60-year-old retired professional and still an intense hobbyist. I continue to upload tracks as “SicTim” up to the day before I wrote this.

Started playing bass and singing (I am NOT a good singer, but I give it my best) in punk bands in the late '70s, continued to play and sing in punk, post-punk, and goth bands until the early '90s. Recorded at several studios during that time, albeit with nothing officially released except on cassette.

If you hunt around hard, you can still catch lingering tracks and/or videos from the Twin Cities bands “Timbuktu” and “Dark Carnival,” although the latter is easy to confuse with later bands and that ICP stuff. Never name your band after a book, even one that’s been out of print forever.

In the '80s, I bought myself a TASCAM Portastudio and a Roland TR-505, and began making solo music (I’d already learned guitar) for the first time. Also had some interesting situations like the time a bunch of us, including Jeffrey Winter from Heathen and Grant Hart from Husker Du, recorded a song as a birthday present to a friend before we headed out to his party. AFAIK, all of this music is lost for good.

As a computer geek, embraced the digital age, starting with Acid 2.0 (and an earlier, abortive attempt with Cakewalk which I found to be incomprehensible and downright user-hostile). Around Acid 6.0 switched to Reaper and haven’t looked back. I live for VSTs and VSTis, and am a major packrat – my current arsenal mostly lives on a 4TB external HD, with a 6TB available for backup and eventual replacement. I also have a collection of loops and samples going all the way back to the Acid 2.0 days and up to the latest stuff from Native Instruments etc. – all legal and royalty-free, although I tend to twist and manipulate them until they’re beyond recognition anyway.

I’m influenced by everything. I like all genres of music, and still love discovering new stuff. Currently concentrating on Industrial, No Wave, and Dark Ambient music.