Suspend whatever beliefs you have of what music is or is supposed to be. Start at the beginning and listen to it all. No, it is not pretty. Nor is it reassuring. Yet somehow hope abounds. Still, you may not like the way the music makes you feel. Can you handle it?

By the winter of 1979 my years of experimenting with 20-30 minute long improvisations playing my Oberheim Two Voice were finally resulting in recordings that had both story arc and pacing. They are presented here as intended to be listened to at their inception - as long form pieces. There is a direct line between these pieces and my current long-form improvisational works with my present band, The Inner Seem. Two notable examples are “Spirit Of The Settlers” and “Transformation”, both on The Inner Seem CD “Migration”, and available here on my Bandcamp page.

By the time tapes 48 and 49 were recorded, my wife Lynn and I and our son Devin had moved from Diamond Heights to the Excelsior district at 410 Munich St in San Francisco. When it came time to relocate, this house was the least expensive listing in the ads for houses for rent in the SF Chronicle on the day I looked. Our regular size unit was above a tiny apartment shared by a young single mother and her son. She proved not to understand that acting like a two-year old instead of a parent was not going to get her anywhere with her son. What do I mean by that? Basically it was a 24/7 screaming match downstairs.

We only lived there from December of 1979 to May of 1980, but while we were there we divided the living room up with sheets of drop ceiling insulation to create a recording studio area. Lynn put in many hours as my engineer and production assistant. In addition to my solo sessions, we hosted saxophonist Robert Haven and guitarist David Blood. The David Blood sessions are posted on Bandcamp as the album “Dialect”, and remain amongst my favorite improvisational sessions.

I had recently purchased a used Korg Mini-Korg synthesizer, and having two synthesizers to use simultaneously allowed me more freedom to create. In addition these recordings feature my Oberheim TVS1 synth, SWTZ PsychTone synth, Hohner Clavinet D6, Fender Rhodes Suitcase electric piano, and a plastic toy drum found in a thrift store for percussion effects.

In my solo work I focused on cassette side length improvisations that were complete compositions. These long-form improvisations mixed electronic ambient music with “song” sections that were melodically dramatic or emotionally intense. These song sections were the beginnings of my explorations of “heroic” themes that are evident in many of my mid to late 1980’s recordings (take a listen to my “The Devil’s Playground” CD for some examples of this).

Tape 49 was recorded before #48, in a single take on December 16, 1979. Lynn has a great ear and mixed it live in real time. I have only made minimal further edits (mostly new fades) in preparation for this release. It begins in an upbeat mood with Forward Motion, a theme that I developed further on Tape 49 and re-recorded as one of my first multi-track recordings (check out my “All Over The Map” CD, available here on Bandcamp). The third track is a variation on a theme I had played for quite a while entitled Alexandria. Track 4, Sources, was noted as “a pop song by and for insects.” This side of the tape ends with Speaking Trees and Irritation; sounds and themes that explore the boundaries of “listenability” and are downright scary sounding in certain parts (translation: turn it up for best effect). With the exception of Forward Motion, much of the tonal material here presents sharp contrasts and a dischordancy that speaks of my mental state at the time. At the same time, a variety of “little voices” sing of hope, heroism and honor in the face of adversity.

Tape 48 was recorded on December 29, 1979, and my recording notes list it as “Love Songs From A Lonely Planet”, with Forward Motion being the only track given a title. When I reviewed it in 2019, the themes seemed much darker than that, and I envisioned it as an outer space mission gone wrong, with resultant mutiny charges. The new titles reflect my thoughts. The tonal material can be “scary” sounding here as well. This was a single take improvisation from Forward Motion to The Experiment Fails. The next track, Legato, was recorded a bit earlier on December 9, and explores similar aural spaces with a more minimal approach.

The remainder of this re-issue consists of pieces that reflect my interest in sonic textures that are not entirely “music”. My favorite of these, “Ping!” sat in my cassette box ignored for 40 years, only being discovered when I reviewed the tapes again in 2019. Recorded on January 4, 1980, it explores the world of non-musical electronic recordings. Although less sweeping in scope, the remainder of the tracks on this re-issue are similar, and were influenced by the used 1960’s DGG albums of Stockhausen electronic recordings such as Kontackt and Telemusik that I found in the used LP bins while I worked at Streetlight Records. I still have these awe inspiring albums in my LP collection.

In order to present the material in the best fidelity possible, all of the tracks except one were fresh transfers from the original cassette tapes. No digital post production was performed, other than minor editing to rectify volume spikes and de-noising. It should be noted that the original Tape 49 became damaged soon after being recorded, and a copy was made at the time with an inevitable loss of fidelity.