ambivalent elephant

Ambivalent Elephant happened because I had been working on a project for a few years that had really gotten away from me, and I didn't want to give up on it, so I made up a perpetual side-project. Which inevitably became my focus. So there.
It started out with tape loops and experiments with the old equipment that was lying around. I liked cutting up and rearranging everything I heard, and always wanted to find a way to do it live, improvised. I became an early audiophile, and have spent a great deal of time emulating the natural, warm feel I grew up with. And now for whatever reason I've figured out how to do it all live too. So things are good, you?
My father obsessively collected records, mostly classical and early avant-garde recordings. Mozart and Cage were regular bedfellows during dinner. My folks brought me out to a lot of performance art as well, so I got used to the idea that people could and did do bizarre things on a regular basis. That would come in handy later, when it was me doing stuff.
Influences are very broad. Take all the stuff I listened to as a kid, I loved the Czech and Russian composers especially, but then Saban & Levy probably had just as much of an impact on me. I really fell into the skam records and warp records scene when I got older, aphex twin and squarepusher and boards of canada. That began to help get my mind out of the "solo act" rut, which meant I did not need to write lyrics to justify music, amongst doing anything else I didn't want to be doing.
I went a lived in Boston and went to Berklee for a while. Twice actually, with Florida and New York in the middle. I went around and performed places but when I got here to New Paltz was when things began to connect. I fell in with the local independent scene, with it's handmade charm and dreamers and artists. But now we're all pushing out in different directions, which brings me here actually.
My music is warm, personal, meant to recreate a bewildered sense of fascination. Mostly meant to convey the same feeling that I get from it personally, but I try to remember that the population which would catch me taking inspiration from "Hi Scores" is muci larger than that which would catch me referencing the hammock squeak from my grandparents' house in the adirondacks.