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Gregg Kowalsky of Kranky Records
Ben Bracken from Oakland, Californi

9pm at Fairchild Chapel

GREGG KOWALSKY resides in Oakland, California where he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. Kowalsky’s compositions range from drone and noise pieces to meditative psychedelia, which are highly influenced by the thick, humid air of South Florida where Gregg lived for most of his life. After his debut album, Through the Cardial Window (Kranky), Gregg started working with cassette tapes, sine oscillators, mixer feedback, contact mics, etc... His recent series of Tape Chants explores the acoustics where the performances occur by setting up cassette players around the space, using only the cassette players' speakers for amplification. Throughout the piece, Gregg moves around the space adjusting the amplitude of the players as a live mix. The first incarnation of Tape Chants was released in 2007 called Tape Chants A Million (Rootstrata).

Kowalsky has had the opportunity to perform throughout Europe and the United States over the past several years. He participated in festivals such as WDR’s SoundArt-Köln Festival, Sonar, OFFF (Online Flash-Film Festival) and The Nursery Summer Festival in Sweden. His recordings have released on Kranky, Rootstrata, Kning Disk, Nosordo, Ruralfaune and others. He has composed for dance, sound installations, film and acoustic ensembles.

Sun Circle with Greg Davis and Zach Wallace
Bird Show from Chicago, Illinois
Emeralds Cleveland's drone-sound

10pm at Fairchild Chapel

SUN CIRCLE is the duo of Greg Davis and Zach Wallace. Psychoacoustic minimalism meets psychedelic maximalism. Ecstatic high volume drones, long form trance musics and peace noise. Bowed strings, voices, organs, percussion, home-made and world instruments. Greg Davis lives in Burlington, Vermont. He has played shows all over the world with many different people and has released solo and collaborative albums on many different labels, including Carpark Records and Kranky. Zach Wallace lives in Swan Valley, Montana. He performs solo, with Memorize the Sky and Sun Circle and has played with people ranging from Tony Conrad to Anthony Braxton.

Discography:
Sun Circle CDr (Lichen Records - Jan 2007 - LP reissue in Dec 2008)
Sun Circle / Wind-Up Bird Tour Cassette (Lichen Records - Feb 2007 - LP reissue on Music Fellowship in Dec 2008)
Sun Circle / Eleh Split LP (Important Records - March 2008)
Sun Circle / Pregnant Moon Split Cassette (Nu-New Age Tapes - June 2008)
Sun Circle Tour Cassette (Lichen Records - Dec 2008)

nmperign from Boston, Mass.
Trauma with Chris Riggs and Ben Hall
Sam Goldberg mesmerizing guitar drone
Walter Carson from Lexington, KY
Fluxmonkey/J. Guy Laughlin duo

9pm at Fairchild Chapel

NMPERIGN is Greg Kelley and Bhob Rainey from Boston, Massachusetts. Nmperign has been hailed the world over as the leading purveyors of whatever that strange thing they do is. Their palette of sounds makes laptops seem as flexible as doorbells, and their precise but wildly unpredictable improvisations would have you at the edge of your seat if you weren't so afraid of the noise you would make getting there. Fierce and fragile, lush and fractured, nmperign is tough to pin down and all the better for it.

BHOB RAINEY’s music has become a model in the world of experimental sound. He is the founder of both nmperign (with trumpeter Greg Kelley) and the BSC, which he also directs. Collaborations with musicians such as Ralf Wehowsky, Le Quan Ninh, Günter Müller, and Lionel Marchetti, dancers Nicole Bindler and Yukiko Nakamura, and filmmakers Loren Boyer, Harvey Benschoter, and William Pisarri highlight Rainey’s broad experience and outline a complex body of work that continues to expand and surprise. His music occupies a charged space between synthetic and organic sound, bringing forth improbable sensual and narrative experiences through virtuosic extended techniques, homemade synths and sound processors, found recordings, and a kind of living silence that is apt to wreak havoc with the perception of time.

GREG KELLEY (b. 1973, Boston) began studying trumpet in 1983. He attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore from 1991 to 1995, where in addition to studying the Conservatory curriculum, he also immersed himself in a deep study of avant-garde and experimental music, eventually coming to the conclusion that his musical focus lay outside of the academic environment. After his studies, Kelley moved back to his native Massachusetts and quickly insinuated himself into the local avant-garde circles and soon commenced a period of intense travel and collaboration, bringing him across the United States, throughout Europe, Japan and South America. He has recorded over 40 albums and despite a more limited travel schedule, he still manages to play in a number of groups including Nmperign (as abstract improvisatory duo and as horn section for ex-Galaxie 500-ers Damon & Naomi), Heathen Shame, Cold Bleak Heat, the Life Partners, the Eagles of Hair Metal, and the BSC, among others. Other collaborators have included Jandek, Keiji Haino, Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Anthony Braxton, Kevin Drumm, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Joe McPhee, and Lionel Marchetti.

