Donny

For as long as he can remember Donny has had an interest in music. From his humble beginnings playing itsy-bitsy spider on the severely out of tune upright piano in his parents basement, to the clarinet as part of his high school band, and finally settling in with MIDI based sequencing. He’d always been fascinated how so many different elements that in general don’t sound all that good by themselves, can come together in harmony to cause a specific and usually planned response, or emotional reaction.

Early on his tastes in music varied greatly. Everything from Country to Death Metal seemed to be “music to his ears”. However in 1994 he was introduced to a whole new style of music that he had until then never even heard of before. Specifically two albums changed his entire musical outlook. First was Skinny Puppy’s: Too Dark Park which seemed to have the uncanny ability to make him feel eerie by using sound combinations and rhythms so completely foreign to him than it almost seemed inhuman.  Secondly was Frontline Assembly’s: Tactical Neural Implant. He fell in love with the complexity of managing a seemingly infinite number of textural layers, each doing a specific job within the composition and each placed precisely where it needed to be never too much or too little.

Later that year Donny partnered with Phillip Stringer to create a project that would, (after several name changes), be known as Nightside Eclipse. It was this rough and humble beginning where he was learning everything he could about sound design, sound engineering and song writing. After completing and releasing a full length album he left NSE to begin working with Pete Greko on DeLIEN’s second album, “Rust”. Shortly thereafter he settled in with Marc to create Siegemachine.

Marc has loved and been fascinated with music, in many forms, since he was a kid.  In kindergarten, his first favorite albums were Petula Clarks's "Downtown" (1964) and Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" (1966).  Throughout his school years Marc took classical guitar, viola, and piano lessons, before he was introduced to one of the new monophonic keyboard synthesizers in a piano and organ shop by a local Port Angeles, Washington radio news man who was in the process of recording his own jingle for the program he was hosting at the time.  Little did the news man know what affect this encounter would have on the life of 14 year old who was carefully watching every button he pushed, every knob he turned, and every key he played.

Marc's musical tastes developed through high school and college as he began to host, produce and engineer student radio shows, and eventually found himself firmly lodged in the synth-pop and new wave corner.  His favorite acts were Howard Jones, The Cars, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Thompson Twins, and of course, Information Society!  But there were notable exceptions to these synthesizer-ruled bands... such as Pink Floyd and Rush.  In the end, though, it was synthesizer dominant music with strong rhythms, layers of great depth and vocals filled with energy and often anger that would become his overwhelming focus... and it was called, quite aptly, industrial music. 

Marc has built his own recording studio and has produced and engineered many demos for local bands.  Along with Jason Anderson and Pete Greko he created DeLIEN and produced their first album, "ALH-84001" (1998).  He then partnered with Don Gransden to create Siegemachine, recording and releasing their first album "All Radio is Dead" (2006).  Marc has edited and mastered compilations for labels and albums for several other bands, and has a great respect and appreciation for the art of managing how sounds are arranged, recorded, changed, and mixed together so that the end result is as mentally pleasing and spiritually inspiring as recorded music can be.