Previous related noise projects include Clover Clover (with Janina Bain, Stephany Colunga and Eleanor Balson), Cock E.S.P. (with Emil Hagstrom, Matt Bacon and Elyse Perez) and Madame Chao Productions (with Adam Chao). Ongoing music projects include Winter Carousel (with Diane Nelson) and Crippled Insectual (with Blake Edwards). Currently in progress are recording and performance collaborations with Rachel Haywire and with Lil Princess.

FAQ

What equipment do you use currently?

Almost all of the Insect Deli is edited from various source material (such as bits of .wav files modified from .mp3 files) on a PC desktop or on a notebook. I'm currently doing an overhaul of my studio, though so nothing is set in stone. I have some new, cheap electronic toys and I am playing with my sounds.

So you are expert at sound editing and software?

No. I got into digital sound editing only after several years of trading and mail-ordering and participating in the noise and various genres of experimental music mainly as a listener and college radio dj. I contributed to compilations and did recording sportatically, but nothing really consistent, and nothing for live music appearances until 2000. Anyway, sound recording and editing is only one creative outlet for me. In terms of noise I used to be more into making zines and writing reviews and collecting the vinyl and cassettes with special packaging (what a waste of money) than recording my own stuff. That's the usual way things begin for a lot people, I think. Unless they were smart and bypassed the phase of collecting specially-packaged noise cassettes.

How is it you got interested in noise?

Like a lot of people who are into experimental music, I think. I have that common childhood experience, fooling around with tape cassette recorders, making manual loops, grabbing sound bites from the radio and television and all the things that people now use computers for but at the time everything being done with consumer and household electronics available to any kid. My family was into making audio correspondence on cassette tapes. Some of these "audio letters" were mutated into field recordings or weird monologous rants. In the sixth grade, my dad made me record myself as I learned to practice the clarinet for a half hour everyday (these recordings were rarely filled with a half hour's worth of beginner-level instrument playing. They were usually filled more with things like playing the radio dial, with the dog, talking to myself, recording the other cassette tapes playing back at the same time, etc).

The interest in noise as a musical genre came after trading and making some tapes for the brother of one of my friends in high school, Jay Yamamoto, who had his own tape label, JTY Tapes. I got into trading noise tapes in the early 1990s, some lo-fi and home-taper type experiments. FDR Tapes, EF Tapes, Regicide Bureau, Hyde Recordings, like that. In 1995 I curated a very do-it-yourself quality cassette compilation featuring pieces by Death Squad, Cock E.S.P., Stimbox, Xome, and Men's Recovery Project, among others. It came out with a copy of one of my single-issue zines (Mandibles In Crisis), which had equally low-fidelity, cut-and-paste production values. Mostly it was noise and lo-fi music coverage, totally unknown and obscure. This material definitely wasn't the only genre or thing I was listening to, but I enjoyed it a lot at the time.

That doesn't sound like any Insect Deli material I've heard.

None of my stuff now sounds like that, no. I wasn't even using the Insect Deli name for anything much until '98. It was all under different project names that I never use anymore and that no one except maybe a handful of tape-trading persons would have heard of anyway. The only tape label I actually contributed solo material to during the 1990s was JTY Tapes. I began as more of a music listener, disc jockey and collector who grew very, very gradually into a recording artist.

How did your sound become what it is now?

Gradual stepping-up with different equipment. I got my first multitracker, a Fostex XR-7, new in 1996 for about $530. I started using less and less analog and relying more on computer-based recording in 2000. At the time Madame Chao had set up the file-sharing/battling precursors that would later evolve into Chaorin Kombat. In order to participate, I started incorporating desktop recording, so that was one of the last incentives for me to finally go in the direction of digital, sound-wise.