Aug. 18, 2022 – There’s a new release of old recordings by Cheri Knight, my dear friend/collaborator/housemate back in college days in Olympia, released on the Freedom to Spend label. Cheri’s had a long and varied career in music, but this material had been largely forgotten and has finally resurfaced forty years later.
Read MoreWith My Back to the World (Original Soundtrack) /
April 29, 2022 – With My Back to the World, my score for Mary Lance's documentary about the abstract painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004), is now available as a digital-only release to stream or download on BandCamp. Read the backstory here.
Read MoreListening in 2021 /
Dec. 24, 2021 – As I said last year, I am not good at making Top 10 lists, or even Top 50 lists. But here, in no particular order, are fourteen releases that made an impression on me in 2021 and that I expect to spend more time with in 2022.
Read MoreThrift Store Surprises /
Dec. 15, 2021 – It’s a good time for digging in the bargain bins as people ditch their CDs in favor of digital-only or succumb to the Great Vinyl Boondoggle. So here’s a list of this year’s gleanings – mostly from thrift stores, a few from used record shops or Discogs, and the occasional gift from an artist friend.
Read MoreJournal Entry, 2021 at Currents Festival /
Aug, 24, 2021 – I’m late in mentioning this, but back in June my music was used in a very beautiful new video piece by Seattle artist Robert Campbell. It was screened as part of the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, NM that ran June 18 - 27.
Read MoreRemembering J.A. Deane aka Dino /
July 31, 2021 – Among the many interesting musical characters who landed in New Mexico when I lived there, Dino was one of the most remarkable. He wasn’t a household name to most listeners, but he had been a vital member of several intersecting music scenes in both the Bay Area and NYC before coming to northern NM, and he quickly impressed all who encountered him.
Read MoreThree Point Circle: Proximity Effects /
May 28, 2021 – Proximity Effects, the second album by Three Point Circle, a trio project by myself, Marc Barreca, and K. Leimer, is released on the Palace of Lights label.
Read MoreErik Satie & Les Nouveaux Jeunes, Version 2 /
Mar. 11, 2021 – Back in 2011, a piece of mine was included on a 2-CD tribute to the composer Erik Satie on the Arbouse label in France. I only recently found out that this album was reissued in 2015 with a third CD added, and just got a copy in the mail.
Read MoreWhy meditate? /
Feb. 13, 2021 – A friend of mine recently posted about quitting her long-term meditation practice. After twenty-plus years she was feeling frustrated by her apparent lack of noticeable progress and finally decided to give up on it. I get it. I've practiced meditation for over twenty years now. And like my friend, I sometimes feel like a failure. So why do I keep doing it?
Read MoreVery Old Songs /
Jan. 14, 2021 – Songs are one of the most persistent forms of human virus, implanting themselves deep within our gray matter and constantly mutating in search of new hosts, spinning off endless versions and variants as they travel across space and time and surviving through their ability to adapt to all kinds of unlikely hosts through the centuries.
Read MoreTop Ten List: A Failure /
Dec. 31, 2020 – I am not one of those people who makes Top Ten lists, annually or otherwise. But last year my friend Kat told me about a series on our neighborhood micro-FM station called My Ten Songs, and she innocently asked what I might play if I were invited. Now here I am over a year later, still thinking about it.
Read MoreOne Song: Patti Smith /
Dec. 18, 2020 – Patti Smith’s Horses was released forty-five years ago this week. It was one of those albums that came along exactly when I needed to hear it, and probably changed my life. It remains as important to me now as it did then.
Read MoreOne Song: Harold Budd (RIP) /
Dec. 9, 2020 – Another day, another musical icon gone. I swear I never intended for this One Song game to just be a series of memorials to the departed. But it seems 2020 isn’t done brutalizing us, and I’m just dealing with what it’s throwing at me.
Read MoreOne Song: John Lennon /
Dec. 8, 2020 – On this night 40 years ago, I was huddled in the kitchen of a freezing house in Olympia with the local college radio station on. I don’t remember who was on the air or what they were playing. I just remember that suddenly it all stopped and the DJ announced that John Lennon had been murdered. And there was now an unexpectedly large, gaping hole in the world.
Read MoreNoah Creshevsky: Jan. 31, 1945 - Dec. 2, 2020 /
Dec. 3, 2020 – My dear friend Noah Creshevsky left this world last night. He was a remarkable composer of electronic music, in a style that he called "Hyperrealism." Noah was an important mentor to me, even though I never actually studied with him.
Read MoreJohn Berger: Once in a Song /
Nov. 30, 2020 – When a great singer sings, the skin of space and of time go taut, the voices of the newborn fill the world, there is no corner left of silence or of innocence...
Read MoreOne Song: Jimi Hendrix /
Nov. 28, 2020 – Yesterday was the 78th birthday of Jimi Hendrix. I had intended to post this on the blessed day itself, just to prove that I don’t only commemorate artists on the anniversary of their death. But the truth is, I was having a really hard time narrowing it down to one essential song.
Read MoreOne Song: Nick Drake /
Nov. 25, 2020 – British singer-songwriter Nick Drake died forty-six years ago today, age 26, from an accidental overdose of anti-depressants. He only recorded three albums while he was alive. Each has its charms, but if I have to choose just one song from his entire catalog…
Read MoreSteve Roden / Small Cruel Party split LP /
Nov. 21, 2020 – Stratégies Obliques is a new split LP with work by Steve Roden (and me) on one side and Small Cruel Party on the other, released on the Ferns label in France. This was the last musical project I’ve worked on since COVID-19 hit and the world changed.
Read MoreOne Song: Lou Reed /
Oct. 27, 2020 – On the seventh anniversary of Lou Reed’s passing, I’m kicking off an ongoing series of posts called One Song, in which I insanely try to narrow down the catalog of an artist I admire to just one essential moment.
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