Our friends at Fire Museum Presents return to Studio 34 with an evening of experimental music to usher in the hot month of August:

Grex:

Karl Evangelista - guitar, voice, drums, samples, misc.

Rei Scampavia - synth, voice, drums, misc.

Grex is an art rock/experimental music duo based out of Oakland, California. In biological terms, a "grex" is an entity composed of several smaller organisms. Grex (the band) explores the meeting point between surreal songcraft and the dark outer reaches of experimental music. The group has been called an "otherworldly experience" (Eugene Weekly) and "true genre warping music" (KFJC), recalling at turns the ecstatic energy of John Coltrane, the electronic squall of Death Grips, and the lilting indie rock of Mitski.

Grex has performed at Myra Melford's New Frequnices Festival, The Switchboard Music Festival, The Sonic Circuits Festival (DC), and the United States of Asian America Festival, and organized multiple online Lockdown Festivals in the midst of the 2020-2021 coronavirus outbreak. The band has worked with Fred Frith, Tony Levin, Marshall Trammell (Black Spirituals), Scott Amendola (Nels Cline, TJ Kirk), and Asian Improv aRts, and Evangelista is an active improvising guitarist alongside the likes of Andrew Cyrille, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Oliver Lake, Ben Goldberg, Alexander Hawkins, and Trevor Watts.

Ashé Mystics:

The Ashé Mystics are Kevin Diehl, Julius Masri & Joshua Marquez. They create a world of sound with electronic circuitry, improv and percussive underpinnings.

Kevin Diehl is a Musician, Composer, Arts Organizer, Drummer, and Percussionist. Among his current projects is a new trio featuring Chad Taylor and Joe Chambers. Their eponymously titled debut record, Onilu, is due for release in Fall 2023. It features compositions by all three multi -instrumentalists. Onilu is a Yoruba word meaning “drummers.” Another project is Justice: The Vocal Works of Oliver Lake. A vocal trio joins his ensemble Sonic Liberation Front in performing the works of this widely acclaimed composer.

Julius Masri is a Philadelphia based multi instrumentalist, and performer/composer for the city's dance community at large. His music focuses on improvisatory methods and syncretic / linguistic exchanges within various musical languages including Jazz, Metal, AfroCuban, Experimental Noise, and Arabic music. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon, he moved to the States in 1990 and picked up drumming a year later. He studied with Philadelphia instructors Carl Mottola, Elaine Hoffman-Watts, and as an undergraduate at Bard College, with AACM's Thurman Barker, Richard Teitelbaum, and Joan Tower. Julius plays drums, circuit modified Casio keyboards, Oud, Kamancheh (aka Rabab, Spike Fiddle), and various other instruments.

Joshua Marquez is a Filipino-American composer and activist whose award-winning music explores the liminal space between tone and noise as a means to investigate the complexities and duality of Asian American identity. Searing a sonic imprint of cultural identity, his tranquil investigations of the noise spectrum represent the internal conflicts of multiculturalism and the struggles of alienation and assimilation through the fusion and fission of disparate timbres. Hailed as "cutting-edge" (The Gazette), "haunting" (The Daily Iowan), and "creepy" (Fanfare Magazine), Marquez's polemic deconstruction of sound is consumed by ever-evolving rituals of disintegrated perspectives from a postcolonial lens.

90eeze:

90eeze is a spiritual improvisor’s collaborative, described by The Midbrow as “a mixture of Flying Luttenbachers, John Zorn, Ascension-era John Coltrane influences, and maybe a little bit of Black MIDI. Consisting of guitar, drums/percussion, saxophone/flute, bass, and MIDI flute/programming, it was like nothing was off the table with this band.”

Alchemical, Transcendent, hoe out the soul...

90eeze was formed in early 2024 by Kyle Balles (drum/percussion) & Connor Eccles (guitar). Soon after Quinn Collins (bass) joined as the pervasive / constant 3rd member.

Other auxiliary/interchangeable members Kyle Press (sax), Pureply (electronics/midi flute), Paul Geiss (trumpet/electronics), Dan Kochersberger (sax).

Accessibility statement: Located on the 2nd floor up a steep flight of stairs. Ramp (also steep) in back available, please contact us for more information.

Contact the host of Grex, Ashé Mystics & 90eeze