JEANNIE ALLEN is Earthgirl, whose music grows from sounds and feelings on our planet, plus some imagined ones. A lone car driving by late at night, far away thunder, the tapping of rain, and the swirls of falling stars. Jeannie has performed at the City Skies 08 Electronic Music Festival in Atlanta, GA, the electro-music 2008 Festival in Kingsport, TN, and this is her first visit to Different Skies. Jeannie has been inspired by new music created every day and by the musical roots of Vince Clarke, Yaz, Erasure, Tangerine Dream, Stereolab, Portishead, Moby, Brian Eno, ELO, Lou Reed, Syd Barrett, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, The Police, and Mozart, to name a few. Earthgirl music combines ambient, experimental and found sounds to create sonic soundscapes, that have attracted the the attention of fans, musicians, and record labels around the globe. When the debut album "Vibrations in Space" is released in 2008, all profits will go for global warming relief in developing countries. http://www.myspace.com/earthgirlvibes

JIM COMBS is a solo ambient musician who works with audio and MIDI looping devices under the name of Sensitive Chaos and is Atlanta Creative Loafing Magazine's "Best Local Electronic Act" for 2005 & 2007. The first Sensitive Chaos CD entitled Leak was deemed one of the twelve best CDs of 2006 by Bill Binkelman of the New Age Reporter, KKUP 91.5FM's "Best Visionary Music of 2007" selection, and is receiving airplay from industry heavyweights including Public Radio International's Echoes (145 stations across the U.S.), Soma FM's Space Station Soma and Cliqhop idm, WWSP, WXDU, WUSM, WTUL, KRFC, WETX, WVKR WDIY, and KTUH. Sensitive Chaos performs regularly in the Southeast US. Jim is also one half of the Atlanta-based electronics & percussion duo Bribing The Buddha. 2008 is Jim's fifth Different Skies, and he continues to bring a powerful drive to carry the event forward in growth and success, as well as extending the community by starting the City Skies Electronic Music Festival in Atlanta. Jim will be playing a portable keyboard rig based on a custom made Sequentix P3 analog sequencer and various hardware synthesizer and processing modules. He believes history tends to repeat itself with variation, and attempts to make music that follows the same footsteps.

RUSSELL FOSTER is a Phoenix native, a solo electronic artist who creates ambient music with a tribal edge under the name Una Voce. His album Provenance will be among several of his creations available for sale at the show. Rus has over twenty years' experience as a guitarist, drummer, and keyboardist, and brings an exceptional artistic sensibility to this, his fifth Different Skies. Rus will be creating the live video you will see at the concert.

BILL FOX is one of the most influential people in the world electronic community. A tireless promoter of the genre in the Northeastern United States, he runs three radio broadcasts of electronic and modern progressive music on two radio stations, which can be heard on streaming Internet radio at WMUH and WDIY. His home page is soundscapes.us/bill. A multi-instrumentalist who's equally at home on guitar, bass, saxophone, and keyboards, he has lent his talents to the Ricochet Dreams albums as well as to a collaboration with world-famous space musician VidnaObmana, and he plays in a number of musical groups in eastern Pennsylvania, including Xeroid Entity. Bill is concentrating on guitars this year, with electric guitar and Hawaiian lap steel being treated by electronic processing to create otherworldly tones. Bill makes use of looping echo devices to accompany himself and build up thick textures of guitar music. As a result of this technique, any mistakes Bill makes will be repeated for quite a while, so he'd best be careful, hadn't he?

