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Author: tantan on June 21 2006 Viewed 4832 times. 18 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: FailedSitcom, sohcahtoa, mlbot, Roshi, Otterfan, jdg, Zanf, sclr, kc9akb, yghartsyrt, bb01, djugel, doofgoblin, bbwax, umami, astroid, mixedtape, Fredo
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I love bandwagons!
I was born in dirty hair mecca Portland in 73. I was raised in basements and slums until my teen years. As a tyke I had a RadioShack table-top cassette deck that I used to produce my own audio recreations of Star Wars, Empire, and original spin-off tales. I loaded these up with sound effects created with household objects, my mouth, and from BBC FX LPs.
The only music I cared for then was film music (mostly John Williams). My favorite bit was always the ominous synth sweep when Luke slices the face off of the hallucinated Vader on Dagobah. I tinkled on the piano throughout these years as well, teaching myself to play the Star Wars, ET, and Jaws scores.
As a teenager, everything changed when I heard The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Skinny Puppy. I spent dozens of hours learning to play their songs on piano, and reproducing them on my then spanking new SK1 (my first keyboard!). I have always said, and still contend, that The Cure taught me to write music—everything I create now is somehow derived from “A Forest.”
By the time I finished high school, I had recorded my first “album,” a techno-pop fiasco called Seven Sad Babes, made with multi-track cassette recorders, a Roland TR 707, HR-16, K1, and an Alpha-Juno. It was cheeseball, full of earnest balladry and pissed off teenage anti-political rants. I produced it together with a friend who would soon become 1/3rd of ML.
At college, I discovered that a guy who lived downstairs from me produced his own music as well, crazy loop-based industrial comedy music. You might know him as mlbot. I made a point of introducing myself, and within a couple months we were sweatily going at it in the school’s then cutting-edge electronic music studio. Weeks later, the first version of ML was born, a mix of industrial and goth, somewhere between Coil and Dead Can Dance. We called ourselves Thine Eyes. We were young, and thought it was Shakespearean and shit.
Two albums and a gazillion compilation appearances into this business, we burned out and re-collected ourselves in ML. Some eight years and five albums later, we’re still at it. In the meantime, I have a life-killing career in software development (I am a writer by trade, and collected two University degrees on the subject, not sure how I ended up here), and I am frustrated wanna-be film-maker who has never touched a film camera. Such is life.
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edited: Jun 21 2006
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mlbot
stoopid portland hippy
edited: Jun 21 2006
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tantan
06/21/06
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tantan
also as a child of Portland hippies, I hate hippies.
06/21/06
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jdg
i missed this one.
hi2u life story.
06/21/06
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tantan
I bumped it just for you!
06/21/06
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Zanf
I dont really know anything about Portland hippies aside from jokes made on IM but I do wretch at the smell of patcholi. Too many open air & squat parties with people who were hydrophobes and would generally be labelled by some as 'crusties'.
Are you like Bob Roberts then Tanner?
edited: Jun 21 2006
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tantan
ROFFLE
hate right-wingers too, I think I just generally hate.  Except you guys.
Enjoyed that film, however.
Portland has nothing on Eugene where mlbot and I went to University. That whole town stinks of patchouli.
edited: Jun 21 2006
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sclr
i too was raised by portland hippies. my parents used to sublet a store front of a house in northwest to bands and when no one was around i used to mess with their amps and mics. thus was born my forray into audio. i saw you guys as thine eyes at the hypnotica series in the jasmin tree lounge way back. its weird how paths cross.
73
06/21/06
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ignatius
"dirty hair mecca"
love it.
06/21/06
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electrodan
"We called ourselves Thine Eyes. We were young, and thought it was Shakespearean and shit."
Holy shit... that is funny. You guys mean more to me now than ever.
I can't tell who's who in the old photos, you all kinda look similar. (sorry) (is that funny?)
06/21/06
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tantan
Heh, yeah, I can hardly tell us apart in those pictures either. Those pics are about 9 years old now, anyway--not long before sclr saw us play a show (back when we were all Electribe, all the time).
In both pics I'm the dork on the right. Mlbot has the boofy bleachy hair. And is spanking a monkey in the first pic.
06/21/06
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electrodan
LOL, actually I had you picked out but I was confused about the other two. I sorta know what mlbelch looks like but I dont know that Ive ever seen a pic of the mysterious "3rd member" other than that goodmorning album pic.
06/21/06
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electrodan
lol at mlbot in that pic on the Russkie page. He's even Lairdier to me now. :P
06/21/06
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Roshi
Yeah, the hair on that page is awesome (though I'm sure mine looked really bad back then too).
06/21/06
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Roshi
Oh yeah, the title pic is a nice touch.
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