[Images courtesy of Martin Franklin]
 
Background: In 1990-91, Martin Franklin released four cassette albums on his SoundImage Tapes label. Fast forward to recent years and Martin was contacted by Tom Gibbs of the Infinite Expanse label wanting to reissue the Premonitions: Underground Cassette Network 1989-90 compilation. Eager to contact the contributors, Martin set off on a quest that led not only to the 2024 reissue on Infinite Expanse, but the November 2024 launch of his history exploring Cassette Culture podcast. Martin explains:
 
“Tom contacted me about reissuing some of my SoundImage Tapes releases and I wanted to make sure that the artists who were featured on those compilations were happy that their contribution, which they made in 1988-89, was something they wanted to have shared again. So, I contacted as many of the artists as I could find. And having those conversations was such an extraordinary experience – hearing about what they’d done in their lives, how their careers had developed… but unfortunately we couldn't find some of the artists.”

Martin successfully tracked down several of the contributors, some of whom have been guests on the podcast. But finding one band in particular, Omega Ensemble, resulted in a quest full of mystery and a bit of Holmes and Watson detective work. Starting from an address on an old Omega Ensemble tape, Tom Gibbs went to the home these decades later and knocked on the door, only to learn from a neighbor that band member Phil Collins had lived there until passing away the week before. The later discovery of a flyer with all the band members names led Tom to finding and arranging a call with two other band members.
 
This dedicated search plays out over several episodes of the show. An Englishman now living in Australia, Martin makes his living in podcast production: “I already had the experience and the tools to put this thing together. Once I started doing it, I realized that this was the project I’d been looking for. Learning that Phil Collins had just passed away made me think… I want to collect these stories, and I want to be able to share them, because it all happened in the pre-internet period where documentation is harder to find. A lot of these stories from our generation are being lost. So that just inspired me to think we need an audio collection of these life stories and the music and cultural context that they had”.
 
Episodes have included Martin and cohost Hudson Graham talking to Premonitions compilation contributors Steve Gears and Sandy Nys, Frans de Waard talks about his Vital zine and working at Staalplaat, Justin Mitchell discusses his Cold Spring label, Dave Henderson talks about his early 1980s ‘Wild Planet’ column in the Sounds weekly, Daniel Plunkett reminisces about his ND magazine, and more.

There’s no grand plan to the trajectory of the podcast. ‘Story’ is the key. Martin continues: "I hear a lot of interview-based podcasts because I produce a lot of them for my clients. And I just felt like the formal interview format was a bit unsatisfying for this context. I wanted to present something that gives the listener a sense of the experience and what it’s like to open these mystery packages that arrived through the mail and contained these handmade, original artworks, the music and so on. That morphed into the sound design approach, which we now wrap around the podcast. I think it wasn’t clearly defined as a format when I started doing them, but now I feel like it’s getting into its stride. It definitely seems to me like I want to have the connections between the episodes suggested across the whole series. So, you might hear about a label or an artist mentioned in one episode, and then their own story will emerge in another episode later on. I’ve got this visualization like you see in some detective shows where they have the corkboard with the photos and bits of string joining the connections together. That’s the way I’m visualizing this sort of mapping – we’re using the network that we’re discovering as the means of guiding the evolution of the episodes.”

The mystery packages Martin mentions are among my personal favorite segments of the episodes. Martin and Hudson on-air unpack boxes of tapes, flyers, correspondence, zines, etc. that Steve Gears and Sandy Nys sent them. The excitement of discovery is palpable as the ‘unboxing’ progresses:
 
“I wanted to bring to life the experience of the packages and what it feels like to get them. I’ve invited guests who come on the show to join this segment which involves them sending me a package of either archival or current material that they have. And we’ll open that and go through it and do a bonus episode that’s basically the whole thing. And then an edited version that perhaps contains bits of music that were sent as part of it. Getting the material from Steve Gears was phenomenal because he had kept a lot of cassettes and correspondence that he had for all that time. And that led to some really useful clues in our hunt for the Omega Ensemble."

Though my motivation for this article was to promote the Cassette Culture podcast, I learned fascinating details about Martin’s background that give context to his place in cassette culture history…
 
Jerry Kranitz (JK): I know Discogs can be dicey on accuracy, but it lists four tapes released on your SoundImage label.
 
Martin Frankin (MF): That’s right. The releases spanned 1989-91. At the time, I was working with a lot of different musicians in different groups and different permutations. We were creating a lot of material on cassettes that were made available at gigs or, in some cases, never had a formal release. At the same time, I was working with a theater company writing music with Michael O’Dempsey, who was eventually a member of my TUU trio. We were working as a duo composing music for theater shows. We did a soundtrack for an exhibition and a couple of our own sound installation pieces. And all this atmospheric sort of music. Some of that was assembled and sold on cassettes at the shows, but in very small quantities. Kolbe was reissued on Infinite Expanse last year too.

JK: How did your SoundImage label get started?

MF: In the UK, there was pretty large-scale unemployment among young people in the mid-late 1980s, and some genius in government had an idea to create something which they called the ‘Enterprise Allowance Scheme’. This was a way for unemployed people to join this scheme and thus not be counted as an unemployed person and not have go each week to the job center office to verify that you had been looking for work. What it did was legitimize you in creating a micro-business, and you got a small amount of money each week to survive. My micro-business was doing live sound for gigs and running a cassette label, so that kind of focused the idea. Ok, this is going to be SoundImage Tapes. I released four cassettes, which were Invocation by Martin Franklin and Richard Clair, the Premonitions compilation and a follow up called Spiritual. And Devices and Desires, a split tape with Richard Leake and Peter Appleton.
 
JK: Why only four tapes?
 
MF: I guess the reason it stopped there is because I was part of so much concentrated activity at that time, things just really took off. On one of the releases, I was sharing music with Dino Oon and Konrad Kraft, who sent a cassette of their stuff and had a track on the Spiritual compilation. And I had sent them some music that I was working on, which was the formative thing of me, Richard Clare playing wind instruments, and Michael who had been doing soundtrack stuff as the trio TUU. We exchanged cassettes as you did and I had no idea at the time that they were running a label, which was called SDV Tonträger. They replied to my cassette saying they’d love to release it on CD on their SDV label. Our first CD, One Thousand Years, was on this boutique label in Germany.”

That was in 1993, and it just coincided with the ambient wave hitting in the UK. We were like post-rave era. The release on SDV gave us visibility. Shortly after that, we had a second album released on Beyond Records, which was a very happening small label at that time run by Mike Barnett, who was from Birmingham in the Midlands. He was probably the most artist friendly label runner that you could wish for… really supportive and really behind what his artists wanted to do. He was releasing a lot of stuff under that Ambient banner. He subsequently released All Our Ancestors, which was the second TUU album.

So, that all happened. We got an agent and were touring and doing concerts both in the UK and in mainland Europe. We’d get a series of dates and go off and play Amsterdam and Paris and a festival in Belgium. It was just such an exciting time that the SoundImage label kind of got put on the shelf. Because my own music career started and ran for a decade after that.

JK: I was Googling and found the Martin Franklin and Richard Clare Invocation tape from 1990. I was listening on YouTube and the music is beautiful. I see there was an LP reissue on Oryx Records. Their Bandcamp page describes it as a precursor to TUU.
 
MF: I was contacted by Oryx Records, which is a Spanish label, about reissuing this kind of proto TUU release, which was basically gentle percussion, winds and electronic drones. Richard and I gigged as a duo doing this kind of material. As I explained, I guess it was a sort of melding of different strands that I was producing with different people. So, I asked Michael if he would come and play synths and samples and electronics to augment the duo. TUU was a really memorable part of my career, performing this amazing, evocative ritual ambient music live and working on the recordings.

We followed up our album on Beyond with a couple of releases on a label called Fathom Records, which was a sub-label of Hearts of Space, based in San Francisco. In retrospect, they weren’t as hooked into the network in Europe as we believed they were, but at the time they were releasing great albums by Robert Rich and Steve Roach and the like. At some point in that period I got in touch with Eddy Sayer, who was the percussionist in a group called Lights in the Fat City. We started doing some work together which eventually resulted in a new project we called Stillpoint. We did an album called Maps Without Edges with a wind player named Nick Parker that was released on Beyond. And then it kind of stalled. After the Stillpoint release I did a small set of recordings that were released on the Italian label Amplexus, still under the TUU name, but Michael had relocated to New Zealand at that point.

JK: Are you still making music?

MF: I think I am, but very slowly. The impact of my life journey and having a child and moving to live in a country the other side of the world… it’s kind of reframed things in a way that I don’t have that time available to get into the creative space. And I’d kind of gotten out of the habit of being in the creative space. It needs a lot of time and personal freedom. If an artist can just switch it on like that they have a real gift. But for me, I need a lot of time to home into it and play around with things that aren’t necessarily aimed at making anything. So, I think that’s where I am now, a play stage of getting back on the tools and getting to play with new sounds and finding out what it is that I want to do.
 
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I encourage readers to check out the Cassette Culture podcast. Start at the beginning, listening to all the shows to get a sense of the unfolding story. And then bookmark it to keep up with new ones. And do check out Martin’s music from the past in the links throughout the article!

Welcome to Part III of the Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience. In the first two segments I explored samplings of Charles’ video art (Part I HERE, Part II HERE). This final installment zeros in on the 1991 live performance and video that inspired the series. Long story short…
 
I’m working on what will be an updated, second edition of my 2020 published book, Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age. There’s a section in the book where I talk about artists incorporating samples from radio and television, often to make political statements. I emailed Charles with what I thought was going to be a simple clarification question. That question spiraled into email exchanges, lengthy phone conversations and, ultimately, the realization that I had glossed over a fascinating performance.
 
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. After much post-invasion preparation, Operation Desert Storm commenced on January 17, 1991, ending on February 28 with the liberation of Kuwait.
 
Disgusted by all parties involved in the death and destruction, the members of Herd of the Ether Space (HOTES) decided to make a public statement regarding the Persian Gulf War – a performance that would take place at the ‘Art Here’ gallery in Albany, California on March 1, 1991.

A great deal of rehearsal and preparation went into the performance by band members Charles Rice Goff III, George Gibson, Killr “Mark” Kaswan, and Robert Silverman. A television was set up on the side of the stage, broadcasting video collages of Gulf War related news reports that had been edited together by Goff and Gibson. Artist Debra Burger (Silverman’s spouse) created a set for the show consisting of bricks, sandbags and barbed wire. She pops up periodically during the performance in costumes. Will Flanagan (now Will Marston) filmed the event, the only video document of a HOTES show.
 
An audio cassette of the performance was released in 1991. For the cassette album, Charles added a track to fill out the 90-minute tape. The version he later made available online is additionally chock full of the rehearsals that illustrate the evolution of how the band ‘composed’ the performance. This was fun for me to dig into after having digested and marveled at the performance video.

