Imagine a radio tuned to all the frequencies of pop culture, with its dial madly spinning as a couple have sex on the top of a mountain where a drum kit has being hurled off the back porch of a Buddhist temple and is tumbling down rocky cliffs. Or Jimi Hendrix caught in a perpetual feedback loop as Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding spiral out of sanity. Then all that intensifies as aliens land, disrupting magnetic fields, stealing cattle, and launching their own quest for sex and chocolate.

For Miller, reality first started blurring when it became mixed with rock and roll. "My dad [an ecologist - scientist] was a stereo buff. He had two 15-inch speakers, tweeters, pre-amp, a tube amp, reel-to-reel, separate tuner. He had jazz and classical records. In 1964, that was serious gear. We went to visit his sister, and she had Herman's Hermits and The Beatles - 'She Loves You,' and that was it. I got into rock and roll. My first album was Beatles '65. And when I got it home, my dad said, 'If that needle on your mother's (lo-fi) record player touches it, you can't play it on my stereo. You have to make a decision now.' "

And so the die was cast. "Right from my first record I knew the difference between hi- and lo-fi," Miller observes. A few years later he graduated from playing guitar on tennis rackets to a garage band called the Electric Onion. Yes, they probably made eyes water, but that didn't deter Miller.

"I got into noise when I bought a Lafayette reverb from a catalogue for $29 in 1969. I put it on my guitar amp and cranked it to 10 and did this thing with its springs shaking so it would feedback. That's when I[really] got into noise." [original noise exposure was early mickey mouse radio am radio squelching static twiddling, plastic trash can banging, and abstract toy piano tinkling around 1961-64 in Virgina.]

Then, when he taped Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love on reel-to-reel and accidentally rethreaded it backwards: "I heard the sound reversed and thought I could build on that."

Nourished by the mix of pot, acid, and other psychedelics and phantasticants common to '60s and early-'70s musical growth, Miller's interest in sonic exploration blossomed as he reached adulthood. In the mid '70s he went to engineering school in California, then returned to North Carolina (in 80s) to mix live sound and produce his younger brother's band.

"I ended up doing live sound for another band and ended up in Boston when their five-week tour ended, so I stayed, got my brother to send my stuff up, and I've never left."

In fact, he's become a fixture. He set up his own eight-track recording studio and produced and mixed live bands at night while working by day at Daddy's Junky Music. "It was a great place to be. I'd do my job and sell gear, but I also used it as my office. I'd book sessions and live sound gigs and meet musicians there. I have gigs recording now that I can trace back to my Daddy's days."

A slew of Boston punk, art-rock, and free-improv artists have come under his microphones in the '90s, including Saturnalia, Nisi Period, and Roger Miller. Yet BTM's work as a recordist for others is in striking contrast to his own Out of Band Experience, Drum Army, and other recordings. "With early OBE I was stoned out of my mind trying to fuck with my head, so the first album was about overindulgence. I had all these other musicians who I knew come in and blast down tracks, almost randomly at times, and I borrowed all these samples. Most of the guests [including premier Boston guitarists Reeves Gabrels and Rich Gilbert, who now play for David Bowie and Frank Black, respectively] were kind of too big to be in the band all the time. So I got to take their contributions and create my own thing. Since nobody was in OBE in the first place except me, it was kind of a dream band -- one that wouldn't break up. (original core band featured BTM with Andy Deckard on Drums and Jeff Cohen on Bass & Stick.)

"These days OBE is more arranged. I'm looking for something that's more based on hit-type hooks." He says this with tongue not entirely in cheek. "Hey, stranger things have happened." He also has no limits and will attempt to create sounds from any instrument or object.

"But when I'm recording other people's bands, I'm the co-pilot. I would never inflict my own aesthetic on people, like, 'Hey, I think we need to put in some backwards guitars and moaning nymphos!' "

Oddly, that's made him a popular engineer/producer with hardcore and metal bands. Subjugator, Disrupt, Grief, and Dropdead are among his projects. Those are very loud bands to record within the small confines of Headroom, a practice space about the size of six walk-in closets with nothing to separate the control-booth zone from the blasting Marshall amps. But the natural bleed-through of amplifiers and drums pouring into each other's microphones and smacking down to tape can be a virtue.

"The key with raw metal and hardcore bands is almost anti-production. They'd go into the studio and the guys would be trying to clean them up. I'm like, 'Set it up and let it go. Grab the hand-held mike and roll around on the floor. I'll make it work.' "

As you'd imagine from a man whose studio has all the comforts of home -- including a ceiling-suspended skull, tapestries, snacks, a refrigerator, and a cat -- as well as piles of essential recording gear, Miller spends a lot of his time at Headroom. So making things work is never an issue. Sharing's more his problem.

"I don't really encourage bands to record here. I'd just like to hog it myself. Producing and recording my own shit in here, I have god-like control over everything.

"What I'm really getting into now is remixes. That's where I want to focus with my stuff and other bands. I think I can find a niche there, because if musicians know what I do, they can send me their multi-tracks and I can sample it and loop it -- give it the Bill T. Miller treatment. I can collaborate with other artists but still have some creative freedom. I'm not just the engineer."

Certainly Miller's aspirations are loftier than mere engineering. "There was a time when I believed in the corporate structure and trying to get signed. There was a time I wanted Grammys, and I kinda still do.

"But now I realize I'm not writing those kinds of songs, and the corporate structure has nothing to do with music. So I signed myself, started putting out my own records. And now I'm going for Underground Cult God."