I co-wrote the newest Reverse Engineer ep with Kenny Johnson. It’s available on Bandcamp and streaming.
Kenny and I go back two decades playing both rock and freely improvised music. I had taken a long break from music while teaching and raising kids, and noticed he had been putting out new material that I admired. He had always written fun, aggressive rock songs. I contacted him hoping I could jump into the bass spot of Terrible Lovers, but he had just formed a band around that material. He said, “I do have some other pieces, maybe for Reverse Engineer, if you’re interested.”
When I initially got his synth tracks, it brought me back to the first experiences of playing improvised music, of staring at a guy with an SK-1 and a contact mic on a coffee grinder and me realizing that the “Spanish Castle Magic” riff wasn’t going to work. It took a while to get started, but being a child of the ‘80s, his synth tracks led me to movie images, and to focus on ambience and film score textures. I appreciated the freedom and encouragement to try ideas that I hadn’t before, while tapping into some of the foundations of my musical imagination.
Stephen McClurg 