Influences: Thug Entrancer

The community I came up in is a huge influence for me. Denver and the freaks that inhabit it have this wild and pure energy, it’s a special place with very special people. Killd By (Colin Ferguson Ward) formerly Alphabets is one of these people. He’s like some sort of time traveling techno shaman that embodies creativity’s potential; past, present and future all at once. A massive force of light beaming positivity and health on everyone that crosses his path. I recommend digging into his massive archive of work. Also someone needs to hook him up with James Cameron so he can get that Avatar money.

This album has become a necessary travel companion for me. I’ve always viewed it as transporter music, devouring the time and space between me and my destination. This track is very unassuming, a subtle human pulse buried under layers of atmosphere, but there’s also a density and texture that deserves exploration.

The San Francisco Tape Music Center made a big impact on my life, despite being born 30 years after it’s incarnation. I found out about it after impulsively buying a couple used Morton Subtonick LP’s stashed in the “electronic” section of a local record store. I was immediately drawn to the alien landscapes and had to dig deeper. Pauline’s work, especially, the Alien Bog/Beautiful Soop release, still reignites this sensation of discovery in me. Every time I listen to it I find something new. The piece has this living, animalistic feeling to it; like an inter-dimensional field recording. The innovation she and her peers developed at the Tape Music Center is still something I strive to integrate into my work.

Shadowrun exposed me to cyberpunk at a young age. It was a perfect vision of a magical dystopia ported into a small grey cartridge. The soundtrack is striking, very emotional with this industrial vibe. I remember playing the game and idling in spots just so I could hear the composition develop. I loved it so much that I made many failed attempts at recreating the songs in Mario Paint’s composer. It might be tied to some of my first experiences with creating electronic music.

Hard to pick a Mannie Fresh favorite, nothing tops early Cash Money for me. I like the urgency in this song. Juvenile rhythmically moving between those machine gun snares and that squelchy acid line all within this loose bounce structure, it’s crazy. The track, sonically and lyrically has a lot of conflict, but I think there’s also this underlying sense of empowerment. Something about that bounce just keeps you moving forward.

RP Boo is a true innovator. Dave Quam’s blog “It’s After the End of the World” introduced me to Dude off 59th Street, it completely shifted my perspective on the power of drum machines and rhythm. That release is fire front to back. It has this relentless force to it. His latest release has the same energy but it’s even more refined and takes you further into his palette of rhythm and sound. Bangin’ On King Drive is a straight up anthem for the contemporary world we live in.

This was another impulse record buy that completely changed my life. I think I was allured by the Trax Record’s minimal label aesthetic, it really stood out. At face value it was the antithesis of all the early electronic music I was into at the time, it was static dance music. My opinion quickly changed after having it on repeat for a month. Acid Tracks was intoxicating. The amount of soul Phuture pulled out of these machines was unreal. Acid Tracks represents the beautiful relationship between humanity and machine.

Bjork is an artist that blurs the line between fantasy and reality for me. Her world’s are so rich and immense that I forget that what I’m experiencing is virtual. Her configuration for instrumentation is unmatched, there’s no question of analog or digital, it all exists on the same level. The rhythm feels like it’s quantized by her voice, she’s in complete control. I really enjoy the nuances hidden within this song like the strange phoneme’s hidden under the snare, it’s complex without overwhelming.

This piece is another example of how gestural, dynamic – near human sounding computer music can be. It was generated from magnetic field data mapped to different musical parameters. For me, the piece really drives in that idea of the harmony found within human/machine exploration. A part of me wants to imagine that data always sounds this light and tempered, we just have to tap into it, but in reality I think it’s more like a Hanatarash performance.

Hard for me to pick a specific Basic Channel track, their entire discography is ground breaking. Their work creates is a world unto itself where rhythm is language. The vagueness of what is rhythm is in Phylyps Trak really pulls me in. There’s the obvious kick that jolts in, but the melody offers a counter and the pops and clicks within the atmosphere create another layer of percussion. It’s like that instance when everything in your universe becomes one.