PERFORMING ARTISTS

Phog Masheeen is a sound art/video collective from Costa Mesa an Joshua Tree, California that focuses on using aerophones, idiophones and electronics for performance and sound design. Audio portions are accompanied by live mixed video.

Francene Kaplan and Mark Soden Jr. constitute the phog masheeen core performers. Home-brew instruments, common objects, narrative elements and extended techniques involving dry ice are common features of Phog Masheeen performances.

The works of Phog Masheeen have been presented at:
the Boise Creative and Improvised Music Festival, Boise ID; Sonic Circuits, Washington DC; Electro-Music, Philadelphia, PA; Santa Ana Noise Festival, Santa Ana CA; Norcal Noisefest, Sacramento, CA; Wonder Valley Experimental Festival, Wonder Valley, CA; Spring Reverb, San Diego, CA; Outsound New Music Summit, San Francisco, CA; 8 Bit noise art @ Leadway, Chicago, Il; Zoom 2, Torrance, CA; Jawbone Canyon IV, Mojave, CA; Dung Mummy VI, Apple Valley, CA; Los Angeles Downtown Film Festival; The Soundwalk, Long Beach, CA; The Orange County Fair, Costa Mesa, CA; the Long Beach Pump opening night party Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs, CA.

Ethan Marks is an experimental trumpet player and producer based in Los Angeles. He is interested in the collision between body and instrument, the instrument-as-interface, and the physical manifestations of acoustic phenomenon. Much of the sounds he explores are similarly physical, subtle, and often otherwise overlooked. His work is usually improvised, is sometimes silly, and has involved sundry preparations like feedback, video, noise, household objects, power tools, and plundered recordings.

Marks is active within the LA experimental music community as a performer and producer, and he frequently collaborates with many of its members and organizations. Between 2022–2024, he directed a DIY noise series, Sounds Poetic, in the heart of downtown LA, and he currently co-directs High Desert Soundings, in Wonder Valley, outside of Joshua Tree National Park. He has also performed at the Getty, LACMA, MOCA, Walt Disney Concert Hall, REDCAT, the Los Angeles Theatre, Automata, Coaxial, the Mortuary, rec center, Betalevel, Art Share L.A., Highways Performance Space, and Santa Monica Public Library, among others.

In addition to his work in LA, Marks has presented internationally at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, dotolim, the Darmstadt Fereinkurse für Neue Musik, and the International Society for Improvised Music 2016 Conference in Guelph, Canada. Marks holds degrees in trumpet performance from California Institute of the Arts (MFA 2017) and The University of Texas at Austin (BM 2013).

When not playing the trumpet and producing shows, Ethan can be found in the video rooms of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, reading scores and operating supertitles for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Brent Vallefuoco is a guitarist, improviser, and composer based in Long Beach, California. Using pedals and extended techniques, he is influenced by improvisers like Sonny Sharrock, Derek Bailey, and Keiji Haino as well as rock experimentalists like Kevin Shields and Nick Reinhart. As a composer, he has explored genres as varied as minimalism, noise, electroacoustic music, field recordings, sound collage, math rock, shoegaze, and progressive rock. Vallefuoco has played at Departure of Music Venues, Que Sera, Tomorrow Today Books, RASP, and the Brown Building, as well as at High Desert Soundings in 2024. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Woodwind Skill share (LAWWSS), a "non-hierarchical woodwind learning effort", with which he has performed at Leroy's, Human Resources, Chez Max et Dorothea, The Sardine, and Primetime Pub, as well as Other Places Art Fair. 

Simon Ray (born 1982 in Sydney, Australia) has been working publically in sound-based performance and recording since 2015. Focusing largely on acoustic and electronic feedback, Ray primarily uses self-built instruments ranging from resonating drums and robotic percussion to effects units, modular synthesizers, and modified video game controllers.

He has performed and recorded in such groups as Panto Collapsar, TSSSR, Aporrheta, and Pun, collaborated with numerous artists including Dr. Pete Larson, Tina Havelock Stevens, Leith Campbell, Cyrus Pireh, and Ben Miller, and performed solo electronics as Piffle. Ray’s most recent releases are I Keep Your Secrets for Fender Rhodes, drums, Holly+, and feedback membranes, and a collaboration with Kern Haug and Louis Cohen of Los Angeles Office of Improvisation.

After more than a decade in Detroit, Ray now lives and works in Southern California.

Insufficient Despair is Ryan Gan (b. 1976 Chicago, Illinois), a noise/experimental music artist based in Torrance, California. Centered in no-input mixing, storytelling, and voice, Gan is influenced by feedback innovators Nakamura Toshimaru and David Tudor as well as the Los Angeles Noise scene. He has booked shows and ran sound at Coaxial Arts and the Torrance Art Museum. He has performed at The Handbag Factory, Club Blob Tub, The Beatnik Lounge, Susprium Art Space and the festivals High Desert Soundings, soundpedro, Wonder Valley Experimental, Santa Ana Noise Fest, and CalArts Experiments in Electronic Sound.