Michael and Dawn also run the small edition label/shop entitled, Raw Special Effects (RSE) which is scheduled to release material by EVOL, Zbigniew Karkowski and Peter Rehberg to name a few. Past projects include: New No York (newnoyork.org) and New No York Soundsystem. In early July, Backbreakerneckbrace will be releasing their first full length DVD on the experimental, New York-based DVD label, Rebuild All Your Ruins. Michael Haleta also plays in the Baltimore band- WZT Hearts.
Backbreakerneckbrace EP6
"Revelation of 2001."
- Keith Rowe
The Wire
issue 215
Evol (Mego-Alku, Barcelona)Evol is a computer music unit formed in 1996 by Roc Jiménez de Cisneros and Anna Ramos in Barcelona. Their recordings and performances explore the many sides of digital noise and algorythmic composition. Harsh and bloody trips along the most extreme path of computer music, putting together sonic brutality, crazy algebra, fractal structures and a slight ironic touch.
Evol's musical outcome has been featured in top record labels such as Mego (Austria), Fals.ch (Austria), Scarcelight Recordings (USA), Diskono (UK), Antifrost (Greece), Lucky Kitchen (USA-Spain) and their own home label, Alku. The Barcelona duo has played in festivals, museums, galleries and club events all over Europe.
Immediate plans include a second US mini-tour, a couple of installations in England, some gigs in Asia (Thailand, Japan), and a few releases: a CD on US imprint Raw Special Effects, a split 12" on Edition, a piece for the rand()% compilation CD, and the long awaited Evol full-length release on Mego, "Magia Potagia".
"Furious, loud and mad music"
(Vital Weekly)
"...a razor sharp atonalism that follows its own sense of abandoned humor"
(Igloo Mag)
"Glistening, hard-edge and almost beautiful in its technological ferocity and abuse"
(Earshot Online)
"This is the here and now of computer music"
(Stephan Mathieu, after an Evol performance)
Guitarist Chris Welcome was born in 1980 and grew up in the Chicago area. Inspired by the local experimental music scene, he began playing improvised music at a young age. He has studied with Guitarists Frank Portolese and Vic Juris, as well as with musicians like Stanley Cowell, Ralph Bowen, and Ralph Peterson. He formed the group Modus in 2002, which released its first album on Optical Sounds Records in the spring of 2004. The album, titled Intersection, features nine of his original compositions. As a composer, Welcome is interested in mixing traditional forms and notations with, Aleatoric structures, and Free Improvisation. Some of his main influences are: Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, John Cage, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Thelonious Monk, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Cecil Taylor, George Van Epps, and Iannis Xenakis. Chris Welcome currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Blaise Siwula
Born 2-19-1950 in Detroit, I have been involved with the arts for most of my life. I began studying the alto sax at the age of 14 in middle school and have been playing/studying in varying capacities since. After periodic explorations of drama, poetry, architecture, visual art, a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. and a stint in Europe, I arrived in NYC in 1989 with my family and an alto sax. In the past 12 years I have been actively involved with the Downtown Scene: Amica Bunker, the Improviser's Collective and most recently the C.O.M.A. series at ABC No-Rio.
As a composer I have incorporated traditional musical scoring techniques with visual/graphical and performance oriented presentations. My philosophy being Sound/Vision/Concept are inter-related in life/art/creating and is communication.
Although primarily an alto saxophonist I play a number of reed, flute, percussion and string instruments at varying degrees of competency per composition requirements.
I have been honored to work with musicians and composers such as - Cecil Taylor, Tan Dun, Borah Bergman, Peter Kowald, William Parker, Joseph Daly, Lee Renaldo, Donald Miller, Dom Minasi, Evan Gallagher and David First as a performer or co-composer and as an improvising musician have found the line between composer and performer to be gray at best. http://home.earthlink.net/~bbrjsiwula/