Sad news about Barry Craig, better known as A Produce

[Seren]

Very sad news indeed. Intagible recently popped through my door and is the next in line for me to listen to - I will do so with different ears.

[mgriffin]

Thanks for the overnight comments, everybody. I'm sure many people are just discovering A Produce for the first time due to the release of Intangible and all the positive reviews so far, or at least rediscovering an artist they hadn't listened to as much in the past five or more years.

Phil, thanks for that review. We'll get it posted to the main Hypnos site and online store later today.

Judd, Golden Needle is a track a lot of people used to talk about as a favorite or at least memorable. I'm pretty sure the prominent guitar on that track is by Scott Fraser, a friend of Barry's who contributed performances to several A Produce tracks over the years.

[Scott M2]

Hi Mike - I'm sorry to hear about the passing of your friend. 
Like many others, I will surely be playing his lovely music this week.
I also have a couple of the early letterpress editions and will start there,
ending with Intangible.

[terraamb01]

Terrible news. I've been Listening to Barry's work for years. So sad when one of our own passes suddenly. His legacy will live on in his music truly.

[mgriffin]

Thanks for your comments, Scott and Jeff.

Bill Binkelman was good enough to send a scan of his Wind and Wire interview with Barry (see yesterday's post of the cover of that issue), a PDF which I've hosted on the Hypnos server. I think for many people around the time I was getting Hypnos rolling, this was their introduction to an important ambient/trance artist.

Feel free to read, download, redistribute.

http://www.hypnos.com/aproduce-interview.pdf

[phrozenlight]

sorry to hear

RIP Barry

[Seren]

...and thank you Mike for sharing such an intimate tribute, it has enabled a rarley seen window in music to see the man behind the music.

[Bert/SonicImmersion.org]

Like many on this forum, I'm very sad due to the news on the passing of Barry;

I learned to know his music through Bill's just started W & W magazine and soon after that got and stayed in touch with him on a regular basis; I also introduced his great ambient music over here in The Netherlands through reviews in KLEM Dutch EM fanzine;
like several on gthe forum I got the letter-boxed cds he privately released from the beginning, and I was also very surprised by the nice outcome of the collaborations with Ruben Garcia, to whom he introduced me very kindly....
Barry, many thanks for being there.

[mgriffin]

Thanks very much for the continuing comments, everybody.

I know that at times like these it can be difficult to figure out what to say, especially when others have already made comments or offered tributes, and we're afraid that what we might have to add has already been said. But I think there's value in just adding another voice to the list of those who say we respected Barry's work, and will miss him.

Loren said on Facebook earlier today that he'll make sure Barry's family is aware of this forum topic, so if you have comments, tributes, condolences or memories, this is the place to post them.

This morning I've been sorting through various photos and scans of Barry and his work, including a few landscape photos he sent me. I'll start posting some of those soon.

[mgriffin]

When I first got to know Barry, he wanted my help setting up a web site. It wasn't something he expected to update frequently, in fact that site remains online pretty much as it was originally designed, here:

http://www.hypnos.com/aproduce

Some of that content was split off to create a separate site for his Trance Port label -- http://www.hypnos.com/tranceport -- mostly to give people a place to see the various CDs released by Trance Port and later Trance Port Special Editions, and to print out a mail order form to send in with a check. Most recently, most Trance Port and TPSE discs were being sold through the Hypnos store and through CD Baby, so I don't think many people were mailing in checks any more.

Most of the photos he sent me were not images of himself, or his albums or CDs, but simply nature photographs he'd taken himself. Some of these figure into album covers or interiors over the years, often in altered form. Barry  took these images as an enthusiastic amateur, and didn't pretend to be a professional-level photographer, but these images demonstrate a good eye for form and texture.

To view a high-resolution version of an image, click on the file-name just ABOVE the image.

http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-desert.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-dunes.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-leaves.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-lilies.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-oceanbrite.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-oceanfoam.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-oceanset.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-plant.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-sanddune.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-sandstone.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-tidalpool.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-trees.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/ap-trees2.jpg

[Scott Fraser]

Golden Needle is a track a lot of people used to talk about as a favorite or at least memorable. I'm pretty sure the prominent guitar on that track is by Scott Fraser, a friend of Barry's who contributed performances to several A Produce tracks over the years.

Hi Mike, & everybody else here who knew Barry & loved his music,

Yes, that was me on the guitar solo on "Golden Needle", a high point of our collaborations & a personal favorite of both of us.
Thanks to all for the many kind words on Barry's behalf. Barry was a close friend, neighbor, collaborator, & fellow traveler of mine for the last 30-some years. I'll add my thoughts here soon, but I'm still a bit too shaken & stunned to be able to compose any coherent ideas at the moment. 
Shine on, you droney diamond...