About the live performance available online: The video was never shown publicly until years later when Charles edited it, and Taped Rugs Productions released it on DVDR in 2010. Charles explains how he weaved the images from the television set into the performance:
 
“The images that were on the TV set… I have them occasionally and sometimes dramatically washing over the performance itself, and sometimes even blacking out the performance. When Will was filming he thought it would be cool to zoom in on the TV set. He had to really zoom in across the room, and still it wasn’t zoomed in enough, so I had to kind of reprocess the way that he had filmed it and pan and just change things so that you could actually see what’s going on. In a lot of cases I just added the visual element from the TV over the performance so that it would be more interesting to watch if you’re watching video rather than being at the concert.”
 
The performance with Charles’ embellishments is a highly intense and often (appropriately) disturbing experience. The opening credits display near apocalyptic missiles launching amid fiery war imagery to a psychedelic jamming and drone accompaniment. It’s so hair-raising that I was already unsettled when the shot transitioned to the band taking the stage for the show.
 
The performance consists of seven movements that comprise the narrative. The music is like an avant-garde chamber-rock meets theatrical art ensemble. The television is visible off to the side but only marginally integrated with the performance. And this is where Charles’ video wizardry comes into play.
 
His overlays pop in with desert scenes of soldiers, tanks and artillery and the sky hellishly lit up by an onslaught of missiles and gunfire. Helicopters, carpet bombing, the worst of war is on full display as the band chant and the music eerily, dissonantly and furiously plays, reaching high-octane levels of orchestrated delirium. Overall, it’s part avant-garde chamber ensemble, variously striking me as Univers Zero meets Art Zoyd, pagan psychedelia and psychedelic free-jazz freakout. The cacophony of horns, orchestral drones, howls, sirens, tribal percussion and news report voices is jarringly exciting. It’s a stellar marriage of avant-progressive rock, psychedelia and experimental music.
 
And throughout, the visuals alternate between band performance and Charles’ embellishments, adding an entirely new audio-visual and experiential dimension to the live performance, which is further accentuated by Debra Burger’s appearances in costume.

The final movement – ‘Exorcism’ – is the one I mention in my book that sparked the initial question to Charles. This may be the most surreal transition of the set (starting just before the 58:00 mark). Images of President George H.W. Bush with a bullhorn announcing ‘mission accomplished’ are accompanied by a celebratory dancehall type song – “Heaven is better than this. Praise God, what joy and bliss.” But this is soon replaced by thunderous crashes and an edge-of-our-seats hullaballoo finale that leaves the audience with the certainty that war may be over, but all is far from well. As Charles points out: “Of course afterwards everything dragged on and on for a million years over there. Iraq… Bill Clinton was bombing those guys for years after George Bush was done.”
 
HOTES wasn’t intending this performance to be a one-off: “We all thought it was going to go on for a lot longer than it did. It was only like a month after it started. We were expecting it was going to go on for a loooong time. So, our performance was, literally, at the end of the war. Whereas our intention was to make it during the war, but it just went too fast for that to happen. So, we might have performed that more than just once. We put a LOT of work into it. I think it was worth it.”
 
Readers will be well served by setting aside 72 minutes to immerse themselves in the Noises of War video.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this Charles Rice Goff III series. Even seasoned Goff fans may not be aware of his interest in and flair for video craftsmanship. Follow the links below to Noises of War, a list of Charles’ audio-visual work, and more.
 
The Noises of War video can be viewed HERE
 
The Noises of War audio cassette album plus rehearsals can be heard HERE
 
A comprehensive list of Charles’s audio-visual work can be found HERE
 
Visit the (MASSIVE) Taped Rugs Productions web site HERE
 
All of Charles’ previously published articles at Electronic Cottage can be found HERE

Quoting from their web site: “The Fuse Factory is an art and technology initiative focused on cultivating artistic production, research, and experimentation with digital media and electronic tools. Our purpose is to function as an incubator for innovation, interaction, collaboration, critical thought, diversity, and artistic exploration.”
 
Among their events is Frequency Friday, which (during its season) features artists/bands in the mostly experimental realm on the first Friday of each month. The March Frequency Friday included Marguerite Sissie, who I was acquainted with from the Electronic Cottage Facebook group. Florida is, of course, a huge state. But through Electronic Cottage I’ve learned of an encouraging number of Florida based artists who live within hours of each other and an impressively vibrant live experimental music scene.
 
Marguerite flew into Columbus from St. Petersburg on Thursday, March 6. I picked her up from the airport, got her settled into her hotel, and then whisked her over to my house where we had dinner, enjoyed a wonderful visit, and I interviewed her. On Friday we visited several thrift stores and an Asian market, which will be explained in the interview below. And then we spent a couple hours hiking along the Scioto River. It was a great day and good work up to the evening’s Frequency Friday.

The show was held at the rustically beautiful Old First Presbyterian Church. The first of four performers was L.A. Jenkins, who played a tasty set of solo guitar. I was curious about him and later did some Googling which revealed an impressive body of work. I saw two of his albums listed at Discogs, both of which seem to be from the 1980s. He must be known in some circles because one of the LPs sold for $200! During his performance I was thinking how great it would be to see him in a band situation and, sure enough, there’s some amazing music on his Bandcamp page.

Marguerite was up next, but her performance will be better appreciated within the context of our interview below.
 
Next up was Blumen, who are the duo of keyboardist/pianist Richard Blumenthal and drummer James Knorel. They played an energetic set of jazz and prog-jazz. Blumen have several albums on their Bandcamp site.

Wrapping up the evening was Thom and Thee Bedlamites, which is Thom Elliott who came from Michigan with his awesomely cheerful mom. I had first seen Thom perform as part of the Gates of Janus duo with Knox Mitchell in Columbus at the July 2023 Cassette Culture Celebration. Thom plays a classic aggressive brand of Industrial that Throbbing Gristle fans would love.

The following interview with Marguerite was conducted the day before the show, so I’ve added some post-show comments…
 
Jerry Kranitz (JK): Tell me about your musical background. You were a drummer playing in bands?
 
Marguerite Sissie (MS): I started when I was 16 years old. I was a traditional kid, sitting in church with my parents. And I was given the choice to either work with the sound team or sit in the pew with my parents. What do you think I’m going to do? I literally started by putting duct tape on floors. And plugging in things. Basically, I learned from the back line, way before I started doing anything like I do now.
 
Another thing is I took tapes apart and made tape loops because I thought it was fun. I thought I was just being nuts, but then I found out years later that I was making tape loops. Or I would do weird things to my tape recorder and make woo-wah-wah sounds or whatever, and I found out later it was tape manipulation. So, a lot of it was just basic experimenting and having fun and learning.
 
The first time I sat behind a drum kit I was told by someone I had no rhythm and shouldn’t be sitting behind a drum kit. Many years later I had an opportunity to go around to different parts of the country teaching people how to play drums. I played everything from djembes, to singing bowls, to pans, to gigantic pow-wow drums. Part of me still wants to find that person. Not because of anger, but to say that you should believe in people even when they first start. Because that’s really important.
 
So, I went from sound technician to just having fun experimenting. My first actual drum I started working with was at my roommate’s house. I was listening to Pink Floyd’s A Delicate Sound of Thunder on his TV. There’s this amazing overcam shot of the stage and I saw the percussionist’s rig. The first thing out of my mouth was I want to build that. Not that I want to play that. I want to build that. Two weeks later when I got paid, I bought my first pair of congas. And every time I got paid I bought another piece of gear. Did I know how to play it? Nope. I just wanted to start building it and start messing around with it in my bedroom. My roommate at the time was a professional bass player. And when I was growing up my dad was a schoolteacher and always had amazing albums. You name it. He had Pink Floyd, he had Chicago, Neil Diamond, Rush, Queen. With my mom we would do lip sync contests in the living room. That’s why I don’t have stage fright, because I’ve been performing since I was a kid.
 
And then things grew and one day I got invited to this really cool Native American grandma’s house that was across the lake. And there was this dude there playing this crazy cool Native American rock ‘n’ roll. And I said, “I have percussion.” He said, “Do you know how to play?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well go get ‘em.” So, I went back across the lake and brought them back. He said, “Stand behind me. Watch my foot. Watch my arm.” So, my first gig was standing behind somebody watching their right foot go tap-tap-tap and their arm goes strum-strum-strum. And from that point I realized, when the arm’s doing one thing and the foot’s doing another, if you’re doing something between both of those things, you’re on beat. And that’s how I became a drummer. And it just started growing from that point.
 
JK: You started by learning technical skills at your church before you became a musician. And then you were a drummer in what we’ll call traditional bands. But just by playing around with tapes is how you got interested in experimental music?
 
MS: Yeah, I started by just having fun. One of my friends, his brother was being a jerk one day, so I took apart his new Metallica tape and I put Jerry Falwell in there and put it back in the case. And he thought the thing was possessed! But I never knew when I was younger that the things I was doing were ‘things’. I just thought they were fun.
 
JK: So, it’s not like you were influenced by specific experimental/abstract musicians. It sounds like you just organically got into it.
 
MS: Yeah.
 
JK: I was watching three different performances of yours on YouTube. Let’s step through them to highlight how different you can be from one performance to the next. Let’s start with Hal McGee’s Apartment Music 51 (Nov. 17, 2024). That’s where you had what I only half-jokingly called the Flying Wok-Saucer, which you clarified is called a handpan. Plus, you had bowls, chimes and thumb piano. What struck me was you had electronics in your setup, but they were secondary. You barely used them. That was an interesting setup you had.
 
MS: For that setup I had my handpan. I had my Kaoss KP3 pad. Then I had a set of teacups in water that was tuned. And then a little teeny hand drum. The idea was I was trying to go with the organic side of the handpan and the caustic noise of electronics. And balance the two because that’s how I see a lot of the music I like doing.

JK: You opened your set by walking around and engaging with the audience, serenading individuals with the thumb piano.
 
MS: The original part of that idea came from two things. One is I like spirituality. I remember when I was a kid watching the old school Latin mass and the priest would have the ball of incense. I thought the way the incense would go through the room was beautiful. Because it was like in a way he was leaving his high area and going out into the congregation. And the other part was I was really blessed to work with first peoples. Native Americans. One thing they do in their culture is called smudging. A smudge is a blessing, a prayer. And at the beginning of a lot of my sets I want to give you a blessing, from my heart to your heart. I don’t have to preach it to you. I don’t have to teach you anything. Because music’s music. And whenever that happens while I’m playing, you might giggle, you might laugh, you might give me a head nod. But music’s music, frequency’s frequency. And my hope is always, like if I’m playing a harsh noise set, or doing a singing bowl, that you leave better than how you came in.
 
JK: Then at Hal’s Apartment Music 49 (Jan. 21, 2024) you had the HandSonic that you played like drums, but you also had the acoustic percussion that you told me earlier Hal’s brother Mark provided.

