I make electronic music under the name wallybrain. I got the bug in high school back in 1985 — bought an Atari 1040ST and a copy of Dr T's KCS 4.0, and started buying hardware one piece at a time: Roland R-8, Yamaha TX81Z, Korg DW8000, Casio FZ-10M. I picked up drums around the same time. Forty years later I'm still at it.
In 1989 I was part of The Flamies Go To Hagville on Cape Cod, MA — one of a constellation of local bands that fed into E.A.R.S.H.O.T. (Eschatological Ambivalence Research Synaptic Hologram Orgone Tesseract), an experimental post-hardcore math rock band where I played drums and samples in a dual-drummer lineup from 1991–93. We shared stages with Unsane, Alice Donut, Crash Worship, King Missile, Hammerhead, Glazed Baby, Chumbawamba, and others — played The Rat in Boston and shows in Providence with Hammerhead (AmRep Records). Our final session was recorded by Steve Albini at Chicago Recording Company in July 1993.
Around 1994–96 I started collaborating with Stefan Tcherepnin — me on drums, him on guitar — recording musique concrete on 4-track in the basement. That led to The Kings of Hell (~1996–97): dual drums with Dale Cunningham (Glazed Baby), Andy Newman on bass, Tcherepnin on guitar. A noise mixture of Swans, The Spitters, and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.
Around 2000 I studied drums with Bob Gullotti — the Boston jazz drummer who co-founded The Fringe, taught at Berklee, toured with J.J. Johnson and Joe Lovano, and played with Trey Anastasio's Surrender to the Air. His approach — jazz discipline reaching into free improvisation — bridged my noise-rock drumming with the exploratory sensibility that would shape the electronic work to come.
The Blanchard/Tcherepnin partnership continued through the 2000s–present as Existential Blowfish (cassette recordings including ESPCP/TEXASHEX and TRAUMAKING) and rESPetc2.rSonel (performing duo — PAN_ACT at ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn 2013; Leland Ballroom, Detroit 2011). In 2018 our music as Existential Blowfish was exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunsthalle Zürich as part of Tcherepnin's installation The Mad Masters.
wallybrain returned in 2001–02 after a hiatus — Fruity Loops on a Windows 98 PC. Nine albums so far in IDM, noise, techno, ambient, and experimental sound design. These days the workspace is Ableton Live 12 and FL Studio. In 2022 the EARSHOT back catalog was digitally released for the first time, and in December 2025 we put out new material — four long-form tracks produced by WALLYBRAIN & DVOID, with Stefan Tcherepnin co-producing track one.
I've always had a somewhat obscure online presence — just quietly making music that refuses to be concerned with whether it's liked or disliked. For me, creation is a process of self-understanding, a pastime of experimentation and entertainment without compromise to the opinions of others.
Lately I've also been dabbling in agentic coding — building little tools and sites with AI assistance. Still very much a noob at it, but it scratches a similar itch to music: you describe something that doesn't exist yet, iterate until it sounds right, and eventually it's a thing.
The Music
This is a new self-hosted project — one of the things that came out of discovering how accessible agentic coding has become. With my somewhat limited knowledge of programming, this is the kind of thing I would have given up on in the past. The old way of learning — googling every question, digging through forums and YouTube videos just to figure out an SSH command or how to configure a server — was tedious enough to kill the motivation. Tools like Claude Code changed that. I can actually educate myself now without the friction that used to make it not worth the trouble.
What's up there is only part of what I've made over the years — nine albums so far, with a few more currently in the works. The site is slowly evolving alongside the music. Put on headphones and start anywhere.
How It Gets Made
The process has changed a lot since the Atari days, but the philosophy hasn't. Hands on instruments first — drum machines programmed by feel, chords voiced on keyboards and a Roli Seaboard, textures shaped in real time. The interesting results usually come from setting up conditions for surprise and reacting to what comes out.
These days the main workspace is Ableton Live 12, backed by a deep library of software synths and processors. The tools got better over the decades but the approach is the same: experiment, listen, keep what's honest, throw away what isn't.
The Gear Over the Years
Atari 1040ST running Dr T's KCS 4.0, sequencing external hardware over MIDI cables. Over time I built up a small rack: a Roland R-8 drum machine, Yamaha TX81Z FM synth, Korg DW8000, and a Casio FZ-10M sampler. Drum kit in the other room. Everything connected by MIDI cables and patience.
I ended up selling all of it — at a considerable loss — after losing a close friend I'd been writing music with. That loss took the wind out of it, and I stopped making electronic music for a long time.
Somewhere around 2001 or 2002 I found my way back in. PC technology had caught up — Windows 98, a fast enough processor, and a program called Fruity Loops. The shift was enormous. What used to require an Atari sequencing a room full of hardware over MIDI was now happening inside a single computer. VST plugins replaced the rack. The sequencer, the synths, the sampler, the mixer — all in one box. That technological leap is what brought me back. The barrier to just sitting down and making something had dropped to nearly zero.
Ableton Live 12, FL Studio, Roli Seaboard for expressive polyphonic input, MIDI pad and keyboard controllers, and a deep collection of software synthesizers — subtractive, FM, granular, physical modeling, wavetable. The instruments got virtual but the hands stayed physical.
Skills & Tools
FL Studio
Roli Seaboard
MIDI Controllers
Too Many Synths
Self-Hosted Servers
Epistemology
Contact
echo $LINKS