off his remaining stock copies. \n\nScott Fraser was born in Oregon in 1952. When he was four, he and his family moved to Los Angeles where he spent the remainder of his youth. He took piano lessons and played clarinet in the school band but that all changed after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. After that, he started playing guitar and spent the second half of the '60s playing in rock bands at high school.\n\nFraser returned to Oregon for college, spending some time in Portland and Eugene at different schools though he never finished his degree. \"I got into musique concrete in the early '70s,\" Fraser recalled. \"My first exposure to electronic music was during high school when Tom Oberheim (inventor of the Oberheim synthesizer) gave an assembly lecture demonstrating the use of tape delays and his own ring modulator circuits. That became far more interesting to me than rock and roll. I got my first tape recorder in 1973 and that opened a lot of doors. With a tape recorder, you could play stuff backward and at half speed.\"\n\nIn college, Fraser met fellow artist Philip Perkins who was then very interested in experimental film. The two collaborated on a series of films such as *Rain* (1974), *Moon* (1974), *Metronomie* (1974), and *A River* (1975).\n\nFraser moved back to Los Angeles in 1976 and got a job working at a recording studio, honing his audio engineering skills. \"That was all I wanted to do at that time, be involved with recording,\" Fraser said. \"I thought I would be recording rock bands and right away I got shunted into niche areas like world music, folk music, and real avant-garde and jazz and fusion. It became a specialty of acoustic recording. I never did rock bands.\"\n\nThough they no longer lived in the same city, Fraser kept in touch with Perkins and the two co-founded the label Fun Music in the late '70s to release their own music in addition to some by like-minded artists such as David Ocker and \"Blue\" Gene Tyranny. Perkins was the primary force behind the label, and the most prolific artist, but Fraser also released three albums of his own. His first was a cassette collection of his musique concrete pieces called *Natural Histories*, followed by the *Water Album*, a tape of field recordings of water. After a long hiatus where he focused on his ascendant career in engineering, he returned with *Architecture* his most fully realized and now-celebrated work.\n\nIn the '90s, Fraser and Perkins collaborated on a new experimental project called the Bifurcators, releasing two CDs on Artifact Recordings between 1995 and 2001, (*Gang of 2*, and *Like A Bird In The Wilderness*). Fraser would go on to be successful in his field, establishing a 30-year relationship with the Kronos Quartet as their live sound engineer. Over time, he racked up six Grammy nominations and one win for the 2018 album *Landfall* by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet.\n\nSource: Author Interview, 1/10/23","discography":{"scott-fraser":{"albums":{"architecture":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Architecture","year":"1988"},"natural-histories":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Natural Histories","year":"1982"},"water-album":{"image":"","label":"Fun Music","review":"","title":"Water Album","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":333,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/scott-fraser-640.jpg?alt=media&token=ef7e2136-5ead-4b3f-a606-ff722e141bd8","image_credit":"","last_name":"Fraser"},"scott-huckabay":{"artist_name":"Scott Huckabay","body":"Scott Huckabay is a solo guitarist who has been active since the late '80s, putting out six self-released cassettes that he sold while busking on the streets or performing at festivals, street fairs, and cafes all over the US. Jimi Hendrix and Michael Hedges were two of his big influences and their sound is evident in his work, though his pieces range from gentle arpeggiated lullabies to echo-drenched drone-fests that wouldn't sound out of place on a Dead C album. Huckabay eventually signed to the prominent new age label Soundings of the Planet in 1996, where he collaborated with Dean Evenson on many albums and produced two of his own. Huckabay has been less active musically more recently, focusing instead on his art.\n\nBorn in 1964, Scott Huckabay grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His mother was Chiricahua Apache, a descendant of the Chief Cochise family tree.  Huckabay was born prematurely with an undeveloped left lung and recalls spending a lot of his childhood sick in bed, teaching himself how to draw and listening to the radio. After high school, Huckabay left home and got involved with a motorcycle gang, selling drugs to make money. \n\nEverything changed in August of 1987. When he was 22, Huckabay got into a motorcycle accident that left him hospitalized for an extended period. \"Upon awakening in the hospital, somebody left an acoustic guitar at the foot of the bed,\" Huckabay wrote. \"As soon as I touched it, all the pain I was going through from the surgery and trauma of the accident disappeared and I've never put the guitar down ever since. When I left the hospital, I had a new perspective on life and moved to Sedona to develop the new guitar technique and style coming through me.\"\n\nIn Sedona, Huckabay wasted little time recording his first cassette *Spirit of the Legend*, in November of 1987, and then a follow-up called *Night Winds* the following June. He painted the covers individually and wrote the credits by hand, selling the tapes while busking on street. He was inspired to continue developing his sound when he saw popular new age guitarist Michael Hedges play live in 1989, realizing that his cerebral, inventive style was not so different from his own.\n\nIn 1990, Huckabay moved to Los Angeles where he lived in a van near Venice Beach for the next two years. At that time, he was a constant fixture on the boardwalk, playing solo guitar, sometimes with a violin bow. As sales picked up, he was no longer able to hand-draw every cassette copy, and he made new versions of his old tapes like *Night Wind* with xeroxed covers and professionally duplicated cassettes. \n\nAccording to Huckabay, \"A documentary film producer saw me perform on the boardwalk one day and interviewed me for his documentary, *Quest for the Dolphin Spirit*. He heard about my mystical experience swimming with wild bottlenose dolphins in Santa Monica Bay. He ended up using some of my music for the soundtrack in exchange for a plane ticket to Kona, Hawaii to perform at the Whale and Dolphin conference. I had no business sense at the time so I just accepted what was offered as I just wanted to get the music that was coming through me to help inspire others, unconditionally.\"\n\nIn the mid-‘90s Huckabay got his big break when [Dean and Dudley Evenson](/dean-and-dudley-evenson) saw him performing at a street fair in Tucson and signed him to their label Soundings of the Planet. Huckabay issued two solo albums, *Peace Dance* (1997) and *Alchemy* (1999), and has collaborated with Dean Evenson on many more. Huckabay has continued to release music in the 2000s and beyond, mostly on his own label Sonic Alchemyst, including an album recorded inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. More recently, Huckabay has taken a long hiatus from music more recently to focus on his art.\n","discography":{"scott-huckabay":{"albums":{"dream-of-the-tree-spirit":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Dream of the Tree Spirit","year":"1993"},"night-winds":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Night Winds","year":"1988"},"peace-dance":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Peace Dance","year":"1997"},"scott-huckabay":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Scott Huckabay","year":"1993"},"spirit-of-the-legend":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Spirit of the Legend","year":"1987"},"universe":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Universe","year":"1990"},"virtual-altar":{"image":"","label":"Fresh Ltd.","review":"","title":"Virtual Altar","year":"1996"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":334,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/scott-huckabay-681.jpg?alt=media&token=6e081cb0-d1da-4d7b-95cd-76d3562aad08","last_name":"Huckabay"},"scott-o'brien":{"artist_name":"Scott O'Brien","body":"Scott O'Brien was a self-taught musician from New York who got his start playing monthly live performances at La Galleria, a club connected to the La Mama experimental theater. After 15 months performing there in myriad electronic styles ranging from artsy prog to pulsing minimalism, O'Brien released a cross-section of this work on a cassette called *Walk on Water* in 1987.  He continued to play live frequently until 1991 when he shifted into composing for theater and teaching as he left live performance and album releases behind.\n \nO'Brien was born in 1957 in Binghamton, New York. His father worked for IBM so the family moved around the Westchester area, eventually landing in the small suburban community of Mahopac.  His father was a jazz drummer but when O'Brien bought his first instrument, he got an electric guitar. Why? \"Girls. Anyone who tells you they got into music for any other reason than getting girls is lying to you,\" O'Brien said. Musically, his early influences were all hard rock. \"Iron Butterfly's *In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida* was one of the first albums I ever bought. I also got into Black Sabbath, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and Leslie West from the band Mountain. That was the best guitar sound I had ever heard. I bought a guitar and tried to figure out how to do that. Turns out you have to be Leslie West to sound like that.\"\n \nO'Brien tried taking guitar lessons, but never responded well to formal training. Thinking rock guitar was too complex he switched over to bass for a period and played in some local prog bands in his junior and senior years. After high school, O'Brien began working at local book stores and eventually became a manager. There he met Joanne, who he eventually married in 1981.\n \nIn the early '80s, O'Brien and his wife settled in White Plains, NY. By this time he was working as an administrator at the NY Blood Program, where he would stay until 1988. On the weekends, he worked on his music. After being fascinated by keyboards for many years, O'Brien finally made the leap and got an Oberheim system with a synthesizer, drum machine, and sequencer that all interacted together. He spent several years learning how to use the gear and then jumped when he saw an ad in the Village Voice from Ellen Stewart of the La Mama Etc. experimental theater. \n \n\"Ellen was the doyen of Lower East Side experimental theater and for some reason, she wanted to support composers,\" O' Brien recalled. \"I lied my way through the interview and was put into the company. Every month we'd write new material, go down to La Galleria and perform 40 minutes of new music for a small audience in this space. I waited to get fired, but she didn't do it. I was there 15 months. And the better material ended up on *Walking on Water*.\"\n \n*Walking on Water* was O’Brien's first and only cassette from this period. His wife drew the cover art and a friend designed the package. He recorded the work at a studio in Massachusetts and then duplicated a few hundred copies, though he doesn't remember the exact number. The tape shows an enormous diversity of styles, from Philip Glass-like minimalism to anthemic rock instrumentals. \"David Borden was also an influence, O'Brien said. \"I looked at Reich for rhythms, Glass for the amplified aspect, and Borden for synths.\"\n \nWith no formal distribution, the tape was mostly sold in the Northeast area where O'Brien played live. In 1987 he and Joanne moved to Harrison, New Jersey and had their first child in 1989. His wife worked as a teacher, and O'Brien eked out a living as a performing musician. Once in New Jersey, he became acquainted with the electronic music scene there which centered around the Synthetic Pleasures radio show on WFMU and the Creative Underground, a collective of musicians that put on live shows. O'Brien sometimes played with electronic musicians in this scene such as [Patrice Devincentis](/patrice-devincentis) and [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), and performed live on the Synthetic Pleasure radio show several times.\n \nAfter a few years, the pressures of trying to make it as a working musician took a toll. \"It was a miserable living, but it was what I was good at,\" O'Brien said. \"In 1991, in the middle of a performance, I just thought--I don't want to do this anymore. We had $65,000 of equipment. The next day somebody called who was doing an off-Broadway show and they said, 'Can you score it?' I have worked in theater from that day until now. There is the occasional film, but it’s mostly theater.\"\n\nAfter transitioning to composing and sound design for theater, O'Brien also began teaching at colleges including Fairleigh-Dickinson University, Pace University, and most recently Montclair State University. Looking back on his '80s period, O'Brien sees it as a time of experimentation and self-discovery. \"I wasn’t working in a specific style,\" O'Brien said. \"I played really loud. There was no point otherwise. Whatever turned me on that day, I would try that. The album is a strange panoply of ideas that was crossing my mind, but it sometimes made it harder to book shows because people couldn't pin me down. But in theater where I work now, I have to constantly look at things through a different lens. So it’s a better fit.\"\n \nO'Brien and his wife currently split time between Harrison, New Jersey and Maine. He is still active as a sound designer and composer for theater, working under the name [Duck and Trout Music](https://www.facebook.com/scottobrien.composer).","discography":{"scott-o'brien":{"albums":{"walk-on-water":{"image":"","label":"Duck and Trout Music","review":"Wafting out of the '80s experimental theater scene of New York, this tape occupies a netherworld between minimalism and prog, a combination that yields both confusing and satisfying results in varying doses. Opener \"Piano Trio for Guitar\" sets the stage by striking an arena-rock pose even as its title nods to the conservatory. Thankfully, O'Brien soon pivots into one of his best pieces, the pointillist \"Running Fences\" which locks into a hypnotic pattern that occasionally bursts into moments of technicolor beauty. Elsewhere, O'Brien explores downtempo grooves on \"Slow Strobe,\" bombastic prog on \"Three Changing Futures\" and mannered baroque moves on \"Western Octet.\" This diversity is not surprising given that each song here is taken from a different show from his various live performances, but it does come at the expense of a coherent listening experience. None of that really matters when a piece connects, as on album closer \"Distant Principles\" which sums up his ethos in a candy-coated pill that leaves the listener wanting more.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Walk on Water","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":141,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Scott-OBrien-640.jpg?alt=media&token=556a1081-cfea-4832-86e4-4ad31f618705","last_name":"O'Brien"},"scott-randolph":{"artist_name":"Scott Randolph","body":"Scott Randolph was a bassist and synthesist from central New Jersey who released four rare cassettes of ambient space music from 1984 to 1985. Prior to that he played locally with a power pop band Dash Weaver, and afterwards he formed a psychedelic rock band with Tom O'Brien called Freudian Flip. He worked as an acoustic sound engineer starting in 1986 and in the late '90s founded his own successful business.\n\nRandolph was born in Piscataway, New Jersey in 1960. His father worked for the telephone company and his mother was a nurse.  His first instrument was the electric bass which he started at the age of 14. In high school he played in some casual cover bands with friends, but he joined his first real band, Dash Weaver, during his time in college at Trenton State. \n\nAccording to Randolph, \"Dash Weaver had a regular gig at City Gardens, the punk club in town, and I went to see them. During the break, I talked to the sound man and he says, 'What do you think of bass player?' I said, 'I think I can do better.' Then they all came over to table and talked to me and I ended up playing for the band.\" At the time I was into punk rock and English punk, but I liked electronic music and college radio too. I wasn’t involved creatively, I just played bass.\"\n\nWhen Randolph joined Dash Weaver, the quartet had just released their first record on Black Sheep Records, a local label run by Tom Marolda who had his own power pop project, the Toms. Although their debut is now considered one of the best in the genre, Marolda didn't have the kind of clout at that time to propel Dash Weaver beyond their local fanbase. According to Randolph, the band wasn't happy with the record either. \"Riece [Altomare] wrote all the material. He wanted to be Bruce Springsteen – his songs had a lot of dark lyrical content. But Tom Marolda sped up the recordings to make it more lively. No one was happy with it.\" Randolph enjoyed his time with the band, gigging locally for a year or two before the group broke up in 1982.\n\nThe demise of Dash Weaver left a void for Randolph to start working on his own music. By then he was listening to WPRB in Princeton and WXPN's *Star's End*, the space music show hosted by [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl). For his own music, Randolph says he was influenced by synth pop like Thomas Dolby and OMD, as well as fusion jazz, REM, XTC, and Elvis Costello.  He bought a reel to reel recorder and started experimenting, playing two very different styles – ambient space music and singer/songwriter fare, both under his own name.\n\nAround 1984, Randolph sent off some of his synth music demos to the radio show *Synthetic Pleasure* on WFMU and they started playing it on air. He got his music entered into their catalog, as well as CLEM, and started getting orders from all over the world. Soon he was swapping tapes with nearby musicians like [Arnold Mathes](/arnold-mathes). \"I never sold more than 10 copies of each cassette,\" Randolph said. \"But it didn’t stop me. I'm still doing it, up to 22 or 24 albums now.\"\n\nAfter his debut, Randolph quickly churned out more tapes in a similar style. Looking back, he describes the music as \"textural – just letting sounds happen and getting trippy about it.\" However, Randolph wonders why anyone would be interested in his old music. \"Writing about those tapes is like writing about a professional baseball player but focusing on their time in little league,\" he says.\n\nAfter that, Randolph didn't return to electronic music for a decade as he focused on other things, primarily his new band Freudian Flip that he formed in the late '80s with drummer and songwriter Tim O'Brien. The band went on to release four CD's in the '90s, with Randolph describing their music as more of a \"rock and roll psych punk thing.\"\n\nDuring the time of his cassette releases, Randolph worked odd jobs like driving delivery vehicles and selling office furniture. One day at his furniture job, Art Barkman came in to do a presentation on the acoustic properties of sound and Randolph loved it so much he ended up working for Barkman starting in 1986. Randolph would go on to design broadcast rooms and studios for Oprah Winfrey and Willie Nelson, and construct acoustic panels at Madison Square Garden. In 1998, he started his own successful business called Acoustical and Tackable Surfaces.\n\nRandolph returned to electronic music in 1995 with a CD called *Drip*, and more recently has returned again with a new project called Mr. Witfits. \"I never tire of music,\" Randolph said. \"I'm  always working...if I don't I feel guilty.\"","discography":{"scott-randolph":{"albums":{"blues-for-a-red-planet":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Blues for a Red Planet","year":"1985"},"miracle-season":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A substantial improvement over his previous cassette, *SOS*. Scott produces some dreamy, subtle textures, using an effective combination of modest electronic and acoustic instruments. Unusual tone colors, arrangements, echoed sound effects, and a touch more melody. I was impressed by his improved production values and the cleaner dub. The music has tightened and is very innovative in terms of arrangement and composition. Scott has an original style that appears to be influenced by Schulze et al.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE* ,Fall 85)\n","title":"Miracle Season","year":"1985"},"pulse":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"The music ranges from German style EM [electronic music] to experimental tapes using voices, etc. There is quite a variety including lots of acoustical instruments. Very full music, lots of sound but sometimes very quiet music. Come to think of it, there is really little German EM and more a NA [new age] independent feel to the cassette. \n\n(Alex Douglas, *CLEM*, Fall 1984)","title":"Pulse","year":"1984"},"sos":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"A dreamy tape of electronics by New Jersey composer Scott Randolph. His production values are good, considering he is only using a 4-track cassette for his mastering. He creates some very meditative, quiet music without a lot of expensive hardware. In fact, his heaviest gear includes a Casio PT-30 and a Yamaha PS-3. He uses a handmade electric guitar, Music Man electric bass, Spectre guitar synth,  Electro-Harmonix mini-synth, Boss drum machine, handmade koto,  harmonica, triangle, MXR compressor, cymbals and assorted sound effects. The music is simple and unobtrusive. I'm not going to damn him for his rather dense mix, considering his lack of fancy recording gear. His style leans on the spacey side, with a touch of the unusual here and there, especially in his sound effects and arrangements.\n\n(James Finch, *SYNE*, July 1985)","title":"SOS","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":167,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Scott-Randolph-640.jpg?alt=media&token=29b32422-9de1-42b9-9999-3c423c238acd","last_name":"Randolph"},"scott-thompson":{"artist_name":"Scott/Thompson","body":"Doug Scott and Chas Thompson were musicians based in Santa Barbara who worked as the in-house producers and engineers for Inner Circle Productions, a small studio in the area. The owner, Jeff Lovelace, also ran a record label called Full Circle that had released two albums by new age harpist Joel Andrews. Lovelace asked Scott and Thompson for something in a similar style and they obliged, producing *Heartspeak*. However, they soon soured on the scene and never followed it up with anything else in that style.\n\nScott was born in 1954 and Thompson in 1951. Scott grew up in Forest Hills, New York and started playing guitar around the age of nine, inspired by the Beatles *Hard Day's Night*. He joined a band with some friends called Overdose of Sound in 1965 that eventually morphed into a new trio called Purple Majesty. In 1967, that band did a recording session produced by their friend Jeff Hyman, later to be known as Joey Ramone. (Nothing came from the session at the time, but a copy of the acetate turned up recently and was reissued by Norton Records.)\n\nThomson also grew up in New York and had gone to MIT for college. He graduated in 1973 but was still hoping to make it a musician. He moved to Santa Barbara in the late '70s when a friend promised to get him a gig as the bass player with Jim Messina, but that didn't pan out. However, Thompson did meet Scott, who had graduated from the University of Santa Barbara and was running the electronic music lab. He'd recently contributed an electronic score for the sci-fi movie *Foes* and was becoming the area's go-to guy for music technology.\n\nThompson and Scott became fast friends and formed an R&B band called Mojo that gigged from 1979 to around 1984. \"That was our main band,\" Scott said. \"When we played the bar made a lot of money. Since I had a degree in music theory, I'd analyze these productions and hand out parts to the band, so everything was represented.\"\n\nIn addition to Mojo, Scott and Thompson got jobs as the in-house engineers and producers at Inner Circle Productions, a small recording studio in Santa Barbara, California. The studio was owned by Jeff Lovelace, but another key partner was Sam Scranton, who managed the Santa Barbara Bowl, a popular event venue. Scranton was well-connected with many of the famous local musicians like Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, and both were regulars at Inner Circle. Loggins and McDonald typically used Inner Circle to record demos for new material, and Scott and Thompson helped them out on countless tracks. In addition to these higher profile sessions, the duo also produced demos and albums for many local new wave bands like the Generics and Temper Temper.\n\nAround 1983, Lovelace asked Scott and Thompson if they would be interested in writing and recording some new age music for his label. Scott elaborates: \"One day Jeff says, 'Listen to this,' and he played us Joel Andrews music. He said, 'I sell this, and people love it.' But he couldn’t get Joel on the phone, he was too busy meditating. So, I said, 'Sure, all it sounds like to me is the Grateful Dead without any heavy drums or recognizable solos or ego.' So, we did a couple demos for him and he said, 'Can you do 10 more of these for me?' We made a deal and that was *Heartspeak.*\n\nLovelace pressed up copies of *Heartspeak* on vinyl and cassette and sold them locally through new age shops and U.S. distributors. For their part, Scott and Thompson promoted the album through a pair of live shows in the area, one at the Strawberry Festival and an appearance at a new age convention in Pasadena. However, the latter left the duo with a bad taste. \"Frankly we found the new age people there to be some of the rudest people in the world,\" Thompson recalled. \"It was really bizarre. They had no patience. We thought they'd be mellow.\" Scott, however, was skeptical from the beginning: \"We couldn't give a shit about the tenets of new age or Buddhism or whatever. Pot was our religion.\"\n\nLovelace ended up doing a second pressing of the album on cassette with new artwork, but in the late '80s he decided to shut down both his studio and label. Scott, who had become tired of the smaller town scene of Santa Barbara, decided to move to Los Angeles and put more energy into composing for film. Thompson would soon hook up with Christopher Cross and join him on a 1991 tour with the Beach Boys, as well as several other tours that decade. Scott did score one movie, *Lounge People*, but he mostly continued to work as an engineer at various recording studios. \n\nScott currently runs the Everwunder studio and Thompson is retired, though he still writes for Taxi Music, a licensing service for films, TV, and commercials.","discography":{"scott-thompson":{"albums":{"heartspeak":{"image":"","label":"Full Circle Music","review":"","title":"Heartspeak","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Scott/Thompson","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":181,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/scott-thompson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9545cded-bfd8-4f4d-a9f1-ca0712c41018","last_name":"Scott"},"seabury-gould":{"artist_name":"Seabury Gould","body":"Seabury Gould was a multi-instrumentalist based in Ojai, California during the '80s and '90s. He contributed bamboo flute to the sought-after *Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Crystal Forest in Ojai, Ca.* cassette in addition to releasing several albums under his own name that included two children’s albums and a storytelling album, with *Sacred Destiny* likely the most relevant to readers of this site.\n\nGould was born in 1953, the youngest of five children. His family lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia and two of his four sisters played music. Gould tried piano lessons but said it just didn't resonate with him. When the Beatles came out however, Gould was electrified by their music and started teaching himself guitar and piano in the new style. His early interests were blues and rock and roll but he later started appreciating folk and Indian music by high school. He also learned transcendental meditation at 17, inspired by George Harrison and stuck with it, regularly meditating.  \n\nGould attended college at Kenyon in Ohio  where he learned to read and write music. He also began correcting some of the bad habits he’d picked up from being a self-taught musician. After graduation, he moved out to Marin County in 1976. He went on to get a Master's degree at Ali Akbar College of Music, studying Hindustani classical and taking flute lessons with bamboo flute master G.S. Sachdev (who also taught [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin)). When he was 25, Gould visited India where he spent some time at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, as well as some time at the utopian Auroville Community. At Auroville he got married and had his first child, a daughter. They stayed for about a year before Gould moved the family back to the US, settling in the countercultural enclave of Ojai.\n\nBack in the U.S., Gould started working as a high school music teacher and put together a John Lennon cover band called the Better Band. Their first show was supposed to be a one-off gig but it was so well received they ended up staying together for the next 20 years. They eventually incorporated other kinds of rock and blues into their sound, and sometimes even played for ballroom dancing.\n\nGould did some of his first original compositions for a local community theater group called Illusions Theater. He was musical director for most of their shows, several of which centered around the Chumash Indians. He had been thinking about composition since college and he finally had an outlet for his ideas. Gould never released any of his scores commercially. However, Gould did eventually release some of his music in 1985 with his first cassette *Sacred Destiny*. The first side was folk-oriented material with vocals and the second side was Indian influenced music and a piano piece.\n\nAlso in 1985, Gould played on the *Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Forest of Ojai, CA* album, produced by his friend [Eddie Guthman](/eddie-guthman). Local artist Zubin Levy had a performance space at his house that he called Infinite Crystal, and it was surrounded by forests, nature trails and environmental art installations. Guthman and Levy were friends and concocted the idea to make an album inspired by the space that Levy could sell to visitors. Guthman played guitar and produced the album, recruiting Gould to play long, sustained tones on the bamboo flute. The tape has become collectible in recent years.\n\nGould moved on to other music styles after 1985, creating two children’s albums and one focused on storytelling.  He also got more into Celtic music which has remained a staple of his repertoire today. One of Gould's more recent projects was an album of Rumi’s poetry music backed with his own eclectic music, plus an instrumental version of the same album as well.","discography":{"eddie-guthman-and-zubin-levy":{"albums":{"crystal-chimes-in-the-enchanted-crystal-forest-in-ojai-ca":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Long sought after by tape collectors, *Crystal Chimes* is a quintessential example of environmental free-improv mysticism. The one-off project was produced by [Eddie Guthman](/eddie-guthman) with help from friends Seabury Gould and Brock Travis. The cassette-only release was commissioned by Zubin Levy, a local artist who had a performance space at his house that he called Infinite Crystal. The musicians recorded the music on site, surrounded by forests, trails and environmental art, interweaving the sounds of acoustic instruments as they communed with various birds, insects, and frogs providing additional accompaniment.\n\nSide A has an evening ambiance, with crickets singing and frogs gurgling while wind chimes softly fade in. The music is atmospheric, with each player leaving plenty of room, like jazz soloists taking turns after the opening theme.  Each brings a unique sensibility, with Gould’s bamboo flute providing harmonically complex, eastern overtones while Travis reels off abstract, impressionistic harp lines. Guthman serves as an anchor, creating a backdrop of tinkling wind chimes and recurring motifs on bowed double bass.\n\nSide B is similar, but with an early morning mood.  Chirping birds and a gently flowing stream signify a new day (and a new jam), with Guthman adding a strolling guitar part that keeps the minimal melody lines from floating away.  The recording throughout is excellent, with a dreamy effect imparted through a mix that allows equal billing from the landscape, as well as a subtly shifting mix where flute and harp come into focus and then recede into the distant forest.  For me, this tape is a classic, with a magical quality that is all too rare in the world of free-improv new age.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Crystal Chimes in the Enchanted Crystal Forest in Ojai, California","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Eddie Guthman and Zubin Levy (w/ Seabury Gould and Brock Travis)","entry_number":2},"seabury-gould":{"albums":{"sacred-destiny":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" \nThis cassette of low-key inspirational music has an instrumental side and a vocal side. I have, at this point, listened to the instrumental side A but five times, the vocal side once. That’s not to say it’s bad…it’s nice, easy-going music with lots of gentle caressing guitar, flute, and synthesizer which nicely underscore the vocals, but it just doesn’t stand up to the all-instrumental side. The latter is a wonderful blend of “spacemusic,” “new age” and traditional Indian sounds (provided by masterful use of tamboura and vina). Those familiar with National Public Radio’s “Music from the Hearts of Space” program already know the genre. The music is extremely relaxing, even healing, and as ignorable as it is interesting. The vocal side has lyrics which, though spiritual in nature, are not preachy but quite sincere, though I find Gould’s voice slightly strained more or less overpowering the music, but I’m nitpicking. Overall, a very well done and pleasant recording.\n\n(Sally Isasswey, *Sound Choice* No. 3, Fall, 1985)\n","title":"Sacred Destiny","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Seabury Gould","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":101,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Seabury-Gould-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=d731ef2f-f2f4-4f15-a88a-7bf1d9c5d303","last_name":"Gould"},"shad-diamond":{"artist_name":"Shad Diamond","body":"Shad Diamond was trained as an engineer but spent the majority of his life following his musical dreams starting in the mid-'60s, playing in a succession of California club bands. He finally found success three decades later with his breakout album *Inside the Crystal* that sprang from an interest in quantum physics and healing music. Aimed squarely at the new age market, the music was based on the sound of resonating crystals and what Diamond called \"Superquantum tones which awaken and shift the life force.\" The album did very well for him, selling 3,500 copies in its first year and leading to dozens more in a similar style.\n \nShad Diamond was born in 1944 and grew up in the small town of Spring Brook near Buffalo, New York. His first instrument was the violin. \"That was when I realized that strings vibrate, and everything in the universe vibrates,\" Diamond said. However, he soon decided violin wasn't cool and switched to guitar.\n\nAfter high school, Diamond joined the Navy and got a degree in electronic engineering. During his time in the Navy, he started playing bass in a soul band called the Ambassadors. After his discharge, he was recruited to join the Renegades, a rock and soul band based in Vallejo, California that released a single called \"Better than the Sun\" in 1968 on their own Melogade Music label. It was around this time that Diamond earned the nickname \"Shadow,\" later shortened to Shad, because he was so evasive and mysterious. \n\nIn 1970, the Renegades relocated to Las Vegas and changed their name to SOUP. They developed a polished, high energy show, with Diamond playing trumpet and bass. The band won some local awards and gigged around Vegas show rooms for the next five years. After that, Diamond was ready for a change and headed to Los Angeles. There he played bass in various club bands such as Sojourn, Street Kids, and California. Diamond got into synthesizers around this time and used his electronics background to build his own synth, plus his own electronically modified bass guitar with two necks and countless knobs. He also wrote the *Songwriter’s Cookbook* in 1979. \n\nDiamond continued to play with numerous bands in the '80s, including Stewart and Diamond, Backstage, and a hard rock band called Voyager that nearly signed with A&M. While he made his living playing bass, he began working on synthesizer music at home, putting together his first cassette release *Atlatian Aeroship*.  He sold it at some new age expos but was mainly focused on his club gigs and rock aspirations at the time.\n\nHowever, by the early '90s, Diamond began to get interested in the healing properties of music. \"I started to meet people doing experimentation in quantum physics and took an interest in it,\" Diamond said. \"I developed technology to capture healing vibrations, but I’ve kept it a trade secret, so I know it can’t get abused.\"\n\nIn 1991, Diamond put out a new cassette that was more geared to healing sounds called *12 Dimensions*. He sent around demos to distributors and realized there was interest in his music. So, Diamond went back to his studio and put together an album utilizing his research called *Inside the Crystal* in 1995. He got distribution from Bayside and other major outlets and ended up selling 3,500 copies in the first year, mostly on CD, though it was also issued on cassette. Over the years, it’s sold close to 10,000 copies in his estimation.\n\nAt the time, Diamond still held a day job, working at the Red Onion restaurants which had dance floors inside the restaurant. He designed their audio systems part-time to supplement his income from various bands. But when *Inside the Crystal* started doing well, he began putting more of his energy into his new age music. He followed it up the next year with *Crystal Dreams” and began doing his own experiments to find out which type of music worked best for various ailments. \n\n\"By 2006, I had 20 titles, made for specific purposes,” Diamond said. \"I got a lot of interest after the first two CD’s. I did some clinical trials which showed that certain music worked to help people recovering from cancer, but I couldn’t make that claim for fear of the FDA shutting me down. I couldn’t say my CD’s are a medical product.\" Over the years, he’s refined his approach, aiming to create music for self-help, therapy, and as a tool to “open the mind, heal the spirit and regenerate the body.\"\n\nAs of 2020, Diamond’s business is still going strong. He moved back to New York in 1998, settling in Orchard Park. He maintains a website [here](http://www.DiamondCrystalMusic.com).","discography":{"shad-diamond":{"albums":{"12-dimensions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"12 Dimensions","year":"1991"},"atlatian-aeroship":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Atlatian Aeroship","year":"1985"},"crystal-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Crystal Dreams","year":"1996"},"inside-the-crystal":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Inside the Crystal","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":176,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Shad-Diamond-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8d60ec03-4882-4c4d-bb7b-f26b48348fda","last_name":"Diamond"},"sky":{"artist_name":"Sky","body":"Ronny Roman Bunke was a German musician who started out as a drummer playing in rock bands but started to move towards creating ambient music after meeting with Deuter in 1978.  Bunke taught himself guitar, sitar, and other instruments, eventually moving to Mill Valley and self-releasing a series of cassettes starting in 1988 and touring to support them.  His main influences were Tangerine Dream and Deuter along with Eastern and Western classical music. He now resides in New Mexico and continues to write and record.","discography":{"sky":{"albums":{"beyond-passion":{"image":"","label":"Magic Music","review":"","title":"Beyond Passion","year":"1990"},"born-in-silence":{"image":"","label":"Magic Music","review":"","title":"Born in Silence","year":"1989"},"dreams":{"image":"","label":"Magic Music","review":"For his debut, Sky presents a slick, digital new age style similar to David Arkenstone or Patrick O'Hearn. The songs are strongly melodic with sentimental string pads, choral samples, and even an occasional orchestral stab.   It's a bit high on drama for my taste, but album closer \"Shore of the High Priestess\" is a nice ambient piece. Featuring long, languid notes drawn out slowly over a two-chord progression for 13 minutes, the song brings to mind the frozen detachment of Lewis Baloue's synth playing, minus the world-weary pop crooner vocals of course.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Dreams","year":"1988"},"land-of-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"Magic Music","review":"","title":"Land of the Moon","year":"1992"},"roses-in-the-sky":{"image":"","label":"Magic Music","review":"","title":"Roses in the Sky","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":48,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/sky.jpg?alt=media&token=0678f20c-d07a-41d9-932d-af94d6b6538c","last_name":"Sky"},"solara":{"artist_name":"Solara","body":"Nani Sheppard started out as a new age author, publishing her first book *Invoking Your Celestial Guardians* in 1986 under the name Solara. Her early theme was humanity's spiritual origin, with her first book explaining how readers could contact their \"golden solar angel and embody its presence.\" Her most popular book was *The Star-Borne: A Remembrance for the Awakened Ones*, which went through ten printings, although all her books have been printed numerous times.\n\nSheppard lived in Taos from 1976 to 1984, where she hosted a radio program called \"Tierra\" on KUNM. She also was the owner of a shop called Tawa that sold goods from around the world. In the mid-'80s, she moved to Charlottesville, VA and began to publish her work. Most of her cassettes are guided journeys and self-help, with musical backing from [John Mazzei](/john-mazzei), who used the name Etherium for these recordings.  Some cassettes such as *Voyage on a Celestial Barge* and *Archangel Mikael Empowerment* have instrumental B-sides.  In 1992, she published a book called *Inside the Doorway 11:11* and issued a cassette under a similar name. The primary idea was that a \"planetary activation\" between 1/11/92 and 1/11/2011 would transform human duality into oneness.\n\nSolara's numerological obsession seems to extend to the release dates of her cassettes as well, with every release put out on an even numbered year. Solara established a website around 2002 which she still maintains. The tapes initially sold for $6 each but now can command up to $100 in the secondary market.","discography":{"solara":{"albums":{"angel-that-you-truly-are":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Angel That you Truly Are","year":"1988"},"archangel-mikael-empowerment":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Archangel Mikael Empowerment","year":"1990"},"lotus-of-true-love":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Lotus of True Love","year":"1990"},"remembering-your-story":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Remembering Your Story","year":"1990"},"star-alignments":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Star Alignments","year":"1990"},"temple-invisible":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Temple Invisible","year":"1992"},"the-star-that-we-are":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Star That We Are","year":"1988"},"the-starry-council":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"The Starry Council","year":"1992"},"through-the-doorway-of-the-1111":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Through the Doorway of the 11:11","year":"1992"},"true-love-one-heart":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"True Love / One Heart","year":"1992"},"two-guided-journeys":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Two Guided Journeys","year":"1992"},"unifying-the-polarities":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Unifying the Polarities","year":"1992"},"voyage-on-the-celestial-barge":{"image":"","label":"Star-Borne Unlimited","review":"","title":"Voyage on the Celestial Barge","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Solara and Etherium","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":34,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/solara%20newspaper%20scan.jpg?alt=media&token=5f578442-9d18-4611-8340-51c849d82a8f","last_name":"Solara"},"sozra":{"artist_name":"Sozra","body":"Sozra was the name of John Sosnowsky's ambient electronic music project that launched in 1989 with his album *Canvas of the Mind*. Based in Frederick, Maryland, John and his wife Deborah also ran a jewelry and art company of the same name, frequently selling their work at crafts fairs and galleries all over the US.\n\nBorn in 1956, John Sosnowsky grew up in Allentown, PA, the middle of three children. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother was a nurse. When he was in high school, the family relocated to Maryland where Sosnowsky started playing guitar and getting into art.\n\n\"I didn't know I had artistic ability until high school,\" Sosnowsky recalled. \"My dad was an engineer and my brother became an engineer and I was supposed to be one. A couple of my art teachers, Linda VanHart and Barbara Steele, brought art out in me. They are still my good friends and art collaborators today.\" Sosnowsky attended Towson University where he earned a degree in business and marketing while also studying art, photography and continuing to play music in a jazz band.\n\nAfter graduating in 1979, Sosnowsky briefly had a photography business. While on assignment, he did some work for jewelry companies and realized that line of work was more lucrative.  So, he and his wife Deborah, who he'd met in college, decided to try making their own jewelry. To test out their early creations, they took a trip to Key West with their newborn baby and ended up selling a lot of what they'd brought. \"After that, we came back and got serious,\" Sosnowsky said.\n\nJohn and Deborah slowly built their jewelry business into a success that put both of their kids through college and is still going strong as of 2020. In addition to jewelry, John also made paintings and frequently traveled around the country to sell his work at art fairs. By the mid–'80s, Sosnowsky had enough money to start buying gear for a home studio and he got serious about making his own music too. \n\nSosnowsky's first album was *Canvas of the Mind*, released on cassette in 1989. He didn't promote his music through performance, which never really interested him. Instead, he sold his music at art fairs and through advertisements in magazines. The magazine *Heartsong Review* was an early supporter, calling his debut a \"superb electronic experience\" and noted a haiku-like quality to the \"sometimes darkly odd\" tracks. Looking back, Sosnowsky believes his practice of meditation, which he learned in college, helped to shape his music. \"I just recreate whatever is In my mind,\" he said. \"I don't know where it comes from. I give credit to nature.\"\n\nFor his second album, Sosnowsky issued the more complex *Rhythm of Words*, this time on cassette and CD. He also came up with the idea of \"Cymatic art\" at this time, using the sounds of his music to inspire visual art. He first tried this by playing the album for artists and having them render their impressions, but he then took the idea further by using the actual sound waves to create geometric designs in water that he photographed and digitally painted. \"To this day I'm still doing that,\" Sosnowsky said. \"I'm kinda like a mad scientist who happens to be an artist.\"\n\nSosnowsky's third album, *Earth Space Continuum*, was his final release on cassette, issued in 1997. He would continue to release music sporadically after that, putting out *Music from the Home Planet* in 2001 and *Multiverse Vortex* in 2014. He still sells the album on his site [here](https://sozra.com/shop/ols/categories/music) and all of his work is available on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. ","discography":{"sozra":{"albums":{"canvas-of-mind":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Canvas of the Mind","year":"1989"},"earth-space-continuum":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Earth Space Continuum","year":"1997"},"rhythm-of-worlds":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rhythm of Worlds","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":213,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/John-Sosnowsky-640.jpg?alt=media&token=f0ca44eb-cb0b-4071-ae07-18db60f5aea5","last_name":"Sozra"},"stacey-jones":{"artist_name":"Stacey Jones","body":"Stacey Jones is a classically trained vocalist who is best known in collector cirlces for her album *Euphoria*, an early example of new age from Marin County in California. She also put out a religious cassette in 1982 and a voice training series on cassette in the early ‘80s (not included in the discography below). She went on to reinvent herself as a therapist and currently practices in Florida under her married name Stacey Nelson.\n\nBorn in 1948, Jones was originally from New York where she studied acting and music. She went on to study psychology and music at Antioch and returned to New York where she tried to break into the movie business. When that didn’t pan out, she moved to Marin County, California around 1972 and began working as a vocal teacher. Once in Marin, Jones got swept up in the new age scene and self-released *Euphoria*, an album with mantra-like vocals and zither. By her estimation, she sold about a thousand copies and Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space reached out to distribute the cassette, but she declined.\n\nBy the ‘90s, Jones relocated to Southern California, where she began focusing on therapy, going on to earn a master’s in clinical psychology. She got her license in 1995 and began practicing as a motivational trainer and consultant in California and later in Florida, where she is based now.\n","discography":{"stacey-jones":{"albums":{"euphoria":{"image":"","label":"New Age","review":"","title":"Euphoria","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":434,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stacey-jones-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=18d73577-03ef-4c0f-b26d-bd209c28dea8","last_name":"Jones"},"star-zeit":{"artist_name":"Star Zeit","body":"Star Zeit was the name used by Michael Clay for his solo music projects in the mid '80s.  Prior to that, Clay was in the duo Crystal with Tom Moore who issued their only album *Rainbow Voyagers* during a four year stint playing live around the Arizona area.\n\nClay was a military kid, growing up in various places in the south and attending a new school seemingly every year. \"You kinda get used to all the moving around,\" Clay explained. \"Some people live in the same place their whole life and you think – what's that like?\" Clay began trumpet lessons in sixth grade, but stuck to playing the notes on the page. He continued for six more years but never really took it to the next level. Clay graduated in 1970 and headed to Arizona to attend school, eventually earning a PhD in Chemistry and Computer Science at Arizona State.\n\nWhile in grad school, Clay was introduced to Tangerine Dream by a guy who sold audio gear and lived across the hall. Clay saved up some money and bought an Octave Cat in 1978 and started playing around with it, much to the annoyance of his friends.  Clay took a trip to Esalen to see John C. Lilly and while he was away, lent the synth to his friend Tom Moore. By the time he got back to Arizona, Moore was addicted, and the two soon started working together on a musical project.\n \nMoore, who had more musical training, was the main composer for the group, with Clay often improvising sounds and textures. \"I did a lot of free improvisation as opposed to Tom. I'd prefer to never have to play a song the same way twice. I view myself as more in the jazz tradition,\" Clay said.\n\nIn 1980, Clay and Moore began living together, buying musical equipment and developing their sound. They devoured music by synth-based artists, buying tons of imports from a local record store by bands such as the Far East Family Band, Steve Hillage, and Adelbert Von Deyen. Once their set was refined, they started playing shows at local planetariums and art galleries.\n\nIn 1983, they went into Synchestra Studios in Phoenix, AZ and recorded their live set. They released it themselves on cassette and sent it out to radio shows like \"Music from the Hearts of Space\" and \"Musical Starstreams,\" both of which featured the album on air. With this success, Moore was able to get direct distribution with Tower Records. The album sold a few thousand copies by Moore's estimation. However, the band parted ways when Clay accepted a teaching job at the College of San Mateo in fall of 1983.\n\nIn San Francisco, Clay continued to make music and adopted the moniker Star Zeit to release solo albums starting in 1986. The band name, Clay acknowledged, was inspired by Von Deyen's debut Sky LP *Sternzeit*, which was a big favorite of his.\n\nFor *Islands Beyond Earth*, he got a big order of 1000 copies from mall mainstay the Nature Store, and that helped fund the production of his next two cassettes. But he was never able to gain much traction outside of the usual mail order catalogs like Backroads. \"Marketing was sort of my downfall,\" Clay acknowledged. \"We loved the music, but we didn't want to do the business. It just choked my creativity to think about how commercial my music might be. You start second guessing yourself.\"\n \nOverall, *Islands* sold about 1500 copies. Clay estimates that the two following albums only sold 500 copies or so. Both *Light Space* and *Rainbows Rising* were recorded and released around the same time, with the former going for a meditative sound while the latter explored the more uptempo progressive electronic sound of his debut.\n\nClay began looking for a musical collaborator in San Francisco and did eventually record a fourth album but it was never released. He soon got interested in the underground rave scene and began doing video projection at dance parties. His source material was mostly home movies of his travels across the world including Greek statues, surfers, buddhas, and dolphins.\n\n\"At first I didn't get the rave scene,\"Clay said. \"But then it hit me - this is body music. It’s not intellectual or mystical. It's physical music made to incite a crowd. Overall I really enjoyed my time in the underground rave scene before it got too commercial.\"\n\nIn 2000, Clay got married and retreated to a more domestic life. He discarded most of his old tapes that were left over, thinking no one would be interested in that music again. He retired from teaching in 2013 and moved to Hawaii in 2016. He and Moore reunited as Crystal for a one-off show in 2012, and Clay is currently at work recording new material in his home studio.","discography":{"crystal":{"albums":{"rainbow-voyagers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"After a decade marinating in Europe, progressive electronic music saw a surge of renewed interest in the U.S. underground in the early ’80s, with many American artists drawing inspiration from planetariums and outer space. Crystal’s timing was good, releasing *Rainbow Voyagers* as the scene was gaining momentum, helping them get radio play on *Hearts of Space* and sell a few thousand copies of this cassette. The album, while not quite a classic, is still a strong entry in the field, with an impressive scope that ranges from the astral atmospherics of \"Departure at Dawn\" to the menacing groove of \"Trek to Kilimanjaro.\" The centerpiece is the three-part “Kingdom of Rainbows,”  an epic suite that showcases Clay’s flowing guitar leads and Clay’s propulsive synth work.