SATURDAY JUNE 24, 2006 AT 8PM. $10 AT THE DOOR.
DANGEROUS CURVE 1020 E. FOURTH PLACE, LOS ANGELES, CA.
DAMION ROMERO
Damion Romero is a sound artist/sculptor and visual artist from Los Angeles. Romero’s main focus is with “resonant electro-acoustic feedback systems” using audio power amplifiers and a variety of transducers and “feedback regenerators” of his own design. The goal is to saturate the atmosphere with natural acoustic standing waves and pulses, large sounds, that are affected (or held in place) by very small movements in order to magnify an (as of yet) indescribable phenomenon. Public performances have taken place in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, And Matsuyama. His work under the name Speculum Fight has been released on numerous record labels worldwide. In addition to performance and recordings of Damion’s sound work, he has also been actively using similar feedback techniques to produce visual artwork. These are visible patterns on paper (and other flat media) created directly by sound waves. Some of these works have appeared in a handful of solo and group shows in Los Angeles and Seattle, and also reside in the Collection of Eileen and Peter Norton, Santa Monica.
CLAY CHAPLIN
Clay Chaplin is a composer, improviser, and video artist from Los Angeles. He has worked on many projects throughout the US, Europe, and Japan involving experimental music, video, improvisation, and custom electronics. Clay’s works have been presented internationally including performances at the NIME 2004 concerts in Japan, the LA County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in San Francisco, the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival in New York, the International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong, the Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists in Toronto, the Korean Electro-Acoustic Society concerts in Seoul, the Sonic Circuits Festivals, and many other music festivals throughout the US. Clay has given workshops and lectures on computer music and digital media for various universities and electronic arts groups in California and he is currently the Studio Director for the Experimental Sound Practices program at CalArts. Clay’s latest CD is available on Artifact Recordings.
HANS FJELLESTAD
Hans Fjellestad (b. 1968) is a musician and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles. He studied music composition and improvisation with George Lewis at University of California San Diego (UCSD), and classical piano with Krzysztof Brzuza. Fjellestad has composed for film, video, theater, dance and has presented his music, film and video art in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, Mexico and Brazil.
Fjellestad has an extensive discography both as a solo artist and in collaboration with many legendary players in the international experimental music scene. An “innovative musician” (All About Jazz) and “mad scientist of sound” (SLAMM), his music has been described as “unbridled sonic freedom… raw, almost shamanic energy that embodies the true essence of unrestricted music” (XLR8R) and a “spicy concoction… refusing to behave itself, it screams, throws things and makes a mess” (The Wire).
Fjellestad has performed and/or recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, Peter Kowald, Lé Quan Ninh, Lisle Ellis, Haco, Miya Masaoka, Money Mark, Donkey, Takayuki Kato, Saga Yuki, Kojima Takashi, Arai Minako, Trummerflora Collective, Thomas Dimuzio, Tetsu Saitoh, David Slusser, Baiyon, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Jakob Riis, P.O. Jørgens, Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Rob Rowland, Mike Keneally, Nortec Collective, among many others. His music is available on Hollywood Records, Accretions Records, Circumvention Music, Brain Escape Sandwich, Barely Auditable Records, Pan Handler, and Vinyl Communications.
Fjellestad (or his alter-ego, “33”) has performed in such far-flung venues as The Roxy (Prague), Shinjuku Pit Inn (Tokyo), Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka), Big Apple (Kobe), ABC No Rio (New York City), Bimbo’s 365 Club (San Francisco), Velvet Jones (Santa Barbara), Don Loope (Tijuana), Spring Reverb Festival (San Diego/Tijuana), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles), Den Anden Opera (Copenhagen), Yokohama Jazz Promenade, Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, San Diego Repertory Theatre, and the Northwest Electroacoustic Music Festival (Portland).
His film and video work has shown at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Tokyo’s Shibuya Station, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Point Loma Wastewater Plant, Cleveland Museum of Art, Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Miami Art Central, Salina Art Center, IAF Videoart Festival Tijuana, and the São Paulo International Short Film Festival.
Fjellestad’s MOOG (2004), a feature length documentary on synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, was released theatrically across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Stephen Holden of the New York Times dubs MOOG a “compelling documentary portrait” of a “provocative, thoughtful and deeply sympathetic figure” and the London Daily Telegraph calls it “brilliantly inspiring on many levels.”
MOOG was an Official Selection at numerous international film festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands 2005), Madrid International Film Festival (Spain 2005), Adelaide International Film Festival (Australia 2005), Naples Sintesi Festival (Italy 2005), Belo Horizonte INDIE Film Festival (Brazil 2005), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Czech Republic 2004), Sheffield International Film Festival (UK 2004), Dublin Electronic Arts Festival (Ireland 2004), Asheville Film Festival (North Carolina 2004), Bergen Ekko Festival (Norway 2004), and Barcelona In-Edit Film Festival (Spain 2004) where the film took home top honors at the Documentary Awards Ceremony. MOOG is distributed by Plexifilm.
