skullcaster

Alongside Skullcaster, Cones has participated in numerous collaborative and group projects. His musical history includes work with the psychedelic and experimental groups ST 37, How I Quit Crack, SubArachnoid Space and Future Blondes, among others. With How I Quit Crack he contributed guitar and electronics, while his later work with Austin psychedelic ensemble ST 37 similarly incorporated keyboards and electronic instrumentation. His broader recording history also includes appearances with projects such as 3 Leafs, Power in the Blood and Le Flange Du Mal.

After relocating to Texas, Cones became increasingly connected with Austin's experimental, noise and electronic communities while living in relative isolation in the Texas Hill Country outside the city. This environment became particularly important to Skullcaster's recorded work. Cones constructed a makeshift home studio at his rural residence, allowing him to record independently and develop compositions away from a conventional studio environment.

Skullcaster's most substantial Holodeck Records release, Revaluation, appeared on October 16, 2015. Recorded by Cones at his home studio, the album consists of two approximately fourteen-minute pieces simply titled “A” and “B.” The recording brought together noise, ambient music, rhythmic electronics and experimental sound design while largely abandoning conventional song structures.

Revaluation also reflected the unusually broad range of influences informing Skullcaster. Cones' longstanding interest in music from the Near East became an important component of the recording, with musician Diego Gonzalez contributing oud. Processed samples taken from Iraqi television commercials were incorporated into the compositions and subjected to extensive electronic manipulation, while harsh feedback and noise reflected Cones' affinity for Japanese noise music. Beneath these layers, recurring rhythmic patterns and low-frequency electronics provided intermittent structure.

The album was mastered by Austin electronic musician and engineer Dylan Cameron at Stassney Studios, with design by Justin Goers. Released as Holodeck catalog number HD024 in a limited cassette edition of 200 copies, Revaluation marked Skullcaster's debut for the Austin label and placed Cones within the same interconnected experimental-electronic community as artists including Troller, Smokey Emery, Curved Light, JU4N, Thousand Foot Whale Claw and S U R V I V E.

In November 2016, UK experimental label Cruel Nature Records released Skullcaster's Vogon Poetry. Like Revaluation, the cassette was structured as two extended pieces rather than a collection of conventional songs, with “Vogon Poetry A” and “Vogon Poetry B” each running approximately fourteen and a half minutes. The release appeared in a limited edition of thirty cassettes and continued Cones' combination of electronics, ambient sound, noise, psychedelia and rhythmic experimentation.

Skullcaster returned to Holodeck's catalog in 2018 with “Crossing the Blood Brain Barrier,” contributed to the label compilation Holodeck Vision One. Released March 9, 2018, the compilation documented a broad cross-section of the community surrounding Holodeck and included Skullcaster alongside artists such as Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, Drab Majesty, Troller, Dylan Cameron, Smokey Emery, Windows1995, JU4N, Bill Converse and Thousand Foot Whale Claw.

Cones has described Skullcaster's performance work in terms resembling a live soundtrack or form of “tone poetry,” using electronic sound to evoke dystopian technological environments while satirizing contemporary ideas surrounding neuroscience, surveillance and data. Live Skullcaster performances consequently emphasize texture and controlled unpredictability, moving between minimal electronic passages, fragmented rhythms, static, noise and densely layered sound.

This approach has also made collaboration a recurring part of the project. Skullcaster has contributed to international experimental compilations and collaborative recording projects, including pieces with artists such as Microwave Windows and Spanish experimental musician Òscar Hidalgo. These recordings extended the project's connections beyond the Texas and California scenes in which Cones had primarily worked.

During the 2020s, Skullcaster continued to produce electronic material while remaining connected to the Texas experimental underground. The track “NOCtech” appeared on Aural Atmospheres' 2021 compilation Southwestern Esoterica, alongside artists including How I Quit Crack, Rick Reed, Pas Musique and Alex Keller. Other independently circulated recordings continued Cones' interest in electronic collage, noise, cultural sampling and what he has termed “psychoradionics.”

Across Skullcaster's work, recognizable musical structures tend to emerge only temporarily before being submerged or dismantled. Rhythmic patterns, drones, samples and melodic fragments appear within layers of distortion and electronic debris, giving the compositions a continual tension between structure and disintegration. Although frequently abrasive, the music also incorporates meditative and ambient qualities, preventing Skullcaster from fitting comfortably within either conventional noise music or electronic composition.

From its beginnings in the San Francisco Bay Area to Cones' later work in the isolation of the Texas Hill Country, Skullcaster has remained a deliberately idiosyncratic project. Drawing upon noise, psychedelia, ambient music, experimental electronics, Near Eastern musical influences and Cones' experience across numerous underground ensembles, the project represents a distinctive strand of the American experimental underground and the wider network of musicians surrounding Austin's Holodeck Records.