HzCollective Presents: MegaHz Festival 2008 - a two day showcase of experimental and avant-garde performances, featuring local, regional and international artists. We invite both the Charlottesville and Richmond communities to participate and attend both days of an event that we hope will bring our cities closer together.
::::MegaHz (Day One)::::Saturday October 11, 2008::::
The Bridge
205 Monticello Road
Charlottesville, VA 22902
(434) 984-5669
3:30pm - 11:00pm
$5
::::Graham and Cleek (Charlottesville)
[ http://www.myspace.com/grahamforbesdezarn ]
::::Big Drum in the Sky (Harrisonburg)
[ http://www.myspace.com/bigdrumskyreligion ]
::::Gerrit Roessler (Charlottesville/Germany)
[ http://www.myspace.com/gerritroessler ]
::::New Loft (Richmond)
[ http://www.myspace.com/newloft ]
::::Richard Brewster (Charlottesville)
[ http://pugix.com/ ]
::::Ben Miller (New Jersey)
[ http://www.benmiller.info/ ]
::::Khate vs. Feralcatscan (Newport News)
[ http://www.khate.org/ ]
[ http://www.feralcatscan.com/ ]
::::Pinko Communoids (Charlottesville)
[ http://www.pinkos.info/ ]
::::Flutter (Charlottesville/Richmond)
[ http://www.myspace.com/bitterpigeonmusic ]
[ http://www.myspace.com/rhythmantis ]
[ http://www.myspace.com/ghapherybivinsdavis ]
::::Matthew Burtner (Charlottesville)
[ http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~mburtner/ ]
::::Doofgoblin (Charlottesville)
[ http://ww.doofgoblin.com/ ]
::::Hal McGee + Ironing (Florida) + Projexorcism (NC)
[ http://www.halmcgee.com/ ]
[ http://www.myspace.com/ironing ]
[ http://projexorcism.com ]
::::Preliminary Saturation (Netherlands)
[ http://www.myspace.com/presat ]
::::MegaHz (Day Two)::::Sunday October 12, 2008::::
Gallery 5
200 W. Marshall St
Richmond, VA 23220
(804) 317-1938
5:00pm - 11:00pm
$5
::::Clifford Schwing (Richmond)
[ http://myspace.com/cliffordschwing ]
::::Birds in the Meadow (Richmond)
[ http://myspace.com/birdsinthemeadow ]
::::Anduin + Noah Saval (Richmond)[ http://www.smtgltd.com/anduinore ]
::::Peter Traub (Charlottesville)
[ http://www.fictive.org/ ]
::::Zach Mason (Maryland)
[ http://www.softpieces.com/ ]
::::Stephen Vitello + Molly Berg + Nic Desantis (visuals) (Richmond)
[ http://www.stephenvitiello.com/ ]
::::Pinko Communoids + Chiachi Chang (Charlottesville/DC/Taiwan)
[ http://www.pinkos.info/ ]
[ http://imagecaffeine.net/ ]
::::Embarker (Philadelphia)
[ http://www.sendhelp.org/embarker ]
::::Blacksonn (Michigan)
[ http://www.myspace.com/oblacksonno ]
::::Cristal + Stephen Vitiello (Richmond)
[ http://www.flingcosound.com/ ]
::::Rick Gribenas (Pittsburgh)
[ http://www.gribenas.com/ ]
::::Caustic Castle + Myo + Jason Talbot (Richmond/Baltimore)
[ http://myspace.com/causticastle ]
[ http://myosound.com ][ http://myspace.com/jasontalbot ]
HzCollective is a Virginia based experimental, noise & improvised music collective serving to strengthen the bond between the Richmond and Charlottesville creative arts communities. The collective fosters a local network of experimental artists and enthusiasts by organizing performances and workshops involving local and touring artists from around world.
Artist Biographies:
Cleek and Graham are growing fall vegetables and their record player plays too fast. Neither of the two are strings. They like you a lot. Thank you.