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Rainbow Voyagers","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Crystal","entry_number":1},"star-zeit":{"albums":{"islands-beyond-earth":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Star Zeit treads a well-worn progressive electronic path with *Islands Beyond Earth*, sounding like Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream’s '80s soundtracks or something like [Elevation Express](/elevation-express/aiki-domo). Still, Clay manages to put his own stamp on the style, favoring ultra minimalistic 4/4 drum machine patterns and staccato synth melodies that often emulate the sounds of a koto or marimba. The theme is space travel at its warm and coziest (\"Children of Stars,\" \"Dancing with the Moon\") with a lighthearted mood throughout, though Clay provides some nice contrast on the brooding and trippy \"Living Between Binary Stars.\" \n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Islands Beyond Earth","year":"1986"},"light-space":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" “An album for people who like the warm glow of space,” writes Michael Clay in the liner notes to Light Space. Indeed, this album takes the listener on an epic journey with two 20+ minute tracks that slowly build and expand for a more meditative experience than his other releases. Side One’s “The Distant Light Travels” has two main sections, with a dreamier front half of twinkling arpeggios and a second half marked by a driving beat with madcap synth leads and sound FX that channels \"The Chase\" by Giorgio Moroder, a spiritual predecessor for much of Star Zeit’s sound. \"The Birth of Light\" on side two is more flowing, ditching the drum machine for a glassy synth sound and a mournful melody.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Light Space","year":"1987"},"medieval-visions":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Medieval Visions","year":"1989"},"rainbows-rising":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Rainbows Rising* is a more adventurous take on the progressive electronic sound of Star Zeit's debut. The album is bookended with two ambient bliss-outs, with synths that zoom in and out like comets and bubbly sound effects. In between are uptempo Berlin-school pieces that draw on Giorgio Moroder (especially \"The Chase\") and T. Dream, but with enough development to keep things interesting. And then there is  \"Sky Jump,\" a frantic chiptune workout straight out of *Mega Man*, that either completely ruins the flow or provides some much-needed experimentation in a genre that seldom takes chances. Your choice.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Rainbows Rising","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Star Zeit","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":46,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/starzeit90.jpg?alt=media&token=511c2377-c71e-4174-8465-3c1c0be45404","last_name":"Star Zeit"},"starroot":{"artist_name":"Starroot","body":"Starroot is a visionary artist and new age musician from Germany who settled in Floyd, Virginia in the late '80s. She put out two albums of tribal free improv in the early '90s based on her research into the Dreamspell esoteric calendar. Her cassettes got some scattered reviews including one from Terence McKenna, and she appeared at a few events including the Harmonic Convergence and the Psychedelic Symposium. After that, she shifted her focus to making colorful and dreamlike paintings which she sells to collectors and on her website.\n\nStarroot was born Ruth Neumann in 1947 and grew up in Augsburg, Germany. She likens her childhood to the movie *Sound of Music*, with the family singing and playing together every night. She learned how to play many instruments at the time including the recorder, guitar, piano and accordion. She also loved to draw and paint as a child, inspired by nature and her active imagination.\n\nAt 18, Starroot moved to Munich for college where she studied childhood education and began performing folk and children's music. She would go on to work as a kindergarten teacher and soon settled into a domestic life with her husband who was a doctor. The couple had two children in the late '70s, but after a few years Neumann was unhappy and considering a move to America. Her friends said she was crazy but when the Chernobyl accident happened, she decided to heed her inner calling and move away, taking her two children with her.\n\n\"When I first came to America, my consciousness changed,\" Starroot said. \"My kids were seven and nine years old and we made money playing music on the streets. We spent our first year at a community called [the Farm]( http://www.thefarm.org/) in Tennessee where people like Stephen Gaskin would give lectures. But I didn't like it there and then I found Floyd in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I bought some land in 1988 and have lived there since.\"\n\nIn Floyd, Starroot circulated among a small but robust hippie scene. She put together a cassette of her quirky folk songs called *Follow the Light* in 1990, but soon found herself drawn to [Dreamspell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamspell), a new age interpretation of the Mayan Calendar. \"I was obsessed,\" Starroot said. \"I tried to scientifically prove that this is the calendar of the third dimension of galactic time. I meditated on this every day. I just went nuts.\"\n\nInspired by her studies of Dreamspell, Starroot began working on a new album called *Yellow Magnetic Sun* based on the 260 day Mayan cycle. The album featured two long improvisations with sections based on the \"five galactic seasons of time\" and the various subcycles within. \"We laid down a grid in the studio and the musicians came in and improvised on it,\" Starroot said. \"They had instructions from me, and while they were playing they heard my voice saying things like 'awakening' or 'death' or 'enchantment.' They were really channeling the instructions that I gave them. I also played drums, percussion and flute, plus some voice.\"\n\nStarroot never got national distribution for *Yellow Magnetic Sun*, instead selling the tapes at events like the Harmonic Convergence or the Psychedelic Symposium at Chapman University in 1994 where she appeared with her second husband Steven \"Starsparks\" Brick. Both *Green Egg* and *Heartsong Review* published favorable reviews of the tape and Terence McKenna called it \"music for the invocation of the unspeakable.\" In 1995, Starroot produced a second cassette based on similar concepts called *Red Cosmic Dragon*. This time, the theme was a \"musical journey of rebirth into higher spiritual identity.\" \n\nAfter that, Starroot began devoting more of her time to painting, creating large scale works grouped into different series such as \"Arcturian Drams\" and \"Spirit Animals.\" She has sold hundreds of works to collectors over the years and two of her paintings reside at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. She continued to play music as well, putting out a CD of children's music called *Somersault* in 2013, and more recently joining up with the local Floyd band Forever Now. For more info on Starroot's art and music, she maintains a website [here](http://starroot.com/wb/pages/home.php).","discography":{"starroot":{"albums":{"red-cosmic-dragon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Red Cosmic Dragon","year":"1995"},"yellow-magnetic-sun":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"From the patchouli-scented wilds of Floyd, Virginia comes this uncategorizable release, bringing to mind '70s era free-improv jams like Christian Yoga Church, Beat of the Earth or maybe even Amon Duul. Creator Starroot originally hailed from Germany and perhaps absorbed some of the krautrock spirit in her halcyon days because this is some truly psychoactive stuff. (At the time, she touted an appreciative review from the heroic doser himself Terence McKenna). Based on the esoteric Dreamspell calendar, this defies any kind of subjective assessment. You're either along for the wild ride through ancient atmospheres or you're out after the first thirty seconds. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Yellow Magnetic Sun","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":219,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Starroot-640.jpg?alt=media&token=9ad75314-1227-4ca7-8171-e918c98fc180","last_name":"Starroot"},"stefan-kukurugya":{"artist_name":"Stefan Kukurugya","body":"Stefan Kukurugya was a pianist and \"musical mercenary\" based in Ann Arbor Michigan who released three new age albums on the local Inner Light label. Founded by John Ashbrook, Inner Light was modeled after Windham Hill, and funded by his Speedy Printing business. A chance encounter there led to Kukurugya recording a solo piano album that was one of the label's earliest releases. However, the label went under in 1989 and Kukurugya, who could perform in any style and ran his own wedding band, never returned to making new age music again.\n\nBorn in 1956, Kukurugya grew up in Northwest Detroit. His father was an industrial painter and his mother was a nurse who encouraged Stefan to learn an instrument.  She bought him a ukulele and organ, but it was singing that really attracted him initially. \"In school my mother said I should sign up for glee club - I thought that was cheerleading. But it turned out to be excellent.\"\n\nIn sixth grade, Kukugrugya formed a band with his friend Michael Bierylo who played guitar. Kukurugy sang and another friend played violin. Their first performance was at a school event and Kukurugya was hooked. He and Bierlyo continued to play in various incarnations, mostly rock. Kukurugya also took up the harmonica and formed a blues band with a likeminded friend named Tim Flaherty. They played all through high school and Flaherty, who knew music theory, taught Kukurugya a lot.\n\nKukurugya spent a few years at Wayne State University, but dropped out in 1976 to go on the road playing electric piano with David Ruffin, formerly of the Temptations. When he got back, he worked painting houses and installing pipe organs in churches. He also picked up gigs playing at weddings.\n\n\"By the mid-'80s, I was living in Ann Arbor and running a wedding band,\" Kukurugya recalled. \"I would make copies of sheet music and drive three miles to get good quality copies at Speedy Printing. I'd come in with ripped up painters-clothes like a vagabond and hear John Coltrane and Keith Jarett records blasting over the din of copy machines. This guy John Ashbrook was the owner there and he sees me with handwritten music-sheets and we start talking.  Somehow I brought him a cassette of me improvising at the piano and he flipped out. He said 'I gotta record you. I can make you a living.' But it never panned out making money.\"\n\nKukurugya's solo piano album *The Essence of Sentiment* was the second release on Ashbrook's newly launched Inner Light Records in 1985. Kukurugya didn't know much about new age at the time. \"I didn't know what I was doing with those records. I'd heard about George Winston and Keith Jarrett, but I wasn’t as disciplined as those cats. I just played. But John heard something he liked.\" Kukurugya went on to do a second album, *Sun Thoughts* with a larger ensemble but he felt \"out of his league.\" The first two albums got some local airplay and were national distributed, but Inner Light never approached the sales figures of its peers Windham Hill or Narada.\n\nFor his last album on Inner Light, Kukurugya collaborated with local sax player Paul Verhagen on *Enlightened Sector* in 1987. Kukuruyga sometimes played live with Verhagen, performing jazz or doing new age shows at corporate events. By 1989, Inner Light went out of busines and Kukurugya moved on. \"The guys I hung out with, like Marvin Conrad, you just play music, it wasn’t blues or jazz or ethereal. A lot of cats in Detroit can play anything,\" Kukurugya said. \"I was in bands, conducted Yiddish choirs, played Italian music, Albanian music, Bozza Nova: I'm a musical mercenary.\"","discography":{"stefan-kukurugya":{"albums":{"sun-thoughts":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"","title":"Sun Thoughts","year":"1986"},"the-essence-of-sentiment":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"","title":"The Essence of Sentiment","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Stefan Kukurugya","entry_number":1},"stefan-kukurugya-and-paul-vornhagen":{"albums":{"enlightened-sector":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"Easy listening instrumental duets for piano and sax/flute. The modal changes give a slightly jazzy vibe, but the predominant mood is sentimental and restrained, with an emphasis on emotive melodies.","title":"Enlightened Sector","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Stefan Kukurugya and Paul Vornhagen","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":262,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stefan-kukurugya.jpeg?alt=media&token=f88cb80f-7bb4-4182-8211-82de2150b967","last_name":"Kukurugya"},"stephanie-sante":{"artist_name":"Stephanie Sante","body":"In her early years, Stephanie Sante was primarily a singer and guitarist in rock and jazz fusion bands. She also liked electronic music and tried her hand at the style with her progressive electronic album *Voyager* in 1984, but it would be 15 years before she released another electronic album. This time she stuck with it, going on to release a dozen albums. She is still active today.\n\nThough she was born in Madison, Wisconsin, Stephanie Sante spent her formative years in the Bay Area. Her father gave her an acoustic guitar for her birthday when she was 12 and she started teaching herself to play casually. But after hearing Jimi Hendrix, she was hooked. Sante went on to get a music degree from Weber State College where she studied piano, and she studied guitar at the Conservatory of Guitar and Voice in Salt Lake City. \n\nDuring college, Sante joined a series of bands such as Clazz and Escape Velocity, mostly playing rock and jazz fusion. Though she played guitar in her bands, she got into electronic music like Larry Fast and Vangelis and bought some synths such as a Moog Source and Jupiter 6 that she experimented with at her home studio.\n\nAfter leaving Escape Velocity, Sante was eager to write her own music and put out a solo album called *Voyager* featuring extended electronic pieces. The tape was favorably reviewed in *Electronic Musician* but she saw it more as a demo to get a bigger record deal. She nearly did get a deal with RCA Red, but the deal fell through and she moved on.\n\nSante next joined up with a new rock band called Aeriale in 1991 and they put out an album in 1994 called *Stargazer*, but after that she went on hiatus, working a day job in IT (she had gone back to school to get a degree in computer science). However, she returned to electronic music in 1999, self-releasing the ambient CD *Into Light* in 1999 which did fairly well. After that, Sante never looked back, putting out at least a dozen albums over the next twenty years. Gradually, her music took on more influences from jazz, as on her biggest seller, *Prismatic*  from 2010.\n\n","discography":{"stephanie-sante":{"albums":{"voyager":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Over the years, electronic musicians have developed what is like a litany of standard practices: string sounds using flanged sawtooth waves, short-envelope bell tones, growling Moog bass lines, arpeggiated open chords with tunes picked out inside them, key changes on long-held string chords, and fast unison overdubbing times to a rhythm box. The fact that Sante does them all, and well, says more about the fullness of what’s gone before than any limitation in her debut effort.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, January 1986)
","title":"Voyager","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":274,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stephanie-sante-640.jpg?alt=media&token=da270e89-d2a7-44c8-8535-baad13adb86d","last_name":"Sante"},"stephen-coughlin":{"artist_name":"Stephen Coughlin","body":"Stephen Coughlin was a woodwind player with a gift for deep, soulful improvisation. During the '80s, he released four albums, but he generally preferred to play in more spiritual settings such as with the Sufi Choir or on labyrinth walks at the Grace Cathedral. Coughlin incorporated non-western music forms in his playing, particularly those from Indian, Turkish and Middle-Eastern traditions. His versatility helped him get work on sessions with Hamza el Din and Arthur Russell, among others. Coughlin's first Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Khan gave him the name Huzur Nawaz in 1970, though it didn't become his legal name until 2002. Coughlin worked as a taxi driver for decades but ultimately settled into a job as a music educator, the career his parents had always wanted for him.\n\nCoughlin was born to Irish Catholic parents in Queens in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. His parents got him started on the clarinet at 13 but he also played the sax too, partly in an effort to attract girls. Coughlin and his sister Noreen grew up going to church most Sundays and attending Catholic schools.  Noreen was more rebellious where Coughlin was the quiet type, though he still found ways to sneak out of the house to attend concerts since his parents wouldn’t let him go. Noreen remembers that they listened to R&B and rock and roll on the radio, and that their father was always yelling at them to turn it down.\n\nIn 1960, Coughlin moved to Washington D.C. to attend the Catholic University of America, an all-male school where he studied clarinet and music education. Growing up, he’d loved sacred Latin music and Gregorian chants that he heard in church. In college, he studied this music more seriously, prefiguring his later interest in other sacred sounds.  But at night and on the weekends, Coughlin was drawn to the more hedonistic sounds of R&B, playing in local blues bands and dating a black woman which he kept secret from his parents. \n\nShortly after graduation, Coughlin was drafted. He’d just been hired to play back up saxophone for Otis Redding's band and felt sure he’d missed his big break until Otis Redding and his band died in a plane accident. During his time in the Army, Coughlin was stationed in Italy and played clarinet in the band, never seeing actual combat. After his discharge, he moved back to Washington D.C. for a while and continued to play with R&B groups.\n\nBy the late '60s, Coughlin moved back to New York where he started driving a cab to help supplement his income. He also taught private music lessons, which he'd been doing since graduating from college. Around this time, he first became interested in Hindustani classical music when he heard singer Pandit Pran Nath. \"My first really mystical experience was hearing a bootleg record of his, and that first note just moved me so deeply,\" Coughlin said in an interview on the *Echoes* radio show. \"That's really what I took from him – was the ability to communicate something from deep within his soul.\"\n\nStarting in 1970, Coughlin began studying with Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Khan, who gave him the name Huzur Nawaz.  He met his first wife Bonnie at one of Khan's camps in Woodstock, and the two moved out to California in the following year.  They joined a Sufi group there and Coughlin began working with the newly created Sufi Choir. Allaudin Mathieu, a jazz pianist who'd previously served as the musical director for Chicago's Second City, started the choir to give a musical voice to the group.  The Sufi Choir released many albums throughout the '70s on Mathieu's Cold Mountain label, and Coughlin was a key contributor to the first four. \n\nCoughlin and Bonnie divorced in 1977 and he remarried a year later to Janice, who he met at a Mendocino Sufi Camp.  Janice sang with him in his Gregorian chant choir as well as Sufi ensembles. \"He was a grumpy director because nothing but 'in tune' was acceptable and he could barely tolerate it when it wasn't,\" Janice recalled. \n\nWhile his time with the Sufi choir was important for Coughlin, he was most profoundly influenced by his work with two Indian teachers in the '70s, the aforementioned Pandit Pran Nath and flautist G. S. Sachdev.  Pran Nath taught many other musicians in the San Francisco area including Terry Riley and Mathieu, and Coughlin was eager to study with him. Pran Nath taught him how to sculpt the pitch of his notes and use space in his playing to convey a deeper truth. Coughlin also studied with bansuri flute master G.S. Sachdev for seven years and the two became very close, with Sachdev even visiting him in the hospital decades later when he had a stroke.\n\n\"My study of Indian music was very valuable,\" Coughlin told Echoes. \"The Indian approach is to start with perfection. You work on one note a lot, the key note. And you try to perfect that note. And then you try to perfect a scale. Then after that you move to the raga.\" Coughlin further studied ragas at the Ali Akbar Khan School, and ultimately got a Masters in music at SF State in 1979. His thesis was about the influence of gamelan music on Debussy.\n\nCoughlin released the first album of his own music in 1980 under the name East Window. Self-released on cassette only, the album also included pianist Moulabakhsh Funk. In the March 1982 issue of *Yoga Journal*, [Ramana Das](/ramana-das) called the album \"soothing and spacious.\" *East Window* caught the attention of Ethan Edgecomb of Fortuna, who offered to release Coughlin's next album *Song of the Reed.* With contributions from [Don Robertson](/don-robertson) on zither and Max Rossmassler on guitar, the album combined eastern and western influences and owed a strong debt to [Paul Horn](/paul-horn) and Sachdev. The album was a big favorite on the *Hearts of Space* radio show and sold well. It was followed by another collaboration with Funk, *Archways*, before Fortuna was folded into Celestial Harmonies. Coughlin's next album, *Breeze at Dawn* came out on Ramana Das' U Music label in 1989.\n\nAfter *Breeze at Dawn*, Coughlin didn't release any new music for over a decade. He and Janice had two children in 1980 and 1984, but his wife was the primary breadwinner. Coughlin liked driving a taxi because, he said, it \"saved his energy for music\" and he could practice his bansuri flute when he didn't have a customer. But by this time, Coughlin was starting to teach more. \"There was still lots of resistance to what his parents wanted him to do,\" Janice said. He subbed in elementary schools for a while and eventually got his teaching credential in the mid-‘90s.\n\nDuring his time teaching, Coughlin remained deeply committed to his own music. He'd started studying the ney, a type of flute, in 1986 and became the long-running music director for the Mevlevi Order of America, better known as the whirling dervishes. He performed live with Terry Riley and Hamza El Din, and appeared with the latter on a 1991 cassette called *Like This* providing accompaniment to poetry by Rumi. Around the same time, he contributed flute solos for three episodes of the *Young Indiana Jones* TV series and wrote music for PBS documentaries. In the ‘90s, he also began playing for the labyrinth walks at the Grace Cathedral, recruited by Mihr-un-nisa Douglass. \n\nIn 1999, Coughlin had quadruple bypass heart surgery and was divorced from Janice. He remarried three years later to an old friend and fellow Sufi, Subhana, who had known him since 1978. He began recording again around this time, releasing *The Presence* in 2002 and *Inner Steps* in 2006. Musica Divina put out an album in 2004 of the music from the labyrinth walks at Grace Cathedral with Coughlin playing flute and ney. Coughlin and Subhana currently live in California.","discography":{"stephen-coughlin":{"albums":{"breeze-at-dawn":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"There are traces of raga and other world musics on this album but something wonderfully other flows out. Like a temple you've visited in a dream, moon-spirit sounds drifting down from a distant hill, sweeping you into some breath of ancientness. A combination of zither, saxophone, piano, synthesizer and space bass  (Constance Demby!) create a field for Coughlin's flutes and saxophone to float in, making for a profound journey.\n\n(Jogen Salzberg, 2019)","title":"Breeze at Dawn","year":"1989"},"song-of-the-reed":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"*Song of the Reed* is a strong entry in the field of acoustic new age - one of many descendants of Paul Horn's *Inside* LP from 1968. Stephen Coughlin's occasional use of soprano sax may trigger those with '80s muzak PTSD, but the flute performances are a wonder to behold. With most songs rooted in one chord, the droning backdrops allow Coughlin room to explore the harmonic and emotional reaches of his instrument, achieving a timeless quality.\n\nSide one features songs with Don Robertson on zither, adding an ethereal haze that complements Coughiln's more earthbound sound nicely. Starting with the brooding \"Shower of Nectar,\" Coughlin goes to profound, serious spaces for the first three tracks, before lightening the mood on the breezier \"Hamza,\" named for Hamza El Din.\n\nSide two is stronger overall (no soprano sax), with \"Awake\" using flute loops to approximate something medieval, while the title track brims with emotion. Finale \"Processional\" is interesting too - achieving a fuller sound with counterpoint from bass flute and light tribal percussion pushing the song towards an abrupt conclusion that leaves the listener vibrating in sudden emptiness.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Song of the Reed","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Stephen Coughlin","entry_number":2},"stephen-coughlin-moulabakhsh-funk":{"albums":{"archways":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Perhaps his most conventional release, *Archways* is also Coughlin's weakest. Utilizing the same piano/flute instrumentation from his *East Window* cassette, the set is driven by pianist Moulabakhsh Funk's classically informed playing and more linear song structures that don't allow Coughlin to go deep into the trance-like solos he does so well. Coughlin's playing is masterful as always, but the songs sometimes feel like musical exercises or worse, neo-romantic schmaltz. Coughlin saves the set with \"Krishna's Blue,\" a raga-like piece that recalls the more mystical zones of *Song of the Reed*. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Archways","year":"1985"},"east-window":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"East Window","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"Stephen Coughlin and Moulabakhsh Funk","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":38,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Stephen-Coughlin-look-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fa146b2c-4fd8-4e99-a354-c3d33e7154c8","last_name":"Coughlin"},"stephen-dijoseph":{"artist_name":"Stephen DiJoseph","body":"Stephen DiJoseph is a Philadelphia-based guitarist and pianist who has been active since the mid-'80s, playing in prog band Increase the Angle in addition to many solo albums of rock and pop. In 1990, he produced a new age album for Mu-Psych, one of the last released before they went out of business. DiJoseph has Tourette's syndrome, which first cropped up when he was six, around the same time he started getting interested in playing music. He now lectures about the disorder and produced a short film in 2013 called *A Synaptic Adventure: Tourette's and Beyond*.\n\nBorn in 1957, DiJoseph first took up the organ when he was six, followed by drums and piano. He took classical piano lessons for years and went on to take some classes at the Philadelphia Music Academy after graduating high school. After that, he formed a progressive band called Increase the Angle with high school friend Michael DiMatteo and drummer Jim Meneses. The group recorded a few sessions but released only one track, \"Picasso's Last Stand,\" for the *Music from Philadelphia* compilation in 1987.  DiJoseph put out his first solo cassette EP *Connected* in 1986, released on his own Bearface label. However, his next release would explore a very different sound.\n\nIn the late 80s, new age label Mu-Psych commissioned DiJoseph to produce a new age album for them. Working with producer Jeffrey Bernstein, DiJoseph purchased new Midi gear and composed everything specifically for that album. \"I was listening to lot of Windham Hill at the time: Will Ackerman, Michael Hedges, George Winston, and Mark Isham,\" DiJoseph recalled. \"So, I was incorporating these influences into that album. I had a classical background, so I wanted thematic stuff. I didn't want to just hold a chord down for 10 minutes. I wanted to create something musical. It was an interesting process. I also used my full name on that album. I liked the sound of having three names, like the composer James Newton Howard.\"\n\nLike all Mu-Psych albums, the album was pressed in a small edition of 500 copies and is now hard to find. DiJoseph returned to playing a mix of prog rock and pop, releasing three CD's on his Bearface label in the '90s. DiJoseph worked for many years as a delivery driver, but found a way to make a living from music by playing classical music at retirement villages which he continues to do today. In 2013, DiJoseph produced a short film about Tourette's and the creative process called *A Synaptic Adventure: Tourette's and Beyond* that can be seen [here](https://melinda-warburton.squarespace.com/gallery).","discography":{"stephen-dijoseph":{"albums":{"a-quiet-time":{"image":"","label":"Mu-Psych","review":"This is on the Mu-Psych label, the people who put \"RX: Relaxation\" on their tape liners and sell a complete line of new agey tapes to help you quit smoking and improve your interpersonal relationship skills, etc. They also have a growing line of music tapes, and much as it pains me to say it (must be time for some crystal therapy), much of it ain't bad at all. DiJoseph plays synthesizers and acoustic piano, and what saves his compositions from the usual new age glop is some very intelligent synth orchestration that holds your interest. His solo piano compositions also have a jazz quirk, which again provides just a bit of intellectual stimulation. Still, the intent is relaxation, so if you want some relatively unchallenging musical tint to your environment, this will at least not drive you up the wall like some new age synth drool will. \n\n(John Baxter, *Option*, Sep/Oct 1990)","title":"A Quiet Time","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":296,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stephen-dijoseph-temp.png?alt=media&token=fd1307f5-cf9a-46a2-a622-cfb2810f578b","last_name":"DiJoseph"},"stephen-van-handel":{"artist_name":"Stephen Van Handel","body":"Stephen Van Handel was a classically influenced electronic musician who released three albums from 1986 to 1991 on his own Point of View label. \n\nBorn in 1952, Stephen Van Handel was raised in Appleton, Wisconsin. He started piano at a young age and dreamed of being a concert pianist. One of his early favorites was Rachmaninoff. He practiced diligently until his early teens, but the pressure got to him. \"I realized at 14 that I didn't have the nerve for it,\" Van Handel recalled. \"I was in some statewide competitions and I thought--I don't want to feel like this every time I am preparing to perform. The couple of weeks beforehand, the hours beforehand…I was so nervous and tense.\"\n\nAfter high school, Van Handel worked a series of odd jobs including construction and woodworking. He spent some time in Chicago and Boston where he learned about electronic music. However, he disliked the cold weather and moved back home to save up for his next move. \n\nAt 23, Van Handel headed to Los Angeles and enrolled at LA Trade Tech studying commercial art. His main passion was still music, but he saw commercial illustration as a more reliable career. He went on to start working freelance at various agencies and then got a full-time job as an art director at USC. There he won many awards and enjoyed a fruitful career on the fast track. \"I worked in advertising for 38 years as art director,\" Van Handel said. \"I lived in a parallel universe because I didn't feel too passionate about it. That's why I did music during that time.\" \n\nThe money from his day job allowed Van Handel to build a small home studio at his place in Long Beach. He had an Arp 2600, a Yamaha DX-7 and a computer. He was aware of other electronic musicians in the area like [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) and [Loren Nerell](/loren-nerell), but he was more of a loner. During his free time, Van Handel composed at home, taking cues from Larry Fast, Tomita, and Mike Oldfield.  \"The first album was four long meditations for synthesizers,\" Van Handel said. \"It wasn't sonata form; it was evolutionary music that would build and recede. New themes would come in.\"\n\nVan Handel sent a demo of two early songs to a radio show called \"Journey through Realms of Music\" on KPFK. The host Bill Davila liked it and brought him on for an interview and gave out his phone number on the air. This led to Van Handel's first cassette, *Les Pièces Pour Le Nouveau Monde*which he self-released in 1986. Eurock and Backroads distributed, and he got positive reviews in Electronic Musician, Keyboard, and Option.\n\nAfter the success of his debut, Van Handel began working on his next album, ultimately released in 1989 as *Pearls of the Soul*. This time he had a better-equipped studio, now with a sampler. The new work included Asian and South American influences in addition to some tribal ambient a la *Dreamtime Return*. \"I like music that evokes images,\" Van Handel said. \"That's what I like about Stravinsky. He can really take you into the dark woods or a shiny mountain peak.\"\n\nVan Handel shopped the album around to various labels but nothing ever came of it and he self-released the album on his own label again. *Pearls* was featured on Hearts of Space and got good reviews, selling several thousand copies by his estimation. \n\nVan Handel's final CD was *Chiaroscuro*, released in 1991. The album was more impressionist, with echoes of Debussy or Ravel. By this time Van Handel grew tired of splitting his time between work and art and decided to stop releasing albums. \"I didn't lose my love of it, but there was no money in it.\" More recently, Van Handel has gone back to painting, an early love from childhood. ","discography":{"stephen-van-handel":{"albums":{"chiaroscuro":{"image":"","label":"Point View","review":"","title":"Chiaroscuro: Extremes of Light & Dark ","year":"1991"},"les-pieces-pour-le-nouveau-monde":{"image":"","label":"Point of View","review":"Van Handel’s *Pieces for the New World* is a collection of four long meditations for digital synthesizer. Unlike most artists, when Van Handel puts together a long track, it's not just a short track that goes on and on. His pieces are filled with changes and dynamic variety almost like the way Mike Oldfield's music evolved through 18 minutes. Excellent voicing and a thundering low end make these pretty invigorating meditations, too.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, December 1987)","title":"Les Pièces Pour Le Nouveau Monde ","year":"1986"},"pearls-of-the-soul":{"image":"","label":"Point of View","review":"","title":"Pearls of the Soul","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":283,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stephen-van-handel-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=764d93e4-1f4d-468d-b62a-f0d47075641b","last_name":"Van Handel"},"steve-douglas":{"artist_name":"Steve Douglas","body":"Steven Douglas Kreisman was a saxophonist who made his name in the '60s as a part of the Wrecking Crew, a now-famous group of session musicians who played on countless hits. Born in 1938, Douglas grew up in Los Angeles and got his start working with Duane Eddy before playing on Phil Spector's Wall of Sound productions and nearly every Beach Boys album of the '60s. In the '70s, he spent time as an A&R exec and also recorded a mystical solo album *The Music of Cheops* recorded on location by his friend [Dan Morehouse](/dan-morehouse), in a manner similar to Paul Horn's *Inside* from several years earlier. He also self-released *Rainbow Suite* in 1981, a mix of jazz and new age styles that may be of interest to readers. These albums were mainly diversions for him though, as he always seemed to have plenty of work, whether working on Phil Spector productions in the '70s or touring and recording with Bob Dylan in the '70s and '80s. Douglas passed away in 1993 but his contributions were recognized with his addition to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.","discography":{"steve-douglas":{"albums":{"beyond-broadway":{"image":"","label":"EssDee","review":"","title":"Beyond Broadway","year":"1992"},"hot-sax":{"image":"","label":"Fantasy","review":"","title":"Hot Sax","year":"1982"},"king-cobra":{"image":"","label":"Fantasy","review":"","title":"King Cobra","year":"1984"},"rainbow-suite":{"image":"","label":"Bel Tree","review":"","title":"Rainbow Suite","year":"1981"},"the-music":{"image":"","label":"Cheops Records","review":"","title":"The Music of Cheops","year":"1976"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":358,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Steve-douglas-540.jpeg?alt=media&token=bae6883f-d83f-4c47-8094-751be86d5efe","last_name":"Douglas"},"steve-kornicki":{"artist_name":"Steve Kornicki","body":"Philadelphia guitarist Steve Kornicki spent three years recording his electronic debut, *Fragments of Illumination* which he self-released at the age of 22. During the time, he was a student at the Settlement School in Philadelphia where he studied guitar and music. He put out the album on CD, then a novel and expensive format, but he didn't have enough money left for a cover. The ambitious album showcases a mix of ambient, experimental, and contemporary classical pieces, and was largely sold through *Aftertouch*, a niche electronic magazine. After graduation, Kornicki went on to work as a school administrator for over a decade. He now works as a full-time composer for TV and film, as well as performing for corporate events. While Kornicki primarily played in various rock and jazz projects, he did return to electronic music in 2007 with *Transformations and Manipulations*.","discography":{"steve-kevin-kornicki":{"albums":{"different-view":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Different Views","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Steve and Kevin Kornicki","entry_number":2},"steve-kornicki":{"albums":{"fragments of illumination":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Fragments of Illumination","year":"1991"},"mythos":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Mythos (Music in Solitude","year":"1998"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":259,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/steve-kornicki-640.jpg?alt=media&token=a2792013-adb3-4237-9707-66962a28224a","last_name":"Kornicki"},"steve-roach":{"artist_name":"Steve Roach","body":"Steve Roach is one of the most well-known and widely respected ambient musicians.  Although he was self-taught, he consumed music history with vigor and commanded respect from his peers with a tireless drive to play and record. He released many critically acclaimed and successful albums including his breakout *Structures from Silence* in 1984 and his critically acclaimed *Dreamtime Return* in 1988, inspired by a journey to the Australian outback.\n\nRoach was born in 1955 in La Mesa, CA, an only child drawn to painting and sculpture early in life. The desert terrain of his youth left a strong impression that informed much of his music and philosophy. But long before Roach was ever a recording artist, he was a rabid music fan, working at a record shop that specialized in imports. It was there in the mid-'70s that he first became enamored with the progressive sounds coming out of Germany, especially Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. \"When I heard *Timewind*, that turned the lights on in the room,\" Roach said. \"Ever since that moment, I've been drawn to the visceral body experience of that sound.\"\n\nRoach was so inspired by the Berlin-school that he began studying album sleeves to see what gear was needed. In 1978 he finally made the leap, taking out a high-interest loan to buy an Arp 2600, a Roland Space Echo, and more. (There is a rumor that he bought all his gear from Nicolas Raicevic, but that is not true.)\n\nInitially, Roach tried taking some classes to learn more about electronic music, but the pace was too plodding for him. He was anxious to jump in and he began woodshedding, exploring both a driving style based on rhythmic arpeggios and the more textural, slow-breathing soundscapes he later perfected on *Structures*.\n\nAs Roach was learning his craft, he also networked with others in the nearby Los Angeles electronic scene. His earliest contacts included Doug Lynner (the editor of Synapse magazine), and a trio of musicians--Bryce Robbley, Danny Sofer and Alex Cima--who were in an electronic band called LEM. Roach started driving up to LA to hang out with them, and soon joined Lynner and Robbley as a guest on their Moebius LP, released in 1979. Later, Roach formed a short-lived synth band with Sofer, [Richard Burmer](/richard-burmer) and Dennis Baglama called Radiance. The band never released anything, but Roach recalls a memorable show at Seattle's Pacific Science Center Planetarium around 1983.\n\nWhen Roach first moved to LA in late 1979, he was able to get a job at a record store chain called Licorice Pizza.  He knew the owner pretty well, and had actually played his first concert earlier that year at another Licorice Pizza location in Pacific Beach.  His early years in LA were a lean time, and he had to sell his entire record collection twice in order to make ends meet.  Still, Roach lived a fairly simple life and only needed to make enough to keep funding his musical projects.\n\nRoach loved playing live, and was one of the most active performers on the electronic scene, frequently playing at the Comeback Inn in Venice. It was through his live shows there and elsewhere that he ended up meeting so many other fellow travelers who would later collaborate with him including Richard Burmer, [Loren Nerell](/loren-nerell), [Kevin Braheny](/kevin-braheny), Thomas Ronkin, and [Will Morris](/will-morris).\n\nRoach's love of live performance informed his early studio recordings as well. For his debut album *Now* in 1982, he sought to capture the purity of the present moment. \"The first take often has the most magic,\" Roach said. \"The music just feels more alive.\"  Because Roach had based his early sound so much on the Berlin school, he made a conscious decision to write shorter songs than the often side-long tracks that dominated the German scene. \n\nInstead of shopping his recordings around, Roach released *Now* on his own, as many of his peers were doing at the time. Then he took out ads in magazines like OP and Polyphony to advertise it and orders slowly started to come in.\n\nAt that time, many artists released their albums on cassette, but vinyl was still considered a big deal.  So Roach felt like he'd taken a big step when Bobby Helm, a Chrysalis executive, wanted to put out Roach's next album on vinyl for his new label Domino.  *Traveler* was a transitional album that saw Roach continue with the sequencer-driven material of his debut, but also showcasing his slower-breathing style in tracks like \"Light Sound\" and \"Canyon of Sound.\"\n\nAs an only child, Roach connected with the vast landscapes of the desert and wanted to articulate through music the emotional introspection this terrain evoked. Although he kept his sequencer-based songs shorter, he wanted his more drone-based tracks to stretch out and evoke the space of the southwest. One of Roach's first pieces in this style was [\"Firelight\"](https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/emotions-revealed) which was recorded in 1983 but not released until 2015. For most listeners, the introduction to Roach's more contemplative mode came with *Structures from Silence*, released initially on his own Soundquest label in 1984. Shortly thereafter, [Michael Stearns](/Michael-stearns), who mastered the album, sent it along to Stephen Hill and Ethan Edgecomb who helped set up a wider distribution deal with Edgecomb's Fortuna label. \n\nAt the time, Roach was living in a small bungalow in Culver City. Stephen Hill, John Diliberto, and others who visited there found Roach to be living a nearly monastic life that revolved solely around music. He no longer worked at the record store, but still picked up work doing scores for industrial films or commercials, as well as working at a microbiology lab testing the sterility of medical products. But once *Structures* began to hit in 1984, Roach was able to focus solely on his own music.\n\nWith backing from Fortuna, and his star rising in the electronic scene, Roach became a focal point for many in Europe for what they called the \"Pacific School.\"  Roach remained very busy, collaborating with Kevin Braheny, Michael Stearns, and Richard Burmer in various configurations on two albums, producing Will Morris' first two albums, and helping to record and produce Loren Nerell's *Point of Arrival*. \n\nIn 1987, Roach began work on a double album that would represent another distinct evolution of his music. Inspired by long hikes in the deserts of California and Australia, as well as the \"fourth world\" explorations of Jon Hassell, Roach sought to connect his music with an ancient landscape and the indigenous rhythms that still resonated there. With samples taken from his travels, and the evocative sounds of native instruments, *Dreamtime Return* was heralded as a masterpiece of the tribal ambient genre.\n\nIn 1990, Roach married artist Linda Kohanav and moved to the outskirts of Tucson where he lives today. He built a large studio there where he continued to record, and embarked on a period of extensive touring in Europe through the '90s. Roach has a huge archive of his music and he maintains an active website and bandcamp page [here](https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/biosonic).","discography":{"robert-rich-and-steve-roach":{"albums":{"soma":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Soma","year":"1992"},"strata":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Strata","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Robert Rich and Steve Roach","entry_number":4},"steve-roach":{"albums":{"dreamtime-return":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"After an amazing opening with \"Towards the Dream\" and \"The Continent,\" the first disc is defined by decent if not unremarkable tribal explorations; the second disc, however, is quite strong, with tracks like \"Looking for Safety\" and \"The Return\" showcasing Roach's well-established mastery of a purer ambient sound. A gargantuan album for its time, and often hailed as Roach's best, *Dreamtime Return* is difficult to assess; it's uneven and its tribal elements are much better executed in future releases, but its ambition follows through for those who choose to undertake the journey.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Dreamtime Return","year":"1988"},"empetus":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"This is the peak of Roach's work in short-form progressive electronic, a genre he would return to from time to time--and in good measure--but never to the heights of this early release. Not every Roach album has every track as a highlight (\"Conquest\" and \"Merge\" in particular are excellent complements, both featuring driving synths and female vocals)--this is his first and among his most enduring.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Empetus","year":"1986"},"now":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Steve Roach was a writer for *Synapse* and a member of Moebius, their house band. Aside from a track on *Music for the 21st Century*, this is his first solo release. Track two is a real nice free-form ring modulator piece, track four has some lovely voice-like synthesis over very ethnic-sounding electronic percussion, and track five is backwards sax and flute which somehow manages to sound surprisingly unhackneyed. The other three tracks are improvised soloing over a rhythmic background of the sort made famous by T. Dream, Klaus Schulze, Michael Hoenig, Michael Garrison, and many others. Even these tracks are extremely well done, with imagination and taste. An auspicious debut. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1983)","title":"Now","year":"1982"},"quiet-music-1":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"The series is probably Roach's closest forray into New Age (at least of his solo works), but he certainly proved more than capable of handling the genre, and without venturing too far into maudlin waters. Quiet Music 1 is his most pastoral offering, defined by its nature sounds and simplistic looping; neither part truly reaches the transcendence of Structures from Silence, but this is still Roach at the peak of his early career, crafting a sound that is still satisfying, if not decidedly more terrestrial.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Quiet Music 1","year":"1986"},"quiet-music-2":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Significantly stronger than *Quiet Music 1* which is already above-average as far as ‘80s new age goes; *Quiet Music 2* is closer in DNA to *Structures from Silence*, and is probably the only of Roach's classic ambient albums that can stand alongside it. Other than \"Towards the Blue,\" Roach moves out of the realm of New Age into glorious space ambient, whether in short or long form; each track has its own unique identity and depth, but the ascendant finale \"Air and Light\" is the exemplar.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Quiet Music 2","year":"1986"},"quiet-music-3":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Whereas Quiet Music 2 propelled the project to new astral heights, *Quiet Music 3* returns to the woods for a hardy yet ever-digestible offering of new age. \"Sleep and Dreaming\" is a majestic descent into the dream realm, but even it can't quite escape the over-sentimentality endemic to the genre--better than the first, but a necessary letdown from the second.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Quiet Music 3","year":"1986"},"stormwarning":{"image":"","label":"Soundquest","review":"","title":"Stormwarning - Live in Concert","year":"1989"},"structures-from-silence":{"image":"","label":"Sound Quest","review":"Unlike his previous [two albums], Roach here is non-rhythmic, non-sequenced and totally blissed out. Ranks with Don Slepian (*Computer Don't Breakdown*) and Eberhard Schoener (*Meditation*) at the tippy top of the 100% electronic New Age. \n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Polyphony*, 1984)","title":"Structures from Silence","year":"1984"},"traveler":{"image":"","label":"Domino","review":"","title":"Traveler","year":"1983"},"world's-edge":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"Not as lasting as the phenomenal *Dreamtime Return*, but still an impressive example of tribal ambient that makes fitting use the compositional technology available. The final track \"To the Threshold of Silence\" (fitting in on a separate disc) is a far more spacey affair, and unfortunately doesn't measure up to Roach's better works in that subgenre.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"World's Edge","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach","entry_number":1},"steve-roach-kevin-braheny-richard-burmer":{"albums":{"western-spaces":{"image":"","label":"Innovative Communication","review":"When three masters of meditative electronic music come together--sometimes singly, sometimes in duets, sometimes all three--the result has to be more varied than any one of them alone. *Western Spaces* does not disappoint. It's full of ravishing digital textures in billowy intermissions from the real world.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, May 1987)","title":"Western Spaces","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer","entry_number":2},"steve-roach-michael-stearns-kevin-braheny":{"albums":{"desert-solitaire":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"\"Flatlands\" is an outstanding opener rivaling *Dreamtime Return*’s \"Towards the Dream\" as one of his best tribal ambient offerings. The other tracks, especially those by the featured artists, are pleasant enough but lack engagement.\n\n(G. Wiley, 2025)","title":"Desert Solitaire","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, and Kevin Braheny","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":14,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/roach.jpg?alt=media&token=86760a2f-c34e-482f-8b8c-ac579826be2b","last_name":"Roach"},"steve-winfield":{"artist_name":"Steve Winfield","body":"Steve Winfield was a saxophone and flute player based in Boston who released seven albums of meditative music during the '80s. He had a brief relationship with Narada-imprint Sona Gaia who reissued some of his earlier cassettes, and he also recorded for Jonathan Goldman's Spirit Music and his own Montage Productions. For decades Winfield owned a music store called the Instrument Exchange, though he also played in wedding bands and worked at a Buddhist retreat. In 1987, he pivoted to synth-based music, starting with *Crystal Silence* and continuing on to his final album *Jeweled Horizons*. Winfield moved to California in 1990 where he worked in real estate and life coaching. Winfield died in 2003 of cancer.\n\nStephen Winfield was born in Chicago in 1944. His father was a merchant marine and his mother worked in the WPA program when they first met in New York. Around the time he was eight, the family moved to Los Angeles where his dad worked as a painter and later as an antique clock repairman. Winfield had a younger brother named Ken and they grew close over the years. Both shared a passion for sports, and Winfield would even go on to earn a spot in *The Secret Life of Sports Fans*, a book by author Eric Simons. Winfield's early favorites were the Patriots and the Red Sox, but he would become a die-hard Oakland Raiders fan later in life.\n\nIn high school, Winfield started playing the alto saxophone. He played in bands all through college, first joining a group called the Cavaliers and then a rock and soul band called Salvador and the Strads. That band gigged around Los Angeles at clubs including the Whiskey a Go-Go and a two year residency at the Howard Manor in Palm Springs.\n\nWinfield graduated from Cal State Los Angeles with a music degree and started playing with musicians who would later form the jazz-funk group War. However, Winfield decided to continue his schooling at the Berklee School of Music and moved to Boston in 1968.  He wound up staying there for the next twenty years. One of his early jobs was teaching at the JDS Music School where he met pianist Roger Baker. The two became friends and started a band with other teachers there called the B&W Music Service. Baker's wife sang. The band played weddings nearly every weekend and any other professional gig they could find. \"Steve was always into meditation and new age stuff,\" Baker recalled. \"We'd do weddings at Elk clubs and on our breaks he'd be meditating. He was always into that even though I used him a lot as a rock player.\"\n\nBy the mid-'70s, Winfield started selling musical instruments out of his house. Business was good enough that he was able to open a brick and mortar store called the Instrument Exchange in Harvard Square, where it remained for several decades.  According to Baker, Winfield was a big fan of George Winston and was inspired to record his own albums of new age inspired music in the early '80s. His first album was *Cruisin With Buddha* (later retitled *Secrets Never Told*), recorded with his then-girlfriend Kat West AKA Nessa. He went on to record several more albums at Baker's studio, often with session musicians that Baker hired, such as drummer Ray Frisby and bassist Bruce Gertz. After self-releasing a few more tapes of meditative jazz, Winfield got signed to Sona Gaia, an imprint of Narada Records. They put out new editions of three of his albums in 1984, plus a new one called *Quiet Grace.