Kerry Leimer has been producing experimental music and sound since the mid-1970s.
One of the early independent Seattle labels, Kerry founded Palace of Lights in late 1979 as a means to release his work and that of others, free of commercial concern. Leimer’s work has also been issued by Abstrakce, Autumn, First Terrace, Les Giants, Invisible Inc., Origin Peoples, and RVNG. His work is included in the Cherry Red Noise Floor compilation series and his early cassette work is featured in the critically acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture. Recent soundtracks include work for Video Artists Cristiane Bouger and Fred Birchman, HBO’s How To with John Wilson and the Netflix documentary John Was Trying to Contact Aliens. His current catalog includes 20 solo albums plus collaborative albums with Savant, Marc Barreca, and Three Point Circle. His work is published by First Terrace and is included in the Collection of The British Library.
Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s.
His 1980 album, Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2018, was one of the earliest releases on PoL. The Empty Bridge is his tenth solo album for the label. Recent releases include From the Gray and the Green (2019), Shadow Aesthetics (2018), and four collaborations with K. Leimer. Reissues include solo work and 1970’s recordings with Young Scientist on the acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture and the Cherry Red compilation of seminal U.S. electronic music. Additionally, a vinyl version of the 1983 cassette, Music Works for Industry, was reissued on the Freedom to Spend label and a vinyl version of the 1986 cassette, The Sleeper Wakes, on Scissortail Records. His work is also included in the collection of The British Library.
Marc Barreca and Kerry Leimer have worked on a similar musical course for more than 40 years.
First in 1980 with ‘Four Pages from an Unfinished Novel’ on K. Leimer’s first solo album Closed System Potentials and the production and release of Marc’s first solo album Twilight, then again during the live performance of Music For Land and Water and for the massive loop piece ‘Heart of Stillness’ from The Neo-Realist (at Risk) by the virtual group Savant. Their current process is designed to destabilize established habits and predilections in favor of responding to the music in objectively new ways. It is also intended to reduce the illusion of control, to become more responsive to and accepting of unpredicted outcomes, and to give the music—as much as possible—a voice less tampered with. What emerges is a complete and distinct audio language.
Steve Peters makes music and sound for concerts, recordings, art venues, public places, dance/theater, radio, and moving image.
Steve’s work is often site-based, combining location sound with voices, instruments, electronics, and found or natural objects. He collaborates frequently with artists across disciplines, and performs with the Seattle Phonographers Union. His association with Palace of Lights began as a guest performer on Marc Barreca’s album Twilight (1980), and co-producing Regional Zeal (1982), a compilation of voice-based experiments. More recently he has worked with Barreca and K. Leimer in the trio Three Point Circle. Other labels releasing his work include 12K, Cold Blue, SIRR, and Dragon’s Eye. Since 1989 he has been the Director of Nonsequitur, a non-profit organization presenting adventurous music and audio art.
The origins of Three Point Circle go back to 1980.
That year K. Leimer, Marc Barreca, and Steve Peters met for two sparsely-attended shows in Olympia, Washington. Some forty years later, they have regrouped as Three Point Circle. Perhaps better described as a process than as a musical group, the three artists have developed a collaborative method that replaces standards of improvisation and authorship with a new, independent, compositional identity removed from the individual habits and traits of the members. Their work demonstrates their embrace of uncertainty. The result is a sense that Three Point Circle are channeling haunted tape loops from beyond the veil. It’s hard to hear that there are three discreet minds at work, rather each sound is chiseled into a faint harmonic blur delivering pieces of sharp and smooth contrasts set in soundstages of rest, unrest, shallows, and depths that manage an unpredictable coherence.
Gregory is a painter who learned that creating imaginary recorded cultural artifacts was preferable to waiting for the paint to dry.
He has studied gamelan and electroacoustic music in the U.S. and the Netherlands, written for Wired, Recording, Array, and Option, and hosted a radio program of contemporary audio on WORT-FM since 1986. After a hiatus from his 1980s cassette culture recordings, he returned to recording and live performance as an improviser in solo and group work in the 21st century. His works are available on the Palace of Lights, c74, CLANG, pfMENTUM, Nachtstück, Stasisfield, Flood, and Spectropol labels, and Soundcloud. He has performed and collaborated as a member of PGT, The Desert Fathers, and “the quartet” (with percussionist Tom Hamer, synthesist Darwin Grosse, and visualist Mark Hendrikson). Gregory works with new media software company Cycling ‘74 and is in demand as an author and educator.