High Mayhem Festival 2007 Performers

HIGH MAYHEM 7th ANNUAL Emerging Music and Arts Festival PERFORMERS and ARTISTS (as of August 15, 2007)

A. Barnhouse (Santa Fe) – acoustic bass, guitar, banjo, drums and percussion. Carlos Santistevan and Milton Villarrubia III formed A. Barnhouse when they realized they needed to eradicate their reliance on electricity and dispelled their infatuation with electronic sounds. Regressing themselves back to their acoustic roots, A. Barnhouse has elevated the potential of acoustic music and improvisation with their short, concise breed of American percussion and string music. A. Barnhouse is made up of Carlos Santistevan, Yozo Suzuki, Alex Neville, and Milton Villarrubia III.

Abacus (Santa Fe) – visuals. Abacus is a visual artist fascinated with the time-based photographic documentation of painting and sculpture displayed as installation. He is exhibited at Gallery Insekt, Mobius, Natural Light Studios, and Raven Door Studios. www.flickr.com/dolfinabacus

Aux Yeux Fermés (Santa Fe/Penasco) – sound and movement. Aux Yeax Fermes is the collaboration between Danielle Stech-Homsy (Rio en Medio) and Cohdi Harrell. Combining elements of voice, body, rope, and ukelele, these two experimentalists weave delicate metaphores and intricate subtleties into a dreamlike environment of sublime abstraction. Rio en Medio is the musical adventure of Brooklyn-based singer/ukulelist Danielle Stech-Homsy. A New Mexico native, Danielle was born into visions and questions. With a gay Syrian painter and a Ukrainian flamenco dancer for parents, peculiar circumstance and mysterious blessings were the norm, laying the foundation for the unusual artistic expression that would eventually come. Danielle's songwriting reflects a vast scope of influence from techno to traditional folk to early and contemporary classical, drawing on literature as well as music, from ancient to avant, and incorporating elements of chance. Danielle has performed and recorded with a wide variety of outstanding artists, including Vetiver, Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie, Tarantula A.D. (Priest Bird), Tim Fite, Patrick Wolf and Vashti Bunyan. In addition, she recently appeared at Englands All Tomorrows Parties Festival. http://www.myspace.com/daniellestechhomsy

Basement Films (Albuquerque) – film. Basement Films brings their full bag of tricks to the Bikanda space. Expect an eclectic showcase of short experimental film and video works, projectors (of all shapes and sizes) you can play with, performances by local projection artists, and a Cinemus Publicus--a venue to show your own work. Everyone is invited to play. www.basementfilms.org Cinemus Publicus accepts work the day of the event. Works must be no longer than 7 minutes and be presented on a DVD, DVTape, VHS Tape, 16mm reel, Super 8 reel. If you need us to accommodate other media let us know a week in advance by emailing...
info(at)basementfilms(dot)org.

Boulez’ Anthèmes 2 by CK Barlow and David Felberg (Albuquerque) – violins and electronics. David Felberg and CK Barlow will perform the Pierre Boulez piece Anthèms 2 for violin and electronics. It has been performed only one other time in New Mexico, and that was by CK and David at UNM in March 2007. The main feature is an incredibly virtuosic violin part played by David. The violin interacts with CK’s electronics. She has 239 precisely timed mouse clicks, each of which sets up a different patch that will respond uniquely to the violin input with both sampled violin sounds and digital effects. As far as we know, there is only one recording of this piece, and that is with Boulez himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Boulez

Bullseal (Santa Fe) – performance/music. The Arts and Sciences of Bull Seal! were imparted upon Damon Griffith at a very awkward age. After much confusion and denial, the artist finally gave articulation to these principles in Pittsburgh, PA during the wind storms of 1992. In 1993 The Bull Seal! Collective was begun. Over the resulting years, the face of Bull Seal! And it’s active elements would change and evolve from wacky Vaudeville performance troupe to monster “improvisensational avant-what-not rhythm-n-noise” band with an inconveniently large footprint. Withstanding changes in personnel, surges and declines of cultish popularity and various mental breakdowns within the group, the concept and principle always stayed the same; manipulation of the mechanics of social perceptive reality through the focus of will and character exploration. This process has come to involve nonsensical “poetry”, rhythm, abstract sound formations, heavy drums, and out of context imagery (live and projected).

