Short Run comics performance part 2!

Here is the 2nd half of my perfomance reading of my comics at the Short Run small press festival 2012!

short run perfomance live2 from Awesome But True on Vimeo.

DREAM GRANT THE THEATRICAL PRESENTATION!!!

YES YES YES!!!! I have here the video of my comic that I put on as a play for the Gridlords portion of the projects festival! You will love this for LIFE!!! As do I!!!

dream greant from Awesome But True on Vimeo.


Thank you Maria for filming this. Thank you Dunja, Lisa & Jason for bringing me to the projects! Thank you Emily for making this possible!
Thank you magical cast who made my characters bloom into life!!! I couldnt be happier:)

AmaZine Day! TOMORROW!!!! LETS PARTY!!!!

Hey Everyone in town! I'm going to be celebrating AmaZine Day that will be held at the IPRC tomorrow, Saturday the 8th from 2 to 6pm! I will be selling my comics & have a selection of original art at painfully low prices to help you buy them! I will have a buncha comics but if you want a copy of my newest edition of the 2005 series that is 66 pages you gotta get there fast! I am nearly sold out from my 1st run! AHHH!!! YES!!! I will be there with my most marvelous friends Emily Nilsson for Sparkplug Comics, & Jason of the magnificent Floating World comics that just published the new delicious field studies of Aidan Koch & Francois will be there getting Fresh as he does so well! Lets get awesome! Lets get gross! Lets make my holiday radder by giving me reality dollers and you reality radness by proxy! (reality dollers are when i make money doing something I love as apposed to selling my soul or sacrificing my time on this earth for the benefits of evil.)

After I get rad there I intend to get my full party on by getting drunk both off the bounty of the bar & especially the bounty of the visual experience at Tiga Bar for my friend Amber Smith (who previously acted in a theatrical version of my Dream Grant Comic). She is presenting a beautiful dark art show that is made up of gorgeous line work making up ladies of Horror! She is also debuting a calender of said drawings just in time for the new year! If you are smart you will come see this devastatingly rad show & give her praise!

 After that....... I hope to attend a holiday party if I survive the HORROR!!!

SHORT VIDEO RUN #1

 

Here is part 1 of three of my short comics performed & read by me and Magic Cave (Julia Gfrorer, Suzette Smith & Myself) at short run Small press fest! This Video was shot & sent to me by my friend Tim Miller, who's monster perfomance I totally missed after mine unfortunately:( Sorry Tim! But thanks so much for being such a phenominal dood & taking & sending me this video!
Its pretty small & slim;) So I suggest you augment it & view it full screen!!! YES! Actually since you can watch this anywhere & viewing it is a completely different way of interacting with the performance than its original live format, please do as many amazing things as possible while viewing it!!! Tell me what you did!!!??? I wanna know! I wanna shower you with praise for whatever else you accomplished or di while you saw this:)
Thanks Emily for making this video possible to be uploaded!

Thanks Tiger

I went to my parents home for which i spent just under half of my current tally of years in life. When I entered the old homestead I found Laying before me, on a shelf in a display case, a recently unearthed masterpiece from my fledgling years in artistry. I had in kindergatten I believe been ordered  as per usual to separately from the class (my kindergarten teacher made me do all assignments opposite the rest of the class alone or with the assistant) go & make the craft for the day that was assinged us. We were made to make a frame out of some form of clay that appears like dough. then we showcase a photo of ourselves like a nice jelly filling inside of it.
Before you here is this work now modernized by my own mother for the new generation to understand via Iphone technology. each touch up option & titling was done completely by herself with her own artistic instincts.

Medium:
Mixed media
Photo on Kodack paper glossy circa 1985
Clay dough?
Glue

iphone re-photograped & digitaly touched up & titled by Linda Christensen 2012















This was a wonderful start to my thanksgiving yesterday! Overall it was a magic event. I witnessed more further developments in technology with the family. I saw the new Ang Lee movie Life of PI, where Ang took film to new heights by showing a full on male tiger genitalia spray piss in your (the viewer in 3d glasses) face in 3D via computer animated urine stream technology. I had previously only known this to be used in modern pornography. The movie itself is full of piss jokes in fact. It seemed like a recurring theme. It came up so frequently, not including the title characters name. I definitely felt as though I was being unwantedly pissed on by the stories transparent motivations.
Afterward Via Skype technology I spoke to my brother who lives 13 hours in the Phuture from me, & descibed to him the marvels of the piss technology.

