The Ghost’s Lounge profile picture

The Ghost’s Lounge

About Me

The other place where you can find new sounds is here , on my Tapegerm page.

Statement of Intent:

This is not something I can easily relate because, like Coleridge in his prose, I draw a wide range of disparate ideas and feelings together in my work; two decades of experimentation have brought me a large stockpile of artistic resources. I mentioned one of my favorite poets, and I could also mention Picasso, but that would be only because I've been watching a documentary on the Spanish painter.

Really, anything I say about my intentions is a translation into the conceptual frameworks of others as I become aware of them, so I could write just about anything. I'd rather be asked questions and answer people directly, because then I could adapt my statements to each individual's framework. A drink or two make it a lovely evening!

It's hard to resist quoting here. Lord Byron wrote in Don Juan, "But if a writer should be quite consistent,/How could he possible show things existent?" Again, in his journal, he said, "If I am sincere with myself... every page should confute, refute, and utterly abjure its predecessor."

It seems that there's a great deal of variety in reactions to my work, but I've noticed that a number of women react fairly uniformly to its emotional intensity and sensitivity. It has been said that music may have evolved as a sort of mating display, and perhaps there is a veneration of women at the core of all I do, meant to speak directly to female listeners.

Bio:

As a child in the 1970s, I developed a devotion to a local easy-listening radio station that deeply affected my understanding of emotions and their expression. The effects that appealed to me most in that music formed a strong core of the knowledge of feeling in me that persists to this day. From familiar songs I formed a private world that I shared only with girlfriends and wives until I began experimenting with sound.

A teenage love of Andy Warhol, and a later interest in Jeff Koons, taught me the aesthetic value in conceptual tension that may make a viewer or listener uncomfortable. Therefore, I have felt free to use Muzak-like approaches to sound with very un-Muzak-like effects. I imagine that the best time to listen to my audio work is when one needs semi-engaging but not entirely distracting listening, such as when doing oft-repeated chores at home. I invite the listener to let her or his mind wander to and from my sounds.

A brief stint in art school during the late 80s, a time when work such as that of Mapplethorpe was put on trial, encouraged my tendency to express the unusual and taboo. Although my approach is more gentle and less in-your-face, I do have to admit that I learned a sort of latter-day romanticism from the art of that period. My sexual themes developed much earlier, during a precocious childhood.

A love of Romantic poetry and music, developed during my twenties, informs my expressiveness, particularly the writings of Shelley and Byron, and the lieder of Schubert. A great deal of my personal motivation to make art is of a Romantic type, seeking exalted emotion as an antidote to the dulling effects of consumer culture and late capitalism in general.

Sexuality fully entered my art during adolescence, but my recent stay around the UVa grounds, and the resulting access to an excellent library, sharpened my focus on the subject. A great deal of scholarship has arisen in response to philosopher/historian Michel Foucault's assertions, and my access to this varied body of work granted me a sharp awareness of how I construct sexuality in my work. This may be its most playful aspect.

Otherwise, my themes mainly involve spiritual struggle and general experience, sometimes underlying or overlapping sexual ones. These themes are a result of years of experimentation and experience that cannot be summed up here.

I've been dedicated to fine art for about twenty years, as I implied earlier, but my relationship with sound started ten years ago. During an odd night alone in 1998, a time in which my art was exclusively visual, I attempted a crude sound experiment using three tape recorders and a TV/VCR combo. I recorded with one device while manipulating the others. Soon after, I was mixing sound using many connectors I'd collected from Radio Shack, enjoying the greater control while my neighbors enjoyed the silence.

It wasn't until 2002 that I started exploring digital manipulation using Windows Sound Recorder and the freeware drum machine HammerHead, and at that time my style truly began to develop. I now rely very heavily on WavePad sound-file editing software, though I return to older techniques as I see fit. The internet has also greatly helped me in my bricollage approach by allowing access to a vast range of audio sources.

More personally, I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, in the same Long Island county as the original tract-house development, Levittown. I identify with the paintings of Eric Fischl because of my experience with the struggle beneath the veneer of suburban utopia.

Recently, I've been heard on the radio courtesy of Little Fyodor at KGNU Boulder/Denver , and have taken part in MaryClare Brzytwa 's sound-art project, Village Nomade Radio .
Who I'd Like to Meet:

I'm interested in taking on all sorts of projects, commercial ones not excluded, and will gladly consider collaboration. I'd like to experiment with making portraits of people with sound. I'm very flexible, as long as I can maintain the basic integrity of my work.

For more sounds, please check out my Tapegerm page and my Virb.com page , and please see my YouTube channel for some of my recent experiments with video. Also, please visit my blog . While you're at it, you may like to hear my piece of the day for Village Nomade Radio .

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 2/11/2008
Band Website: http://www.tapegerm.com/jamroom/bands/1123/
Band Members: Just me, Peter Le Zotte, a 40-year-old eccentric and mystic. Yes, I know I look young. Please remember that I'm a sensitive fellow in spite of my odd qualities. My friend Laura ends every description of me with "but don't worry, he's a gentleman."
Influences:The repetitive loops played from hidden speakers in theme park environments, easy listening and lounge music, skipping records, liminal states, advertising music, the USA's persistent hope of a sexual utopia and Gaugin's too, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Eric Fischl, Pablo Picasso, Israel Regardie, Aleister Crowley, and most of all women's great, big behinds.
Sounds Like: Music is best when it's just music; I think labeling and discussing could be part of what kills musical movements. I hope to always keep my work beyond comparison, so it will stay just music.
Record Label: None; my albums ore only available for downlaod.

My Blog

A Public Statement, Posted Here First in Accordance with Hals Advice

Since I entered a stronger relationship with the public last Saturday, having performed live for the first time, it seems appropriate to make a public declaration of my intentions, of my role in the p...
Posted by on Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:36:00 GMT

New Tracks: "The Immaterial is on Line One," "Theres a Second Sun in the Sky Today," and More!

The two tracks I just posted here, the ones named in this post's title, are my first attempts at mixing live production with software production. They both feature Edgar Bergan, his dummy Charlie McCa...
Posted by on Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:45:00 GMT

About "And I Worship Her"

The new track I just posted, "And I Worship Her," is the final track I have made for an EP I thought I had finished long ago. When Little Fyodor  contacted me via this site, offering to play my n...
Posted by on Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:52:00 GMT

A Sexy New Song is Now Up at Tapegerm

Please take a few minutes to hear "Silk Sheets," the new song I just posted at Tapegerm, which will be on an all-Tapegerm album of mine called The Sleaze (Ev'rybody's Doin' It). You can find it here. ...
Posted by on Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:48:00 GMT

I Have a New MySpace Video Page and a New Video!

My new page is here, and the video is below:Num-Nums 1
Posted by on Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:07:00 GMT

Avast! A Very Piratey Song Now on Tapegerm.

I just posted a new song on my Tapegerm page called "It's Sore I Be". The song uses a loop created by Dave Fuglewicz as well as source audio form the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride, so 'tis ve...
Posted by on Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:05:00 GMT