After a four-year hiatus, I’m getting ready to release my sixth CD,
Specters of Twilight. It’s a major departure from my previous music, reflecting the influence of Nine Inch Nails, MeShell Ndegeocello (
The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams) and Tori Amos (
Venus and Back): industrial, strange, anti-pop. The music consists of fragments of melody, distorted sounds, obsessive ostinati and recurring themes that linger briefly before vanishing. Less visible links connect the songs, too, with passages from some tracks manipulated electronically and reincarnated in other tracks.
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Tags: science & technology by Jon O
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On a recent trip to New York, my partner and I visited specific locations referenced in songs by our favorite artists while we listened to the song. The concept of a musical tour of the city made for an intriguing plan. Our first stop was Washington Square Park. In “Garlands,” Tori Amos sings about two lovers meeting up here to go see a Chagall exhibit uptown. The paintings seem to chronicle elements of their love. The song was a bonus track on The Beekeeper. Tori originally considered titling the song “Washington Square.” [Read more →]
Whenever I hear Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters,” it’s suddenly fall of 1980 when I first moved to San Francisco. I see every detail of my studio apartment in a 1920s brownstone on the border of the Marina district: the honeycomb-patterned tile on the bathroom floor; the wall niche for the telephone; the space in the kitchen that once held the icebox. I relive the emotions of those early days in a new city, the excitement tinged with longings. “San Francisco show and tell.” Most songs don’t have this kind of emotional valence for me. But some do. Why is that? 
In the consumerist, money-obsessed recording industry, artists have had to fight hard to record the music they love. Tori Amos detoured through the failure of the pop/big hair rock band Y Kant Tour Read because countless labels told her “that girl with the piano thing is dead.” Her successful solo debut, Little Earthquakes, was initially rejected by Atlantic Records (she was told she needed to replace all the pianos with guitars for it to be a viable record). She made some compromises on the final line-up of tracks, but held firm to her artistic vision for the music. 