The Big Drum In The Sky Religion was born and bred in a briar patch in the valley of the seething Shenandoah, Breadbasket of the Confederacy, left breast of the Goddess, in the Moon of the Ram, 2007 c.e. and consists of a shifting line-up of sketchy individuals with varying motives who are unified by an appreciation of spontaneous action over/against lifeless composition and considers its primary, but not only, purpose to be the awakening of all and sundry sentient beings to the chaotic beauty of the Infinite/Eternal Absolute Mystery that lies under, hangs over and permeates through the great and terrible reality we call "home". Dilute! Dilute! OK! World without end, Amen! The Big Drum In The Sky Religion is not a religion.
In his most recent solo project Gerrit Roessler explores improvisation with found sounds, traditional instruments and electronicmanipulation.He uses a variety of sound sources like a bass guitar, a synthesizer, a drum pad and a microphone. The sounds are organized with the help of loops, delays and electronic effects. The sets are completely improvised, without prepared loops or patterns. The idea is to avoid the sound of an electronic one-man-band but to still embrace tonality and traditional concepts of rhythms as much as their opposites. Strong influences are European electronic music in the spirit of Bugge Wesseltoft and Sidsel Endresen as well as the Art Rock of the 1970ies and 80ies particularly Tangerine Dream and Grobschnitt. Gerrit's strong Jazz background shines through very frequently as well.
Gerrit Roessler was born in Unna, Germany in 1977. At the age of 6 he started playing classical piano and took up Jazz at the age of 17. Ever since he has played in numerous bands and worked with artists from Europe and the US such as Melvin Butler, Matthias Schubert, Angelika Niscier, Jan Klare, Peter Eisold, John Salerno and Matthias Bergmann. He also studied with artists like Billy Drewes, Fred Frith, Hubert Nuss, Kenny Werner, Dietmar Fuhr, Michael Abene and others. He attended the Universities of Kassel and Dortmund, Germany, and spend time abroad in Green Bay, Chicago, and Charlottesville. In 2007 he received a Master in Music and English from the University of Dortmund and is currently enrolled in the German Studies PhD Program at the University of Virginia.
New Loft: Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, playing an aggressive blend of improvised music with a 20 year history of troubled and adventurous aesthetics. The members of New Loft have collaborated, recorded, or performed with a wide variety of musicians including Bern Nix, Gregg Ginn, John Medeski, the Technical Jed, Bio Ritmo, Ululating Mummies, UYA, Hotel X, Matt Heyner, Pat Best, Byard Lancaster, Ian Davis, and Jason Bivins.
Richard Brewster: I had a job building audio and video synthesis equipment in the nineteen seventies at the Experimental TV Center in Binghamton, NY. There, I worked with video engineer David Jones and was influenced by prominent video artists, such as Nam June Paik, who counseled me not to go to music school, Walter Wright, who bequeathed me his collection of Electronotes, and Peer Bode, who introduced me to his father, Harald Bode, chief engineer of Moog. I played bass guitar in a new wave rock band, The Fluks. From 1980 to 1983 I made electronic music using a modular synthesizer I had designed and built. Beginning in 2002 I again took up modular building. These days I create music with my own studio analog modular. I have a web site that supports the DIY synthesizer community. My day job is in computer software development, but I do not use computers to make music.As a guitarist / saxophonist, Ben Miller has explored psychedelic songwriting,freeform-based improvisation and notated scores in quasi-tonality. Miller was raised in the late 60's, Ann Arbor, MI having since formed and collaborated with various groups focusing solely on original music.
