June 15, 2007
visuals by Marge
DONKEY: They come, riding fog, thirsty mules. A new breed with eyes on their arms, moving like hungry hunters, not yet poised to sleep. Inspecting valleys, terrain shifts, boasting blades and breathing machines, with ivory handles, and sharp edges, performing mid-air flips in such far-flung territories as California, the Pacific Northwest, New York, Japan and Mexico. Donkey are LA synth player Hans Fjellestad and NYC sound manipulator Damon Holzborn, building intensive noise structures for over 15 years. "El Burro" is set to release a new live cd recorded at The Stone in NYC... coming Spring 07 on Accretions Records.
"Fjellestad and Holzborn create a dense, festering tropical sound texture... a compound sonic miasma reminiscent of the bubbling inventive density of Matmos and the psychotic drawl emerging from the bottom of a Frank Zappa cheeseburger." - The Wire
"Noisy, occasionally brutal, this is not a Merzbow-esque assault. There is pace, tension and most of all invention." - All-Music Guide
"Donkey veer from the heady extremes of pure adrenaline noise to the more cerebral and chin stroking intellectual exercise that is improvisation at its most inventive." - Acid Attack Music
"A new sonic horizon, and booga to the "Oh, electronic music! It's so cold! So unfeeling! Waah!" crowd, the excitement that the interchange of creativity and challenge these two are engaged in fairly leaps into your ear." - Signal to Noise
"Leaping between towers of abstraction, dragging note clusters over cruelly sharp rough terrain, Donkey mess around in the margins of an ever-playful train of sonic events." - Metamorphic Journeyman
Los Angeles musician and filmmaker Hans Fjellestad tours and records extensively as a solo artist and in collaboration with numerous players on the experimental music scene in well over a dozen countries. An "innovative musician" (All About Jazz) and "mad scientist improviser" (IDJ), 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). A classically trained pianist, these days Hans concocts most of his unbridled sound messes with analog synths and vacuum tubes.
Damon Holzborn is an improviser and composer working primarily with electronics. His performances make the familiar unrecognizable, manipulating sound sources such as guitar and field recordings with custom instruments, untraditional effects and interactive processes. Currently pursuing his doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University, Holzborn has presented his work in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, South Africa and Japan and has collaborated with many innovative musicians and dancers.
CHIC NERVE: Rebecca Mills is a sound artist based in Washington, DC who uses found sounds and samples of live instrumentation to create laptop compositions under the name Chic Nerve. She comprises one third of the avant-rock band The Caution Curves, described by The Sound Projector as "a single-minded trip into mild dementia that is totally engaging". The band’s unique approach to sound has garnered critical recognition by sources such as The Wire and The Washington Post. Rebecca also plays clarinet in the avant-jazz horn-and-percussion ensemble Gestures, and documents aural experiments and oddities through the label Initiated Eye Recordings. Recently she collaborated with dancers Jane Jerardi and Ginger Wagg on the performance installation piece Façade, and composed a live mix from an original score by Audrey Chen for performances of Daniel Burkholder’s piece Together/Apart.
MENOIR (Jeff Bechtel) uses a variety of experimental software, instruments and interface electronics for real time performances. The level of complexity of this setup pretty much insures the pieces couldn't ever be played the same way twice. The pieces use live synthesized and prerecorded sonic elements that are triggered and manipulated in real time through a large variety of processes. The musical style incorporates many different aspects of electronic music, but doesn't rely too heavily on any of them. If any classification could be used, the word 'abstract' would precede it...
