Black Dominia
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Black Dominia is a shifting freeform doom-jazz-psych collective from Northern VA |
Bushmeat Airways
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Bushmeat Airways is Thomas Stanley and Vincent Rado. Thomas Stanley is a founding member of MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND (MOM²), an electrophonic improvising ensemble. He is the co-author of an oral history of George Clinton and P-Funk and in 2014 published The Execution of Sun Ra, a book on the teachings of astro-kemetic jazz iconoclast Sun Ra. He is also the host of Bushmeat's Jam Session, a weekly excursion into sonic impossibility heard every Thursday on WPFW-FM. |
Caves Caverns
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Caves Caverns is Jruss, Mike, and JK from Richmond, VA |
Chester Hawkins
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CHESTER HAWKINS ( DC) has recorded and performed a wide range of experimental music since 1985. The best-known project was BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT, which began as an exercise in modern audio Dadaism (via musique concrete and tape-collage) and later expanded to embrace drone, krautrock, electronic psychedelia, brutal noise, and cinematic sound design: "deep and elegant trance states with a glaze of paranoid tension." |
Christopher S. Feltner
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Christopher S. Feltner is an experimentalist based in Strasburg, VA whose work includes solo and collaborative performances in music, sound, and film. Formerly Kingdom of Sharks, Feltner's newer works focus on live performance art. Feltner,a member of BRICKS and Arterial, is also a filmmaker and the author of "A Little Privacy, Please," a paperback photojournal of bathroom graffitti. |
Curanderos
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Curanderos is a Psychedelphia side project supergroup formed by members of the formidable Bardo Pond and experimental ensemble Kohoutek. The improvised journeys take you on a cosmic voyage through kosmiche, drone, noise, prog and free jazz. |
Echolalia
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Echolalia is ethereal soundscapes by NoVA staple Amber Leigh Dunleavy. Through the use of theremin and a rotating cast of sonic objects, Dunleavy creates somnambulant territories and textures that lead listeners from the ears to the ether.
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Free Soil
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Organize, resist, rise. War for profit, against our own citizens or against another country, is treason. Northern VA based ambient textures with guitar, electronics, and visuals.
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Geoff Wilt
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Geoff Wilt is a musician living in Silver Spring, Maryland. His recent work has focused on hardware modular synthesizers and acoustic instruments to create music blending the compositional and improvisational. |
Hallowed Bells
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Hallowed Bells is Philadelphia-based musicians Darian Scatton and Alison Stout: electronic songs-without-words and abstract soundscapes. |
Ian G. McColm
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Ian G. McColm is a multi-instrumentalist and composer residing in Alexandria, Virginia. He has performed nationally and internationally in a variety of ensembles including the drone/ambient duo Nagual, free-music trio Heart of the Ghost, and with an array of solo artists. |
jrnlr
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"A man in armor is his armor's slave." Depressive and vulnerable rhythmic noise. |
Kuschty Rye Ergot
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Kuschty Rye Ergot is long time DC improviser John Stanton's project. As a soloist, band leader, or as a member of the legendary Kohoutek, John's spontaneous aural conjurings have been a hit at every single Avant Fairfax festival. |
Layne Garrett
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Layne Garrett is an improvising musician and instrument builder based in Takoma Park, MD. He works with prepared guitars, found objects, and self-built instruments. He plays in the improvising duo Weed Tree with drummer Amanda Huron, as well as in regular and irregular collaborations with a spectrum of players from across the DC and Baltimore sound universe. He is an active promoter of the musical culture, hosting house shows for the past decade and recently as a founding member and curator for Rhizome DC. Attendees of the first AvantFairfax in 2009 may remember the opening act was played on a big sonic sculpture built by Layne Garrett. |
Little Howlin Wolf
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Little Howlin' Wolf is a formerly Chicago-based streed musician who sings and plays guitar, drums, harmonica, two saxophones, and a clarinet all at the same time. His performance at AvantFairfax 2010 was a huge crowd pleaser. Claims to fame include authoring the original "Bad to the Bone," providing the inspiration for the film Lone Wolf McQuade with his life story, and inventing breakdancing.He is a performer like no other and his discography is extensive, though many are sharpie labeled CDs. "I recorded this one for you, man."
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Luke Stewart
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LUKE STEWART has emerged as one of the most exciting young bassists on the improvised music scene on the east coast. Based in Washington, DC, he plays regularly in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and has toured in Europe. A member of the impressive Irreversible Entanglements, he has also gained considerable exposure playing with the James Brandon Lewis Trio and he leads or co-leads his own projects including Ancestral Duo with Jamal Moore and Heart of the Ghost with Ian McColm and Jarrett Gilgore. As a solo artist, he has composed a series of improvisational structures for upright bass and amplifier, utilizing the resonant qualities of the instrument to explore new sounds. As an organizer and advocate for the sonic arts, Luke has been extremely active at WPFW, CapitolBop, and RhizomeDC. |
Mark Fosson
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Mark Fosson is an American singer-songwriter and American Primitive guitarist who grew up in Kentucky and recorded on Thompkins Square and John Fahey's Takoma Records label in the late 1970s, though the Fahey recordings were not released until they were picked up by Drag City in 2006. In the late 1980s, Fosson played in the Bum Steers, a country-tinged group, eventually being invited to play the Grand Ol' Opry at the request of Porter Wagoner. Fosson's material also appeared on several soundtracks through the 1990s.
