Q: First things first: What's "Proem?"

A: hmmm well the name I pulled out of the dictionary. It means literally... proem: 1.Preface; introduction; preliminary observations; prelude.

Q: Why, then, "Proem?" Does it signify something or does it just sound cool?

A: Well... I figured that it made sense. 1st record=initial observations. I could change it later if it didn't sit well with me after awhile. That and I always hated the whole acronym naming trend that seems to follow the genre. I think it puts too much of a cold scientific spin on what should be warm and human. So why not just pull a word from the dictionary that means something? Came about after a debate with a label about the name I chosen which clashed with a death metal Xian band and some punk band... [frightening I can assure you]

Q: What was the original name? Blood of Christ? It came out of your debate with Hydrant, or a different label?

A: yeah. Hydrant, bless their hearts... Didn't feel the name I had sent them the demo under fit the sound... Unless you think blood of Christ fits over every proem track nicely... that and I had an old mod named proem. So by process of elimination....

Q: Alright. So you're a laptop performer. I've never seen you do a show with any gear except you computer. Has this always been the case or did you reach that point after abandoning other gear?

A: And hopefully you never will see me with anything but my computer. I've always been a computer musician, although long before my "professional career" I played with some really lo-fi stuff, whatever I could get my hands on...

Q: What sort of stuff did you first get your hands on?

A: several tape decks, radio shack mixers, two antique record players, couple of Casio sk1's, various efx pedals...cheap lo-fi and expendable. Once I got a computer and figured out how to sample... I just sampled all the junk I had, everyway imaginable. Finally, after filling a small hard drive any every 51\4 floppy in the house, I realized I no longer needed all these cables, electrical tape, soldered junk anymore.... so I threw it away.

Q: I've considered it rather elegant -- you just plug in your audio-out into the PA and -bam- you're set to go. And clean-up's a charm. And travel, too, I guess. Do you feel you're sacrificing anything for the convenience, or does that even matter to you? Would you recommend this approach to newbie's?

A: no I prefer the less is more approach... as for the newbie's: most people are drawn to whatever path they feel suits their potential sound. I've met more people who prefer the laptop thing simply for the convenience. I'd recommend having some gear laying around the house though simply for productions sake.

Q: Todd Simmons mastered one of your albums -- "Negativ?" Or the N5MD minidisc?

A: he mastered 'among others' [the n5md release] and 2 upcoming projects; my upcoming 12" for merck, and a three inch CD for component. Todd has a great set of ears for that kind of thing. I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who enjoys that level of tedium the way he does.

Q: How much "production" or mastering goes on between what you make on your laptop and what ends up on the CDs?

A: not a great deal. It's mostly enhancement, level adjustments and what not. There is a lot of post production, pre-mastering work that goes on but I'm in the process of weeding that out.

Q: And, I know you value the improvisational aspect of live performance, creating the show on-the-fly. Do you generally create tracks for the albums and then sort of reverse-engineer live tracks out of them by pulling them apart into pieces you can play with, or do you create sounds to play with during live performances and then bring those ideas together for album tracks later? Or do both happen? Or something else entirely?

A: All of the above. Most of stuff that I have on hand for live performance are usually tracks that I'm working on, or older material that I've revised a little. Tons of new composition ideas have come out of "accidents" during live performances though.

Q: Have you noticed any major shifts in the way the music is made in the past few years? I, for one, have noticed that as computers have become more capable of processing audio, the trend has been away from more costly gear and towards cheaper (especially if it's pirated!) software. What do you think of this? Is it a permanent shift, do you think, or will two different styles of music eventually result from the two different means of production (hardware, mostly versus software, mostly)?

A: I don't think it's a complete shift. There have been a lot of developments back into the tactile realm recently, so I don't think it will ever go completely back to expensive outboard gear. Well, maybe expensive gear that controls expensive software. Personally I think it's just more beneficial to buy a computer than a sampler. Samplers can't send email... its not so much that computers are becoming more capable, Software developers like native instruments, Steinberg, and Abelton have raised the bar on what your computer can do when pointed in the direction of audio to such an extreme that any sensible [not to mention poor] musician would be a fool not to look in that direction. And its certainly been a long time coming.

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