Scott Fraser

[mgriffin]

Scott, thanks for contributing here. Barry mentioned your work to me many times -- just one example of Barry's relentless efforts to help spread the word about work he enjoyed and believed in.

Anything else you feel able to add, I'm sure people would appreciate from someone who knew him well before the rest of us.

[Resonant Drift]

I'm so sorry for his family and friends.  They will be in my thoughts and prayers (really).

[mgriffin]

As I mentioned before, I don't have a lot of images of Barry himself. He had a couple of photos he used for promotional stuff such as interviews, primarily the one we've already seen from the cover of Wind and Wire, where he's holding a frame drum or the world's biggest tambourine.

These are the only other two I've been able to find so far.

The first is of not-so-great quality, but it was the first time I saw him with hair. Those of you who knew him back in the cassette days of Trance Port may recognize this. I believe it's a scan from a newspaper or magazine article or interview that came out before I knew Barry.

The second was originally going to be the cover of Black Sands, and even has the artist/title text for mockup purposes. Obviously Barry changed his mind about putting the famous bald pate and sunglasses on the album cover.

As before, to view a high-resolution version of an image, click on the file-name just ABOVE the image.

http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/barry.jpg


http://www.hypnos.com/forumpix/blacksands-alt.jpg

[Scott Fraser]

I'm so sorry for his family and friends.  They will be in my thoughts and prayers (really).

Please send an extra bit of healing energy to Barry's widow. She's in a particularly bad way right now.

Scott Fraser

[mgriffin]

This must be harder for Barry's wife than for anyone else. I'm sure we all wish her the best during this terribly difficult time.

[SmiteMatter]

I've enjoyed his music for years, and though I never met him, he was very close to a good friend of mine. This is a staggering loss.

[Dean De Benedictis]

I'm starting to get pretty heavy realizing everything that has now died with Barry, and I can't seem to hold it all back: ideas he had, plans we made and conversations we never finished... He was not the most enthusiastic guy in the end, but he was still funny, and passionate, and most importantly he was always a pessimist who let his music do the talking about hope and purity.  Until now, I've never had such a close friend in music die on me.  It's a first, and it feels different--in a bad way.

We had talked about it, and it was hard enough for us both to imagine that there was actually a creator behind the beauty of our music, and that it happened to actually come from a human being who was right next to us, and whom we knew personally.  Now the creator of his music is going to seem that much more unattainable to me.  The actual man, and friend, is gone, and he was brilliant.

It didn't matter how pessimistic he got in person, there were music pieces he made that spoke volumes about the sentimental and emotional depth of the human heart, as well as the mystery of all existence.  It was all in there.  And I feel lucky that mine was revealed to him as well.  Too often, that part of our music seems hidden to others, while it screams plain-as-day to ourselves.  I shared this with Barry.  No longer will I have long, regular listening sessions with one of the only other people I know of who really understood the power and texture of musical emotion when presented from a setting of utter tranquility. 

No longer will I be able to work with him, and we had just started collaborating again after a pause of about 15 years. 

Barry was also a huge fan of the desert, most notably with a passion for White Sands National Monument.  Well, I was really really looking forward to the day when I wandered back into his front door and showed him a well-edited video of me collaborating on an ambient music track with him, but while at White Sands National Monument.  I was going to finish a piece of ours while there, and then show it to him, and he was going to see a grin on my face a mile long.  A "Smile On The Void" to put it bluntly.

I suddenly feel like that much more of a stranger to this world.  Maybe it will go away.  That's the only down side of death--leaving those few people behind who are the only ones that remember you and appreciate your essence.  Makes them want to die, too.  No one wants to carry that burden.  Now I wish the whole world shared my understanding and my memories of Barry.  I don't want to carry that by myself...

There are probably a few others in my life whom I will experience feeling this towards if/when they pass on before I do, so I suppose I should save some of my tears for them.  I don't know.

http://www.hypnos.com/aproduce/bio.htm

http://www.hypnos.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=HOS&Product_Code=hyp3160

http://www.google.com/search?q=white+sands&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivnsm&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Zr9mTsaCJKqzsALOvbWiCg&ved=0CF4QsAQ&biw=1186&bih=767

[mgriffin]

Dean, thank you for sharing this very personal and heartfelt expression of what Barry has meant to you both personally and musically. You were among those few people I heard him mention again and again over the years, along with Scott Fraser, Chas Smith, Ruben Garcia and Pierre Lambow (who was already gone before I ever heard of A Produce). There were certainly others -- Barry really liked to extol the virtues of one friend to another -- but these were the names I heard most often in those early years.

I know it's hardest for those of you who knew Barry longer and spent more time with him (many of us knew him only online or over the phone), but we appreciate you giving us this glimpse of the Barry Craig you knew.

[Vajragio]

  Very sad news to hear. My heart goes out to his loved ones and may they find peace.