tdr.design - Timothy Donavan Russell

Hi, there. I'm an information technologist for The Computer Department, Inc., a member of The Pharmacy Gallery & Art Space, a graduate of both Springfield Southeast High School and Illinois State University, an independent artist, a radio DJ at WQNA, and a father/spouse. My current work in IT focuses on social networking, Microsoft Access and SQL Server databases, and HTML5/JavaScript/AJAX web design. As a musician, I am a composer and performer, with a current emphasis on live punk, post-rock, and alternative sounds and in the studio ambient/drone. I also dabble in video making, writing, graphic design, and cartooning. Click on stuff below for more information.

Much of my most recent music is available for free streaming and downloading at Bandcamp, including Rain Tree, my latest release.

Much of my most recent music is available for streaming on Google Play.

Here is the SoundCloud account for all or much of my primary musical work. It's chock full of ambient/electronic pieces, 387 songs total as of this writing.

Here is another SoundCloud account, one for my old alternative rock 'n' roll music. Expect about 20 lo-fi pieces from years 1991 to 2003.

My brother, Aaron, and I together host this mostly weekly hour-long show on radio station WQNA. It's half comedy, half music, and three-quarters unknown chunks.

I offer a large collection of pure tones in mp3 format (completely free of charge) designed to help sitarists tune their instruments. As a (former) sitar player, I understand how difficult it can be to keep the instrument on course.

My son, Isaac, and I have made music together over the years. This SoundCloud account for our project, which is called Musical Realists, should give you enough cute and quirky electronic children's music for a good while.

My latest music project, a solo one for live performances (guitar, vocals, drum/bass machine),
is named UNKN0WN S1GN. Its debut gig will be at The Studio on October 5th.
I recently created a Facebook page for it.

My latest studio music is a trilogy of ambient/drone albums that all incorporate
strange synthesizer/sample tunings not based on traditional equal temperament.
They can be streamed and downloaded at Bandcamp.

My first book, available on Amazon, is a collection of essays much like a Pink Floyd or Radiohead album, in that although threads of the subjects of music and language connect them, each of the pieces is distinct.

My 2nd book, also available on Amazon, is a brief though intense treatise which roots the intellectual pursuit of what it means to be stupid deep in layers of metaphysical analysis. Over the course, I mix the personal with the universal in ways that entertain and defy the conventions of both memoir and philosophy.

My public blog, in which I post writings and pictorial essays concerning politics, music, civil rights, and relationships.

Essays on such topics as perception, communication, work, personal taste, and David Foster Wallace.

Several pieces of alt/postmodern fiction from my college days at Illinois State University in the early 90s, during which time I studied under Curtis White.

This is a collection of Buddhist-flavored poems I wrote recently. For now, this link simply opens a PDF of the original manuscript.

At long last, I attempt a contemporary interpretation of LEGO "City" toy box covers.

What new books in the fields of cultural studies and critical theory might be on the horizon? Let's find out!

News comes and goes, but what remains is a single unpaired sock at the bottom of the hamper. Seriously, though, these are pieces written for my radio show originally declared on the air to be current news, so just keep that in mind.

Oh, the things we do. Sometimes, they involve drawing a comic strip that puts ninjas in outer space, pitting teen musicians against male bighorn sheep and slimy interstellar frog creatures against our plucky hero.

On the other hand, there are subjects seldom broached in polite society but which should probably be much more, specifically perhaps the one of how funny genital integrity can be.

In the Garfield comic series, Lyman was the original owner of Odie the dog and was also Jon's roommate, but sometime around 1982 he vanished from the series without explanation. Before Lyman was largely forgotten, though, at the age of thirteen I drew these comics detailing the many battles that Garfield and Lyman had with each other behind the scenes.

Every nonsensical, gratuitously violent comic series deserves a sequel, right? Volume 2 even contains a subseries in which the titular characters expand their battle zone to the interplanetary realm.

Nothing to see here, folks, nothing but pictures which may or may not seem funny or (more basically) simply enjoyable to your sense of vision. They are largely photoplasty, albeit with the occasional piece of unfiltered photography.

Photos of ethereal reality. Light thru glass.

There are videos I make, too, that I wish to share with you. Here are a few of my favorites and a few of the more culturally popular, which categories might of course overlap in some instances.