* \n\nIn Massachusetts, Winfield spent a lot of his time at a Buddhist retreat called the Forest Refuge. There he met Bill Morgan, who hired him to be a manager. The two bonded over sports, and Morgan recalled in Simons' book they often snuck away from the meditation center to watch games. One night, with money on the line, they both screamed in delight during a Monday Night Football game and disturbed the quiet atmosphere that usually permeated the retreat. The two would remain close throughout their lives.\n\nIn 1984, Winfield met Jonathan Coe, a younger musician living in Alston, Massachusetts who had a band at the time called [Dervish](/dervish) that played a mix of krautrock and new age. Coe was the new age buyer at the Harvard Co-op record store and discovered that a musician with similar tastes – Winfield - was living nearby. The two became friends and started to play music together. \n\nAccording to Coe, Winfield went back to school at this time to earn his master’s in education. For his thesis, he was studying the adagio tempo and prepping an album as a tool for healing. He enlisted Coe to help out with that, and released the final product in 1987 as *Crystal Silence* on his friend [Jonathan Goldman’s](/jonathan-goldman) label Spirit Music. Goldman ran the New England Sound Healers Association and Winfield was an active member.  *Crystal Silence* was pretty different from his earlier work, showcasing a very minimalist sound created mostly on synthesizers. According to Goldman, *Crystal Silence* reached a lot of people, including a doctor in Sweden who used it for immersion therapy.\n\nWinfield and Coe recorded a second album for Goldman in a similar style using layered synths, but according to Coe, \"Steve wanted to do something more ambitious and expansive. We strayed away from the feel that Goldman liked, so we released it ourselves.\" They sold the tape at their shows, playing at spots like the local hangout Interface, but it was not widely distributed.\n\nIn 1990, Winfield returned to California to be closer to his mother. He continued to play music, appearing at new age conferences occasionally, but he didn’t release any new music. Winfield remained close to his family, but he had a small circle of friends and never married. In an interview with Eric Simons, Winfield’s brother Ken recalled: \"The chief thing about him was that he never seemed comfortable. Steven could have been the identity-seeking poster boy. He had trouble with commitment.\" Baker concurred about Winfield’s perennially single status: \"I always met women he was with, one time he was even dating Richard Gere's sister, but I usually never saw them again.\"\n\nDespite his personal issues, Winfield found success in the business world, pivoting from selling musical instruments to buying and selling foreclosures and distressed properties. He did this throughout the ‘90s, and eventually worked as a life coach as well. However, his career was put on hold in 1998 when he was diagnosed with colon cancer, and it sent him on an obsessive search all over the world to find a cure.\n\nBy the early 2000’s, with his health failing, sports became Winfield's solace more than ever.  His beloved Raiders made the Super Bowl in 2003, and Winfield's old pal Bill Morgan flew out to watch the game with him. Even though the Raiders suffered a bad loss, the excitement of the day helped Winfield hang on just a little bit longer. \"The Raiders had given Steve that one thing he’d always wanted and never found: a meaningful relationship,\" Ken told author Eric Simons. \"From that one source came a weird kind of peace that meditation and music couldn’t offer. He really was at peace. The Raiders brought him to a point where, once that Super Bowl was over, he was ready to pass away.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\n\nSources:\n* Author interview with Ken Winfield, June 18, 2020\n* Author interview with Jonathan Coe, March 17, 2019\n* Author interview with Roger Baker, August 10, 2020\n* Simons, Eric. *The Secret Lives of Sports Fans*. Abrams, 2013. ","discography":{"mirage":{"albums":{"crystal-silence":{"image":"","label":"Spirit Music","review":"This tape marked a big departure for Winfield, who brought in guitarist Jon Coe from [Dervish](/dervish) for a minimalist, synth based album designed for healing and relaxation. The two pieces here are both 25 minute sound baths that gently pulsate and flow, seeming to slow down the molecules in the air. Side One's \"Crystal Silence\" is all synths, while \"Spiral Reflection\" on the flip adds Coe's shimmering guitar in places for a more organic/electronic blend.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Crystal Silence","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Mirage","entry_number":4},"stephen-winfield":{"albums":{"forest-flower":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Forest Flower* revisits the sound of Winfield's debut, weaving delicate flute and piano lines together in a subdued chamber jazz style reminiscent of Oregon's quieter moments or [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin)'s work with Moulabakhsh Funk. Here, Winfield is joined by pianist Dan Moore, whose sophisticated jazz chords serve as a good foil for Winfield's heartfelt, at times mawkish flute playing. Two standouts are the side openers \"Indian Summer\" and \"Reunion,\" though the prim title track is far too fusiony and soprano-saxy for me. For my money, the pick here is \"Meadows,\" with Winfield riding waves of flute echo like a zen surfer, while Moore's sumptuous electric piano propels him forward into the everlasting now.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Forest Flower","year":"1983"},"in-the-early-hours":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Winfield, who was something of a loner, shines in the solo format of *In the Early Hours* which features only him on the flute, awash in deep fields of echo. Some tracks like \"Zen Garden\" feature light embellishment of chimes and nature sounds, but the majority of the album is hardwired directly into Winfield's subconsciousness, with mystical flute melodies cascading through the air in search of a deeper truth and meaning. The first side is highlighted by the lengthy title track, an astonishing eco-system of double-tracked flutes, but side two is stronger overall, perhaps my favorite side of music Winfield produced in his career.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"In the Early Hours","year":"1983"},"quiet-grace":{"image":"","label":"Sona Gaia","review":"*Quiet Grace* was initially titled *Bamboo Forest* in a nod to the more eastern-influenced sound and predominant use of bamboo flute. He also switched up the instrumental mix here to include backing from vibes instead of piano, and the bell-like tones of that instrument create an ethereal atmosphere less tethered to western traditions. Winfield's flute playing is still heavily vibratoed and occasionally wistful, but nearly every track is good, and some like \"Resting on a Painted Cloud\" enter a very special, profound space. Along with *In the Early Hours*, this is one of Winfield's best tapes. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Quiet Grace","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Stephen Winfield","entry_number":2},"stephen-winfield-and-kat-west":{"albums":{"secrets-never-told":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Winfield's debut was first released with the groovier title, *Cruisin' with Buddha* and a black and white cover image of the open road. When it was later reissued by Sona Gaia, they gave it a moodier cover and title (*Secrets Never Told*) which probably better reflects Winfield's intimate flute pieces within.\n\nBacked by then-girlfriend Kat West (Nessa) on piano, Winfield's tunes are lyrical and pleasant, yet often reverberate with a misty, late-'70s quality that evokes burgundy shag carpets, wood paneling, and lonely housewives on a made-for-TV movie. In the right mood, it might cast a spell akin to [Emerald Web](/emerald-web) or [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin), but the instrumental mix often feels staid. This becomes more evident on side two, when Winfield's layered flute intro to \"Star Sailing\" seems poised for deep exploration, only to be grounded by the song's confining arrangement once it kicks in. For an example of Winfield untethered, try the superior *In the Early Hours* instead.\n \n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Cruisin' With Buddha","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Stephen Winfield and Nessa","entry_number":1},"steve-winfield-and-jon-coe":{"albums":{"go-there":{"image":"","label":"Montage Productions","review":"*Jewled Horizons* is similar to Winfield and Coe's work on *Crystal Silence*, featuring two long, droning synth pieces that gently ripple like soft rain on a still pond.  Likely influenced by Steve Roach's *Structures from Silence*.","title":"Jeweled Horizons","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Steve Winfield and Jon Coe","entry_number":5},"steve-winfield-ensemble":{"albums":{"afterglow":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Afterglow* showcases a group format, with bass, percussion, synth, and piano in addition to Winfield's flute and sax work. A creeping '80s influence is discernible, but the primary blueprint is ECM jazz, with fretless bass, insinuating percussion, and gossamer threads of synth and e-piano building around Winfield's breathy flute and sax lines. The fuller sound puts more emphasis on his compositions, which are a mix of nostalgic, emotional mood pieces (such as the Kenny G PTSD-inducing title track) and celestial jams (such as side openers \"Return\" and the \"The Center\") which work more to Winfield's strengths.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Afterglow","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Steve Winfield Ensemble","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":178,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Steve-Winfield-541.jpeg?alt=media&token=e85776d9-d697-452f-bcbf-002a8aa22beb","last_name":"Winfield"},"steven-bergman":{"artist_name":"Steven Bergman","body":"A pianist with roots in jazz and classical traditions, Steven Bergman gained an early foothold in new age with his tape *Music for an Inner Journey* in 1979.  By then he'd long since abandoned his hometown of Brooklyn for a more laid-back life on the West Coast as photographer and musician. At his high point in the mid-'80s, Bergman had a staff of five working full time to fulfill orders and run his home studio, finding his greatest success in the niche of new age kids music. However, in 1988 his business started to dry up and he went into bankruptcy, ultimately leaving music behind and returning to photography.\n\nBorn in 1942, Bergman realized early on that playing music would be a great way to get closer to his father, who was a school teacher during the week and bandleader on the weekend.  Bergman had traditional piano lessons for five years in elementary school but really got going when he taught himself to play stand-up bass and joined his dad onstage at weddings and other events playing jazz standards.\n\nIn high school, Bergman started a jazz trio with some friends to play local dances, and it was Bob Harlem, the trumpet and keyboard player from this band who years later recommended Bergman try out California.  By then, Bergman had graduated from Michigan State and was making a living as a music programmer at a station in New York.\n\nLuckily for Bergman, he was able to find a similar job in San Jose at after moving out there in 1965. However, he only worked there for a year before pivoting into a career as a fashion photographer which he did for the next fifteen years. In his downtime he played jazz with Harlem and many others in the area who would later contribute to his new age recordings. He also played background music at restaurants, slowly working up a repertoire of original music that he would later mine for his recordings.\n\nCharles Muir, a friend of Bergman's, was a yoga teacher in the area who was working to launch a label called Source to release meditation music.  He came to one of Bergman's shows and recommended that he try to do some music in that style and Bergman ran with it. For his first album, produced in 1979, Bergman wrote chord changes and basic melodies and then improvised hours of recordings based loosely on that.  Bergman had been transfixed by Bill Evans' music in college, and in some ways his debut reflects Evans introspective approach. The tape sold surprisingly well, and was featured on radio shows like Hearts of Space, leading to good distribution and awareness.\n\nThe following year Bergman put out his sophomore release, *Omni Suite*. This tape was the culmination of a childhood dream to arrange his compositions like mini symphonies with flutes, strings, and guitars. For his third album, he split the difference between his first two releases, with one side of piano romanticism and another of restrained new age with nature sounds and flute. Together, these releases comprised a trilogy of sorts that Bergman would later cull together in a box set called *Music for Relaxing.* \n\nFollowing these tapes, Bergman produced his first children's album *Sweet Baby Dreams*, featuring \"calming music for expectant mothers, crying babies and children.\" *Parents Magazine* and other family-centric publications praised the release and sales were brisk. Bergman would produce two more releases of children's music to complete another trilogy, with the nap time music of *Slumberland * and the self-explanatory *Lullabies from Around the World.* These were Bergman's best selling releases,  going on to sell tens of thousands of copies each.\n\nWith an infusion of cash from his children's albums, Bergman built a studio in his house and hired a small staff to help fill orders. He toured with Paul Horn in 1985 on his \"Inside Hawaii\" tour and spooled off four new tapes in 1986 including a best-of release called *Blessings*.\n\nBy the late '80s, the new age market became glutted with new artists, and people like Bergman had a hard time competing for shelf space. Bergman gambled and spent a ton of money on retail marketing aimed at parents, but it didn't work. He decided he couldn't make the transition into producing CD's and declared bankruptcy. As a result, he sold all his masters to Platinum Disc Corporation who went on to rerelease much of his back catalog with new titles and nature sounds added. \n\nAfter leaving the music business, Bergman returned to photography and he still works in the Monterey area today.","discography":{"steven-bergman":{"albums":{"1-lovesong":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Lovesong","year":"1986"},"1-sweet-baby-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sweet Baby Dreams","year":"1982"},"2-serenity":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Serenity","year":"1986"},"2-sleepytime":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Sleepytime","year":"1986"},"2-slumberland":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Slumberland","year":"1982"},"3-heartsong":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Heartsong","year":"1986"},"3-inspiration":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Inspiration","year":"1986"},"4-inner-peace":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Inner Peace","year":"1986"},"joyous":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Joyous","year":"1984"},"lullabies-from-around-the-world":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Lullabies from Around the World","year":"1983"},"music-for-an-inner-journey":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This was an early West Coast new age staple, going through many cover variations and pressings. The album covers three of the genre’s most typical styles: solo electric piano (“Improvisation”), solo flute (“Flowing River”), and an Eastern-inspired, mystical piece with nature sounds, flute, and acoustic guitar. The piano-led pieces show Bergman’s romantic, wistful side, but have enough harmonic flavor to keep things interesting.","title":"Music for an Inner Journey","year":"1979"},"omni-suite":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Bergman's second release is the culmination of a childhood dream to arrange his compositions like mini-symphonies with flutes, strings, and guitars.  The songs are based on classical and baroque traditions so listeners looking for new age are advised to check elsewhere. For this style, Kay Gardener does something similar but more effective on her classic *Rainbow Path* album from 1984.","title":"Omni Suite: Music for an Inner Journey Vol 2.","year":"1981"},"simplicity":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"\nFor his third release, Bergman shows off two disparate styles on each side. The first features a piano improv that is heavy on romanticism and is not too different from what you might hear at a local Italian restaurant circa 1982.  The second side is the pick here - a gentle floater with early morning cricket and bird sounds, very tastefully done. Guest Ray Frabizio plays flute while Bergman contributes a layered arrangement with acoustic guitars, and synth. ","title":"Simplicity","year":"1981"},"uplifting":{"image":"","label":"SBE","review":"","title":"Uplifting","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":199,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Bergman-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=188cb44a-de83-4b2b-8ee8-61030fd6779a","last_name":"Bergman"},"steven-berkowitz":{"artist_name":"Steven Berkowitz","body":"Steven Berkowitz is a visual artist and musician with a long history of working at the intersection of computer music, choreography and live improvisation. Some of his earliest experiments used software to map the coordinates of natural imagery and painstakingly translate that to musical notes.  While working as a photography professor at Temple University, he further developed his algorithmic music and eventually released two cassettes based on these ideas, *Ec(s)tasis* and *Dis/Recon*. Concurrently, Berkowitz contributed music for art installations and dance scores, working with prominent choreographers in the Philadelphia area. Berkowitz released some of the highlights of this music on small-run cassettes, but a sizable portion of his work remains to be archived and made available.\n\nAn only child, Berkowitz was born and raised in Philadelphia during the 1950s. His father was a school principal and his mother a Sunday school teacher. His mother played piano and loved classical music of the romantic era such as Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Chopin. Berkowitz initially took up the clarinet in high school, but switched to guitar and bass when the Beatles came along. He  joined a rock band called the Sentrys and they enjoyed a strong local following.\n\nBerkowitz didn't go far for college, attending Penn State where he planned to be an architectural engineer. As a kid, he was a gifted artist and loved drawing floor plans of buildings. \"I had no friends; I was an introvert,\" Berkowitz said. \"When I had my bar mitzvah I had no idea who to invite, so I actually invited the kids who I thought were the smartest in the class.\" In his sophomore year, Berkowitz was inspired by his art professor David Milby to reconsider his major and study art instead. \n\nFor the first few years of college, Berkowitz was still putting most of his energy into music. The Sentrys had moved into the lucrative world of playing frat parties or appearing on the local TV show *Summertime on the Pier*. But eventually, he grew tired of playing Motown covers and \"Louie Louie,\" and decided to leave the band. He was then recruited by a friend to play guitar in a progressive band called Marriage (\"the perfect fusion of five individuals making music\"). Drummer Craig Mirijanian led the band and wrote most of the material, and they had big expectations for success initially. They recorded demos in New York and searched for a record label, but broke up when they finally got offered a tour as an opening act and two of the members dropped out. (Mirijanian would finally score a solo deal in the late '70s with Warner Bros.) \n\nAfter his band broke up, Berkowitz sold his motorcycle in 1972 and headed to London, the home of his new favorite band King Crimson. There he existed on the fringes of the progressive music scene, playing in jam sessions and trying to find a band. However, Berkowitz never found his footing and headed back to Philadelphia and finished school at Temple as an art major.\n\nAt Temple, Berkowitz took an electronic music class that would alter the course of his life. Fellow student Jim Wilson told him about a computer music program called Music 4BF that used a deck of IBM punch cards on a mainframe computer. Berkowitz was intrigued by the possibilities of translating art to music, but first had to figure out how to program. \"At 10 p.m., after the lab closed, I would lock the door, with me on the inside, writing code,\" Berkowitz recalled. \"Another student made a digital-to-analog converter and I wrote software that would draw a graphical musical score and then translate it into music notation. I used drawings of organic leaves and that determined the placement of notes. What came out was beautiful stuff. I didn't know it'd be beautiful until I made it. It was an extraordinary amount of work to get something that was simple, yet not so simple.\"\n\nAfter graduating in 1975, Berkowitz spent some time in London again before returning to Philadelphia to get a Masters of Fine Art at Temple. While he'd previously worked as a printmaker, he got into photography while in London.  He spent much of his time in graduate school trying to explain to his teachers and peers how he wanted to translate images into sound, but few seemed to understand at first.  By 1979 he began getting some recognition, playing one of his first live shows at the Philadelphia Music of Art, which featured improvisation and an installation of his algorithmic music. He also installed an exhibition for his Master’s Thesis in Philadelphia and then in New York at the Light Gallery the following year.\n\nBerkowitz then embarked on a teaching career, starting at Bucks County Community College where he taught photography. After two years, Berkowitz also began teaching photography and computer graphics at Temple, and he would remain there for the next 38 years until his retirement.  \n\nEarly on, Berkowitz found a receptive audience for his work among choreographers and filmmakers. He provided soundtracks for filmmaker Leah Karp on three of her films starting in 1979. He then began working with a long list of choreographers including Les Ditson of the Great Chazy Dance Company (\"Cuneiforms\"), Robert Small (\"Sand,\" \"Allogam\"), Maureen Wiley (\"Ascerva\"), Karen Bamonte of Zero Moving (\"Tabula Rasa\"), Nancy Frankel (\"Dance Sculpture\"), Melanie Stewart (\"Flatland Approach\"), Joshua Jess Cabot (\"Chronicles of Light\"), Terry Beck (\"Basins\") and Steve Krieckhaus (\"Fractal Shore\").  \n\nIn addition to his many commissions and collaborations, Berkowitz also played live shows of improvised music at Philadelphia locales such as the Painted Bride, Group Motion Studio and Etage Experimental Theater. Some of these shows were played as part of a trio called the Floating Texture Ensemble with bassist Scott Fisher and keyboardist Michael Moser. \n\nIn the mid '80s, Berkowitz was a frequent lecturer and performer at the annual symposium of \"The Small Computers in the Arts.\" There he debuted one of his most unique works called *Vapor Dances*, which was actually an interactive installation.  The listener would put on headphones and listen to random compositions computed in real time and based on Brownian Motion. Then the listener would select five pieces that would generate a custom recording that also contained elements of randomness.\n\nBerkowitz first started issuing tapes of his work in the early '80s, compiling the highlights of his dance scores on two volumes of *Music for Dance*. By 1987, he began putting out discrete works, starting with *Kissing Memory’s Lips* which was followed a year later by *Touching Distance*. Both of these were based on his improvised dance music. After that, Berkowitz returned to his algorithmic music for his next album*Ec(s)tasis* in 1989. For this album, he built the piece around one guitar lick that he expanded on mathematically using what he calls \"packet fractals.\" He pressed 100 copies on CD and cassette and got a warm reception, getting airplay on influential radio shows like Echoes and Hearts of Space. \n\n*Dis/Recon* was Berkowitz’s next album, and it served as the culmination of his earliest efforts translating organic forms into music. In this case, he took a series of photographs of leaves in a stream and modeled his score on that.  The album is one of his best, yet failed to garner the same interest as *Ec(s)tasis* at the time.\n\nBerkowitz continued to produce art and music in the ensuing years after those releases, including publishing a series of [six photography books](http://www.lateralimaging.com). His later work falls outside the scope of this site, but more info can be found at his website [here](http://www.fluidmusix.com). Berkowitz retired from his job at Temple in 2020 and currently spends most of his time in New York with his wife, Eiko. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\nSource: author interviews with Steven Berkowitz, 2/28/20","discography":{"steven-berkowitz":{"albums":{"dis-recon":{"image":"","label":"Fluid Music","review":"*Dis/Recon* is the culmination of Berkowitz's work translating nature into music through computers. As he explains in the liner notes, \"the source is the displacement and reconfiguration of a cluster of seven leaves floating downstream, as distilled from a seven frame photographic sequence.\" Through this process, the music is intended to create sympathetic vibrations in our bodies that serve as a healing force. \n\nWhile it's easy to get lost in the conceptual trappings (lots of math is involved), the natural ebb and flow of organic life is readily apparent in this beautiful work, with hovering clouds of synths washing over each other in cycles that mimic deep, yogic breaths. As with nature, there are moments of light and dark: shifting textures of sound gradually build into dense tonal clusters, only to break apart when the tension gets too thick.\n\nAs Berkowitz writes in the liner notes, the music itself is a representation of our world. \"We are the sum total of the air, the water, the earth, moving according to the patterns of life - ubiquitous and ever changing.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Dis/Recon","year":"1992"},"ecstasis":{"image":"","label":"Fluid Music","review":"","title":"Ec(s)tasis","year":"1989"},"kissing-memory's-lips":{"image":"","label":"Fluid Music","review":"","title":"Kissing Memory's Lips","year":"1987"},"music-for-dance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Dance","year":"1982"},"music-for-dance-vol-ii":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Dance Vol. II","year":"1983"},"touching-distance":{"image":"","label":"Fractal Music","review":"","title":"Touching Distance","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Steven Berkowitz","entry_number":1},"steven-berkowitz-and-scott-fisher":{"albums":{"eastern-landscape":{"image":"","label":"Fluid Music","review":"","title":"Plasticity","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Steven Berkowitz and Scott Fisher","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":152,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Steven-Berkowitz-640.jpg?alt=media&token=60259d4e-a9ed-441a-9fe1-5f09594b0ea5","last_name":"Berkowitz"},"steven-c-kellogg":{"artist_name":"Steven C Kellogg","body":"Based in Southern California, Steven Kellogg was a synthesist in the mold of Keith Emerson or Larry Fast, composing intricate, progressive electronic music that drew on classical and rock. Born in 1953, Kellogg initially took piano lessons before going on to learn drums and guitar in his teenage years. He got into synths in the '70s and labored over his music slowly and carefully. His first tape, with a type-written cover and hand duplicated at home, acquired a cult following in underground circles at the time, leading to interviews in zines such as *Syne* and *Surface Noise*. Kellogg took his time releasing a follow-up, *Advanced Digital Synthesis*, again not bothering with a tape cover. He released two more cassettes in the early '90s, and has continued to compose in a similar style up to the present, creating cinematic pieces that he licenses out for films, podcasts, and commercials. He has a YouTube channel [here](https://www.youtube.com/@StevenClarkKellogg).","discography":{"steven-c-kellogg":{"albums":{"ads":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Advanced Digital Synthesis","year":"1985"},"imaginable-fantasy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Imaginable Fantasy","year":"1981"},"no-time-to-listen":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"No Time to Listen","year":"1993"},"rite-of-passage":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Rite of Passage","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":354,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/steven-kellogg-temp-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c9a002c3-1f28-4cc5-a952-db1f1cb9657a&_gl=1*8p37x0*_ga*MTk3MDM4OTE1NS4xNjg1NTcwMjMz*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY4NTgzMDk4Ni43LjEuMTY4NTgzMTQyMS4wLjAuMA..","last_name":"Kellogg"},"steven-cooper":{"artist_name":"Steven Cooper","body":"A working nightclub musician with a taste for flamboyant hats, Steven Cooper gigged for over a decade in cover bands before starting an acclaimed side gig composing new age albums. His second cassette *Crystal Garden* was popular with critics and fans, but a strong case could also be made for his debut *Transcendence*. Cooper finally got tired of the bar circuit and built a studio to record song demos for aspiring songwriters in Nashville, eventually going on to record 11,000 songs over the span of 25 years.\n\nSteven Cooper was born in 1951 and raised in the sprawling suburbs of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. He started on trumpet but began taking music more seriously when he moved to the piano. He was a constant fixture at live shows in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, catching performances by the Doors and Led Zeppelin among others. \"Pretty much everybody that people wish they could have seen – I saw them,\" Cooper said.\n\nEven as he taught himself to play other instruments including the bass, guitar, and drums, Cooper never considered studying music formally. The closest he got was a class in music production with Phil Spector at the Sherwood Music Academy in 1972. Instead, Cooper studied History and English in college at Cal State Northridge, with plans on being a teacher. But after he graduated in 1973, he hooked up with a touring show band called Shadybrook that played for dinner crowds and sang covers of pop hits and Broadway tunes. The band was popular, the money was good ($3500 a week for the band), and since costs of living were also low, Cooper was riding high until the band broke up amid escalating power struggles in 1975.\n\nCooper decamped to Denver where he looked for the same magic with another band, but never quite found it. So instead he returned to LA, where he briefly joined Classics IV on their last tour. He finally settled down more permanently in Houston in 1978, joining a band backing local entertainer Gary Smith. They did well on the nightclub circuit, playing a range of country, rock, and pop hits, including a few choice originals too. The band played out often, and Cooper's trademark was wearing flamboyant hats given to him by fans, earning him the nickname \"the mad hatter\" among their crowd.\n\nShortly after moving to Houston, Cooper met his wife Laurie in Arkansas. She moved to Houston and they married in 1981. A few years later, they had a son.  At home, Cooper began putting together a studio with the money he was making with Smith, acquiring top of the line gear including an Otari 8 track recorder, a Prophet 5 and a Yamaha CS-80.\n\nAround the time that his studio was completed, Cooper signed to Dick Sutphen’s label Valley of the Sun. Sutphen was a hypnotist turned self-help guru with a legion of followers all over the country who had launched his label initially to release his cassettes on psychic abilities, hypnosis, and astral projection. Cooper had read one of Sutphen’s books in 1976 and subscribed to his monthly \"Self Help Update\" newsletter. In one of the issues, Cooper read that the label was in search of new music and he thought he'd give it a try. \"I went out and bought a couple things and thought, 'I can do this',\" Cooper recalled.\n\nCooper put together a demo of two long tracks and sent it to Sutphen, who loved it and wanted to release it. Cooper recorded a second side of material to complete the album and it became his first release for the label. Sutphen even painted a cover for it and named the album *Transcendence* (Sutphen named all of Cooper’s releases.)\n\nFollowing the release of his first cassette, Cooper began recording similar pieces of music for Sutphen to use as backgrounds for his various spoken word tapes.  Those pieces were sold as stock music, with Cooper getting a flat fee up front and Sutphen repurposing the music as needed. For his second official album, Cooper put more time and care into the composition and production, resulting in his best seller for the label, *Crystal Garden*. The album got strong reviews at the time from *Jazziz* and *Electronic Musician*, with the latter calling it \"the intelligent side of the new minimalism.\" The tape went on to sell over 50,000 copies worldwide in the ensuing years.\n\nCooper recorded three more albums for Sutphen: *Key West Afternoon* (1986), *Angels of the Sun* (1988), and *Soulmate Suite* (1990). The first of these was Cooper's worst seller (and now the rarest), but Sutphen blamed it partly on himself for the title, which he didn't think resonated with his customers. Cooper actually recorded another album in 1986 called *Planet Earth* that was intended for a more commercial audience. He was in talks to put it out on Audion, but the label went bankrupt.\n\nIn January of 1987, Cooper moved to Nashville so his wife could be closer to her family, but it was a tough transition. \"I went from some of my best months of making money from films, playing live, Valley of the Sun, and working at a music store. There was money coming in from many angles,\" Cooper recalled. \"But then the club we were working in went out of business, my film work dried up, and my wife wasn’t working. That move was difficult for the first couple years.\"\n\nCooper got a break when another self-help evangelist, Dr. Jonathan Parker, heard of Cooper’s music through Valley of the Sun and reached out to get similar music for his motivational cassettes. Cooper recorded two hours of music for Parker that was used on many of his cassettes such as *Positive Thought Power*.\n\nCooper used the money from Parker, plus money he'd made In Nashville as the bandleader for Margo Smith and started the Songwriters Studio in 1990. The idea was to produce full band demos for songwriters to use when selling their songs. At the time, only a few others were offering a similar service in Nashville, and Cooper stayed busy for the next 25 years, recording 11,000 demos for people like Trace Adkins on their way up. However, it also meant he had less time for his own music and his *Soulmate Suite* cassette from 1990 was his last.\n\nCooper finally wound down the Songwriters Studio in 2015 amid increasing competition. \"It was a good business for many years. I’d get $200-$500 per song,\" Cooper said. \"When I first started there were only about six people doing it. By the end, there were 200 studios doing it.\"\n\nLooking back on his career, Cooper sees himself as a pragmatic musician who plied his craft like a tradesman in order to do what he loved: \"I’m good at being creative. If you wanted something tomorrow, I could have something for you. I taught myself how to play so there’s no boundaries.\"\n\nCooper currently lives in Nashville and is hopefully planning to release his long lost 1986 album *Planet Earth*.","discography":{"steven-cooper":{"albums":{"angels-of-the-sun":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Angels of the Sun","year":"1988"},"crystal-garden":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Crystal Garden","year":"1986"},"key-west-afternoon":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Key West Afternoon","year":"1986"},"soulmate-suite":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"","title":"Soulmate Suite","year":"1990"},"transcendence":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"With a droning pedal bass and descending synth chords, the untitled track on side one recalls Brian Wilson's magical \"California Girls\" intro, but slowed down and repeated to infinity, like new age vapor wave.  Side two is split into two tracks and was actually Cooper's original demo that he sent to Sutphen. The first song has a more organic feel in a [Don Robertson](/don-robertson) or [William Aura](/william-aura) bag, with splashes of zither and cymbals crashing like waves on the beach.  This seamlessly drifts into the relaxed, peaceful bliss of a pentatonic synth floater to close the album. Although not especially original,  it is very well done for the genre and recommended. \n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)\n","title":"Transcendence","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":40,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Steven-Cooper-candid-640.jpg?alt=media&token=8a673f80-b0ee-40c8-bfff-2625f00ff5c9","last_name":"Cooper"},"steven-halpern":{"artist_name":"Steven Halpern","body":"Steven Halpern was one of the most influential and widely imitated new age musicians, helping to popularize the idea of healing music for a new generation. He did everything himself: composing, producing and mixing his own albums, then paying to have them pressed, while also handling his own PR, marketing and distribution. As he unspooled a large and diverse catalog over the next 40+ years, Halpern sold millions while dodging attacks from skeptics, fundamentalist Christians, and even the government.  He was a tireless promoter of his ideas and music, touring all over the U.S. and writing two popular books.  But perhaps his best asset was a nimble and unsentimental attitude about his art, soliciting input from fans and distributors while keeping an eye on the zeitgeist.\n\nThe best seller of Halpern's career remains *Spectrum Suite*, a perennial that he's pruned and reshaped over the years to keep it relevant. When it first arrived in 1975 under the title *Christening for Listening*, the crisp electric piano meditations and spaced out jazz bore some resemblance to Miles Davis' *In a Silent Way* and Paul Horn’s proto-new age *Inside*, but it was packaged and promoted as a tool for healing and relaxation, a novel idea at the time. The album would eventually be recognized for its enormous influence 25 years later, earning the title of \"most influential new age album of all time\" by *New Age Voice*, but the quiet revolution that Halpern sparked would turn out to be fraught with conflict.\n\nHalpern came from what he [called](https://books.google.com/books?id=gesDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA39&dq=halpern%20coltrane%20buffalo%20davis&pg=PA38#v=onepage&q&f=false) a \"typical American Jewish family.\" He was born on April 18, 1947 and raised in Valley Stream on the north shore of Long Island. He was the eldest of two boys, with a brother four years younger. His family didn't have a piano and barely even listened to music, but Halpern took an interest around third grade. His first instrument was the trumpet, which he chose initially because it looked easy to play. \n\nWhile Halpern's early trumpet lessons had followed the typical conservatory method, he started to get bored with that and turned to jazz and improvisation, which he loved. After years of study, he was eventually chosen for the State All-Star band at the end of his junior year. There, a senior turned him on to a secret technique of hitting a triple high C (an octave above normal trumpet range) which Halpern found a natural high. \n\nIn high school, Halpern explored the guitar as well, joining a blue-eyed soul band doing covers of songs like \"Shout\" by the Isley Brothers.  He spent his teens going to jazz clubs in Manhattan and learning how to play songs like Herbie Hancock’s 1962 hit \"Watermelon Man\" and Herbie Mann’s \"Comin' Home Baby.\"\n\nAs much as his teenage years revolved around music, Halpern didn't expect a musical career. When he first started college at the University of Buffalo, he wanted to be a dentist. However, amidst the flowering of hippie culture, his life was transformed by eastern meditation, yoga, and poetry. By his second semester, he changed his major to Sociology, which allowed him more freedom to pursue his wide-ranging interests.\n \nThe key shift in Halpern's consciousness came from an impromptu jam at college soon after arriving there in 1965. \"I literally became the instrument of the instrument, and my trumpet began playing itself,\" he told [*Yoga Journal*](https://books.google.com/books?id=gesDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA39&dq=&pg=PA38#v=onepage&q&f=false). \"In New Age terms, this is called channeling. I didn't remember what I had played, but I knew I wanted to experience it again.\"\n\nHalpern's interest in improvisation was further heightened when he heard Paul Horn's landmark *Inside* lp in 1968, which he later wrote left him \"[spellbound](https://books.google.com/books?id=2usDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=&pg=PA53#v=onepage&q&f=false).\" On campus, he took classes with Archie Shepp and Ron Carter, with the latter pushing him to spend eight hours every day practicing. \"By the end of that year, I was able to sit in with anybody,\" Halpern said. \"Larry Coryell was one. I copped a lot of his ideas and licks, his approach to improvisation and 'practicing' on stage.\"\n\nHalpern formed a new band in 1968, a jazz-rock outfit called New Chicago Lunche, named after one of the few restaurants in town that would serve the integrated band. The group played a mix of originals and covers by bands like the Electric Flag and Blood, Sweat and Tears. They landed a recording contract with a label in New York but clashed with their producer in the studio and the sessions were canceled.\n\nWith his newfound free time, Halpern took an impromptu trip to California in late 1969. He never came back.  After hitchhiking from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, some new friends took him to a sacred meditation spot in the hills. It was there that he first heard the sound of the new music that he would debut many years later. \n\nShortly after, a chance meeting at the roadside mailbox led to him being offered a job cooking and cleaning at a weekend retreat connected with the Esalen Institute. There he spent hours playing contemplative solo piano on the old upright grand in the workshop hall, deeply immersed in the sustained overtones which formed soft pillows of harmony. Many of the staff members liked his playing and encouraged guest speakers such as Dr. John Lilly and Dr. Stanley Krippner to check him out. Krippner was so impressed that he invited Halpern to study at the Humanistic Psychology Institute on the campus of Sonoma State. Halpern accepted.\n\nThus far, Halpern could see that his music was having a relaxing effect on people, but he wanted to understand the reasons why. \"The reason I got into it, I was sick a lot,\" Halpern said. \"I had high-stress levels. At the time, I was sitting in with a fusion band called Fourth Way and one time we opened for Herbie Hancock. As we finished, Herbie warmed up with an arpeggio on his Fender Rhodes piano. I remember stopping in the middle of a sentence and saying, 'What is that?! I gotta get me one of those.'\" The instrument's gentle and chiming tone would soon become his trademark.\n\nAt the Institute, Halpern attended lectures from leading figures in the human potential movement and tested his music on listeners using biofeedback and Kirlian photography. Describing his music years later, he said, \"The most noticeable response to my music is one of deep relaxation. The breathing slows, the heartbeat becomes more regular, and the mind quiets down to cause relaxation on both the physiological and psychological levels.\" Halpern achieved this in part by getting into a calm state himself with deep yogic breaths, but there was also a harmonic basis. \"One reason my music is so relaxing is that it doesn’t have a  harmony and melody you can hum, which locks you into the here-and-now.\"\n\nIn 1973, Halpern completed his dissertation and earned a degree in the contemporary psychology of music from Lone Mountain College (the original institute lacked the proper credentials – long story). By then he'd befriended the musician [Iasos](/iasos) who had hit on a similar idea with synthesizer-based music, so Halpern knew he was onto something. He decided to start his own label called Sound Principle Records and issued his debut *Christening for Listening*.\n\n\"In 1975, as I pressed my first album, I was working as a music specialist in the Palo Alto elementary school system,\" Halpern said. \"I had borrowed money to press the first 1,000 LPs, and they arrived and took up half my little cottage. I decided I needed to learn something about the world of business.  I didn't *want* to get into marketing, but I had no choice. Marketing for me was communicating in words what the music was about.\" Working outside the usual channels of music distribution, Halpern sold the album to bookstores and metaphysical shops, pioneering a distribution chain that would be used by other musicians for decades. \n\nNext, Halpern founded the Spectrum Research Institute (SRI), labeling it \"a center for the study of holistic psycho-acoustics.\" He also changed the name of his record label to SRI Records. Next up were new albums such as the Zodiac-themed *’I’: A Cosmic Attunement* in 1977 and *Starborn Suite* in 1978. For the former, Halpern let someone else bankroll the recording and design the cover, but he soon regretted it when he saw the results. So he bought back the rights and re-recorded it as *Zodiac Suite* which went on to sell much better. During this time, Halpern also wrote his first book, *Tuning the Human Instrument*, which served as the culmination of all his previous research.\n\nWith the book done, Halpern put out a flurry of new albums and quickly found himself over his head. He hired a banker named Carl Trondhjem to manage his affairs, and he ended up running a full-service operation on Halpern's behalf for the next seven years, though also taking a large percentage of sales that meant Halpern was barely breaking even.\n \nAble to move beyond the day-to-day business, Halpern toured regularly, speaking at countless seminars, doing interviews, meeting with distributors all over the country, and building up a grassroots network person by person. According to [Halpern’s interview with Redbull Music Academy](https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2012/08/steven-halpern-interview), the music gradually came to be categorized as new age, though it wasn't his preferred term: \"Even though many of us were using other words like 'space music' or 'consciousness music' or 'transformative music,' the music industry literally told us: 'Too many letters, we need something short. You play for new age conferences, we're going to call it 'new age music' and like it or leave it, that's what the genre is going to be called.\"\n\nIn 1979, the Stanford Research Institute asked Halpern to stop using the initials SRI. He'd initially gotten their permission, but they withdrew it, so he changed his label name to Halpern Sounds. In the ensuing years, Halpern showed a willingness to experiment, branching out to acoustic piano, synthesizers, and flute. He also tried new styles like space music (*Rings of Saturn*), a Peruvian whistling vessel album, even disco. Halpern also loved to collaborate with others, and his early releases featured friends such as Iasos, Dallas Smith, [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly), [Emerald Web](/emerald-web), Richard Horowitz and Schawkie Roth.\n\nIn addition to his catalog, Halpern also licensed his music to self-help gurus and authors to use as backgrounds for their guided meditation tapes.  He had been doing this for years and by the early '80s had practically cornered the market, supplying backgrounds for hundreds of tapes. According to Halpern, \"many of these projects began when I accompanied them live at a conference, and folks would come up to us and want a copy of what they just experienced.\"\n\nBy the mid-'80s, new age had become big business. Windham Hill had started as an indie and was suddenly selling millions with George Winston’s *December* going triple platinum. Major labels like MCA got in on the action, and new artists like [Giles Reaves](/giles-reaves) and Ray Lynch were reviving interest in new age by adding elements of jazz and digital synthesizers. New York label Gramavision started to pursue Halpern heavily in part due to his jazz-inflected *Connections* album with [Paul Horn](/paul-horn) from 1984 that was already getting popular. Halpern had just finished an exhausting tour for his second book *Sound Health*, published by Harper and Rowe, and was seduced by Gramavision's proposal for a production and distribution deal that included CDs, then too expensive for small labels like his to make. \"The first six months were great,\" Halpern said. \n\nGramavision reissued a big chunk of Halpern's back catalog like *Hear to Eternity* and *Comfort Zone*, as well as *Connections.* They followed that up with a new Halpern solo album *Rhythms of Vision* in 1985, and then *Shared Visions* and *Lifetide* in 1986. Unfortunately, these didn't sell nearly as well as *Connections* and the relationship chilled. According to Halpern, he stopped getting royalties and sued them.  He ultimately won, but the battle dragged on for over a year and left him emotionally and financially depleted.\n\n\"I almost went into bankruptcy,\" Halpern said. \"But I borrowed some money and started working out of the garage again, just like in 1975.\" He set up a new label called Sound Rx, and reissued and repackaged many tapes from his Soundwave 2000 series from the previous years. These were designed around specific uses like *Music for Massage* or *Enhancing Success*. He also released some new albums like *Crystal Suite* and *Higher Ground*, which both went through many pressings and helped keep the label afloat. But according to Halpern, the biggest lifeline he got during this period was the support of motivational speaker John Bradshaw, who invited Halpern to play at his lectures and workshops. This provided access to a new, large audience of paying customers.\n\nWith success always comes detractors, and Halpern certainly had his share. Ever since the late '70s, he'd been dogged by criticism from other musicians and rock critics that his music lacked substance, relying solely on clever marketing. By then, this was old news to Halpern, who liked to say these people suffered from \"pianist envy.\" But he wasn’t prepared for the coordinated vitriol of fundamentalist Christians, who made Halpern into a target in the early '90s.  It started with televangelist Bob Larson who told his followers that new age music was dangerous, citing Halpern by name. \"It got pretty nasty for a while,\" Halpern said. \"I got so much hate mail. They tried to put me out of business.\"\n\nA few years later, it was the government's turn to mount an attack. \"In the early days, you couldn't say 'sound healing',\" Halpern said. \"In 1993, the FDA came down on a number of manufacturers of flashing light goggles and certain record labels like mine that released music that promoted relaxation. They said that under FDA guidelines, anything that affects the structure and function of the human organism is a medical device.  Under that definition, your CD is a medical device. Then they said, 'Are you a doctor? No? We're gonna put you out of business.' That was a pretty scary day.\"\n\nIn order keep his business going, Halpern had to take all his albums off the market and remove anything about relaxation or brainwaves. After discussion with some focus groups, he dropped the name Sound Rx and changed it to Inner Peace Music.  In a strange twist, the government abandoned the effort soon after Halpern fixed the problem. \"Thanks to Newt Gingrich of all people,\" Halpern said. \"He was instrumental in getting them to back off. I was told he uses complementary medicine protocols.\"\n\nIn the late '90s, Halpern's debut album found an unlikely audience with crate-diggers and electronic dance producers, drawn to the jazz-funk track \"Something for Every Body Suite\" with its extended drum break. Upon its original release, the song was a cold splash of water to most listeners who thought it spoiled the calming effect. (Halpern quickly deleted it for the next pressing.) For many years, the original version of *Christening* was the primary collectible in Halpern's catalog, but recent new age enthusiasts tend to seek out his experimental or out-of-character work too like *Rings of Saturn* or the spooky *Organ of Perception*. Still, much of his catalog remains accessible and affordable, and more common works like *Eastern Peace* and *Dawn* merit investigation too.\n\nDespite his setbacks and challenges over the decades, Halpern was ultimately vindicated. Many of his early ideas about musical healing have proved to be remarkably enduring. Tastes and trends may change, but the audience remains. Over the years, Halpern has gotten heaps of mail from people who say they use his music to relax, including Kenny Loggins, Alice Coltrane, Shirley MacLaine - even the Texas Rangers law enforcement group use his music to help crime witnesses relax.\n\nIn the 2000s, Halpern stayed relevant by repackaging old favorites like *Spectrum Suite* which became *Chakra Suite*.  He went a bit further with *Crystal Suite*, which was entirely re-recorded and released as *Crystal Bowl Healing*. Tracking all these changes and permutations is nearly impossible, but this tinkering is a hallmark of his career. Perhaps, as a result, his debut has always retained a certain allure - in 2020, the 45th anniversary of *Spectrum Suite* is being re-released with all the long out of print tracks from side two in their original form.\n\nIn many ways, Halpern's life has come full circle. The term \"new age\" has gone from industry buzzword to musical slur and back again, though nearly all the labels who tried to cash in on the craze are long gone. \"But like the tortoise and the hare, I’m still here,\" Halpern said. \"It's my calling. Music is my life. There's nothing else I'd rather do.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n \n### Sources:\n- Author interviews, April 1, 2020\n- Jacobs, Susan. \"Exploring the Farther Reaches of Sound.\" *Yoga Journal*, Nov-Dec 1984\n-  Halpern, Steven \"Music and Beyond,\" *Yoga Journal*, March 1977\n- Singleton, James, \"Music as Medicine, an interview with Steven Halpern.\" *Redbull Music Academy*. (Retrieved [here](https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2012/08/steven-halpern-interview))\n- Parker, Corey. \"My Interview with Steven Halpern,\" *The Actor’s Work*, 2016. (Retrieved [here](https://www.theactorswork.com/2016/10/my-interview-with-steven-halpern.html)","discography":{"halpern-and-selvage":{"albums":{"gaia's-groove":{"image":"","label":"Sound Rx","review":"","title":"Gaia's Groove","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Halpern and Selvage","entry_number":11},"paul-horn-and-steven-halpern":{"albums":{"connections":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Connections","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Paul Horn and Steven Halpern","entry_number":8},"steven-halpern":{"albums":{"achieving-your-ideal-weight":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Achieving Your Ideal Weight","year":"1984"},"christening-for-listening":{"image":"","label":"Sound Principle Records","review":"","title":"Christening for Listening","year":"1975"},"comfort-zone":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"Pentatonic solo piano daydreams with nary a trace of dissonance or linear development, which is exactly the point. The first side is played on grand piano, with some string-machine synths to help to fill in the sound, creating a serene, calming atmosphere. Halpern switches to his trusty electric piano on side two, an instrument which suits this style better for my ears.  