The Fellow Traveler/TFT What kind of music do youdo?Electronic soul groove, dubgroove, industrial soul dub, dubsonica.
Wow, aren’t you specialHmm… (clears throat) Why areyou called The Fellow Traveler?When I was young I started amusical side project called the fellow traveler - fellow travelers weresuspected communist sympathizers in the witchhunts of the 50’s - I was not acommunist, but had a brief interest in that and other philosophies at the time.Today the name extends the idea to the sound - sounds like a lot of things butisn’t. How’d you get started?I finished making music inthe early 90’s. I wrote a lot of songs and they were so depressing I couldn’tgo on making them. I’d wanted to uplift and it was one big downolator. So Istopped. I’d started some bands inthe 80’s - The Blue Daisies, The Blissed out fatalists and played with someothers - Gothic Hut, Ethyl Meatplow. I played the guitar then, builtinstruments, sang and could coax a lot of feedback out of an amp. I liked noise - a la Velvets, Cabaret Voltaire and Flipper. Hearing Elmore James kept me sane. But it was agood time to make music and there was some great music being made. Yeah, and?When I was a kid I listenedto punk rock and dub. Then lots of what was called industrial back then. I’dalways liked the sequenced sound of Giorgio Moroder and later the noisy dub ofAdrian Sherwood. One of the highlights of live music has got to have beenseeing Mr Sherwood mix - the sound was flying all over the auditorium, he wasplaying the desk like a church organ. Later than that I used to go dance at aclub called The Third Eye - the DJ, Jac Zinder (rip) played a lot of great andannoying stuff including north African trance stuff. I heard ‘Terminator X’back in 1988 and Hank Shoklee and the Bomb Squad scared the shit out of me, itwas punk all over again. Ok, so?I started again in 2006 - this time with software. I’d worked for a long time in graphics, mostly inphotoshop, and started making music in the same way you might edit orreconstruct an image, using filters, correcting color etc., I heard a song byFunki Porcini and tried to capture the atmosphere it had. Then I realized Icould have as many delays as the computer could stand, plus a lot ofdistortion, and that was the beginning. Back into the past, all thesongs that never got written. I started bugging people onMySpace, remixing and getting remixed. I stumbled onto DubStep and mangled itinto ‘Fuzzstep’. I started being able tocontrol the sound a bit better, or not, and realized that dynamics could begood too. The bass started getting phat. Recently people have beenthreatening to divorce me if I don’t release this stuff. What can I say. So you want a deal?No, I want my music in aMichael Mann movie. TFT is, to put it in a very lame way, visual - so it lendsitself to film etc., Or an ad for dentures. (denture makers take note...) Why no vocals?Singers need to be fed.
What's that thing above?
It's a style map - like a visual aid to get an idea where the music fits.
Oh, isn't that special
grrr...
