Music Zeitgeist recently discovered the music of Ohio artist Joseph A. Peragine. The self-produced multi-instrumentalist creates gorgeous and urgent evolving songs that summon up the best that the first wave of early 90’s independent alternative music had to offer. This is not a slight - it was a golden age for musical experimentation and the music landscape would do well to remember the undercurrents that have slowly become annexed by the bands that claimed the game prize.

His angelic and beautifully rendered vocals aside, Peragine evokes everything from Jesus Lizard, His Name Is Alive and King Crimson to Smashing Pumpkins and Fred Frith. But it isn’t limited to post-prog innovators; his track “Perspectives of Then and Now Saved… Metamorphosis Engraved/Rewind” from his album The Acoustic Diaries is a holographic dream of amazing sampling, tape-playback, acoustic/vocal singing and songwriting that instantly bypasses all your defense mechanisms and leaves you staring a thousand yards beyond the twilight out the grimy window of whatever little box you live in and contemplating those seemingly significant moments of your life that you can still manage to surrender from fading memory.

Music Zeitgeist had an opportunity to ask the artist some personal questions:

Music Zeitgeist: Who?

My name Is Joseph A. Peragine

What?

I am an Indie/Experimental Solo artist who writes my music about my personal struggles with paranoid Schizophrenia.

Why?

I want to eliminate all of the negative stigmas associated with my illness and show the world that there is recovery.

Until when?

As long as I am mentally and physically able to create music and spread my positive message I will do so.

And then?

Hopefully I can leave some type of positive impact in the world of music and mental health.

Instrumentation

Joseph A. Peragine: Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Drums, Percussion, Sampling

Discography

“The Acoustic Diaries” (Oct. 2004)

“Self Medication…Poems of Alienation” (Nov. 2006)