BURNING BOOKS with the brilliant Dullards (Santa Fe) Michael Sumner's Between 5th & 6th was filmed in Super-8 out a car window in San Francisco in 1984. The rhythm of the film was determined by stop lights and the flow of traffic while driving around the block five-and-a-half times. The soundtrack, based on Melody Sumner Carnahan's story "Mona Lisa," was created in 2007 in collaboration with The brilliant Dullards, narrated by Alex Neville. Burning Books is an artist-run, weirdness-driven organization founded by writer Carnahan and artist Sumner, which produces books, films, posters, pamphlets, and audioworks. Sumner's work has been shown in the Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, Polyphonix International Festival, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition, and recently at MOV-iN Gallery (CSF). Carnahan has six books in print and has worked with artists and composers for two decades to present her writing off-the-page as "performance novels," soundtracks, audio-recordings, and intermedia installations. The brilliant Dullards is Alex Neville (acoustic guitar, banjo, electronics, voice), Chase Haynes (bass, trumpet, voice), Jeremy Bleich (electric guitar, melodica), and Milton Villarrubia III (drum set, bell, laptop). Formed in 2005 by Neville and Haynes, the current manifestation came together in the summer of 2006. They have performed in a wide variety of venues throughout New Mexico: with "Luminous Cabaret" at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, at the Santa Fe Beer and Nut Festival, the Historic Taos Inn, Club Alegria in Santa Fe. Their first release, The Defector, pushes the limits of traditional country music. It's an avant-country album, fusing contemporary composition with new instrumentation and chord structures.
http://www.burningbooks.org/
http://www.myspace.com/Dullardsbrilliantthe

I Pledge Allegiance… (Santa Fe/Penasco) – a Multimedia Aerial Commentary. I Pledge Allegiance… is a aerial chain piece with Allesandra Ogren and Kayo Muller.

bass, sax, drums. The Cleveland Trio is comprised of Joshua Smith (saxophones), Jeremy Bleich (bass), and Carmen Castaldi (drums). All have been playing together since 1997, pre-dating the inception of Smith and Bleich’s group, birth. Unlike birth, The Cleveland Trio has always played almost exclusively improvised music, literally a modern free-jazz group. The music is shaped and tempered by incredibly pure, deeply rooted jazz/improvised drumming of Castaldi. Now in his 50’s, Castaldi grew up with Joe Lovano, spending his late teens and early twenties playing experimental jazz. The jazz elements of the group’s music are bolstered by Smith’s long pas t and present participation in the jazz idiom. The music speaks for itself, stripped of the sensationalism which marks much of birth’s music, The Cleveland Trio plays music which builds momentum through patient and attentive interaction, with the fire, effortlessness, and slow build of experienced improvisors.

D Numbers (Santa Fe) – bass, guitar, drums, electronics, looping. D Numbers is made up of Ben Wright (guitar, loops, beats, synth, mix and effects), Paul “Feathericci” Groetzinger (samples, drums), and Brian Mayhall (bass, loops, rhodes, clavinet ). D Numbers is the life’s work of these three close friends living in Santa Fe, NM. Influenced by pioneers of post-rock and electronica such as tortoise, mouse on mars, fourtet, and sigur ros, but geared more towards live performance than studio production, D Numbers has created a completely unique and exciting sound all their own. D Numbers continues to let their style evolve organically while always maintaining focus on the spontaneity and presence of the live musical experience. Sampling and looping the sounds of their instruments “on the fly”, D Numbers creates multilayered compositions rich in texture and depth. Eschewing the mini-discs, sequencers and laptops so entrenched in modern music, D Numbers weaves intricate and electrifying instrumental soundscapes in real time so that the audience feels viscerally involved with and connected to the process of creation. Exploring a wide range of grooves and feels ranging from ambient and melancholy to aggressive and funky, they take their listeners on an ecstatic journey in sound and dance. D Numbers looks forward to seeing you.

The Deirdre Bond Show (Santa Fe) – audience participation and fire. Deirdre Morris is a movement and theatrical performer, choreographer, director, producer, administrator, circus performer, teacher, and all around awesome gal. She has been cultivating and performing her own unique form of "whole theatre" over the last fifteen years. Deirdre is a current member of High Mayhem Emerging Arts where she has performed her solo work and helped to produce other performing artists for the past six years. She is a recent member of Wise Fool New Mexico were she administrated, taught, directed and performed with the company. She is currently working on the third installment of her three part series "Ashes" to be presented in the spring of 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It would be really obnoxious to say anything else, so…..if you want to contact her try, deirdre@highmayhem.org and check out the high mayhem website in the spring for more info.

Ecotone Physical Theater (Albuquerque) – digital technology, amusing costumery, movement. Ecotone Physical Theater is an Albuquerque-based performance ensemble that mines the veins of improvisation: sonic, kinesthetic, textual, visual. This diverse ensemble consists of musicians, dancers, and actors. Each performance is utterly unique, a blend of slapstick dramedy, angular sound and gesture, inscrutable ritual, rife with potential for hap and mishap. Ecotone Physical Theater makes extensive use of computers and other digital technology, amusing costumery and props. Semi-willing audience participation and a little backyard voodoo to transmogrify both environment and performers to the point where, really, anything can happen.