Like the first side, it floats by like afternoon clouds, lulling you into nidra before swelling to a gorgeous finale. If you like David Naegele’s *Temple in the Forest*, this is pretty similar in feel.","title":"Comfort Zone","year":"1980"},"corridors-of-time":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"Calling this tape \"visionary music for piano, synthesizers, and special effects,\" Halpern revisits the spacey moods of *Rings of Saturn*, even recycling some of those synth parts anew for the title track. Elsewhere, he experiments with ambient choral pieces a la Julianna Barwick (\"Diana's Dream Theme\") and two deep piano improvisations with tape echo (\"Fantasy for Piano\"). While the vocal pieces featuring guest Diana Allen are heavenly, the piano pieces are the highlight, nailing a sweet spot between Halpern's zen style and this album's visionary ambitions. For me, the synth pieces feel less developed and for some reason Halpern nearly beats one particular sequencer riff into the ground. Like *Rings of Saturn*, the album closes with an anomaly, in this case what must be an outtake from *Hear to Eternity*, revisiting the mystical, North African-inspired vibe of that album.\n\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Corridors of Time","year":"1982"},"creativity":{"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/steven-halpern-creativity.jpg?alt=media&token=a89c8275-951b-4673-8126-9be4d5e7fb65","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"One side of acoustic piano and one side of electric piano. Seems to be the same tracks as *Comfort Zone*.\n","title":"Creativity","year":"1985"},"crystal-suite":{"image":"","label":"Sound RX","review":"*Crystal Suite* is full of blissful sounds to enhance your meditation, or to relax with. The synthesized and electronic bell-like themes on the first side gently flow together in a long, repetitive harmony. The first theme, \"Crystal Suite\", sounds like ripples on the water which you can feel moving through your body. \"Canon in C Major,\" a beautiful variation on the 17th century Canon by John Pachelbel, and \"Windows of Light\" give visions of streams of light filtering through patches of storm clouds after a rainstorm, generating peace and comfort.\n\nThe songs on side two are separate and distinct; that does not disturb the flow of your meditation. \"Crystal Chalice\" features Quartz crystal temple bowls, which ring with incredible purity, and \"Crystal City\" is full of harmonic sounds. \"Crystal Cathedral\" and \"The Gem and I\" contain some interesting and delightful surprises, building and swelling. \"Inner Journey\" is a path of sound flowing toward you, then disappearing and beginning again. This crystal beauty creates inner peace and harmony. Enjoy. Recommended.\n\n(Mildred Fruichantie, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, 1988)","title":"Crystal Suite","year":"1987"},"dawn":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Dawn","year":"1981"},"driving":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Driving","year":"1983"},"eastern-peace":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Eastern Peace","year":"1978"},"egypt-sounds-and-silence":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Egypt: Sounds and Silence","year":"1981"},"eventide":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Eventide","year":"1981"},"fitness-suite":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Fitness Suite","year":"1983"},"gifts-of-the-angels":{"image":"","label":"Inner Peace Music","review":"","title":"Gifts of the Angels","year":"1994"},"good-morning-and-good-night-suite":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Good Morning and Good Night Suite","year":"1983"},"growing-plants":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Growing Plants","year":"1983"},"hear-to-eternity":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"*Hear to Eternity* is one of Halpern's most psychedelic records, an attempt to channel \"ancient and contemporary musical traditions from all over the world.\" The first side is a collaboration with Victor Spiegel, whose North African rhythms set the tone for many of the pieces. The songs are spell-binding and mystical, at times similar to the German band Agitation Free who blended Moroccan music with Krautrock. The centerpiece is \"Hendrix in Dreamland,\" where Halpern shows off his trippy fuzz guitar playing over an organ and percussion groove. The rest is like a fever dream, with images of vast open deserts and howling wind at night. \n\nThe second side abandons rhythms for a walkabout into primal territory, with sitars, flutes, and echoed voices emanating from caves somewhere in Tibet. On the sleeve, Halpern claims that some listeners \"report that this album helps stimulate past-life recall.\" In this case, that might not be hype – this is trance-inducing stuff.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Hear to Eternity","year":"1979"},"higher-ground":{"image":"","label":"Sound RX","review":"","title":"Higher Ground","year":"1991"},"i-a-cosmic-attunement":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"'I': A Cosmic Attunement","year":"1977"},"inner-peace":{"image":"","label":"Sound RX","review":"","title":"Inner Peace","year":"1994"},"live-at-findhorn":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Live at Findhorn","year":"1977"},"live-in-monterey":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Live in Monterey","year":"1977"},"lullabies-and-sweet-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Lullabies and Sweet Dreams","year":"1982"},"lullaby-suite":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Lullaby Suite","year":"1983"},"massage":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Massage","year":"1985"},"music-for-meetings":{"image":"","label":"Sound RX","review":"","title":"Music for Meetings","year":"1987"},"new-age-blues":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"New Age Blues","year":"1986"},"organ-of-perception":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Organ of Perception","year":"1980"},"prelude":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Prelude","year":"1980"},"reflections":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"Halpern's first full album of solo acoustic piano, though it has little in common with the contemplative moods for which he's better known. Instead, Halpern channels the classical and romantic eras, with pieces in the style of Scriabin, Mozart, and Debussy.","title":"Reflections","year":"1980"},"relaxation":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Relaxation","year":"1985"},"rhythms-of-vision":{"image":"","label":"Gramavision","review":"","title":"Rhythms of Vision","year":"1985"},"rings-of-saturn":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"Here Halpern tries his hand at synthesizer-dominated space music, or what he calls \"celestial music for meditation and pure listening pleasure.\" The album didn't connect with fans at the time and went out of print quickly, though it has picked up collector interest in the past decade. The tape is split into two distinct sides, each from a different recording sessions (a tactic Halpern used on many of his releases including his debut).\n\nFor the first side, Halpern teams up with Richard Horowitz, last seen playing oblique flute on Halpern’s *Hear to Eternity* under the name Richard Gerevich. By this time, both musicians had bought Prophet-5 keyboards and were experimenting with ambient soundscapes. According to Halpern, \"*Rings of Saturn* was born late one night.  Richard and I played simultaneously, without listening to each other.  When we married the tracks, there was interesting chemistry.\" The tonal, free-flowing nature of the compositions allowed this sort of blind collaboration to work fairly well, though their success depends on the listener's appetite for structure. \n\nFor the second side, Halpern is joined by violinist Tony Selvage for most of the tracks, and for me this pairing yields better results. The interplay is more dynamic and Selvage's ethereal, aching strings on \"Cosmic Blues\" and \"Sirens of Titan\" keep Halpern's astral tones from floating into the ether. For the closer, Halpern brings the listener back to center with \"Voyager,\" a serene Fender Rhodes meditation that illustrates exactly what he does best.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n","title":"Rings of Saturn","year":"1980"},"sleep":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Sleep","year":"1985"},"soft-focus":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Soft Focus","year":"1984"},"spectrum-suite":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Spectrum Suite","year":"1976"},"starborn-suite":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Starborn Suite","year":"1978"},"starting-the-day":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"Gentle, relaxing piano pieces, some solo and some with flute. As with others in this series, various songs are taken from his earlier albums like *Dawn* and *Eventide* and occasionally augmented with recordings of birds. This one seems better for sleeping than trying to wake up.\n","title":"Starting the Day","year":"1985"},"study-suite":{"image":"","label":"Soundwave 2000","review":"","title":"Study Suite","year":"1983"},"the-first-hello-the-last-goodbye":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"The First Hello, The Last Goodbye","year":"1982"},"timeless":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Timeless","year":"1983"},"zodiac-suite":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"*Zodiac Suite* is the second in Halpern's \"anti-frantic\" series which aims to instill a sense of tranquility in the listener.  It is a re-recorded and repackaged version of *I: A Cosmic Attunement* plus a totally new track on side two. The recording is much better here, and Halpern shines with his shimmering Fender Rhodes meditations, augmented by collaborators such as Tony Selvage on violin and Schawkie Roth on flute. Both are sympathetic to Halpern's dreamy style and their flowing improvisations help to elevate this album to a classic for me.\n\nThe first side is a series of gentle, impressionistic pieces based on the 12 astrological signs. So for \"Cancer,\" we get an aquatic, flowing sound whereas something like \"Gemini\" is more mysterious and airy, with flute and wind chimes.  The second side is a grab bag of tracks from various sessions, again with Selvage and Roth, but they are all great. \"Blues for Arcturus\" is a rare new age blues jam that somehow works, \"The Heard Eye\" incorporates Halpern's wordless vocals (chanting really), and  \"Moonrise Over Orion\" is both divine and trippy, with stereo effects and excellent playing by Roth on flute.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Zodiac Suite","year":"1977"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern","entry_number":1},"steven-halpern-and-dallas-smith":{"albums":{"1984-newsound":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"1984: Newsound","year":"1983"},"natural-light":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Natural Light","year":"1984"},"threshold":{"image":"","label":"Hear & Now Records","review":"","title":"Threshold","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Dallas Smith","entry_number":7},"steven-halpern-and-daniel-k-strat":{"albums":{"peruvian-whistling-vessels":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"","title":"Peruvian Whistling Vessels","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Daniel K. Strat","entry_number":3},"steven-halpern-and-daniel-kobialka":{"albums":{"recollections":{"image":"","label":"Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Recollections","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Daniel Kobialka","entry_number":6},"steven-halpern-and-david-friesen":{"albums":{"shared-visions":{"image":"","label":"Gramavision","review":"","title":"Shared Visions","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and David Friesen","entry_number":10},"steven-halpern-and-georgia-kelly":{"albums":{"ancient-echoes":{"image":"","label":"Haru / Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Ancient Echoes","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Georgia Kelly","entry_number":4},"steven-halpern-and-ingo-swann":{"albums":{"star-children":{"image":"","label":"Swann/Halpern Sounds","review":"","title":"Star Children","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Ingo Swann","entry_number":5},"steven-halpern-and-sunil-k-bose":{"albums":{"the-rain-meditation":{"image":"","label":"SRI Records","review":"Another strange album in Halpern's vast catalog, the hype sticker reads \"Music for Moisture,\" an odd turn of phrase that gives a hint of what's inside. On the first side, Halpern and Sunil K. Bose perform four Hindustani raga pieces meant to summon rain but they fall far short of something like Ravi Shankar. On side two, the musicians jam on some jazz-funk and atmospheric blues pieces with Halpern taking lengthy guitar solos while Bose tries follow the chord changes with strained vocal improvisations.","title":"The Rain Meditation","year":"1977"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern and Sunil K. Bose","entry_number":2},"steven-halpern-susan-mazer-dallas-smith-ft-kenneth-nash":{"albums":{"lifetide":{"image":"","label":"Gramavision","review":"","title":"Lifetide","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Steven Halpern, Susan Mazer, Dallas Smith ft. Kenneth Nash","entry_number":9}},"entry_number":157,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Steven-Halpern-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0ee81606-89d7-4003-9f8c-47dc2968064b","last_name":"Halpern"},"stuart-dempster":{"artist_name":"Stuart Dempster","body":"A classically trained trombonist, Stuart Dempster worked for thirty years as a professor at the University of Washington, producing a relatively small body of work that nevertheless produced two cult classics, *In the Abbey of Clement IV* and *Deep Listening* with Pauline Oliveros and Peter Ward (AKA Panaiotis). After the latter attracted interest, the trio began performing an elaborate live show a few times a year that relied on extended reverberation that transformed their acoustic instruments into ambient soundscapes.\n\nStuart Dempster was born in Berkeley, CA in 1936. He grew up during World War 2 and his family didn’t travel much, so they’d often pass time watching the steam trains. \"I remember that well, listening to the rails sing,\" he recalled. Dempster started to play the trombone in 10th grade and went on to major in music during college at SF State.\n\nDempster ultimately earned a master's in composition at SF State as well (spending some time in the Army between degrees). At college, Dempster met Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and Lauren Rush who would go on to be lifelong friends and musical collaborators. Starting in 1962, Dempster became the principal trombonist with the Oakland Symphony who was then playing a lot of contemporary music in contrast to the more conservative SF Symphony.\n\nDempster's first recorded appearance was with Riley, forming and rehearsing the band that appeared on the landmark recording of *In C* composed and conducted by Terry Riley. The album, released in 1968, inspired many musicians featured on this site and in the broader contemporary music world. In the same year, Dempster got a job teaching at the University of Washington where he went on to work for over 30 years.\n\nIn addition to teaching, Dempster recorded sporadically in the 70s, appearing on collections such as *New Music for Virtuosos 2* and *Three Sketches for Trombone and Piano* in 1978. But it was his solo album, *In the Abbey of Clement VI* that brought acclaim outside the usual academic circles. Recorded in a large abbey with a 14 second acoustic delay, the long pieces were meditative and minimalist, but never content to fade into the background. The album sold 5,000 copies and would promp Dempster to seek out natural environments with rich soundscapes for the rest of his career. In addition to playing trombone on the album, Dempster also included a piece with the didgeridoo, an instrument he first discovered on a trip to Australia in 1974. Open his return, he began teaching a class in the instrument, one of the first in the US. Dempster, who had long practiced yoga, learned to master circular breathing because the instrument requires so much air. \n\nDempster didn't record much in the '80s, though he did appear on an early CD compilation called *The Digital Domain*. He also self-released the now-rare cassette *On the Boards*, recorded live at the Seattle performing arts center of the same name. \n\n In the late-'80s Dempster partnered with his old friend Pauline Oliveros and Peter Ward to record another environment-specific work that would be his greatest triumph. \"Pauline was coming west and I wanted her to see the cistern,\" Dempster recalled. \"The Great Abbey only had 14 seconds of reverberation but the cistern had 45 seconds of vibration. It’s west of Seattle - part of Fort Worden. It’s a water tank for fire suppression. I got it set up for use and the idea was to test it out and see what we could make of it. [Recording engineer] Al Swanson had a Nagra and he recorded everything we did. It was a wonderful accident.\"\n\nThe album went on to become an ambient classic (*AllMusic.com* called it \"legendary\") and the trio formed the Deep Listening Band. They performed a few concerts a year, requiring a large electronic setup. Over a 25 year career they put out a dozen albums, often recording in site-specific locations such as a limestone quarry. \n\nDempster continued to perform and record well into the 2010's, usually collaborating with other musicians such as Eric Glick Rieman, Tom Heasley, and Lori Freedman. His last solo album was *Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel*, another set of minimalist works for New Albion.\n\nSources:\n* \"If The Earth Had A Voice' -- Didgeridoo's Mesmerizing Drone Has Become A Folklife Fixture,\" *The Seattle Times*, May 27, 1999\n* New Albion artist bio. Retrieved [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20040803093419/http://newalbion.com/artists/dempsters/)\n* Author Interview with Stuart Dempster, October 3, 2019\n* University of Seattle faculty bio. Retrieved [here](https://faculty.washington.edu/dempster/disco.html)","discography":{"deep-listening-band":{"albums":{"sanctuary":{"image":"","label":"Mode","review":"","title":"Sanctuary","year":"1995"},"the-ready-made-boomerang":{"image":"","label":"New Albion","review":"","title":"The Ready Made Boomerang","year":"1991"},"troglodytes-delight":{"image":"","label":"¿What Next? Recordings","review":"","title":"Trogolodyte's Delight","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Deep Listening Band","entry_number":3},"stuart-dempster":{"albums":{"in-the-abbey":{"image":"","label":"1750 Arch","review":"","title":"In the Abbey of Clement VI","year":"1979"},"on-the-boards":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"On the Boards","year":"1986"},"underground-overlays":{"image":"","label":"New Albion","review":"","title":"Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Stuart Dempster","entry_number":1},"stuart-dempster-pauline-oliveros":{"albums":{"deep-listening":{"image":"","label":"New Albion","review":"","title":"Deep Listening","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Stuart Dempster, Pauline Oliveros, Panaiotis","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":303,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/stuart-dempster.gif?alt=media&token=f5a40dc1-0479-4b98-a4eb-9d75fc5c192f","image_credit":"","last_name":"Stuart Dempster"},"sun-path":{"artist_name":"SunPath","body":"While working at the Santa Fe Indian Hospital in New Mexico, Jeff Berry experienced a calling to begin creating music. Then in his mid-'30s, he hadn't played music for over a decade, but he heeded the inner voice. Eventually, he produced two new age albums in the early '80s that he sold at Whole Life Expos across the United States. However, during the mastering process of his second album, he began to experience tinnitus and decided to exit the music business entirely to focus on jewelry making and writing. \n\nJeff Berry was born in 1945 and grew up in Los Angeles and San Diego. Living near the border of Mexico, he became interested in flamenco guitar in high school and continued to play throughout college. He went on to earn a master's degree in psychology and sociology until the time when his educational deferment expired during the Vietnam era. He was then drafted and sent to serve in the USAF in Taiwan and the US.\n\nAfter spending four years in the military, Berry was discharged in 1973 and embarked on a hitchhiking journey across the country. \"I was aimlessly roving around,\" Berry said. \"I wanted to see the sights and have a little unfettered exploration. One day, up in Nova Scotia, I was watching a parade in a small town and all of a sudden, I realized that wasn't where I wanted to be. I called a friend in New Mexico and he indicated he could host me for a while. So, I flew down to Albuquerque and had a wonderful experience there. It felt like at that moment my whole life opened up and blossomed into a kind of dream.\"\n\nDeciding to stay in New Mexico, Berry got a job at the University of New Mexico where he worked in community mental health. He began taking an interest in biofeedback and alternative healing modalities. Several years later, he met some people working on a biofeedback research project out of the Indian Hospital in Santa Fe, and he decided to take a job working for them. \n\nDuring this time, Berry had a transformative experience that started him on a musical path. He'd befriended someone who turned out to be a medicine man, and the two of them traveled around New Mexico setting up sweat lodges.  In the liner notes for his cassette reissues, Berry wrote: \"One late winter's evening after coming out of the lodge all steaming and fiery and spaced out of my mind, I distinctly heard a voice command, 'Get a recording studio. Write music.'\" \n\nBerry continues: \"For some strange reason, the thought stayed with me as the weeks passed and before the year was out, I had a studio and only a vague idea of what to do with it. I played back some initial flute sequences for a friend one afternoon and after listening entranced and speechless they proceeded to describe to me a series of visual images that had emerged while they were listening. To my utter astonishment, they were the same images that were in my mind when I was recording the initial tracks several days before. After they left, I began to wonder if it were possible to purposely create music that would reanimate again a dreaming scenario or story or an image.\"\n\nNewly inspired, Berry recorded and released his first tape in 1983 titled *Yasamine and the Snowflake Dragon*. He got exhibiter’s booths at Whole Life Expos and sold them there, encouraging passersby to listen with headphones. He continued to promote the album for a few years and then embarked on a new album. \n\nWhile he was completing his second album in 1984, Berry's musical career came to an abrupt end. During the mix-downs, he damaged his hearing. At the same time, his contract at the biofeedback research project was coming to an end and it was time to focus on getting another job. He ended up apprenticing with a friend who made jewelry and began crafting and selling his own unique designs across the U.S. This continued for the next 13 years, after which he embarked upon writing projects connected with the music he created. In 2003, he moved to Wyoming, where he currently lives and writes novels. \"The music was all about the mystery and magic found in lucid dreaming and my writing is a continuation of that exploration,\" Berry wrote.\n\nMore recently, Berry's music was rediscovered by a new generation of collectors including David Hollander who orchestrated a reissue of both SunPath tapes on Leaving Records in 2015.","discography":{"sun-path":{"albums":{"sunpath-2":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"SunPath 2","year":"1984"},"yasamine-and-the-snowflake-dragon":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Yasamine and the Snowflake Dragon","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":228,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jeff-berry-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c9e53144-0d44-40a9-95d1-b8ccbd468627","last_name":"SunPath"},"suresha-hill":{"artist_name":"Suresha Hill","body":"Suresha Hill was a vocalist with Rajneesh's in-house band for much of the '80s before she left the community in Oregon and moved to Nashville. There she recorded her first album of instrumental new age with the help of [William Linton](/william-linton). After moving to San Francisco a year later, she reconnected with some old friends from the Rajneesh community including [Sky](/sky) who recorded her second album of new age instrumentals called *Peaceful Heart*. This would lead to a deal with German label Nightingale who put out two vocal-oriented CDs from her in the early '90s. Hill now works as an osteopath and movement educator.\n\nBorn in 1949, Suresha Hill grew up in Ohio where she sang at church and in the school choir. She continued to study singing in college at Kent State and was there during the May 4 massacre when four students were killed while protesting the Vietnam War. She went on to earn a degree in Education, followed by a Master's in School Psychology. During this time she moved to Atlanta and had her first child.\n\nOne of Hill's friends in high school was a rowdy kid who, she said, \"got me into trouble, drinking and smoking as a teenager.\" But later he transformed himself and started meditating and becoming a vegetarian, helping to inspire Hill on a path towards an alternative lifestyle too. She was also active in martial arts, and when she learned of a martial arts master who held classes in New York, she left Atlanta where she was living and working at the time as a psychologist.\n\nArriving in New York in 1977, Hill found some roommates who were Sannyasins and followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. \"That was how I found out about him,\" Hill recalled. \"They had books and tapes and someone talked me into joining. I like it and just took the leap.\" A year later, Hill visited Pune, India, to see Rajneesh. \"I got there and I was floored,\" Hill recalled. \"His presence was so powerful.\"\n\nHill eventually moved to the ashram in India for the next few years. There she got the name Suresha from Bhagwan which she has used ever since. After some time in Pune, members in the community encouraged her to sing with celebrations and the in-house band, but it wasn't until the group moved to a ranch in Oregon in the early '80s that she finally decided to join the band officially, playing a mix of covers and \"celebration\" songs they played together at the ranch or at clubs in the area.\n\nHill eventually left Oregon and moved to Nashville for a relationship. There she got the idea to record a cassette, though she opted to do instrumental music. \"I loved to express a certain feeling, but I didn't want to sing. I felt I could do that best without words. I would meditate, a space would open up, and I'd go to the keyboards and write from that space.\" She recorded the album with William Linton engineering and titled it *Blissful Goddess*, self-releasing it on cassette in 1987. New age tastemaker Lloyd Barde liked what he heard and offered to distribute it in his Backroads catalog at the time.\n\nHill's relationship in Nashville didn't last, and she moved to Marin County after that, befriending many sannyasins there such as [Kit Walker](/kit-walker) and Sky. \"We would get together a rent a space and play everyone's favorite celebration songs,\" she said. \"We had such a great time.\" One of the musicians, Sky, helped record her second album *Peaceful Heart*, in 1989. \n\nHill's new musician friends in Marin County invited her on a European tour in 1989 with a band called Ah This! That led to her getting a two-record deal with the German label Nightingale who put out *Secrets* and *Oceanic* on CD. Hill returned to singing for these albums instead of her previous instrumental approach.\n\nAfter the tour, Hill moved back to California and became an osteopath and movement educator. \"My body fell apart when I was coming back from India and I started working at a physical therapy clinic. In a way that led to my new career which I've done now for the past 30 years.\" she said. Hill currently works at the Marin Center for Somatic Education.","discography":{"suresha":{"albums":{"blissful-goddess":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Blissfull Goddess","year":"1987"},"peaceful-heart":{"image":"","label":"One Sky Productions","review":"","title":"Peaceful Heart","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Suresha","entry_number":1},"suresha-hill":{"albums":{"oceanic":{"image":"","label":"Nightingale","review":"","title":"Oceanic","year":"1993"},"secrets":{"image":"","label":"Nightingale","review":"","title":"Secrets","year":"1991"}},"artist_name":"Suresha Hill","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":336,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/suresha-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=2657d770-4592-4cf9-98cc-37283102786b","image_credit":"","last_name":"Hill"},"susan-alexjander":{"artist_name":"Susan Alexjander","body":"Bay area composer Susan Alexjander is best known for her cassette *Sequencia* which featured compositions based on the molecular frequencies of DNA bases such as adenine and thymine, incorporating microtonal scales and elements of Hindustani classical music. Interestingly, another musician from the area named [Riley McLaughlin](/riley-mclaughlin) had also created an album of compositions based on DNA a few years earlier, and both of them worked with Dr. David Deamer, a biophysicist at UC Santa Cruz who was an expert in the field. *Sequencia* garnered some press at the time, helping the album sell about 1,000 copies by Alexjander's estimation. However, she didn't release any additional albums, focusing instead on her career as a music teacher and composing for film, art show, and plays instead.\n\nBorn in 1943, Alexjander grew up in Northern New Jersey. (Her last name was originally Alexander, but as she recalled, \"I threw the ‘j’ in there to mess with the energy of it and to change the frequency of the name.\" She earned her Bachelor’s in English at the University of Utah and taught English during the ‘70s. She later attended the University of San Jose in the early ‘80s, earning a master’s in composition and theory. She also took interest in electronic music and gamelan at the time, studying with Lou Harrison. She then spent most of the ‘80s teaching music at San Jose State.\n\nAround 1986, Alexjander began working on *Sequencia*, an album of music based on DNA. In her research, she learned about Dr. David Deamer, a biophysicist at UC Santa Cruz, who studied DNA and had already helped another musician, Riley McLaughlin, create a method for turning DNA into musical notes. While McLaughlin had assigned musicial notes to each molecule to create melodies based on the patterns in the DNA sequence, Alexjander and Deamer measured the wavelength of infrared light absorbed by DNA and converted that to musical frequencies.\n\n\"I had this idea that I wanted to hear the body, the raw chemistry of the bases,\" Alexjander recalls. \"In order to do that, I had to take all the numbers on the infrared spectrum and translate those into their equivalent frequency, since they are both measured in hertz. The result was a collection of all the frequencies going on in a molecule like adenine.\"\n\nThe resulting album was brought to life with a string quartet and table on some pieces, while others included Alexjander’s wordless vocals and synth. News outlets took an interst in the album, and Alexjander was interviewed on public radio programs, the BBC, and news stations. \n\nAfter spending a few years promoting *Sequencia*, Alexjander continued her teaching career while also composing music for dance, plays, and films, but she didn’t release any new music on cassette or CD. \n\nAround 2002, Alexjander began working in sound design, creating music for art exhibits including group shows and solo works by artist Rebecca Kamen. In 2009, she moved to Oregon where she lived until around 2021 before returning back to Northern California. \"I’ve moved around a lot,\" she recalled. \"I like to repot myself and get some different nutrients.\"","discography":{"susan-alexjander":{"albums":{"sequencia":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Sequencia","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":429,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Susan-Alexjander.jpg?alt=media&token=ec0fb190-ef48-4061-b28b-3d9feed90da0","last_name":"Alexjander"},"suzanne-ciani":{"artist_name":"Suzanne Ciani","body":"Suzanne Ciani is one of the most respected and acclaimed new age artists of the '80s, able to fuse a deep technical and compositional ability with a pop sense for melody and emotion that gave her a wider appeal (and more Grammy noms) than nearly all of her peers. After a decade of high profile advertising and soundtrack work, she embarked on a successful music career that spans four decades and counting.\n\nSuzanne Ciani was born in 1946 and raised in Quincy, MA. She came from a family of six and started learning the piano in second grade. She loved classical music early on and had some lessons, but mostly taught herself on the family Steinway. She knew she wanted to be a composer and enrolled at Wellesley to study music. \n\nAfter graduating in 1968, Ciani went to UC Berkeley to get her MFA. It was there that she met Don Buchla who had developed a unique and complex synthesizer at the request of Morton Subtonick. Ciani became Buchla's apprentice, helping him to assemble synthesizers at his Oakland loft and slowly learning to master the instrument.  Although it didn't include a keyboard, the Buchla had many unique characteristics (and bugs), the instrument grew into a decades-long obsession for Ciani and her main instrument for composing and performance into the early '80s.\n\nIn an interview with [Self-Titled](http://www.self-titledmag.com/2014/04/03/interview-suzanne-ciani-on-her-buchla-beginnings-talking-dishwashers-and-why-no-one-got-electronic-music-in-the-70s/), Ciani explained how she fell in love with analog synths: \"I was primarily a composer, and the life of a composer is very restricted in a traditional sense because you’re reliant on other people performing your music. In those days, I saw the politics of new classical music and it was very discouraging. Being female, they said, 'Oh, you have no right to conduct.' And this and that. So when this concept of a self-controlled musical environment struck me, it was a godsend. It was like, 'I can control it; it’s mine. And no one can tell me what to do.' A natural euphoria happened.\"\n\nAfter graduating from UC Berkeley, Ciani began to pick up ad work for clients like Macy's and movie soundtracks like *The Stepford Wives* when clients needed electronic and futuristic sounds.  After playing a concert in New York, she fell in love with the city and moved there in 1974 with few contacts or leads.  She prided herself on working extra hard in a male dominated field, and ad work was no exception as she aggressively pursued big ad agencies for work. She finally got a big break scoring a Coca Cola commercial for McCann Erickson.  Her business picked up and she was soon making good money doing music for commercials for Atari, GE and many more.\n\nAlthough her ad music was more energetic, she spent her free time doing slower, more contemplative music based on wave motifs.  The unpredictability of the Buchla eventually drove her to use more reliable synths and increasingly, the piano. She composed her first album *Seven Waves* over a period of two years, releasing it in 1982 on Finnidar, with distribution from Atlantic. \n\n\"Seven Waves is special for me because it expresses my love for and fascination with early electronic instruments. With this album I blended my classical-romantic sense for melodies with the astounding possibilities offered by electronics,\" Ciani said.\n\nCiani recorded a follow up for RCA that showed her increasing interest in romantic and emotional melodies played on a variety of synths, but it also showed how far she had moved away from her more experimental Buchla days.  In 1988 she signed with Peter Baumann's Private Music label and released four albums there before setting up her own label in the 90s.  \n\nCiani's '80s material has never had a shortage of fans, but more recently her '70s compositions made on the Buchla have been rediscovered and reissued, thus bringing her career full circle.  Ciani lives in San Francisco, where she's been since 1992 and she continues to play concerts and release music.  Until Buchla's death in 2016, he and Ciani remained close friends and even occasional tennis partners.","discography":{"suzanne-ciani":{"albums":{"seven-waves":{"image":"","label":"Finnadar","review":"Three years in the making, *Seven Waves* is an intricate electronic symphony that showed how accessible and human a synthesizer could sound. The album took a while to gain traction in the US, but by the end of the decade stood as a classic of early new age and has retained a strong rep ever since. \n\nIn an interview with the [Quietus](https://thequietus.com/articles/26008-suzanne-ciani-interview-2), Ciani said her goal for *Seven Waves* \"was to create a safe space. I felt that electronics gave a sense of security because they were dependable.\" This was key because so many of her rhythms were very slow, like the pulses of ocean waves. \"I thought that the subliminal, subconscious certainty that the next beat was going to arrive precisely where it should gave a connection to the cosmos, where things were moving in their natural consistent ways.\" \n\nThis is not to say that the songs come off as rigid either, as her precise arrangements are balanced perfectly by the nostalgic, yearning melodies that Ciani does so well. The recurring Ocean motif also lends the album a natural quality, even though the waves are all created by a synthesizer. \"To me that rhythm of the ocean, I found it to be a very feminine rhythm,\" Ciani said. \"It's a very feminine energy system, where it built to a climax and then receded.\"\n\nIndeed, the album does build to a climax, albeit ever so slowly.  While many of the songs on side one have more subliminal rhythms, the drum machines and linear song structures fade more into view on side two. Dynamics build up more too, with \"Fifth Wave\" reaching a symphonic crescendo of tension/release, followed closely \"Sixth Wave\" which features  Ciani's most memorable melody on the album.  Album closer \"Seventh Wave\", aptly subtitled \"Sailing Away,\" is the perfect conclusion to this masterpiece, with a sunny melody and funky compu-rhythm that is impossible to not love. \n\nRelease Notes:\n*Seven Waves* was initially released in the US on Finnadar, Ilhan Mimarogul's contemporary classical label. Finnadar was blessed with good distribution from parent label Atlantic, but its releases were still confined to the classical bin at the time, totally ignoring Ciani's crossover appeal. *Seven Waves* had more success in Japan initially, where Ciani's lyrical melodicism fit in so well with the city-pop and jazz-fusion bands of the era like Tatsuro Yamashita or T-Square. By the late '80s, Private Music bought the rights and reissued the album, finally giving *Seven Waves* wider exposure stateside and cementing its place as a precursor to much of the pop-influenced new age (much of it inferior) that was then a commercial force.\n \n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Seven Waves","year":"1982"},"velocity-of-love":{"image":"","label":"RCA Red Seal","review":"","title":"Velocity of Love","year":"1986"},"voices-of-packaged-souls":{"image":"","label":"Liquid Sound","review":"","title":"Voices of Packaged Souls","year":"1970"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":9,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ciani2.jpg?alt=media&token=3ff1e76f-ee57-49cc-9be5-a51d8afda42a","last_name":"Ciani"},"suzanne-doucet":{"artist_name":"Suzanne Doucet","body":"One of the key figures of the American new age scene, Suzanne Doucet produced a strong run of albums in the '80s and founded one of the first new age record stores.  Long after the genre peaked and went into decline, she remained a big booster of the genre, serving on the Grammy committee and streaming music through her New Age Music site. Many of her albums have recently been reissued.\n\nEarly in her career, Doucet showed a knack for brazen originality with the release of a triple album of field recordings and mind-expanding psychedelia under the name Zweistein in 1970.  By that time, Doucet was already well known in her native Germany as a pop singer and singer/songwriter, so the release would have been even more baffling had it included her name. (Doucet omitted her name to allow listeners a more unprejudiced listen, thus igniting a long mystery about the album's origin.)\n\nIn 1979, Doucet launched a record label in West Germany named Isis after the Egyptian goddess of feminine divinity.  Doucet had success with her first release by Reisefieber, and was also garnering interest in her musical accompaniment to Thorwald Dethlefsen's guided meditation tapes.  Together with her musical partner Christian Bühner, the two formed a duo called New Age and began work on *Transformation*, inspired in part by Doucet's visit to Findhorn, Scottland. \n\nDoucet distributed her label through bookstores in Germany and *Transformation* sold about 1,000 copies initially. In 1983, the duo began work on the follow-up *Transmission* on Good Friday. Bühner was more involved in this recording, contributing to the songwriting and instrumentation.\n\nAfter this release, Bühner and Doucet moved to Los Angeles, hoping to find more kindred spirits in the burgeoning new age scene there. Doucet fit right in, meeting Tajalli ([William Wichman](/william-wichman)) who she would later collaborate with on the scarce 1983 cassette *Brilliance.* Doucet also had a whirlwind romance with James Bell, who she met at a yoga center and then married six months later. Bühner was less enamored with California life and moved back to Germany after only a short stay.\n\nIn addition to her collaborations, Doucet also released two solo albums under her own name in the mid-'80s, *Reflecting Light*, and *Reflecting Light Vol. 2*. Both had a mirrored cover, slyly calling back to her Zweistein landmark from 14 years prior. After this, Doucet focused her energy on bringing the genre to a wider audience. Around that time she and Bell were making up to $1,000 a weekend selling the Isis cassettes on the boardwalk in Venice, and they wanted to tap into the burgeoning market. After a pitch for a New Age radio station format failed to garner interest, they decided to open a new age record shop (they called it an \"audio gallery\") on Melrose Blvd. The store, which they named \"Only New Age Music\" opened in January 1987.\n\nTheir timing was impeccable. Within a month, local station KTWV switched to a new age/lite jazz format.  While the previous listeners bemoaned the ending of an era, other listeners loved the new format and flocked to Doucet's shop to buy what they'd heard on the radio. Doucet's store had a listening bar with four cassette players and hundreds of releases from around the world, so there was plenty for the fans to devour.\n\nKTWV's radio format transformed careers overnight, with formerly unknown artists like Ray Lynch and/or Ottmar Liebert suddenly moving 20,000 cassettes and getting record label deals.  Doucet herself got distribution from Capitol for her new US label Beyond.  In late 1987, Doucet rereleased many cassettes from the Isis catalog with new covers (all taken from Ken Knutson's images on Voyager tarot cards). She also changed the artist name on \"Transmission\" to just list herself and Christian Bühner (who engineered \"Transformation\" and co-wrote \"Transmission.\" ) Confusingly, she also reissued \"Reflecting Light Vol. 2\" as just \"Reflecting Light\" on Beyond.\n\nWith the success of new age music, major labels and better-financed indies began to get in the game, and chain stores like Tower started carrying the music, which previously was distributed by a loosely connected network of health food stores and bookshops.  After the big chain stores added listening stations, Doucet lost her competitive edge and the store's finances took a dive. On top of that, Doucet had been producing annual conferences for her New Age Music Network and the 1991 six-hour concert event lost $20,000.  The next year, Doucet and Bell closed down the store.\n\nDespite these changes, Doucet continued to be involved in the industry. She still worked as a producer and consultant and in 1988, she joined the Recording Academy and served as a committee member of the newly created New Age category for the Grammys (she is still a member to this day). In addition to her [New Age Music](Newagemusic.com) site, Doucet also founded a site called the [New Age Music Circle](Newagemusik.ning.com), an extension of her network from the '80s which releases yearly compilations called \"Sounds from the Circle.\"\n","discography":{"new-age":{"albums":{"transformation":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"Both relaxing and keenly focused, a collage of sound, simple yet expanded, carries us through the unified and harmonious approach. \n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Transformation","year":"1982"},"transmission":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"German duo Suzanne Doucet and Christian Buhner in a fantastic musical journey to the inner self. \"Shiva's Dance,\" \"Moonlight\" and the title piece are most reminiscent of Deuter or Hamel, two other German pioneer musicians.\n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Transmission","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"New Age","entry_number":2},"suzanne-ciani":{"albums":{"reflecting-light":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"Doucet's solo debut shows an artist in transition, drawing on both the darker, more cerebral synth music of Europe (her birthplace) as well as the more introspective, gentle airs of post-hippie California, her adopted home.  Whereas songs like the evocative title track or \"Seacliff\" radiate a sense of playfulness and joy, others like \"Rising\" and \"Koan\" feel weighty and serious. The yin/yang balance makes for an engaging listen, and Doucet's intimate, experimental approach (it's all just her playing synth) nicely ties it all together. \n\nNow considered a minor classic by many new age collectors, this album's profile has risen significantly since its first issue in 1984. In 2019 it was reissued by Dark Entries.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Reflecting Light","year":"1984"},"reflecting-light-2":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"","title":"Reflecting Light Vol. 2","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Suzanne Doucet","entry_number":1},"suzanne-doucet-and-william-wichman":{"albums":{"brilliance":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"","title":"Brilliance","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Suzanne Doucet and William Wichman","entry_number":3}},"entry_number":6,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Suzanne-Doucet-Photo-large1.jpg?alt=media&token=71ef891a-139f-4138-9237-119d9c49f178","last_name":"Doucet"},"swami-kriya-ramananda":{"artist_name":"Swami Kriya Ramananda","body":"Swami Kriya Ramanada's three releases, all of which have been out of print on vinyl and cassette since the '80s, are some of the most sought after among new age collectors. His real name is Edward Christmas, but he was given the name Ramananda by [Goswami Kriyananda](https://templeofkriyayoga.org/goswami-kriyananda/), adopting the moniker for all of his early releases until he reverted to his given name when Celestial Harmonies reissued his debut on CD in 1989.\n\nBorn in 1941, Edward Christmas grew up in Chicago, an artistic child who was interested in music, art, and photography. He started the flute at the age of nine, calling the instrument \"a natural fit\" and stuck with it.  Christmas went on to attend the American Conservatory of Music, expanding his musical palette by playing jazz with various groups in the '60s.\n\nIn the '70s Christmas joined the Organization of Black American Culture, a group of Black writers, artists, historians and activists that formed in Chicago in 1967. Christmas worked with the group as a photographer and cinematographer. Eventually, Christmas used his photography skills to build a 35 year career as a photo-journalist, with his work appearing in *Life*, *Look*,  and *The Chicago Sun-Times*. \n\nChristmas later joined the Temple of Kriya Yoga in Chicago, founded by guru Goswami Kriyananda who had studied under Shelley Trimmer and Paramahansa Yogananda. There he became an ordained minister. According to Christmas, who dedicated his first album to Trimmer, he wasn't interested in music for meditation, but rather \"music that could affect the consciences in a positive way.\" His albums were sold through the non-profit Satsanga Fellowship, and later distributed through Fortuna, raising Christmas' profile in the fertile west coast new age scene.\n\nAfter releasing two more albums, Christmas moved to California in 1982, though curiously never released anything else, for reasons unknown. He continued to work as a photographer, but his albums gradually slipped out of print. Only his debut, which ended up being owned by Celestial Harmonies after the bankruptcy of Fortuna, was ever released on CD.\n","discography":{"swami-kriya-ramananda":{"albums":{"inner-wings":{"image":"","label":"Satsanga Fellowship","review":"","title":"Hymn of the New Age","year":"1981"},"journey":{"image":"","label":"Satsanga Fellowship","review":"","title":"In the Garden","year":"1982"},"song-of-the-golden-lotus":{"image":"","label":"Satsanga Fellowship","review":"","title":"Song of the Golden Lotus","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":390,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/edward-christmas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=343038e1-2edc-4364-9ad8-310b4dd2f6d1","last_name":"Ramananda"},"terrell-and-diane-jones":{"artist_name":"Terrell and Diane Jones","body":"Terrell (born 1942) and Diane Jones were a married couple based in Willis, Virginia who made a living selling their own line of hand-painted bamboo flutes. They made the flutes from plants grown on their property and sold them at craft shows in the Southeast. To help promote the flutes, the couple began producing cassettes of flute music in the early '80s. Terrell recorded many of the albums with David Mikeal, a journeyman musician who had a studio in Florida. Prior to starting his flute business, Village Magic Flutes, Terrell had been a math professor but wanted to move away from civilization, channeling his math skills into engineering flutes of various sizes and pitches.  He wasn't originally a musician but taught himself and his wife to play. According to Mikeal, *Cry of the Laughing Owl* was their best-selling cassette, followed by *Kokopelli*. After Terrell passed away in 2002, Diane focused on writing, creating a series of mystery novels such as *Beyond Secrets* (2015) under the name DB Jones.","discography":{"pied-pipers-of-peace":{"albums":{"listen-to-the-peace":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":" Simplistic, but often charming flute melodies, some solo and some backed with acoustic guitar and synth. A wandering minstrel/Ren Faire mood predominates, with the cassette cover helping to sell the image of Terrell Jones as a new age pied piper wandering the wilds of Viriginia as the sound of frogs, rain, and flowing creeks percolate in the distance. The songs are often short, and occasionally show surprising depth that you wish was duplicated acrosss the entire album, but this is still pretty solid.\n\n(MG, 2025)","title":"Listen to the Peace","year":"1987"},"listen-to-the-peace-ii":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Listen to the Peace II","year":"1988"},"the-shepherds-christmas":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Shepherd's Christmas","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"The Pied Pipers of Peace","entry_number":2},"terrell-and-diane-jones":{"albums":{"cry":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Simple flute melodies backed with guitar and keyboard arrangements from David Mikael, who produced this and many other releases from the married couple. The songs are often just two or three chords, but Mikael tries to keep things interesting with ever-shifting arrangements that include bursts of synth texture and a guitar solo on the title track or a suite-like approach to \"Inner Journey\" which never stays still for too long. Similar overall to Coyote Oldman or JC High Eagle.\n\n(MG, 2025)\n","title":"Cry of the Laughing Owl","year":"1985"},"flute-notes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Flute Notes","year":"1983"},"journey-of-a-raindrop":{"image":"","label":" No label","review":"","title":"Journey of a Raindrop","year":"1990"},"kokopelli":{"image":"","label":"Terrell's Magic Flutes","review":"","title":"Kokopelli: The Indian Legend","year":"1992"},"musical-messages":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Musical Messages","year":"1985"},"whispering-hope":{"image":"","label":"Terrell's Magic Flutes","review":"","title":"Whispering Hope","year":"1992"},"wings-of-a-dove":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Wings of a Dove","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":363,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/terrell-diane-comp-640.jpg?alt=media&token=097f8f76-8af0-40f4-8d34-bdd7691a3578","last_name":"Jones"},"the-enlightening-breath":{"artist_name":"The Enlightening Breath","body":"Pamela Whitman is a classically trained flautist who has been with the Ocean City Pops orchestra since 1987. Through her Compassionate Heart Production non-profit she seeks to \"promote peace through intercultural understanding.\" She aims to do this both through music and through her *Course in Miracles* classes. The first incarnation of her band was called Enlightening Breath and put out a cassette called *Music and Art for World Peace* (there are two versions). The band mostly played an upbeat mix of world music with vocals that falls outside the scope of this guide, though some of her instrumental, meditative flute pieces may be of interest to readers. Her band soon changed its name to WorldColor and moved into more rock-influenced territory, touring for the next 14 years.\n\nWhitman was born in Alabama and grew up in Springfield, a suburb of Philadelphia. She started the flute at an early age and got a degree in flute performance at the University of Michigan in 1984. After graduation she got married to an opera singer and lived briefly in South Africa, where she was struck by the area’s poor treatment of its native population. The marriage didn't last, so Whitman moved to New York where she worked as a freelance musician.\n\nWhitman left New York after a few years when she joined the South Dakota symphony. There she befriended Kevin Locke, a Lakota flutist and hoop dancer who played often at festivals with Whitman. She began collecting ethnic flutes and would often play them hooked up to delay pedals for a more mystical sound.\n\nAfter a few years in South Dakota, Whitman returned to the east coast and joined the Ocean City Orchestra in New Jersey as the principal flautist. By this time, Whitman had become painfully aware of the harsh treatment of Native Americans in her country. She was especially interested in the Native American \"prophecy of the four races\" which said that when the races came together, there would be a great society and peace on earth.  Whitman loved the idea and  decided to form a band that played music from four different cultures as represented by \"Black, red, yellow and white.\" She also founded a non-profit company called Compassionate Heart Productions in 1989 to help raise awareness.\n\nWhitman’s first version of her band was called Enlightening Breath and included guitarist Toshinari Yanagialong and Emile Hassan Dyer. Early on, they played a mix of various world music styles with vocals that are outside the scope of this guide, though they also included some meditative flute pieces that may be of interest to readers.  After 1992, Whitman recruited bassist Stuart Thorne, drummer Makoto Izumitani and synth player Tadashi Namba and changed their name to WorldColor. This band combined world music influences with rock and gigged for the next 14 years, putting out several cassettes (all self-titled). Whitman currently lives in New Jersey.