Michael Tau Interview
Michael Tau is the author of Extreme Music: Silence to Noise and Everything In Between. Michael is a geriatric psychiatrist by day, and by night, he’s a music journalist, with bylines in numerous underground music publications. (He’s also created several music zines.) The questioning nature of psychiatry and his love of underground music inform the book in equal measure.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
Music writing is not my career—if it were, at least my tax returns would be more straightforward! I'm fortunate enough to have a rewarding day job, and to have had time in my life to write.
I started writing about music in high school for websites and zines, mainly about independent music and often about the outer fringes of experimental music and noise. Over the years, I've become interested in what could be described as "unusual musical phenomena": writing reviews of cassettes released in editions of 20 copies, interviewing artists and labels committed to the outermost boundaries of sound, etc.