Ēsthöm (Santa Fe) – guitar, live loops, electronics, vocals, projection. Ēsthöm is a collaboration of Roland Ostheim and Vadi Grontis. They produce sounds and visuals with angelic overtones, with the clanging reds, blues, yellows and other hues over bottles and cans. They use circuits, strings, brass, and vibrations in this artistic exploration/love collaboration. They are actively involved with 7ate9, We Drew Lightning and Simulate Sensual. http://www.myspace.com/esthom

GK duo (Chicago, IL) – drums, bass, electronics, tapes. Matthew Golombisky (bass, melodica, likable noise, live sampling) and Quin Kirchner (drums, samples, melodica, tapes, toys) originally met in New Orleans. They began to play in groups such as QMRPlus, Grilly Briggs, Red Shift, The Hall Monitors, The Other Planets, and others. After Hurricane Katrina swept through, Golombisky went to Chicago and Kirchner to NYC, but then both ended up in Chicago. This project contains meter changing grooves to sound scapes and noise. They capture the audience immediately. www.myspace.com/gkduo

John Berndt (Baltimore, MD) – sax and more. John Berndt is a composer, improvising musician, and philosopher living in Baltimore. For the last two decades he has been among the most active experimental musicians and new music concert organizers on the East Coast, with a huge array of extremely varied collaborations and projects. Raised in the utopian/political/nonconformist international underground of the 80’s and involved with radical experimental music since before puberty, he went on to develop intense skills as an improviser, beginning in the 1990 with his association with his saxophone teacher, Jack Wright. He has always been devoted to exploration and expansion rather than the cultivation of a recognizable style. His music today ranges from freely improvised circular-breathing kaleidoscopes that recall North African music to the creation of strange new instruments and resulting idiomatic languages to pure electronic experiments with sonic illusions. He has collaborated extensively with other artists, including many of the most inspired and exotic musicians of the day: Jack Wright, Neil Feather, Kaffe Matthews, Joe McPhee, Eugene Chadbourne, Le Quan Nihn, Jaap Blonk, Bhob Rainey, Alessandro Bosetti, Audrey Chen, Toshi Makihara, Susan Alcorn, Lexi Mountain, and many others. He also founded the collectively run Red Room series and the High Zero Festival, which he co-directs to this day. http://www.johnberndt.org

Liquid Mandala (Arroyo Hondo) – movement, gestures, contact mics, chorus, amps. For the past 20 years Scott Moore has been driving curious ideas, running the red light at the intersection of action and object. The sonic fall-out of these performance circumstances is the consequence of corrupted resonate frequencies. In Brooklyn and Philadelphia Scott has helped found performance and street projects of the situationist tradition, and numerous solo actions anchored in the cycling energy of improvisation. Liquid Mandala is a sonic collaborative theatre creation spawned in the new synapse of a prior life in Brooklyn and recent life in Northern New Mexico. Formerly, this piece would evolve around a commencing gesture, folding actions and objects into a dance of bleeding senses, affecting both the physical and cerebral spaces. Repetitive gestures of work and love will supply the fundamental architecture of visual and aural landscape. The overall effect will be simple and visceral.

Loud Objects (New York City) – live soldering, circuit building, projections. Loud Objects performs live electronics. Their music sets are built in front of the audience on overhead projector from scratch with electonics and soldering irons. Their components are microprocessors (Atmel), a 3V battery and an audio-out jack. All the music is 1-bit and data is routed between the chips and to the audio-out. The beginnings of their sets are usually in silence as the preliminary circuit is constructed from scratch, live. One could say that a lot of the idea is about demystifying the pretentious and magical aura around a lot of live electronic music performances with people pressing buttons on computers once and a while and all sorts of sound coming out. They’re trying to pair it down to its bare minimum, actually constructing a circuit onstage, wiring output pins to audio jacks, etc. And it’s all digital. There's not too much purely digital noise music out there, and the only time the Loud Objects becomes analogue is at the audio out jack. www.loudobjects.com

Mute Socialite (Oakland, CA) – drums, drums, guitar, bass. Mute Socialite was founded by drummer/percussionist Moe Staiano, ex-Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. They create music reminiscent of Devo filtered through a Slayer lens, only noisier. Mute Socialite is made up of Ava Mendoza (guitar), Alee Karim (bass), Moe! Staiano (drums, percussion, guitar) and Shayna Dunkleman (drums).

Noisefold (Santa Fe) – images, electronics. NoiseFold is a network performance group exploring A-Life, chaotic systems, intelligent noise and visual music. In this laptop duet the performers mix or breed 3D forms from a database of mathematic equations to create live audio-visual structures resembling fictional architectures and artificial organisms. The performers animate, coax, fold, bend and herd these audio-visual “organisms” by use of cameras, microphones, electro-magnetic and infrared sensors. The sound is synthesized directly from the form and movement of the image. The result is a visual music theater where “lifelike” avatars emerge, evolve and emit a startling array of chaotic rhythms, and shimmering sonic textures.

