In 1987, visual artists The Abbottos (Doug and Judy Alderfer) approached Baird Hersey (aka Tone LeStrange) to write music to accompany a show of their art work.
Primarily collage, their pieces used found objects from newspaper and magazine illustrations/advertisements, commercial product labels, and photographs from various sources. The work is ironic, satirical, humorous, and yet sometimes poignant.
Using this same model, Baird collaged "vocals" for his drum & bass oriented pieces from the audio of television news and advertising, movies and radio. This being before the time of large memory samplers, the "vocal" track was compiled on a cassette machine.
Hersey and the Alderfers later performed as The ATVs. Doug and Judy used a single mounted overhead video camera and boxes and boxes of found paper images to improvise real time collages. They were accompanied by improvisations by Baird who used a computer to drive bass & drums, and synthesizers parts, a cassette machine to play taped "vocal" tracks, and electronic drum pads to fire sound samples and open noise gates revealing short sections of tape loops.
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