Sunday Dec.2 * 8pm * $10

Sandy Ewen is a sound artist, visual artist and architect who has recently relocated to NYC from Houston, TX. Ewen’s audio practice focuses on extended guitar techniques, improvisation, graphic scores and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her unique approach to guitar incorporates a wide array of implements – railroad spikes, sidewalk chalk, threaded bolts, steel wool and other items become an arsenal of abstraction. Ewen has worked extensively with film makers, dancers, poets and musicians to create films, audio recording, sound interventions and performance art. Ewen’s musical collaborations include trio Etched in the Eye, duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs, the trio Garden medium, and ongoing collaborations with percussionist Weasel Walter and bassist Damon Smith. For nearly ten years, Ewen has been the leader of an all-female large ensemble. The ensemble conceptualizes and performs sound and performance art, utilizing graphic and text based scores and improvisational constraints. The ensemble performed with an amplified bathtub at Diverse Works in 2016, and performed a suite of installation-specific compositions for Francis Alÿs’ Fabiola Project at the Menil. Sandy has spent much of 2017 touring, performing solo sets and in collaboration with Steve Jansen (tapes and electronics) and Maria Chavez (turntables) around Europe. In years past, Ewen has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Rowe, Lydia Lunch and many others, and has performed and recorded with Jaap Blonk, Henry Kaiser and more. In 2014 she performed at San Francisco’s 13th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, and she has made several appearances at Austin’s annual No Idea Festival.

Jeff Carey (Baltimore) makes hardcore digital music with a joystick, a gamer keypad, and an array of strobe lights. Computer based synthesis, noise, and improvisation combined with a no-safety-net aspect of gestural control makes his music totally physical and visceral.

"He's acting on raw instinct here - he refuses the clinical approach to programming software or composing music, and strives to throw himself bodily at his machines, replacing all mechanical moving parts with human flesh, blood, and bone. In pursuit of this all-organic goal, virtually everything else is jettisoned, starting with recognisable notes or melody." -Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector

Layne Garrett is an improvising musician and instrument builder based in Washington DC. 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 more recently as a founding member and curator for Rhizome DC. He leads instrument building and sound exploration workshops and camps for kids at various educational institutions around town. He has travelled to play at events like High Zero in Baltimore, XFest in Massachusetts, Voice of the Valley Noise Rally in West Virginia, H-O-T Series of Improvised Music and Dance in Philadelphia, and Frantasia Festival of Out Music and Arts in Maine. Other activities have included facilitating a large-scale tape-loop intervention in Rock Creek Park, constructing participatory installations for the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music and for the DC Listening Lounge's annual Sound Scene event (including the past 3 years at the Hirshhorn Museum), and building a playable gong-map of the USA out of found car metal. In reference to a particular large freestanding sound structure he built, a collaborator commented: "man i would really love to play that big baby for 12 hours straight it is obviously a meditation key."