Howard Stelzer's music is made using a series of standard cassette decks and tapes, manually manipulating their motors and gears in order to create percussive textures and noises. He is primarily concerned with the sounds unique to magnetic tape and playback devices, rather than a collage-like manipulation of pre-recorded sound. Along with his most frequent musical partner, turntable player Jason Talbot, Stelzer pursues the development of a unified instrumental and gestural sonic language, concentrating less on preparations and extended techniques than on the performative possibilities of his chosen instrument in an improvisational setting. Stelzer has performed with sound artists from all over the world, including Kevin Drumm, Le Quan Ninh, Haco, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Roel Meelkop, Axel Doerner, Andrea Neumann, Jason Lescalleet, Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger, Brent Gutzeit, Frans De Waard, Martin Tetreault, Gert-Jan Prins, Ron Lessard/Due Process, Peter Duimelinks, James Coleman, Keith Whitman/Hrvatski, Loren Boyer, Jack Wright, Mike Bullock, Katt Hernandez, and several others. In addition to performing, Howard Stelzer operates the Intransitive Recordings label for electro-acoustic and improvised music. He regularly hosts sound-art, electronic and improvised music concerts in the Boston/Cambridge area.