The Phuture is Bright
Never give up
Like our own bodies take in & flush out unwanted toxins liquefied,
 so too does the world.

Gouache!

I made this yesterday as a test for myself & Andrice's Gouache demo she is doing for the IPRC comics program. I have an aversion to using a brush as I am a little like a cavelord with tools. Which is why I use color pencils predominantly. I can grip em & push em in the paper real hard like! But I also love the way Gouache & water color look & function so much! So thanks to Andrice I had the opportunity to learn from a real master how to use it. Now I just need years of practice to make nice brush lines, learn more fluid control & experiment with blending techniques. Gosh! Overall I was totally pleased with this image. She told me to draw something simple that I could apply flat non modeled color to. When giving me an example off the internet of what she felt would work best she scrolled through several other artist painting examples, of which featured one unintentionally new agey humorous image of a female nude with a huge leaf she held over her head. I found it to be strangely beautiful & unfortunate at the same time as it seemed to say so many more things then its artist was aware of. It was the sort of thing that unfortunately represented so many sad contexts in contrast to what its intended meaning was. An image fighting itself. I wanted to make something based on it but I had to be quick & was thinking a lot about my recent play I did for Gridlords & this mask making African tradition that my friend Cameron Hawkeye was pumping me up about. So I made this woman who is meant to look like she is performing a theatrical piece with a leaf mask instead to a leaf wall that removes us from a feeling of soul through the eyes or expression as apposed to the original inspiration which drew most attention to the void & the naked female form with its oppressed tired posture. 

It was a lot of fun despite how I may have whined along as I got scared of the brush:) Its super fun how easy it is to make light forms on top of dark! That is something I am always wishing was easier with color pencil. Its difficult to get light forms crisp on top of dark forms outside of a limited colors palette. Also it is so easy to fix mistakes in gouache whereas you cannot in color pencil for the most part. total magic! Andrice is a great teacher!

SHORT RUN MEMORIES RUNNETH OVER!

