He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980).

In recent years he has had his career celebrated extensively, with reissues of his extensive and wide-ranging back catalogue on labels including Numero Group, Glitterbeat and Leaving Records.