​MS: The HandSonic HPD 20 is a drum synthesizer. But it also has an acoustical value. If I hit it hard it’s going to be louder and if I hit it soft it’s going to be soft. And there’s about a hundred different sounds in it that are digitally captured. I was trying to determine what themes, or what feelings I wanted to play with. One of the things people have said about my sets is that it’s something like what you get in a movie. Something that should be like in Twin Peaks or Dune or something like that. So, whenever I do stuff at performances I like creating a tapestry, so that if you close your eyes, you literally get a movie.
 
JK: That performance had a kind of soothing ethnic vibe. And for that one you wrapped up the performance by walking around the audience with a little percussion instrument.
 
MS: For that one, the beginning electronics… the same beat I did on the songs I did on this little teeny hockey puck hand drum. It’s the same idea where I want to leave something in your mind, in your heart. I like to bring the person in so it’s not just about me on stage. It’s about us being in the space. That’s how I want to enter it and that’s how I want to leave it.
 
JK: When I’m watching these videos it strikes me how I might hear your audio on Bandcamp, but watching you and seeing the gear and setup you have and how you’re engaging with the audience, the visual aspect makes for a much fuller experience. It’s a huge difference.
 
MS: I remember reading in one of the Grateful Dead books… that was their nemesis. Trying to capture in the studio what they played live. And to this day I try to capture on CD what I do live. It’s like trying to grab a dragon by the tail and not letting go. And sometimes I come close to it. And other times I’m like, nope… and I stop worrying about it. Press Play and on Bandcamp you get what you get and live it’s whatever happens in the moment.
 
JK: You had these two very different performances and setups. How do you decide what you’re going to do?
 
MS: I’m a very processing type person. I think it comes from having two schoolteachers for parents. And when I started doing music, I was the opposite, I was on the back line. Hooking things up and making sure you sound good. Making sure you work good before I go on stage and do anything. I kind of do the same thing when I’ve got a show coming up. I try to look at everybody I’m playing with. What’s their sound? One, I don’t want to take what they do. It’s boring when you see five bands doing the exact same thing. The other part is I want to do something… I want to be moved. I figure if I’m moved there’s a good chance that you might be moved. If it’s boring to me it’s probably going to be boring to you. But I take the old fashioned way of theater. I write my script. I have the set for tomorrow night. And I rewrote the set different ways probably six times over the last three days. Just to see what feels good. There’s also the improv part that comes in the middle of it all. Tomorrow night I might not even do three of the things because one thing I feel needs to go longer. But that’s part of the process. I want to come into a room prepared.
 
JK: You won’t improvise?
 
MS: I like improv. Sometimes I’ll embellish. I mean, I’m a drummer. I love improv. I like having structure. But at the same time, I enjoy both without overthinking it. Same thing with the shows you saw at Hal’s Apartment Music, when I was walking around with the thumb piano. Sometimes I felt I could play longer. If I have a 15-minute set I want to make sure I’m playing that set, but I might think maybe I need to play longer right here. When I was playing the handpan, I liked what I did there, so I wanted to go back and do it again. That’s the magic of the moment.
 
JK: You gave me a glimpse into your process by showing me your notes for tomorrow night. I think you’re saying this is just a guideline.
 
MS: It’s a set list. It’s kind of like if you go hiking in the woods, it’s good to have a map. But every now and then you’ll see a cool tree and want to go hang out there for a while.
 
JK: This third performance I really got into was even more different… the Steep Station (May 25, 2024). That was pure electronics. You really went out into space.

​MS: Steep Station was a fun night. It was a set for my friend Michael Couling’s birthday bash. I was performing that night as a solo project and at that time I was a part of Michael’s band Direwood. My solo works that I perform outside of Apartment Music differ in the size of my setups and the styles I perform.
 
JK: I took a picture of some of the goodies you brought with you for the show. Let’s go through what’s in the picture. You’ve got two thumb pianos.

MS: One’s electronic and the other’s acoustic. The contact mic is by Frank Sturgeon. I just wanted to figure out a way to mic it. That’s the little one. And the big one is my acoustic one.
 
JK: And you’ve got a kid’s toy.

MS: A kid’s toy. It’s a wave drum. It sounds like a wave.
 
JK: You’ve got a traditional harmonica. And what are these dynamite stick things?

MS: Those are thunder tubes. REMO is one of the first companies I think. There’s all kinds of variations of them. That’s an old school telephone mic. An old school telephone we had as kids made into a harmonica mic. I’ve got some deer bones. I’ve got echo delay and reverb. A plastic drum. A modulation pedal with multiple effects. A mixer. Those little teeny chimes are like what Buddhists would use or what someone would use for meditation. They all have their own different frequencies, and the different frequencies react to different parts of the body.
 
JK: We’re going to visit some thrift stores tomorrow because you’re hoping to find some things for the show. Anything particular in mind?
 
MS: There’s this really cool thing from India… they put water in teacups and bowls. And then they use like knitting needles or little teeny drum sticks or chopsticks. And they actually play rhythm off of them. When you put water in the teacup it changes the pitch of the teacup. I did that in the performance with the handpan. You’ll see in my videos on YouTube I’m always beating on pots and pans, hubcaps, and I’ve got a giant brake cylinder from an old truck. As a percussionist I always try to find things to hit that have cool sounds.

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On Friday we visited a couple thrift stores and an Asian market where Marguerite picked up several dishes, bowls and chopsticks to use in the evening’s performance. I wish I had gotten video of her ‘auditioning’ the bowls by positioning them on the store shelf and playing them with the chopsticks!
 
I indicated in the interview how taken I was with the variety across Marguerite’s various performances. But none of that could have prepared me for her multi-part half hour performance at Frequency Friday. Marguerite is an artist who will defy any expectations anyone might have of her. I would urge readers to watch the entire video. (Please watch the videos of all the performers!)
 
It was a pleasure spending time with Marguerite and seeing her in action here in Columbus. I’ll look forward to catching her upcoming Florida performances online.

Welcome to Part II of the Charles Rice Goff III Audio-Visual Experience. Part I is an essential prerequisite, so if you’ve not read it yet, please start HERE. As I explained in Part I, the decision to write about Charles’ audio-visual work began with a question about a 1991 performance by his band Herd of the Ether Space. After detailed conversations with Charles and hours of deep diving into his videos, I was inspired to write this 3-part series.
 
Part I included background information after which I explored four of Charles’ early videos. With that under readers’ belts, I’ll now survey four of Charles’ more recent videos. And - full disclosure - my intent is to lure, inspire, provoke readers into exploring Charles’ work for themselves and, if enlightenment sets in, the massive 40+ year Goff/Taped Rugs audio and audio-visual catalogue. Lovers of all things creatively cool and strange will be rewarded.
 
Lacquered Intonations (2016)

Lacquered Intonations consists of eight videos Charles produced between 2013-2016 and released on DVDR in 2016. The videos are presented on the internet as eight separate ‘tracks’.
 
For ‘Liquid Assets’, Charles took original video and photos shot around Kansas City and manipulated them into a visual art collage. Assorted waterways and unidentifiable scenery are augmented and overlayed with swirly objects, cascading light, and variously imposed, inserted and melted into shapes.
 
‘Fingering Canned Krab’ is an amusingly psychedelic food show demonstration with Salvador Dalí creating crabmeat concoctions.
 
‘Chains Batons Pipes And Hammers’ takes more Kansas City footage and photos as illustrative of a recording by the Goff/Killr ‘Mark’ Kaswan band Disism. Highways and cityscapes are flashing lights dream machined, textured objects flicker, a tripped out staircase is ascended, a ferris wheel is psychedelically swirled and more. One of my favorites of the set.
 
‘Fun To Be Thirsty’ is another humorous one, adding a Goff composed vocal jingle to an old soft drink commercial.
 
‘The Machine Economy’ takes still more Kansas City video and photos, but in this instance arranges and blends them into a disorienting psychedelic art collage.
 
‘The Goff Family Circus’ is a cute, fun and trippy tribute to Charles’ two cats.
 
‘Fear For $20.15’ is a fast-paced collage of Halloween themes. The imagery is arranged such that we see flashes of ‘normal’ Halloween store video but mostly flashing, floating, distorted imagery. Super freaky and another of my favorites.
 
Finally, ‘Views From The Outside’ is a succession of out and indoor Kansas City scenes that are colorfully and geometrically disfigure choreographed and accompanied by playfully jingly music.
 
The variety across these eight videos makes Lacquered Intonations a good introduction to Charles’ work for those who have yet to take the plunge.
 
Sideshow Distraction (2020)

Sideshow Distraction is a 9-minute video of Goff animated images combined with a collage of Herd of the Ether Space music. It’s a flowing and melting slideshow of Dada meets Terry Gilliam imagery reacting to political dysfunction and COVID death and disruption. The visuals are all black & white and the sensation is like a psycho-Dadaist documentary. The music gets freakily intense and is tightly integrated with the visuals, making this one of my favorites of Charles’ art + music experiences.
 
Sequence Of Non Sequitur (2023)

Sequence Of Non Sequitur is a nearly 7-minute video featuring Charles’ original art and animations. The drawings have a sparse swirly lined look and feel. The animations at times come across like a psychedelic children’s cartoon and at others like an art gallery slideshow collage. And, once again, we’ve got a solid marriage of music and visuals, with Charles’ audio veering from playful to noisy to carnival orchestra.

Discothequeno (2024)

Discothequeno is a collection of four videos that were the DVD accompaniment to a 7” vinyl EP released on Justin Jackley’s Herby Records label. (Justin previously released Charles’ Heartbreaking Randomness LP and a 7" single by Disism.)
 
‘Discothequeno’ is a symmetrically distorted and shaped blend of scenery and art images. The way the shapes keep flowing in various directions, along with the intense sci-fi industrial-orchestral music is a wee bit vertigo inducing.
 
‘Baby Break My Circuit’ consists of dancing Dada shapes, photos, colored psychedelicized video and collaged ads.
 
‘Rockin’ The Hey Wagon’ is a rotating collage of various political, broadcast and other ‘personalities’.
 
And ‘Hip Lip Rip’ is a kaleidoscope of imagery and strobed, lasered, watercolor art.
 
I hope the two parts of this tour have inspired interest in Charles’ work. He has meticulously documented his history, with nearly all audio and video releases going back decades available at archive.org.
 
The magic portal to Goff/Taped Rugs Wonderland is HERE
 
A comprehensive list of Goff audio-visual works can be found HERE

All of Charles' previously published articles at Electronic Cottage can be found HERE
 
Part III will be different, wrapping things up by zeroing in on the performance/cassette album/video that inspired this series. Stay tuned…

Charles Rice Goff III has been home recording his uniquely personal brand of audio art and music for over 40 years. My own Goff journey began in 2001 when Charles submitted a CD by The Magic Potty Babies to my web zine – Aural Innovations. Since then, I’ve been delighting in a steady stream of Goff concoctions.