TONY GERBER was mesmerized by electronic music in 1971, after playing with an SWTP theremin and hearing the classic "Switched on Bach". Like many young synthesizer explorers during the 70s he built his own PAIA synth when he was 14 years old. However, guitar is his main instrument, but he became a multi-instrumentalist over the years with an emphasis on synth sound creation. In 1986, he founded the performance collective Space for Music which spawned multimedia performances combining film, video, dance, and electronic music. Space For Music was turned into a website in 1996 and then into a record label in 2000 (spaceformusic.com). In 1997, he founded the well-known space music group, Spacecraft, with fellow synth lover and musician, John Rose, after solo releases on the Lektronic Soundscapes label. Combining his solo releases and SPACECRAFT recordings there are over 20 CDs available. Some of these recordings are with fellow City Skies performer and friend, Giles Reaves. Gerber has been a driving force in the art and space music arena during his 25 year stay in Nashville, TN. Tony is quite active in Second Life as the space music performer Cypress Rosewood (cypressrosewood.com). His own web site is http://spaceformusic.com/tonygerber Many of Gerber's recorded works are the result of live performances, many of which take place in planetariums or outside, under the stars themselves. Several of Gerber's performances have been broadcast live on public radio in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana and the subsequent recordings have received airplay on syndicated shows like Echoes and Musical Starstreams. A pioneer in the use of computers for creating music and graphics, Gerber has also consulted with Apple Computer and has given many speeches on art and technology. An accomplished visual artist and craftsman working with both computers and wood, Gerber has enjoyed exhibits sponsored by the prestigious Cheekwood Gallery in Nashville and the Visual Artists Alliance of Nashville.

ALLEN GOODMAN is a Phoenix native, an ambient artist with varied influences and styles; he currently hosts Ambitar Radio, a weekly live net radio show on stillstream.com. Allen is relatively new to the ambient scene however we are looking forward to his upcoming release “Angels & Demons.” This is Allen’s second year at Different Skies.

KEVIN HALLER is a long-time Atlanta resident and first time attendee at Different Skies. Burning Artist(s) Sale is the moniker for the variety of artistic and musical endeavors by Kevin. Alter egos include Killer Haven, a grizzled rocker that prefers to stay in his bunker making music videos. KVpop writes catchy hooks, but is too afraid to let friends or colleagues help him put finishing touches on his compositions. K love writes music intended for dance clubs old and new. Still in development is eleK troniK, an ambient & experimental sound sculptor. Burning Artist occasionally performs as a solo artist, as he recently did at Atlanta's City Skies Electronic Music Festival, but prefers the dynamic of group interaction. Recent musical involvment has been with GFE and a re-united Amalgamated Cliff Divers. Burning Artist is proud to have played at Atlanta's EYEDRUM First Thursday Open Improv for the last seven years. Past bands have included 21st Century DISK, Random Violets, Bonobo, DISK, 64k, Harper Fragment, Empty V, MASTERCOW, and TOAST. His MySpace page can be found here.

DAVID HERPICH returns to Different Skies for his third year. Dave is a composer and electronic musician balancing dual interests in classical and new age music genres. He holds degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Kansas, and recently completed his master's degree as a recipient of the University Graduate Fellowship Award at the University of South Florida. Since the early 1990s he has been making electronic music of all sorts, most recently under the name Emerald Adrift. Different Skies alumnus Tim Walters has made some of Emerald Adrift’s tracks available to the hordes of imaginary fans via the Doubtful Palace, a tasty little sonic café you can visit anytime here.

GREG HURLEY is an ambient guitarist and music producer in San Diego; he recently began working for Recording Magazine as a writer, with Magix Samplitude as his 'beat'. Originally hailing from the Cleveland progressive rock scene, Greg eventually embarked on other ventures ranging from ambient to fusion and sound design. His 1990 release 'Welcome!' reached the New Age/AC top 40. His nearly 30 years of electronic engineering design experience combined with music technology development has led to his participation in the development of new types of interactive musical interfaces. Greg will be performing this year after his successful filming of the event last year.

KLIMCHAK Between stints with RuPaul, Col. Bruce Hampton, and his two bass-vocal-percussion band, Fab Area, he began working on solo works for modern dance and theater. He uses his knowledge of exotic instruments and the sounds they make to provide a live underscore theater productions. Many of his recent works have been at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival. He has written and performed scores for the plays: Othello, Henry IV, Hamlet, Tartuffe, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Cymbeline. In addition, he's done scores for Shakespeare's Coriolanus at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, a live score for No Exit at Le Neon Theater in Washington, DC (nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for best sound design), and a live score for Malinche performed at the Bovenzaal Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam.

Klimchak's dance work is equally important to his style. His recent work includes scores for Jane Comfort ("Three Bagatelles for the Righteous, excerpt (Election Update 2004)", performed in NYC at the Joyce Theater by Jane Comfort and Co in September) and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women ("Are We Democracy?", performed in November at Emory University's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts). He regularly composes for faculty and guest choreographers at Emory University.