HOLEY MOLEY!!! OK! So I totally went to the Short Run small press fest again as I previously stated to be true! It was absolutely excellent!!! I felt like royalty all weekend! I found my visage in print as part of the Short Run exhibitors & events booklet among a series of loved ones & other fine artists I respect, all drawn by Kelly Froh herself:) Then I found the same images printed as a bookmark! YES!!! MY FACE IS ON A BOOKMARK WITH BUDDIES DAVID LASKY, TIM GOODYEAR, STEFAN GRUBER, TIM MILLER, & ANDRICE ARP!!! AHHHH! HOW AM I SO LUCKY?!!!! CRAZY! OKAY! yes!
Okay so I rode into town on the newish Bolt Bus with Andrice, Theo, Jason, Suzette, & Julia. I read some collected Sally Forth all the way up, practically. Julia & Suzette did a celebratory impromptu theatrical reading aloud in full of the new 66-page portion of my series 2005 on the bus. I found a new Gardetto product I’d never eaten at the rest stop! The snack of champions!
Upon arrival in Seattle we 6 friends split in half to hook up with our corresponding housing friends. Andrice, Theo & I got to stay at the beautiful home of Short Run organizer Eroyn Franklin. She greeted us with mad excitement & the desire to get awesome ASAP! She was ready to party!!! We met the 2 wonderful cats of the house, Eroyn’s gorgeous & friendly mewser Pillow, and her roommates cat PP DOODOO. Mrs PP DOODOO was so silly & wanted to break out the window all the time so she could be let back in through the sliding glass door! I fully understand this game! IT’S SO FUN!!! it’s like you exit & then pretend like time has passed and when you return that TV applause plays upon your entrance! AWESOME!!! I love it!
OK so we set up camp in the house & raced forth to dinner at a weird restaurant themed after old men with crotch rockets that was around the corner from the Fantagraphics boostore. We ate some Nachos, guzzled some Horse’s Necks & were in full party & book shopping mode!!! We went to the gallery upstairs to see the release & art show for the new issue of Intruder. It’s a psychedelic new thunderstorm of madness! The show introduced me to the work of a new dooder, who happened to be the guy I tabled next to the next day, named Darin Shuler! Mountains of Portland buddies were trickling in & we all got awesome keg style between that upstairs gallery & Fantagraphics where Lasky, his writing partner Frank Young & Abe Lincoln were presenting their new books & art. Later that night Andrice, Theo & I had an intimate drinkypoo with Eroyn & Tim Miller before calling the night a complete party success! We got a good night’s sleep. Theo said that Pillow failed to live up to her name but PP DOODOO slept next to his face all night.
With the coming of the morning we raced to the Vera Project to get tabling! Bright eyed & bushy tailed we were greeted by mountains of friends & puffy-eyed smiles! Some who drove in that morning & many who partied with us all night long! We got set up, Andrice with her new & 1st ever zine and me with my new 66-page section of 2005. Within minutes people were crawling all over us! IT WAS AMAZING!!! TIME JUST SHOT BY!!! I talked to so many lovely people & friends, & before I knew it I was racing back’n’forth for performance in the animation & performance room run by Stefan Gruber. I did a 20-minute set of live music while doing a theatrical reading of 3 of my Church of Awesome Thought comics accompanied by my band Magic Caves (Julia Gfrörer & Suzette Smith). Later I caught the shadow puppet theater of mega buddy Erin Tanner. I was truly moved & also introduced to the music of Ray Lynch. All of a sudden I was back & performing with Magic Caves for my 3rd time a live music set to Stefan Gruber’s Brilliant Both Worlds. This was, in my opinion, our best perfomance of it yet! The addition of Julia on Theremin was epic! Peter Frampton, Jean-Michel Jarre, Autechre, & Ivan Maximov would be proud!
All of a sudden the show was over! WHAT!? Yep! It was as a whirlwind of fun that felt like it lasted 30min! Then I got to make faces at Theo who I miss so much! I got to hi-five millions! I also sold a bajillion books which feels so good as this doesn't happen in portland! I met so many nice new faces namely Darin, Elaine, Erin Birgy in person, Sean Ford, & Finn Colando.
With the feeling of instant nostalgia dividing me from the present, we went to party more. We went to party our ourselves clean, we went to party ourselves into a friendsy (yes a friend-sy), we went to get nuts but just before nuts we hat to eat dicks. Andrice, Suzette, Julia & I went off & ate at Dick’s. We had special Dick burgers & I had a vanilla Dick shake. It was filling. We got some whiskey & poured into the empty Black Lodge where in a short while we were all dancing into a sweaty cluster to the delicious house sounds of Airport! It was magic!
By morning I felt like a plastic doll all dry with a sweat gloss & Eroyn & Tim gave Andrice, Julia, Suzette & me a personal tour of the Soil Gallery art show which so many friends had work in. It was so well put together & such an amazing show! A true testament to how comics are an Art.
With heavy hearts, tired eyes, dehydrated shells, big smiles, & bags full of new books to pore over, we banded together for a very confusing mess that Bolt Bus & the Seattle Seahawks created for us & 50 other human beings.
The ride home was lovely. I missed Theo, PP DOODOO, & all of our out-of-town friends already & regretted a few macho party fouls I needed to apologize for, but I had such an amazing weekend with Short Run that I wished it never ended.
BUT WAIT! IT’S NOT OVER!!!! IT’S NEVER REALLY OVER!!!! IT LIVES ON IN OUR HEARTS & MINDS & BLOGS & IT WILL BE THERE FOR US NEXT YEAR!!!! WITH EVEN MORE FRIENDS & MORE FUN & MORE ART & BOOKS!!!!
LONG LIVE SHORT RUN!!!!