MEM1
Mem1 is a collaborative venture between cellist Laura Thomas-Merino & laptop artist M. Cera. They are the curators of the quarterly experimental music series CTRL+ALT+REAPEAT. In their improvisation-based performances, the cello is manipulated using custom software built by Cera in max/msp. Extended cello technique is magnified by live signal processing, which is in turn influenced by the sounds produced by the cello. The result is a subtle electroacoustic hybrid that culminates not in a duet between two individuals, but in a single performance by a fused and cohesive instrument. Utilizing a limitless palate of sonic possibilities, Mem1’s sound is a constant evolution of textures ranging from sparse to dense, ambient to beat-driven, tranquil to volatile – the listener is submerged in layers of distinctive, complex patterns which provide a focus not on melody or lyricism but an opportunity to listen beyond such structural confines. There is a sense of narrative, but one that unravels organically, almost in slow motion.
Mem1 has performed with the renowned Penderecki String Quartet and in January was invited to play at CEAIT 2006 by media artist Kadet Kuhne. They have also performed as part of the Definiens Project, LA ArtFest 2005, SoundWalk 2005 (Long Beach) and in March 2006 they will took part in “An Evening of Improvised Music” at the Orange County Museum of Art. Their second album, Alexipharmaca, will be released Fall 2006 by Interval Recordings.
MITCHELL BROWN / SEED POD PALS
Seed Pod Pals was created after the acquisition of 10 seed pod shells found sitting at the base of a tree in Glendale last winter. With an admiration for the communal polyrhythms of Moondog, the rapid call and response panting games of Inuits, and the acute listening required to hear insects walking on leaves, Mitchell Brown invited some good folks over to his kitchen floor for some fruit tasting and jamming. CTRL+ALT+REPEAT will host the 2nd public performance of this nebulous acoustic ensemble.
Brown doubles as Professor Cantaloupe while DJing on KXLU on Wednesday nights for a children’s show, The Kids Are Alright, and Glossolalia, a sound-art show. He runs the Melon Expander record label, supporting humble hermits working in the field of head music. He has performed and/or recorded analog electronic and/or electro-acoustic music with: Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts, Joe Potts, Damian Bisciglia, Trevor Wishart, Tom Recchion, Petra Haden, Leticia Castaneda, Jeremy Drake, John Weise, Ezra Buchla, Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger, Space Machine, Points of Friction, and Thomas Dimuzio among others.
Brown often takes cues of focused listening from the developmentally disabled children he has assisted daily since ’95 at a special education school in Glendale. In some of the children, the reduced capability to interact with others allows them to flourish internally through self-stimulation of the senses in a solipsistic manner. In 2000, the project Aralina Ping began, giving select higher-functioning students the opportunity to express themselves through playing electro-acoustic music with him outside of the school. Brown organized the Cotton Candy Octopusland Festival in 2004, which was a rare showcase for the encouragement of the creative arts in children and adults with developmental disabilities.
Mitchell Brown seed pod shells, breath, percussion
Michael Intriere cello
Heather Lockie violin
David Rothbaum seed pod shells
David Kendall seed pod shells
Jean Paul Garnier seed pod shells
ANDRÉ CORMIER SCRUBBING
André Cormier was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He began making music with a guitar. In 1995, he gave up the guitar for good, left his native Acadie and began a BMus. in music composition at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. His teachers at UVic included John Celona, Christopher Butterfield and Michael Longton. After graduating from UVic in 1999, André attended the California Institute of the Arts where he received an MFA in composition. At Calarts he worked with James Tenney, Michael Pisaro and Morton Subotnick. He has also collaborated with visual artists, animators, writers, and choreographers.
In 2002, Cormier was a featured composer at Okiro’s New and Improvised Music series in Hollywood, CA. In May 2003, harpist Susan Allen premiered his Piling Sand – Piling Stone, a 90-minute work for solo harp and 6-minute delay loop, at the Roy O. Disney Hall. André co-founded the artist collective OXO in Brooklyn, NY in 2003 and founded Ensemble Ordinature in Vancouver in 2004 and has since served as its artistic director. His work has been presented by performers and ensembles in Canada and the US including Motion Ensemble, New Brunswick; Lost Dog New Musik Ensemble, New York; OXO Ensemble, Brooklyn; New Century Players, Valencia; cellist Jessica Catron and harpist Susan Allen, among others. Recently, one movement (60 minutes) of his 12 hour ‘Horaires: volume 1’ was premiered at Kenyon College in Ohio by members of the OXO ensemble, followed by a broadcast of the performance on Wandelweiser Web Radio. In April, André worked with Quatuor Bozzini on string quartets ‘Tammy Powder’ and ‘Forme uniche de continutia nello spazio’ after being selected to attend the Composer’s Kitchen in Montréal.
He is currently working on several commissions including an opera with librettist Louise Brissette, chamber music for ensembles in Canada, Germany and the US, as well as an upcoming release by Ensemble Ordinature. His compositions treat time as rubber bands. He lives in Vancouver.