JEFF KUNZELMAN Growing up in rural Wisconsin Jeff's first exposure to space music was through reruns of BBC's Doctor Who on PBS and NPR's Music From the Hearts of Space. After delving into using computers to produce music for a number of years, Jeff has switched to using analog instruments for more a more tactile experience. He often perfoms using electronic music and digital video under the name Alpha60. Jeff was discovered by Different Skies while he was living at Arcosanti and provided the poster artwork for the first 3 years.

MIKE METLAY, Founder and Coordinator of Different Skies, returns for the sixth year of the event he birthed (after incredible labor pains) in 2003. Mike's first experiments in collaborative space music resulted the trilogy of CDs by Team Metlay; his efforts now are concentrated both at Different Skies and in his small-group collaborations under the mindSpiral banner. At this year's show, Mike may be playing a keyboard or two, but plans a heavy emphasis on the aebea, a baritone electric string instrument with a deliberately obscure tuning.

JONATHAN MILLS is a newcomer to Different Skies whose idea of music changed when he heard Terry Riley's "A Rainbow in Curved Air." It was 20 years before he began to compose and perform minimalist music as a shamanic practitioner using Tibetan singing bowls, logs, rocks and Native American flute. In 2005 he bought a Roland Fantom-Xa and began a string of CDs that include ambient pieces in the Pompeii Trilogy, "21st Century Shaman," "Trainspotting," and "¿a la Frontera Sur?" among others. His most recent work, the four-disc Oncology Cycle, documents his encounter with cancer. He has played at Bloomington's Lotus Fest, the 2007 Lilly ArtsWeek Festival, and collaborates with Janiece Jaffe to create healing music. When not composing, Jonathan is a professor of computer science whose work with Rubel's extended analog computer is internationally recognized. He and his students are designing "Synthesizers in Speakers," woven analog supercomputer fabrics that reproduce music holographically. http://www.myspace.com/shamaniaq

OTSO PAKARINEN is the owner of Visual Power, a music label in Helsinki, Finland. Otso has been releasing music of one form or another since the 1980s, as a soloist and with the Finnish electropop group Tapa Paha Tapa. His latest project is a trio of albums by Ozone Player, which combine intricate electronic structure with dramatic excitement and a rare streak of broad humor. Ozone Player's ifth album is Orange Apples, of which two of the songs on the CD were previewed at last year's Different Skies. Otso will be creating electronic sounds entirely from software running on a laptop computer. This system allows an entire music studio to be compacted to the size of one small box, requiring only a keyboard to play the virtual instruments. Otso will also, despite dire threats from the other performers, do the Happy Finn Dance at random points in the performance.

GILES REAVES has been producing solo albums for over two decades, starting with Wunjo in 1986. His album Sea Of Glass reached #11 on the Billboard Magazine New Age Charts when it was released in 1992. Giles lives and works between Nashville, TN, and Salt Lake City, UT, where he is a well-respected audio engineer as well as a first-call keyboardist and percussionist; most recently as part of the Fulton Reaves Project, he has appeared on several albums by the Nashville-based electronic music collective SPACECRAFT (as well as countless others), and most recently he played the Alfa Centauri festival in the Netherlands with Dave Fulton and Paul Vnuk Jr. His website is at www.spaceformusic.com/gilesreaves.html and also at www.recordingcollective.com. Giles will be quietly sitting at his keyboard, which will erupt with everything from traditional instruments to a full brass section to a rock'n'roll drum kit, changing abruptly from sound to sound throughout the evening. Sometimes the sounds he chooses will even go with what everyone else is playing!

JOHN ROSSI III will be making his third appearance at Different Skies. John first became involved in electronic music in 1972, and in 1973 acquired Synthi-AKS and EML-101 synthesizers and learned subtractive synthesis and sequencing. In 1975, John teamed up with Pascal Languirand (a.k.a. TransX) and Pierre Benard to form a trio that played and recorded electronic/space music in Pascal’s studio. Session players would frequently enter the mix and by late 1975 the Zap Jam idiom was born. In 1985, he became a member of pre-internet newsgroups and email lists that were also frequented by Mike Metlay. The two met in 1989, and soon thereafter John became a regular in Mike’s band Team Metlay, and appears on each of their 3 CD releases. Most recently, he appeared in concert at the City Skies Electronic Music Festival last spring along with several other DS alums performing under the name ìDifferent Skies All-Starsî. He spends his creative time developing electronic music for the DTS 5.1 format in his CrystaLogic Productions studio in Naples, Florida.

