There are several years worth of music before this, all of which can be found on Bandcamp (much of it free to download), but for our purposes, I’ll start with…
…& HIS OWN DEVICES (2020)
(The virtual equivalent of) a triple album, an effort in the earliest days of the pandemic to recall the thrill of working with collaborators in days where that was obviously not on the table. Rather than using instruments, bits of software, tools, etc. (the titular “devices”) in service of creating my own music, I tried to treat the tools as band members, so to speak, encouraging their quirks (low sample rate, excessive aliasing when pitching a sound down, whatever wacky feedback systems I’d set up in Reaktor or Max/MSP) to overwhelm my own, playing through these tools rather than keeping them “subservient to my vision.” The three (virtual) “discs” are IN, OUT and THROUGH: the first contains purely ambient pieces, the second, “dance” pieces with explicitly rhythmic elements, and the third is devoted to heavily processed (typically live but occasionally in post) improvised instrumental performances on bass and guitar. I tried to take this “auto-eliminatory” approach a step further on…
SONGS FOR ROLAND (2020)
Roland is Roland Kayn, chief purveyor of what he called “cybernetic music” – the practice of setting up elaborate systems of self-regulating feedback and letting ’em go off for a while, seeing where they take themselves. Stricken by a burst of inspiration (what I wouldn’t give for this to happen more often!), I ended up making attempts to recreate this method of working in Max/MSP – I would create a patch, press record and keep my hands off. Heady stuff, but lots of fun! Naturally, the next step from my rigorous attempt at “post-human” (as if!) music would have to be…
DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE: A CATALOG OF CONTRADICTIONS (2021)
A singer-songwriter album, of course! Well, sort of – you can take the voice out of the throat (?), but you can’t take the experimentalist out of the Pincus, so it’s still chock-full of ambient digressions and tape deck noodling (because did I mention it’s recorded entirely on a Tascam Portastudio 424 Mkii?). The more songlike tracks are about such invigorating topics as “things I saw on my walks,” “the channelization of the LA River,” “1970’s structuralist cinema” and “failed socialist settlements in the Antelope Valley.” Y’know, the usual!
Kiss Hello – FEELINGS WILL FOLLOW (2023)
If you asked me what I was up to on any given day in 2022, my answer was likely to be some variation of “workin’ with the band.” “The band” was Kiss Hello, and “the work” gradually developed from bass duties to writing, mixing, production, tape operation and a million different weird ‘n’ wacky things that all ended up coalescing into this record. As for my own music…
AT YOUR SERVICE: JAMS ON DEMAND (ongoing)
You can now participate in its creation! My latest project is as follows – order a CD-R from me and I will put a brand-new strange sound on it and mail it to your door. This could be just about anything, from squealing feedback noises to ambient techno to a processed field recording of a CTA train to clouds of chromatic harmonica and voice. The only rule – if someone orders a CD-R, I deliver it. Anything beyond that is up to whim, fate, luck, etcetera!