Carlos Giffoni from Brooklyn, New York
Emeralds from Cleveland, Ohio

9:30pm at Fairchild Chapel

The CARLOS GIFFONI sound can be described as psychedelic electronics for the new era of death and destruction hope music. He is a Venezuelan artist who resides in the New York City area since the year 2000, applying feedback systems, modular manipulation, rewired electronic instruments, analog and digital synthesis to the composition of electronic music pieces, as well as improvising live with local and international renown musicians. Carlos remains very active performing live in New York and in a number of tours and festivals in the US, South America, Europe and Japan. He is the curator of the No Fun Fest, a yearly event in Brooklyn bringing together a wide variety of international experimental musicians. He is also a member of No Wave/Noise/Rock trio Monotract.

John Wiese from Los Angeles, California
Aaron Dilloway from Oberlin, Ohio
Skin Graft from Cleveland, Ohio
Andrei Popozuda from Oberlin, Ohio

10pm at Fairchild Chapel

JOHN WIESE is an artist and composer from Los Angeles, California. His ongoing projects include LHD and Sissy Spacek, with plenty of freelance work with many artists as diverse as Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Dave Phillips, Smegma, Kevin Drumm, Cattle Decapitation, and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). He has toured extensively throughout the world, covering Europe, Scandinavia and Australia as a member of Sunn O))), the UK as part of the Free Noise tour (a tentet including Evan Parker, C. Spencer Yeh, Yellow Swans, etc.), the United States alongside Wolf Eyes, and recently performed in the 52nd Venice Biennale with artist Nico Vascellari.

SKIN GRAFT brings the noise.

ANDREI POPOZUDA is the greatest living composer in the world? Who knows what he'll be doing this time.

The New Monuments
Christopher Riggs

9pm at Fairchild Chapel

THE NEW MONUMENTS is a collaboration between saxophonist Don Dietrich, violinist C. Spencer Yeh and percussionist Ben Hall.

DON DIETRICH is a saxophonist and founding member of New York City based improvisational group, Borbetomagus. Borbetomagus formed in 1979 when Dietrichjoined with saxophonist Jim Sauter and electric guitarist Donald Miller. Their aggressive music has been described as "a huge, overpowering, take-no-prisoners mass of sound" by Byron Coley.

While the core trio listed above has been responsible for most of Borbetomagus's music, they have collaborated with Swiss circuit bending duo Voice Crack, Dutch cellist Tristan Honsinger, German double-bassist Peter Kowald, and others. In 2006, they recorded a collaborative album with Hijokaidan live at the Festival de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Canada, and in 2007 their long out-of-print cassette Live In Allentown was released on CD. Sauter and Dietrich have also recorded a duo CD, and a collaborative CD with Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore.

Borbetomagus are considered widely influential on the Japanese noise music scene, as demonstrated by the re-release of their limited Live At Inroads cassette on CD by the Japanese label P.S.F. Records, as well as having a CD released by Osaka-based noise label Alchemy Records. They have been influential on many American rock, free jazz, and noise musicians, such as Sonic Youth, Pelt, Thomas Ankersmit, and Kevin Drumm.

C. SPENCER YEH was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in 1980, studied radio/television/film at Northwestern University, and is now based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeh is active both as a solo and ensemble artist, as well as with his primary 'organized sound' project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh has focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound organizer/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of sound, but the gestural qualities as well.

Yeh has performed alongside and collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups including Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, The New Humans with Vito Acconci, Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano, John Wiese, Aaron Dilloway, John Olson, Amy Granat, Jutta Koether, LaDonna Smith, Carlos Giffoni, Okkyung Lee, Atsuhiro Ito, Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, JP Feliciano, Rafael Toral, Rhys Chatham's Guitar Trio All-Stars, Damo Suzuki's Network, and many others, and has performed across the U.S.A. and Europe in a variety of settings and festivals. Most recently he participated in the 24 Hour Drone People project in Stockholm, alongside artists such as CM Von Hauswolff, Mika Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, BJ Nilsen, Hildur Gudnadottir, and Mark Wastell. He has also had visual art and video works presented internationally.

BEN HALL is a percussionist and member of Detroit, Michigan improv-noise project Graaveyards with John Olson and Hans Buetow. Hall and Buetow also collaborate with Chris Riggs under the name Trauma, and with Nate Wooley under the name Mêlée, and release music under the Brokenresearch imprint.

CHRIS RIGGS is, well...