THANKS EROYN & KELLY FOR SETTING US IN THE RAD ZONE!

  

Seattle is just a Short run away!

OH MAN! In just a couple days my friend Theo is FINALLY back to visit & he is doing a special reading of his new book The Understanding Monster!

The next morning we board a bus together along with Andrice Arp, Julia Gfrorer, Suzette Smith to blast into Seattle for one of my favorite events only in its second year! SHORT RUN SMALL PRESS FEST!!! YES!!! I will be tabling there & have a brand new 66 page section of my comic "2005" printed fresh just in time for them. I may also be accompanying Stefan Gruber in his presentation of Both Worlds, His epic animated masterwork that I have had the priveledge of playing synthesizer to twice  here in portland. I could also be doing a trance enducing performance reading with my band Magic Caves (Suzette Smith, Julia Gfrorer) of a selcetion of Church of awesome thought comics! Theo will be joining us up there to be some awesome characters as well! Its destined to be a rad weekend!!! If you are in seattle or you feel the itch to get rad come to Short Run this weekend I get nuts with us!  I'm out of my mind! YES!!!

THE PROJECTS Memories!

At the gallery party in the Ford Building.

At the panel for Floating World Comics

Breakfast at The Projects!

The Church of Awesome Thought Dream Grant play with Julia Gfrörer, Allie Hankins, Amber Smith & Wally

I stole all of these photos off the various facebook folders for The Projects facebook page. I was unable to get any pictures myself. 

This was one crazy beautiful show! 2 nights of Gridlords plus the panel I conducted the opening night & the panel I was on Sunday afternoon were all a serious experience of absolute wonder, magic, explosive excitement, otherworldly delight & occasional awkward dips into new & awesome territory!

