Marie Antoinette & Gunnar - The connection?

I've known Kent Sparling, the producer of "Two Hands", since he was a young man. I've known his music since he was a teenager.

Back in the early 80's I had a few piano students, and one of them was a wonderful teenage girl. She gave me a tape of her boyfriend's band, Riis Spargo. Yeah, okay, your boyfriend's band, sure, I'll listen...

But it was GOOD. I played that little cassette over and over.

Years later, I hooked up with her boyfriend - Kent Sparling. He was in a monoprint class that my wife was taking (Yes, he's one of those multi-talented types). We became friends. I played keyboards sometimes in his follow-up band, Eyeland. Kent is a wonderful carpenter/electrician, and together with a craftsman pal of his helped us build the studio where I've done much of my work over the past decade.

But besides being a visual artist and a songwriter and experimental musician and electrician and craftsperson, Kent had another dream - to work at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound. To get there, he moved to Vancouver, BC, where he apprenticed in the sound for film world. His experiences there filled out his resume, and he returned to the bay area and knocked on the door at Skywalker, and they hired him.

Nowadays, besides being a visual artist/experimental musician/etc., he's also a highly respected and sought-after mixer for films. He's done many of the the foreign language versions of Star Wars, he helped sink the Titanic, he's mixed a ton of films including some knockout ones you've seen and heard, like "Lost in Translation", "Adaptation" and "The Virgin Suicides" and, yes, "Marie Antoinette". And then, he makes his own wonderful, ethereal/trippy music using state-of-the-art retro synthesizers. And he does his own cover art. And he wired his own studio. And, (how lucky can I be?), he's produced 3 of my CDs along the way. More on Kent at his website.