Khate likens herself to a bee, collecting the pollens of those audio flowers that capture her interest, performing a digestive-cum-alchemical transformation on them, and emitting the resultant musical honey while creating new hybrid species of noise through her inadvertant cross-pollinating. Sometimes she plays live. It makes her nauseous beforehand, but she's usually happy to have done so afterwards. To bring home both the figurative and literal bacon, she works as an AV technician at her local public library. She can field strip and re-shell a VHS tape in about two minutes, run sound and lights for a troupe of belly dancers performing in the library theatre, and tell you where just about any non-fiction book might be to the hundreths place in the Dewey Decimal System. When not at the library or making noise, she enjoys cooking with obscene quantities of butter, making found-object sculpture, and controlling the entropy created by her cat Fitz. And yes, when writing about herself, she prefers the third person.
Feralcatscan is science fiction, a romantic walk through a dystopian wonderland, that strange array of lights hovering in the twilight, the mad scientist caressing peculiar mechanical finery, the sound of countless worlds falling into oblivion. Using mostly obsolete and reverse engineered technology, this mercurial music ensemble connects seemingly different disciplines of art, science, and spirituality, with a delicate application the absurd. The result is that of chaos surrendering, regrouping, and then revolting.
Flutter features local improvisers Matt Wyatt, Bob Holub and Jimmy Ghaphery focusing on highly textural, mainly acoustic sound and tonal improvisations.
Hal McGee has been making homemade recordings of his own experimental, electronic, industrial and noise music since September 1981.In Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 1980s McGee recorded several tapes of experimental industrial avant pop with Debbie Jaffe, as a duo under the name Viscera. Viscera appeared on countless international compilations. In the 1980s Hal McGee recorded about two dozen tapes of power electronics, industrial, and experimental electronic music under the name Dog As Master. A track by Dog As Master appeared on the first Dry Lungs compilation.In the mid-1980s Jaffe and McGee operated the Cause And Effect International Distribution Service, which distributed homemade experimental music tapes from artists all over the world: U.S.A., Canada, England, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Norway, The Netherlands and others. C&E sold, traded and gave away more than 5,000 tapes in three years from 1984-87.
Cause And Effect was also a label. In addition to their own tapes, Jaffe and McGee released recordings by Nurse With Wound, Merzbow, Borbetomagus, Controlled Bleeding, F/i, D.D.A.A., Negativland, John Duncan, Blackhouse, Haters, Vox Populi, Algebra Suicide, Jabon, Human Flesh, and more. C&E also released four compilations. In 1988 Hal McGee moved to Florida, and within a few months began a new project: Electronic Cottage Magazine, which took "an inside look at The Hometaper Phenomenon, Cassette Culture and Electronic & Experimental Music". He published six issues of the magazine from 1989 to 1991, and sold something like 5,000 magazines.
Hal McGee has done a lot of solo recordings, but has also collaborated extensively with other recording artists: Mental Anguish, Ironing, Brian Noring (EHI, 360 Sound), Homogenized Terrestrials, Charles Rice Goff III (Turkey Makes Me Sleepy), L.G. Mair, Tom Sutter, Emil Hagstrom (Cock ESP), Post Prandials, Dave Wright (Not Breathing), Big City Orchestra, If, Bwana, NOMUZIC, Busyditch, Bret Hart, and others. In 1998 McGee produced the Tape Heads International Compilation Series, eight 90-minute cassettes of recordings by more than 200 audio artists from all over Planet Earth. Over the last 27 years Hal McGee has made recordings in a wide variety of experimental music subgenres and styles: electronic, free improvisation, space music, electroacoustic, tape cut-ups, tape collage, industrial, power electronics, deconstructed rock, spoken word, "noise", ambient, abstract sound sculpture and painting, etc.
Ironing uses the recontextualized sounds of microcassettes, tapes, radio, and records in a sound collage format, ranging from noise to danceable moments. He has been actively recording and touring since 2005 and runs the Hymns bedroom label.
Doofgoblin: Like an unscratchable itch or an uneasy memory, the sonic escapades of Doofgoblin are a thorn in the side of would-be easy listeners. Rural thematics penetrate a thicket of electronic techno-noise; tight orchestration wrestles with digital catastrophe; moments of anarchy and humor arise and disappear. Meanwhile, the dysfunctional relationship between noise and time plays itself out over a tortured, if grassy, field.
