I wish I could remember which tape I selected first, but I don't. I was almost shaky when I put the reel onto the deck. As I listened I became intrigued, because not only was the signal good and the tape didn't fall to pieces, but I actually enjoyed what I was hearing too! It was then I started thinking that at least some of my collection should be transferred to CDs for preservation, especially some live recordings of works by Cage, Ashley, and others I felt were bits of history. At the same time, hearing these ghosts of new music gave me the desire to work with sounds and music again. So I bought an old tape deck, a CD writer and some sound and music software, and here I am.

I don't really have the desire to pick up from where I left off by resurrecting old pieces, though I am thinking of some of the better ideas in new terms. My long string pieces for example are still valid I think, or could still be interesting today. In New York, I had a loft/studio in which I could work on fairly large ideas. In my current situation, I don't have the luxury of space. That has led me to explore microcosms of digital sound generation and processing. In the physical world, I'm trying to extricate large events with tiny means. Probing around in the interiors of sounds.

It reminds me of my old crystal radio set. My dad helped me put together a really basic circuit when I was about 10. I'll never forget, late at night, wearing old bakelite headphones, probing around on the little galena crystal with this tiny cat's whisker and hearing some distant radio signal. Almost like being connected with outer space. Living in a tiny railroad work community of maybe twenty people in the middle of nowhere, yet hearing, almost vacuuming in with my ears, the sounds and talk and music from seemingly imaginary places.

So in one of my latest investigations, I'm trying to elicit a wealth of sounds from such items as one or two wound guitar strings and a special probe. At the same time, I'm exploring the innards of amplification, trying to get inside the nature of electromagnets and transducers.

I try to gain the perspective of conceptual constructs. Defining a set of rules, an algorithm as it were, a recipe for a series of self-propagating events. Some of these I will only be able to realize when I have the space to build them: another of my hobbies-I like to make things. So I'm working in several areas: the digital, the electroacoustic, the purely acoustic and the mental, or psychoacoustic. I see them coming together at some point.

I've also been doing a lot of photography and working with computers graphics tools. A lot of my imagery tends towards the macro, zeroing in on the world from a lichen's point of view. I used to think of myself as an experimenter. Now I feel more like an explorer.

T.J.: I think we've pretty much covered everything, but I'd like to add just one note to finish. You grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, about 80 miles north of where I grew up in Greeley, Colorado, and we're only three months apart in age so we were pretty close together right there at the beginning. Somehow, I have the feeling that we haven't moved very far apart since then, despite the huge difference in the trajectories our lives have taken.

J.B.: I think you're right. We certainly faced a variety of challenges in our lives. Yet today we can still get together to discuss old times and new music, even though we haven't been in touch for 25 years.

Jim Burton now lives in Portland, Oregon, USA where he has established a small studio for restoring tapes and refining his latest ideas using sound and music. True to form, he still experiments with ways of producing new sounds. You can listen to excerpts from some of his work on his website at http://home.comcast.net/~jim.burton2. Tom Johnson now lives in Paris, France where he composes and performs with Galileo, his pendulum instrument.  You can read more about his work on his website at http://www.tom.johnson.org.

Partial List of Works (recordings under conservancy, scores lost unless otherwise noted)

Festoons (1971) for solo flute "Free Offer Inside" (1971) for solo voice 
How to Compose Music in your Spare Time for Fun and Profit (1975?) score published here for the first time. 
Mother's Piano Solo for piano (1971) 
Music for Amplified Jon Deak (1972) score available 
Phantom Organ (1974) for four players and a collection of detached organ pipes 
Potpourri(1971) for solo percussion 
ReadyMade Rotosonorophone Concerto (1974) for four bicycle wheels mounted on stools 
Solo Melancholique (1971) for solo clarinet 
Simple Cymbal Piece (1971) for solo percussion 
String Quartet # 2 (1974) for four players and 80' long amplified strings