\n","discography":{"the-enlightening-breath":{"albums":{"music-and-art-for-world-peace":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music and Art for World Peace","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":144,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Pamela-Whitman.jpeg?alt=media&token=27a19df0-bece-4857-9ab3-a2a1eb4aa30a","last_name":"Enlightening Breath"},"thom-brennan":{"artist_name":"Thom Brennan","body":"Thom Brennan is an ambient musician based in Los Angeles at the time of his debut *Mountains* in 1987. Brennan was friends with Steve Roach who helped master the album and also collaborated with him for a track on the 1987 album *Western Spaces*. Brennan’s work was all improvised, but he struggled with completing his second album (working titles included *Heartland* and *Mojave*), not releasing any new music until *The Path Not Taken* EP in 1995. After that, Brennan entered a more prolific era in the 2000s after moving to Seattle, releasing over 15 albums on soundclick.com and mp3.com in addition to some CD releases.\n\nThomas Brennan was born in 1957 but spent parts of his childhood living in Okinawa in the 60s and later in Tucson, Arizona. “Both places I think, developed my love for landscapes and nature, and that is often the inspiration for my music,” Brennan [said](https://www.tumblr.com/insidetheriftx/130601551473/interview-with-ambient-musician-thom-brennan). \n\nBrennan moved to Los Angeles to attend Cal State in 1977 where he studied film off and on while working as a project manager. Around the same time, he bought his first synthesizer and became more interested in electronic music such as Morton Subotnick, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, and Popol Vuh. Fellow Angeleno Steve Roach had similar interests as Brennan, and the two eventually connected at one of Roach’s shows in the area. Roach became a mentor to Brennan, mastering his first album *Mountains*, which was recorded live to cassette and initially released in a run of 500 copies.\n\nIn 1987, Brennan’s profile got another boost when he appeared alongside Roach to play synth on *Western Spaces*, a compilation of Los Angeles electronic musicians on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communications label. (Also featured were Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer.)\n\nRegarding his music, Brennan says: “My music is live improvised, using analog and digital synthesizers and recorded during Single take performances with no overdubs. I don’t use computers or software for creating music. I was a film student in my younger years, and looking for ways to tell stories without specific plots or specific characters, and shifted from film to working with synthesizers to basically tell a story with just sound.”\n\nBrennan began working on a follow-up album initially called *Heartland*. The project got its start after Roach requested an extended track he could listen to on a flight to Australia while working on his *Dreamtime Return* album. However, Brennan never finished the album and entered a dormant spell.\n\nAround 1991, Brennan relocated to San Francisco for a new job and a change of scenery. He continued to record, though he didn’t release much music during the decade aside from *The Path Not Taken* EP and *Beneath the Clouds* in 1996. After moving to Seattle, he felt he’d found an area that suited him, with its dense forests, rivers, and mountains and a mix of old and new culture. At that point, Brennan discovered sites like mp3.com and soundclick.com, where he could release music directly to consumers. This would mark his most prolific period, with Brennan releasing 14 albums between 2000 and 2008.\n\nBrennan then entered another quiet period for a decade, returning to musical activity again in 2019.  “My background in operations management helped me in finding ways to make my music endeavors financially self-supporting,” Brennan said.  “It could be challenging at times to balance between the two careers, and although I took a break from releasing music between 2009 and 2019, I was still working on it. Starting in 2020, during the COVID shutdown, I began working exclusively on music.”\n\nBrennan currently lives in Seattle as of 2026 and maintains a website [here](http://www.thombrennan.com/).","discography":{"thom-brennan":{"albums":{"beneath-clouds":{"image":"","label":"Arya","review":"","title":"Beneath Clouds","year":1996},"mountains":{"image":"","label":"TMB","review":"Evocative, synth-driven ambient music that falls somewhere between Steve Roach and Robert Slap. There are four shorter songs on side one with just enough tonal variation to distinguish each piece, though “The Burning Temple” runs a little hot for this otherwise icy-sounding album. Opener “Green River Passage” is an easy standout, with a mix of probing guitar leads and dreamy synths that set an adventurous tone, while “Habu Valley” is also gorgeous, kept in motion by the faintest percussion tip-toeing through the background. “Mountains,” which takes up all of side two, continues the tone of exploration with a suitable grandeur and scope.","title":"Mountains","year":"1987"},"the-path":{"image":"","label":"Amplexus","review":"","title":"The Path Not Taken","year":1995}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":442,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/thom-brennan-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=bec301bc-0666-40e5-8898-0d6e7b6cc355","last_name":"Brennan"},"thomas-bellino":{"artist_name":"Thomas Bellino","body":"Thomas Bellino was an arts administrator in New York who also worked as a freelance music composer starting in the mid-'80s. He produced three cassettes that mixed electronics with flutes and woodwinds, earning favorable reviews from Synthetic Pleasure magazine and Ben Kettlewell. However, he shifted his focus to jazz in 1985 and didn't release anything else in the style.\n\nBorn in 1951, Bellino grew up in the Bronx. He remembers hearing his neighbor playing saxophone and wanting to play an instrument too. He eventually settled on the clarinet.  He showed early talent, learning how to play jazz and earning a scholarship to attend high school in Manhattan. After that he went out on the road with a horn rock band in the style of Blood, Sweat and Tears. However, he didn’t like the touring life and enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston to study music. He graduated in 1974.\n\nReturning to New York, Bellino got a job working for an outreach program with the New York Philharmonic where he performed for kids in city schools. After that he went on to become the program director at Young Audiences/New York where he set up art education programs and student recording projects. This led to a long career as an arts administrator and eventually the creation of his own company.\n\nIn the early '80s, Bellino put together a small home studio with a reel to reel and some synthesizers in addition to a collection of wood flutes. One of his first commissions was the score for an exhibit at the Museum of the American Indian called \"Star Gods of the Ancient Americas.\" The show was advertised as \"the first major exhibition ever to present an overview of the astronomical imagery of the ancient Americans.\" \"They asked me to do a soundtrack, so I put together an electronic background and used my collection of wooden flutes,\" Bellino said. \"I compiled a list of native American songs that dealt with star gods and recorded a half-hour soundtrack.” \n\nAround this time, Bellino learned about a WFMU radio show called *Synthetic Pleasure* that played electronic music. He was already into Harold Budd and Brian Eno, and had long appreciated minimalist composers like Phillip Glass and Reich. But now he realized that nearby amateur musicians like him were making electronic music too. Bellino sent in a cassette of his *Star Gods* cassette to *Synthetic Pleasure* host Richard Ginsberg. He liked the album and played it on the air. He also included it in his magazine, leading others around the world to discover Bellino's music. Other radio shows promoted the album too, such as Ben Kettlewell's *Imaginary Voyage* in Massachusetts and John Schaeffer's *New Sounds* in New York. The latter called the album \"an original, engagingly tranquil piece of work.\"\n\nBellino went on to release two more tapes in 1985: *Sweet Dreams* and *Out of the Mists*. The latter featured a blend of electronic sounds and native American instruments like his debut, and earned a strong review from Ben Kettlewell who called Bellino \"a weaver of dreams with a distinct mystical quality.\" \n\nAfter a flurry of three tapes in two years, Bellino's interest in electronic music started to wane. In the '90s, he began working with the jazz community as a production and administrative consultant. One of his main projects was working with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, producing an album for them in 2009 that won a Grammy, though he's worked with other clients including Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Heath. More recently, he established his own non-profit called Planet Arts where he produces concerts and music education programs.","discography":{"thomas-bellino":{"albums":{"2-sweet-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Blue Moose","review":"","title":"Sweet Dreams","year":"1985"},"3-out-of-the-mists":{"image":"","label":"Blue Moose","review":"Delightfully arty neo-primitivism with bells, synth, native flutes, and a little sax. The emphasis is on mood rather than melody (just try humming along with “Forbidden Hand Shadows”), as Bellino builds a unique, otherworldly vibe. The most accessible track is probably “Moon Room,” which adds lyrical alto sax lines to Bellino’s strange chord patterns, but the whole album is compelling and unique, conjuring images of a lost civilization or some ancient alien relics.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Out of the Mists","year":"1985"},"star-gods-of-the-ancient-americas":{"image":"","label":"Blue Moose","review":"","title":"Star Gods of the Ancient Americas","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"Thomas Bellino","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":226,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/thomas-bellino.jpg?alt=media&token=2027c182-15a1-43d8-a193-a67e5a89af8b","last_name":"Bellino"},"tim-boone":{"artist_name":"Tim Boone","body":"Tim Boone was a Dallas musician who specialized in Berlin-school ambient soundscapes. He was childhood friends with David Price and formed his first electronic group with him called Square Wave in the mid-'80s. He also performed in bands with [Fred Becker](/fred-becker) and [Jaxon Crow](/jaxon-crow), both of whom were based in Texas and shared his interest in electronic music. After releasing a few solo albums in the late '80s, Boone picked up some attention in Europe where his cassettes *Worlds of Another Color Vol. 2* and *Embryonic Dreamstates* sold fairly well. Boone also released a CD in 1994 on his own Boonetunes label, but by 1998 he was diagnosed with cancer and died shortly after.\n\nBorn in 1960, Tim Boone grew up in Dallas, Texas with two brothers and a sister. He took piano lessons starting at the age of six and showed an early talent for the instrument. One of Boone's good friends from the neighborhood was guitarist David Price, and both shared a love of music. They joined various bands that gigged in the area, but became more focused on electronic music by the mid-'80s. \n\nAt an Emerald Web show in Houston, Boone met Fred Becker, a fellow electronic musician who was then working at NASA. Together the two formed a duo called Vector Unit that performed live occasionally.  Boone also formed a duo with Price called Square Wave that put out two cassettes. After that, Boone started playing with Jaxon Crow, another electronic musician from Dallas who'd previously played with Price in the Red Tapes before breaking off to go solo. Crow and Boone shared an offbeat sense of humor and became fast friends. Crow released several albums on his own before forming a new trio called Gone Tomorrow with his new wife Irene Herebia and Boone.\n\nIn 1988, Boone released his first solo album *No Resistance*, followed by the ambient *Worlds of Another Color Vol. 1* on Crow's Neon Tetra label in 1989. By this time, Boone had started to develop a small fanbase in Europe where interest in Tangerine Dream-style electronic music was still relatively high compared to the US. Through his own Boonetunes label, Boone released two new cassettes in 1992 that were mainly distributed in Europe. These were followed by *Swimming in the Clouds of the Summit*, Boone's first CD, though it featured some older collaborations with Price from the mid-80s.\n\nIn the '90s, Boone worked as a computer technician at Mary Kay in Dallas, and then later on at the American Heart Association. His musical output slowed down somewhat as he settled into a more domestic life with his girlfriend Donna. However, in 1998, Boone was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and passed away shortly after his diagnosis. His friend David Price passed away a few years later from AIDS. \n\nRemembering Tim, his brother Bill said: \"Tim had a magnetic personality that attracted people. I don't know a single enemy he ever had. There were so many people at his funeral that they couldn't get everybody in.\"","discography":{"square-wave":{"albums":{"scubatronics":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Scubatronics","year":"1987"},"square-wave":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Square Wave is the synth duo of Tim Boone and David Price, together exploring abstract soundscapes of every description. Variety and imagination are their compass points, and they make no concessions to popularity. It's kind of refreshing to hear two such intrepid explorers avoiding the pitfalls of synth-pop so completely.\n\n(Robert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, May 1987)","title":"Square Wave","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Square Wave","entry_number":1},"tim-boone":{"albums":{"embryonic-dreamstates":{"image":"","label":"Boonetunes","review":"","title":"Embryonic Dreamstates","year":"1992"},"neutron-transit":{"image":"","label":"Boonetunes","review":"","title":"Neutron Transit","year":"1992"},"no-reistance":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"No Resistance","year":"1988"},"swimming-in-the-clouds":{"image":"","label":"Boonetunes","review":"","title":"Swimming in the Clouds of the Summit","year":"1994"},"worlds-of-another-color":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra","review":"","title":"Worlds of Another Color Vol. 1","year":"1989"},"worlds-of-another-color-2":{"image":"","label":"Neon Tetra","review":"","title":"Worlds of Another Color Vol. 2","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Tim Boone","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":305,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Tim-Boone-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=0cbb796b-a963-4b9c-a1d1-cab4859df2ac","last_name":"Boone"},"tim-clark":{"artist_name":"Tim Clark","body":"Tim Clark (born 1947) was one of the earliest electronic composers for Planetarium shows, working in the field from 1972 to 1987. After attending Eastman College to study music composition, Tim Clark got a job creating music for Rochester's Strasenburgh planetarium and later at a planetarium in Toronto. Clark's other primary musical outlet was producing soundtracks for the ZBS Foundation, a non-profit founded by Tom Lopez. The company produced audio dramas including *The Incredible Adventures of Jack Flanders*, which included portions of Clark's planetarium music; and *Ruby: Adventures of a Galactic Gumshoe* which featured an original score from Clark. In 1987, ZBS issued an album of Clark's original music called *Myth* featuring a series of progressive, cinematic pieces. Clark had earlier put out some music on a Hearts of Space compilation called *Starflight* and in 1990 released *Adventures of the Sun People*. Reviews were good but sales weren't. This was followed by two collaborations with [Kevin Braheny](/kevin-braheny) before Clark took a hiatus from music to move to Phoenix and attend a culinary institute. In 2000 he moved to Burnsville, North Carolina where he focused on playing the washtub bass and returned to composing for ZBS.","discography":{"tim-clark":{"albums":{"myth":{"image":"","label":"ZBS Foundation","review":"","title":"Myth","year":"1987"},"tales-of-the-sun-people":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Tales of the Sun People","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Tim Clark","entry_number":1},"tim-clark-kevin-braheny":{"albums":{"rain":{"image":"","label":"Hearts of Space","review":"","title":"Rain","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"Tim Clark and Kevin Braheny","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":320,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tim-clark-640.jpg?alt=media&token=50adbaf4-6ac4-4ea6-8e25-afe813f0d993","last_name":"Tim Clark"},"timothy-hellem":{"artist_name":"Timothy William Hellem","body":"Timothy Hellem was a writer, artist, and electronic composer who created music he called \"mediative sonics\". He earned some airplay on Hearts of Space and got good reviews for his debut album, *The Great Spirit* in 1985. Writing in *Synthetic Pleasure*, Richard Ginsberg credited Hellem with \"some of the finest and most listenable meditative electronic music available today.\" After this warm reception, Hellem enjoyed a prolific period over the next three years, issuing twelve more electronic albums that featured his own distinctive art on the covers. Hellem, who had polio as a child and had limited mobility all his life, passed away in 2011.\n\nBorn in 1949, Hellem contracted polio when he was only 9 months old. He was initially paralyzed from the neck down and spent years in the hospital and undergoing physical therapy, rarely seeing his family for five years. He eventually recovered and returned home, though he relied on leg braces and crutches to walk for the rest of his life. Growing up in Muskegon, Michigan, Hellem retreated into a world of art and music as a child, learning how to draw and play guitar. He joined a cover band in high school called Blues Machine that played covers of songs by artists such as the Doors and Steppenwolf. During this time, Hellem was able to drive, using a special car, a '63 Thunderbird equipped with special pedals and handbrakes.\n\nHellem attended community college in Muskegon as well as the Kendall School of Art and Design, where he studied writing and art. He contributed children's stories under the name Elfwalk to a local paper and later on drew underground comic books.  In the early '80s, Hellem got a Commodore 64 computer and synths, which he used to compose his own music. His big inspiration was film soundtracks, which he collected and listened to often. In the liner notes of his first album *Great Spirit*, he credited Jerry Goldsmith, Miklos Rosza, John Barry, and Franz Waxman as \"proxy teachers.\" The tape ended up getting some airplay on Hearts of Space and was reviewed favorably in Syne Magazine, Heartsong Review, and more. Hellem followed it up with two more cassettes in 1985, and this trio of releases remains his best known.\n\nBecause Hellem largely lived on disability income, he was able to devote a large amount of his time to making music. From 1985 to 1988, he produced 14 albums that he mainly sold through mail order. He also wrote some computer games and worked as a wedding deejay, among other sporadic jobs. Hellem got married and helped raise two children until an accident in 1996 rendered him unable to get around on his own anymore. Hellem passed away in 2011.","discography":{"timothy-hellem":{"albums":{"1-the-great-spirt":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"Contemplative electronics similar to *Dark Angel*, and other tapes by Michigan artist Tim Hellem. While the music is meditative, it is constantly improvising. The music here is more foreboding and thematic, with an ethnic (American Indian) flavor as well as computer generated sound with natural and vocal sounds to create a group of short statements that interconnect (*The Great Spirit* is designed as a symphony). The effect is somewhat like listening to a very calm Vangelis piece, but without the theatrical pomp and circumstance. There's a lot of sincerity in Hellem's music, especially in that he injects a great deal of warmth into his compositions as opposed to sheer technology or grandiose arrangements. This production is more contrived and variegated than his other works, but has the same atmosphere of gentleness and subtly. \n\n(James Finch, *Syne*, Winter 1986)","title":"The Great Spirit","year":"1985"},"2-dark-angel":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"Contemplative, emotional electronics generated via a Commodore 64. While the sounds stay basically in the same range (mostly sawtooth or string sounds and triangle or flute sounds) the composition itself exhibits a great deal of emotion and gently changes shape.  The plaintiveness as well as the meditative quality casts this work into a new age genre, but the improvisations and melodic content give it substance. Deceptively simple and certainly thought provoking.\n\n(James Finch, *Syne*, Winter 1986)","title":"Dark Angel","year":"1985"},"3-annustassi":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"With every tape I receive from Timothy I am more relaxed. Here is a musician who knows what sounds good and how to make it. Not a formula or a pattern, but a method and train of thought that comes across to the listener clearly and cleanly each time.\n\nThe concept behind the \"Mythra - Sonic Orchestra and Chorus\" is well beyond the scope of my technical training to explain, but the sound is easily explained as sheer beauty and harmony.\n\nTimothy's newest cassette album *Annustassi*, is for you to listen to when the entire world seems to be spinning too fast, your life is just too complicated, and the problems of day-to-day existence are far too complex to be dealt with at the moment, Put on the tape, close your eyes and just relax.\n\n(Richard Ginsberg, *Synthetic Pleasure*, December 1985) ","title":"Annustassi (An Ancient Shore)","year":"1985"},"acousti-mysterium":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"Acousti Mysterium","year":"1987"},"distant-vespers":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"Using vocal samples and organ-like synth sounds, Hellem conjures a mood from the Middle Ages on the *Distant Vespers*, possibly the chilliest album in his catalog which is already awash in aural snowdrifts.","title":"Distant Vespers","year":"1988"},"elfwalk":{"image":"","label":"Serephim International","review":"","title":"Elfwalk","year":"1988"},"morningstar":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"Misty morning ambient music with layers of synth-pads and tribal drums echoing in the far-off distance. For a DIY artist on the fringes of the new age scene, this is actually really good and could be compared to something like Laraaji’s *Essence/Universe* or even Boards of Canada at their dreamiest.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Morningstar","year":"1985"},"sangraal-the-holy-grail":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"Sangraal (The Holy Grail)","year":"1986"},"solitudes":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"Solitudes","year":"1987"},"the-fearful-needs":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"The Fearful Needs of the Human Heart","year":"1988"},"the-pahana":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"Drenched in Hellem’s usual wall of synths, this is windswept ambience perfect for an adventure through Middle Earth or the foggy remnants of your 80s childhood.","title":"The Pahana, Original Soundtrack","year":"1987"},"the-vision-quest":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"The Vision Quest","year":"1988"},"voyagers":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"","title":"Voyagers","year":"1988"},"wind-dancer":{"image":"","label":"Nefilm Universal","review":"A very homogenous, gentle sonic blanket of synthesized music, designed for sleep and stress control. There's not a distinct melody, only swaying, shifting textures and soft echoing harmonies. Timothy's overall concept for his music is to get back to the purse essence of musical intonation without the structure and artifice. He's interested in universal vibration and call his musical form \"mediative sonics.\" This music is very trancey, lifting you up to the higher atmosphere; not to heaven or outer space, but up there, nonetheless. Great for relaxation. \n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, Spring/Summer 1988)\n\n\nMore ghostly ambience from Hellem, who has a knack for crafting impressionistic dronescapes that transport the listener to an ethereal 80s dream world of Elfquest comics, warbling VHS tapes of Labyrinth, and D&D. No percussion at all - just layers upon layers of lo-fi synths that unspool for eternity.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Wind Dancer","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":257,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/timothy-hellem-temp.jpg?alt=media&token=8133aa9a-d494-4f59-b740-b21a5effe54c","last_name":"Hellem"},"todd-alan-and-marybeth-witt":{"artist_name":"Marybeth Witt and Todd Alan","body":"Todd Alan first met Marybeth Witt at the Starwood new age festival in Ohio in 1985. Alan was 24 at the time and had skipped college to work as a musician, playing six nights a week with his band the Effect. That changed when he met Marybeth, born Mary Elizabeth Witt, ten years his senior. She was a former English teacher at Youngstown University who'd been a practicing witch for a decade since cofounding the Coven of the Floating Spiral. Also known as Lady Plythia, she became a high priestess in 1983. The couple moved in together and produced two cassettes, *Moon Magick* and *Earth Magick* that they sold at craft festivals and through Ladyslipper. Both albums were largely improvised, with Alan playing synth guitar and Witt providing wordless vocals and guided meditations. The couple split up in 1989 and Alan went on to record a solo album *Carry Me Home* before transitioning into a career as a jewelry maker. Witt continued to practice witchcraft as well as tarot readings, jewelry making and astrology before being sidelined by serious health issues in 2020.","discography":{"todd-alan-marybeth-witt":{"albums":{"earth-magick":{"image":"","label":"Oracle","review":"","title":"Earth Magick","year":"1988"},"moon-magick":{"image":"","label":"Oracle","review":"A full 90 minutes of musical improvisation-for magickal circles, healing, meditation, and astral projection-certainly a unique and versatile recording! Performed in trance states, the musicians have reproduced the tape trusting the music will bring the listener into whatever state of moon-spelled mesmerism they experienced at the time. Harp, synthesizer, guitar, ocean waves, and voice are combined in various effects; mysterious, bespeaking of esoteric secrets. Marybeth is a poet whose work has been published in journals such as Womanspirit. \n\n(Ladyslipper Catalog, 1988)","title":"Moon Magick","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":254,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/todd-alan-and-lady-plythia.jpg?alt=media&token=99b31a74-c45a-40e8-8536-574f165de79a","last_name":"Alan"},"todd-barton":{"artist_name":"Todd Barton","body":"Todd Barton is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who created a varied and compelling body of work across a 40+ year career. He is best known these days for his work on the Buchla synthesizer and his collaboration with Ursula Le Guin, but he spent the majority of his career as the in-house composer and music director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There he was able to indulge his love of baroque and renaissance music, as well as his interest in more experimental synth sounds on his Serge Modular system.\n\nBarton was born in 1949 and grew up an only child in the San Francisco Bay area. His father was a chemical engineer who didn't know much about music but both he and Barton's mother were strong supporters of their son's interest in music. Barton started teaching himself piano around the age of five, and began studying trumpet formally at the age of eight. He first learned about music composition from his third grade teacher and by high school was already composing for the jazz band, choir, and school orchestra.\n\nStarting in 1967, Barton began attending the music conservatory at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. There he studied trumpet and broadened his musical palette further, listening to abstract expressionist music and non-western musical forms from India. But it was early music that most captivated his interest. \n\nIn a Pop Matter [interview](https://www.popmatters.com/todd-barton-2019-interview-2638912552.html) Barton recalled how his love of Baroque music dovetailed into the perfect career opportunity: \"I was an avid Shakespeare reader as a teenager, and I loved music. A friend brought me up to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival after my Freshman or Sophomore year of college. I saw the festival. There was music in the plays. I went, 'Oh man! It's made for me!'\n\n\"After my Junior year, I applied to be a musician at the festival. I got in, realized that the fellow that was composing [Bernie Windt] was nearing retirement and loved having an assistant. A month before graduation, I wrote Angus Bowmer, the founder of the theatre and said, 'I know you don't have this position, but I'd love to apply for it. I'd be the Assistant Music Director.' They bought it!\"\n\nSoon after moving to Ashland, Oregon to take the job, Windt retired and Barton was able to take over composing and music directing for the festival, a job he held for the next 40 years. Over the decades, the festival expanded from a summer gig to a nearly ninth month job, and Barton often composed for multiple plays at a time. His work varied as the plays and directors required it, and Barton developed a knack for composing quickly and omnivorously. Over the years, he wrote music for every play Shakespeare ever wrote, including completely different scores to the same Shakespeare plays, with six unique scores alone for \"A Midsummer Night's Dream.\"\n\nIn addition to his work at the festival, Barton also produced early music concerts in Ashland and performed in early music ensembles on the west coast. One of the musicians he met in that circuit was Douglas Leedy who introduced Barton to electronic music. Leedy was a pioneer in the field, releasing one of the earliest commercial electronic albums, *The Electric Zodiac* in 1969 on Capitol records. Leedy showed Barton the Buchla Music Easel, a unique instrument that Barton would later explore in depth. But the first synth that Barton actually bought for himself was the equally inscrutable Serge Modular, which he obtained 1979. \"I spent eight hours a day trying to figure it out,\" Barton recalled.\n\nBarton gradually incorporated electronic sounds into his work and by 1980 put together his first cassette of festival highlights: *The Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Music from the Plays 1979-1980*. The tape included selections from *Dr. Faustus*, *Seascape*, *Midsummer's Night Dream* and others. Barton sold the tapes mostly at the festival gift shop, and they are now very rare.\n\nBy 1982, Barton was very comfortable writing music on the Serge Modular, and found a perfect outlet for his experiments with the National Science Fiction Radio Theatre. The show was a spoof of sci-fi adventure stories, and Barton wrote all the music behind the narration. When Barton heard that the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin was writing a radio play, he asked her for an audition to compose it. Le Guin loved what she heard and he soon scored her story \"An Eye for an Eye” for public radio (confirm).\n\nLe Guin later contacted Barton to compose the score for a novel she was writing called *Always Coming Home*. The book is about a ethnographic study of a fictional culture of people called the Kesh who live in Northern California. Le Guin describes the people's customs, language, poetry, and music, and wanted to accompany the book with a cassette of Kesh music. Barton used a Roland Jupiter 8 to simulate the sounds of the Kesh musical instruments and music, imagining fictional instruments that some fans later actually reproduced. \n\nIn 1986, Barton put out his first LP, *Pieces*, which contained highlights from some of his Shakespeare plays, selections from *Music from the Kesh*, his score for \"Dracula\" played by the Kronos Quartet, and \"Obake\", a commission for a San Francisco dance company. This is probably the best introduction to Barton's work, and even though he only pressed 500 copies, it is probably the easiest to obtain. \n\nIn the same year, Barton also released *I/Shih-Ho: Meditation Environments*. The album is his most ambient work, admittedly influenced by Brian Eno’s *Music for Airports.* Unfortunately, it is also very rare, produced in an edition of about 200 copies. It was reissued in 1989 on Ozzy Lax's World Room label, in addition to *Music of the Kesh*, but that version rarely turns up either.\n\nBarton, who had played the recorder and trumpet for much of his adult life, was always a big fan of eastern music and the shakuhachi for its unique timbre. Starting in the late '80s, he bought his own and began learning how to play. Starting with *Tai Chi Shakuhachi* in 1992, Barton produced four albums featuring his take on the instrument. \n\nBarton continued working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and releasing music sporadically into the present. He retired from his job in 2012 and began devoting all of his time to the Buchla and other instruments like the Serge, Hordijk and Eurorack, offering tutorials via Skype or through videos at MacProVideo.com. He maintains a website [here](http://toddbarton.com).","discography":{"todd-barton":{"albums":{"excerpts":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Excerpts","year":"1987"},"light-in-the-village":{"image":"","label":"Valley Productions","review":"","title":"Light in the Village","year":"1993"},"meditation-environments":{"image":"","label":"Soundflex","review":"Influenced by Brian Eno and Harold Budd, *Meditation Environments* features two beautiful side-long tracks (22 minutes each) that are based on hexagrams from the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text. \n\nSide One features \"I\" (Hexagram 27), which represents nourishment of the mind and body, with a character approximating an open mouth. The music is stately and unhurried, built around a chiming piano riff soaked in reverb that repeats throughout. Other synth textures provide color and atmosphere, though the lo-fi recording makes for a somewhat icy air.\n\n\"Shih Ho\" on side two is based on Hexagram 21 which represents \"gnawing bite\", indicating progress through struggle. Appropriately, this all-synth piece is more complex than \"I\", contrasting an anxious double-time marimba pattern with a slowed-down choral voicing that breathes in and out, helping the listener find their center.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Meditation Environments","year":"1986"},"mountain-ghost-breathing":{"image":"","label":"Valley Productions","review":"A two song cassette of pieces inspired by the paintings of Barton's friend Bob Kostka, whose work also graces the cover. Side A is \"Mountain Ghost Breathing,\" which is made up of altered digital samples of shakuhachi sounds—pure tones, multiphonics, \"flutter tonguing,\"—you name it—creating sounds that are ultimately very un-flute like. At one point an ominous low drone, reminiscent of something being bowed, pours in and then out while whispy bursts like escaping steam punctuate the upper levels. It's similar to the way Barton describes Kostka's paintings in the notes as living in that \"fleeting membrane between the Void and Form.\" On the second side, he shows off his diverse shakuhachi techniques with stylized bursts on a piece called \"Emerging,\" a slowish, sparse improv with added echo and some synthesized wind sounds over a \"live recording of 4 to 7 foot metal wind chimes in a wind storm,\" albeit a fairly gentle wind storm. \n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2019)","title":"Mountain Ghost Breathing","year":"1995"},"music-and-poetry-of-the-kesh":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music and Poetry of the Kesh","year":"1985"},"music-from-romeo-and-juliet":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music from Romeo and Juliet","year":"1988"},"music-from-the-play-orphans":{"image":"","label":"Valley Productions","review":"After a successful run as a Steppenwolf production in Chicago and New York in 1985, Lyle Kessler's play *Orphans* was performed at smaller theaters around the US, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1988. There, in-house composer Todd Barton composed his own score for the darkly comic tragedy about two orphaned brothers living in Philadelphia. Barton's score has an experimental, urban feel that bounces between a more chaotic, free jazz sound in scenes dominated by older brother Treat, while shifting into more tender, reflective pieces for scenes built around younger brother Phillip. On this album, Barton is joined by two other musicians Joseph Thompson on guitar and Mike Vannice on sax.\n\nSide A features ten short mood pieces than cover the wide range of emotions and characters in the play, from the almost Prince-ish synth-funk of \"Fuckin' Rich\" or the skronky \"Silent Stream\" to more ambient ballads like the lovely \"Phillip's Gift.\" Some songs are less developed than others, but Barton thankfully gives plenty of room to the strong \"Encouragement Reprise,\" with its hypnotic, emotionally resonant melody to close the side.\n\nSide two features longer songs that expand on some of the musical themes of the first side, but with a more prominent inclusion of Vannice's Coltrane-like sax playing. Indeed, side opener \"Pathlighting\" seems to overtly channel Coltrane's spiritual jazz opus *Love Supreme* with Barton providing swirling clouds of synth under transcendent, searching sax lines. \"Cruisin in the Cosmos\" goes further into the realms of free improvisation, with some success, but \"Dreams East\" is probably the highlight of the whole album, perfectly encapsulating the play's flirtation with magical realism. Using a host of digital synths, Barton evokes a late night soundscape of fog, street sounds, howling winds, and cymbals crashing like garbage can lids as raccoons search for a late night snack.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)","title":"Music for the Play Orphans","year":"1988"},"pieces":{"image":"","label":"Valley Productions","review":"As a staff composer and music director for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Barton operates in a lot of different mediums. *Pieces* presents excerpts from  the scores for five O.S.F. productions, utilizing everything from solo piano to neo-Medieval consort to the Kronos String Quartet.  Also represented are all-synthesizer dances from San Francisco's Third Wave Dance Company, and made-up folk songs for an imagined future civilization called the Kesh, written as an adjunct to an Ursula K. Le Guin sci-fi novel. Barton, as you might have guessed, gets around. How's the music? Despite the diversity, each piece shares an immediately-likable sound, a human dimension to the music, and some hook that draws you into it. This is one of the most remarkable debuts I have ever witnessed.\n\nRobert Carlberg, *Electronic Musician*, April 1987\n","title":"Pieces","year":"1986"},"tai-chi-shakuhachi":{"image":"","label":"Valley Productions","review":"Elegantly simple, with the mournful, haunting sound typical of this Japanese flute, the notes proceed in a steady, quiet stream. This was created as an accompaniment for those doing the Yang form of Tai Chi Chuan, an Oriental martial art for centering and health. Todd improvises for both the long and short forms, creating a synchronization  between the long lingering tones of the flute and the fluid, graceful movements. The flute warbles, wanders, seems to seek something lost or forgotten. The lack of definable melody or rhythm coaxes the mind to unfocus and drift. Very nice for any kind of relaxation and healing.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* No. 12, 1992)","title":"Tai Chi Shakuhachi","year":"1992"},"the-oregon-shakespeare-festival":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Music from the Plays 1979-1980","year":"1980"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":100,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Todd-Barton-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e3bc8f58-eed9-456f-b33b-daa01afa0981","last_name":"Barton"},"todd-fletcher":{"artist_name":"Todd Fletcher","body":"Todd Fletcher was a Washington DC musician who co-founded the Poison Plant label with [Jack Hurwitz](/jack-hurwitz) and issued a run of ambient and progressive electronic albums starting in 1988. Fletcher and his wife relocated to Arizona in 1992 where he continued to release ambient music sporadically. In the early 2000's he started a new CD-R label called Microrelease.\n\nFletcher was born in California in 1964. His father was a postal inspector and moved the family around the country as he worked his way up in the ladder. He finally became the chief postal inspector, settling the family more permanently in Washington D.C. when Fletcher was 14. By then, Fletcher had already started playing the drums and listening to underground radio shows where he first discovered ambient music. Fletcher's older brother was also a big music fan who played guitar and loved Miles Davis.\n\nIn high school, Fletcher met Jack Hurwitz, a drummer and kindred spirit who shared similar music tastes. The two would sometimes get their drums together in the basement and make an unholy racket that even incorporated cookie sheets. They both loved Tangerine Dream and particularly Klaus Schulze's early 80s work, so they also added synthesizers and digital effects to the mix. However, they never saw themselves as a part of that analog tradition and happily adopted cheaper, new digital technology.\n\nFletcher went to Montgomery College where he planned to be a composition major, but after a year and a half he dropped out. \"There was a general frustration of how to do music,\" he said. \"Writing scores or starting a band wasn't appealing, but then along came this home recording stuff. I have a brother who is eight years older than me and he loved Todd Rundgren so I knew from an early age that one person could play all the instruments. It finally clicked for me that you could do this on a cassette. I started to take it seriously.\"\n\nHurwitz felt the same way and the two decided to take out a loan and start their own studio called Sonus Recorders in Silver Spring, Maryland. The idea was to record other bands by day and then work on their own music after hours. \"We were only around for a year, but we did well,\" Hurwitz said. \"We recorded rock, soul, solo artists, synths. It was fun at first, but then reality set in.\" Fletcher concurred: \"After four hours in a studio recording rap, music was the last thing I wanted to do. So we started a label instead.\"\n\nPoison Plant was intended to be a collective where each artist would pay to produce and market their own cassettes. \"For me and my friends, [Jeff Greinke](/jeff-greinke) was a head turner. He legitimized the whole thing [of cassette culture],\" Hurwitz said. \"We did a lot of trading with others. That was one way to get your music out there and you didn’t have to be good at marketing. I was amazed that we would run ads for the label and get responses. Almost every time we sent out a catalog to someone, we got an order. Over time we sold thousands of tapes.\"\n\nThe first releases on the label were Fletcher’s *Songs from 3 Phases* and Hurwitz’ *Tones Timbre*, soon followed by many others, all on cassette. Like Hurwitz, Fletcher experimented with different sounds, ranging from the smooth-jazz and downtempo funk of  *Songs from 3 Phases* to the more ambient, Steve-Roach inspired *Whispering Voice.*\n\nAfter a few years with the label, Fletcher got married to Jack's sister Michelle and moved to the suburbs. By that time, an experimental musician named Treiops Treyfid had joined Poison Plant, and he would eventually take over the label's operations.  Fletcher moved to Arizona in 1992 and as his family life began to consume more time, his musical output slowed down greatly.\n\nFletcher, who had previously worked as a lab photo technician and photographer, transitioned into being a web designer in the late '90s. His timing was good, and he got a lot of work right away, mostly with various startups. In 2000 he started a new label called Microrelease to put out his new ambient music. He sold around 500 copies over the next five years, but a divorce and other personal issues put an end to that. He sold his synths and bought a piano which is now his instrument of choice.\n\n\"A lot of us are still going,\" Fletcher said. \"We never did it for fame, we just did it for the love of music. So there was never any reason to quit. It was never, 'Oh we didn’t get signed, we're going to give up.' It was never about that to begin with.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)\n\nSource: Author interviews with Todd Fletcher, 3/29/20 and Jack Hurwitz, 3/18/20\n\n\n","discography":{"todd-fletcher":{"albums":{"atavism":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":" Atavism","year":"1990"},"byzantium":{"image":"","label":"Dervish Music","review":"","title":" Byzantium","year":"1993"},"entrance":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"","title":" Entrance","year":"1989"},"songs-from-3-phases":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"Fletcher's debut is pretty different from his later ambient work, with touches of R&B and sophisti-pop in his soft-hued, funky electronica. Picture Vangelis composing backing tracks for Sade, or an instrumental version of the swiss duo Double and you get the idea.  The ten tunes are well arranged and high on atmosphere, with floating synths, light-storm rhythms and silky acoustic piano creating an urban, nocturnal mood.  For some listeners this may veer too close to lite jazz, but Fletcher weaves a convincing spell over the album's duration.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"Songs From 3 Phases","year":"1988"},"star":{"image":"","label":"Arya","review":"","title":" Star","year":"1995"},"the-whispering-voice":{"image":"","label":"Poison Plant","review":"This one is now a regular in my headboard tape player. It makes good night music. Steady, meandering mood setting. Evocative synth textures. SOUND: excellent\n\n(Bryan Baker, *Gajoob* #6, 1990)","title":"A Whispering Voice","year":"1989"},"unison-discordia":{"image":"","label":"Toracic Tapes","review":"","title":" Unison Discordia","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":162,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Todd-Fletcher-640.jpg?alt=media&token=7dea8682-b3cc-4046-939b-0e9a3fa6f7fa","last_name":"Fletcher"},"tom-barabas":{"artist_name":"Tom Barabas","body":"Tom Barabas was one of the more successful new age pianists, working in a romantic and neo-classical style that helped land many of his albums, such as the popular *Sedona Suite*, on the new age Top 20 charts at the time. However, his work has not resonated much with collectors, despite the pedigree of his label Soundings of the Planet. Barabas, who was a piano prodigy, was born in Hungary in 1934 and emigrated to Venezuela as a teen. There, he eventually went on to earn a Master's degree at the Venezuela Conservatory of Music in Caracas before moving to San Diego in 1966. Barabas remained in California until his death in 2020. More on his life can be found [here]( https://soundings.com/musicians/tom-barabas/).","discography":{"dean-evenson-and-tom-barabas":{"albums":{"soaring":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Soaring","year":"1987"},"wind-dancer":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Wind Dancer","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"Dean Evenson and Tom Barabas","entry_number":3},"evenson-barabas-damaris":{"albums":{"high-joy":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"High Joy","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Evenson, Barabas, Damaris","entry_number":2},"tom-barabas":{"albums":{"magic":{"image":"","label":"Invincible","review":"","title":"Magic in December","year":"1986"},"piano-impressions":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Piano Impressions","year":"1986"},"sedona-suite":{"image":"","label":"Soundings of the Planet","review":"","title":"Sedona Suite","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Tom Barabas","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":325,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tom-barabas-640.jpg?alt=media&token=88d55250-2a42-4d1a-88f2-53631c03b582","last_name":"Barabas"},"tom-heil":{"artist_name":"Tom Hiel","body":"Originally from Minneapolis, Tom Hiel has enjoyed a multi-decade career composing for films and TV, with credits including *Swimming with Sharks* and *The Practice*. Prior to that, he had a brief stint as a budding new age composer when he was in his early twenties, releasing an album of solo piano pieces (*Please*) and another of minimalist electronica (*Geometry*). While Hiel mostly left this chapter behind after moving to Los Angeles in 1990, he has recently made both albums available on streaming services.\n\nTom Hiel was born in 1965 and grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He started playing piano at the age of five, begging to play when he saw his brother and sister doing it too. He took formal lessons for years but he especially loved writing his own music. By the age of thirteen, he had completed his first orchestral piece.\n\nHiel attended the University of Minnesota and took some music classes but was turned off by the emphasis on 12-tone music and decided to be a math major instead. He continued to compose, creating repetitive piano pieces influenced by Steve Reich, Phillip Glass and Tangerine Dream. These formed the basis of his first cassette *Please*, a series of solo piano instrumentals. The tape caught the attention of Brian Turner, a radio programmer who began playing the album on Cities 97. This helped to raise Hiel’s profile locally, earning some write-ups in *City Pages* and leading to some live performances at the student union and at the Walker Art gallery.\n\nIn 1989, Hiel released an album of more intricately arranged electronic music called  *Geometry.* He got some positive reviews from critics who noted the cinematic nature of the work and he began using the tape to pitch his services as a composer for film. His first score was for the film *Providence* with Keanu Reeves, directed by Hiel’s friend David Mackay, who was then attending USC. This led to other film projects including *Swimming with Sharks* in 1994, which remains Hiel’s best-known score.\n\nWhile he worked to establish himself as a film composer in Los Angeles in the ‘90s, Hiel did temp work and designed websites. He eventually returned to school to earn a master’s degree in composition at Cal Arts. After that, he got his longest-running gig composing music for the David E. Kelley legal drama *The Practice* from 2000 to 2004. Hiel has been scoring TV and movies regularly ever since, and also began teaching orchestration, music theory, and film scoring starting around 2014.","discography":{"tom-heil":{"albums":{"geometry":{"image":"","label":"Echo Bay Music","review":"","title":"Geometry","year":"1989"},"inner-wings":{"image":"","label":"Echo Bay Music","review":"","title":"Please","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":446,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Tom-Heil-640.jpg?alt=media&token=864f6707-ceef-4d66-979d-36e3fddbe876","last_name":"Heil"},"tom-masapollo":{"artist_name":"Tom Masapollo","body":"In the late '70s, Tom Masapollo was a record collector and music fan who loved *Diaspar*, a Philadelphia radio show that played progressive sounds by European bands like Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Temple. After seeing local trio the Nightcrawlers successfully create similarly spaced out sounds from their garage in Jersey, Masapollo became inspired to try his hand at music too, releasing a handful of cassettes on his own and three more with synth wunderkind [Jesse Clark](https://ultravillage.com/jesse-clark) in the '80s. Masapollo never quite fully committed to music, as he had an MBA and a solid day job as an industrial engineer. By the end of the decade he abandoned his musical ambitions, even though he remained a devoted fan.\n\nMasapollo grew up Haddon Heights, one of the many small towns in Southern New Jersey that serve as Philadelphia suburbs. It was a great era for radio, and with plenty of college stations broadcasting nearby, Masapollo became a student of jazz and progressive rock. During his time in college at Drexel in Philadelphia, Masapollo became aware of a small music scene in the area with bands like the Ghostwriters and Crash Course in Science who were influenced by the new wave of European artists featured on Diaspar. But it was the Nightcrawlers DIY approach that really captured his interest.\n\n\"I think I saw every [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) show, at least early on,\" Masapollo said. \"They inspired me to try to learn how to play.\" In 1982, Masapollo bought his first synth, an Electroharmonix mini-synth, and joined the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association) at the urging of his friend Don Slepian, who helped run the group. Masapollo, who worked as a program manager, had a gift for organizing and offered to set up a local showcase for IEMA artists in late 1982. He ended up arranging, promoting, and presenting the festival, held at Appel Farm in Elmer, NJ. Naturally he booked the Nightcrawlers, as well as other kindred spirits like [Alien Planetscapes](/alien-planetscapes), [Don Slepian](/don-slepian), [Lauri Paisley](/lauri-paisley), and Atomic Thinkers.\n\nAfter the festival, Masapollo built a small four track studio in his home and entered a fruitful period of creativity. By then he'd gotten more familiar with his synths, built his own drum machine and purchased a reel to reel tape recorder to make loops. Like the Nightcrawlers, everything he did was improvised. \"My approach to music has always been simple, meaning the music is based on a feeling or mood at a certain moment in time,\" Masapollo wrote in a 1989 press release. \"I like spontaneous expression rather than closely structured pieces that tend to get stale or boring after a while. I try to create a relaxing, floating melody with my music that will tend to comfort people rather than distress them.\"\n\nMasapollo put together a few tapes of his early music, but never made much of an attempt to distribute them.  The first one he duplicated on a small scale was 1984's *Earthlight*, making up 10 copies. By 1985, Masapollo was feeling more confident and put together *Route 23*, which he mastered at a local studio to get a more professional sound. He sold it through electronic music newsletters like SYNE and Synthesis, as well as at shows. He estimates about 25 copies were made.  In the same year, he played his first solo show to 200 people at the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia. \"That was a monumental time for me, Masapollo said. \"And I actually got paid for performing.\" Masapollo released a tape of the show a year later, printing up a small amount of copies for friends and sent some to radio stations too.\n\nBy that time, Masapollo was a regular at electronic shows in the area where he met Jesse Clark, a young musician who was making a name for himself in the local electronic scene. The two bonded over their love of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, and they decided to form a duo called Syntegrity. A few years earlier, Clark was in a traumatic car accident that left him unable to get to and from gigs. Masapollo generously offered to help Clark get around and load in the gear. Together as Syntegrity, they released one studio album, *Visions of Two* in 1986. Masapollo estimates they made about 85 copies and sold some at shows and gave the rest to friends or sent to radio stations. Syntegrity went on to release two more live albums in subsequent years. However, Masapollo's interest in performing began to wane and Syntegrity eventually dissolved.