Though active since 1998 in various online electronica communities, Doofgoblin has always resisted the consumerism of the gearhead, as well as the product-minded critics who complain that his songs are "too short," preferring instead to subvert expectations about harmonic structure and the nature of time through a compositional process that renders almost everything obsolete as soon as it is completed.In recent years, Doofgoblin has had the opportunity to deliver to expecting audiences (including event-conspirators Machinedrum, Jason Forrest, Doormouse, I Am Robot and Proud, Xanopticon) as well as startling/initiating unsuspecting audiences (with Of Montreal, Why?/Anticon). With defunct label Unschooled Records, Doofgoblin released two full-length albums, an EP, 7", and contibuted to a few various artist projects. He has contributed to compilations for Terminal Dusk Records (with Rusuden, Wisp, Ochre, Enduser, and others), and his remixes appear on EPs by Captain Ahab and Books On Tape. His latest release, a split EP with North Carolina-based A Drop In Silence, was self-released in spring 2007. However, he has been quite the hermit since then.
Spawned in 1999, Projexorcism was begun when Ed Cooper acquired two Bell & Howell
2592 auto-shred projectors and 200 educational films. By 2003 Projexorcism had
defined a unique flavor of experimental hyperactive expanded cinema & has since been
pushing the boundaries of weirdness. Currently Projexorcism is using a quad 16mm
projector array suspended from a lighting pole - the projectors are synchronized with a 4-
channel sound-actuated variable speed lighting controller. The projected images are split,
inverted and bent using silver reflective CD-R's and Fresnel lenses. In May 2005 The
Catawba Council for the Arts awarded Projexorcism an Innovative Project Grant to add a
Film-to-Video Regurgitation Array to their quad 16mm setup. Unbound from the
linearity of film, the 16mm setup is now augmented with real-time video capture,
manipulation & projection devices.
The film is manipulated using various techniques to create new contradictory action
sequences and dialogue. Films are chosen to reflect relevant, irreverent or nonsensical
themes – black history, presidents, Gila monsters. Film often breaks or passes through
the projection gate in a manner inconsistent with film preservation, much to the dismay
of Jedi film preservationists. The kinetic swinging and shaking of the film tree will warp
reels and melt film - CDs fall to the ground - the shriek of optical sound feedback as dust
clogs the sound bulb - the randomly choreographed accidents of brilliance & stupidity – a
space armada of keyboards scoring a photonic overture.
Projexorcism is joined by a rotating cast of musicians which include Tom Devlin, Faze
Exile, Richard Jeffries, Chad Davis, Ben Teeter, Steve Burnette, Joe Sample and Rick
Gallagher. Projexorcism has projected with US Christmas, Rommanis Motte, The Steve
Mackay Ensemble, Feralcatscan, Temple of Bon Matin, Khate, Hellblinki, Weedeater,
Sikhara & more.
Clifford Schwing (b 1985) Uses the saxophone as a strarting point, base of operations; it is the window that he works through, not the instrument he plays. While previous perfomances have found him using the saxophone in what can be called a "traditional" way, his recent work has been focused on the use of the saxophone as a sound object rather than a musical instrument. This has led to the use of pure feedback created either by the saxophone or the room which the microphone occupies. His recent work wishes to decentralize the self so as to allow a feedback between "performer", "audience", and the actual physical space which they occupy. He has collaborated/performed with: Robert Bryant, Kenneth Yates (Caustic Castle), Bill Porter (Big Eats & Munch Crew), Jason Talbot, Jimmy Ghaphery, Tim Harding, Pat Lawrence.
Martin McCavitt (improvised electronics), who creates layers of tight and calculated bursts of frantic glitching squeals and squalls that move from one end of the tonal spectrum to the next in a heartbeat.