Charles is also a video artist, which I became aware of from the DVDs he submitted to Aural Innovations years ago. Goff audio is pure craftsmanship. But Goff audio + visuals is… an EXPERIENCE.
 
The decision to write about Charles’ audio-visual work began with a question about a 1991 performance by his band Herd of the Ether Space. And then… it spiraled (these things often do). I hurled myself down the rabbit hole into Goff audio-visual Wonderland. There’s a lot there. And it’s a trip.
 
A few weeks and a couple hours of phone conversations with Charles plus many hours of listening/viewing later, I’ve landed on what will be a three-part series that seeks to lure readers into Charles’ world.
 
While working on these articles Charles’ notified me of a new album he’d made available (Transition Transmission) which he claimed might be his most psychedelic yet. That got my attention because everything about Charles’ work is over-the-edge psychedelic, but in a very Goffedelic way.
 
In his video work, Charles’ use of imagery and animation is influenced by an array of artists that will be apparent to viewers who immerse themselves in his work. As Charles summarizes: “People like Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam. And all the way back to the Fleischers (Max and Dave), Chuck Jones, Disney. And then there’s all the Dadaists, I’ve got a big list of those.”
 
To this list I would add that Charles’ video work in a way reminds me of the old Ralph Records videos I bought in the 1980s on VHS. Taken together with his stated influences, readers can imagine the avant-psychedelic cauldron that’s in store.
 
It should also be added that Charles does wonders with lo-fi, inexpensive video equipment: “All the edits and everything else are done on software that was made in probably the first decade of the 21st century, up until around 2011. I’ve functioned pretty much my entire life at the low end of the economic scale. Old technology is my friend, and I do a lot with that.”
 
In this, Part I, I’ll explore four of Charles’ earlier videos. These examples are only the sharpest tippy tip point of not just Charles' audio-visual work but the massive and continually growing Taped Rugs history.
 
The Bible, The Bullet & The Synesthesia (1990)
​

The Bible, The Bullet & The Synesthesia began life as a two-hour Dadaist video that Charles showed to only a handful of ‘victims’ and never released. Years later he trimmed it down to a compact 9-minutes that “combines images from an M&Ms ad, a Green Hornet episode, a Real Cheese ad, and a gun show TV promo.” The audio is provided by Charles’ band Herd Of The Ether Space. He explains: “It’s very much a serious experiment in lo-fi. It’s crude, but I think that’s what attracts people to it.”
 
Crude indeed. But the music and imagery are mesmerizing. Air raid orchestra, 1950s sci-fi soundtrack, freeform tinkly, jazzy and trippy spacey music provide the backdrop for a freakish succession of imagery… slow motion rodeo, flying saucer, toy aliens, explosions, geometric shapes, guns… it’s a wigged out parade! Charles packs a lot into 9 minutes.

Panaramania was the first official Taped Rugs release of Charles’ video recordings. I first experienced it when Charles submitted the CDR collection of MPEGs to Aural Innovations for review in 2004. The 28 videos range in length from several seconds to not quite 2 minutes. Charles later stitched them together for a single viewing experience on the internet.
 
Charles describes the nearly 29-minute contents: “Old and new videos and photographs from various sources were cut up, effected, re-combined, and blended with bits of pre-existing sound recordings from the Taped Rugs catalog to create this collection.”
 
Charles gives the Dada pioneers a run for their money. Images are manipulated, efx’d and set in motion to create an art-video bursting with color and psychedelic brain disruption. There are snippets of actual video throughout, but it’s the color-changing, swirling, pulsating, blurring and every which way but loose collagery fun that takes center stage.
 
Having given up ’substances’ years ago I’ve come to believe that undivided attention/immersion rewards with a much better experience than being under the influence ever did, and parking myself comfortably in front of the computer screen with the speakers turned up supports this belief. (Of course, I speak for myself. Readers can enjoy according to their personal preference.)
 
When I reviewed this in 2004, I would have clicked the individual files but revisiting it all these years later I much prefer sitting back and immersing myself in them as a single experience. The ‘tracks’ are easy to follow so I’ll single out a few personal favorites…
 
‘Gerd Up’ is creatively hysterical. Samples of genuine Gerd ads and/or infomercials accompany animated imagery of the brain and facial features, with a slice of pizza munchy munching into a skeletal mouth. ‘Mister Clean’ is Goff’s take on a Mister Clean commercial, which is extra fun because we’re treated to Charles in singing song mode. ‘Vondgina’ takes what looks like ‘In Search Of Ancient Astronauts’ imagery and gives it the lysergic alter-dimensional psychedelicazation treatment, backed by melodically warped acoustic guitar strumming and effects.
 
The cool and strange backing music runs the gamut of Charles solo work, his various other bands, and collaborations with such luminaries as Hal McGee, Don Campau and Bret Hart. For sheer variety, Panaramania is an excellent introduction to the Goff/Taped Rugs audio + visuals experience.
 
Dada For The 21st Century (2006)

A little background on Dada For The 21st Century. On December 27, 2005, then mayor of Lawrence, Kansas, Dennis ‘Boog’ Highberger, proclaimed various days to be International Dadaism Month. In response, Charles ended up organizing what became the April 1, 2006, International Dada Celebration, a 3-hour event held at Lawrence’s South Park Recreation Center. Video of the event is well worth watching but was not filmed by Charles because he was busy as a participant.
 
Of his Dada influences, Charles explains: “Dada video has influenced me. And it started to influence me more when the city of Lawrence, Kansas under mayor Boog Highberger issued an official Dada Month for the city of Lawrence. That was not filmed by me, but there are things in it that are… they helped inspire me. Anyway, all that Dada stuff really kind of reinforced my interest in Dadaism and gave me a good deal more concrete knowledge of the subject.”
 
Which brings us to the 46-minute Dada For The 21st Century, which was inspired by the Dada month and event in Lawrence. Like Panaramania, this was originally released as a CDR with 17 individual MPEG videos, which Charles later made available as a single file for the internet. The notes describe how “contained in these audio/video pieces are altered clips from old films and newer documentaries, old and new photographs, original art, original films, sound samples edited and treated, and original music.”
 
I’ll call out a handful of my favorites… ‘Dada Dada Dada’ is a perfect opener, being a lightshow collage of Dada documentation and posters. ‘Flight Of The Dresses’ is an old silent film of a dancer that has been Goff-O-Vision multi-colorized to look like a psychedelic video watercolor. ‘333’ is a stunner, marrying an eerie, noisy, chaotically musical Dadaist symphony with blurred, moving candles/lights/fireflies, rotating and swaying art and shapes, a constellation of painted and who knows what globules, clouds and more. ‘En Route’ is like a Sunday drive through a colorful pastel countryside painting, as if it were an avant-art version of the old cartoon (I forget the name) where a boy created his worlds with chalk. ‘View With A Horn’ is a fun parade of Dada verbalization and imagery. Other videos feature odes to Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Eric Satie and Francis Picabia. And all are accompanied by appropriately Goff musical mind-play.
 
SanduskscenesS (2008)

SandusksceneS (Charles lives on Sandusky Street) was originally released on DVDR in 2008. Charles later made the six videos in the collection available on the internet, though in this case as six separate ‘tracks’.
 
All the soundtrack music was created by Charles except for the opening video - ‘Newcolor Bomb’, which was a collaboration with Dave Woycechowsky. This video is worth calling out for particular attention as it’s an example of Charles’ animations – He created all the art himself, as opposed to manipulating existing film and imagery. Charles nails the effect in his own assessment of the visuals: “’Newcolor Bomb’ is one of my favorites. It’s a pretty powerful thing, where it’s all crazy colors and stuff coming at you.” Which is exactly right. Shapes, objects and symbols appear, shapeshift, dance about and fade in and out, the colors continually morphing, like a psychedelically dosed avant-garde cartoon.
 
Charles and I got into a discussion about his animations relative to his creative manipulation of images and film. Many of his videos do appear to be animations, though the dividing line is whether he did the drawings/artwork himself.
 
‘Euclid’s Domesticity’ is next and is a mind-bending collage of homes, their contents and surroundings, accompanied by Charles’ eerie guitar plus assorted rumblings and effects. ‘Kauffman Stadium’ takes Charles’ love of baseball and gives it the Goff-art treatment, with a Goffified take on the traditional ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’ as soundtrack. The appropriately titled 'Mantis Meal’ features a praying mantis enjoying a katydid meal with humorous robotic narration describing the scene. ‘Trip To The Fair’ uses video Charles filmed at the Douglas County (Kansas) Fair to artfully document the ‘trip’.
 
Finally, ‘Unnatural Selections’ was featured at a couple film festivals in Lawrence, Kansas. Described by Charles as “an adventure in interpretation”, the viewer is treated to a seamlessly evolving, cascading succession of imagery and film. With lots of nature, seashore, insects and wildlife, but also construction, it goes from pastoral nature to industrial and on to more active form of nature in visuals and sound. Along with ’Newcolor Bomb’, this is my favorite of the set.
 
I’ve been writing about Charles’ music for over twenty years and as much fun as it is to share the impressions it all ultimately boils down to… ya gotta experience it for yourself!
 
Have I aroused, inspired, provoked your interest? Charles has meticulously documented his history, with nearly all audio and video releases going back decades available at archive.org.
 
The portal to Goff/Taped Rugs Valhalla is HERE
 
A comprehensive list of Goff audio-visual works can be found HERE

All of Charles' previously published articles at Electronic Cottage can be found HERE

Stay tuned for Part II in which I will explore more recent examples of Charles audio-visual work.

​Astro Al (that’s ‘L’) is the Massachusetts based duo of Paul (Count Robot) and Deb (DNA Girl) Angelosanto, whose uniquely uncategorizable recordings have been enchanting my cranium for over 20 years. They’re psychedelic, they’re theatrical/poetic, they’re experimental, they’re sci-fi, and they are always ripping FUN!

Exhibit A: Die Unceremoniously, the recently released new Astro Al album. Throughout its eight tracks, the Count (and sometimes DNA Girl) provide an ongoing spoken word preacher/poet/inspirational/ranting narrative, aided and abetted by a constellation of atmospherics, music and effects. Weirdly spacey jingles, psychedelically disorienting melody that sounds like phased shifted strings or an acid dosed Japanese tea ceremony, cavernous/aquatic soundscapes, rattling and tribal percussion, trippy folk guitar licks, kazoo jams, horn blows, whistles and spectral chanting voices. It’s subtle but there’s a lot going on. Instrumentation includes mandolin, bodhran, drums, acoustic guitar, theremin, duotron, kazoo, violin, stylophone, Aztec death whistle, duck call, modified tape player and FX… all put to righteous use.

And this is only one example in a sizable catalog of varied albums and projects. I’ve been communicating with the Count and DNA Girl for years, but it occurred to me that there’s much about their background and creations I don’t know. So now, I present to you… Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Astro Al But Were Too Disoriented To Ask…
 
JK: Let’s start with a summary of your backgrounds. Given the nature of Astro Al’s recordings, I’m guessing both of you have maybe some combination of music and theater background?
 
