In the beginning there was Port Said. This was a band I started and worked
with from 1981 to 1984, with Keith Keeler Walsh, now deceased. When we began
to play and record, there was great excitement, since we had spent years listening
to all the new imports in British and European electronic music, as well as
the American minimalists and various underground experimental artists, and
this was to be our chance to make a contribution.
Since we were located in NYC, there were some good opportunities to play live
and introduce people from labels, clubs and other musicians to our sound.
We also benefited greatly by being included in the Contact List of Electronic
Music, an informal sporadic zine that was put out by Alex Douglas of Vancouver,
B.C. This made us a known entity among the new recording artists in Europe,
Australia and Asia, and made us aware of them.
Following this, we had a cassette released by Aeon Recordings of Ft. Collins,
Colorado, a pioneer label, who was responsible for getting that same cassette
album, "Eve of Departure", distributed in Europe via Ding Dong Discs, a Netherlands
based label. They, in turn, invited us to contribute a piece to their double
cassette package "Film Noir, American Style", for which we produced an original
piece entitled, "Countdown To Midnight". This was a breakthrough for us, since
there were 2000 copies made of this package, and some well known artists were
included on it such as The Residents, Muslimgauze, K. Leimer and Clock DVA.
The radio station WFMU, then located at Upsala College in East Orange, New
Jersey, and still today a vibrant and exciting resource for new music, had
a show called Synthetic Pleasure, hosted by Richard Ginsberg. It was here
that we premiered our new recordings and were interviewed several times. Other
artists who were becoming known through this show were Don Slepian, Emerald
Web, The Nightcrawlers and Yanni. On the west coast in Vancouver Canada, we
were played and encouraged by Coop Radio via Peter Moser's show, Alien Soundtracks.
Following Port Said, I worked in collaboration with Tara Cross, a New York based synthesist,
Joe Zeytoonian, an oud player and composer/ performer with many credits and
recordings, and Blair Petrie, a multi- instrumental experimenter from Vancouver.
These works all presented varied and valuable learning situations, which gave
me the idea that each work I undertake could benefit from being conceived
and executed individually, with a concept devised specifically for it. Not
only would this provide new methods of approaching composition, but would
also give us flexibility to adjust to different kinds of creative choices.
Of these, the first with Tara Cross, "Searchlight and Torch" and the latter
"Gorgons and Gargoyles" had some distribution.
Of the works
which I produced myself, only " In
Florette's Room " and "Excess of Free Speech" were released. The former
was a limited edition lp distributed by Generations Unlimited in 1989, and
the latter, a CD in 1992, by Extreme Music in Australia. "In Florette's Room"
was my first attempt at an actual film score, and had almost no distribution.
"Excess of Free Speech" is the only work for which I may be likely to be known,
if at all, since it got distributed in the international underground.
This is somewhat ironic, since it is unlike my other recordings in several
important respects. First, it is not a "cinematic" work, a suggested soundtrack
to a non-existent film, which the others are. Secondly, it makes extensive
use of voice samples from different media to explore the themes of mis and
dis information that is foisted on the public at large by various power groups,
to achieve a pre-determined result. This work was somewhat prescient, given
the situation the US is in currently.
Although there are many thousands of new recordings being made available all
the time, and the methods of distribution are in a state of transition, I
hope that some of the other recordings I have made will eventually connect
to some audience. It is to this end that I am dedicating this page and my
website.
Trail
of the Sphinx Video
Music: Stefan Tischler & Keith
Walsh
Dance: Anahid Sofian
Production: Michael Mannetta
