There once was a woman named Linda…

… Linda Sharpe.

For just over two years I was the sound designer, dialogue looper, mix guy, and chief conceptualist in an outfit called the Linda Sharpe Trio. I worked with an excellent musician who did the majority of synth and rhythm work, which I always felt resulted in the extraordinary. It eventually fell apart to the point I was told to cancel the distribution account being used. This, of course, wiped all material off – I believe – all streaming platforms. Rats.

Linda Sharpe Trio (no ‘the’) is still around doing its thing. Check it out. I’d link the reader to his output platform, but he’d probably threaten another cease & desist for my efforts. 

But I’ve got the prior goods. And I want to share a couple of them. This outfit could’a been a contender. 

 

Linda’s Suitcase (It’s Her Bag)

Radio and Television (It’s in the Bag)

Nemier: Synthesizers, Sounds
Bärkər: Optical theremin, Shortwave manipulations, Sounds, Dialogue loops

Produced: Nemier & Bärkər
Engineered: Bärkər 
Recorded: Cyclops' Lair - Middleburg Heights, Ohio - 2022

Emeline – an American Tragedy

Lend me your ears, my friends. Spare me short a quarter hour, for I have a soundtrack that is born of righteousness.

David Hoffman, a renowned documentarian, interviewed Nettie Mitchell of Fayette, Maine in 1979. The yarn she spun was pure, unadulterated Americana; gothic, resilient, and far too oftentimes unbearably tragic. An impromptu, warts and all jam between Bärkər and Toxic Nemier in 2022 would serve as foundation to the soundtrack. After some 200+ meticulous edits to match the story being told to the music, the finalized track was rejected by the latter due, I’ve reasoned, to musician’s hubris.

Ambitious, emotional, and unflinching, this particular piece has remained dear to me. The storytelling, combined with the emotional build of the instrumentation, is rather powerful. And the payoff of both is a kick to the shins.

Power to the Imagination.

Emeline 

Music written: Eric Baker / Lee Nemier

Bass Guitar, Effects: Bärkər
Electric Guitar, Effects: Nemier

Conceptualized, Sculpted, Engineered, Produced: Bärkər
Recorded & Mixed: Cyclops' Lair - Middleburg Heights, OH.

© All Rights (P)Reserved, 2024

Publicly Executed in 40 minutes

It is late 1978. I am halfway through my eighth year. My father, taking another step in his spiraling downfall, became involved with a fringe Pentecostal church on the lower west side of Cleveland. He would provide acoustic guitar accompaniment to sermons and hymns during services, and right hand man the preacher throughout the week. I always wondered what the old man got out of the efforts.

I call him ‘old man’, but at the time my father was 27.

It was at these services that I learned the band KISS stood for ‘kids in the service of satan’. Heavy stuff. I also learned that human beings could twist their bodies, their languages, and their minds in a heated celebration of their God. To the left, on any given Sunday, were weeping old women that smelled of licorice. Old men in the back, hooting and hollering their agreements. To the right, younger men and women rolling around on the floor – clawing at themselves, while speaking in tongues.

I was eight.

One Sunday I came in early and noticed stacks upon stacks of Time Magazines littering the first row of pews. This Time Magazine…

The sermon that day, as it often tended, warned of the upcoming Christian decimation that was going to take place prior to THE RAPTURE (always capitalized). This terrible incident at Jonestown, the preacher raged, was proof of God’s plan in action. “If the People’s Temple could be destroyed, so shall us all”.

It was at this point a small part of my soul disintegrated.

My father just stood there, playing his guitar. I have been suspicious of musicians and the fervent ever since.

Two years later, and thanks to some fringe radio program, the old man got his hands on a copy of the infamous ‘Jonestown death tape’. His obsession with the subject was reaching fever pitch. Thinking I was asleep, he would play those recordings late into the nights. Play > Stop > Rewind > Play > Stop > Rewind.

I’d just lay there, trying my best not to cry.

These are the voices you are about to hear: Jim Jones – Maria Katsaris – Jim McElvane – Jim Jones. These are the voices that orchestrated and justified the deaths of 918 people. These were the voices of evil.

It isn’t just the anti-Christs we need to worry about. It is the fervent that blindly follow that are of much greater concern. 

Publicly Executed (40 Minutes)

Written: Eric Baker / Bradford Manelski
Drums: Brad Manelski
Synthesizers: Bärkər

Conceptualized, Sculpted, Engineered, and Produced: Bärkər 
Recorded at Cyclops’ Lair, Middleburg Heights, OH.

How Golden Is Your Calf? – Mayfly Records 
© All Rights (P)Reserved, 2024

The Past Chambered

… A burial chamber dedicated to one’s Past.

I come here not to praise my former efforts, but to bury them; to dedicate to the past a most damnable end, and to the future, a most cordial of welcomes.

It is not now I first remark, but oft ere this, how unruly a pest is a harsh temper. For instance, thou… hadst thou but patiently endured the will of thy superiors, mightest have remained here in this land and house, but now for thy idle words wilt thou be banished. Thy words are naught to me.

Euripides’ Medea, Jason speaks

– bärkər, ‘the past chambered’, digital collage of various ai manipulations of stock photo, ’24

The Sun’s Ra

What’s it about? A former collaborator once called and relayed to me an experience where two radio frequencies merged on a highway drive. The result was, as suggested ‘like Sun Ra mixed with a radio preacher’. I knew then that was the experimental path that I wanted to travel. I said as much. And I followed through.

Years later, I slaved over this piece as gift and homage for the inspiration provided me. And, considering we would eventually partner up in a project called ‘Linda Sharpe Trio’ – the inspiration provided Us. It was a rough cut, but it was a token that I wanted to share with my desperately wanted friend. The former immediately sneered the effort away. Oof. His idea, you see, didn’t include the Little Rascals.

His idea…

… I should’ve known that trouble was on the horizon. Always trust your instincts, friends. Always.

Within this left unfinished rough cut you will find an Our Gang short, Sun Ra’s brilliance, radio waves from Venus, a short-waved evangelical, underlying sound effects, and grave conviction.

Sculpted, Engineered, and Produced by: Bärkər

Conceptualized: Toxic Nemier

Recorded at Cyclops’ Lair, Middleburg Heights, OH.

The Past Chambered – Mayfly Records 

© All Rights (P)Reserved, 2024