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Matta Gawa
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Matta Gawa is a NoVA duo that features Edward Ricart (Monotrope, Hyrokkin, New Atlantis) on guitar and Sam Lohman (36, Trio OOO, Cash Slave Clique, New Atlantis...) on drums. They play a unique blend of improvisational, pyschedelic avant-rock and free jazz. |
Mock Identity
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Mock Identity’s quartet of DC DIY and avant garde artists brings together Adriana-Lucia Cotes (Antonia), Jeff Barsky (Insect Factory), Josh Hoffman (Supersonic Piss) and ambient artist Nate Scheible. Cotes, a champion of the local scene who works to make space in it for artists of color and women, whispers and screams her disdain for physical and mental abusers. The post-punk sound is jagged, with sudden shifts in direction and tempo. If you’re looking for an entry into the local music scene, following Mock Identity and the work of its members is a decent place to start. |
Nathan Bowles Trio
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Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Jack Rose, Steve Gunn) is a former VA native now living in the Durham, North Carolina. His work, both as an accomplished solo artist and as a sought-after ensemble player , explores the rugged country between the poles of Appalachian old-time traditions and ecstatic, minimalist drone. Although his recent solo recordings prominently feature his virtuosic banjo, Bowles is also widely recognized as a masterful and versatile drummer, and he considers himself first and foremost a percussionist, with banjo as a natural extension of his percussive practice. |
Nice Breeze
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NICE BREEZE is a veteran three-piece from Washington, DC who stir up lo-fi, surf-tinged punk cuts that weave droning hooks with laconic, off-the-cuff vocals and take you for a buoyant ride on an ever-cresting wave inside the bonzai pipeline of your mind. Guitarist John Howard and drummer Martha Hamilton also play in the noisy noisy freeform act Plums, who helped kick off this concert series back in 2009. |
Pas Musique
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Pas Musique emerged from Brooklyn, New York in 1995 as a solo project of founder Robert L. Pepper and has since gone through many variations of experimental, electronic iterations. In 2018, Pas Musique remain as a four piece consisting of Jon V Worthley, Michael Durek, Jesse Fairbairn, and Robert Pepper, pursuing the musical elements of krautrock with electronic music undertones. |
Phobodeimos
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Phobodeimos is a troupe from Baltimore, MD comprised of Dan Conrad (Flute), Pony Payroll Bones (Violin), Jenny Moon Tucker (Saxophones, Percussion) and Eric Franklin (Theremin, Guitar). They participate in an immersion in drone, ecstasy, terror, trust, and journey to discovery. Bringing physical light on the ritual is Conrad's invention in projection, a whirling and sensitive turntable emitting various organic expressions- tamed at this time by Andrew Loughery.
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Phoenix Auto Group
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Phoenix Auto Group (Flag Day Recordings) is an ambient/textural/drone band from Virginia comprised of AvantFairfax veteran Stephen Palke, Raven Bauer Durham, James Wolf, and Will Thornton. Live performances frequently involve visual projections. |
Rat Bastard
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Rat Bastard is Frank Falestra of Miami Beach, FL. He is the founding force behind the International Noise Conference and the famed and feared Laundry Room Squelchers and is largely credited as the godfather of Miami noise. |
Sunburned Hand of the Man
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Sunburned Hand of the Man are an influential band from Massachusetts that formed in 1997 from the remnants of the Boston psychedelic punk trio Shit Spangled Banner. Sunburned Hand of the Man has an amorphous lineup, with composition and instrumentation potentially varying from gig to gig. They release records on Eclipse Records, Thurston Moore's label Ecstatic Peace!, as well as a number of smaller labels, and produce a great number of limited edition albums on CD-R via their own Manhand label. |
Tag Cloud
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Tag Cloud is the solo drone/experimental project of DC experimental music mainstay Chris Videll. The project started in 2010 as experiments with field recordings and has come to include kit electronics, analog and semi-modular synths, cheap keyboards, and occasional acoustic drone instruments and percussion. Influences include various minimalists, Krautrock, noise, all kinds of environmental sounds, and particularly the experimental scene in DC. Other projects include BLK TAG with James S. Adams (BLK w/Bear, Stylus) and Zschwishenzug with Gary Rouzer and Phong Tran (Halo Valley, The Shouts from the Sea). |
Thirteen Colonies
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Thirteen Colonies is the solo project of longtime DC musician Paul Joyner (PJB, The Deads, AfterMarket, Blair). |
Twig Harper
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Twig Harper is a founding member of the canonical experimental noise troupe Nautical Almanac and the legendary Baltimore noise house Tarantula Hill. Though Nautical Almanac no longer performs, Twig has been very active as both a performer and as a speaker and he runs Be Free Floating, a Baltimore company that puts people in sensory deprivation tanks. |
V2K
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V2K - voice to skull device - is a psychotronic torture device used for transmitting voices with low or high frequencies directly to targeted individuals. Voices can be for commands or harassments attacks that may look like the TI's own voice. V2K can also use to induce or manipulate dreams or to deprived TI sleeps. |
