We'd stopped at a gas station, and in a fit of nostalgia, my dad bought a cassette tape that he proceeded to make us listen to as we drove along the interstate. The singer was awful, whining in this nasal voice about things I couldn't relate to. Dad got tired of our begging him to stop and finally put the tape away. Somehow it wound up at the bottom of a box, where I found it a few years later and popped it into my tape player. It was Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', and it blew my mind.
My parents bought me a guitar. Like so many before, I barreled full-bore into a deeply earnest attempt to become Bob Dylan. I wrote painfully bad songs, and sang as painfully as I could, and played a painful harmonica.
But over time the imitation developed into something personal, and as my exposure to other music broadened, my songwriting benefitted.
My university years, spent with a radical, experimental project called Music Program Zero at Bard College, dramatically widened my vistas, and led me into experimental music with tape collage and computer synthesis. I began interweaving more "conventional" songwork with more sui generis forms and investigative musical projects.
During this time I contributed a somewhat pompous and embarrassing essay, entitled "Temporal Synthesis", to an MIT Press book/CD project about the sound synthesis language Csound.
After college, I paid the bills with a career working for software companies, eventually specializing in what I like to call "fake artificial intelligence". I ended up living in a few interesting places: Russia for about three years, the Dominican Republic for about a year, various corners of New York City. I got married. I had a son. We moved to Germany. I got divorced.
In 2012, I met this company called Ableton, in Berlin. They hired me, and for the first time I was able to combine my interest in programming with my musical pursuits. At Ableton I work as a developer on the company's music production software, Ableton Live.
I met Henrik Lafrenz and Micha Bürgle at Ableton, and we formed a band, The Cardboard City, in 2013. The Cardboard City performed many of my songs, including a few that dated way back, along with newer material, and released two albums, Heavy Paper (2016) and More Like Sunshine (2018). I like to call our style "Romantic Punk Jazz Cabaret". In 2016 we became a foursome with the addition of Niels Hoogendoorn.
I continue with both songwriting and experimental projects. I love Berlin and its thriving creative communities. I now have two more kids and live happily in a green part of the city, working on Ableton Live, raising my kids, and occasionally making music.
Thanks for visiting. I hope you find something interesting here, and I'd love to hear from you.