In our music, you'll hopefully find everything -- rock, orchestral, trip-hop, spacey/ambient, whatever -- most times all in one tune!! Mwah-ha-ha.... We follow no labels, guidelines, trends -- we write what we feel at any given moment; industrial one moment, folk the next. You might hear smatterings of Floyd/Waters/Gilmour, a touch of Mike Nesmith, some Metheny, maybe even some Vangelis or 80's pop, classic rock, sheer noise, Air, Terje Rypdal, and if you really stretch in order to make us seem more relevant to the times, maybe some of The Shins, Sigur Ros, etc. Basically anything that makes a noise can inspire us.
We started as two teen mokes at a college with a then-state-of-the-art 24-track tape studio in 1985. Our duo-ness arose from the need to do most stuff ourselves, even if we couldn't, because we'd book the studio at odd hours in the middle of the night which suited us better, but precluded getting many guests or real musicians in. Much of our stuff from '85-'89 is represented in our tunes as you get further down the list (if it wasn't obvious by the quality difference!) We played our only show together as a project in '89, and have been collaborating (much of it via web) ever since. We can do a million things a million times better with the "home-based" PC studios we both have now than we could ever do then ("'copy/paste'?! Well, get out the razor and the tape-glue and let's spend days indiscriminately ruining a $100 reel of tape...")
Us two actually played live together once in 1989, though hopefully we'll get around to doing it again. Right now the emphasis is just on writing/production. But we've both very much enjoyed live-ness in many bands. John had a great time with a Floyd/Genesis tribute "Eclipse" in the early-90's, as well as with a "jazz fission" outfit, "Blue Monque" thruout the '90's. Last couple of bands Matt's played live with have been True North, Tom Time, and if you go back far enough, Rock Lab I (or Rock Lab 1 if you prefer) in the late 80's.
John -- Floyd (Waters for vocals, Gilmour in guitar, style in general), Terje Rypdal, The Shins, Sigur Ros, Mike Nesmith, Debussy/Impressionists, film music, Bill Frisell, Allan Holdsworth, Bjork, Vangelis, a bunch of others.
Matt -- A bizarre eclectic combination of artists like the Beatles, Soft Cell, A Flock of Seagulls, Cocteau Twins, Yaz/Yazoo, The Grid, late 80's hair metal, They Might Be Giants, Rammstein, Darryl Rhoades and the Mighty Mighty Men from Glad...
Lotsa Roland synths/guitar synths, Sonar, CoolEdit Pro 2, a million plug-ins, a bunch of other stuff Matt needs to specify.
Gonzo on Fender '69-'79 ("big-head") Strats, preferably swamp ash and weighing a million pounds. Current guitar is a "Pfeifocaster" (used to be a beautiful cherry-burst stock '79, but has been modified beyond recognition).
Larrivee acoustic guitar, 5-string Fender P-bass,
Rivera 100W amp, Line 6 GuitarPort (AMAZING device!!)