NICK ROTHWELL is currently based in London, England. His professional recording and performance project, known as CASSIEL, has been creating live electronic music for modern dance for over fifteen years, first as a duet with space musician Glyn Lloyd-Jones and then as a solo act. Nick has also co-produced and performed on all three Team Metlay albums. Nick has worked with dance companies all over England and Scotland as well as with the Frankfurt Ballett, in Vienna, and in Istanbul, Paris, Zurich, and Tokyo. His debut solo album Listen/Move was released on Atomic City in 1998. Nick is returning for his fourth Different Skies, having attended in 2004 and 2006. His music rig is based around custom computer software that translates simple control movements into complex and beautiful musical gestures, completely controlled by the artist but extrapolating his movements into ideas not playable by human hands. So it only looks like he's not actually doing anything. Really.

MICHAEL SANDERS

IVAN SCHWARTZ is attending his second Different Skies this year, providing sound reinforcement and mixing for the event. He has worked in the professional audio industry for the past twenty years, and has been mixing live sound since the late 1970's. A closet electronic musician, Ivan spent his adolescent years learning synthesis on an Arp 2500 and Emu modular at the local university. He also owns Rudy's Lair, a Seattle-area project studio for tracking, mixing, mastering, and electronic music composition. Rudy the RackCat, General Manager of Rudy's Lair, will be unable to attend Different Skies this year due to previous laptop performance and napping commitments.

PAUL VNUK JR. is an audio engineer and the other half of the electronic space music duo Ma Ja Le. He has also worked with space music pioneers Vir Unis and James Johnson, and has released a beautiful ambient solo album entitled Silence Speaks In Shadow. He plays not only keyboards and traditional Third World instruments but also is an accomplished percussionist, working with Arabic, African, and Indian percussion, kit drums, and electronic percussion devices. Paul will be performing with compact digital modular synthesizers, and with sensitive electronic percussion devices that are designed to interact closely with drum technique. He will also do a lot of standing around trying to figure out when to jump in, which is fine - if he played all the time, no one else would get a note in edgewise.

TIM WALTERS is a San Francisco experimental musician whose many projects are brought together under the realm of the Doubtful Palace. He has created dense processed electronic soundscapes in his solo albums The Dry Well and Lost Continents, performed electroacoustic improvisation with Circular Firing Squad, recorded unusual children's music for adults in Slaw, and twiddled bits with Shalmaneser. Tim has based his entire music production system for Different Skies on an Apple laptop computer running the powerful SuperCollider music creation language. As a result, when he is not playing woodwinds or bass, he will look like he's doing his taxes. He believes this is better than the Happy Finn Dance.

GREG WALTZER participates in a number of musical projects in and around Eastern Pennsylvania: Mutation Vector, Xeroid Entity, Holosphere, and Fringe Element. These groups team Greg with area musicians James Lacey, Bill Fox, Howard Moscovitz, Jose (JEM) Murcia, and Michael Victor. He has most recently appeared on Xeroid Entity's CD "Live at the Deer Head Inn". Learn more at http://gregwaltzer.com/egw/music.html. Greg plans to spend the entire program hunched carefully over his keyboards, turning knobs and making evil noises. He has a homemade device that looks like a steel shoebox with bad acne sitting atop his keyboard rig; if he reaches for it, the audience are advised to take a hint from the other players on stage and grab hold of anything that won't move when the blast wave hits.

HONG WALTZER Azimuth Visuals is the artistic partnership of Greg and Hong Waltzer. They create video performance art to accompany musical events. Using a combination of computer-generated abstract images, animations, Greg's artwork, Hong's nature photography and video clips, these images are processed and mixed in real time by various effects software and video hardware. The intent is to provide a colorful and dynamic visual experience that is inspired by and complements the music.

http://www.gregwaltzer.com/azimuth/azimuth.html