This thread topic was last introduced as
Your Biggest or Most Important Musical Influences where I contributed
this response about Karl Hyde and the Tomato Design Collective.
Other major influences include John Cage (of course), the developments in non-narrative minimalism from the New York Hypnotic School (composers like La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich), as well as their European contemporaries like Michael Nyman and Arvo Pärt, each of whom contributed their own unique element to the development of experimental music in the 20th century as well as some of the founding manifestoes of experimental music theory.)
Later, I found similar inspiration from both the Cologne and Berlin schools of kosmische musik and the early electroacoustic experimentations of sound poets from Hugo Ball onward.
And finally, I'd like to credit Metallica, those insufferable douches, for inspiring me to explore the history of copyright law, the culture of file sharing technologies, and the miracle of evolution which enabled Lars Ulrich to walk erect.