Count Robot: Just a heads up, since we’re discussing Astro Al, I’m going to answer as my alias for that band. Just to explain, I’m not trying to hide who I am. It’s just that I think rock and roll aliases are more fun. DNA Girl and I met whilst performing in murder/mystery dinner theater shows, so we have a shared performance background. We did a lot of those shows in real castles. They were fun. I was in a couple of audio projects before and during those days, but none of them really went too far until Astro Al launched. Many moons ago I did a bunch of poetry performances, some with or without music, but I just wanted more. A bizarre need to make bizarre sounds that weren’t being made as ineptly as they could be made.
 
DNA: Yes, very much so. I performed in theatre for many years. I got involved in dinner theatre as well, that opened the door to murder mysteries. That is where we met in Dinner and Death productions. We had to kill each other off several times. As for music, I used to sing lead in a rock band (Legacy) in college. After that broke up, I got the co-starring role of the Leading Player in Pippin, that led to a couple of decades of theatre. As for music, in addition to Astro Al, and all the other bands we are currently involved in, I was in Katfish 4, and the Lionhearts. (Both folk) playing primarily mandolin and singing a bit. 
 
JK: The first CDs you submitted to Aural Innovations were by Paul Angelosanto and the Melting Poetry Collective. I’m revisiting the A Blade of Grass album (2002) and it’s certainly in the same spirit as Astro Al… spoken word, music meets avant-garde radio drama, sci-fi freakiness. I’ve got a Jihad Cafe (2004) CD too. I see miscellaneous other names in the credits, but it still seems to be mostly Paul and Deb. Was the change to Astro Al just a reflection of that or a more thought out ‘evolution’?
 
Count Robot: Great question... well I want to apologize to everyone involved with those projects for being a bigger idiot than I always am, and for putting my stupid birth name above everything. It was hubris of the worst kind. If I could go back into the past and slap myself, I would. The original name should have just been, The Melting Poetry Collective. Instead, you can just look for me on the bridge of sighs. Egos shouldn't get in the way of creation. We changed the name to Astro Al for many reasons. Here's a few: 1. Astro Al is easier to fit on a CD cover. 2. We already had the domain name for Astro Al. 3. It’s easier to fit Astro Al on a marquee outside a club or other venue, etc. You may have noticed those CDs you mentioned are not on our Bandcamp page. The reason being is they are pretty much disowned. We really came into our own as Astro Al. More DNA Girl and less me makes it better.
 
DNA: That is when I started playing with Paul. Basically, I just planned on playing a little guitar to accompany his reading, but it turned into something strange, wild and fun. It became Astro Al. The name is not one we would have chosen today. So many people refer to Paul as Al, and I guess I’m just an appendage, hehe. 
 
JK: Another early encounter I had with you was your performance at Carlo DeShouten’s 2004 Space Rock Con. I didn’t get to hear it, but Carlo sent a bunch of pictures, and I published a photo gallery in Aural Innovations. Were you by that point Astro Al or was it still the Melting Poetry Collective?

Count Robot: When I saw how ridiculous our original name looked on the gig poster for that show, I knew we had to change the name of our act. It took a bit to make the change happen. Personally, I just pretend we were called Astro Al at Carlo's Space Rock Con and I feel happier. That was a fun show. We met some dude who came all the way from Chicago on his motorcycle to see Nik Turner. Big thanks to Carlo for putting the show together and super big thanks to you, Jerry, for enriching our lives.
 
DNA: What Paul said. We pretty much started to call ourselves that at the Space Rock Con. Carlo is amazing. Was a pleasure to work with.
 
JK: Has live performance always been a big part of Astro Al? Do you perform live much?
 
Count Robot: Playing live as Astro Al is something we now only do a few times a year. I think we only played once last year. If we had a road crew it would be possible to play out more. Otherwise, it’s just an occasional thing. Mainly we like to record and record and record and playing out live eats into that time. The lack of a budget means we can’t hire roadies which means we have to haul everything ourselves. My zillion year old back doesn’t enjoy lugging all our gear. Astro Al has never played out a lot. We have done a few cable shows. Those were quite fun. Especially Sal's Show and Lowell Train.
 
DNA: Not much anymore. We played out more before the pandemic. Oddly enough, ironic as it is, especially since I used to do so much theatre, I get stage fright playing music. It takes a while for me to get the courage up and lots of rehearsals. Paul does not have that problem, so with recording I feel much more comfortable. With experimental music too, I am much more relaxed.
 
JK: You went to England to perform at the 2022 Sonic Rock Solstice! How did that come about?

Count Robot: Ever since I was a teenager (about a billion light years ago) I have always wanted to go to a psychedelic music festival in England. The UK psych festivals seemed to be the gold standard for musical festivals. Well, I was right about that! After Crudvid ended, the amazing Martyn Hasbeen announced that he was putting together the 2022 Sonic Rock Solstice. I thought... well why not try and ask if we could perform? So, I contacted him and Martyn agreed to let us make noise on his stage. Martyn is truly awesome. He lent us a guitar, let us jam with Dr. Hasbeen, and we played as Astro Al twice at the festival. It was truly a dream realized. Martyn and everyone involved were so nice and fun. Even the security guards were polite. It was paradise. Thank you Martyn and everyone at 2022 Sonic Rock!

DNA: Again, what Paul said. It was such a privilege to play in the UK. The people were so nice. We felt right at home. Fun group of people and Martyn loaned me the guitar he was playing. That’s a lot trust he had in me, and he didn’t even know me. What a thrill that whole experience was!

JK: You seem to have targeted, associated yourself, etc. – at least in part – with the Space Rock crowd. There’s certainly a lot of spacey fun in your work, though you’re ultimately uncategorizable. Is the Space Rock connection intentional, a reflection of what I know to be Paul’s space rock interests, other?
 
Count Robot: Space rock is a vague genre. I have seen some bands described as space rock that don't seem to fit what I would have thought as being space rock. Astro Al is probably more psychedelic than space rock, but then again, psychedelia is at the core of space rock. Are we space rock? What is space rock? I've heard a couple of Madonna songs called space rock, so I guess we can fit into space rock too. Ultimately, Jerry, you are right, we are uncategorizable.
 
DNA: Comedy is a big part of what we do. Monty Python, Bonzo Dog Band, Robyn Hitchcock, etc. are some examples, progressive rock, experimental, folk, poetry, all influence me/us.
 
JK: Let’s have some fun. I’ve always loved your work because it’s impossible to describe. I just let the impressions roll when writing about new albums. When asked to describe Astro Al, what is your response?
 
Count Robot: Recorded audio that needs no purpose other than existing. Over the years we’ve described ourselves this way, or that way, and I think the descriptions were accurate at those times. Labels are best left at the grocery store. At one point we often said, it was children’s music for psychedelic adults. Now I am inclined to say, we’re just weird. 
 
DNA: I always liked psychedelic children’s music for adults. I think that describes us well, but we also do some heavy pieces, like Anne Frank, or horror stories, like on Beyond the Wall. It’s a mixed bag.

JK: Continuing with the describing Astro Al subject, you’ve got an enormous discography, but to further entice our readers I’ll select one example that’s stuck in my mind - 2024’s Dr. Gumdrop’s Flea Circus Show. Your description: “This is a recreation or a creation of a flea circus show with Astro Al acting as all the performers (musicians, actors, aardvarks, etc.) including the fleas who juggle elephants.” Who could possibly not love that! My description when I posted about it was - “Think Sesame Street meets Pee-Wee’s Playhouse at the Grand Ole Opry and the entire cast are tripping their asses off”. So, with this as an… if I may… Astro Al ‘case study’ - How does a work like this come together?

Count Robot: Love it! Thanks for that description. Pee Wee is so much unbridled fun, both in his edgy and not so edgy form. The Dr. Gumdrop album was a long gestating idea. Back on our first album, 4:20, we wrote a song called Dr. Gumdrop. It was fun to play so it popped up more than a bit during our few shows. At one point we just started talking about Dr. Gumdrop and what his life was like. In his first song, the doctor sold a medicinal elixir in the frontier wild west days of the United States. He had a medicine show, would sing a song, then pitch his tonic which he pitched all throughout the one song for his show. We started to talk about how what if the Dr. was now in the peak age of Vaudeville around 1900, but still that was too normal for Gumdrop, so instead he had a flea circus. Then we figured if we built an album around that premise, it would be fun. That album really pushed us in some odd directions and had lots of fun obstacles to knock over. Rules were created and changed as we went along. At one point I almost completely re-recorded the whole thing in mono. Finally, we settled on all the elements. We performed all the musical and comedy portions of the flea circus. The fleas and animal acts had no musical accompaniment because the Dr. was too cheap to pay anyone else to play during their segments. So, that's the show which is the album. How did Gumdrop get from the frontier age to the 1900s (it's possible, maybe)? Did his medicine work and extend his life? Was he a descendent of the original Gumdrop? Is someone stealing his name? Who knows. Maybe he'll be back again in another age.
 
DNA: I think our theatre/dinner theatre backgrounds were a big influence on that album, definite comedy vibe.
 
JK: Not sure what my question is here, but your work has always had a tremendous element of pure FUN!
 
Count Robot: Thank you! One thing any type of art should never be is boring. We do strive for fun. Even when we go goth and deep, I like there to be something fun at the bottom of the bottomless pit.
 
DNA: I like that. If we can put a smile on your face (and hopefully others) it makes it all worth it. I think some people just can’t believe we perform as off the wall as we do. Some love it, some don’t, I’m sure. We have fun though.
 
JK: There have been several Astro Al collaboration albums. But your numero uno collaborator seems to be goat herder extraordinaire - Tim Mungenast. Is there a special relationship there?
 
Count Robot: Tim Mungenast is a goat guitar god! We found him because of YOU! We heard Tim’s song ‘Candles’ on your Aural Innovations radio show and we were blown away. We went to see him play and what a great experience we had. It’s an understatement to say we get on well with Tim. He stays at our place a few times a year to hang out and record. Sometimes we go out to NY to see him. We are way overdue to do that again. All this is to say, there is a special relationship there. Tim is part of my brain! He digs a lot of the same stuff we do. Creating with him is easy, we hardly talk about what we're going to do, we just do it, and it is. Tim is a Zen Goat. Thank you for existing Tim! We love you man! He is a wonder! If you asked me to list my top 100 guitarists he would be on the list. Tim knows how to love his instruments and craft goat-rific music! He is whimsy! We often watch B movies when we get together. What can make you bond more than that?
 
DNA: We go back a long way with Tim. He is a great friend and a guitar master. He has become like family. It all started on your show. I thought he sounded like Jim Morrison, and the songs were fun, so we were curious to check them out. He and Michael Bloom (who I used to play with in Katfish 4) were playing at a coffee shop and we caught their set. Been friends since.
 
