David Slusser

Sound designer David Slusser uses the term "sound composition" when referring to his work, to delineate the difference between his approach and that of musical notation compositions. He has also worked as sound designer for the films of Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch, and George Lucas — as well as Terminator 2 and Driving Miss Daisy — but most of his sound design work has been for television commercials. He has made music in Rubber City, with longtime Tom Waits-collaborator Ralph Carney. He and Carney first played together making free jazz in Akron, OH, in the mid-'70s. Slusser moved out to the San Francisco area in 1977, where he played gigs at a club that featured experimental music. Some nights, he'd be in the club's audience to check out Eugene Chadbourne. At one of these shows, Slusser heard Chadbourne collaborator John Zorn for the first time. Slusser went on to spend two years as the foley recordist at Skywalker Ranch. He also has had sound installations in renowned modern art museums: in 1986, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art commissioned audio art for a radio series from Randy Thorn. Slusser was to aid him, but Thorn got too busy, so Slusser created "Suite Machines." Also, one of his television commercials is in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. On his first solo release, Delight at the End of the Tunnel (Tzadik, 1997), Slusser adds rare electronic instruments and various sound effects to the more usual instrumentation.