On Thursday evening the Projects had a little dinner party at Blossoming Lotus that I just barely made after practicing Julia Gfrörer's performance, in which I played a merman in a pair of black tights. Later after the dinner there was an opening art show curated by the projects that featured a rad selection of Igor Hofbauer prints & I was able to also see a couple pieces made by a favorite of mine, Mark Beyer. Friday afternoon I met Matthew Thurber while he set up a beautiful vibrating wall with wizard! He told me all about a series of amazing sounding books I hope to find. One about a wizard & another about a study of a little girl whose scientist aunt was analyzing her artistic growth. In the evening on I met Sammy Harkham & reaquainted with Matthew Thurber as well as Jonny Negron who was on a book tour with Sammy. At Floating World Comics I then led a Gridlords panel with them & buddy Chris Cilla to discuss various topics derived from a slideshow of images I conducted & transitioned in a Mr. Rogers fashion via casiotone flourishes. These images were meant to get them to talk about things such as their mothers, their fathers, their work habits & concepts of living in an almost psychoanalytical party. All of which they avoided with great skill. Overall Sammy gave a great show of getting the boys to be boys. Right after, Emily Nilsson & I met up with Andrice who introduced me to Gabrielle Bell & Tom K who had a reading at Powell's, sadly parallel to our event. I got to get my frustrations with Doods & comics off my chest with Gabrielle & Nicole Georges over whiskey drinks with yummy house-made Ginger soda. Then Emily & I went to the House show at Mike's Basement. I never once saw anyone perform because my buddies who had a corner in the house with a box of beers, Jack Hayden & Goodyear are way too entertaining, genius & rad! The next morning (11am Saturday) I was met along with Andrice by Lisa Mangum & Anna Ehrlemark to help prepare a breakfast for the artists & planners of the Projects. I mostly ran circles & I made a large amount of coffee, then I ate large quantities of sausage & salmon spread! It was amazing to be at a table again with such a wonderful eclectic group of artists in such a great mood! Later that day as in a trance I hung around the projects soaking in the atmosphere of screenprinting madness & people drawing together on the wall, on the tables, on the floors! If only they had scaffolding to draw on the ceilings! My pals Kelly Froh, Eroyn Franklin & Max Clotfelter from Seattle arrived just in time to do a panel on new school festivals. I started to crawl inside myself as the time came closer for what was my most ambitiously planned Gridlords yet, with potentially a larger audience and with many more new people to win over. Before I knew it we were in the thick of it & it was marvelous!!! Maia Bambul started it off with an epic show that melted me into a beautiful bliss to live music by Pulse Emitter. Everyone who followed was like a new delicious flavor added to the perfect meal that I could only describe as being like my favorite food Sundubu jjigae. Austin English went second & then Clara Bessijelle, while Julia Gfrörer & I played live music to accompany her reading of Face Man. Next Julia gave a very dark performance of her comic Black is the Color with dancer and choreographer Allie Hankins, Suzette Smith, a dood name of Jacob & me as merpeople that was nearly too dark to see.  Matthew Thurber did a scroll comic presentation specially made for the Projects that had everyone in post-modern stitches! Then it all wrapped up with Jesse McManus doing the most phenomenal performance of Oof Tah! that he later told me had him in tears when people of the audience, undirected, joined in making his sound effects. It was truly moving! Later Andrice, Graham Kahler, Julia, & most of the Projects met up to eat dinner at the moon & sixpence. I was so relieved at this point that Gridlords had worked! I was slowly awesomizing into maximum overdrive now! We blasted through some fish & chips then on too the Hollywood Theater where my body was put through the tests of restraint & utter madness as we watched one of my favorite bands Nice Nice play an extremely beautiful dance music set that I was so angry we were in a seated venue for, & that no one else was dancing. I am too self conscious to just get up there by myself. I was shaking our aisle with rambunctious restless leg dance in my seated position! The next morning, once I started to feel more clear & alive, I found myself still fiending for the dance (this is really like most mornings) & I was suddenly standing eating a bowl of cereal dancing to Daphni djing live on youtube which was a video showing Dan Snaith (Daphni or Caribou) at turn tables getting rad while people danced behind him & behind them '90s videos of people danced behind them. Later at the Projects I was able to share this experience on a panel I was on to talk on performance, comics & the internet from my Gridlords perspective. Before the panel however I needed to get nourished. Andrice & Emily picked me up to get to the Projects & I caught up briefly with Jason T. Miles who had some new rad books! Andrice & I both had different understandings on this new publishing thing he had started called Fantasy Graphics. We went to get Burritos where Graham Kahler met up with us & I decided that we should all do a cover zine of Jason's new comic based on the idea we thought Fantasy Graphics was. So all three of us redrew the 8 pages of his zine & Graham & Andrice photocopied it into its new cover zine to give Jason while I was on the panel. I hope Jason was delighted! He seemed like he was out of his mind with excitement! It was the most fun I had drawing in days as well as it felt like a smart healthy & magic exorcize! I hope he publishes it as Fantasy Graphics. That's my Fantasy!

On the left is Andrice Arp's cover version of Jason T. Miles's zine cover & on the right is Jason's cover.

 Later after the Panel I flipped right into Gridlords, & before I knew it I was setting up the brilliant Erik Nebel who performed a magnificent electric violin set to his new color comic series! It was so amazing! Each comic is only 3 panels but all in sequence together it felt like a crazy trailer for the most amazing psychedelic questionably children's animated movie! Then Chris Cilla gave one of my favorite performances I've seen him do! In Cilla white glove & Boombox voice he showed us the world! 

I then presented my greatest achievement I have ever made! Allie Hankins, Amber Smith, Julia Gfrörer, & Wally our understudy & prop maker (who learned his lines in full at Gridlords to fill in for our ailing Alicia who was in the role prior) performed my Church of Awesome thought Dream Grant comic mini in full as a play accompanied by me on synthesizer for music!!! I couldn't have been more proud! I almost cried! But I had to keep it together to host the show! But it was truly the best thing I've ever been part of! The cast was just so overwhelmingly perfect that it was its own living thing that I am having trouble even understanding how that came from me or whether i can even take credit for it! SO ABSTRACT! You know? I wrote that thing, & directed that thing, but then watching it happen live in real life felt like I was dreaming an event as opposed to creating it! How can one create people acting out your ideas? IT'S CRAZY! It was also the 1st time it was performed in full costume. We never did a costume rehearsal, and each of them chose their own costumes, so it was really like a dream to have that new element right there fresh & new for me. 