Anduin is Jonathan Lee, Richmond VA based electronic artist and member of experimental trio Souvenir's Young America. Forever Waiting, his newest release of dark ambient kaleidoscopic bliss, is out now on SMTG Limited. He is currently working on two new releases and touring / collaborating with Norwegian artist Svarte Greiner. Lee has also collaborated with Sweden's Jasper TX, England's Xela, Noah Saval, Caustic Castle, and Zan Hoffman.
Peter Traub is a composer and net artist currently in the Composition Ph.D. program at UVA. He received his Master's in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College in 1999. He has composed numerous works of electronic music and several internet-based sound installations. Between Dartmouth and UVA, Peter lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for five years. While a holding a day job as a software engineer at various startups, he also moonlighted as a visiting researcher/composer at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. He is currently working on his dissertation which is a series of performances and installations exploring sound in physical and imaginary space. In his spare time Peter also contributes interviews and posts to the Networked_Music_Review (http://transition.turbulence.org/networked_music_review/).
Michael Schutz is currently the Director of Percussion Studies at Longwood University and is active as a performer and adjudicator in the Central Virginia area. Solo performances include a guest appearance at the University of Virginia, Goucher College, Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association State Convention, and the 2006 Alvin Lucier Festival. Active in the promotion of new music, he was selected to co-premier internationally renowned Judith Shatin's Time To Burn at PASIC 2006. A prize-winning researcher, Michael has published on topics ranging from the role of visual information in music perception to the computer aided analysis of post-tonal music, presenting his research at universities around the world including the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK) the University of Bologna (Italy), and Concordia University (Montreal, Canada).
Zach Mason, in 1990, at the age of 13, began making music with a bass guitar, cassette tapes, and assorted electronics; performing throughout the DC area and self-releasing numerous recordings in the years that followed. Synths and computers slowly moved from accessorries to central musical tools, allowing for new sounds and techniques. Using a digital synthesizer, a small mixer patched to allow feedback, and a reverb/delay pedal, Zach's current work seeks to join the organic nature of gestural performance with the utilitarian versatility of modular programming. Software environments Pure Data (Pd) and Max/MSP are emerging as new instances in this pattern of improvisational work with homemade tools.
Stephen Vitiello an electronic musician and sound artist transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. He has composed music for independent films, experimental video projects and art installations, collaborating with such artists as Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler and Dara Birnbaum. In 1999 he was awarded a studio for six months on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center's Tower One, where he recorded the cracking noises of the building swaying under the stress of the winds after Hurricane Floyd. As an installation artist, he is particularly interested in the physical aspect of sound and its potential to define the form and atmosphere of a spatial environment." Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain catalog for the exhibition Ce qui arrive/Unknown Quantity, 2002
Pinko Communoids is an improvisational trio based in Charlottesville, Virginia. The trio consists of Carey Sargent, Kevin Parks, and Wendy Hsu. We create both free and structured improvisations using conventional instruments including guitars, accordions and percussion, found objects, circuits, microphones, and other electronics. We enjoy the quiet interplay of small sounds and often employ a restrained sonic palette of diverse timbres. Though we like occasional loud cathartic noisy workouts, we play at appropriate volumes and always invite our audience to savor our sounds without ear plugs. Our recent explorations have led us to investigate aspects of tuning and timbre and the relationship between the two. Since forming in 2006, Pinko Communoids have given over 30 performances both locally and abroad, including a tour of Taiwan's major cities in Summer 2007. We have been on various 804noise showcases, Sonic Circuits, Noise in the System, Technosonics, and various other concert series and recently helped curate a series entitled Audio January at The Bridge PAI, in Charlottesville VA. Our music has been featured on radio shows such as Noise Solution and Ghost Don't Walk, and at Harold Golen Gallery in Miami, FL.