JK: In some cases, you’ve released albums under different ‘band’ names. There have been several Static Apparitions albums. That’s the two of you, right?
 
Count Robot: Yes, Static Apparitions is usually just the two of us. We did have a guest on one track on the first album which was Mark Paradoxos who played some fine keyboards. Thanks Mark! We found ourselves veering a bit from what Astro Al is (that's a whole question in itself) and wanted to do something more like a soundtrack to a 1970s Italian horror movie and that’s how Static Apparitions came into existence. There are two rules with Static Apparitions: 1. No lyrics or words although vocalizing is fine too. No writing in advance. It's all improvised and then cut/mixed/sculpted together later.
 
DNA: Yes, it started during the pandemic. We decided to goth it up and do strictly instrumental and cut loose music with a spooky vibe. We both love horror and supernatural movies, so it has become another part of us.
 
JK: And you’ve released several albums by Amplissima, which is clearly its own ‘band’. Tell me about that one.
 
Count Robot: Amplissima came about because Tim introduced us to Eric, AKA E Dahlfree. We got to talking and the four of us decided to record outside in an abandoned World War II gunnery site and we had a blast. Then we knew we wanted to do more and more. Now we have probably a couple of hours worth of stuff waiting to be mixed. Amplissima is... its own experiment. Is it free jazz? Is it art noise? Is it a caged John Cage? Who knows? I just know I really like creating with this band. We have plans for some more recording sessions this year at different locations. Not only is Eric truly a creative entity he also has a knack for locating harmonically rich or spiritually rich spots to record in, such as a potentially haunted house. He listened to classic Hawkwind a lot so that makes him cool in my book.
 
DNA: We have a ball recording with Tim and Eric, and sometimes Vanessa LeFevre joins us. So much fun making music with them. We try to find places outdoors for the most part - Echo Bridge, the bunker at Maudslay State Park, the artillery place Paul mentioned, etc. We have more plans for this year, though we did record in a haunted brothel at one point.
 
JK: Any other projects I’m forgetting?
 
DNA: Paul knows them better than I do. I always ask him what we are doing. 
 
Count Robot: Another project we’re in is Neurodivergent. A few times a year we get together with a vast array of characters in a secret house that looks normal from the outside, but the inside looks like the waking vision of any musician (with wall-to-wall instruments and gear) and we perform. The shows are all live streamed for free and then re-mastered and posted again for free. This is all run by the incredible David Peck. David is in a stunning collection of bands/projects and has played on more albums than Miles Davis (I'm not exaggerating at all). Pek (as he’s called) truly is a wonder, and I am so happy to make an idiot of myself with him. None of the music is planned in advance. We just improv and every time the show ends I want to cry. I just don't want it to stop.
 
Here's some links to this wild stuff.
https://neurodivergent1.bandcamp.com/
https://evilclown.rocks/nd-recordings/
https://www.youtube.com/@GiantEvilClown
 
JK: What are the best sources for Astro Al? I’ve got your Bandcamp and Astro Al web sites.
https://astroal.bandcamp.com
https://www.astroal.com
 
Count Robot: Those sites you mentioned are the best sites for us. There's also a YouTube channel as well. 
https://www.youtube.com/astroal
 
JK: Any final words? News? Wisdom? Other?
 
Count Robot: As David Lynch would say, "Be kind to each other." And I would like to thank you, Jerry, for being a giving, gifted, cool, person. As to news, we'll be dumping more sounds on this plane of existence throughout the year. Some of them include another Rust album with Tim Mungenast, an Amplissima album recorded at Echo Bridge, an album with our friend and experimentalist Vanessa LeFevre, an Astro Al single, some videos from Static Apparitions and at least one more Static Apparitions album. Phew. 
 
DNA: Not that I can think of, except thank you so much Jerry for having us on your show. It is always a pleasure.

Gabe Konrad began recording as Grey Tissue in 1984, releasing three cassette albums and contributing to some compilations in the mid-1980s. Most of the recordings were solo with occasional guests on individual tracks. Gabe also performed 8 or 9 live shows in Grand Rapids, Michigan with Toxic Scott (Bala) from the band ADC. Then ‘life’ imposed itself and Gabe’s activities went on hiatus. As he recalls, “We still called ‘noise’ Industrial back then, and for years I had the desire to start recording again.”
 
Fast forward to Christmas 2021 when Gabe’s wife bought him a Tascam 8-track for a present: “After a few false starts and tentative steps I received some gentle prodding and encouragement from Knox Mitchell of the Easy Listening label in Detroit. By late-2022 I was off and running, recording nearly every week since. Knox put me on a compilation in 2023 – my first release since 1986 – and released my first full-length CD, An Excess of Pathologies, in 2024.”
 
And now we’ve got two brand spankin’ new cassette albums from Grey Tissue…

​The packaging for this tape is pretty cool. Gabe collected mini-Bibles for several months and repurposed them for the cover. Of the theme, Gabe says: “I enjoy the juxtaposition of hope and terror deployed by most of the preachers featured on the tracks, though I think I fall squarely on the dread side of the fence in tone and manner. I wouldn’t say the songs are inherently anti-religious, aside from the fact that I had to destroy twenty Bibles to make the covers. I’m going to hell.” The comic that came with the tape is a real ministry that former ‘Son of Sam’ serial killer, and now born-again Christian, David Berkowitz is affiliated with.
 
There are three tracks on Side A, though the first two (‘Glory’ and ‘Wrath’) play as one to my ears. Pulsating squalls that sound like a blend of radio static and morse code combine with a drugged voice that struck me as a demon from beyond (but I now know is a manipulated preacher’s voice). Has the devil ambushed the readers of this bible?!! Eventually other garbled voices join in, only to be overwhelmed by intermittent high pitched chirp tones and scratch effects. Maybe these represent the born-again David Berkowitz crossing swords with evil? It’s fun imagining the possibilities with these themes in mind.
 
‘Books Don’t Cry’ opens with a sonic assault of noise that sounds like being in a tunnel when a water main has broken and we’re running for our lives. The noise waves pulsate in a way that produced an unsettling throb in my chest but is punctuated by free-wheeling tone whips and whirls against the incessant noise march, adding a sense of kid toy fun to the atmosphere of aggression. Eventually the noise builds to such frenzied levels of chug-a-chug aggression that the kid and his toy crank the volume to compete, blasting out wailing and pulsating notes as if from a ray gun. The remainder of the track consists of multiple interludes where the noise recedes and various creepy voices ramble and drone before the whitest of noise swoops in for the kill. Debates between good and evil? I like how it alternates between aggression and disorientingly spooky.
 
The entirety of Side B is taken up by ‘Last Days’. It opens with atmospherics that make me feel like I’m in a hellish dungeon with wind whooshing and clangs echoing. Then the familiar slowed down voice comes in with its unintelligible demon sermon. I like the way the soundscapes, waves and blasts of thunder and rumbling weather patterns develop an ongoing theme without quite tipping over into noise. It’s an interesting balance that communicates the dread of navigating hell itself. Maybe the droning voice is a helpful tour guide! Later in the piece the mood gets increasingly thunderous and unsettlingly static noisy, as if the venture into hell has taken the worst possible turn. Let your imagination run wild!

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this tape is part of Ron Lessard’s RRRecords Recycled series, where the artist takes a used cassette and tapes over it to create their own audio art. Good to know Ron is still at least semi-active.
 
Grey Tissue’s Recycled starts off with deliriously winding and pounding space-waves. Maybe we’re on an interstellar construction site, surrounded by the pulse of tornadic jackhammers and cranes and the men whistling while they work yet cautiously dodging meteorites. As the piece develops it becomes increasingly weather beaten, as if we’re fighting the worst possible blinding Arctic storm. The winds are incessantly furious, with howls that are like a cross between wolves and air raid sirens. Eventually the storm calms to the point of hissy silence. But this is brief, as a subtle rumble quickly increases in volume, gradually creating an atmosphere that’s just as sandpaper rough as it is eerily spooky. And from here we swing back and forth between quietly dreary, ghostly dirge and higher volume threatening chorus of anguished howls and noisy spectral space symphony.
 
The B-side is, for the most part, a more subtle affair. In fact, I thought maybe this is a one-sided tape. But patience reveals a long stretch of quiet hiss, interrupted by the most minute bits of sound. But ever so gradually the pace picks up… louder waves and blasts of hiss, the sound of what could be someone trudging through a tunnel, weather and construction bits and pieces that start to increase in volume. It’s all very sparse and, dare I say, ‘ambient’ compared to the A-side, and in a strange way gave me much more to focus on. There’s even some music near the end. Overall, a really cool tape for the noise/abstract audio art crowd.

Both tapes are available directly from Gabe. Email him at:
[email protected]

Gabe also has a seller page at Discogs with both tapes and the An Excess Of Pathologies CD.

An Excess Of Pathologies is also available at the Easy Listening label web site.

NOTE: Gabe has more Sunday School tapes than comics that came with my copy. FYI to those who order it.

California based Jeff Carney was playing in progressive rock bands in the 1980s when he met the late Doug ‘Dr Synth’ Walker (Alien Planetscapes) via the bootleg concert tape trading network. The two struck up a friendship, leading to regular communication. Doug’s knowledge of music was scholarly and his enthusiasm infectious. His influence was such that Jeff obtained an arsenal of keyboards and electronic gear, resulting in two cassette albums released on Carl Howard’s audiofile Tapes label.
 
The first, Imperfect Space Journeys, was released in 1988 (aT 64). In 2020, Lion Productions reissued the cassette as a 2-LP vinyl set and digital download, consisting of the original tape plus bonus material. It’s a fantastic set of space electronica, inspired by the early 1970s electronic pioneers. Taken as a whole, the album sounds like a cross between Klaus Schulze, Heldon, Ash Ra Tempel's more electronic early works, and even bits of Kraftwerk. I encourage readers to check out the Bandcamp link.

Later this year, Lion Productions will reissue the second Jeff Carney cassette album released on audiofile Tapes, which was Live Electronic Music from 1989 (aT 95). Jeff asked me to write the LP notes, which lead to discussion about the inclusion of an interview, which gave me the bright idea to do a full-blown interview for the Electronic Cottage web site. The interview reveals an interesting story from a talented electronic musician. It is exciting that Lion Productions is reissuing these gems that Electronic Cottage community member Carl Howard had the vision to release back in the day.

I conducted the following interview with Jeff Carney via email over several weeks…
 
Jerry Kranitz (JK): How/when did you first start playing music? What instrument(s)?
 
Jeff Carney (JC):  My mother started me on piano at a very young age. Probably about 7 years old. This may have been because of my absolute obsession with Dave Brubeck's Time Out album which my brother and I played again and again on a little turntable we shared at a very young age. We just could not get enough of that record.
 
