12 Facts about Joseph

01
I was introduced to unconventional music when I was about five, when I heard a record of a modern choral piece (to this day, I have not been able to identify it, though I still remember how it sounds), and so I never thought of such music as “weird”. I really hit the motherlode when I discovered Carl Stone’s Imaginary Landscapes show on KPFK, as well as another show (probably on KUCR).

02
I grew up with cassette recorders and super8 film, eventually moving to digital audio and video recorders, so production’s been in my blood forever.

03
Living in England in the late 70s was quite the musical education as punk and disco duked it out in the pop charts, not to mention artists like Kate Bush, Father Abraham, and the Eurovision Song Contest.

04
First instrument: a Realistic Concertmate MG-1.

05
I learned BASIC on a TRS-80, then eventually HTML and CSS.

06
Long ago I was in two bands: Dynamicaracket (moody improvised soundscapes and avant-pop) and The Weird Brothers (mischievous and swaggering post-punk and outsider music).

07
I studied dance and choreography in college.

08
Favorite album? The Dreaming (1982) by Kate Bush. Favorite film? Playtime by Jacques Tati. Favorite novel? Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec. Favorite opera? Nixon in China by John Adams. And if I could leap through the TV screen and participate in a particular show’s adventures, it would be V.I.P., oddly enough.

09
I’m a member of the Portland Music Producers.

10
My non-music projects include Daijoubu Dames (a reality show parody about five Japanese women living in Southern California), Up The Waterspout (classic fairy tales read with a somewhat satirical twist, sometimes in lipogram form), and The Coffee Detectives (short stories about two amateur detectives solving murders).

11
Five most influential books I’ve read:

1. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
2. Expo 70 Guidebook, Shunichi Suzuki (publisher)
3. Bronze Age comics, various
4. Busy Busy World, Richard Scarry
5. Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do, Peter McWilliams

12
I think curiosity and being an adept serendipitist are my strengths. I am fascinated by prediction error, odd connections, and liminal states, drawing upon a wide variety of sources for inspiration.

“I think the main thing that differentiates our songs from other people is the fact that we are sort of obsessed with things, overly interested in a lot of subjects, whereas most people tend to sort of not be too interested in anything and just write about sort of like rock ’n’ roll or driving down the road, that kind of rubbish. We’re fascinated by lots of different things and it’s not necessarily dark or gloomy or anything like that. It’s just being interested in a lot of what life has to offer.” 1986 interview, Steven Severin (source)