\n\n\"It just got to be too much, loading up all the gear to play shows all over New Jersey,\" Masapollo said. \"Clark lived about an hour away and we just kind of stopped performing after 1988.\" Masapollo continued to play music at home in his studio, but he never released anything else. As his work career prospered, his music career faded from view. Masapollo lives in Haddon Heights, New Jersey.","discography":{"syntegrity":{"albums":{"easter-jam":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Easter Jam","year":"1987"},"live-at-the-nexus-gallery":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at the Nexus Gallery","year":"1988"},"visions-of-two":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Visions of Two","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Syntegrity","entry_number":2},"tom-masapollo":{"albums":{"earthlight":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Earthlight","year":"1984"},"route-23":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Route 23","year":"1985"},"tom-masapollo-live-at-the-bride":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tom Masapollo Live at the Bride","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Tom Masapollo","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":87,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Tom-Masapollo-640.jpg?alt=media&token=977ad826-e2b3-44a1-84e0-02b9a0900a81","last_name":"Masapollo"},"tom-maynard":{"artist_name":"Tom Maynard","body":"Tom Maynard was a saxophonist and composer who grew up in Hartford, Connecticut but relocated to Durango, Colorado in the 1983 with his first wife Andrea (later known as Oni). The two of them played together in a jazz band called Jazz Express throughout the decade, but Maynard also detoured into new age for one album *Sky Mirror* which he recorded mostly on his own and self-released in 1986. The album got some distribution through Backroads at the time, but is now scarce. Maynard, who worked in urban planning, passed away in 2007.","discography":{"tom-maynard":{"albums":{"asterism":{"image":"","label":"No Label","review":"","title":"Sky Mirror","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":350,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tom-maynard-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fd66fe91-2861-4560-acfb-a430b5111b52&_gl=1*1fx5ffu*_ga*Mjk3NTA0NTczLjE2OTQ3ODk4OTk.*_ga_CW55HF8NVT*MTY5ODY4NDY1My4yMy4xLjE2OTg2ODQ3ODUuNTAuMC4w","last_name":"Maynard"},"tom-parsons":{"artist_name":"Tom Parsons","body":"Tom Parsons is a classically trained pianist from Homewood, Illinois who worked as an accountant before becoming a piano teacher starting in the '80s. From 1986 to 1992, he produced three self-released electronic cassettes, all in editions of 100 that he sold through the Computer Music Coalition. His music featured an idiosyncratic take on new age, berlin-school and progressive electronic sounds, with Klaus Schulze and Vangelis being two key inspirations. After a long hiatus, he returned in 2008 with a CD called *Azure*.\n\nBorn in 1958, Parsons grew up in Homewood, about 30 miles away from Chicago. He started classical piano lessons at six and stayed with it through college where he initially majored in performance and minored in music education. He first discovered synthesizers through the *Clockwork Orange* soundtrack and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, whose music he studied closely. In junior high, a friend of his father's gave Parsons a tour of his studio that included a modular ARP 2500 system, and that sealed the deal for Parsons. He had to get a synth of his own.\n\nParsons played in various bands as a teenager, including a stint as the keyboard player in a reggae band called The Caribbean Knights that often gigged in the area. When he was 18, he finally had enough money to buy his first synth, an Arp Axxe, which he started playing in bands too. \n\nAfter two years at Prairie State College, Parsons' father passed away. Suddenly, Parsons didn't have the money to continue schooling and dropped out. However, he then landed a job in the mailroom at *Time* magazine in Chicago. He showed a knack for numbers and was able to work his way up to an accounting position and went on to work for several other firms in Chicago. With newfound disposable income, Parsons bought a four-track and set up a small home studio where he recorded electronic music. Over the years, he acquired more and more synths, eventually ending up with 11. Some of his key inspirations were Klaus Schulze, Harold Budd, Vangelis, and Wendy Carlos, and he recalls listening to *Hearts of Space* and *Musical Starstreams* often on Sunday Nights.\n\nParsons debuted his electronic music live in 1986 at the New Music Chicago festival, and then played again the following year.  In 1986, Parsons released his first album *Aesthetics* in an edition of 100 copies, featuring an eclectic group of tracks all played on electronic instruments. He sold the tapes through the Computer Music Coalition, which also had a magazine called *AfterTouch*. He went on to issue two more cassettes over the years, each pressed in an edition of 100. He also landed a profile in the \"Discoveries\" column of *Keyboard Magazine* in May 1988.\n\nParsons continues to reside in Homewood where he works as a piano teacher. He has recently made all three of his cassettes available on his Bandcamp page [here](https://tomparsons.bandcamp.com/).\n","discography":{"tom-parsons":{"albums":{"aesthetics":{"image":"","label":"Parsongs","review":"With a charming album cover featuring a still-life of a computer, lizard, and teapot rendered on PC Paint, the music within is exactly what you might expect. Parson's debut mixes video game exotica (\"Chameleon\"), 8-bit robo-prog (\"Percolator\"), and dreamier electronic pieces (\"Sunrise,\" \"Twilight\") that show an affinity for meditative krautrock and new age. Could perhaps be compared to [Marden Pond](/marden-pond) or [Daniel Crommie](/daniel-crommie).\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Aesthetics","year":"1986"},"child-of-the-moon":{"image":"","label":"Parsongs","review":"","title":"Child of the Moon","year":"1992"},"pink-sounds-from-the-purple-plain":{"image":"","label":"Parsongs","review":"Another prismatic album of home-brew progressive electronics from Parsons, this time featuring excursions into Phillip Glass-ish minimalism (\"Pause?\"), experimental sound collage with synthesized gunshots (\"Holiday in Beirut\"), and sparkling Berlin-school trance (\"Deedle.\") The first side never quite gels as a whole, but the second side flows better, sustaining a more lyrical and melancholy mood across tracks like \"Daydream\" and \"Regret.\"\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2021)","title":"Pink Sounds from the Purple Plain","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":237,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tom-parsons-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d45d0c12-13f9-4e0d-ba6a-463c26743e29","last_name":"Parsons"},"tony-campise":{"artist_name":"Tony Campise","body":"Tony Campise (1943-2010) was a jazz musician based in Texas who made a name for himself as the lead alto sax player with Stan Kenton's band in the '70s. Campise already had two decades of experience by then, playing with Houston jazzers like Don Cannon and Paul Schmitt and studying classical flute with the renowned musician Julius Baker. By the '80s, Campise settled in Austin, Texas where he taught classes and gigged nightly at clubs like the Elephant Room, sometimes backing heavyweights like Frank Sinatra or Sarah Vaughn. Though his main influences were bop and post-bop players like Charlie Parker and Eric Dolphy, Campise also played more meditative flute improvisations. He featured two long pieces in this style on *Bass Flute*, which he self-released on his own Loquat label in 1987. In the early '90s, Tab Barling signed Campise to his Heart Music label, a partnership that yielded five CDs and a Grammy nomination. Campise primarily worked in more trad jazz styles, but he returned to his meditative sound for the 2004 CD *The Newest Day*. Campise had many admirers and friends locally, with a long list of personal tributes and remembrances on his obituary page [here]( https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/statesman/name/tony-campise-obituary?id=52053132).","discography":{"tony-campise":{"albums":{"bass-flute":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Bass Flute","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":355,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tony-campise-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=81190362-aa98-43ae-9897-e8bf30f9f340","last_name":"Campise"},"tony-garone":{"artist_name":"Tony Garone","body":"Tony Garone was primarily a progressive rock singer/songwriter, fronting the band Heresy for several decades starting in the '70s. After playing five nights a week with Heresy, Garone pivoted to home recording in the mid-'80s, setting up a label with his friend [Earnest Woodall](/ernest-woodall) called Daystar to issue their work on cassette. While most of Garone's solo work was also in the prog-rock-realm, he did put out the more experimental release *Songs for the Pyramids* in 1988, joined by his brother Kenny. The two of them, plus Woodall, also released some improv-based electronic music as Loomings in the same year. In 1997, Garone moved to Arizona and embarked on a series of new solo works with historical themes.\n\nTony Garone was born in 1957 and grew up on Long Island, New York alongside three younger siblings. He came from a musical family and his father played accordion and guitar. When his father started teaching his sister to play guitar, Tony got jealous and asked for lessons too. His sister eventually dropped it for ballet, but Tony became obsessed with writing songwriting.\n\nOne day in high school, he met drummer Mike Deitch who was looking for others to join his prog-rock cover band Heresy. Garone, who loved Jethro Tull and ELP, jumped at the chance. Consisting of keyboardist Scott Harris, Deitch, and Garone, Heresy began playing live all over the Tristate area, eventually becoming fixtures on the club scene and playing five nights a week.\n\nHeresy mostly played cover songs live, though Harris and Garone were prolific songwriters. They got some attention from a song publisher at Polygram who tried to place their songs with other performers, but nothing ever materialized. However, the band finally got enough money together in 1985 to self-produce an LP called *At the Door*.\n\nDuring the early '80s, Garone worked as the supervisor at a factory early in the morning and gigged with the band a night, a grueling schedule that was made nearly impossible when he got married and started having kids. By the middle of the decade, Garone decided to focus his energies on home recording instead. To issue the cassettes, he partnered with nearby friend and guitarist Earnest Woodall to start a label called Daystar Music. The tapes were DIY, with black and white covers and handwritten labels, and the tapes were promoted with ads in magazines like *Factsheet Five* and *Option*. Their tagline was \"Not new age-just new.\"\n\n\"We came up with the idea to sell our tapes through a self-made magazine,\" Garone recalled. \"It was a tiny magazine, a couple pages, called *Creative Alternatives*. I printed them out on my laser printer. Me and Ernie [Woodall] wrote under pseudonyms because we didn't have any writers. That's where we sold cassettes.\"\n\nThe first album Garone released under his own name was *Shadowland* in 1988. The music was what he called \"avant folk,\" inspired by Peter Hammill's album *Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night*. After that, he formed a trio with Woodall and his brother Kenny called Loomings to play more experimental instrumental music. \"We got together and did weird jams,\" Garone said.\" My brother played Chapman Stick, I played computer, and Ernie played electric guitar with effects. It was pretty spacey stuff.\" Loomings was short-lived, but they did issue a self-titled cassette in 1988.\n\nIn the spirit of Loomings, Garone next produced a tape about the great pyramids. \"I had borrowed some keyboards from Scott Harris and my brother joined in on bass and keyboards,\" Garone recalled. \"At that time I read everything I could about the pyramids. I was obsessed. And when I get interested in something, music is the best way to express myself.\"\n\nGarone went on to release two more home-recorded albums, though he returned more to the prog-oriented sound of Heresy. *Proton Decay* featured drummer Casey Carney and *Invisibles* was a collaboration with musicians from Heresy, though both have vocals and fall outside the scope of this guide. Garone and Heresy also went on to put out a double album on CD in 1990 called *A Far Cry*. \n\nAfter this burst of activity, Garone took a break from recording. He and Woodall eventually folded their label in the early '90s. And then, in 1997, Garone and his family relocated to Arizona and Heresy mostly became dormant, though never completely inactive. \n\nGarone went back to school and got his BA during this time, earning a degree in religion and anthropology. He eventually started recording again, creating a new series of thematic albums, starting with *The Epic of Gilgamesh* in 2001. This musical interpretation of the ancient Sumerian story included contributions from other musicians sent via file sharing and Garone created an accompanying [website](https://tonygarone.wixsite.com/gilgamesh) that goes into much more detail. Other ambitious projects followed, including *Big Star Way* about UFO's; a musical interpretation of *Moby Dick* called *Ahab*; and *The Silk Road Journey of Xuanzang* about a Buddhist monk.\n\nIn 2013, Garone moved back to New York and started to play with members of Heresy again, recording a new album with them in 2016 called *Prufrock*, a musical adaption of T.S. Elliot's poem. They also have a new album in the works currently. Garone maintains a website [here](https://www.tonygarone.com).","discography":{"loomings":{"albums":{"loomings":{"image":"","label":"Daystar Records","review":"","title":"Loomings","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Loomings","entry_number":2},"tony-and-kenny-garone":{"albums":{"songs-for-the-pyramids":{"image":"","label":"Daystar Records","review":" I guess you could call  this New Age music, but it’s much looser and more alive  than much of the genre. Part of the difference is that the  Garones don’t shy away from electric guitars, and their  rambling, Egyptian-inspired tunes touch down in rock as  well as improv jazz and more spacey sounding stuff.  Rather vibrant, actually. \n\n(Mike Gunderloy, *Factsheet Five* #28, 1988)","title":"Songs for the Pyramids","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Tony and Kenny Garone","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":208,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tony-garone-640.jpg?alt=media&token=d50c0aae-b64b-43de-ade5-d193fad69f93","last_name":"Garone"},"tony-gerber":{"artist_name":"Tony Gerber","body":"Tony Gerber is a musician and entrepreneur with an interest in emerging technology, whether it was MIDI in the '80s or digital downloads in the late '90s.  Although his earliest self-released cassettes didn't make much of an impact, he later formed the more well-known Spacecraft band with [John Rose](/john-rose). He also found a niche producing electronic music festivals and hosting the Space for Music website, which united fans and artists in the early days of the internet. This led to a record label under the same name and radio shows focused on space music, with Gerber having a particularly successful run from about 1999 to 2006.\n\nBorn in 1961, Tony Gerber grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, where his father was a student at Purdue. His father later taught electronics at high school and brought home a theremin one day for his son to check out.  Gerber had a blast playing with it, priming him for a later interest in electronic instruments. Gerber already had his own guitar by then, too, given to him by his grandfather who was a singing preacher in the south.\n\nGerber recalls that his elementary school had a great music program, with top-of-the-line instruments and passionate teachers. His fifth-grade teacher became an early mentor, introducing him to electronic music like *Switched on Bach* and showing him the music lab at Indiana University. Gerber even went to see some electronic music performances at the university like IUSB professor Barton McClean, who had mapped chess tournaments to music. Gerber decided to build a mail-order synthesizer from PAIA and his father helped to troubleshoot the finicky instrument. \"At that time, I also had Arp and Moog brochures; I was just drooling,\" Gerber said.\n\nThrough the '70s, Gerber soaked up the electronic scene, listening to Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, early Genesis and Rick Wakeman, among many others. He also got into computers, a skill that would later come in handy during the Midi revolution of the mid-'80s.  \n\nGerber tried a few different colleges, first studying art at Indiana University and then music business at Belmont, but he never graduated. However, at Belmont he did end up meeting others interested in electronic music like [Giles Reaves](/giles-reaves) and [William Linton](/william-linton). Gerber and Linton became good friends and recorded many of their jam sessions, including the material that became *Cosmic Flight* in 1986. \"I treat everything as a recording session,\" Gerber said. \"I love playing with new people. The first time you play with someone is usually the most magical time.\"\n\nStarting in 1983, Gerber opened a gallery and framing business that became his primary occupation. \"The Gerbers are Swiss,\" Gerber said. \"We all know how to do woodwork.\"  Gerber had monthly shows and was doing well enough to sell the business a couple years later, enabling him to build an electronic music studio at his home. There he spent a year making his first album  *Teleworks*. The songs are mostly in a progressive electronic vein and show a debt to Vangelis with a flare for drama and thematic melodies, but there's also some dark ambient excursions and a Tangerine Dream-like space jam with William Linton. Gerber pressed about 100 copies of *Teleworks* on cassette, using the name Anthony Rian. He drove to New York to sell them on consignment at places like Tower Records but the album mostly went unnoticed.\n\nIn 1986, Gerber began working with Al Jolson on music row, helping him set up and run an early digital studio.  In his downtime, Gerber used the space to record his second album, *Clearly Opaque* which came out in 1987 under the name Anthony Rian Gerber. This was a more consistent and mature work than his debut, at times veering from space music territory into headier, brash soundscapes that demand close listening.\n\nBy this time, Gerber had started to produce multimedia concerts under the name Space for Music. The first show was a somewhat low key affair with a few hundred people, held at a farm and including performances from Gerber (see photo above), Giles Reaves, Kirby Shelstad, and others. But people loved the show, and Gerber went on to produce two more for larger crowds at Middle Tennessee University with the help of Mike Timme. (In the late '90s, he revived the concept again.)\n\nWith his experience from Al Jolson's studio, Gerber put together a commercial studio in 1989, doing music production, library music, multi-media and composing for films. He ran that until 1993 but started to get burned out on the business side of music and, in his words, \"moved into the woods for a while to record my own stuff and just rejuvenate.\" After recording two low-key releases during this time, Gerber made his first big splash with *Blue Western Sky* on Lektronik Soundscapes, which showed a more ambient sound than his previous work.\n\nBy the mid '90s, Gerber had connected with fellow synth player John Rose from Kentucky. The two of them recorded a cassette called *Travelers* in 1993 and then later formed Spacecraft with Diane Timmons. This band put out three CD's on Lektronik Soundscapes that sold fairly well at the time.\n\nDuring this same period, Gerber got interested in web design, and launched his own site, Spaceformusic.com. The site initially served as a hub for fans and artists interested in ambient music, but grew to become a record label as well. Gerber put out releases by William Linton, Giles Reaves, [Robert Rich](/robert-rich) and many others over the span of the next seven years. He also had a lot of success with mp3.com, becoming one of the top sellers for ambient music during the site's heyday, helping him and pals like Linton finally earn a decent payday from their music.\n\nWhen the label started dying down, Gerber pivoted into internet radio and went on to host over 2000 broadcasts by his estimation, doing shows every Wednesday and Sunday night. Gerber is still active on the space music scene and maintains the Cypress Rosewood site [here](http://cypressrosewood.com/tonygerber/) and the Space for Music site [here](http://spaceformusic.net).","discography":{"anthony-rian":{"albums":{"teleworks":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Teleworks","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Anthony Rian","entry_number":1},"anthony-rian-gerber":{"albums":{"aural-overview":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Aural Overview","year":"1992"},"clearly-opaque":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Clearly Opaque","year":"1987"},"native-spirit":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Native Spirit","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"Anthony Rian Gerber","entry_number":3},"anthony-rian-william-linton-mason-stevens":{"albums":{"cosmic-flight":{"image":"","label":"Emerald Castle Music","review":"Three extended pieces of \"Original Electronic music\" with two synthesizers and and one treated bell-like guitar. \"The result of several live improvisational sessions,\" *Cosmic Flight* explores some underground space music/Hearts of Space/[Micheal Stearns](/michael-stearns) territory with the title track/B-side being the most textured and enveloping.  \n\n(Erik Bluhm, 2023)","title":"Cosmic Flight","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Anthony Rian, William Linton & Mason Stevens","entry_number":2},"tony-gerber":{"albums":{"blue-western-sky":{"image":"","label":"Lektronic Soundscapes","review":"","title":"Blue Western Sky","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Tony Gerber","entry_number":4},"tony-gerber-jon-rose":{"albums":{"travelers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Travelers","year":"1993"}},"artist_name":"Tony Gerber and Jon Rose","entry_number":5}},"entry_number":66,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Tony-Gerber.jpg?alt=media&token=bf4cf503-44a2-48bc-920e-f741625d0076","last_name":"Gerber"},"tony-selvage":{"artist_name":"Tony Selvage","body":"Based in Los Angeles, violinist Tony Selvage is closely linked to the new age scene of the late '70s, appearing on early albums by [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern) (*Zodiac Suite*, *Rings of Saturn*) and [Georgia Kelly](/georgia-kelly) (*Seapeace*). Selvage, who was a Vietnam veteran, was interested in the restorative powers of music and created *Harmonic Dreamtime* with synthesist [David Storrs](/david-storrs) to help listeners heal and relax. With his signature electric violin sound, Selvage was in demand in other genres as well, playing with artists including Brian Wilson, Yellow Autumn, Robbie Patton, and Gino Vannelli.","discography":{"halpern-and-selvage":{"albums":{"gaia's-groove":{"image":"","label":"Sound Rx","review":"","title":"Gaia's Groove","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Halpern and Selvage","entry_number":2},"storrs-selvage":{"albums":{"selvage-storrs":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Harmonic Dreamtime","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Tony Selvage and David Storrs","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":378,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/selvage.jpeg?alt=media&token=02e8494b-0a2a-4126-a96b-770fdb42d61b","last_name":"Selvage"},"tony-wells":{"artist_name":"Tony Wells","body":"Tony Wells is a saxophone and flute player who has been based in Las Vegas since the early '80s. He is best known for two self-released new age cassettes, *Collage* and *Weatherspace*, which have been circulating on the secondary market in the past decade after some collectors tracked him down and helped introduce his music to a new generation. Wells also had an earlier new age cassette called *Music for Flutes and Sounds* that he recorded on a lark and became a surprise hit at a a local metaphysical book shop, encouraging him to continue recording in the style.\n\nBorn in 1953, Tony Wells grew up in Long Beach, California. He started on clarinet, playing in marching bands, concert bands, and orchestras. He also learned flute and tenor sax, eventually making the latter his primary instrument. By the '70s, Wells was playing in rock bands, soul groups, and touring with a Polynesian themed show that brought him to Las Vegas for the first time. He loved the city and figured he'd find lots of work, so he moved there in 1980. \"There were thousands of working musicians when I got there,\" Wells recalled, \"but after a while they were starting to close all the lounges and showrooms and put in slots and sports books.\"\n\nOne of Wells early new age projects was *Music for Flutes and Sounds*. He was already a fan of Paul Horn's more meditative works like *Inside the Taj Mahal*, as well as Tim Weisberg's flute pieces with echo. \"I found an Audubon society record with birds chirping and I edited all the words out,\" he recalls. \"I took that and played flute through Echoplex with bells and bowls. I shared it with people, and they all loved it. A metaphysical bookstore in town tried it out and the customers loved it! But the people who worked at the bookstore hated it because she played it all day every day.\"\n\nThough Wells continued to play jazz around town, he continued to experiment with new age after seeing the sales it could generate. In the mid-'80s, he produced two more cassettes that got national distribution, *Collage* and *Weatherspace.*  \"Everything was improvised on those albums,\" Wells said. \"I would record one track and do another track over it. I didn't make any plans.\" \n\nWells sold the cassettes at craft fairs and at gigs, such as his regular concerts during full moons. He also recalls bringing copies personally to Suzanne Doucet's Only New Age Music Store in Los Angeles. \"I remember that I took a copy of *Collage* to her store,\" Wells said. \"She played it I the store and there were speakers outside where people could hear the music. Someone walked by and said, 'What is this? I want to buy it.' So that sealed the deal.\"\n\nIn the '90s, Wells stopped playing music for a while and worked construction, though he did get back into music eventually, returning to his roots to play big band jazz which he still plays today. Wells currently resides in Las Vegas.","discography":{"tony-wells":{"albums":{"collage":{"image":"","label":"Karma Productions","review":"","title":"Collage","year":"1986"},"music-for-flutes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Music for Flutes and Sounds","year":"1980"},"weatherspace":{"image":"","label":"Karma Productions","review":"","title":"Weatherspace","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":382,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/tony-wells-640.jpg?alt=media&token=fcc61f30-91bd-4755-a287-02533c651dd0","last_name":"Wells"},"uma-silbey":{"artist_name":"Uma Silbey","body":"Uma Silbey was a pianist, jeweler, and crystal expert who began releasing music starting in 1985 with her husband Ramana Das and later as a solo artist. Classically trained on piano, schooled in psychology, and brimming with optimism and an entrepreneurial drive, Silbey was primed for success in the healing culture of new age. Most of her earliest releases were guided imagery and music, but she had her biggest sales with the instrumental *Watergarden* in 1988.  Silbey's jewelry business \"Uma\", which she started in the late '70s, was a big success with gross sales in the millions and 42 employees at its height. \n\nUma Silbey (born Marilyn Glick, 1951) grew up in a middle class household in Los Angeles, California in a family that put a strong emphasis on musical ability.  She began studying piano at a young age and stuck to it, practicing several hours a day before and after school.  She also took singing lessons and ballet and entered talent contests, but Silbey began to look for something deeper. \"I had a spiritual awakening at a young age,\" Silbey said. \"But it also seemed to me like people were religious only on Sundays. It was very hypocritical. I was very interested in love and the nature of reality.\" Silbey looked beyond Christianity for ways to explore the human mind, beginning with hypnotism in high school and later taking an interest in meditation, yoga and shamanism in college.\n\nAfter graduating from UCLA in 1975, Silbey worked with a Guru named Neem Karoli Baba who gave her the name Uma after a Hindu Goddess. She took her Bodhisattva vow from the Dalai Lama and moved into an ashram where she became a kundalini yoga teacher and spent much of her time meditating. She also became active with the Yogi Bhajan Sikhs, leading kirtans, teaching meditation and singing bhajans (devotional music.) During one session in Los Angeles she met a man named Ramana Das and had an immediate connection.\n\nRamana Das, born Paul Silberstein in 1938, was living in San Francisco at the time and hosted weekly sessions of devotional music on Tuesday nights.  After Uma first met him, Das casually invited her to visit in San Francisco but Uma interpreted it as an invitation to move in. She started forwarding her mail to his studio apartment in Noe Valley when she suddenly got a call from Das. \"Uma, why am I getting your mail?\" Das asked her. Uma explained that it was a misunderstanding, but Das invited her to move in anyway.\n\nSilbey moved up to San Francisco in 1980 and by then had started her own jewelry business centered around crystals. Das, who'd worked as a marketing executive before his spiritual awakening, used his skills to help Uma build her business. Silbey became an expert in the field of crystals and toured around the country, and later the world, giving workshops. The success of her company in turn helped to fund the duo's musical aspirations.\n\nIn 1985, Silbey and Das released their first three cassettes, *Wakan-taka*, *Helios*, and *Crystal Path*. The first two were a potpourri of percussion - cymbals, bells, gongs, and rattles - rich with primal, heavy atmosphere. *Crystal Path* was a more relaxing affair, with Silbey's guided imagery on the healing properties of crystals. Their fourth release from 1986, *Crystals, Colors, Chakras* was similar.\n\n1986 was a pivotal year for Silbey. She and Ramana Das separated, though they remained close. Their last album was appropriately titled *Flying Free*. In the same year, Silbey also published her first book, *The Complete Crystal Guidebook* which explained how to use crystals for cleansing, meditation, as jewelry and more. The book went on to be a best seller and helped raise her profile even more.\n\nUma and Das' divorce was finalized in 1988 and Uma began releasing a steady stream of solo albums including the all-instrumental *Watergarden* which was her biggest seller to date, moving close to 50,000 copies. In the same year, she also released two guided imagery albums *Healing* and *Relax*. For the next 20 years, Silbey stayed busy as a musician and author, and in 2010 downsized her business and retired to Maui where she currently lives. She maintains a website [here](https://www.umasilbey.com/).","discography":{"uma":{"albums":{"healing":{"image":"","label":"Blue Sky","review":"","title":"Healing","year":"1989"},"relax":{"image":"","label":"Blue Sky","review":"","title":"Relax","year":"1989"},"watergarden":{"image":"","label":"Blue Sky","review":"","title":"Watergarden","year":"1988"}},"artist_name":"Uma","entry_number":2},"uma-and-ramana-das":{"albums":{"crystal-chakras-color-and-sound":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Crystals, Chakras, Color and Sound","year":"1986"},"crystal-path":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Crystal Path","year":"1985"},"flying-free":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"Both sides are guided meditations from Uma scored with gongs, synths, and bowls.","title":"Flying Free","year":"1986"},"helios":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Helios","year":"1985"},"wakan-taka":{"image":"","label":"U-Music","review":"","title":"Wakan-taka","year":"1985"}},"artist_name":"Uma and Ramana Das","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":77,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Uma-Silbey.jpg?alt=media&token=3545a607-4855-4b51-8b6e-7a43c4bd5906","last_name":"Silbey"},"upper-astral":{"artist_name":"Upper Astral","body":"Upper Astral was designed as the in-house musical project for [Dick Sutphen's](/dick-sutphen) Valley Of The Sun label, on call to create ambient backgrounds for his spoken word, hypnosis, and self-help cassettes as needed. Upper Astral also executed pure music tapes of specific atmospheres and concepts dictated by Sutphen. Originally the Minnesota classical pianist [David Naegele](/david-naegele) (pictured above) helmed this role, recording 1981’s deeply blissed debut, *Upper Astral Suite*, and the more ominous follow-up, *Manifestations*.  \n\nIn 1982, overwhelmed with work, Naegele enlisted his friend and neighbor [David Storrs](/david-storrs) to collaborate on a number of upcoming Upper Astral assignments. Their first two titles as a duo, *Crystal Cave (Back To Atlantis)* and *Skybirds*, skew more sentimental but are effective statements of purist new age dream-weaving. Unfortunately, by late 1983 Naegele became disillusioned by his role within Valley of the Sun and left the company. *Higher-Self Rendezvous* and *Journey To The Edge Of The Universe* were recorded entirely by Storrs, though they were conceived collaboratively, before Naegele's departure. \n\nSutphen hired Detroit journeyman musician [Robert Slap](/robert-slap) to fill Naegele's position, which included handling all Upper Astral tasks. So from 1984 onwards all music credited to Upper Astral was created solely by Slap. 1987's *Astral Massage* is the only proper Upper Astral solo title complete during his term, and is a relatively straightforward ambient new age outing. However, Slap would release many more titles under his own name for the label, and produce many more.\n\n(Britt Brown, 2018)\n","discography":{"upper-astral":{"albums":{"1-upper-astral-suite":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Chimes tinkle. Waves crash. Angelic voices float through an airy mist.  *Upper Astral Suite* sets the template for the blissed-out sound that would define Valley of the Sun in the coming years, drawing from a mix of Pink Floyd, Deuter, and Steven Halpern. Composer [David Naegele](/david-naegele) would refine the formula into something more bankable a year later on *Temple in the Forest*, but this one still resonates with primordial inspiration.","title":"Upper Astral Suite","year":"1981"},"2-manifestation":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Minor key meditations from [David Naegele](/david-naegele) that shimmer like a mystical night air. Both sides are sparse and ominous, dominated by a low rumbling drone and synth leads that alternate between foreboding and majestic, with occasional passages of benedictine vocalise. Things lighten up slightly on side two's \"Distant Echoes,\" which injects some space-rock style chord changes to give the piece a more developed-feel.","title":"Manifestation","year":"1981"},"astral-massage":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"*Astral Massage* is an instrumental tape designed for massage that features [Robert Slap's](/robert-slap) graceful playing and airy arrangements. The two sides have distinct moods and themes, though both are relaxing and gorgeous. For the first side, he uses his keyboard like a flute,  repeating short phrases and embellishing them while the sound of waves punctuates each section. The flip side takes inspiration from Chinese classical music with pentatonic melodies woven on bells, piano, chimes, and synths. ","title":"Astral Massage","year":"1987"},"crystal-cave":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"With a catchy title and heavenly instrumentation,*Crystal Cave* was a popular release at the time for Valley of the Sun. This collaboration between David Naegele and newcomer David Storrs finds the duo ditching the synths and piano of earlier Upper Astral to focus on the human voice and harp. The title track, which takes up all of side one, is built on layers of ethereal voices backed by harp and bells. The second side is solo harp, played by Carrol McLaughlin in a gentle, dreamy style that is superficially pretty but doesn't leave much of an impression.","title":"Crystal Cave (Back to Atlantis)","year":"1982"},"entrance-to-the-secret-lagoon":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"A solo effort by [David Naegele](/david-naegele), this was his first to feature his new Rhodes Chroma synth. Recorded in four hours in his basement, this tape conjures a more emotive, nostalgic sound than his earlier releases. The album was a favorite of label owner Dick Sutphen and went through several printings and cover designs.","title":"Entrance to the Secret Lagoon","year":"1983"},"higher-self-rendezvous":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"Whereas earlier Upper Astral tapes hinted at Pink Floyd, the connection is made more explicit here, with [David Storrs](/david-storrs) moving away from organic new age to dive headlong into mellow space rock. Throughout two long tracks, he commands a shiny array of cascading keyboards over classic rock chord progressions and the world's chilliest drum machine. The first side feels like an instrumental slow-jam while the second side is more cosmic, albeit in a Vangelis kinda way.","title":"Higher Self-Rendezvous","year":"1983"},"journey-to-the-edge-of-the-universe":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"For me, the best  of [Storr's](/david-storrs) albums under the Upper Astral banner. The first side is an epic, Kosmiche jam that shoots the listener heavenward on a four note bassline and carefully assembled layers of keyboards and guitars. The second side approximates floating in space, with celestial arpeggios and abstract electronics choreographed like planets in motion. A hint of treacle peaks through, but Storrs successfully revives the more ineffable spirit of early Upper Astral, even if he had to journey far beyond Earth to find it.","title":"Journey to the Edge of the Universe","year":"1983"},"skybirds":{"image":"","label":"Valley of the Sun","review":"This meditative seaside experience is a highlight of the Upper Astral catalog, combining the best of [Naegele](/david-naegele) and [Storrs'](/david-storrs) unique talents as they channel the movements of waves and birds. The mantra-like jams are grounded by a Juno 6 drone, with cycles of acoustic piano, vocoder affirmations (\"fly with me\"), and arpeggiated synth lines. Both sides are similar, though the first is more majestic while the second is subdued and inward, with electric piano in place of acoustic.\n","title":"Skybirds","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":71,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Naegele-alt.jpg?alt=media&token=760e7124-110a-4bf3-ba91-25cc6c10f875","last_name":"Upper Astral"},"vito-ricii":{"artist_name":"Vito Ricci","body":"Vito Ricci is an electronic composer based in New York who first gained recognition in the '80s for his scores to plays by the Creation Production Company, founded by Susan Mosakowski and Matthew Maguire. Ricci scored most of their shows starting in the late '70s, culminating with his score to *The Memory Theatre of Giuilio Camillo*, released on vinyl as *Music From Memory* in 1985. Prior to that, Ricci issued small cassette runs of other scores, such as *Say No More* and *Postones*, the latter a collection of pieces from various plays.  He continued to compose into the '90s and beyond, though much of it remained unreleased until Dutch label Music From Memory (named after his album) began a reissue campaign that also included selling his remaining stock of LP's.","discography":{"vito-ricci":{"albums":{"music-from-memory":{"image":"","label":"Creation Productions","review":"","title":"Music from Memory","year":"1985"},"postones":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Postones","year":"1983"},"say-no-more":{"image":"","label":"Creation Productions","review":"","title":"Say No More","year":"1984"},"the-inferno":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"The Inferno","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":377,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/vito-ricci-640.jpg?alt=media&token=6dba4680-c3d0-439b-836e-cd7616f41304","image_credit":"","last_name":"Ricci"},"voyager":{"artist_name":"Voyager","body":"Voyager was the name used by Tom Moore for his music projects in the mid '80s.  Prior to that Moore was in the duo Crystal with Michael Clay and together they released one album *Rainbow Voyagers* during a four year stint playing live around the Arizona area.\n\nIn 1966, Tom Moore was just another rock guitarist trying to hit it big with his band Wild Kingdom. One night in Cleveland, when they were on tour, the band finally got their break when rising pop star James Barry Keefer caught their performance and signed them on as his backing band. Keefer was then recording under the name Keith, and had a breakout hit with \"Ain't Gonna Lie\" followed up by top ten single \"98.6.\" Keith, backed by the Wild Kingdom, toured all over the US and opened for bands like the Beach Boys and Paul Revere and the Raiders.  They also were a part of Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour.\n\nThe band toured together until 1968 when Moore got drafted and eventually served in Vietnam.  He returned from the military a few years later and moved to Virginia to finish his undergraduate degree at William and Mary. On a trip to New York, he picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be Ron St. Germaine, an actor and musician who was heading to New York to be in the musical *Hair*.  St. Germaine passed along a book to Moore called *Yoga, Youth and Reincarnation* that ignited an interest in meditation and yoga that would change the course of Moore's life. By 1974, Moore began teaching yoga and meditation and spent time with people like Ram Dass and Alan Watts.\n\nIn 1975, Moore moved to Arizona and began working towards a graduate degree in religious studies (focusing on Buddhism) at Arizona State University in Tempe.  While in grad school, Moore met fellow student Michael Clay who was working towards a Ph.D. in Chemistry. In 1978, Clay had just bought a synthesizer and let Moore borrow it for a weekend while he was out of town. Moore was immediately hooked.\n\nMoore purchased his own synth in 1978 and began to collaborate with Clay.  By 1980 the two were living together, buying musical equipment and developing their sound. They devoured music by synth-based artists, buying tons of imports from a local record store by bands such as the Far East Family Band, Steve Hillage, Ash Ra Temple, and Tangerine Dream. Once their set was refined, they started playing shows at local planetariums, space shows, and art galleries.\n\nIn 1983, they went into Synchestra Studios in Phoenix, AZ and recorded their live set. They released it themselves on cassette and sent it out to radio shows like \"Music from the Hearts of Space\" and \"Musical Starstreams,\" both of which featured the album on air. With this success, Moore was able to get direct distribution with Tower Records. The album sold a few thousand copies by Moore's estimation.  However, the band went on an indefinite hiatus when Clay accepted a teaching job in San Francisco.\n\nLeft alone in Tempe, Moore put the music on hold for a few years and became a pilot after a Cessna fun flight got him hooked on flying.  Moore got his license and became a working pilot, mostly doing corporate work in small Beechcraft King Air planes.  Using the money from this job, he was able to build a nice studio in his house and start recording again as Voyager.\n\nOn choosing the name, Moore said, \"I was reading about the Voyager mission, and it just seemed appropriate.  Whether it's exploring an external space in a plane, or an inner place through meditation, I see myself as a voyager.\" \n\nMoore self-released three albums as Voyager. The first two explored a more rock and groove-oriented sound that included some extended jams with guitar and percussion in addition to some more ambient tracks. Moore, who liked working with others instead of going fully solo, was joined by guitarist Thomas Gates on *Horizon of Hope*. For his next two releases, *Contact* and *Sound Dreams*, he brought in synthesist Charles Thaxton who later released many albums under the stage name Char-El.  According to Moore, he sold about 7,000 copies of each release, with \"Sound Dreams\" as the best seller in his estimation.\n\nIn 1987, Moore was burned out from trying to run his music business in addition to a busy schedule as a pilot. He decided to take a protracted break from releasing music commercially, although he continued to compose and work in his studio at home.\n","discography":{"crystal":{"albums":{"rainbow-voyagers":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"After a decade marinating in Europe, progressive electronic music saw a surge of interest in the U.S. underground in the early ’80s, with many American artists drawing inspiration from planetariums and outer space. Crystal’s timing was good, releasing *Rainbow Voyagers* as the scene was gaining momentum, helping them get radio play on *Hearts of Space* and sell a few thousand copies of this cassette. The album, while not quite a classic, is still a strong entry in the field, with an impressive scope that ranges from the astral atmospherics of \"Departure at Dawn\" to the menacing groove of \"Trek to Kilimanjaro.\" The centerpiece is the three-part \"Kingdom of Rainbows,\"  an epic suite that showcases Moore’s flowing guitar leads and Clay’s propulsive synth work.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Rainbow Voyagers","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Crystal","entry_number":1},"voyager":{"albums":{"contact":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"With *Contact*, Voyager main-man Tom Moore better refines the groove-oriented approach to electronic \"visionary music\" first heard on his solo debut.  Recorded live at the Phoenix Performing Arts Theater in December 1986, Moore is supported by Charles Thaxton on synth and Eddie Katz on percussion. The sound could be compared to [David Storrs](/david-storrs)' work with Valley of the Sun or late-'70s Ashra at their most hypnotic and propulsive. Rhythms drive many of the tracks, from the up-tempo, proto-trance sound of \"Arrival\" to the chugging rainstick boogie of \"Cosmic Dance\" with brain-melting synth leads and an ambient come-down with feedback and spaceship sounds. \n\nFellow new agers have technical credits here, with [Aiko Domo](/aiki-domo) providing cover art and [Kellan Fluckiger](/mindspace) handling mixing.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Contact","year":"1987"},"horizon-of-hope":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Horizon of Hope* introduces Voyager's groove-based electronic sound with searing guitar leads and hypnotic beats.  The cover may look more like something from [Jonn Serrie](/jonn-serrie), but this is closer to Trans Am or Ash Ra Temple in sound. \n\nTom Moore is joined here by Thomas Gates on guitar and Eddie Katz on percussion, creating a driving, energetic sound with lots of dynamics as on the Schulze-ish \"Skywalking/A Song of the Earth\" and the swaggering \"A New Horizon.\" Despite the energy and obvious enthusiasm, many tracks stay stuck in neutral and a few include a misguided attempt at vocals (which were removed on a later remix in 1987). Moore would better refine his rock and dance-influenced electronic sound on *Contact* two years later.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Horizon of Hope","year":"1985"},"sound-dreams":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"*Sound Dreams* is Moore’s most ambient release, eschewing the jammy grooves and prog moves of *Contact* for six songs of gently floating synths meant to invoke a state of dreaming. Some tracks include wordless vocals, with male choir sounds on \"Dream World\" and female voices on \"Dream of the Golden Flower.\" All of the pieces are lovely, with the melodic \"Twilight Dream\" casting a particularly enchanting spell. \n\nAs with *Contact*, fellow new agers [Kellen Fluckiger](/mindspace) handles mixing and [Aiki Domo](/elevation-express/aiki-domo) drew the cover art.\n\n(MG, 2026)","title":"Sound Dreams","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"Voyager","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":45,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/TomMooresync.jpg?alt=media&token=7fa6a5c2-ce09-46df-8f2f-5b34b8d0cefd","last_name":"Voyager"},"walter-whitney":{"artist_name":"Walter Whitney","body":"Walter Whitney was a synth player and recording engineer based in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a frequent collaborator with guitarist [Carl Weingarten](/carl-weingarten), joining him in the trio Delay Tactics and producing two albums as a duo as well. After that, Whitney stopped releasing music as his career and family obligations took over, but in 2015 he returned to music making in the digital world, establishing a Bandcamp [page]( https://walterwhitney.bandcamp.com/) for his new music.\n\nBorn in 1954, Whitney grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis in a town called Overland. His father was a photographer with a knack for fixing things, and is still known locally as the first person to snap a picture of the newly completed St. Louis arch. Whitney was a big fan of sci-fi movies as a kid, and his father helped him build a space control panel with blinking lights. Naturally, Whitney was drawn to synthesizers as well when he first discovered them at a young age.\n\n\"My dad was a hi-fi nut with an amazing stereo system,\" Whitney recalled. \"He brought home a record called *The Happy Moog* [by Perry and Kingsley]. It was real quirky and corny, but when you were a kid, you go 'What is that?! I gotta know what’s that all about. And then I heard *Switched on Bach*.\"\n\nAfter graduating high school in 1972, Whitney started taking music more seriously. When he heard Todd Rundgren's album *Something/Anything* he was blown away to learned that Rundgren produced the album and played all the instruments himself. Whitney begged his dad for a multi-track recorder and got a TEAC ¼\" tape machine and got to work teaching himself how to use it. He’d started out playing guitar at first, but the following year he bought his first synth and was hooked for the rest of his life.\n\nWhitney was restless in the '70s, moving to California and then to Denver in 1977. There he got a job as a sound man for a band called the Eclipse and worked at a music store. During that time, he remembers working on a demo tape for a young comedian named Michael Winslow, who would later hit it big with his crazy sound effects imitations in the *Police Academy* movies.\n\nWhitney returned to St. Louis in late 1979 and continued to work a variety of jobs. He would eventually find his way into the automotive field doing graphics, and his job paid well enough that it never made sense to become an audio engineer full time.  However, he continued to record his own music at home, and take on occasional side projects such as mixing and engineering. \n\nIt was through his studio work that Whitney met his most important musical partner, Carl Weingarten, in 1982. Weingarten was an ambitious guitarist who had just completed his first album, *Submergings* and he hired Whitney to engineer his second album *Windfalls*. After that was complete, the two decided to collaborate on future projects. \"Walt was hungry to collaborate,\" Weingarten recalled. \"I took a very serious approach to the music, while Walter had a more loose, fun attitude. We balanced each other out.\"\n\nSoon after they met, Weingarten invited Whitney to join his band Delay Tactics along with Reed Nesbit. The trio soon began prepping their debut album *Out Pop Options*, a mix of experimental synth pop with ambient textures and occasional vocals. Weingarten pressed 500 copies on his own label Multiphase and it got some college radio airplay despite the band not playing live much to support it.\n\nAfter that, Weingarten put out a solo tape of Whitney's home recorded experiments called *Composer X*. The tape certainly shows the influence of Todd Rundgren in the dynamic synth arrangements and quirky pop-based approach to electronic music. After that, the duo partnered on the gentle ambient album *Dreaming in Colors*, which would go on to be a big seller for the label. It's an album that Whitney still considers one of their best.\n\nMeanwhile, Delay Tactics shuffled the lineup, with Dave Udell replacing Nesbit. The group began playing live more often between 1983 and 1986. Weingarten pressed 1,000 copies of their next album *Any Questions* and advertised it heavily. The promo push paid off with radio play, a PBS [profile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZbAyCfjRSM&fbclid=IwAR0TkhVCzaDNh_glaYV0qvGvQAM__ZbTyYpqlxdhMAip38beRWE9sgoI5Mw), positive critical reviews and better sales than the debut. However, Delay Tactics was put on hold as Weingarten shifted his focus to solo albums. Whitney remained a close collaborator, mixing Weingarten’s *Laughing at Paradise* and then pairing up to write and produce *Primitive Earth* in 1989, their final release together. \n\nBy this time, Whitney, who married in 1982, now had two children and much less free time for music. He took a long hiatus until 2015, when he started playing music again. \"I've had a studio in my house since 1973. I never did much performing, I just loved the studio,\" Whitney said. \"These days I’m playing experimental, dark ambient music. It’s not what you’d expect, because I’m a very cheerful person. But when I get these sounds that are scary I just have to go with it.\"","discography":{"carl-weingarten-walter-whitney":{"albums":{"dreaming-in-colors":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Dreaming in Colors","year":"1985"},"primitive-earth":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Primitive Earth","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Carl Weingarten, Walter Whitney","entry_number":3},"delay-tactics":{"albums":{"any-questions":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"Synthesizer-influenced band meeting somewhere at the rock/pop interface. Clean sound, well-produced, with a sound leaning towards the softer side of electronic music.\n\n(Bob Morris, *Option*, March/April 1985)","title":"Any Questions?","year":"1984"},"out-pop-options":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Out-Pop Options","year":"1982"}},"artist_name":"Delay Tactics","entry_number":2},"walter-whitney":{"albums":{"composer-x":{"image":"","label":"Multiphase","review":"","title":"Composer X","year":"1983"}},"artist_name":"Walter Whitney","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":180,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/walter-whitney-571.jpg?alt=media&token=54953ef3-b080-4f0d-9b2e-b48297d4a275","last_name":"Whitney"},"warren-sampson":{"artist_name":"Warren Sampson","body":"Warren Sampson is a guitarist who self-released several ambient albums on his own Big Road Music label in the late '80s while working as an aerospace engineer. He is mostly known for his debut *Traveller* which came out on vinyl and cassette and shows influences from Brian Eno and Leo Kottke.\n\nBorn in 1959 and raised in Rockford, Illinois, Warren Sampson grew up loving music and acting, especially musical comedy. Inspired by Leo Kottke, he started playing fingerstyle guitar in high school, but he was also a fan of prog-rock and electronic music. While working towards a degree in engineering at the University of Illinois, he took some electronic music classes and got into ambient music like Cluster and Brian Eno. \"*Discreet Music* was the first record of Eno's I remember hearing that stopped me,\" he recalled. \"*On Land* is a landmark album too. It's so organic. I could listen to that every day.