Chia-chi Charlie Chang, born in Taipei, Taiwan and has lived in Virginia since 2000, is an image artist primarily working with the medium of photography. Inspired by the modern life, particularly the contrast between the urban and suburban lifestyle, sound, and music, she makes art that exudes a sense of the familiar while displaying a vague, uncertain, dreamlike visual experience, and evoking a hidden memory or a fragment of past experiences.
EMBARKER is the project of Michael Roy Barker. EMBARKER uses homemade / modified electronics, circuit bent drum machines, modified effects pedals, and voice to create hyperkinetic ADHD infused music.MB plays or has played in Sharks With Wings, The George Steeltoe Ensemble, PIMA group, and Wet Cement. Michael has performed at the High Zero Festival in 2002, the International Noise Conference (Miami) 2006/07, the 2008 Bent Festival in Los Angeles. He has also studied at STEIM (NL) 2007 and been artist in Residence at the Experimental TV Center in Owego NY. He also has a profound obsession with found media where he has released a CDr of found answering machine tapes on Heresee Records and self released DVDr compilation of found video.
Cristal came together in a Richmond, Virginia kitchen over a batch of sangria in 2001. The band members, Jimmy Anthony, Bobby Donne (who is also a member of Labradford), and Greg Darden use a variety of electronic devices, sources, and recording locations to improvise and/or compose. The result can be beautiful, relaxing, chaotic or challenging, often all at once. Volume is critical.
"The threesome create tracks that mix drone-landscaping with surgical penis methods in a way that is sure to make you salute. By turns lilting, dark and noisesome, this music feels like a sharp fingernail circling your navel slowly inside a tightly shuttered room. Just be careful you don't have anything in the way when they decide to slam the door shut. It might hurt." – Byron Coley, the Wire
Rick Gribenas (b.1977) is a sound and media artist working in Pittsburgh PA. He received his BFA from Edinboro University of PA in 1999 and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2006. He has exhibited and performed in major cities throughout the United States and internationally including solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and in New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, Copenhagen, Malmö, Salzburg as well as solo performance tours across the US and Scandinavia. He has also edited and published a book and audio CD titled Participatory Autonomy, which is distributed by Autonomedia. The book includes artists, scientists, curators and theorists, including a foreword from Fluxus scholar Hannah Higgins and contributions from Claire Pentecost, Jack Fisher, Sabrina Raaf, Christa Donner, Mark Hereld and others. Gribenas has received reviews in Art Forum, Art in America and Wire Magazine among others.
Gribenas is also a member of the sound ensemble Antennacle with noise pioneer Eric Wood, of Bastard Noise and Man is the Bastard as well as the multi-talented tactical media artist Nathan Martin. Antennacle has a full length release slated for release in late 2008 on Swedish label Deleted Art and tours planned for the US and Japan to support its release in 2009.
Caustic Castle is Kenneth Yates, also of the duo's Harm Stryker (w/ Constant Mauk) & Insects With Tits (w/ Chefkirk). Kenneth Yates utilizes the no-input mixing technique coupled with live processing using various filters and pedals. With his music usually comes an abstract visual fascination with architecture and is psyhogeographical effects on the human psyche. Inspired by past revolutionary art and social movements like DaDa & the Situationiste Internationale, he struggles to find a parallel between art, sound & social unrest, or just perhaps provide a sort of soundtrack to it all.
Myo is Cory Obrien, born 1980, a self taught hacker, computer musician, and electro-acoustic improviser who works with digitally processed voice and objects. Described by Vital Weekly as "louder, dirtier, gritty and angular, but still with ingredients of microsound." Collaborates with Kenneth Yates (as Never Work), Jeff Surak, video artist Metaphreaq, visual artist Jesse Hartgraves (as Clouds-Out).Living in Maryland.
Jason Talbot performs and records solo, modifying a single turntable with minimal preparations to create a cascading wall of noise and subtle, creaking musique concrete...
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