I recall quite vividly that when I began lessons, my teacher advised me that there was a scheduled recital in just three weeks. As it was my first lesson, it was explained that I could simply attend and enjoy it as there was no way to prepare a new student to perform on such short notice. But at the second lesson I guess I had made a fair amount of progress. She taught me MacLachlan's ‘Climbing’ and decided to assign this piece to me to perform in two weeks. I worked on the crossover technique which it required and had it down fairly well by the time of the performance. I suppose there were maybe 50 people there. All of her other students were more advanced. I was pretty damned nervous, but as I recall she had me perform first and it was explained that I was a new student with just two weeks to prepare the piece. I played it well enough, I guess. I remember that the audience were very receptive, but then I suspect if I had chopped it all up that they would have been nearly as polite. I played it well, however. I can remember a real sense of achievement.
 
For some reason I lost interest in piano maybe six months later and stopped taking lessons. I played several sports and I suppose that sort of took over for a few years, but my interest in music never left. By the time I was about 12 I wanted to learn electric guitar. Perhaps somewhat ironically, given that this would have been about 1980, the players who inspired me were the guys who were by then the veterans. So it was Blackmore, Iommi, Schenker, Lifeson ... these types of players. For whatever reasons, the up and coming “shredsters” of the period didn't speak to me all that much. I think I was always drawn to discipline in music. I heard that more in the players from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Some of those guys were downright hypnotic and that reached into my soul and drew me in.
 
My mother arranged guitar lessons with Danny Means, who was an absolutely brilliant guitarist in the East Bay and the resident guitar teacher at Orinda Music in Orinda, CA, where I later worked when I turned 16. My brother started at the same time. And though he was a year and a half younger, it soon became evident that guitar was going to be his instrument. He was simply unbelievable and is to this day. Anyway, I switched to bass guitar and that became my instrument. I later studied with Bill Tapia who was just a phenomenal jazz guitar player and teacher. My brother was learning guitar from him, but as was quite common in those days, many guitar teachers were also able to teach bass. I learned a lot from him and eventually how to understand harmony. I was a half decent reader for a while. I studied with Glenn Letsch (from Montrose and Gamma) for a time. And I played in the high school jazz band. But rock music and particularly heavy rock and progressive rock were always tugging at my soul. I loved jazz then and do to this day, but I knew I was not going to be a jazz musician.
 
JK: By the summer of 1986 you said you had played in a couple of progressive rock bands, one of which was successful in your area. Tell me more about those bands.
 
JC: By 1984 my brother and I were coming along a bit as musicians and had formed a power trio called Jupiter. That band played only one gig, but we attempted (I think attempted is the appropriate word) to play a 45-minute piece of music which we had rehearsed for weeks on end. It ran the gamut from ‘Tarkus’ inspired riffing to bossa nova to spacey jams and hard rock freakouts. It was an absolute mess. We performed this piece called ‘Velocity’ at the Rheem Theater as an opening act to a couple of other bands and I don't think many there knew what in the hell we were trying to do. But we got some really positive feedback from some who attended.
 
By 1985 I was playing bass in Evolution. That band featured my brother Greg on guitar, David Morgan on keyboards, Kevin Christison on vocals and Guy Schultz on drums. We wrote our own music and ended up winning a spot on a talent show tour which featured musicians, artists, magicians and whatever else. The tour took us to probably 8-10 high schools and we performed in front of the entire grades 9-12 as part of the show. So audiences were usually 1500, maybe even 2000 in some cases. We played this song we wrote called ‘The Seventh Sun’ and it really went over very well. There was another musical act on the tour, but they were playing a U2 cover, so we were in our own territory. Both my brother Greg and Dave Morgan were simply incredible instrumentalists and could carry a show on their own, and we had both of them! So that was a lot of fun. We were playing heavy prog. I do have a recording of one of the performances.
 
After the tour finished we were working on new music and rehearsing. Schultz was replaced by Shannon Taylor on drums and we soon played a gig at the Rheem Theater. This time we opened for the band Trak. Trak was a big deal as I think they had just won the MTV Basement Tapes show and their manager had somehow gotten in touch with us as they wanted a top local band to help sell tickets. I can't remember from where they originated. Anyway, the Rheem Theater is this beautiful old movie theater which also played home to concerts by everyone from the Grateful Dead and the early Rollie-era Journey in the 1970s to Dave Brubeck, The Drifters and Tower Of Power in the 1980s. It's in Moraga where I grew up, just outside Oakland.
 
We played an opening slot and by then had a decent following in Moraga and some of the surrounding towns. By this point we had wisely edited ‘Velocity’ down to about 15 minutes and it was a far better, tighter piece of music as a result. We opened with a new song that I think Greg and Dave had written but I can't remember its name. Greg and Dave had solo spots that were absolutely astonishing and we closed with ‘The Seventh Sun’." Good times. Sadly, the recording of this concert came out as pure distortion. Something went wrong on the line into the board from our sound guy (Marcus Buick) and as far as I know it was just abandoned.
 
JK: You said that meeting Doug Walker was a game changer for you in terms of your exposure to music. Being on opposite coasts, how did you come into contact with one another?
 
JC: I guess it would have been late ‘85 or early ‘86 when I placed a classified ad in Keyboard Magazine looking to trade live, unreleased tapes of prog bands like Yes, Genesis, ELP and King Crimson. Evolution had kind of folded and soon people were planning to go off to college, start careers or whatever else. Out of the many responses, the most thoughtful and interesting was from Doug Walker. I think I still have that letter around somewhere. He was interested in trading tapes but was more so wondering about tapes from all of these bands and artists of which I had little to no knowledge. He was talking about Hawkwind, Van der Graaf Generator, Gong, Soft Machine, Henry Cow and on and on.

We began trading letters and then started communicating by telephone. Eventually we would talk probably at least once a week. Amidst the trading he would also send me stuff by Alien Planetscapes and other independent artists like Barney Jones (ex-Mars Everywhere), probably David Prescott… just all kinds of people. But at some point I quickly became interested in electronic music. I loved what Doug was doing and of course I also had my own ideas starting to brew. Soon I heard all the usual stuff like Tangerine Dream, Heldon, Klaus Schulze, Ashra, etc. And this also tied back in some ways to my cousin Terry's music (Terry Riley). So I was pulling out records of his like Shri Camel and Rainbow In Curved Air and so on. I was just absorbing all of this electronic music and also building up a little bit of a keyboard arsenal myself. It had been a long time since I had played piano, but I retained some level of skill and decided I would see what I could find in terms of vintage electronics. I had zero interest in the digital technology of the time as the sound I was hearing in my head was unrelated. I think the first thing I bought was a Polymoog. I bought it at Leo's Music in Oakland. It might have been $250? You could find ‘70s keyboards for such great prices then. It had a stamp on the back that said, “Property Of The Greg Kihn Band.” It came with a road case but no manual that I recall. I set it up in my parent's garage and messed around with it for hours on end.

JK: The Imperfect Space Journeys (ISJ) notes say you were becoming interested in more experimental forms of music, but always as a bassist. Talk about your transition from bass to keyboards/synths.
 
JC: After Evolution's gig at the Rheem Theater, it was felt to be a sort of “triumph”, but subsequently the band members began to pursue different musical directions. Shannon and myself were practicing as a bass/drums duo and really developing a sense of playing together that was a bit outside of “progressive rock”. Dave Morgan was a sensational songwriter as well as a keyboard player and he was moving in a direction that was probably a bit easier on the ears. My brother Greg was somewhere in between and Kevin perhaps leaning a bit more in the direction of the material Dave was bringing to the table. At some point our rehearsals became less productive.
 
There was also a desire by Shannon and myself to develop a very uncommercial sound. In retrospect, we were probably uncompromising but also had a somewhat egotistical notion that we best understood where the band should be headed.
 
In addition, the other band members were a grade lower than myself and would soon have considerations insofar as college, career pursuits and so forth. Shannon was from Ypsilanti, Michigan and it turned out that he had to move back. 
 
My brother worked with me on electronic and experimental music as time permitted over the next year or two, but eventually ended up pursuing jazz. He was the guitarist in the Hayward State Jazz Band which was an absolutely incredible band directed by Dave Eshelman. Heavy hitters like Joe Henderson were sitting in with them. Then he taught at USC and eventually went to teach at Leeds in England. Upon his return he was in Chemystry Set, which is a fantastic Bay Area rock band. He's usually kept busy with music in some capacity but did not end up pursuing it professionally.
 
Dave also pursued jazz. He ended up in New Orleans playing with Wynton Marsalis and eventually had his own jazz trio. He is still very active and writes music for television, amongst other pursuits. A simply incredible pianist and musician.
 
Kevin moved to Thailand and became a renowned artist specializing in sculpture, I believe.
 
So as all of these things were transpiring, I was becoming a solo artist specializing in analog electronic music.
 
JK: Was this before or after your interactions with Doug? That is, were those experimental influences the bands Doug introduced you to?
 
JC: This was all around the same period. Doug turned me on to so many artists which were previously unknown to me. I was getting a box of tapes every week or two from him and also making other contacts and exploring lots of music on my own. I was heavily into trading bootleg cassettes. I probably heard early '70s  live PFM shows from Italy before I ever heard one of their actual albums. I eventually bought all of their records, but the tape trading networks in those days were just something else. And in some ways it might have been easier to hear a live Battiato bootleg tape from say ... 1973, than to find one of his early records.
 
I originally saw electronic music as experimental but very melodic at its core. At least that is how I wanted mine to sound. And that influence was not just from electronic music but all the music I appreciated. If you take a band like Yes, who I absolutely loved, and while it could be argued that their approach is somewhat diatonic or “upbeat”, if you will, there are darker sections juxtaposed with that which make it so compelling. I'm talking about their ‘70s stuff. I have no idea what they are doing now, but think of a track like ‘Ritual’. It has so many moods. From the brightest lights to the darkest of darks. I wanted my music to be able to develop in that manner. Not necessarily within the same piece of music, but over the course of an album I saw no reason why one track couldn't be inspired by the likes of King Crimson even if the previous track had more in common with Ashra.
 
JK: The notes say Terry Riley is your cousin. Were you in contact with him? Had he heard your music?

JC: Oh sure. Gosh, I remember seeing Terry's 50th Birthday concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco when I was 17. That must have been 1985 and I had been listening to his music for some time before that. Terry has always been a workaholic and on the road a lot, but you would see him at family gatherings and such. I think I must have been maybe 15 or 16 when his mom gave me a few of his records due to my interest. My family would visit her in Colfax and I remember she gave me Shri Camel, In C, probably Rainbow In Curved Air as well. So I was listening to his music even before I started working in electronic music, which wasn't until I was 18. I sent Terry a few tapes and he was always encouraging about whatever I did. Terry is just a lovely man. One of the world's great musical treasures in my book.
 
JK: Describe the synths you had at the time and talk about the trial-and-error process of figuring how to master them in the absence of helpful user manuals.
 