\"\n\nAfter graduating from college, Sampson moved to Los Angeles and got a job as an aerospace engineer. He also took some acting classes. Earlier, he'd obtained a four-track, which he used to compose scores for small indie movies by fellow students. \"A lot of *Traveller* was written in college,\" Sampson said. \"I can't say the recordings were made in college, though. I had a 9-5 job, and I would get up at 4:30 in the morning, recording for an hour and a half before work, playing with my headphones down in the basement.\" \n\nBy the time he was ready to release his debut in 1987, Sampson and his family had relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota. At his job he worked up a cover for *Traveller* on a Xerox machine and pressed 250 copies. He sent some to distributors, but he sold very few copies. \"I did zero to promote this album,\" he recalled. After *Traveller*, Sampson recorded two albums of symphonic music using a Kurzweil sampler, such as *Still Life* in 1988 but he wasn't satisfied with the sound and barely distributed them at all.  \n\nSampson went on to work as an engineer for 20 years and eventually returned to music, this time working in pit orchestras. In the 2010's, collectors began to approach Sampson and he realized that the album was still resonating with listeners 30 years later. In 2018, Love All Day reissued *Traveller* on vinyl and put out an album of new music by Sampson as well. \n\nLooking back, Sampson believes part of *Traveller*'s lasting power was due to the music's simplicity. \"I was conscious of not adding too much,\" Sampson said. \"I just had a [Yamaha] DX-7, maybe a bass, my guitar. I decided to play the things I could play and not try to prove anything. It was a set of limitations; Eno talks about that. Limitations are a powerful force in making any form of art. The guitar I recorded *Traveller* with - I built that myself. A guy at Illinois built the neck and I carved the body out of maple. I just plugged into the front of my Tascam.\"\n","discography":{"warren-sampson":{"albums":{"still-life":{"image":"","label":"Big Road Music","review":"","title":"Still Life","year":"1988"},"traveler":{"image":"","label":"Big Road Music","review":"","title":"Traveller","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":285,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Warren-Sampson-crop.jpg?alt=media&token=0d202d4c-0d23-4f15-8cf2-4da46e33e384","image_credit":"","last_name":"Sampson"},"wayne-musgrave":{"artist_name":"Wayne Musgrave","body":"Wayne Musgrave (born 1953) is a keyboard player who released many relaxation tapes for Mary Richards’ Master Your Mind label that could be compared to Adam Martin Geiger or Arden Wilken. After a career on the fringes of the soft rock music scene in the '70s, Musgrave reinvented himself as a composer for film and commercials in the early '80s. Moving to Provo, Utah, Musgrave got some acclaim for an album of synth instrumentals (*Jesus the Christ, Joseph the Prophet*) targeted at the local Latter Day Saints community. This eventually led to studio work that included scoring documentaries and local commercials. In 1985, Musgrave began working as a music therapist for the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, where created hundreds of custom relaxation tapes for individual clients. This led to his partnership with Mary Richards (born 1924), a hypnotherapist and professor who also narrated many guided relaxation tapes on the label as well, maintaining a website until 2010 when she passed away. (Note: the old catalogs for Master Your Mind label list close to 20 additional releases though it is unconfirmed if these feature Musgrave's music or not.)","discography":{"wayne-musgrave":{"albums":{"angel's-song":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"This was one of Musgrave’s more popular tapes, perhaps due the angel theme, and musically it’s probably one of his better ones, though this still won’t excite many collectors. The music itself is  delicate string synths and cascades of electric piano, aiming to create a heavenly mood with a hint of mystery and wonder. ","title":"Angel's Song","year":"1986"},"dreamscapes":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Dreamscapes","year":"1985"},"fall":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Fall","year":"1984"},"golden-dreams":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Golden Dreams","year":"1988"},"magical-garden":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"Musgrave pretty much made the same tape over and over for Mary Richards, using saccharine strings and sentimental piano melodies. Unfortunately, inspiration and substance are often lacking, and this is no exception.","title":"Magical Garden","year":"1986"},"morning-mist":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Morning Mist","year":"1985"},"music-for-fogiveness":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Music for Forgiveness","year":"1986"},"ocean-rhapsody":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Ocean Rhapsody","year":"1986"},"peaceful-journey":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Peaceful Journey","year":"1986"},"seaside-images":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"Light-as-a-feather electric piano lullabies with gentle wave sounds and synth strings. Musgrave might have potential but his penchant for schmaltz and sentimentality makes it seem more like music for a softcore romance than something for meditation.","title":"Seaside Images","year":"1985"},"summer":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Summer","year":"1984"},"wings-of-the-heart":{"image":"","label":"Master Your Mind","review":"","title":"Wings of the Heart","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":431,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/wayne-musgrave-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=f262e702-6f47-4061-b61c-d961c5d17496","last_name":"Musgrave"},"will-morris":{"artist_name":"Will Morris","body":"Will Morris was an accomplished drummer and multi-instrumentalist who performed with orchestras, jazz combos and funk bands in LA before producing a couple of his own new age releases in the mid-'80s with the help of friend Steve Roach. While Morris enjoyed the challenge of jazz and symphonic music, his own music reflected a deeper interest in healing and astrology.\n\nBorn in 1956, Morris was the son of a military intelligence officer who moved the family around for a while before settling in Dayton, Ohio. It was there that Morris began playing the piano, and later the drums. In high school he joined a hippie rock band called Rosewood that played Grateful Dead and Neil Young covers, in addition to a slate of originals.\n\nAfter high school, Morris knew that music was his passion but was unsure how to translate it into a career. Bob Nyswonger, Morris' cousin and a bass player who went on to some success with Adrian Belew in the late '80s, suggested that Morris try playing professionally instead of studying music in school. Morris followed his advice and headed west to LA in 1975.\n\nOnce in LA, Morris stayed busy with classes at Valley Junior College and the Dick Grove School of Music where he studied percussion and composition, as well as working with a series of funk bands.  He eventually landed a more lucrative gig with Terrell Prude, a B-3 organ player in the mold of Jimmy Smith.  Morris toured with him for two years but felt a different calling and left Prude's band in 1977.\n\nBack in LA, Morris moved to Venice in 1978  and picked up his music studies, adding flute lessons and further studies in composition to the mix. An inquisitive and eager learner, Morris also took analogue synthesis classes with electronic music legend Malcolm Cecil.\n\nMorris' girlfriend at the time was a fan of Steve Roach, and encouraged them to meet. The two became friends and Morris began playing with him at this shows in Venice.  Morris had been into electronic music since 1970 when he first heard the band Syrinx and later Tangerine Dream, but he'd never really pursued synthesizers seriously until meeting Roach. Morris played flute on Roach's debut *Now* in 1982 and *Quiet Music* a few years later. The two stayed close throughout the '80s and Roach helped produce Morris produce his solo albums, *Helios Rising* and *Helios Attunement*.\n\nAs Morris cobbled together an income from various musical gigs in the late '70s, including a stint as the musical director for a theater group, Morris also did astrology readings on the side. Morris had been interested in astrology and tarot readings since he was a teenager, and began studying it more intently in LA at the Church of Light and with Marion March. \n\nWhile recording the *Helios* albums, Morris developed a system for integrating astrology and music. Each star sign was associated with a musical key and each planet had a corresponding musical mode. So, for example, the key of C was represented by Virgo, and Saturn was the Locrian mode. Then, as he explains, \"I would take important features of an astrological chart related to tension in a person’s life and use frequencies that operated in a healing fashion. The difficult emotional state would resolve into a more harmonious and coherent place.\" \n\nAlthough astrology loomed large over his albums, Morris also had a strong interest in healing, and began studying acupuncture and herbal medicine in the early '80s.  He went on to earn doctoral degrees in both and became a Reiki instructor as well, following in his mother's footsteps. His mother Joyce had moved out to LA by that time and was transitioning from a career in social work to Reiki. (The two later went on to write a book in 1999 called *Reiki Hands That Heal.*)\n\nAs healing took a prominent place in Morris' life, music was mostly put on the back burner. He moved to Massachusetts in 1991 and continued his studies in Chinese medicine and eventually opened his own successful practice. \"I reached a period in Massachusetts where I couldn’t find the feeling and identity I had carved in music,\" Morris said.\n\nMore recently, Morris has been composing again and is planning to release some of his archival material.","discography":{"will-morris":{"albums":{"helios-attunement":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Helios Attunement","year":"1988"},"helios-rising":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Helios Rising","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":58,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Will-Morris-640.jpg?alt=media&token=35164a7a-450e-4c56-9bbe-6523a793ea77","last_name":"Morris"},"will-vukin":{"artist_name":"Will Vukin","body":"Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Will Vukin was a musician who released eight nature-inspired ambient tapes in the '80s. He regularly played live in the area, coordinating his \"Spirit Journey\" concerts with the solstices and equinoxes. He sold his tapes locally and through Earth Wisdom Music but they have become hard to find lately and are now sought after by collectors.\n\nBorn in 1951, Vukin grew up in Ann Arbor. He attended college at the University of Michigan where he began taking an interest in yoga, tai chi, meditation, astronomy, philosophy and theatre. He spent a lot of time in nature, playing his bamboo flutes. Vukin recalls many memorable trips slowly floating down the Huron river in the summer, playing his bamboo flute along the way and listening to the sound of the water. He also loved to play along with the birds in the forest.\n\nAfter graduation, Vukin got a job as the director of the Alexander Brest Planetarium in Jacksonville, Florida in 1974. He had early success with his \"Cosmic Concerts\" which featured albums by bands like the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd set to celestial light shows combined with live theatre. Vukin returned to Ann Arbor in 1978 and began creating and performing his own music. In 1982, he recorded his first album *Heartpool* which featured flute, dulcimer and guitar with the sound of the ocean. His music was sold locally at Earth Wisdom Music and distributed by them to other stores on a national level. \n\nEach year, Vukin would play several shows, timed to the solstice or equinox. He would often create new music for each performances and make cassettes to sell at the shows.  In addition to his solo performances, Vukin also formed several bands throughout the '80s, including a duo called Full Circle, another called Raven Moon, and a quartet called Nada with sitar, tabla, flute and cello. Each band released one self titled cassette.  Raven Moon produced a second recording called Net of Light.\n\nFor his music process, Vukin relies largely on improvisation. At the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he spent a few summers in the late ‘70s, he studied with jazz musicians like Ralph Towner from the band Oregon, and learned to keep his mind open. \"I tried to become an open channel to hear music from the beyond,\" Vukin said.\n\nVukin now lives in Seattle where he is still actively making music that he posts on SoundCloud [here](https://soundcloud.com/will-vukin).","discography":{"will-vukin":{"albums":{"earth-wood":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"","title":"Earth Wood","year":"1989"},"earthtone":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"","title":"EarthTone","year":"1989"},"fireflow":{"image":"","label":"Inner Light","review":"","title":"Fireflow","year":"1989"},"golden-forest":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"Mostly real flutes backed with digital synths, languid and lush. Goes in some new age 2.0 directions at times with synthesized guitars and pan flutes, but the consistent autumnal mood is a plus.","title":"Golden Forest","year":"1988"},"heartpool":{"image":"","label":"Full Circle Productions","review":"Soothing washes of zither, flute and guitar backed with a faint hum of ocean waves. Similar to [George Tortorelli](/george-tortorelli) or Daniel Parker Moore.","title":"Heartpool","year":"1983"},"spiritstones":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"","title":"Spiritstones","year":"1986"},"tidewater":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"Circular, like the flow of tides, with a looping synth backdrop, ocean sounds, and Vukin’s somewhat melancholy flute improvisations. Great stuff.","title":"Tidewater","year":"1984"},"water-and-wind":{"image":"","label":"Wellspring Music","review":"A fully organic and warm set from Vukin that includes nature sounds, acoustic guitar and flute. Sounds like lounging by a pond in early summer.","title":"Water and Wind","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":196,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/will-vukin-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c540f730-8e7b-4282-a276-0c8c349a7716","last_name":"Vukin"},"william-aura":{"artist_name":"William Aura","body":"William Aura began his solo music career at the dawn of the '80s, riding the wave of California new age from its DIY origins to the zenith of smooth jazz, world muzak crossovers, and prog-rock Christmas carols. Along the way, Aura found early success with a pair of [zither-n-bliss](https://ultravillage.com/zither-'n'-bliss) ambient albums on Fortuna (*Aurasounds 1* and *Aurasounds 2*) that ultimately led to a bigger label deal with Higher Octave and the release of *Half Moon Bay*, his best-selling album of the '80s. Aura flexed a more groove-oriented approach for his follow-up, *World Keeps Turning*, but the album failed and Aura regrouped with a new band in the '90s. In addition to his music career, Aura also worked as an A&R rep for Higher Octave, ran a small music studio, and freelanced as an art director.\n\nWilliam Aura was born in 1951 and raised on a farm in Niles, Michigan, not far from Chicago and the Indiana border. As a teen he caught the rock and roll bug when he heard the Beatles. He remembers trying to fashion his bowl cut into a mop top hairdo while practicing his rock moves on a broom. Aura soon got a job at a local music store and taught himself to play guitar. He formed a series of local garage bands to play dances and other teen events, usually playing guitar or bass. One of his bands, UFO put a single in 1966 but there seems to be no trace of it remaining.\n\nAura compressed a lot of development into his late teen years. After getting turned on to hard rock and marijuana by stoners at the local lumberyard (another of his early jobs) in 1969, Aura joined Charlotte (\"Char\") Vinnedge's new band Syrup to play bass for their upcoming tour. Vinnedge was a talented guitarist who'd previously fronted the legendary garage band the Luv'd Ones, but had recently come to idolize Jimi Hendrix and formed a new harder rocking band in his style. Aura briefly indulged in an excessive lifestyle, but burned out after 10 months and returned to Michigan, where he soon fathered his first child.  \n\nIn the early '70s, Aura dropped his musical aspirations to focus on the more pressing needs of his growing family. For a while they lived in Ann Arbor and Detroit as Aura churned through a series of jobs like selling insurance, working at a car dealership, and driving a truck for Eden Foods. The latter gave Aura his lucky break when they saw his artistic potential and offered him a job in the office. There Aura worked on advertising for the company, promoting new health food products like ginseng root.  His advertising work caught the attention of the Vegetarian Times and Well-Being Magazine who both made him offers to come work as an art director there. In 1977, Aura moved his family out to San Diego and began a job at Well-Being for $120 a week. It was hardly enough for a five member family, but they made it work, living lean and trying to enjoy the peaceful California lifestyle.\n\n\n\n\nOnce he'd set up shop in San Diego, Aura picked up the guitar again and formed a band called Heartspace with some local hippies. Over a period of a few years, Heartspace played live shows and released two cassettes, one self-titled and another called *Peace on Earth.* The band played a breezy fusion of folk, progressive, and world music sounds that can be heard (sans most of the vocals) on Aura's later *Heartspace* album. The original Heartspace cassettes were pressed in tiny editions and nearly impossible to find.\n\nThrough his work with companies like Eden Foods and Well-Being Magazine, Aura was well-aware of the new age and wellness movements gaining traction in California. He'd interviewed a couple from Japan who wanted to introduce tofu in America and he learned about the benefits of solar power. He was also starting to meet other musicians like Iasos and Paul Horn who provided a template for the kinds of sounds he was seeking, as well as the means to sell it. \n\nIn 1980, Aura got inspired and decided to call in sick for a few days and record his first solo album *Lovely Day*. Satisfied with the results, he hand dubbed 100 copies on cassette and drove up the coast selling them door to door at metaphysical book stores and other stores catering to a turned-on clientele. Aura found some homes for cassettes on consignment at various places, but still had about 80 left by the time he got to San Francisco. There, he met with Ethan Edgecomb, then the premiere distributor for new age sounds. Edgecomb popped the tape in his car and said, \"This is great, I'll take everything you got.\" \n\nEdgecomb must have sold out of those 80 cassettes, because he came back to Aura soon for more releases to distribute. Aura gave him *Timeless,* his second cassette release, and copies of *Heartspace* which was culled from earlier band material and remixed without vocals. The music for *Timeless* was more inner directed and ambient, and Edgecomb encouraged Aura to submit more music in this style for his recently created label Fortuna. The result was two albums worth of contemplative zither jams perfect for the blossoming new age market. \"I liked what Laraaji had done with the zither,\" Aura recalled. \"I got really deep into that.  I remember that I put the zither on a wooden table in my house and it amplified the sound. I waited until the family was asleep and recorded it in the middle of the night.\"\n\nThe *Aurasounds* tapes were picked up by Stephen Hill’s influential Hearts of Space show, which had just gone into syndication. This did wonders for Aura’s profile and helped Edgecomb sell thousands of copies. Aura was soon supplying music for sound-healing and brain-research clinics in California, including one in Ocean Beach that tested his musical patterns on patients. \"I'm not sure I even believed it, but they actually showed that certain musical sounds could help people concentrate,\" Aura said.\n\nEven though he finally had some money coming in from music, Aura was still doing freelance graphic design work to help support his family of five, working with local health food stores and yoga studios.  \"It was hard,\" Aura recalled. \"There were times when we were living out of camper, basically homeless.\" But his fortunes would soon change.  \n\nIn the mid-'80s, Aura moved up to Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. He had been helping Edgecomb out at Fortuna, and liked the area enough to move there for a few years. He was also doing a lot of new age trade shows, renting booths out to promote his music. Around this time, Aura met Matt Marshall who was starting a new label called Higher Octave and he signed Aura for the release of *Half Moon Bay* in 1987. “When he signed me, I got a check for $10,000,\" Aura said. \"And then The Wave came out and they just played that album to death.\" The Wave was a new radio format started by Frank Cody for KTWV in Los Angeles that mostly played new age, folk, and smooth jazz. *Half Moon Bay* - which combined all three styles - was tailor made for the new format. The album sold close to 50,000 copies, by far the biggest sales of his career at that point.\n\n\"*Half Moon Bay* was the beginning of my interest in smooth jazz\" Aura said.  \"I actually used a synth sax on that one, and got away with it. Of course I would never do that again.\" Aura leaned even more heavily into pop textures and lite funk beats on his next album *World Keeps Turning* but sales were slow. Aura decided that would be his last album as a solo artist, and formed the smooth jazz outfit 3rd Force in the early '90s.  The band went on to release a series of successful albums for Higher Octave, with *Vital Force* the biggest hit with 150,000 copies sold. Aura currently lives in Ojai, California and is finishing up what he calls \"my last ambient album\" that he started in 2003.","discography":{"william-aura":{"albums":{"aurasound-i":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"Very soft, string-synthesizer dominated ambience with spatially recorded zither. Heavenly music, for lack of a better word, that flows with plaintive major chords much like [Aeoliah](/aeoliah) or [Iasos](/iasos), but more like the latter composer in that Aura has more going on in his very contemplative music. He improvises gentle melodies on the zither as the strings weave in and out like some synthetic ocean. The intent of the tape is to inspire meditation and Aura successfully put his message across. Nice stuff to \"cool out\" on.\n\n(Jim Finch, *Syne*, Fall 1985)\n","title":"Aurasound I","year":"1982"},"aurasound-ii":{"image":"","label":"Fortuna","review":"","title":"Aurasound II","year":"1982"},"dreamer":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"This music is typical of William's work — a beautiful, quiet flow of soothing sound. Always steady, pleasant and not too heavy, the different cuts have their own flavors. \"Inspiration\" incorporates a placid percussion rhythm with the singing notes of electric piano and synthesized horns, producing an energizing, quiet happiness. \"Serenity\" offers softly swirling harp strumming, meandering, echoing flute and sustained synthesizer background. The title piece is much more directed and strong, with percussion and a repeated melodic piano theme. This dreamer is engaged in a very powerful, active dream!\n\nIn general, this is improvised, shimmering, light music, refreshing as a rest by a cool stream. Very non-intrusive, good for creating a positive soothing ambience. It’s not so slow that it will create deep trance states, and the rhythmic changes make it a good choice for background for massage and creative movement.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review*, No. 4, Spring/Summer 1988)","title":"Dreamer","year":"1984"},"fantasy":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"","title":"Fantasy","year":"1986"},"half-moon-bay":{"image":"","label":"Higher Octave","review":"","title":"Half Moon Bay","year":"1987"},"heartspace":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"","title":"Heartspace","year":"1981"},"lovely-day":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"","title":"Lovely Day","year":"1981"},"paradise":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"","title":"Paradise","year":"1983"},"timeless":{"image":"","label":"Aura Communications","review":"","title":"Timeless","year":"1982"},"world-keeps-turning":{"image":"","label":"Higher Octave","review":"","title":"World Keeps Turning","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":39,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/William-Aura-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=39e110eb-e649-430c-91eb-480c8bbd97d0","last_name":"Aura"},"william-eaton":{"artist_name":"William Eaton","body":"Known all over the world for his beautiful and complex stringed instruments, William Eaton is both an artist and dedicated craftsman who has created a small, but vital body of work.  As the director of a luthier school, one could easily glance at his resume and have no clue of the radical and uncompromising thinker who lurks within. His first two cassettes are highly sought after and his debut LP has been [reissued](https://www.telephoneexplosion.com/collections/morning-trip-records/products/william-eaton-music-by-william-eaton) by Morning Trip Records.\n\nIn college, Eaton was a fraternity president and holder of a pole vault record. After that, he got his MBA at Stanford and began working towards becoming an investment banker. But Eaton soon rejected what he calls \"ego driven pursuits\" in 1971 when a friend passed him a book called *Cosmic Consciousness*.  Eaton, who does nothing lightly, immersed himself in Eastern philosophy, mind-altering drugs, and meditation.  For a few years, he lived out of his car, roaming the desert and eating mesquite pods and cactus fruit. \"My sole purpose was to live in the present with no distraction, similar to a monk's life,\" Eaton explained. \"It grounds you.\"\n\nOriginally from Lincoln, Nebraska, William Eaton displayed a musical knack at an early age. He started out playing ukulele and banjo in a folk trio and later joined a band called Candy Machine in high school that played covers of Jimi Hendrix and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.  While attending college at Arizona State,  Eaton met John Roberts, a luthier who taught him how to build guitars with tropical hardwoods.  By the time Eaton got his MBA a few years later, he decided to go all in on guitar making, establishing the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix in 1975 along with Roberts and Bob Venn. \n\nFor his first release, *Music by William Eaton*, he fully embraced the ever-present now by improvising all 18 compositions. Eaton recorded the album in the bath house of a Phoenix mansion, using an array of 6, 12 and 26 stringed guitars, the latter of which was his own design. Eaton self-released the album in 1978, pressing up 1000 copies. \n\nMichael Anderson and Ethan Edgecomb of Pyramid Distributors heard the LP and helped Eaton distribute copies, calling the music \"new age\" to Eaton's bemusement. \"I thought of it more as world music, but I'm not sure that term existed then,\" Eaton said. \"I was thinking more along the lines of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke.\"  \n\nAfter the first album picked up some interest, Eaton created a label called En Esumus and released the debut on cassette, duplicating copies at the local Invincible Studios run by Liv Singh Khalsa.  In 1981, Eaton recorded his follow-up, the extremely scarce *Tale of a Musician* which has a photo of Eaton standing atop a rocky hill holding up one of his homemade lyra guitars.\n\nAfter this release, Eaton moved away from solo playing and started a series of local bands playing more pop oriented material. He also wrote and scored some local theater productions such as *Dream Makers*, which played in Scottsdale at the Kerr Cultural Center. Around this time Eaton built one of his most ambitious creations, a quadrophonic guitar with 10 pickups, 2 necks, 12 and 7 strings.  “I would go out to the desert, set up speakers and a generator and play all night long during a full moon,” Eaton recalled.\n\nIn 1986, Eaton met a Native American flutist named [R. Carlos Nakai](/r-carlos-nakai) who had a tipi set up at an arts conference. The two immediately clicked and began jamming there on the spot with Eaton joining on his lyra guitar.  Nakai's label Canyon Records would go on to release many albums featuring musicians starting with *The Tracks We Leave* in 1988. \n\nEaton currently works as the director of the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery and lives in Sedona, Arizona.","discography":{"r-carlos-nakai-william-eaton-will-clipman":{"albums":{"ancestral-voices":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Feather, Stone and Light","year":"1995"}},"artist_name":"R. Carlos Nakai, William Eaton, Will Clipman","entry_number":3},"william-eaton":{"albums":{"music-by-william-eaton":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"Absolutely magical album that taps into the same cosmic, sun-soaked bliss as These Trails and Relatively Clean Rivers, but in the form of an instrumental guitar album. And these are no ordinary guitars either, with Eaton showcasing his own hand-built creations like a 7 string guitar, a violin-uke hybrid, and a 26 string guitar as pictured on the cover of the cassette (the lp version has a hand-drawn cover that is actually more evocative of the music.)\n\nRecorded in the bath house of an Arizona mansion, the songs resonate with echoes of the desert landscape, with occasional birdcalls, recording artifacts, and other environmental noises lending an atmospheric presence. The songs are improvised, with Eaton hanging sustained notes in the air and picking shimmering, gorgeous melodies around them.  Eastern motifs are detectable a la Fahey or Basho, but there are also plenty of surprising key changes and modal angles.  Great solo guitar albums are nearly as rare as great solo piano albums, but when they are this good, you can see why so many tried. The fact that this hasn't been reissued is near criminal.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2019)\n","title":"Music by William Eaton","year":"1978"},"tale-of-a-musician":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Tale of a Musician","year":"1981"},"tracks-we-leave":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Tracks We Leave","year":"1989"},"wisdom-tree":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Wisdom Tree","year":"1992"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton","entry_number":1},"william-eaton-carlos-nakai":{"albums":{"ancestral-voices":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Ancestral Voices","year":"1992"},"carry-the-gift":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Carry the Gift","year":"1988"},"winter-dreams-for-christmas":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Winter Dreams for Christmas","year":"1990"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton and R. Carlos Nakai","entry_number":2},"william-eaton-ensemble":{"albums":{"naked-in-eureka":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Naked in Eureka","year":"1996"},"where-rivers-meet":{"image":"","label":"Canyon Records","review":"","title":"Where Rivers Meet","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"William Eaton Ensemble","entry_number":4}},"entry_number":18,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/eatonedit.jpg?alt=media&token=d294e487-ea10-4f50-aadb-ec6ce518bc41","last_name":"Eaton"},"william-hoskins":{"artist_name":"William Hoskins","body":"By the time of this album, William Hoskins (1917-1998) had worked for over three decades as a music professor, first at the Jacksonville College of Music and then later at Jacksonville University (J.U.) when the two schools merged. At J.U., Hoskins composed many concertos and symphonic works before becoming interested in electronic music and synthesizers in the late '60s. After consulting with Robert Moog, Hoskins secured a modular Moog for the university and started the first electronic music studio in Florida at the time. In addition to composing several electronic suites, ballets, and concertinos, he also recorded the spacey *Intergalactic Fantasy*, on the classical label Spectrum in 1979. The album was bootlegged on CD by the infamous Creel Pone label in 2014 and some synth enthusiasts have taken an interest in him; there is a forum [here](https://www.matrixsynth.com/2010/06/professor-william-hoskins-and-his.html) with some technical info on his setup.","discography":{"william-hoskins":{"albums":{"intergalactic":{"image":"","label":"Spectrum","review":"As you might guess from the bifurcated cover art, Hoskins presents two pretty different moods on his sole LP. “Galactic Fantasy” on side one is an unnerving 12-tone trip through the cosmos, alternating passages of discordant sci-fi beeps and atmospheric clouds of noise with discursive, atonal melodies that conjure an alien musical scape. The second side is more modal but no less strange, sounding like a Sun City Girls Far-East-pastiche filtered through Perry and Kingsley’s mad-scientist lab. For the truly musical adventurous.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2024)","title":"Intergalactic Fantasy","year":"1979"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":400,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/william-hoskins-640.jpg?alt=media&token=91a05be1-1d13-41f9-a8bd-a2e8f5402f41","last_name":"Hoskins"},"william-linton":{"artist_name":"William Linton","body":"William Linton was a Nashville-based synthesist who released two space ambient albums in 1986 while attending Belmont College. He worked closely with Tony Gerber who went on to have a career in electronic music as an artist and label owner, though Linton opted for a lower profile. After graduating from college he entered the workforce as a software engineer and didn’t return to music for over a decade. With the advent of mp3.com, Linton re-emerged to put out the archival *Wayfarer* in 1999 and a CD of piano instrumentals in 2003.\n\nWilliam Linton was born in 1962 and grew up in a rural area, just outside Nashville, Tennessee. His grandmother lived next door in an ancient house from the 1800s and had an old piano and pump organ. Linton was fascinated by the organ and recalls playing around with it as a young boy. At the age of nine, Linton took up the trombone and played in the school band and orchestra until 7th grade. But as he entered his teen years, he lost interest and didn’t play again until after high school. A friend of his had shown him an Arp Axxe synthesizer and he was immediately transfixed, just like with his mother’s pump organ, all over again.\n\nLinton started college late, around the age of 20. He went to nearby Belmont college where he studied music theory and composition. He also spent a great deal of time in their electronic music lab which had an Arp 2600 and a Moog III. By then he’d also purchased his own small keyboard, the Moog MG-1, soon to be followed by the more powerful Oberheim OB-8. At school, he met other electronic music fans like [Giles Reaves](/giles-reaves) and [Tony Gerber](/tony-gerber) who were also learning how to use the complex synths, as well as how to engineer and record them. However, Linton wasn’t ready to commit to a career in music and ultimately got his degree not from Belmont, but from a technical school nearby where he majored in Engineering Technology.\n\nDuring this period, Linton was deeply influenced by the music on Carl Sagan’s *Cosmos* and Stephen Hill’s *Hearts of Space* radio show.  He recorded it every week, discovering a whole new world of music. \"[Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns) - his album *Planetary Unfolding* is one of my all-time favorites,\" Linton said. “There is so much going on there. The more you listen, the more you hear. I was also really into [Steve Roach](/steve-roach) and [Iasos](/iasos). Of course, Tangerine Dream kind of goes without saying. As an early teen, I loved their album *White Eagle*.”\n\nIn 1986, Linton recorded some ethereal music in the vein of what he heard on *Hearts of Space* and sent a demo to Hill. To his surprise, Hill called him out of the blue one day. \"This was before caller ID,\" Linton said. \"I just picked up the phone and a voice said, 'Hello, Is William Linton there? This is Stephen Hill. I'd like to feature your music on my show.' And then I realized I don’t even have an album. So I got one together pretty quickly.\" Linton self-released his first album *Traveler’s Tales* and Hill mastered it to digital tape in California.  \n\nOnce his music was played on *Hearts of Space*, Hill set Linton up with distribution via Lloyd Barde’s *Backroads* catalog, a mainstay of new age and cosmic sounds at the time. Linton recalls selling about 300 copies on cassette.\n\nLinton followed up *Traveler’s Tales* in the same year with *Cosmic Flight*, an epic and cosmic improvisation with Gerber (then known as Anthony Rian) and Mason Stevens, a guitarist who he knew through private lessons in song composition. \n\nAfter graduating from college, Linton didn't record again for over a decade. He kept a small studio where he would tinker and play occasionally, but he was more focused on his career in corporate technology, troubleshooting, and implementing computer software. By the late '90s, Gerber was having success selling his music on mp3.com, a site that allowed artists to sell digital downloads directly to fans. Gerber set up a label called Room for Space and re-issued Linton’s old cassettes for the site.  By then, Linton had a decade's worth of material, and he culled the best tracks for a new album in 1999 called *Wayfarer*. According to Linton, he made more money from mp3.com than he did in the ‘80s selling cassettes.\n\nLinton released an album of piano instrumentals in 2003 but hasn’t released anything since. He currently lives in Nashville.","discography":{"anthony-rian-william-linton-mason-stevens":{"albums":{"cosmic-flight":{"image":"","label":"Emerald Castle Music","review":"","title":"Cosmic Flight","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Anthony Rian, William Linton & Mason Stevens","entry_number":2},"william-linton":{"albums":{"travelers-tales":{"image":"","label":"Emerald Castle Music","review":"For his first solo album, William Linton wanted to create the aural equivalent of a journey through space. With a cover depicting earth seen from above and song titles like \"Solar Wind,\" one can already hear the music before listening. Showing a strong west coast influence, Linton creates soft, billowy clouds of synth with an emphasis on harmony and chord structure vs. rhythm or melody, similar to some of the early work from Michael Stearns, Iasos, or Don Slepian.\n  \nSide one is mostly comprised of the five part title track suite, but the songs generally blend together in an airy, ethereal haze. Although Linton mentions in his notes that the songs are best appreciated at a low volume, his interesting chord changes and occasional detours into darker territory keep the album engaging on close inspection too.","title":"Traveler's Tales","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"William Linton","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":67,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/William-Linton-640.jpg?alt=media&token=2293e4e4-c573-4686-891e-982a5637801c","last_name":"Linton"},"william-maxwell":{"artist_name":"William Maxwell","body":"William Maxwell was a multi-instrumentalist based near Santa Cruz, California when he released a trio of progressive electronic cassettes in the mid-'80s. His self-produced tapes were distributed by Backroads and played on Hearts of Space, but Maxwell felt isolated making music on his own. In the next decade, he shifted his focus to playing bass live with other bands, audio engineering, and composing orchestral works.\n\nBorn in 1960, Maxwell grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and Louisiana. His mother used to take him to see jazz shows and Oakland Symphony concerts as a kid, setting the stage for an appreciation of more complex music. Maxwell started learning guitar when he was six and expanded to playing bass by the age of twelve. \n\nAs a teenager, Maxwell became a fan of virtuosic prog rock bands like Happy the Man, Yes, and Genesis.  He also discovered the radio show Hearts of Space one night and was impressed by the beauty and simplicity of the music. Maxwell was very serious about his own music, continuing classical guitar lessons and even building a model violin out of matchsticks when he was 15.\n\nMaxwell attended college at Humboldt State where he worked towards a BA in music theory/composition. While there, he made money picking up gigs playing classical guitar at weddings and restaurants.  Around 1982, he started getting into keyboards and put together a home studio. \n\n\"Orchestral music was a big influence,\" Maxwell said. \"Although I have been able to get orchestras to play my compositions, it's a very very tough road to go down. Electronics provided another option as exemplified by Wendy Carlos and Vangelis. The self-contained studio route had tremendous appeal because bands are like the heavy elements on the periodic table: they come together and blow apart in nanoseconds. I just wanted to finish something. I bought a reverb from a guy about 1981 who, in his sales spiel, said it was good enough for him to make an album with it. After that, I was off and running with a goal.\"\n\nMaxwell released his first electronic album *Remembrance*in 1986 and it did pretty well for an indie, earning airplay on Hearts of Space and appearing in some independent movies. He followed the album with the similarly styled *Horizons* and then *Q*, though in all he thinks only sold a few thousand copies of all his tapes combined. \"In hindsight, it became too 'classical' for the new age crowd and too new age for the classical crowd,\" Maxwell said. \"Even today if I get an orchestral performance, it's always on the 'pops' concert.\"\n\nIn the '90s, Maxwell moved to Mexico for a few years where he owned and operated a recording studio. After that, he moved back to California to finish his music degree at Humboldt State.  By then, he was ready to get out of the studio and shifted his focus to composing for orchestras and playing live gigs. As a bassist, he never had a problem finding work, performing in a wide swath of genres including classical, jazz, blues, metal, country and prog.  Through a combination of live gigs and session work, Maxwell was able to make a living doing what he loved. After burning out from touring, Maxwell shifted into work he could do in his area, working as an engineer at various studios in Seattle where he now lived.\n\nMaxwell started releasing music again in the early 2000s, issuing seven albums of primarily orchestral work. He also started teaching stand-up bass lessons which he still does today in addition to writing an astronomy column in a local paper. ","discography":{"william-maxwell":{"albums":{"horizons":{"image":"","label":"Chimerical","review":"","title":" Horizons","year":"1987"},"q":{"image":"","label":"Chimerical","review":"","title":" Q","year":"1988"},"remembrance":{"image":"","label":"Chimerical","review":"","title":"Remembrance","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":222,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/william-maxwell-640.jpg?alt=media&token=6819d41b-3397-44e1-97cf-abd2ffa8c558","last_name":"Maxwell"},"william-penn":{"artist_name":"William Penn","body":"William Penn (above right) was a music professor and composer for plays, film, and TV. His 1978 album *Crystal Rainbows* is a unique album of ambient and experimental pieces, created in partnership with a Smithsonian exhibit on unusual instruments like the glass harmonica, electronic jawbone, and Robert Rutman's steel cello. At the time, Penn taught at the Eastman School of Music and wrote baroque scores for Shakespeare festivals in the summer. The album was reviewed favorably at the time by the Washington Post and other outlets and is starting to attract interest from collectors. Penn's other work falls outside the scope of this guide.\n\nBorn in 1943, Penn grew up in New Jersey and attended SUNY Buffalo (now University of Buffalo) where he studied music with Maurizio Kagel and Belgian composer Henri Pousseur. While there he also worked with Lukas Foss on pieces for the Creative Associates. Penn went on to get a Master's degree at Buffalo, followed by a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition at Michigan State University.\n\nAfter finishing his studies, Penn launched a long career teaching music and composition. His first position was at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.  Much of Penn's early work was avant-garde classical and electronic and he was featured on a few compilations in the mid-'70s by Composers Recordings Inc (CRI). However, Penn also had a strong interest in baroque and renaissance music and spent his summers composing for Shakespeare festivals, starting with the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1973, followed by the Williamstown Theater Festival the next year.  Starting in 1978, he established a 20-year relationship with the Wisconsin Shakespeare Summer Festival.\n\nIn 1975, Penn began working with Sounds Reasonable, a record label and studio in Washington DC. The label first put out an album of Penn's Shakespeare scores for the Folger Theater in 1977 and then hired him to compose *Crystal Rainbows: The Sound of Harmonious Craft* in conjunction with a Smithsonian exhibit of unusual musical instruments. For the album, Penn composed six pieces in disparate styles that featured the exotic instruments combined with standard instrumentation such as guitar, piano, and synth. In an interview with the Washington Post, Penn said, \"I was determined not to create a 'show and tell' album. I wanted to write music that would use the sounds of the instrument creatively.\" The album earned some great reviews, with many praising the song \"Gossamer Looms.\" In a review for *Audio* magazine, John Diliberto gave the album an \"A\" and called it \"exciting and provoking.\" The *Unicorn Times* called it \"space music at its most eclectic.\"\n\nIn the ensuring years, Penn continued to write music for plays, TV, film, and countless other projects. In 1979, he left the Eastman School of Music and taught at various other schools including the University of Connecticut, the University of Georgia, University of Texas, and the University of South Carolina.  In 1998, Penn moved to Tucson, Arizona where where he served as owner and producer of the label Arizona University Recordings and Publications.\n","discography":{"william-penn":{"albums":{"crystal-rainbows":{"image":"","label":"SRI","review":"","title":"Crystal Rainbows: The Sound Of Harmonious Craft","year":"1978"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":260,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/william-penn-640.jpg?alt=media&token=ed001ea2-bda6-40d9-abd2-b18d792f5e52","last_name":"Penn"},"william-wichman":{"artist_name":"William Wichman","body":"William Wichman was a musician, composer and bandleader who emigrated to the US from the Philippines in the early '50s.  He was in a series of rock and pop bands throughout the '60s and '70s before breaking out on his own in the early '80s to release a slew of new age albums in which he composed and played all the music.  He continued to write and record for the rest of his life, and was beloved by many in his wide circle of admirers before passing away in 2004.\n\nWilliam Wichman was the eldest of eight children, born in the Philippines in 1940 to a Filipino mother and German father. At the age of 11, he emigrated to San Francisco with one of his younger brothers, staying at a convent briefly until the rest of his family made it over to join him. Once they’d all arrived, the family settled in East Palo Alto and ran a laundromat.  \n\nAt nearby Menlo Atherton high school, Wichman blossomed as a musician, especially on the congas and drums. When he was 16, he won a drumming competition and they flew him out to New York to play with doo-wop group the Del-Vikings.  Wichman also started a band of his own around this time, a '50s rock band called the Cool Breezes in which he played drums.\n\nBy the  ‘60s, Wichman was beginning to make a name for himself on the local scene, jamming with a young Jerry Garcia and Carlos Santana, among many others.   He met his wife Alice in 1961 at a party in Palo Alto. At the time, she was working the late shift as a phone operator and recalls Wichman serenading her at work with his flute.  A few years later, they married and had two children, Christine and Shani, born in 1964 and 1966 respectively.  (They later separated, but Wichman remained close to her and the kids.)\n\nWichman moved on from the Cool Breezes and put together an eight member folk pop band called Apartment 4 that included three female vocalists who wore matching outfits and go-go boots. All the men wore suits.  The band played residencies in Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas, singing hits of the day like \"California Dreamin'\" and \"Under the Boardwalk.\"  A little while later, Wichman was hired by Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters as the drummer for a band that went to Vietnam and entertained the troops.\n\nA few years after returning from Vietnam, Wichman met Master Kirpal Singh who would have a profound effect on his life. Wichman became a vegetarian, began meditating, and focused more on his spiritual path.  He still continued to play live music, often performing at places like the Ramada Inn with Cathy Carter, one of the vocalists from Apartment 4.\n\nIn 1980, Wichman began a new relationship with a woman named Monika and together they moved to San Jose. There he set up a recording studio and recorded music in his newer, more meditative style. He debuted his new sound on a collaboration with French synth wizard Cyrille Verdeaux in 1980. At the same time, he was also stockpiling many albums worth of material that he would release under his own name.  \n\nWichman’s first album was called *Paradise,* released in 1983 with a cover design by his friend Joseph Parker. The album was followed by many others in the same year that he sold through Lloyd Barde’s Backroads catalogs, metaphysical bookstores and other like-minded shops.  He also found a kindred spirit in Suzanne Doucet, a former pop star from Germany who'd recently moved to Los Angeles and started her own new age record label called Isis. They recorded one album together in 1984 called *Brilliance* and several more that weren’t released until the ‘90s. Doucet also released some of his solo albums on her Isis imprint.\n\nWichman’s cassettes weren't very well known at the time, but he remained dedicated to his music.  To help bring in money, he managed some local bands and bought and sold art. According to his daughter Christine, \"He was an avid art collector. He had storage units filled with his collections. He also went to classrooms to show kids how to make bamboo flutes and talk about native culture.\"\n\nAround 1986, Wichman moved his family to Paradise, California.  He and Monika had two kids by then and he wanted to raise them in a more rural area and have room for a music studio. They lived in a wooden cabin and Wichman could often be found outside in his headband and vest playing the flute.\n\nWichman was a regular fixture at new age conventions at the time, sometimes serving as a host and playing music.  He also hosted a radio show on KKUP in Cupertino, California. He continued to play music and sell art through the '90s, and in 1995 found a new backer in Alex Rubin who lived in San Joe and had just started a non-profit label called Investments in Nature. Through that label, Wichman put out a trove of material he'd been working on, including *Luminous Rainforest* and *Maganda*. By then, Wichman was now using the artist name Tajalli for all his albums. \n\nWichman always had a large circle of admirers, and he took on some students later in life such as Paradiso, who played the didgeridoo. \"He was a shaman of music,\" Paradiso said. \"He taught me by just throwing me onstage and told me to play by intuition. And I would hear him say in my mind it was time to change the beat.  He could play any instrument. I used to ask him how he did it and he would tell me, 'Son, when will you realize? Let go. Get rid of fear and trust yourself.'\"\n\nTowards the end of his life, Wichman got into acting and had a role in the film *Buffalo Hearts*, although it didn’t come out until after his death.  But his main passion was always music. \"I remember he was down in Los Angeles with Suzanne [Doucet] a lot,” Christine said.  \"He called me one time and said he was playing at raves. And he loved it. He was always open to new sounds.\" Wichman passed away unexpectedly at the age of 63, and there was an outpouring of support from friends, students, and fellow musicians. \"He was a guide and inspiration to a lot of people,\" Christine said. \"And everyone around him was a character, they were larger than life. Anytime I was with my dad it was an adventure.\"","discography":{"billiam":{"albums":{"maganda-beautiful":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"This recording is a musical adventure--uplifting and rhythmic, yet spiritual and meditative. It presents exotic, melodious sounds that are woven throughout each song, creating a mood of inspirational curiosity and joy. The musical instrument list includes synthesizer, piano, congas, bongos, timbalas, Indian bells, maribas, flute, kalimba and Tibetan bells; however, only a few are played in each song, lending themselves to the exotic nature of the recording. It is beautiful, mysterious music that instills an altered state of musical sublimity. Styles are taken from Africa, Polynesia, China and Native America, expressing the central concept of \"beauty\" in the musical language of many cultures. The music would best be used for background music, creative movement, relaxing, for soothing children, as well as for driving. The primitive, rhythmic mood created reflects a universal spiritual focus, where the music becomes a prayer toward honoring global diversity. Tasteful use of nature sounds adds depth to some cuts. The overall feel of the music is that of inspiration through an international journey of music, with visual images of fantasy-- an enchanting dance of life. Recommended.\n\n(Vicki Rofoff, *Hearthsong Review* #10 Spring/Summer 1991)","title":"Maganda \"Beautiful\"","year":"1989"}},"artist_name":"Billiam","entry_number":3},"william-wichman":{"albums":{"beyond-the-golden-realms":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"","title":"Beyond the Golden Realms","year":"1983"},"ethereal":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"","title":"Ethereal","year":"1984"},"galaxy-3000":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"More space music with a softened sensitivity. Evokes spirit images of the highest form of trans-cellular travel.\n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Galaxy 3000","year":"1983"},"marshmellow-gold":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"","title":"Marshmellow Gold","year":"1983"},"paradise":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"A marvelous blend of acoustic and electronic instruments with a quality recording and packaging. Nature sounds are blended into the music to create a sweeping piece, similar to Deuter.\n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Paradise","year":"1983"},"shangri-la":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"Deep yet dynamic synthesizer music performed by our friend William Wichman. A beautiful and magical journey through a paradise of warm electronic and rhythmic sounds.\n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Shangri La","year":"1983"},"tara":{"image":"","label":"California Marketing","review":"His softer side is shown here, again intertwining nature sounds with various instruments and electronics. Titles include \"Himalaya/Ecstasy\" and \"Divine Nectar.