Metalshop is the name I've given to my one-man technonoise assault unit, equipped with the latest in broken gadgetry and intentionally misapplied technology.

Among my qualifications to this end are years of meditation upon complex pseudo random environmental noise patterns, intense study of aural and psychosocial manipulation techniques and 7 years of jazz saxophone, which I do not play.

The true aim of the project is to define a public context for my explorations in the medium of sound. Specifically, I concentrate on 'found' or electronically-invented anatural textures - my work in circuit bending is one aspect of this.

The Metalshop project provides me with an excuse to present this work in a format that is accessible to the public - or tries to be. Without the pretext of a 'song' as a setting, the hours of experimental audio I regularly produce would go unused on their minidiscs.

There was a brief period during which I strove to 'commercialize' my material more for the 'techno' community. Luckily I soon realized the insidiousness of this concept and have returned to my purely experimental roots in force.

Metalshop has been on mp3.com since way back - I am listed as member 910 . . . they're somewhere around 400,000 now.

Update: mp3.com, forum for independant artists everywhere, is no more. The Metalshop project is in the process of being updated (to cool new OGG format) and migrated to it's new home. Stay tuned!

"You're $#@&!* sick, man - that is some of the noisiest, most perverse obnoxious racket I've ever heard purposely recorded . . ."

"No Gary I am not going to send you my old equipment."

"I'm glad to hear you're taking advantage of the services provided by ApartmentSearch (ie, none). More apartments will become vacant as soon as Cousin Rocco buys more gasoline. I liked the Shards song alot. Nice digital sweeps, sub basses, and cool samples. WARNING: Do not, under any circumstances, rent 'Ghost in the Machine'!!"

"Tax the churches."

"I liked the music that I heard on your web page - it reminds me of Kraftwerk... "

"The music is most excellent, you probably should not publish this or someone like me will take it along with the most excellent credit for making it! That's why I don't publish my own most excellent shit."

"Hey what's up I liked your traxx pretty phat."

I started-out with very little gear - that's probably evident in some of the earlier tracks like "Potion" and "Firmware": For quite some time I used only an SB16 card and an SP-202 phrase sampler. Gobs of fun, but quite limited in creative capabilities.

I have added some fun stuff since then, but I specifically want to avoid relying too much on any particular instrument or device. I make a habit of regular retreats into 'low-tech': Say, take the SP-202 and TR-505 into the other room with an SK-1 and play them live into a handheld tape recorder.

Here are the resources at use at Metalshop Studios.

Synthetic Instruments
Roland JP-8000 synthesizer
Roland TR-505 drum machine
Roland SP-202 phrase sampler
Yamaha QY-70 sequencing sythesizer
Korg Electribe ES-1 rhythm production sampler
Casio SK-1 sampling toy keyboard
Casio CSM-1 digital sound module (sucks!)
Casio VL-Tones and other toy keyboards

Circuit Bent Instruments
See my section on circuit bending for more info.

LED: Texas-Instruments Speak 'n Spell
Stovetop Abortion: Sesame Street All-Star Band
Bloody Mary: Playschool (?) toy keyboard
Little Bugger: Unidentified toy cel phone
2-Tone: Casio VL-Tone
Dizzyphone: Disney Friends Phone
More

Computers
Pentium III 300/256MB RAM/4GB HD
Soundblaster AWE64 gold 2ch audio/midi interface
Mitsusumi CD-R recorder
Slackware Linux 7

AMD 333/256MB RAM/4GB HD
MAudio AudioPhile 2496 4ch audio/midi interface
Midiman DMAN 2044 8ch audio interface
Win 98

Playstation 1 w/mouse
MTV Music Maker

Studio Gear and Stuff
Roland RX-82 8-channel powered mixer
Furman PB-40 40-point patch bay
Behringer Ultrapatch Pro 48-point patch bay
SAE 180 stereo parametric equalizer
Sony MDS-JE32 minidisc deck
Sharp MD-702 portable MD recorder
MidiMan 2x1 "Pink Box"
DOD FX90 analog delay processor
DOD FX?? screamin' distortion processor
Digidesign DR-1000 dynamic mic
Samick steel-stringed acoustic guitar
Moroccan congos

If you're wondering how all this crap is rigged-together, you'll enjoy a look at my studio diagram, usually a little out of date.

Audio diagram (JPG)

By the time Tron came out I was an avid Carlos fan - you would have found me in line at the theatre with a cheap tape recorder in my pocket. Wretched quality recording I would hear 100s of times before I could get the soundtrack. A side-effect of my original Carlos obsession is a Tron obsession: As a sad result, I must be one of the world premiere collectors of Tron crap.

