Multi-instrumentalist and programmer Paul Dickow has been making music as Strategy since ...
From a musical family, as a youth he was exposed to everything from academic computer music to the synth pop and rap filling the airwaves at the time. A longtime participant in Portland's strange underground music community, (where it's not atypical for people to be participating in 3 or more projects which bear little resemblance to one another) he went on to play in a number of groups, most notably as drummer for agit-art-punk outfit Emergency and as keyboardist in Fontanelle. Currently, he is a member of Nudge and several other collaborative projects.
Strategy wires together Dickow's programming and performing experience via a hodgepodge of table top electronics, computers and realtime musicianship. Combining a granular ambient aesthetic with an abstract, percolating rhythmic sensibility, Strategy music does not find a singular sylistic expression, but rather exists along a genre-confounding continuum where all genres are created equal and primed for deconstruction. Strategy releases all his music under the same name: outcomes have taken the form of digital dub singles and remixes (for Shockout label), dancefloor singles (for ORAC and his own Community Library label), ambient and experimental music for kranky and others, and uncategorisable territories. Reflecting this, his working process includes everything from collage-based composition, to live improvisation, careful sound design and spontaneous noisemaking.
Since the release of Drumsolo's Delight in 2004, Strategy has shifted gears away from live performance, to DJing and studio production, becoming an in-demand remixer for the likes of DFA, The Blow, Gregory Isaacs, and others, while continuing his path in Portland as a respected local music standard-bearer, label curator, and insatiable record collector. Strategy is director of the Community Library label (along with cohort Solenoid) and co- founder of the DIY imprint Archigramophone.