MUSIC
A label executive once described my music as a “marketing nightmare” due to its resistance to conventional categorization—something I prefer to imagine is a feature rather than a bug. “Art-rock,” “world-fusion,” “ambient,” “psychedelia,” “experimental,” “progressive,” and even “avant-jazz” are all terms that have appeared in reviews of my releases.
My first album, Mythos, was released on Larry “Synergy” Fast’s Audion Recording Company label in 1986. It combined layered guitars—including via Terry Riley-style tape looping—with Bob Stohl and Kat Epple’s woodwinds, synthesizers, and percussion, and Michael Masley’s otherworldly bowhammer cymbalom. I still feel that the entirely improvised title track is one of the best things I’ve ever recorded. Mythos received numerous glowing reviews and was chosen as one of the “25 Best New Age CDs” ever in the Stereo Review Compact Disc Buyer’s Guide (alongside such other “new age” albums as Dark Side of the Moon and Autobahn).
The follow-up, Voluntary Dreaming, was also well received. It had a more electronic edge—I played synthesizers in addition to electric and acoustic guitars—and encroached upon world music territory with the addition of Michael Pluznick’s African and Middle Eastern percussion, Robert Powell’s pedal-steel guitar, and Masley’s cymbalom.
Around that same time, the Canadian label Chacra Music released a cassette of recordings I’d made years earlier on a 4-track in my bedroom. Stones of Precious Water achieved a sort of cult status over the following decades and a restored and remastered version was released on vinyl by another Canadian label, Morning Trip Records, in 2020.
During the 1990s, I cofounded the improvisational quintet Cloud Chamber with bassist Michael Manring, cellist Dan Reiter, percussionist Joe Venegoni, and Michael Masley on bowhammer cymbalom and several unique instruments. Cloud Chamber performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and released the critically acclaimed Dark Matter album in 1998. During that decade, I also recorded material that would be released subsequently.
Volcano (2004) combined African and Afro-Haitian rhythms with progressive rock, jazz, and ambient elements. The album began with percussion tracks arranged, played, and recorded by Pluznick. Manring played bass and Norbert Stachel played EWI and an array of saxophones, flutes, and clarinets. Masley and vocalists Maxwell Taylor and Lygia Ferra also made cameos.
Memory & Imagination (2003), is a 2-CD compilation that combines nearly all of Mythos and Voluntary Dreaming with nine guitar/percussion looping pieces—including the epic 24:24 title track, three of which feature Carl Weingarten on Dobro and slide guitar. The loops were created using a prototype of the Paradis Loop Delay (later the Echoplex Digital Pro), which I had the good fortune of borrowing for a few months.
Hologramatron is an avant-rock 21st Century protest album featuring Manring, Powell, Alberti, and Amy X Neuburg, with Harry Manx, Deborah Holland, Erdem Helvacioglu, Artist General, Rick Walker, and Gino Robair. Released on Moonjune Records in 2010, it spanned a musical continuum from art rock to avant-metal to psychedelic pop, and received more than 100 glowing reviews worldwide.
My collaboration with French guitarist and synthesist Richard Pinhas, which also featured Manring and Alberti, was titled Mu and released on Cuneiform Records in 2016. Combining pure group improvisation with my post-production compositional development, the album’s four pieces explore musical currents that include progressive rock, ambient, jazz, and experimental.
Most recently, I contributed to Stephan Thelen’s Fractal Guitar, Fractal Guitar 2, and Fractal Guitar 3 albums, as well as remixing “Mercury Transit” for the Fractal Guitar Remixes album (alongside remixes by Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble, David Torn, and Thelen). And I played multiple guitar parts on “Maria’s Lakeside Drive,” which appears on Friends by Gayle Ellett and the Electromags
I’ve also written about 50 cues for the Telepictures production music library, some of which have been featured on various Warner, CNN, TMZ, and other programs.
WRITING
I served as an editor at Guitar Player magazine for 12 years, where I interviewed hundreds of guitarists, producers, engineers, and other creative individuals, and reviewed nearly a thousand musical and pro audio products. My writing has also appeared in Tape Op, Recording, Electronic Musician, Mix, Premier Guitar, and numerous other publications. Additionally, I contributed 13 interviews to Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World’s Greatest Guitarists, and wrote two chapters for Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin, the Illustrated History of the Heaviest Band of All Time.
Finally, I penned the cult classic book Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques, an in-depth study of the legendary British recording iconoclast’s career, gear, and methods of working.