Minoy has been played on NTS in shows including Séance Centre, featured first on 30 April 2015. Songs played include Memory Undefined (Dream As Truth), Nightslaves and Babel.

Stanley Bowsza (aka “Minóy” ) was not only one of the acknowledged “creators” of the 1980s “homemade” independent music scene, he was also one of its most-acclaimed and well-known through his extensive collaborations with literally dozens of other luminaries in the burgeoning scene.

Many have wondered how Mr. Bowsza came to adopt the name “Minóy.” It stemmed from his interest the visual arts: His favorite artist was Joan Miró, the renowned Catalan surrealist painter who died in 1983. One of Stanley’s friends, knowing this, mispronounced the artist’s name one time when discussing him with Stanley, referring to the artist as “Minóy.” Well, Stanley loved it, and the rest is history. As an aside, anyone who ever received a cassette from Minóy can attest to his talent with abstract art – some of his J-card cassette cover creations are works of art in themselves. And it was not unusual for him to artistically “decorate” the plastic cover so that it too became “art,” sometimes incorporating 3-D relief features with all kinds of embellishments.

But Minóy is best known for his solo compositions, which number well over 100. Whether a C60 or C90 cassette boasted only one, or perhaps six, works of audio art, he is recognized as the master of controlled noise, who used every sound imaginable in the world around him as his audio palette. Many releases had only one or two compositions, and these gave him the time to develop his themes and hypnotically enshroud the listener in what were usually very powerful works – which made for a very memorable and powerful “trip.” This was the secret to his magic and magnetism – calling his music “noise” properly identifies it in the respectful lexicon of the time, but doesn’t do it justice. It was, rather, a composed and, again, controlled manipulated agglomeration of sounds, natural and/or composed, that sucked you in with its precision and power. Then again, some of his works were totally different in structure, delicate yet powerful little mantras with alien riffs and melodies, often using, notably, a toy mouth organ, manipulated, echoed and multi-tracked to sound like a warning call from heaven – or hell. He also reveled in manipulating the human voice, another ingredient in the brew of several of his works. In summary, Minóy knew how to expertly manipulate any sound with another sound to come up with an engrossing, totally unique, brain-bending opus.

Minóy spent a couple of days with me in November 1987 in conjunction with a guest radio gig he was doing at a local radio station, and we toured San Francisco and the East Bay, visiting good record stores and doing a bit of the “tourist itinerary.” His recorder was clipped to his belt, always ready to capture interesting ambient sounds around us – which, with later manipulation and embellishments, were released as the Burning Tree (for Jack) cassette. It was great to meet him and I remember well his good humor, warm personality, acidic wit, and overall intelligence. He painted a wonderful work of abstract art for me, which hangs on our living-room wall to this day. We continued to keep in contact via phone and letters until we lost touch after he began a journey down different roads in the early ‘90s. But his music will live on forever.

Knoxville, Tenn.