I`m just like you, only I`m different because I`m me.
I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn`t such a leap.
Yes, I was forced to take piano lessons for 8 years as a child.
I`ve always been interested in the relationship between sound, music and image, how together they can bring things to life in a magical way.
But that`s something that I like about scoring film: it makes me reach out of the parameters of my self, it requires me to do things musically that I wouldn`t normally do left to my own devices.
I guess that I am more interested in shifting moods and atmospheres than song structure, but it isn`t something that I sit down and plan out.
I don`t think I really know just how cool Satan really was when I was in Junior High School. Now, thanks to Marilyn Manson, it`s no longer a secret.
If the finest hour is now, then I`ll always be in it.
First, I`m trying to edit down about 7 hours of material which I made prior to the Cop days and find some way to get it out. This stuff is pretty out there, mostly sonic collages and tape manipulations.
Then I took 8 years of French Horn, first jazz, and then classical.
So, through playing with Cop I realized that there is a potentially interested audience out in the world.
I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward.
I think that one of the strengths of Cop Shoot Cop lay in the different, and at times, clashing personalities, Ideally, I want to have both ways of working in my life.
I do remember being in high school and trying to go to an Outlaws concert, but I was too drunk and ended up in trouble with the police at some truck stop on 95 in Connecticut.
I`ve had a lot of highs in my life and a lot of lows, some pivotal experiences, and in ways I feel like I`ve already lived a couple of lives.
As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.
I really enjoyed playing live with Cop.
Born in Baltimore, I lived there 1 month.
Unfortunately, however, I have too many desires to make a good Buddhist.
For electronica music, David Linton has been doing this series called Unity Gain, which is pretty cool.
Basically, I just try to keep myself from getting bored, but in doing so, at times I`m going out on a limb, not being sure how things will work.
But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.
FIL basically showed me that I didn`t want to be doing a rock and roll band in the way in which I had been doing a rock and roll band.
And I think that I`d be a natural for scoring horror movies.
I`m from all over the Northeast.
And when that`s working, the sum can be greater than the parts.
I grew up outside of DC, New York state, and Connecticut.
With Frat House, at times I needed to make music that would reflect what these fraternity brothers might actually listen to, but still keep it within the realm of a score; it still had to lead the viewer through the scene, or just help create the mood.
But in my college years it got to the point where my friends and I didn`t do anything without consuming a massive amount of alcohol before we went anywhere or did anything, and you know that.
In scoring, I usually start with a sound or group of sounds, searching out what feels right.
I guess professionally it began when Hal Hartley used some music of mine in his film The Unbelievable Truth.
Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.
And I don`t know where I`m heading. I mean, I`ve got a pretty good idea of what I want in life.
But Contra la Puerta was done mostly in the opposite way, starting with sounds and melodies.
And I definitely have an affinity with the piano.
When I recorded Contra la Puerta, I never really thought out doing the material live. Mostly because I haven`t really seen any electronic music performed live in an interesting way.