About

The show.

Dead Electric plays the sounds of past futures. Showcasing vintage synth, space, and new age music from the 70s and 80s, it’s a show that embraces the dreamy, driving, beautiful, haunting, and melodic side of when humans and machines meet to make music.

Shows typically begin more grounded and upbeat before gradually leaving the earth. In a given show, artists might include Tangerine Dream, Laurie Anderson, Giorgio Moroder, Vangelis, Kraftwerk, Clara Rockmore, Laraaji, Enya, Jonzun Crew, Klaus Schulze, and Michael Rother, and genres like synthpop, ambient, electro, 8-bit Nintendo soundtracks, German kosmische, Berlin School, and the occasional progressive rock song, assuming the host is in the mood for lyrics about wizards.

How to listen.

As of February 2023, Dead Electric is on an indefinite hiatus. The demands of new parenthood made creating the show too challenging at the moment. However, older episodes of Dead Electric will continue to be broadcast. If you’d like to be informed if the show comes back, send me an email: deadelectricfm@gmail.com.

Dead Electric airs every Friday night from 10:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on independent public radio station 90.7 KSER in Everett, Washington, and 89.9 KXIR on Whidbey Island. The station can also be heard in north Seattle and throughout Snohomish and Island counties. You can stream from anywhere around the world on KSER.org.

Past shows are available to listen to for two weeks after the initial show date. Go to the Radio Replayer on KSER’s website to listen.

About the host.

While my middle-school classmates listened to “Loser,” “Today,” “Dreams,” “Closer,” and other songs with one-word titles, I was listening to tracks with titles like “The Harp of the Ancient People with Songs of Venus and Space Children.” My lifelong pursuit of escapist synth bliss has led me down some beautiful and terrible pathways, and I’m excited to present the fruits of my labor.

I’m a lapsed musician who writes under the name Basic Astronomy, and have created soundtracks for major museum exhibits including Self-Reflected at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute and the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. I’m also a journalist whose work has appeared in the Utne Reader, City Arts, and the scientific journal Neurosurgery.

I’m currently the communications and content director for Humanities Washington, our state’s affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, where I edit and write the magazine Spark.

I live in Shoreline with my wife and two sons.