\"\n\n(Backroads Catalog, 1985)","title":"Tara","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"William Wichman","entry_number":1},"william-wichman-and-suzanne-doucet":{"albums":{"brilliance":{"image":"","label":"Isis","review":"","title":"Brilliance","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"William Wichman and Suzanne Doucet","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":80,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/William-Wichman-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0ea83cb1-089b-43c0-9f03-c13fcff4e44a","last_name":"Wichman"},"windy-carl":{"artist_name":"Windy and Carl","body":"Windy and Carl were part of a '90s revival in ambient and drone music which also included bands like Stars of the Lid and Labradford. Like those bands, the married duo primarily used heavily treated guitars to create atmospheric soundscapes whereas many '80s artists utilized synths. Most of their releases fall outside the timespan of this guide, but their debut cassette *Portal* is a mostly instrumental ambient album that will likely be of interest to readers here. \n\nCarl Hultgren was born in 1967 and Windy Weber in 1972. Hultgren started playing guitar in his teens, doing \"the whole routine of learning Black Sabbath and AC/DC songs as a teenager with my friends in our private garage band,\" as he recalled. Weber was also a big music fan and was working at a record store when she first met Hultgren in 1989. The couple soon started dating and in 1993 the couple released a 7\" and launched their own label Blue Flea. They signed to Kranky in the '90s (also home to Stars of the Lid) and released their most acclaimed album *Depths* in 1998, but have continued to record and release music sporadically in the ensuing decades. The couple has also owned a record store in Dearborn Michigan called Stormy Records which they've run together since 1999. Their bandcamp page is [here](https://windyandcarl.bandcamp.com/).","discography":{"windy-carl":{"albums":{"portal":{"image":"","label":"Blue Flea","review":"","title":"Portal","year":"1994"}},"artist_name":"Windy and Carl","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":343,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/windy-carl-640.jpeg?alt=media&token=14689f1a-034e-4ff5-80e7-8b9b3b8a5522","last_name":"Windy"},"woz":{"artist_name":"Woz","body":"Delaware synthesist Paul Woznicki (\"Woz\") is mainly known for his minimal synth album *Woz*, originally issued in 1981 and reissued in 2012. However, he recorded and performed throughout the '80s and '90s and put out many DIY cassettes that he mainly sold at gigs. On all of his work, Woznicki was joined by longtime collaborator and guitarist George Christie. \n \nBorn in 1951, Woznicki grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. He loved to tinker with electronics, learning to take things apart and fix them. He brought a similar mentality to music, teaching himself to play harmonica and piano.\n\nAfter high school, Woznicki started playing keyboards in various cover bands, usually 3-4 nights a week. By the mid-'70s, he formed the Melting Planet Band to play original material, a mix of jazz fusion and prog. He also started performing electronic music, acquiring an electric piano, a string synth, and a homemade instrument he constructed from an accordion and a hairdryer. He even built a few robots modeled after R2D2 that he'd bring onstage at his shows and they always attracted attention.\n\nAt one of his performances in New York, Woznicki met B-movie director Don Dohler, who was there promoting his movie *Alien Factor*. Dohler asked Woznicki to compose a soundtrack for his next movie, *Fiend* which came out in 1980. \"I drove down to Maryland and did that soundtrack from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon,\" Woznicki recalled. \"Everything was improvised on the spot.\" Recently, the [soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMr9C5P7mes) has attracted a cult following and a reissue is in the works.\n\nAnother early supporter was Gino Wong, who played Woznicki's music on WXPN and asked him to record an album for his label Ulterior. The result was *Woz*,  the only widely distributed album of Woznicki's career.  He released two more self-titled cassette releases with new material in 1984 and 1985, though they had xeroxed covers and were mainly sold at his concerts. \"I just wanted to gig,\" Woznicki recalled. \"I played bars, art galleries, the Painted Bride. I loved performing.\"\n\nThroughout the '80s, Woznicki had a job working as a dental technician, a career he held until retirement in 2018. They let him use a room in the basement as a studio, and he continued to record there often, putting out occasional cassettes that he duplicated at home and sold in small quantities. This continued into the '90s when he released the ambient/environmental album *River Sounding* and a live album at Borders. More recently, Woznicki appeared on some projects by the Edge City Collective, a collaborative recording project that resulted in a trio of CDs.\n","discography":{"woz":{"albums":{"embassy":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Embassy/830 Recordings","year":"1988"},"live-at-borders":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at Borders Books and Music","year":"1995"},"live-at-the-kennel-club":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Live at the Kennel Club 5/9/86","year":"1986"},"river-sounding":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"River Sounding","year":"1994"},"woz":{"image":"","label":"Ulterior","review":"","title":"Woz","year":"1981"},"woz-microbes":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Woz [Streets of Pompeii]","year":"1984"},"woz-music-by":{"image":"","label":"No label","review":"","title":"Woz [Music by Paul Woznicki]","year":"1984"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":310,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/paul-woznicki-640.jpg?alt=media&token=e80e3906-e3c9-4347-af01-e7b6f88c4ea3","last_name":"Woz"},"zavijava-orchestra":{"artist_name":"Zavijava Orchestra","body":"Named after a star in the Virgo constellation, the Zavijava Orchestra was an ambient/experimental duo that formed at Bennington College in Vermont. At the time, its members Charles Townsend and Chris Faris were primarily free jazz players, though both were also influenced by Indian Classical music and shamanism. They only released one cassette in their time together, the now rare and collectible 1986 album *Rivers of Light*\n\nTownsend and Faris first met at Bennington in 1976 while they were studying jazz with notable players like Bill Dixon, Alan Silva and Milford Graves. Faris played bass and vibes and Townsend played violin and piano, two instruments he'd been playing almost his entire life. The two bonded over their similar interests and would stay up late playing in epic jam sessions.  Before they recorded anything on their own, Faris contributed bass to an Art Brooks live LP that was recorded at Bennington in 1977.\n\nAfter college, they moved to Philadelphia where they were based for the rest of their career.  The two continued to play jazz and experimental music there and eventually got a deal with Mu-Psych to release their debut.\n\nFor their album they recruited harpist Suzzanne Bonnen who they'd met at Bennington, to play on a few songs too. Townsend composed most of the music on *Rivers of Light* but there was also a fair amount of improvisation from all three on various tracks. As with all the Mu-Psych stuff, only 1000 copies were printed and sales were slow.  The band played live around the area when they could, but Townsend felt there just wasn't much interest. \"It broke my heart when the band dissolved,\" he said. By 1989, Bonnen moved to Oregon and Faris moved back to his home state of Vermont.\n\nTownsend, who was originally from Philadelphia, stayed in the area and continued to make music with others. By the '90s he was making his living largely through busking, playing electric violin nightly on the streets of Philadelphia, New York City, and the Atlantic City boardwalk.  \"Busking may seem 'low-brow' to some,\" Townsend said. \"But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I have made lots of money and enjoy it very very much. It has freed me from a lot of the problems most musicians face like wasting lots of time trying to get gigs or getting enough practice time in daily on your instrument.\n\nFaris passed away in 2015.","discography":{"zavijava-orchestra":{"albums":{"rivers-of-light":{"image":"","label":"Mu-Psych","review":"","title":"Rivers of Light","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":32,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ZaviJava%20Orchestra.jpg?alt=media&token=31f9c6dd-c920-4279-9dbe-740daf8c0c0f","last_name":"Zavijava Orchestra"},"zenon-slawinski":{"artist_name":"Zenon Slawinski","body":"Zenon Slawinski is a musician and graphic designer living in the Washington, DC area. For years, he wrote music for industrial and educational films and for Children's Radio Theatre, a group that produced radio plays for kids on WPFW. He and co-music director John Ramo became close friends and released an album of original music in 1981 called *Polarities*. The pair later founded Sonic Images, a recording studio and production company that specialized in interactive and educational content. They even wrote the theme music for the political talk show *The McLaughlin Group*. During this time, Slawinski released a Vangelis-influenced tape, *The Mad Draconians* on his friend Michael Willis' Newvieux label. However, there were only a few hundred copies made and it is now seldom seen. \n\nZenon (sounds like \"Lennon\") Slawinski was born in 1954 and grew up in and around Detroit. His parents were Polish immigrants who came to America after the war. His father was a model maker for General Motors and his mother was a homemaker and big fan of music who made sure all the kids learned to play a musical instrument. \"I had a brother named Ziggy, a sister named Ursula, I was Zenon, and then a brother named Andy. How do you have all those unusual names and then come up with Andy?\" Slawinski laughed. \"We all took accordion lessons, but I was the only one who stuck with it.\"\n\nEventually, Slawinski switched to organ and piano and started playing in bands during high school. At the time, his favorite music was progressive rock and jazz, which is where he first learned about the analog synthesizers he would later explore in depth. Slawinski also loved to draw and put his visual skills to work designing logos and fliers for local businesses. These two interests - both music and design - would shape the trajectory of his adult life.\n\nSlawinski attended three different colleges but eventually settled on a music theory major at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He got his first synth, an Arp Odyssey, which he spent countless hours playing and mastering. At school, he also learned how to play the large set of bells, or carillon, at the Burton Memorial Tower on the main campus in Ann Arbor. \"I would pass by Burton tower and hear the bells. I did an audition for them and they said I had the chops to do it. I did some arrangements of contemporary music and loved it. Later, when I moved to D.C., I played the carillon at the National Zoo. It was a big keyboard you had to play with your fists.\"\n\nAfter graduating in 1976, Slawinski moved to Washington D.C. and got a job as a type setter and then as a film animator at Bono Film Services, a film lab started by Sonny Bono’s cousin, Joe Bono. He worked on a modified Master Series animation stand, shooting animation and film credits. He also shot a lot of filmography, the technique later made famous by Ken Burns.\n\nThrough a friend, Slawinski heard about a new radio station, WPFW, that was hosting a program called Children's Radio Theatre. Directed by Joan Bellsey and Doris Indyke, the program aired on Saturday mornings and featured children's stories set as plays with music. Slawinski auditioned for a music position and got the job. Soon, he and another newly hired musician named John Ramo became co-music directors. They got along well and decided to produce an album of their own original material. \"I was working at Bono Film Services, meeting film makers and they needed music,\" Slawinksi said. \"When I heard the music that was available, I thought, 'We can do better than this.' So, John and I got some contracts to do scores for documentary and industrial films. That then led to us doing an album of our own music.\"\n\nOn the side, Slawinski had already been working as a sound engineer, recording poets at his house for another radio show on WPFW called *Writers Workshop On The Air* (later changed to *Garfield Street*.) He decided to move his home studio, which he called Sonic Images, into a building in the Adams Morgan area of DC. There, he upgraded to an eight track recorder and bought new instruments like an Oberheim synthesizer and a Linn drum machine. Slawinski and Ramo's album, *Polarities* released in 1981 was mostly recorded at Sonic Images.\n\nBy 1984, Ramo and Slawinski's work with Children's Radio Theatre had garnered numerous awards, including the prestigious Ohio State Award. The duo then become involved with the Henny Penny play writing contest, an offshoot of their radio show where children would submit original plays and the adult actors would produce them. The contests would culminate with a live broadcast production from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with actors, musicians, and sound effects artists.\n\nAnother of Slawinski’s gigs was playing music for dance concerts, often alongside Ramo and his friend Michael Willis, a bass player. When Willis started a label called Newvieux to promote his soundtrack to the film *Dead Air,* Slawinski got him to also put out,  *The Mad Draconians*, an album of his compositions recorded at his home studio. \"I was a big Vangelis fan,\" Slawinski said. \"I liked the lush sounds he got. I also loved Tomita and Walter Carlos was a big influence. The music I wrote was more landscape pieces.\" Newvieux promoted both albums in underground music magazines like *Syne* and *Sound Choice*, but only a few hundred copies were made.\n\nWorking on *The Mad Draconians* had given Slawinski a lot of confidence in his production skills, and he and Ramo decided to turn Sonic Images into a full-fledged business.  They rented out a large building and installed a 24 track recorder and state of the art gear like a Kurzweil 250 synth. Running from 1986 to 1996, the studio employed over 50 people at its height and encompassed audio, video and interactive production.  \n\nInitially, Sonic Images recorded original soundtracks for the Smithsonian and independent filmmakers, as well as voiceovers for talking books by authors such as Jim Fowler, David Brinkley, and James Earl Jones. But as time went on, the majority of their work turned toward interactive and educational products for the newly developed CDi platform. Some of these projects included an animated update to the three little pigs story called *PIGS*, a musical instruction series called *Private Lessons*, and *Reel Women*, a disc about women in the movies hosted by Jodi Foster. They also worked on numerous educational projects largely funded through grants. \n\nOne of the best known productions at Sonic Images was the theme for *The McLaughlin Group*, a TV show hosted by the opinionated and brash John McLaughlin, who directed a panel discussion of experts on hot political topics of the day. “We got a visit from him one day and he said he needed a theme song for his show,” Slawinksi said. “So, John and I developed the theme. McLaughlin came back a week later. We played it for him and he simply said in his firm and decisive voice, ‘I like it!’ and walked out. It has played for all the years the show was on. It even appeared in the movie *Dave.* During the good times, we probably got two to four thousand dollars each a year from the royalties.”\n\nAs Sonic Images grew, maintaining a large staff became a concern. Many of their projects were funded with grants, and that money had a tendency to eventually run out. \"As we grew, we didn’t want to let people go as the projects wound down. But we weren’t making enough money just from recording.\" Slawinski said. \"So, we hooked up with Cheyenne Software who was looking to expand into the consumer market. They also wanted to take us public and soon changed the name from Sonic Images to Enteractive, a name that didn’t sit well with the founders and our staff. Eventually, they brought in new marketing people and we had to give control of the company away, and then they shut it down. It was a real sad time. After that, many of the people that were the core of the company remained friends. We all just went our separate ways.\"\n\nRamo ended up moving to Colorado while Slawinski stayed in the DC area, where he lives today. He was married in 1998 to Karin Huggens, a fellow artist and musician who plays the flute and saxophone. The two of them continue to create art and play music together to this day, usually with their jazz band and solo gigs around the DC area. After Sonic Images, Slawinski founded a new company called Zenarts Design Studio, focusing mostly on graphic design and some music projects, that he still owns and operates today.\n","discography":{"john-ramo-and-zenon-slawinski":{"albums":{"polarities":{"image":"","label":"Lavenham Records","review":"","title":"Polarities","year":"1981"}},"artist_name":"John Ramo and Zenon Slawinski","entry_number":1},"zenon":{"albums":{"the-mad-draconians":{"image":"","label":"Newvieux","review":"Not all tapes in the cassette underground were low budget - here we have a pristinely recorded and professional-looking electronic album that is thoughtfully composed and executed in a style reminiscent of Vangelis, [Emerald Web](/emerald-web), or even Camel at their most pastoral.\n\nNearly all the music is synth-based, with thematic motifs that would make you swear this is from a film soundtrack, especially the memorable \"Dune\" which had me wondering if it was from that film (it's not). Percussion is used sparingly, as are sequencers, creating a moody soundscape with symphonic aspirations, as with the harmonically complex title track that could pass for a Gentle Giant composition. Moments like these mean this tape would appeal more to prog-heads than new age collectors, though there are some more relaxed moments such as the reflective \"Triumph of Eve,\" the mystical \"Mirage\" and most  of the epic \"North East Rising Sun\" which has a convincing synth flute.\n\n(Mark Griffey, 2020)","title":"The Mad Draconians","year":"1986"}},"artist_name":"Zenon","entry_number":2}},"entry_number":172,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Zenon-640.jpg?alt=media&token=0ae83fb9-ce79-4f80-9d4f-f4b14ed30db2","last_name":"Slawinski"},"zon-vern-pyles":{"artist_name":"Zon Vern Pyles","body":"Since getting his first Moog at the age of 16, Zon Vern Pyles remained in thrall of synthesizers for all of his adult life, whether playing, teaching, or designing sounds for them.  Living in West Virginia, hardly a hotbed for electronic music, Pyles eventually befriended the area's other synth guru, Gil Trythall, and the two formed a traveling synthesis show that toured universities to give educational talks and musical demonstrations. Pyles moved to Arizona in 1986 where he worked for a decade at a synth retailer before moving into film scores and freelance sound programming full time. Pyles' commercial output in the '80s was slim, comprised of just one album *Earthzone*, plus a few songs on the first IEMA group tape.  \n\nBorn in 1960, Pyles grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, a small college town about 75 miles south of Pittsburgh, PA. Pyles' father led the art department at Houze Glass in Pt. Marion, PA. One of Pyles’ first musical loves was The Ventures, a surf band who drenched their sound in reverb and sometimes used wild effects on their guitars.  But it was ultimately the synthesizer that captured Pyles' imagination. “The first bolt of lightning hit during a long drive in the car with my dad,” Pyles remembered. “We heard one of those old Raymond Scott electronic audio logos for Gillette on the car radio and I asked my father what made that sound. He usually knew the answer when I’d ask him questions like that, but he didn’t know this one. That intrigued me even more, so I had a natural inclination toward weird sounds I guess.”  \n\nPyles later heard *Switched on Bach* on PBS and discovered that the source for the new sound was a modular synthesizer. Once he saw a picture of Walter Carlos’ Moog, he knew that’s what he wanted to do. For his 16th birthday, Pyles’ father offered to get him either a synthesizer or a car. Pyles picked the synth - a Moog Sonic Six. He proved to be a quick learner and a year later was already playing in a band covering songs by Led Zeppelin and the Beatles.  \n\nAfter a while, Pyles got tired of playing covers and started writing his own music. He joined a fledgling synth group called the IEMA (International Electronic Music Association) and through their newsletter SYNE, learned that founder Jim Finch was soliciting contributions for the first ever “Group Tape.” Pyles recorded some tracks with his Moog and a reel to reel recorder and sent them in to Finch. Pyles was pleasantly surprised when two of his songs, “Voyage” and “Sorceress” were included as the first tracks featured on the tape.  \n\nIn 1981, Pyles replied to a classified ad for someone selling a used Echoplex tape delay. It turned out that the seller was Gil Trythall, then the Dean of Music at WVU and one of the few other synth enthusiasts in town. He and Pyles became fast friends and later, musical collaborators. Trythall had written a book called *The Principles and Practice of Electronic Music* in 1973 and was also running a festival called *Electronic Music Plus*. Trythall invited Pyles to join him for a live show at his festival. When that went well, they took their show on the road to other local colleges where they would do a lecture during the day, followed by a free concert at night. They continued doing these shows for the next five years, eventually adding some of Pyles’ compositions into their repertoire, like “Ritual,” which later ended up on *Earthzone*.\n\nDuring this period, Pyles occasionally got work doing scores for industrial films, most of which have been lost to time. However, he did score his first film in 1986, a sci-fi B-movie called *Battle for the Lost Planet* (AKA *Galaxy Destroyer* AKA *Galaxy*).  \n\nBy 1986, Pyles was ready for a change and moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, in part lured by a new keyboard-focused specialty store called Synthony Music. Pyles was able to get a job there doing sales, and worked his way up to store manager. At Synthony he met many like-minded musicians and started to become aware of the marketing power of new age.  For his album *Earthzone*, which he self-released right around the time of his move to Arizona, Pyles used a list of new age stores to sell his tapes on consignment. In all, Pyles estimates that he sold about 700 copies.  \n\nAt the end of the ‘80s, Pyles started getting freelance work designing preset sounds for synthesizers. In 1992 he was a grand prize winner for Roland’s JD800 sound programming competition, helping secure a raft of new clients including Roland, Korg, Alesis and later Nord.  Pyles was even able to contribute sounds for the MiniMoog voyager, designed by one of his idols, Robert Moog. The two actually had met years prior to that in 1987 when Pyles introduced himself at Kurzweil Music Systems in Boston, MA where Bob Moog was working at the time. Pyles gave Moog a copy of *Earthzone* and the two struck up a correspondence. A little while later Moog eventually revealed that he loved the cassette and listened to it often in his car.  By the time he launched the MiniMoog Voyager in 2002, Moog hired Pyles to design and program the first bank of 128 factory presets for the Performer edition of Moog’s new, updated Minimoog.\n\nIn addition to his work as a sound designer for synthesizers, Pyles returned to soundtrack work in the 90s, contributing scores to a few ultra obscurities like *Darkfury* (1995) and *Stranger Than Angels* (1998) and was a Contributing Editor for Keyboard magazine - writing several synthesizer and electronic music product reviews. Pyles finally released his second album in 2007 *Looking Forward* on iTunes. Pyles maintains a website [here](https://www.zonvernpyles.com/).","discography":{"zon-vern-pyles":{"albums":{"earthzone":{"image":"","label":"Synthespan","review":"*Earthzone* varies in mood from celestial space-out to pretty hot energetic selections. \"Yeti Trail,\" for example, is densely melodic, rhythmic and tinged with sounds of sitar and tablas, bringing to mind the magnificence of the Himalayas. \"Morning Mist\" and \"Karon\" are more mellow and flowing, with with sounds of flute and harp echoing in  a cloudy soft atmosphere. \"Sole Survivor\" evokes the awesome isolation of being along with the vastness of nature - in this case apparently a jungle, filled with strange echoing animal cries. A total change of pace hits in \"Rush Hour,\" a fast paced, circular piece done with sounds of electric piano, organ and bells. All in all, this is interesting electronic music with some punch to it, for travel, movement, and background.\n\n(Wahaba Heartsun, *Heartsong Review* No. 4, 1988)","title":"Earthzone","year":"1987"}},"artist_name":"","entry_number":1}},"entry_number":93,"featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Zon-Vern-Pyles-alt.jpg?alt=media&token=35b7e25b-c5ad-432a-8eba-777d8d3e3f56","last_name":"Pyles"}},"lists":{"1-marcancions-midwest-favorites":{"body":"In this list, collector Mark Hanson highlights some of his favorite ambient, new age, and electronic releases from the Midwest. Some of these tend to be lesser known even to seasoned collectors. This is partly because West Coast new age and Northeast progressive electronic scenes were more documented at the time. \n\n\"Midwestern artists have a strong DIY ethic and work in an environment that encourages experimentation,\" Hanson said. \"There is less pressure than on the coasts. I would imagine the long winters and dramatic seasonal changes play a role in sound and aesthetic as well.”\n\nBased in Minneapolis, Hanson got his start collecting techno and house records. Eventually, his tastes broadened to include disco, funk and obscure private press electronic cassettes from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Recently, he has taken a particular interest in the quirky DIY [cybertronica](/genre-definitions) and MIDI music catalogued in *AfterTouch* magazines in the early ‘90s.\n\nHanson’s wife is a harpist, and he credits her as an influence on his collecting as well. “She’s from Wisconsin and was listening to Kim Robertson at a young age, so that sound world - harp, spacious arrangements, a kind of pastoral stillness - was always around. Many electronic, ambient, and new age tapes carry that same expansive, relaxing quality. I’m also drawn to the mystique around a lot of these releases. It feels handmade, personal, almost secretive.” \n\nAround 2020, Hanson started a YouTube channel under the name “Marcancion” with the goal of sharing thrifted musical discoveries that feel overlooked or forgotten. Follow him [here](https://www.youtube.com/@marcancion9910).\n\n- Shane Anthony - *Follow the Dream* (1990, S.A. Records)\n- Robin Berry - *Quiet Expressions* (1990, No label)\n- [Scott Bruder](/scott-bruder) - *Stolen Moments* (1989, Scott Bruder Music)\n- [John Denzene](/jon-denzene) - *Life Waves* (1992, Nimzhead Rush Audio)\n- [Tom Hiel](/tom-hiel) - *Geometry* (1989, Echo Bay Music)\n- [Tom Parsons](/tom-parsons) - *Pink Sounds from the Purple Plain* (1988, Parsounds)\n- [Peter Phippen](/peter-phippen) - *Darker Instincts* (1994, Primal Music)\n- [Warren Sampson](/warren-sampson) - *Traveller* (1987, Big Road Music)\n- Tomasz - *Five Corners* (1988, Out Chorus Studios)\n- Christopher Yoerks - *Trains in the Night* (1989, Deflated Suit Music)\n\n\n\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Marcancion%20drawing.jpg?alt=media&token=cfbe8eb3-25ee-4b55-a1a7-d29cd7476bff","title":"Marcancion's Midwestern Favorites"},"2-one-shot-gems":{"body":"Part of the cassette's appeal to DIY musicians was the ease with which they could reproduce and sell their music to fans. While some ambient and new age artists like [Karma Moffett](/karma-moffett), [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers) or [Peter Spoecker](/macrofusion-/-shining-lotus) took advantage of the format to issue sprawling discographies, other artists were content to pour their creativity into one standalone release. Here are twelve excellent one-shot new age and ambient albums of the '80s and early '90s.\n\n- [Ernest Hood](/ernest-hood): *Neighborhoods* (1975, Thistlefield)\n- [Judith Tripp](/judith-tripp): *Windscape* (1983, No label)\n- [Mike Christopher](/mike-christopher): *Suspended Thoughts* (1983, No label)\n- [Scott/Thompson](/scott/thompson): *Heartspeak* (1984, Full Circle Music)\n- [Mark and Helen Banning](/mark-banning): *Journey to the Light* (1984, Creative Sound Productions)\n- [Dervish](/dervish): *Dervish* (1985, No label)\n- [Chel White](/chel-white): *The Key of Dreams* (1986, No label)\n- [Zavijava Orchestra](/zavijava-orchestra): *Rivers of Light* (1986, Mu-psych)\n- [Scott O'Brien](/scott-o'brien): *Walk on Water* (1987, Duck and Trout Music)\n- [Bud Wood](/bud-wood): *Blue Heron* (1987, No label)\n- [Bill Gregg](/bill-gregg): *Voyage to the Heart* (1990, Triple Gem Music)\n- [Claudia Tulip](/claudia-tulip): *Migration* (1991, Canyon Records)","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Chel-White-640.jpg?alt=media&token=c8cb06c5-b973-4f4d-8251-5dcdd6fd1c3a","title":"One Shot Gems"},"3-collectible-new-age-labels":{"body":"The wellspring of self-released ambient and new age music on cassette runs deep. So deep in fact that many great artists remain largely undiscovered, even by the small but rabid cult of collectors out digging in thrift stores daily across the US. The scarcity is partially due to the music - which was never exactly mainstream in the first place - but it can also be attributed to the format itself. The inexpensive reproduction of cassettes enabled artists to press small amounts of copies or make them on demand, but over time it has also effectively reduced their footprint as tapes decay, are thrown out, or sit in a musician's closet.\n\nOf course, some new age and ambient musicians released their music not on their own, but on a series of upstart labels with better distribution and bigger budgets. As such, these cassettes tend to hold up better over time and be available in larger numbers. A lot of these labels, such as Mu-Psych and Spirit Sounds, have been targeted by cassette collectors who try to track down every release. \n\nIn my personal estimation, these are the most desirable labels, ranked by catalog consistency and/or overall average prices. Vanity \"labels\" that are just used for single artists like Peter Davidson's Avocado Records are not included here, however cool they may be.\n\n1. Mu-Psych\n2. Valley of the Sun\n3. Plumeria\n4. Spirit Sounds\n5. Unity \n6. Third Ear Music\n7. Soundings of the Planet\n8. New World Productions\n9. Fortuna\n10. Antiquity\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/labels.jpeg?alt=media&token=46a639d0-c5d8-4237-b42e-5a251afbdd34","title":"10 Most Collectible New Age Labels"},"4-zither-n-bliss":{"body":"On his prophetic 1969 album *Dawn*, musician Don Robertson foreshadowed many strands of the new age sound that would blossom in the mid-70s, such as the blissed-out zither raga of the title track. Laraaji was the first to popularize the zither, which could be easily made with a simple modification to an autoharp, but others like Schawkie Roth and William Aura also had big-selling albums that made extensive use of the instrument's heavenly, cascading sound. More obscure musicians such as Michael Morrongiello and Dan Parker Moore also tried their hand at the zither too, which could be tuned so anyone could play it and get lost in the vibrations. Here is a sampling of eleven new age albums with plentiful zither:\n\n- [Don Robertson](/don-robertson): *Celestial Ascent* (1980, DBR)\n- [William Aura](/william-aura): *Aurasound I&II* (1982, Fortuna)\n- Dan Parker Moore: *Tone of the Yellow Bell* (1982, No label)\n- [George Tortorelli](/george-tortorelli): *Medicine Wind* (1983, Medicine Wind Productions)\n- [Will Vukin](/will-vukin): *Heartpool* (1983, Full Circle Productions)\n- [Michael Morrongiello](/michael-morrongiello): *Down the Mountain* (1983, No label)\n- [Maloah Stillwater](/maloah-stillwater): *Shores of Paradise* (1984, Heavensong Music)\n- [Mark and Helen Banning](/mark-banning): *Journey to the Light* (1984, Creative Sound Productions)\n- [Laraaji](/laraaji): *Essence/Universe* (1987, Audion)\n- [David Michael](/david-michael): *Sierra Suite* (1990, Purnima Productions)\n- [Schawkie Roth](/schawkie-roth): *Calling the Angels* (1993, Heavenly Music)","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/zither-cover.jpg?alt=media&token=c52bf818-d9cc-4b4e-8d9b-fbe2da03e3fa","title":"Zither 'n' Bliss"},"collector-faves-jed-bindeman":{"body":"Jed Bindeman owns the record label [Concentric Circles](https://www.concentric-circles.net/) and co-runs another called [Freedom to Spend](https://www.freedomtospend.org) with Pete Swanson. Both are home to ambient and experimental reissues by artists such as [John DiStefano](https://ultravillage.com/john-di-stefano), [Michele Mercure](/michele-mercure-musser), and Ernest Hood. Based in Portland, Oregon, Jed has been collecting weird music since his teenage years. His father got him into the Residents, Terry Riley and Zoviet France early on, priming Jed to venture further underground after discovering *Bananafish*, the legendary zine about noise and fringe culture. In 2010, Jed started a record store called Little Axe which has helped him gain access to deep collections of many obscure and sought-after cassette releases. Ever since, he's built an amazing collection of homemade and DIY cassettes, including a nice swath of PINA and ambient releases most of us will never see.\n\n**Ten Favorite New Age and Ambient Albums:**\n\n- [Mark and Helen Banning](/mark-banning): *Journey To the Light* (1984, Creative Sound Productions)\n- [Kevin Braheny](/kevin-braheny): *Lullaby For the Hearts of Space* (1980, Heartcall)*\n- [Joanna Brouk](/joanna-brouk): *Healing Music* (1980, Hummingbird Productions)\n- [Michael Chocholak](/michael-chocholak): *Les Oiseax* (1987, M&M Music)\n- [Constance Demby](/constance-demby): *At Alaron* (1984, Gandarva)\n- [William Eaton](/william-eaton): *Tale of a Musician* (1981, No label)\n- [Neil Kvern](/neil-kvern): *Doctor Dancing Mask* (1983, No label)\n- [Kia Portafekas](/kia-portafekas): *Ki'tai* (1987, No label)\n- [Don Slepian](/don-slepian): *Open Spaces* (1980, Plumeria)\n- [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns): *Morning Jewel* (1980, Continuum Montage)\n\n*Note from Jed: \"Minus the saxophone section!\"","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jed.jpg?alt=media&token=3331835a-4d4d-482a-97f4-52f987d7d80f","title":"Collector Favorites: Jed Bindeman"},"collector-faves-jesse-woodcock":{"body":"[Jesse Woodcock](https://www.instagram.com/doublespeak_vinyl/?hl=en) is a native of Portland, Oregon who started collecting vintage ambient and new age cassettes long before others in the local scene caught on. Part of his interest in the genre stems from his bout with chronic migraines, which has lent a therapeutic dimension to his appreciation of relaxing music. Some of the jewels in his collection include a Goodwill-sourced copy of *Quartz Hills* by [David Stout](/david-stout), a signed copy of Laraaji’s *Vision Songs*, and various [Todd Barton](/todd-barton) releases, on which his aunt was one of the Kesh vocalists. \n\n**Ten Favorite US New Age Albums:**\n\n- [Scott/Thompson](thompson): *Heartspeak* (1984, Full Circle Music)\n- Gail Laughton: *Harps of the Ancient Temples* (Rapture, 1969)\n- [Charles Lloyd](https://ultravillage.com/charles-lloyd) : *Pathless Path* (Unity, 1979)\n- [Daniel Crommie](/daniel-crommie): *Chrysanthemum* (1993, New Weave)\n- [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns): *Planetary Unfolding* (1981, Continuum Montage)\n- [Pauline Anna Strom](/pauline-anna-strom): *Trans Millenia Consort* (Ether Ship, 1982)\n- [Laraaaji](/laraaji) and [Lyghte](/jonathan-goldman): *Celestial Realms* (1986, Spirit Music)\n- [Steve Roach](/steve-roach): *Structures from Silence* (1984, Soundquest)\n- [Aiki Domo](https://ultravillage.com/elevation-express/aiki-domo): *Sunrise Walk along a Tahitian Seashore* (Mirror Image Labs, 1985)\n- [Marcey Hamm](https://ultravillage.com/marcey-hamm): *Celestial Dance* (Music by Marcey, 1987)\n\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/jesse-w.jpg?alt=media&token=52c5af23-960e-4be4-9b30-7215b5b41202","title":"Collector Favorites: Jesse Woodcock"},"collector-faves-jogen-salzberg":{"body":"[Jogen Salzberg](https://www.instagram.com/sorcevibrations/) is a musician and collector who began exploring electronic and meditative sounds in 1996. At the time, he was making beats and hunting for interesting sounds to sample. Two early finds that caught his attention were Bruce Haack and Bill Reddy. He says that Alice Coltrane records hold a special place too, as they got him initiated into transcendent spaces and sparked his spiritual quest. But it wasn't until 2015 that he started buying new age. \"Unfortunately my ignorance repelled me for a long time,\" he says.  \"Constance Demby's *Skies Above Skies* invited me into this world.\"\n\nSalzberg currently works as a Zen teacher and meditation coach in Portland, Oregon. He sometimes conducts \"ethno-cosmik analog sound meditations\" which you can check out [here](https://www.mixcloud.com/jogen-adam-salzberg/). He also plays drums, practices paratheatre, reads James Hillman, and chills with his lady and her cat.\n\n**Top Ten Favorite New Age and Ambient Albums:**\n\n- [Steven Cooper](/steven-cooper): *Crystal Garden* (1986, Valley of the Sun)\n- [Michael Masley](/michael-masley): *Bells and Shadows* (1989, No label)\n- [Dr. Jeffrey Thompson](/dr-jeffrey-thompson): *Windows Live Concert* (1990, Brain/Mind Research)\n- [Anthony Rian](/tony-gerber), [William Linton](/william-linton) & Mason Stevens: Cosmic Flight (1986, Emerald Castle Music)\n- Patrick McMahon: *Darshan* (1983, Aquarius Bookshop)\n- [Bob Mills and Friends](/bob-mills): *The Ocean....The Island* (1987, Mills-Mulligan Music)\n- [Ojas](/ojas): *Lotussongs 2* (1980, Ojas Music)\n- Rahul Sariputraji and Ryugen Watanabe: *Samadhi: The Supreme Meditation* (1989, No label)\n- [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin): *Breeze at Dawn* (1989, U-Music)\n- Various Artists: *Good Feelings* (1986, Mu Psych)","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Jogen-640.jpg?alt=media&token=70689208-a443-4a48-a284-05f6cfebb650","title":"Collector Favorites: Jogen Salzberg"},"collector-faves-leo-from-vermont":{"body":"Many people know Leo Vecchione as \"Leo from Vermont,\" a name he's used for mixtapes like the George Floyd tribute [*Say.His.Name.*](https://www.waterburyroundabout.org/community-archive/duxbury-music-lover-activist-blends-classic-protest-tracks-todays-street-sounds-to-confront-racism), or his ambient album *Somnium* from 2017. However, Vecchione duly notes that since he wasn’t born there (he moved there as a baby), he isn’t technically a Vermonter, but instead just a long-time resident. Nevertheless, Vecchione has done more to boost the state in collector circles than anyone else by far. \n\nVecchione first got the collecting bug as a kid, starting with He-Man and Star Wars book-and-record sets and soon graduating to pop and rock records like Michael Jackson's *Thriller* or the Beastie Boys 45 “Fight for Your Right to Party.” By the ‘90s, he had amassed a large collection, bought some turntables and was making mixtapes of hip-hop while collecting genres like reggae, soul, and gospel. In the early 2000s, he discovered rare new age music on [Waxidermy](https://waxidermy.com/blog/category/new-age/), trading records and info with Anthony Pearson and Douglas McGowan. Soon, he realized that Vermont was a \"jackpot for new age and ambient cassettes\" and largely stocked his cassette collection from local thrift stores and shops. In this list, Vecchione runs down a few of his local favorites in those genres.\n\n\n**Favorite New Age and Ambient Albums from Vermont:**\n\nThe Green Mountain State is a place where “salt of the earth” practicality meets an idealistic (and often nondenominational) spiritualism in a way that can, ideally, mitigate the shortcomings of both the former and the latter. Here are some of my favorite albums that showcase the best and brightest strains of that (admittedly) utopian collision, while embodying the soul of the place I’m proud to call home, collected in no particular order.\n\n- Alice Damon Kenzie: *Windsong II* (Lyghtwork, 1990) \n- [Andy Shapiro](/andy-shapiro): *Thoughts and Harmony* (Inner Wings, 1985)\n- [Andy Shapiro](/andy-shaprio): *Inner Wings* (Inner Wings, 1986)\n- [Dhyani Ywahoo](https://ultravillage.com/paul-temple): *Our Hearts and the Heart of the Earth Are One* (Sunray meditation Society, 1984)\n- Malcolm Goldstein: *The Seasons: Vermont, for magnetic tape collage & instrumental ensemble* (Folkways, 1983)\n- Cellutron & the Invisible: *Reflecting on the First Watch, We Uncover Buried Treasure for the Blind* (Green Mountain Records, 1978)\n- [R.E. Crosby](randall-crosby): *Watertation* (Brookwood Music, 1995)\n- Wintergreen: *Imagine the Sky* (Private Press, 1986)\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/leo-vecchione2.jpg?alt=media&token=240b9170-70a7-48ea-ac5f-cc495462d7b5","title":"Collector Favorites: Leo from Vermont"},"collector-faves-pete-smith":{"body":"[Pete Smith](https://www.instagram.com/peteneedsinstagram/) is an Oakland-based record and tape collector who discovered ambient music via Brian Eno during college. \"I've always liked long-form music with a kind of 'openness,' whether its improvised or composed,\" Smith said. After moving to California in the late 2000s, he started finding new age tapes at thrift stores and began exploring the genre. One of his most treasured finds came from a friend: \"*Hymn to a New Age* might be my favorite album overall: it strikes the perfect balance between flute and synthesizer, which is my ideal new age instrumentation. It's dark but warm, and it has a deep mystery about it.\" Originally from Northern Maryland, Smith works at a non-profit dedicated to economic justice and enjoys basketball and scrabble. \n\n**Twenty New Age and Ambient Favorites:**\n\n- [Swami Kriya Ramananda](https://ultravillage.com/swami-kriya-ramananda): *In the Garden*\n- [Swami Kriya Ramananda](https://ultravillage.com/swami-kriya-ramananda): *Hymn to a New Age*\n- [Robert Fritz](/robert-fritz): *Rainy Night on the Highway*\n- Meditations from the World of Osho: *Gourishankar / Prayer*\n- [Hasan Bakr](/hasan-bakr): *Vision*\n- [Aeolus](/robert-aeolus-myers): *Aeolian Melodies*\n- [Judith Tripp](/judith-tripp): *Windscape*\n- [Chris Spheeris](/chris-spheeris): *Electric Europe*\n- Eliane Radigue: *Jetsun Mila*\n- Bonnie Barnett: *Tunnel Hum USA*\n- Bonnie Barnett: *Tunnel Hum 1984*\n- [Jordan de la Sierra](/jordan-de-la-sierra): *Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose*\n- [Michael Mantra](https://ultravillage.com/michael-mantra): *Sworn to the Bell*\n- [Don Campbell](/don-campbell) - *Crystal Meditations*\n- [David Casper](/david-casper) - *Crystal Waves*\n- Randall McClellan: *The Healing Music of Rana*\n- [Karma Moffett](/karma-moffett): *Sitting Still Within Sitting Still Without*\n- [Jim Oliver](/jim-oliver): *One with the Eagle*\n- Jon Appleton: *Brush Canyon/Synclavier*\n- [Larkin](/larkin): *Moments Empowered*","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Pete-Smith-640.jpg?alt=media&token=b2594934-c5b8-47d0-a861-a98cc012e204","title":"Collector Favorites: Pete Smith"},"collector-faves-ryan-staley":{"body":"[Ryan Staley](https://www.instagram.com/hungryghostsupperclub/) is a Los Angeles native who was drawn to film scores at an early age through his parent's record collection. That became a gateway to things like Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno when he started collecting records more seriously. Recently, he's had increased focus on cassettes, getting lost in new age and DIY electronic rabbit holes. He does most of his buying locally or through trades, and he particularly treasures his six tape set of *Sound Sculptured Environments*. In addition to record collecting, Staley works as a lawyer and is an amateur street photographer of note, whose [shots](https://www.instagram.com/powercorruptionandlikes/) of peculiar LA characters have earned him a strong following on Instagram and inclusion in high-profile art [exhibitions](https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/ryan-staley-lawyer-double-life-los-angeles-street-photographer/). \n\n**U.S. New Age and Ambient Favorites**:\n\n- Jon Hassell - Fourth World Vol. 1 (1980, Editions EG)\n- [Emerald Web](/emerald-web): Valley of the Birds (1981, Stargate)\n- [Craig Kupka](/craig-kupka): *Clouds* (1981, Folkways)\n- [David Casper](/david-casper): *Crystal Waves* (1984, Hummingbird Records)\n- Smith and Erickson: *Blue Skies* (1985, No label)\n- [Carl Weingarten](/carl-weingarten): *Living in the Distant Present* (1985, Multiphase)\n- [Ernest Hood](/ernest-hood): *Neighborhoods* (1975, Thistlefield)\n- [Ojas](/ojas): *Faces of Ever* (Ojas Music, 1984)\n- [Michael Masley](/michael-masley): *Cymbalom Solos* (No label, 1985)\n- Robert W. Schachner: *Sound Sculptured Environments: Meditation* (Sound Sculpture, 1976)\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/ryan-staley-640.jpg?alt=media&token=99e88476-587c-4aaf-9468-49a0166a1f15","title":"Collector Favorites: Ryan Staley"},"genres":{"body":"Ever wondered what exactly is \"chamber jazz\" or \"progressive electronic music\"? Here are definitions for the genres commonly discussed on this site. \n\n**New Age**: This term can describe a huge variety of styles ranging from Tibetan meditation music, Sufi chanting, and neo-raga flute jams to up-tempo electronic instrumentals or even ethereal pop like Enya. Due to overuse in the '80s, it was rejected by many of the artists to whom it was applied, though a suitable alternative was rarely offered. However, it is still a useful umbrella term for music that intends to impart a reflective, mystical or spiritual quality. For more clarity, I occasionally divide it into the two subcategories below.\n\n**Meditative New Age**: Extended song forms, usually partially improvised, with a more introspective/inward quality. May feature acoustic and electronic instruments. (Example: [David Naegele](/david-naegele): *Temple in the Forest*)\n\n**Progressive New Age**: Instrumental music that may draw on minimalism, world music, prog-rock, fusion jazz, or classical. Song structures tend to be influenced by rock and jazz. Rhythms are more prominent than in the meditative style. Think of it as an evolution - new age 2.0. In the '80s and early '90s it was sometimes known as contemporary instrumental music. (Example: [Emerald Web](/emerald-web): *Catspaw*)\n\n**Progressive Electronic**: This is a broad genre that encompasses all electronic instrumental music that takes cues from progressive rock, ambient, minimalism, or classical. Similar to Progressive New Age, but without the spiritual/meditative angle, and exclusively electronic. (Example: Vangelis: *Antarctica*)\n\n**Berlin-school**: Electronic music based on sequencer patterns with rigid tempos, usually contrasted with melodic and improvisational solo leads. Extended song lengths are common. (Example: Klaus Schulze: *Timewind*)\n\n**Ambient**: Primarily electronic music that places emphasis on atmosphere or mood instead of melody. It can be similar to meditative new age, but lacks any spiritual or meditative intentionality. (Example: Brian Eno: *Music for Airports*)\n\n**Space/Space Ambient**: This is a subgenre of ambient that aims to impart a sense of wonder and awe, sort of a middle ground between ambient and meditative new age. Synthesizer is the predominant instrument. (Example: [Michael Stearns](/michael-stearns): *Planetary Unfolding*)\n\n**Kosmiche/Krautrock**: This term was originally used to characterize West German bands in the '70s that sought to remove R&B influence from rock music and replace it with elements of minimalism, psychedelia, jazz, avant-garde, and space rock. (Example: Neu!: *Neu!*)\n\n**Minimalism**: Pattern-based or droning instrumental music where melody is eschewed in favor of linear progression or development, even if it occurs at a very slow pace. It can have a \"mood-music\" quality at times that gets it lumped in with the other genres here, even though it has more academic origins. (Example: Steve Reich: *Music for 18 Musicians*)\n\n**Electro/Acoustic**: Like minimalism, this term is generally applied to music from an academic context. The term technically describes the process more than the music itself, specifying electronically modified acoustic instruments. (Example: [Harold Budd](/harold-budd) and Brian Eno: *The Pearl*)\n\n**Chamber Jazz**: Acoustic instrumental music that includes elements of minimalism, folk, and jazz.  Unlike most jazz, improvisation is downplayed in favor of melody and song arrangement. Moods are generally subdued. (Example: Penguin Café Orchestra: *Penguin Café Orchestra*)\n\n**Downbeat**: Instrumental electronic music with a clear rhythmic base (usually 4/4) via drum machine. BPM's typically under 120, hence the name. (Example: Wally Badarou: *Echoes*)\n\n**World Fusion**: A non-western influence in instrumentation or melody is clearly discernible, though song forms are rock/pop based. (Example: [Chuck Jonkey](/chuck-jonkey): *Rio Amazonas*)\n\n**Cybertronica**: This is a new term coined out of necessity to describe instrumental electronic music that draws from rock, pop, and new age, usually made with computers and digital synths, between the late '80s to mid-'90s. Quirky, odd, and homemade sounds predominate. This music was commonly made by members of the Creative Music Coalition (CMC). (Example: [Paris Rubiks](/paris-rubiks): *Paris Rubiks*)\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/appleton-image.jpg?alt=media&token=25555efe-c2c5-4ff2-b1e6-b2b930eee14b","title":"Genre Definitions"},"new-age-flute-superlatives":{"body":"The flute is the world's most ancient instrument – used by every culture in every part of the world, often for ritual and ceremonial purposes. So it was naturally a good fit with Baby Boomer musicians seeking a connection to their primal past while pointing their spiritual compass east instead of west. No album better captured the instrument's appeal for this generation than [Paul Horn's](/paul-horn) solo flute album *Inside* from 1968. Recorded on-site at the Taj Mahal, using the great walls as a huge echo chamber, the album became a surprise hit and went on to sell millions. Like the Velvet Underground, Horn's influence inspired thousands and launched a new genre. Here is a list of some who followed in Paul Horn's footsteps, with a mix of collector favorites and top sellers from their eras:\n\n- [Dean Evenson](/dean-and-dudley-evenson): *Desert Dawn Song* (1979, Soundings of the Planet)\n- [Joanna Brouk](/joanna-brouk): *Healing Music* (1980, Hummingbird Productions)\n- [Larkin](/larkin): *O'cean* (1980, Wind Sung Sounds)\n- [Swami Kriya Ramananda](/swami-kriya-ramananda): *Hymn to a New Age* (1981, Satsanga Fellowship)\n- [George Tortorelli](/george-tortorelli): *Trancemission* (1982, Medicine Wind Productions)\n- [Kip Setchko](/kip-kevin-setchko): *Flutronics* (1983, Crystal Wind)\n- [Judith Tripp](/judith-tripp): *Windscape* (1983, No label)\n- [Stephen Winfield](/steve-winfield): *In the Early Hours* (1983, No label)\n- [James Newton](/james-newton): Echo Canyon (1984, Celestial Harmonies)\n- [Karma Moffett](/karma-moffett): *Kailash* (1986, Padma Tapes)\n- [Bob Mills](/bob-mills): *The Ocean…The Island* (1987, No label)\n- [Sarah Benson](/sarah-benson): *Flutes of Interior Time* (1989, Spirit Music)\n- [Stephen Coughlin](/stephen-coughlin): *Breeze at Dawn* (1989, U-Music)\n- [Ia Tulip](/claudia-tulip): *Migrations* (1991, Canyon Records)\n- [Todd Barton](/todd-barton): *Tai Chi Shakuhachi* (1992, Valley Productions)\n- Grady Pounds: On the Turtles Back (1993, No label)","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Sarah-Benson-640.jpg?alt=media&token=20299aef-643a-4e78-9abd-de61f2d57ee2","title":"New Age Flute Superlatives"},"new-jersey-synthscapes":{"body":"Regional music scenes were still going strong in the '80s and New Jersey was particularly fertile ground for a community of synth lovers. The musicians in the area had plentiful networking opportunities, either through the International Electronic Music Association and their SYNE newsletter; Richard Ginsburg's *Synthetic Pleasure* radio show and magazine; and Creative Underground concerts. One of the earliest bands in the scene was the Nightcrawlers, a trio from Camden whose dark, throbbing ambient music inspired many locals to buy synths and try it too. Others followed the lead of Don Slepian, a key figure who had an early hit on the new age circuit with *Sea of Bliss*. Slepian also helped to found the Creative Underground, a New Jersey collective that put on multimedia shows between 1986 and 1990.  \n\nBecause the scene was steeped in DIY culture, nearly all of the music was self-released and can now be difficult to find. Nevertheless, here is a sprinkling of some fine examples:\n\n- [Don Slepian](/don-slepian): *Sea of Bliss* (1980, Plumeria)\n- [Jesse Clark](/jesse-clark): *Indigo* (1983, No label)\n- [Nightcrawlers](/nightcrawlers): *Evening Repose* (1983, No label) \n- [Lauri Paisley](lauri-paisley): *Channels* (1985, Methylunna) \n- [Chuck Van Zyl](/chuck-van-zyl): *Nuclear Winter* (1985, Lights Out)\n- [Dennis Andrew](/dennis-andrew): *Concepts* (1985, Day & Nite) \n- [Control Voltage](/d-andrew-rath): *Mind Pictures* (1986, No label) \n- [Chris Wyman](/chris-wyman): *Water Journeys* (1986, No label) \n- [E.Q...Zak](/e-q-zak): *A Gathering of Colour* (1986, No label)\n- [Scott O'Brien](/scott-o'brien): *Walking on Water* (1987, Duck & Trout Music) \n- [Ellen Crystall](/ellen-crystall): *Cosmic Laws* (1988, No label)","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Don-Slepian-640-new.jpg?alt=media&token=2dc8a066-4d56-4404-a603-c08391b5a7f3","title":"New Jersey Synthscapes"},"top-tier-solo-piano":{"body":"Minimalist and contemplative piano works can be traced back to 19th century Impressionist composers like Erik Satie, but the style was revitalized in America after LaMonte Young and Terry Riley placed a renewed emphasis on tonality and repetition inspired by Eastern traditions. In the '70s, many conservatory musicians created their own piano music that built on Riley and Satie, and then in 1975 Keith Jarrett showed that solo piano music could be popular with *The Koln Concert*.  The style peaked commercially with George Winston in the early '80s, when he issued three albums of seasonal piano impressions that sold millions and made Windham Hill one of the most successful indies of the era. Unfortunately, nearly every piano player who heard these thought, \"Hey, I can do that too\" and put out an album that proved they couldn't. Here are some highlights of meditative American piano music from the '70s and '80s: \n  \n- [Steven Halpern](/steven-halpern): *Spectrum Suite*  (1976, SRI) \n- [Jordan De La Sierra](/jordan-de-la-sierra): *Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose* (1978, Unity) \n- [Paul Lloyd Warner](/paul-lloyd-warner) and Steve Kindler: *Lemurian Sunrise* (1981, Waterfall Music)\n- [Jim Oliver](/jim-oliver): *Faces of Neptune* (1982, Oliver Music) \n- [David Naegele](/david-naegele): *Temple in the Forest* (1982, Valley of the Sun) \n- [David Oliver](/david-oliver) - *Lizard Grows on You* (1982, Damiana)\n- [Allaudin Mathieu](/allaudin-mathieu): *In the Wind* (1983, Cold Mountain) \n- [Joanna Brouk](/joanna-brouk): *Golden Swan* (1983, Hummingbird Productions) \n- [Harold Budd](/harold-budd) and Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois: *The Pearl* (Editions EG, 1984)\n","featured":false,"image":"https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/api-project-464300049727.appspot.com/o/Paul-Lloyd-Warner-whales.jpg?alt=media&token=ed2dd235-7a5a-4535-9303-95ff18256dab","title":"Meditative Piano"}},"users":{"CJi9xYTVVtTNPGFqRJxffMrRTAj1":{"isAdmin":true,"name":"chris"},"winWbnpFShbb6M0Qy8QBEbe9MMg2":{"email":"markgriffey@gmail.com","isAdmin":true,"name":"mark"}}}