Artist Detailed Info: Burning Machine

I've uploaded an old, old recording - the first. It's called SEAN'S KITCHEN, and it's the first thing I've ever done.

In...1997?...I had just moved downtown to Philly, and one day on the street I bumped into an acquaintance from West Chester University, one Sean O'Donnell, who among other activities was interested in electronic music; he had been involved with a techno band named Silence while at WCU. I had bought a few effects and a small amp and had been entertaining myself in my lonely urban shelter making music with a Casio. Sean invited me to record at his studio apartment studio. I played the keys and messed with effects pedals, and he grabbed loops live, added fx, processing and synth/perc elements, and we recorded the resultant mix into a Walkman.

I was REALLY excited by the results and did a little further "mixing" with them. Later, Sean moved out of music and kicked me a 4-track tape recorder. (Back in the 20th century, we used to record things on reels of plastic covered with magnetized iron - we called this "tape"). I fiddled around with my new toys, and soon after bumped into Lora Bloom, another WCU alum, on the street near my place. The fusion from that collision resulted in the formation of Radio Eris.

Not long after Lora and I had recorded an album's worth of tracks, Steve Murtaugh, yet another friend from WCU, asked us for material to be released on the Orange Entropy recording label. We had two projects available which I had taken to labeling "Radio Eris" (sometimes "Radio E.R.I.S." which I used off and on until Lora pointed out people were asking what the implied acronym stood for, which was...nothing). One album was the material recorded with Sean, released as a Radio Eris' first album SEAN'S KITCHEN, and the second was the first wave of material recorded with Lora and featuring other musicians (Steve Murtaugh, Mike Lepostellec, Caleb Cliff who would be Radio Eris' first bassist) and was released as LORALAII. Shortly thereafter, Steve helped co-create Radio Eris the rock band.

Down the years, Radio Eris became more and more of a band and less and less of a spoken-word project, and no-one was interested in promoting SEAN'S KITCHEN or keeping it in print as it wasn't representative of the band's concept. However, I did really enjoy the music. Aural Innovations gave it a good review.

* * * *

Right before we met Steve and all that happened, I had stumbled across a trick involving creating an fx loop with no intstrument and manipulating the feedback. I filled up a couple cassettes with various feedback and Boss 202/Dr. Sample loops, plus that Casio. I thought enough of some of the results to want to release them, but that wound up not happening until one of the periods where Steve had quit the band. I pulled the material together with a few more recent experiments and released it as the "4th" Radio Eris album, BURNING MACHINE.

I had spotted a classified ad for a position as a "burning machine" operator, and thought it was a great phrase. It also connoted the CD-burning drive, the advent of which allowed the release of such trifles by putting the means of production in the hands of the novice.

Again, probably because it had only one vocal from Lora, BURNING MACHINE sort of fell out of the rock-band identity Radio Eris had evolved towards.

Therefore, from henceforwared SEAN'S KITCHEN and BURNING MACHINE are now their own project... an electronic/ambient side project to Radio Eris. Enjoy them if you can.

m
h.e.a.h.d.

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