Tom Neely & Keenan Keller followed in there Dudular way, & thoroughly man-yonnaised our minds to send us out of the Projects! Jason ushered us out sentimentally. No one seemed to know quite how to leave. How do you get out of the Projects? Aren't your projects your life? What's your life project? A fountain of us washed over to Hungry Tiger to get some food in our systems. All the work I had done for the event caught up to me & I had become sick. I went on with everyone to Holocene to see my friends Manny & Tim perform as Atole. I was accosted (for the 3rd time all weekend) by the Useless, brutal, Immature, angry, violent Misogyny of the sadly never maturing (in his 50 something years) Frenchman's animation before Atole played. Atole had a sick lover among the band at home so they played a short & sweet set of mostly new material (to me), & ran. Then with a series of hugs we all parted into the night to sleep off our stupor & dream.             

 Thanks to all who were there & all who participated in making this all so amazing!!!

I would like to thank a bunch of people! Jason, Lisa & Dunja for making me a part of their world. Asher Craw for helping me all weekend during Gridlords. Sam for thinking of me & getting me a bagel & beer. Graham for being such a wonderful friend with such able spirit and creative drive! Wally for jumping in everywhere I needed & being such a great friend of intense spirit! Allie Hankins, Julia Gfrörer & Amber Smith for being the most phenomenal cast I could have ever dreamed!!! I wish I could write a million things for you all to perform (Allie, how bout that Opera???). Emily for being at my side & making Gridlords possible with me & driving me everywhere all week! And Andrice for keeping me of positive mind with confidence & support in everything I had to do!

You are all the greatest of Projects! May we never stop making projects together!  

.

The Projects PDX / Me & My Gridlords!

!

Hey Doods, I am totally in a trance of intensity induced by the most insane amount of work I have ever taken on in one month. As you all know I currently have an art show up at the SoHitek Gallery that I made in collaboration with my wonderful magical friend Daria Tessler. That aside I have also taken on the responsibility for making 2 nights of events progamming for the new experimental linear arts festival put on by my friends Dunja, Lisa & Jason called The Projects! I run & organize with my friends Sascha, Emily & new lord Suzette the linear arts performance club night "Gridlords" monthly & so those two evennings are the most exciting and most experimentally focused Gridlords performances Ive organised yet! Its not just more experimental but its also twice the lineup I usually take on in one month! 12 artists will be performing!!! Can you imagine the amounts of emails one sends & reads to wrangle 12 artists to do something incredible!!! PHEW!!! MAN I'm making a million friends & loosing some!!! Its madness!!!
Aside from organizing, I am also involved in a handful of the performances. As things stand I am so far playing with my band Magic Caves (Julia Gfrorer, Suzette Smith? Me) to soundtrack the reading by artist Clara Bessijelle. I am very excited as I am totaly in love with her comic Face Man. I will also be playing a lead role in a dance/ acted performance of Julia Gfrorer's Black is the Color comic as orchestrated by dancer/ choriagrapher Allie Hankins. I will also be performing a multimedia performance of my dream grant comic, that involves actors (Julia Gfrorer, Allie Hankins, Amber Smith, & Alicia with Props made by Wally!) projection, and again my band Magic Caves (me?) performing a sound scape to back it all. This is all happenning while I additionaly co host Gridlords With Emily Nillson, and help set up the show much like Kermit the frog in the muppet show! BUT AT THE IPRC WHERE WE PERFORM THERES NO BACKSTAGE!!! Its going to be pure insanity in the eyes of reality!!! I cant wait!!!
Whats next??? OH I AM DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN BUT IN SEATTLE!!! WHOA!!! okay Im doing a little less for seattle. BUT WHOA!!!!

Come see it all! This could be the only thing you ever need to see!!!??? Or it could be a thing you see!!!!??? Or! IT COULD BE THE BEST THING YOU EVER SEE!!!!???

