Michael Stasis is a songwriter and artist living in Los Angeles. Since the age of thirteen, he has written and recorded music in tiny homemade studios. As a child, Michael and his father would make toys and go for heady night walks through the rolling hills and lonely mansions of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. With its own American folklore of wealthy industrialists, witches and dog-people, Michael’s youth danced with an oil-to-water hatred of homework and beige pragmatism. Convinced that imagination and faith in the unknown are keys to the good life, he left home to study art at Cooper Union in Manhattan. The need to score his video work turned into a passion for song writing during late night recording sessions in Astoria, Queens. There is a strong visual element in Michael’s songs – a credit he gives to endless classes in a darkened screening room. Software girls, back-alley gongs and synthetic guitars can all hang together like wildly different characters standing in line for the same cyberpunk party. ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ seems to be a favourite mantra. For his first release on Arbutus, RIP III is the third in a “greatest hits” series. Presenting a broad range of material, from playing with trial software in his bedroom to learning from acclaimed producer Jorge Elbrecht and stumbling into a thriving community in the Bay Area, Michael has drifted through many scenes to collaborate, perform and grow, all patiently under the radar. Largely self-recorded, his restless output (over two hundred songs) has jumped sonically and stylistically, leaving some listeners to wonder if it’s the same artist at all. Stasis calls it “playlist mentality”, a fractured approach borrowed from current listening patterns and dwindling attention spans. This intuitive tactic, he hopes, will keep people interested, rather than lamenting a bygone era of classic anything. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.