After a long and rewarding career in commercial music including a Grammy ("Nadias Theme"), an Oscar nomination, ("Bless the Beasts and Children"), and one of the longest running themes on television ("The Young and the Restless"), Perry Botkin began a dramatic musical shift. In 1990, he retired from commercial music and began experimenting with Electronic music in a passionate and very personal way. COMBINES, COMBINES 2, and COMBINES 3 ( three self produced CD's ) are prime examples of his new direction. A portion of James Harbert's liner notes for COMBINES accurately describe his new compositions: "You will hear no ' Young and the Restless' themes in these works. And no monotonous minimalist loops, rigid mathmatical systems, or New Age meanderings. His music is daring and original - emotional, uninhibited, explosive, enigmatic, off center! I would call him an American original, influenced to some degree by the John Cage 'every-sound-is-music' philosophy, and to some extent by the dream like(hallucinatory?) musical world of Charles Ives". With these new musical works, Perry Botkin has achieved his musical goal. He has succeeded in being himself. "COMBINES Five Electronic Essays ..."There's more to Botkin's music than punch-line samples. Ultimately, it's his compositional skill, as well as his sense of irony, that makes "Combines" ideal listening for those with strong opinions about electronic music and the temper of our times." Robert L. Doerschuk, KEYBOARD MA