Biography
American composer and sound designer Kim Cascone earned wider notice earlier through his leadership of Silent Records, the imprint he launched in the mid-1980s, yet his own output under the names Spice Barons, Thessalonians, PGR, Heavenly Music Corporation, and his given name has registered with comparable force. He produced soundtracks during the first years of the 1980s before stepping out independently; formal studies in electronic-music arrangement and composition took him to Berklee College of Music in the early 1970s and then, in 1976, to Dana McCurdy’s classes at Manhattan’s New School.
Afterward he served as assistant musical supervisor for director David Lynch on Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. Mid-decade Cascone left Hollywood for San Francisco to concentrate on solo work, founding Silent Records in 1986 after issuing his initial PGR album, Silence, on his own. Although those PGR recordings were more abrasive and internally unsettled than most of his later pieces, their emphasis on texture and compositional chance runs through his entire catalog. Further PGR titles appeared on Silent as well as on RRRecords, Noctovision, and Permis de Construire; thereafter Cascone recorded chiefly as Heavenly Music Corporation, releasing the greater share of that material through Silent.
The name derives from Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s 1973 collaboration No Pussyfooting. With occasional exceptions, HMC has concentrated on beatless ambient music, beginning in 1993 with In a Garden of Eden—completed just before the birth of Cascone’s son, Cage—and continuing through a run of mid-1990s releases. Moving toward increasingly abstract sonic constructions, HMC’s contact with club culture has been limited to the sparse rhythms found on Consciousness III and parts of Lunar Phase, while the bulk of the work draws from early electronic and musique concrète composers such as Morton Subotnick, John Cage, and Luciano Berio. Cascone departed Silent in 1996 to undertake design and composition duties at Headspace, the multimedia firm established by Thomas Dolby.
Afterward he served as assistant musical supervisor for director David Lynch on Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. Mid-decade Cascone left Hollywood for San Francisco to concentrate on solo work, founding Silent Records in 1986 after issuing his initial PGR album, Silence, on his own. Although those PGR recordings were more abrasive and internally unsettled than most of his later pieces, their emphasis on texture and compositional chance runs through his entire catalog. Further PGR titles appeared on Silent as well as on RRRecords, Noctovision, and Permis de Construire; thereafter Cascone recorded chiefly as Heavenly Music Corporation, releasing the greater share of that material through Silent.
The name derives from Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s 1973 collaboration No Pussyfooting. With occasional exceptions, HMC has concentrated on beatless ambient music, beginning in 1993 with In a Garden of Eden—completed just before the birth of Cascone’s son, Cage—and continuing through a run of mid-1990s releases. Moving toward increasingly abstract sonic constructions, HMC’s contact with club culture has been limited to the sparse rhythms found on Consciousness III and parts of Lunar Phase, while the bulk of the work draws from early electronic and musique concrète composers such as Morton Subotnick, John Cage, and Luciano Berio. Cascone departed Silent in 1996 to undertake design and composition duties at Headspace, the multimedia firm established by Thomas Dolby.
Albums
