Taylor Haskins + Gnosis featuring Taylor Haskins (analog EVI, Trumpet), Nir Felder (Guitar), Henry Hey (Synths), Zach Danziger (Drums)

It all began in 1983, when a 12 year-old Taylor Haskins first became obsessed with Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit.’ Watching Hancock talking about his equipment in a documentary soon thereafter was a life-changing moment for Haskins, one he claims has shaped nearly every decision in his life since.

“I desperately wanted to be Herbie surrounded by that matrix of electronic music gear and computer screens. I knew little of it all but immediately seized on any opportunity to explore. We didn’t have a computer at home yet, but my school’s music department had an Alesis HR­16 drum machine and I became interested enough to start making rudimentary sequences on it. I’m pretty sure I was the first one to try and figure out what it actually did, as it had mostly been used as a metronome up until that point. I’d program something on it and then play along with it on trumpet or bash along on the drum kit that happened to be sitting there. I actually still have that same practice to this day.”

The next step was the first in a long line of equipment acquisitions: saving for the purchase of a Casio sampling keyboard and Mattel Synsonic drums. “I used to set them all up on my dresser along with my boombox and my crappy plastic turntable, trying to match beats, scratch, and play along with recordings by Run DMC, Rush, the Police, and of course Herbie. It was the first time in my life that I felt totally immersed in something…I would just lose myself for hours."

This aspect of Haskins’ musical journey was somewhat sidelined during his college years while he pursued a Master’s degree in composition and trumpet, until it was rekindled when he was hired by the electronic music production company tomandandy in 1998. There, Haskins was put to work developing generative music software (which eventually received a U.S. patent) and composing music for nationally

broadcast commercials, films, and art installations. These years also put Haskins directly in the midst of the electronic music culture of New York City.

“At the time, tomandandy was known for cutting-edge electronic approaches to traditional scoring situations, and it really threw me into the fire,” Haskins recalls. “In my room at their studio I just had an AKAI S1000, a Roland JV-1080, a Kurzweil K2500, and a computer running Logic through Protools, which was incredibly buggy back then. It was a lot to take in at once, but that’s how I like to approach new things anyway, just to dive right in.”

His first few months composing at tomandandy amounted to a hardcore electronic music boot camp; learning how to run a modern studio, the basics of engineering, signal routing, all while absorbing the essence of electronic music by osmosis. “We’d write all day, often until after-hours and then we’d go out to wherever someone had a friend DJ’ing, often drum’n’bass, EDM or breakbeats.”

Since that time, Haskins has been working to reconcile two seemingly disparate musical worlds and to use his experiences in both to create a new, hybrid form of music. “I’ve always been aiming to combine my first passion: synthesizers, computers, and electronic music with my studies in acoustic instrumental music, but I wanted to get there in an organic and natural way. The process has taken a long time, a lot of patience and self-restraint…’Gnosis’ is the closest I’ve come to achieving what I’ve intended all along.”