As a child with a record player, I experimented with playing pop and children's vinyl records at slower speeds so they took on an otherworldly quality, subverting their sound. I remember listening to the radio program MYSTERY THEATER with E. G. Marshall and then making my own versions with home made sound effects on my cassette tape recorder. 

Most of my musical heroes over the years have tested the boundaries of the art form: Brian Eno, David Bowie, B-52s, Blondie, Devo, Talking Heads/David Byrne, Velvet Underground and Nico, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Nina Hagen, Psychic TV, Aphex Twin, Antony and the Johnsons, William Orbit and countless others. I also have a soft spot for singer songwriters both of both Folk and Jazz including Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake,  Cat Steven's, Emmylou Harris, Devendra Banhart, Rufus Wainwright, Linda Perhacs, Vashti Bunyan, Jessica Pratt, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Madeleine Peyroux and others.  Ambient, EDM, and Singer/Songwriter genres are my mainstay these days. Also I have been influenced by Classical and Sacred music...Bach, Hildegard Von Bingen, Guilaume Du Fay, Arvo Part...

I was educated in multi-media fine arts (video, film, sound, performance and combined media) at Massachusetts College of Art's visionary Studio for Interrelated Media in the 1980s.  I did some performance art back then at ACTUP and AIDS Benefit related events in Boston, MA and Portland,

Followers of Jay McElaney