John Duncan

by Greg PratoPainter/experimental musician John Duncan is renowned for his use of shortwave radio. Getting his start hosting radio programs (including one such show titled Close Radio), Duncan began his musical journey in 1980, as he likened the sounds of a shortwave radio to what one may hear while dreaming, and began to merge this uncharted sound with music (another popular technique of Duncan's is recording his voice on tape reading text backwards, then inverting the tape to achieve peculiar effects on his voice). One of his earliest recordings, the 1984 cassette Pleasure Escape, includes a piece titled "Blind Date," which features Duncan talking about a dead body and a vasectomy operation. Further releases followed, such as music for a series of Japanese porno films, titled The John See Soundtracks, plus Riot, Incoming, The Crackling, Tap Internal, Palace of Mind, and NAV, among others.