Wendy Carlos' official site is great - buy the Tron soundtrack!

Brian Eno
What can be said about this amazing artist that hasn't already been said? Musician, theorist, logician, innovator - obliterates boundaries, spawns whole musical genres with a swipe of his hand - essentially invented ambient electronic music. Nearly every major musical work from this modern rennaisance man has unveiled groundbreaking technique, philosophy or paridigm - routinely turning entire genres on their head.

Had he been born 500 years earlier I'm certain he would have been Da Vinci.

Go here and here and to learn more about this remarkable artist and his work.

Future Sound of London
I'm not sure exactly how much they've influenced me, but I'm certainly a big fan of theirs. I had been into Eno and other electronic music pioneers long before I was introduced to them but no one else quite approaches the art as they do.
For some reason, FSOL gets air neither on the radio nor at clubs, but I think they are probably the single most sophisticated, ground-breaking act from the "new school" of electronic music. I actually bought "ISDN" by accident, thinking it was an obscure band calld "ISDN". their broken, distorted, unnatural rythyms and screeching, alien art-noise loops ("Smokin' Japanese Babe") are so foreign to the mind, so unnatural as to induce vertigo. Yet, at times ("My Kingdom") they are capable of such sweet sunset dreams that one might think these impossible sounds somehow emanate from one's own heart

Autechre
Autechre is also a fascinating development - completely sterile, devoid of both emotion and logic - this team of devout non-musicians could probably go-down as the first masters of the broken computer. Their refusal to commit to any accepted boundries of so-called "music" has made them heroes in my mind. Scattered drum machines ("It sounds so fake" -friend, "Yes, it's beautiful" -me) and absolutely inhuman audio mutilations cascade over an intricate matrix of rythym so convoluted as to nearly obscure any structure - which, upon closer inspection, reveals a sublime minimalist philosophy of digital reality.
I don't know exactly what that meant but it sounded nice.

Gary Numan
Back to the classics: Gary Numan was one of the early early pioneers of electronic music. Forget about 'Cars' (fun, yes, but) his earlier work under the Tubeway Army broke boundaries few knew were there to be broken. Beatifully sterile but somehow still very raw, his droning voice is the perfect match for the (then totally alien) sound of thick-filtered early analog synths.

Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin (Richard James): My reaction to this guy's work remains "mixed". While pompous, self-gratifying and at times just plain childish there's no denying his considerable gift for the arts of electronic sound. Everytime I'm tempted to write him off completely ("jerk - idiot!") for another rambling, insulting farce ("qwarek", "funny little man") he blows my mind again ("IZ-US", "Cock-verlos" and of course "Come to Daddy"). Sometimes I think what I hate about him is what I hate most about myself...that's apparently enough to keep me buying his albums so I guess he's doing the something right [grin].

Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart)
Captain Beefheart (with or without Magic Band) is vastly underrated as an artist. Few know how influential he was on the more serious work of Frank Zappa, for example.

When first confronted with Beefheart, particularly his earlier work, one is naturally prone to oversimplification. It's humorous (and it in fact quite fun) and eratic: It may come-off as a spoof, a joke on art and music with nonsense lyrics and random noise.

Be assured, nothing could be further from the truth.

Lyrically, Beefheart uses the innate function of language to build a peculiar sort of audio illustration: Illustrations invariably taken from the immense and rich landscape of his fertile mind.

Excerpt: Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee (D. Van Vliet)

The monkey moved a fur shadow...
its soot tail curled in twos
Its lips smiled needles.. its eyes rolled loose
Her throat broke open... glistened in the dew
Red berries dangled like a dream of rubies too
Snot muscles ran down her ivory chin 'n tooth within
A locket... a pin held fast to then, my love, my pocket deep within



What he does to language is a lot like what a hacker does to software: Bypass the interface completely and trick the components into doing something they shouldn't be:

Excerpt: Ice Cream for Crow (D.Van Vliet)
beneath the symbol
we'll all assemble
oh how we'll fly
oh how we'll tremble
cut the cake
we'll all get well
turn up the speakers
hop flop squawk
it's a keeper



Beautiful stuff. Now, none of my stuff has lyrics - still, I am so influenced by (and just plain identify with ) Beefheart's work that it shows-up in nearly everything I do. I could write about him all day but many others already have so you'll devour these, then pickup the awesome 'signature' disc set and you can die fashionably.