"The resulting vortices, radial planes, oblique spirals and cellular structures evoke images and sensations often associated with the direct stimulation of the optic nerve."

Novasak (Denver, CO) - Novasak is a sound project by Todd Novosad from Denver, CO. Todd started creating sounds influenced by future theories, more specifically with space exploration and new horizons. Today, more than 10 years later, there are added influences using the physical elements of LOUD sound, such that the listener is indirectly and involuntarily assaulted. Using homemade electronics and acoustic objects, he creates an open sound space that is both quiet and loud simultaneously. The sound has been described as harsh noise as well as ambient, but the real definition stands between the two. www.novasak.com

Page 27 (Denver, CO) – electronics, laptop, circuit bending. Page 27 is a noise/experimental group that has been active in Colorado since 1994. The membership has changed over the years to include many players. The current group consists of John Rasmussen, Ezra Nye, and John Gross. Utilizing computers, samplers, synthesizers, modified electronic toys, drum machines and effects pedals, they create an improvised sound collage ranging from harsh noise to ambient drones. www.page27.org

Playroom (Santa Fe/Albuquerque) – vibes, marimba, traps, cello, tuba, percussion. Playroom is a quartet that concentrates mostly on the low end terms of sonics, timbre, and volume. The group is comprised of three people with extensive experience playing scored music of all sorts (as well as improvisational music) and one die-hard improviser who has long harbored a secret desire to compose. It is a cooperative musical venture, made up of Joseph Sabella (vibes, marimba, percussion, drums), Katie Harlow (cello), Mark Weaver (tuba), and Dave Wayne (drums, percussion, vibes).

Re-Wired (Santa Fe) – The Late Severa Wires featuring J.A. “Dino” Dean and Molly Sturges, live sampling, vox, bass, drums, guitars, turntables, voice. Launched out of Santa Fe in 2001 with an approach of radical improvisation, The Late Severa Wires build collages of tomes around themes that, like virtual particles, vanish and reappear, each time as strange as they are familiar. For this year’s festival the Wires will be joined by J.A. “Dino” Deane on live sampling, as well as the majestically beautiful voice of Molly Stuges. A new expansion of possibilities, a new breath of fresh air and exploration. The Late Severa Wires is made up of Carlos Santistevan (bass), Yozo Suzuki (guitar), Mike Rowland (drums), and Shawn O’Neal (turntables).

Rrake (Santa Fe) – saxes, basses, drums, violin, voice, guitar, percussion. One of the best-received sets from the 2006 High Mayhem Festival, Rrake is Chris Jonas’ latest Santa Fe ensemble project. The music is a consequence of mixing composition, conduction, and improvisation via the superimposition of unlike blocks of rhythm and melody. The latest incarnation of Rrake adds much to last year’s project: new instruments, shifting transposable rhythms, layers of metric modulation and telescoping repeating cells. The resulting music is as crunchy as last year's version of the project, but with a higher level of complexity and conflicting layers.

TRAPS (Santa Fe) – drum sextet by Peter Breslin and guests. An improvised anti-drum engagement. Space. Movements ritualized. Drums turned inside out. Each percussionist focused on distinct statements emerging from exploding the conventional approach to the drums. Unexpected anti-rhythms resulting from the mass and shades of timbres six percussion rigs can evoke. This is not a drum battle.

Venerable Scroat (Albuquerque) – acoustic drums, analog feedback. The Venerable Scroat consists of Saul Rodgar (from Summon the Meteors), Ken Cornell (from Alchemical Burn) and Peter Conheim (from Negativland and Mono Pause). A trio which formed on May Day 2007, the group combines acoustic drums and tone triggers with analog feedback devices as constructed by the band members. No computers, no samplers. Cornell plays mixers wired in series for maximum feedback potential; Conheim plays “boopers” (feedback oscillators handmade with Negativland member The Weatherman). Anchored by Saul Rodgar’s spastic yet controlled percussion, the group improvises fields of cascading and rhythmic tonalities in a nearly all-analog domain.

WMD three (Santa Fe) – drums, keys, bass, electronics. WMD Three is made up of Dace Wayne (drums), Robert Muller (fender Rhodes, clavinet, organ, synth) and Matt Deason (electric bass, effects). The WMD Three is a brand new collaboration that provides a vehicle for jazzy, funky explorations involving bass, drums, and keyboards. They are aiming at a sound that is futuristic (in a pre-decayed, post-Apocalyptic, and messed up sense) and primitive (altruistic and positive while maintaining an always funky, greasy feel). By the same token, they are not afraid to make noise.