Collaborator Archive

Robert Dorschel - Performing at EM2010

Robert Dorschel is one of the many friends that I made at Electro-music 2010, a festival dedicated to electronic music. Ironically, while most of the festival was electrified, it was during the acoustic jams that we really got to talking. Robert brought his melodica and Zen drum, which added some great textures to everything from folk tunes to 8os covers. Based out of Syracuse, Robert plays a number of instruments, but concentrates mostly on synths and Logic Pro and has an ear for down tempo ethereal ambient music. We stayed in touch after the 2010 event, and put together a (largely improvised) set for EM2011 as RodoJerde. We got an invitation to play in Egypt, so I guess that is good!

It’s rather unusual for me to work with a collaborator that I do not already know for many years, but Robert and I seemed to relate on many levels philosophically. I think we were both at points in our lives where it was time to just set aside any preconceived ideas of perfection and just see what happens. This has been liberating because neither one of us are trying to prove anything. We continue to swap files and ideas via Skype and DropBox. Robert just started a new venture for 2012 that he calls Ditty A Day 2012 where he assigns himself the task of posting something new every day. We’re still formulating our next experiment, but it will be fun to see what happens this year.

Matt Homiak - Man of the Bass

{This is the first in a series of short entries about fellow collaborators that you will be hearing more about in the coming year.}

Matt and I met while attending classes at PSU Hazleton. He was working on his BA right out of high school. I was there in a two-year Associate program for business, after taking a year off from high school to work. I was still very much exploring the completely acoustic, folk singer-songwriter path, while Matt was (and still is) into funk, various world musics and ambient. In many ways we could not have been much different. Before long we met in an honors writing class, which encouraged group discussion and debate. Through that class we learned that we had a lot in common philosophically. Soon we began to talk music and, we’ll… that was it.

Matt is largely responsible for my expanded listening via artists like Dan Lanois, Jai Uttal, and Bill Laswell. We had a couple short-lived projects in NEPA, including some live shows and clandestine recording sessions both at home and at Lebanon Valley College. Matt played two tracks on my first album, Mandala, but before long our respective personal lives and careers took us into separate directions. For most of the 2000s, we remained out of touch.

Now based in Pittsburgh, and recently graduated from University of Phoenix with a multimedia degree, Matt plays with the Sun Kings on weekends, and occasionally other groups. We reconnected online a little while back when he was still taking classes, working and playing in a band. Based on those discussions, and some brief meetings since, we recognized it was far too long since we had done music together. So we’re slowly putting together some tracks via DropBox and our respective home studios. Watch this space!