| Yes, but starting with my latest album, which is quite different than my previous work. Besides being the first album I recorded with lyrics and vocals, Hologramatron is also my first “rock” album—though it also drew on progressive, psychedelic, metal, ambient, trance, funk, electronic, and various world music. The core team was myself on acoustic and electric guitars, Moog Guitar, and Guitarviol; Michael Manring on bass; Robert Powell on pedal-steel and lap-steel guitars; Celso Alberti on drums and percussion; and Amy X Neuburg on vocals. Harry Manx and Deborah Holland sang on one piece, as did I, and Michael Masley—a.k.a. the Artist General—improvised the rant on “Warning.” Turkish electro-acoustic guitarist Erdem Helvacioglu co-wrote “You’ll Just Have to See It to Believe,” and percussionist Gino Robair and drummer/percussionist Rick Walker also played on the record. Besides the eight original songs, there are covers of Malvina Reynolds’ “What Have They Done to the Rain” and Joe Meek’s “Telstar.” Bonus tracks include remixes by Evan Schiller (“Lake of Fire”) and Forrest Fang (“Abandoned Mines”), as well as an alternate mix of “You’ll Just Have to See It to Believe.” Grammy Award-winning engineer John Cuniberti mastered the album.
My first gig was a solo performance at a junior high school “Happening” in 1969, where I played a mostly improvised piece of original music with my amp’s vibrato and spring reverb effects cranked way up. Next, I formed a band that played Zeppelin, Cream, Purple, and Hendrix. While I was in high school I played with older musicians, and my musical tastes expanded to include progressive bands such as King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Van der Graaf Generator.
I listened to a lot of ECM jazz while in college years, such as Terje Rypdal, Ralph Towner, and Barre Phillips, along with fusion bands such as Mahavishnu, Miles, Weather Report, and Oregon. All of this music influenced me to some extent, particularly sonically. By the early ‘70s, I was using tape-echoes, spring reverbs, fuzzes, wahs, phasers, and other devices. I also studied electronic music in college, where I was exposed to Stockhausen, Subotnick, Schaeffer, and Ussachevsky. Eno was also a big influence at that time.
In 1978 I joined an eight-piece funk and soul band and played throughout the Southeast U.S. non-stop for about a year.
In the early ‘80s, I began learning more about recording, while playing in several groups, including an improvisational instrumental duo called “Thin Ice” with bowhammer cymbalom player Michael Masley. In 1981 I recorded an album called “Stones of Precious Water” that was released on cassette by a Canadian label a few years later. Mythos was recorded in 1984, and was the first project I did in a professional studio. It was one of the first albums released on Larry “Synergy” Fast’s Audion Recording Company label in 1986.
I was still signed to Audion when I recorded Voluntary Dreaming in 1989. The album was scheduled for release on Audion, and an early mix of the title track appears on The Best of Both Worlds: The Second Audion Sampler—but the label imploded before the project was completed. Fortunately, I got another deal shortly thereafter, and Voluntary Dreaming was released on Scarlet Records.
In 2003, I released a 2-CD set titled Memory & Imagination. The first disc contains most of Mythos and Voluntary Dreaming, and the second disc contains nine loop-based improvised guitar and percussion compositions recorded in 1992, along with two ambient guitar pieces from 1981, and an improvised solo guitar loop piece recorded live on the Echoes radio program.
The following year I released Volcano, which featured pieces based on African and Afro-Haitian rhythms arranged by Michael Pluznick.
The other two principal players were bassist Michael Manring and sax/flute/clarinet/EWI player Norbert Stachel. Although the rhythms were African and Afro-Haitian, the music drew more on rock, jazz, ambient, and progressive music than it did African music. | 