SEE?

I interviewed Pulse emitter for my Gridlords project recently! Read it!

Daryl, I have to say having you performing live music with Maia’s visual show is very exciting for me. I am a major lover of synthesizer music and have always been drawn to performing arts that involved such. I can remember watching dance pieces on TV that were set to improvised Vangelis performances, and of course, loads of over-the-top visual theatrics by Jean Michel Jarre, who ultimately ripped off another synthesizer musician and visual sculptor, Bernard Szajner, the inventor of the laser harp. The pairing of synthesizer composers with some element of experimental visual arts is now almost a modern tradition. Have you yourself worked with, or accompanied, other such visual artists for live performance in your work?

I’ve collaborated with Ashby Lee Collinson on her Princess Dies videos which were filmed live in a television studio. Those were a phenomenal creative experience. I’ve worked with Weird Fiction, a live video performance group. I generally love live video art but avoid playing to a DVD. Sometimes at a show there is random video playing behind all the sets; I always request that the projector be turned off when i play in those instances. Maybe someday I’ll make a DVD that is meant to be played behind me.

Experimental ½ Hour - Episode XVI: Princess Dies - The Crowning (ft. music by Pulse Emitter) from Experimental Half-Hour on Vimeo.
 
 Are there other synthesists, contemporary or from the past, that you have seen perform with visual artists that are inspiring to you?

Le Révélateur with Sabrina Ratté, and Demons with Alivia Zivich.

Who are your influences? Did you grow up listening to music composed on synthesizers or did you get gatewayed into it listening to Phil Collins like me?

I grew up in the ‘80s also hearing synthesizers in pop music, not knowing what was making that sound but knowing that i loved it. It wasn’t until college that I got into electronic music that was happening at the time — Aphex Twin, The Orb, Future Sound of London, Steve Roach. And i was also exploring the older stuff like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis. I have a lot of influences outside electronic music as well, too many to get into really.

 
I was fortunate to see Laurie Anderson perform on my birthday last month, and her entire performance was set to gorgeous synthesized tones that were being triggered via one of her modified electric violins which was just making my mind explode imagining how that worked. She was triggering the most unnatural sounds from it! You appear to work with custom instruments yourself. Do you build synthesizers or electronics yourself, and what can you tell us about that? In the realm of music, many individuals’ stylistic approaches to music are audibly recognizable & can feel very distinct. But in the open arena of endless possibility that is electronic music, when I hear musicians that use home-built or personalized electronic instruments, I feel like that enables their sound palette to be more distinct, and in turn more synonymous with its builder/player. Do you feel that the equipment you use that is custom enables you to get a closer sound that feels more expressive of yourself as an individual?

My modular synthesizer is hand-built, but mostly from kits and DIY projects, I’m not a designer, I can solder things together and do modifications but in the end I am a music composer, not an electronics designer. I do enjoy that my synth is handmade though, because it makes a lot of crude sounds that, from my experience, the store-bought synth modules can’t make. Those ones are more stable and professional and have all the wrinkles ironed out. A DIY synth is much nastier and I appreciate that. I must say, the keyboard synths that I use are a greater part of my sound lately; the handmade modular synth is just one voice, it’s not my only instrument.
 


When I was sent a video by my friend Dunja of Maia performing, set to one of your compositions, I absolutely melted with excitement! I immediately recognized your song, but it immediately captivated me. It was a piece that she did in the Flink festival in Berlin. Your song in that video was like what the soundtrack to Close Encounters should have been! Im a big fan of the music the aliens in Close Encounters produced and I loved how the aliens made fun of John Williams in reprising many of his famous scores with bowel-shaking bass sounds, but that aside, I always felt like that film would have been better suited to a more experimental synthesized soundscape. In fact most of the time when I think of that movie, outside of its theme, I believe my imagination has replaced the music of that film with imaginary Harald Grosskopf.


