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."