sampler,
of Dance and Electronic
A.k.a. hiroshimabend
Already an accomplished visual artist by a very young age, puppy38 began his career as a DJ in West Texas 1985. He "experimented" on denizens of the dancefloor by playing simultaneous tracks that would normally have been deemed incompatible, such as Kraftwerk mixed with Conspiracy International, or David Sylvian ambient cuts with Skinny Puppy. By 1987 he had moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and towards remixing dance tracks in his primitive home studio dubbed "The Opium Den" and releasing limited edition cassette tapes, primarily for friends. Upon relocating to Austin, Texas in 1995, he had started to construct new soundscapes for ambient/early downtempo sets by combining as many as four different tracks at a time, with 2-3 inputs of tapes and loops of field recordings and found sounds, all played simultaneously for the duration of the performance. In 1996 puppy38 formed experimental recording project hiroshimabend, began teaching himself production and mastering techniques, and re-engineered The Opium Den into a full-fledged studio renamed "opiumdenpluto." Taking advantage of newer technology provided by less expensive equipment and Desktop Audio Workstations, he also started taking on production work for local artists, often times outside of the genre of electronic music. opiumdenpluto is now the umbrella name for the website, independent label, and professional audio/visual production facility where all work is done. While several hiroshimabend works saw release on the internet, via www.opiumdenpluto.com, it was not until 2004 that puppy38 returned to form as an experimental DJ and created the first release for opiumdenpluto, ODP 001 - puppy38 "a.d.jayset...for pleasure leisure and fucking", a four hour and twenty minute mp3-CD and digital download. Since then, puppy38 has continued to record music and perform live as hiroshimabend. He has also remixed Cocteau Twins ("Love's Easy Tears (hiroshimabend remix)" appeared on a 2-CD bootleg anthology) and David Sylvian ("The Healing Place" and "Answered Prayers" were available on davidsylvian.net for a short time and were downloaded thousands of times). In September of 2013, puppy38 emigrated to Vienna, Austria. In the process of slowly rebuilding opiumdenpluto, he produced 24-bit remasters of seminal works by artists such as David Harrow, Sprung aus den Wolken, Caroline K, and Chakk, for Austrian Label Klanggalerie. A return to the DJ booth also manifested itself when asked to be one of the DJs perfoming for Section 25 in December of 2013. At the time of this writing, puppy38 plans to release recently discovered cassettes of dj mixes, and is continuing work on more projects by hiroshimabend.
hiroshimabend |