Many a man will tell you the city of secrets lies in Providence, capital of good America’s East Coast non-island Rhode Island. It was here I first caught a set by said city’s own Ted James in one nook and cranny or another. There James sat on the edge of a stage hovered over a small farm of synths, a laptop, and a few beverages crooning into a microphone going through it all; a voice coming from some kind of alternate universe. Like maybe Hum’s Matt Talbott singing over some complex Boards of Canada thud. And while Providence was long known for the weird and wild, this also had soul.

I had been passed James’ debut some time before that ‘The Bridges of Providence County’ by Tim O’Keefe, who had put out the record on his Cozy Music imprint a few months prior, and by this time that and a live set was all I knew of James. I would later become aware of all sorts of things. That Ted may or may not had lived in the mountains for a while with future Paper Eagles collaborator Reuben Fortes, solely funded by a man who pushed (whatever) medicinal substance of questionable legality, believing in the two enough to put them up and let them record for months on end. That he was also the driving force of all kinds of ambient and noise cacophony under monikers Hills & Valley and Risqué Bouquet. That he had once threatened the entire internet with dipping a head of lettuce into a vat of blue cheese with strips of bacon in it. Regardless, I went into the depths of the internet to discover all sorts pop nuggets recorded as singles either under James’ own name or under his heavily wired, previously mentioned four-piece Paper Eagles.

Between that margin of time then and now, James’ has shared stages with Lightning Bolt, The Chinese Stars and Morgan Geist, changing up his sound between his otherworldly electro, rock, drum & bass, bludgeoning noise, or his past life’s sound as performance DJ. While James remains prolific as ever under his own alias, he plans to drop a series of singles in soon with Paper Eagles on Cozy Music. Anthony Ferreira/2009