The year is 1985; Paul Dickow’s composer dad purchases a Yamaha DX-7 to compliment his C64 MIDI music setup. This begins a lifelong love for electronic music and synthesisers. Growing up in culturally isolated Moscow, Idaho, the young Strategy would wait anxiously by the radio for any tidbit of synthetic song that might bore its way through the top 40: Pet Shop Boys, New Order, maybe even the Timelords “Doctorin’ the Tardis.” [which became an inexplicable local hit when released...] Now fast-forward to 1992. Thoroughly educated in underground music through DJing the local college radio station, Dickow purchases his first synthesisers at local pawnshops. These keyboards would transport Dickow through his first bands, and later into programmed music.

Dickow moved to Portland, Oregon in 1994, where he formed the bands Two Noises (an improvisational keyboards and drums duo) and Emergency (a politically charged, art-punk quartet in which he played drums.) In 1999, both bands went on temporary hiatus. Armed with a digital four-track deck, tons of FX boxes, and his keyboards, his distinct combination of electronic collage, improvisational programming, and dub was devised under the code-name Strategy. Private tapes were distributed, and in 2000, Strategy was recruited into studio act Fontanelle (Kranky), where he met longtime advocate & friend Brian Foote of Outward Music Company. It was not long after that Brian talked Strategy into making his first live appearance, and activity has been snowballing ever since. The OMCO support culminated in the release of ‘Strut’, Strategy’s debut full-length CD and first official release, in 2003.

While some electronic music producers prefer to spread their stylistic output across multiple AKA’s, Strategy’s identity has mutated and multiplied itself over time. While dub mixing, improvisation, and a signature soupy sound-design tie all his work together, his output has ranged from dance styles of a techno/house/disco nature, all the way to abstract, ambient music, electronic dub reggae, and the outer reaches of noise. Strategy has contributed as the token electronicist at a wide variety of free-improv events, and has become one of Portland’s most notable electronic music exports, keeping in step with Portland’s avant-garde music renaissance of the last 2 or 3 years.

Currently Strategy is producing dance music 12"s for ORAC, ambient albums for Chicago’s notable Kranky label, and the occasional dub joint for TB6 offshoot Shockout. Other activities include recent remixes for comrades Stars as Eyes, and Charles Atlas; participation as a full-time member of the ensembles Fontanelle, Nudge, and One Human Minute; and a collaborative project with guitarist Jason Buehler of Nice Nice. He also co-operates the punk label Archigramophone (est. 1998) and is founder of the newly launched Community Library imprint. In 2003, Dickow undertook an unofficial “apprenticeship” with the infamous DJ Brokenwindow, learning to DJ from the ground up in the high-pressure club environment. In the last two years Strategy has become more widely known to clubgoers as DJ P.Disco for his celebratory and disco-centric dancefloor sets at Holocene’s Cascadia Fridays, his weekly residency at Tube, and the eclectic and conceptual monthly Community Library Club at Dunes. Strategy’s plans for 2006 include Cascadian regional independence from American dictatorship, partying like it’s 1999, and producing a large batch of new music.