colin helb dot comLet's just keep it simple, stupid.

Seems redundant and a fair bit narcissistic to feel the need for an about page on a site that is essentially one large about page, but here goes a nice third-person autobiography. Before we proceed, if you just need my CV, here you go. I’m adding links.

Colin Helb is Assistant Professor of Communications at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He teaches is the subjects of introductory media production, new media production, audio production, and critical studies and advises the student-operated radio station. Before joining the Department of Communications at Etown in 2009, he taught in the Telecommunications Department and American Culture Studies Program at Bowling Green State University while working on his doctoral dissertation.

Colin’s PhD is in American Culture Studies with concentrations in Film, Popular Culture, and Media Studies. His dissertation is titled “Use and Influence of the Amateur Musician Narrative in Film, 1981-2001.” It is an analytical survey of four fictional amateur musician narratives created in films; the actual influences and longevity of which have far outlasted the created narratives.

Colin Helb has played music for several years in various bands including a bunch of “just rock” bands, some hard core, some punk, some jam bands, a bit of jazz, a bit of bluegrass, a lot of minimalist recording projects, and others I’m sure. As of recently, Colin’s musical projects have veered further and further away from a reliance upon repetitive meter, tonality, and musicality. Concentrating on experimental sound, noise, and music, Colin creates a variety of prepared strings, electronics, and nontraditional instrumentation. He is a part-time member of the KBD Sonic Collaborative.

Colin Helb founded Cornslaw Industries in the Fall of 2004 after his short-lived production company, I.F.N.O.R., folded in part because of a lack of precise purpose. Cornslaw Industries went through several half-assed incarnations before settling in some time after as a net.label and media collective. The now-successful and established net.label virtually releases albums and media collections by bands and artists both as digital archive re-releases or as material created specifically for Cornslaw. The label boast tens of thousands of downloads and over sixty individual releases.

Colin was born in New Jersey in 1976 and grew up with his mother in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He attended Pennsbury High School, left New York University after one semester, and moved to Morgantown, WV in 1995 to attend West Virginia University. He was told by an advisor that he was the first student to transfer from NYU to WVU. This may or may not be true. He moved to Philadelphia in 2001. Colin and Carolyn were married in 2009 and currently live in Philadelphia with their two cats.

Enough of the third-person. About me and music and stuff:

I’ve played in dozens of bands you’ve likely never heard of. Currently, I record with 1000000 a.d., DJ at PigeonDaggers events at The Dive in South Philly, record and perform experimental and conceptual sounds as DangerVacuum, and am an occasional member of Toledo aural architects KBD.

I the past I recorded as/was a member of: Dewback, The Courteous Ninjas, PoCKetScHwa (with Chris Kasper), The Recipe, The Grossly Misjudged Collective Works of Barry’s Listening, theroyaloui, The Daven Mines, Good and the Hoods, Kind Insight, Some of the Most Famous People Alive, and Grass Combustion.

I founded net.label Cornslaw Industries in 2004 and record label Uncle Nicky Records in 2009. Cornslaw has over 70 releases available for free download. Uncle Nicky has released a split seven inch with Mason Porter and Chris Kasper as well as Mason Porter’s debut CD.

The first song I played live was at a junor high school talent show. It was “California Uber Ales” by the Dead Kennedys. I formed Dewback with some friends while in high school. We played and wrote music a lot and had an opportunity to record for a small-but-respected NYC/NJ-based indie label and producer, but we blew it. I studied bass at West Virginia University. I left the program in 1998 to join Kind Insight’s “Looking West” tour in 1998 (a better music education). I played bass and guitar with a bunch of bands in Morgantown, WV between ’95 and ’01. In ’00 I formed PoCKetScHWa with Chris Kasper and moved to Philly. We played for a couple years between NYC and Baltimore before injury and geographic relocation got in the way. Then I went to grad school.

I bought my first four track in ’95 on a credit card I would pay off for the next several years. I still have it. It barely works, but it’ll play some of those old tapes. I used that four track until I got a digital eight track in ’06 on a credit card I would pay off over the next couple weeks (I was an adult). I love proper studios, but I really love four-track bedroom pop culture. Cornslaw Industries is founded on this love.

I do a lot these days with prepared, altered, homemade, and wrong instrumentation. I record with and perform on prepared guitars and basses, light sensitive oscillators, bent toys, mis-wired electronics, no input mixers, contact mic’d objects, bowed and struck metals, casios, pedals, a cracklebox, a computer-based sampler, and a theremin.