Artist Statement

I'm going through my web site and simplifying it. This is one of the things I cut from my biography, but I wanted to keep it documented, because it is a good explanation of why I make the music that I do.

Logos Artist Statement

Logos" is Greek for "word" and it was used by the Christian mystic St. John to describe the fundamental creative force that gave shape to the universe at the beginning of creation.

This project began in 2001 as an effort to synergize electronic sounds and human voices. As my personal journey has taken me further into explorations of psychedelic trance and other more dance-oriented forms of electronica, my music has come to reflect that shift.

Originally, though, it was classical music that forged the pathways in my neurons that associate sound with experiences of the sublime. As a child, I was introduced by my mother to records of the classics — Beethoven, Bach, most of all Edvard Grieg — and listening to those recordings, I developed a sense of music as narrative. Music, I learned, had the power to take the listener on a journey into the unknown, even into the unknowable.

The Ancient Greeks identified two distinct musical traditions.
The Apollonian which includes what we would call "classical" music today, has its roots in the tradition of lyric poetry, and its patron was Apollo, the solar diety. In that tradition, music (literally "the inspiration of the muse") described a connection between the poet and the gods, who spoke through him. Lyric poets accompanied their epic tales by playing the lyre, and the melodies were meant to serve the story or narrative.

The Dionysian lineage, on the other hand, was the music of ecstatic revelry. Dionysus was the god of wine, and his music was played on aeolian pipes to accompany dancers and drummers in their celebratory (and often orgiastic) revelry. Dionysian music encompasses all the musical traditions that awaken ecstasy and substitute intuition, passion, and unrestained joy for the controlled rationality of our everyday consciousness. Jazz, rock-and-roll, drum circles, and electronic dance parties are all born of the ecstasy of Dionysus.

My desire is to bridge the two worlds — to be a composer of narratives that invoke the spirit of ecstatic trance.