
Age 2: My aunt taught me to bang out Mickey Mouse Club on the upright.
Age 4: Classical piano training begins.
Age 10: I gave the violin a shot for 1 year.
Age 12: I puckered up to the French horn (highly transferable skills).
Age 18: Started tinkering w/synths & samplers.
The Early Years
I practiced daily all those years (my poor parents!). For me it was meditation: once the crude chords and trills fell into my fingers and a sustainable rhythmic momentum forced past a few bumbled fingerings, I slip into my "practice". My eyes simply stared out the window into the woods. Serenity. subdued ghosts kept my hands in repetition- purposefully learned dexterity.
I only came out of the revery to celebrate the tactical success in mastering Herr Mendelssohn's devilishly counterpointed rhythms. My reward today will vaudeville a common liszt etude whose showy (read: excessive) octave decorations enduce my dog Schuss to howl the soul of a battered Soprano. I smile. good dog. tatered Liszt falls away & I turn inward a moment so zeal rightly funnels into the passionate focus required to step-up to Schumman or Bartok. I could stay in that space for hours. It was for me. The only person who could listen without disruptting me was my father.
A Young Adults Discovery
I never enjoyed playing music for others until I picked up the turntables. But THEN my alter ego (known variously as 'Her', 'the She-Devil', or 'La Diabla') set upon the Earth to shake some fierce booty. This heroine sports latex suits, a wickedly forked tonque and a magic bag full of parlor tricks, with which she moonlights around the globe (and spun with some of the best). However, like the haunted souls of Marvels past, my daylit persona can recall but mere shadows from those depthless nights. I hope to showcase some of our fabulous DJ mixes; however current ISP procedures prohibit the implementation...
So no mixes, but I have compiled a thorough list of MP3s that survey my compositional development and influences over the 6-8 year period that i took CLUB/DANCE music so seriously. However, some are simply experiments with post-modern compositional methodologies, returning structures that don't translate appreciably upon our culturally tuned ears.
The Intellectual Side, Influences, & a Break
So the beginning explores textural soundscape (i.e. ambient environment) as intrument (yes, of course, nod to the musique concrete, reich & the "airport"). Beatlessness yields to rhythm and the music becomes '91-93 (altho i prfer LFO & Banco D'Gaia). Then simple techno grooves that almost... well, they try (ripe for resampling however). Further on I discovered electro tattle-tales, drunken answering msgs left 13 hrs & 13000 miles away, & then Flash Gordon and Power Station stop by for a turn on the mic. They land somewhere btwn Aril Brika & Sven Vath. Other tracks R more funky (I must be getting older), but they're way too quirky for any DJ shy of Herbert to "get". (Damn that traditional music education!) Whatever. My tracks? They just keep on banging, more solid, mo'better, more tricks & mo' sass. UNTIL the "divorce" left my studio incomplete & in disrray... It's OK, I got to stop twiddling knobs in dark corners with nerdy, bald boys who knew too much about this stuff and not twat about the rest of life. Life is long, and music has been so much part of it that I don't need to put a leash on dat ugly ol dog. I needed some pussy anyway.
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