SOLO (I've started playing solo again recently and am really enjoying it. My solo guitar record will be finished and released on Resipiscent later in 2009.)
DOGSBODY (Music for a theater piece, Dogsbody, by playwright Erik Ehn (dean of theater at California Institute of the Arts), performed by Theater of Yugen.
CRUDE FORMS (Duo with trumpeter Liz Allbee, mangled songwriting and harsh sounds)
QWOK (a new collaborative trio with bassist Devin Hoff (Nels Cline Singers) and drummer Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers)). Extreme rock melded with collective improvisation.
POREST live band (Porest is Mark Gergis' project and features his middle eastern pop-influenced songwriting and his special sense of theater.)
JUS (open improvisation quartet led by Jacob Lindsay. Jacob Lindsay- clarinets/Ava Mendoza- guitar/Damon Smith- basses, laptop/Weasel Walter- drums)
Former member/sometime associate of:
MUTE SOCIALITE (a hyperkinetic avant-rock band with Moe! Staiano (ex-Sleepytime Gorilla Museum))
Bolivar Zoar Evangelista (Carla Bozulich) Pink Canoes
Performed and/or recorded with:
Carla Bozulich, members of Caroliner, J.A. Deane, Ben Goldberg, Phillip Greenlief, Devin Hoff (Nels Cline Singers), Henry Kaiser, Annette Krebs, Gino Robair, SF Sound, Damon Smith, Moe! Staiano (ex-Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers), Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE), Kenny Wollesen (Sex Mob), Theater of Yugen.
I've performed the music of/played in groups under the direction of Anthony Braxton, Tom Djll, Fred Frith, Malcolm Goldstein, Butch Morris, Jon Rose, John Shiurba, Weasel Walter, and Zachary Watkins.
Influences
Bo Diddley, Albert Ayler, Rapeman, Waylon Jennings, Mayhem, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Derek Bailey, Captain Beefheart, Annette Krebs, Maria Callas, Jimi Hendrix, D. Boon, Sonny Sharrock (Black Woman), Kanoko Nishi, Ben Wright, Chuck Berry,
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Julian Bream, Taku Sugimoto, Tatsuya Nakatani, Emperor, Marc Ribot (Saints), Franz Schubert, my cat,
David Tudor, Matt Ingalls, Darkthrone, Morton Feldman, Joe Colley, Otomo Yoshihide, Yuji Takahashi, Moe! Staiano, John Dikeman, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Ornette Coleman's Prime Time records, Iggy Pop/The Stooges, Skip James,
William Faulkner, Anton Chekhov, Antonin Artaud, Stan Brakhage, Anal Cunt, Tatsumi Hijikata, Min Tanaka, Carla Bozulich, The Geraldine Fibbers,
Reverend Gary Davis, Slayer, Joseph Spence, Charley Patton, John Fahey, Davy Graham, Paul Robeson, Nels Cline, Hound Dog Taylor,
Jimmie Rodgers, Kreator, Hank Williams Sr, Hank Snow, Roy Acuff, Bathory,
the Fugs, U.S. Maple, Arab on Radar, Dog Faced Hermans, Crass, Keiji Haino, walking, cooking, Nekromantik, The Happiness of the Katakaris, trying to remember to breathe when i play guitar, Ray Charles, Nigerian dwarf goats, Miroslav Tadic, Betty Davis (miles' ex-wife, not the actress), Miles Davis, Ike and Tina Turner, Mick Barr, music that transcends its genre
Sounds Like
here i am with Mute Socialite
Here I am with QUOK (Devin Hoff- bass, Weasel Walter- drums)
And here i am with the Porest band. our first show.
Mute Socialite "More Popular Than Presidents and Generals"
This debut album by my main band, Mute Socialite, is released through Dephine Knormal Musik, Moe! Staiano's label. The 43+ minute full-length CD features 12 dynamic and hyperkinetic songs, including the cover version of Massacre's 'Killing Time'. Jolting, hocketing rhythms, atonal surf riffs, and blackened salsa grooves combine to create a singular brutal, polyrhythmic spasmathon. Please visit www.myspace.com/mutesocialite to listen!
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--------------------------------- JUS
released on Balance Point Acoustics
Lindsay/Mendoza/Smith/Walter
Jacob Lindsay - Ab, Bb, Bass & Contrabass Clarinets
Ava Mendoza - Guitar
Damon Smith - 7 String Ergo Bass, lloopp
Weasel Walter - Percussion
Each person approaches their instrument from the perspective of being sound generators. The musicians are not interested in imitation, but rather exploring the possibilities of how different each component can be in relation to each other at any given moment. This is a highly subjective and intuitive process which shifts rapidly and/or radically from second to second.
THE FURIOUS HARPY- with QWOK (Mendoza/HoffWalter). live at the Ivy Room. written by Mendoza.
THE INVITATION- with/by Crude Forms (Mendoza/Allbee). live on KUSF.
FUNHOUSE- by The Stooges. this was at a benefit for Leonard Peltier that i played as part of Mike Watt's band. me- guitar, Devin Hoff- upright bass, Mike Watt- electric bass, and Vijay Anderson- drums. toward the beginning of the song a fellow grabbed the mic from watt and started singing the wrong Stooges song!-- "Loose". watt eventually recovered the mic and continued with "Funhouse".
EXCERPT OF LIVE SOLO SET- live at Totally Intense Fractal Mindgaze Hut.
TENNESSEE WALTZ- written by Redd Stewart/Pee Wee King. arranged by Mendoza. recorded by The Norman Conquest.
I'M SO GLAD- originally recorded by Skip James. arranged by Mendoza. there are also some Joseph Spence riffs floating around in this one. recorded by The Norman Conquest.
GOODNIGHT, IRENE- written by Gussie L. Davis, popularized by Leadbelly. arranged by Mendoza. recorded by The Norman Conquest.
VIOLET SMITH- with/by Mute Socialite (Mendoza/Staiano/Karim/Dunkleman). recorded at Polymorph Studios.
TO THE LARYNX! METASTASIS- by Mendoza. this is a tape/fixed media piece I did a few years back.
**MY NUTS AND BOLTS BIO**
I am a guitar player/composer in Oakland, CA. I have played in a wide variety of ensemble situations-- heavy, weird rock/avant jazz/improvised music. Currently I'm focused on my solo work, which draws a lot from early country and blues tunes, reworked (mangled?) in my own way. In any context I tend to tread a wobbly line between melodicism, atonality and sonic abstraction. Both solo and in groups I like to develop specific tunes/riffs/compositional ideas, and then throw musical monkey wrenches into them live, forcing them to self-destruct and collide with free improvisation. I am an extremely curious person and love a lot of very different sorts of music.
I've played guitar at the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels Austria, at the High Mayhem Festival in Santa Fe, NM in 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2007, at Jazz em Agosto in Lisbon 2009, and at the Stone curated by Fred Frith.
My electronic compositions have been played at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2005 and 2006, and at the Women's Electroacoustic Listening Room 2005.
i am band mate with bolivar mary clare now and i came back to visit your sound world!
you reminds me of my teenager idol steve vai - not for music - and i can't say why! ...sorry if it sounds stupid for you, but it is nice feeling with me!
you better keep me up there too or i'll send metronome to sit on your face and suffocate you to death. and tremolo will come and lick your toes slowly down to the bones and say "yummm!"
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