Glad you liked that video, I did too, I’m excited to be playing with Maia live! In Close Encounters I love that the synth is the means of communicating with the aliens. I love a lot of older films that DO have synth scores, particularly when they are as well done as Blade Runner and Escape From New York. Tangerine Dream did some good ones too.

It is more than common that instrumental music compels people to desire a visual to accompany it. Why do you feel that the lack of lyrical content, which itself is not even directly visual, gives many the desire for a visual accompaniment, or that it even most often feels like there is a cinematic quality to most instrumental work?

I guess it makes sense that a lack of lyrical content would prompt more visuals. But I mostly just notice it in electronic music and I figure it’s because it’s often not that interesting to watch live. You know, someone up there with a table of boxes, turning knobs.

I most recently saw you perform at an album release party for another synthesizer contemporary, Golden Retriever. It appears that many other acts that are experimental synthesists like Bee Mask or Oneohtrix Point Never are gaining more attention. Do you feel like there is a renewed interest, similar to the new age boom, in synthesizer-composed music with the success of acts like Golden Retriever, who have been released by a larger label like Thrill Jockey?

I can only hope so! 

You have worked a lot in noise music in your past, which has smoothed into this very beautiful sound you have now. I spoke once with Dirk of Schneider ™ and he was telling me about how he was doing music like the Velvet Underground for years and then was in a metal band and then suddenly had a harsh noise project that became synth pop and it was so funny for him to think back on it and be touring around the world playing much weirder music than his much more conventional beginnings. Did you ever do other different forms of music?

Yeah, I played bass in symphonic and jazz bands in school, as well as rock bands. On my own before starting Pulse Emitter, I was making an odd mix of electronic music with synths, sampler, computer and tape. Almost none of it ever made it out. 
 
What is next for you? Are you touring or currently woking on something exciting that you can tell us about?

I have a new LP which I am very excited about, it’s called Crater Lake and it’s coming out on Immune Recordings by year’s end. Looks like I’m going to make it to the East Coast in the spring for a festival. And I’m slowly getting started on the next recording project. As the days get shorter i tend to spend more time in the studio.

Buy some Thaumeturgy

Hey all if you would like to view & purchase any of Daria & I's phenomenally outrageous art work in our new collaborative series up at SoHitek gallery you may now do so online!!!! It would be much appreciated in the assistance to helping Daria & I's lives better!

Just pop over to there awesome shop!

http://www.sohitekgallery.com/shop/

thaumeturigical openning!

 Here are some pictures of Daria Tessler & I's magic openning (Taken by Daria) for our collaborative show Ricochet Thaumeturgy! It was a great succes & I really felt loved all night! ALL NIGHT LONG! YEAH ALL NIGHT LAAAAWWWWNG!!!! Everyone I met was dancing in the streets all night long! Erik who runs SoHitek & is the man behind Double Plus Good even played a music set for the show where he did live looping with percussion & sound all generated from just him, a mic & a paper bag all with lyrics made up of our art pieces titles! It was so rad!!! There was a song about moon divers, & a song about seeing through the foxlordian Myth! Can you imagine! YES!!!

Well thank you all for coming out. Those who couldnt get out that evenning should stop by through the week 12 to 5pm! I will be there next weekend to hangout & get rad at the gallery as well!

Ricochet Thaumaturgy

Be prepared! In the next few dayz there will be the unveiling!!! The curtain will be pulled from the black hole from which the collaborative work of Daria Tessler & myself came!  FROM FROM FROM!!!

In Ricochet Thaumaturgy, Daria & I traverse expanses of the mind arriving at a dimensional crossover space. Within this realm we explore secret inner territories and unearth a new breed of material that would expand the awareness of the most adept space jungle traveler, as well as soothe the wild horses of the rainbow warrior. 

Looking for a party to celebrate this stuff? Then come to SoHitek gallery & get awesome 1st Thursday with Daria, me & all of your friends!!! MAN! Dress up even! Wear a costume or something maybe! YEAH! YEAH!!! Let the season of the witch begin & lets ride it till The Bristles fall from our brooms! BROOMS!!! 

Visit SoHiteK spectekular website for more informatek support!