JC: I had quite a number of keyboards at various points. My basic arsenal for the first two albums on audiofile Tapes was a Polymoog, Crumar Orchestrator, Farfisa “Fast 3” Organ, two Micromoogs, ARP 2600 and a Korg SQ10 Sequencer, plus various little effects and tricks which I might not reveal even if I could remember them, but that was the foundation. The SQ10 was the hardest to figure out. I had this fake Gibson guitar I traded to Spitzer Music in Concord for it. I remember that we used to usually go to the one in Oakland as there was a Guitar Center right across the street as well. But one time I was out at their location in Concord and on the very top shelf of a room with mostly guitars, basses and amps was this Korg SQ10. I made the trade of my old guitar for it. Straight trade. I don't think anybody working that day really knew what the hell it was or why I wanted it. All I knew was that with the music I wanted to do, I needed a sequencer. And it was a sequencer.

I got the thing home and it had no handbook. No clue how to use it whatsoever. That was almost always the way it was in those days for me. I'd buy used keyboards because I was only interested in what was already “vintage” stuff by then. A lot of cables, experiments and patience helped me learn how to incorporate them into my sound. Looking back on it, I am not even sure how I figured out some of those majestic machines because nobody I knew was even using them in my local area. Keyboardists were using digital by then. This was the mid-‘80s and everybody wanted to be “modern”, including some of my heroes. I just went in the opposite direction.
 
I do remember with the SQ10 that I was at first only able to trigger the filter component and it had been driving me batty. I could do some neat little things with it, but I needed to trigger its ability to read oscillators. It really came down to looking at everything involved. I was running a Micromoog with it and one day it just hit me that this S-Trig output on the Micromoog needed to be explored. I went and bought a couple of S-Trig to 1/4” cables, came back and hooked one up and suddenly I was there. I would soon run two Micromoogs into the SQ10, which gave me two 12-step capabilities for oscillators and a third 12-step filter capability. It was off to the races after that. The biggest problem with the SQ10 I had was that the oscillator steps would slip out of tune unless you had them dialed in just flat-out perfectly. And even then I would often have to adjust them on the fly during performance. I think these little “problems” can help define who you are as a musician. I decided that to strive for perfection was important to me within the live performance context. I was of course aware that such would be impossible to achieve, but I felt that would be the goal. That's why if you listen to my work, you will hear me make adjustments almost immediately. If something comes in a little “off” I would always try to correct it within seconds.
 
JK: What led to your first album, the A Trip Through The Universe tape, being released on Doug Walker’s Galactus label?
 
JC: What led to it was simply that I sent Doug what I believed would have been my very first electronic recordings and he made an executive decision that he was releasing that tape on Galactus. No consultation that I recall. I think I got a Galactus catalog from him a short time later and he had it available. I was one part flattered and one part a little pissed off. No, it was great. It was just a wonderful gesture. In fact, it gave me confidence that someone of Doug's considerable talent thought enough of it to release it on his label. I really went to work after that and in some ways it was because I felt I had so much better in me.
 
JK: You met Doug Walker in December 1986. Tell me about traveling from the West to East Coast to meet him and about your visit.
 
JC: Doug and I had been trading tapes and talking regularly since maybe about the summer of 1986. I went to Brooklyn and stayed at Space Station Studio in December for about a week. We did play and I have a tape of it. I had brought a Micromoog and a wah pedal in a suitcase. I suspect that was all that was within reason to bring. I met all sorts of folks and have fond memories of that time. Hard to remember everybody I met but Doug's late wife Fran was such a gem. Doug and I were staying up all hours, talking music, listening to music… I seem to remember that one night he had a little performance planned but he didn't end up performing. It ran late or something. But there was poetry, maybe a dancer, somebody might have played some music. It was just a very artist-friendly environment and creativity was enthusiastically embraced.
 
JK: Did you network with other homemade musicians other than Doug? Communicate, trade tapes of your original work? (as opposed to the bootleg live show network).
 
JC: Yeah, but not with that many folks. Limited hours in the day, waiting on tables for a living by then and working on my own music. I don't think I ever found the time to network like Doug did. He was good at that and could somehow find enough hours in the day to do everything. I did regularly exchange tapes with Barney Jones. He would send me these amazing cassettes that reminded me of Anthony Braxton, only it was for electronic compositions instead of jazz music. The titles read like geometry equations and the music was very innovative and uncompromising. He was a master of “drone” music in my view. ‘Questions (Unanswered)’, from Live Electronic Music (LEM) has a foundation which was influenced by some of the work I was hearing from Barney.

JK: You said that ISJ was released on audiofile Tapes ‘via Doug’s Galactus Tapes’. What does that mean?
 
JC: So when I sent ISJ to Doug, he sent it to Carl to be released on audiofile Tapes. I think Carl had aT up and running pretty well by then and Doug must have decided it would get better distribution that way. I assume he had Carl add the “Galactus Project” credit to tie it back to my music being his discovery. Or maybe by then he had decided to use Galactus strictly for releasing AP stuff? I really don't remember even discussing stuff like this. Doug and Carl were just kind of handling this end of things. Carl would have a cover designed for my stuff and start getting it out there. Or certainly with ISJ that it is how it happened. With LEM I may have had the cover layout thought out and he tightened it up a bit.
 
JK: You described ISJ as your first ‘official’ release? Why is that? How did it differ from A Trip Through The Universe?
 
JC: Well, ISJ was the first album where I sent it to Doug with the intention of it being releasable work. I guess that's why I described it that way.
 
JK: Between ISJ and LEM there was another tape released on audiofile Tapes: Code Zero – Process Of Improvisation in 1989 (aT 86). The credits list the duo of you and Greg Carney.
 
JC: Code Zero was a project with my brother Greg and it was absolutely wild. We were approaching both electronic music and acoustic music. And both with humor. aT released it. I stole the cover drawing from a Spanish book I had leftover from high school. Carl loved it and thought it fit the concept and music perfectly. I could see reissuing it one day, but it has more in common with some of Henry Cow's improvisations, Art Ensemble or Music Improvisation Company than anything Berlin-school. It was a total departure. Just a period where I was wanting to explore different avenues.

JK: Tell me about the Eepie Allum Schlugdha tape, which was released in 1990.
 
JC: Eepie was originally a guitar/bass/drums trio with my brother on guitar and Shannon Taylor on drums. Shannon, who is the most remarkable drummer with whom I have ever worked had moved back to the Bay Area in late '89. I have some recordings from this trio that are white hot but haven't gone through them extensively yet. Anyway, Greg became too busy with his work at school and playing in the Hayward State Jazz Band to be active at the time, so Shannon and I switched things up and started improvising with myself on keyboards. We developed a pretty darned unique sound and then decided to bring in Bill Dean on bass. What was weird is that I had been doing a lot of left-hand bass work when Shannon and I played as a duo. But I remember the first time Bill played with us it became apparent that he could fit in without me having to completely abandon that aspect of our sound. So if you listen to a track like ‘2000 FM’, that was actually recorded the very first time Bill played with us, and Shannon and I kind of just take off and start doing our thing. Bill gets kind of drowned out by the left-hand bass work I was doing on the Crumar. But I guess Shannon and I sort of decided to “blast off” and see if Bill thought it was even possible to find room in this wall of sound. Over time, we really developed together. I became more comfortable in having him and Shannon hold down the rhythmic foundation of our improvisations and it opened up some more possibilities. Bill was a superb bassist and played very different to me. He followed Shannon almost always, was more rhythmic and perhaps a bit less melodic. He also played the Chapman Stick, had played in numerous projects and attended an extensive guitar course taught by Robert Fripp.

As a unit we only ever improvised. We had a few things we could go to that had been created in previous improvs, but that was about it. We would just start playing. I think perhaps a better term for it was that we were creating instant compositions. Not unlike my own music at the time of ISJ and LEM, I was interested in really blurring the line between what could be perceived as a composed or improvised.
 
The Eepie Allum Schulgdha album was going to be released by Carl on aT. I had sent Carl the tape and he wrote back about how exciting it was but the sound quality wasn't quite up to my usual standard and he wondered if I could improve it. At the time I had a million things going on. But the recordings were so damned good in terms of musical quality I felt it deserved some type of release. And I wasn't sure how much I was going to be able to do with them sonically because they were just recorded with one microphone in the middle of a room. When they were recorded we were improvising and developing as a trio. I certainly wasn't thinking of it being a release, but when I played some of the stuff back I felt it was remarkably good. And so I decided to put it out with a solo piece of mine as Side B. I designed the cover and sent out a bunch to people I knew. Probably 50-100? Certainly no more than that.

JK: I asked you about playing live with your earlier progressive rock bands. Did you ever play out live in any other capacity, or as Jeff Carney playing solo electronic music?
 
JC: I only ever did a couple of live shows as an electronic musician. Of course, I was recording live anyway, but in terms of audience? Only once or twice. I should have done more but I was so consumed with having all of my stuff set up in my home studio and recording that breaking it all down and setting it up again probably had a somewhat limited appeal.
 
JK: It was a full decade from Eepie Allum Schlugdha until Jeff Carney Table For One, which discogs.com says was released on CD by Renascent Music in 2000.
 
JC: I worked on electronic music through about the middle of 1990. I have some unreleased stuff I recorded at my home studio in Oakland during that period, which was done between work with Eepie at the same location. There are some things in the works and some of that material may well see a release. After that period, life sort of took over. I had a son and a full-time job and the usual things that can cause one to move into a less “artistic” direction in life. I would get the itch and was writing songs on piano and guitar. Peter Hammill had changed my musical visions. And I was always able to sing what I hope was half-decent and started pursuing a singer/songwriter thing kind of as a side project to my daily life. I recorded Table For One and played live quite a bit around that time. But the album went nowhere. I did record a single around 2007. What was to be Side B was later made into a little video. It's on YouTube. The song was called ‘Train Of Time’.

JK: And that was it! No more releases... What happened?
 
JC: That was it. Who knows what the future holds but I love running my record store, The Inside World. That keeps me knee deep in music and ... well ... I live life through music in so many ways, so owning an online record store is great for me.
 
JK: Do you still have your gear? Ever play at all? Do the reissues give you the ‘itch’?
 
JC: No gear at all. Haven't played in years. These reissues do trigger a little bit of desire. I would be open to something one day, I suppose. But right now I'm just more than content reissuing what I did when I was active and it's a real joy to be able to do that.

Artitude was an 'Audiofile magazine' published by Carl Howard, with 12 issues released from October 1984 to August/September 1986. As stated in the first issue: "the purpose of Artitude - The Audiofile magazine shall be to discuss the cultural phenomenon of intelligent recorded and live music, and for it to be said that it shall be the aim of this magazine to discuss it intelligently, above and beyond the adolescent teen-trendy writing styles of Rolling Stone and other popular rock n roll magazines".

Click the covers below to read each issue and see for yourself the extent to which Carl succeeded in his mission

The zine is presented one page at a time in the size it was scanned. It is followed (for older eyes) with a repeat of each page in the largest size that the columns would allow.

Artitude Issue #12 repeated in larger image size...