PERFORMING ARTISTS

Since 2002 Los Angeles-based artist Neil Young aka Neil ‘Cloaca’ Young has been performing and recording as Bromp Treb, a nonsense onomatopoeia for the rattling windows of a jalopy with an overenthusiastic subwoofer. Young’s sounds and performances are the sputterings of refined dysfunction and eager uncertainty, coaxed from an improvised maze of crooked rhythms and tangled textures made from voice/body, synthesis, tapes, percussion. All with a faint whiff of physical comedy. Bromp Treb has many recordings in circulation and has performed at fancy-pants arts institutions and schools as well as countless basements, bars, lofts, living rooms, galleries and closets all around North America and Europe.

Ellen Phan is an artist working primarily in the field of computer music. Therapy-specific methodologies are employed as source material, modulated autonomously by para-sympathetic activity through a variety of processing and synthesis, with an aim to gather insight into cognitive and emotional states on a subconscious level. Hers is a distinctly hallucinatory psychoacoustic sound world aimed directly, with intent and focus, at the subconscious mind. She is based in Los Angeles.

Max Devereaux is an artist, musician and filmmaker born and raised in Milwaukee, WI and now based in Los Angeles, CA. Devereaux has created thousands of abstract paintings and drawings, and has exhibited his work in museums and art fairs. He has written, produced and recorded over 70 albums of original music in a wide variety of genres and performed live both solo and in larger ensembles in venues across the country. As a filmmaker, Devereaux has directed hundreds of experimental short films and exhibited in international film festivals. He recently produced and directed a feature length documentary, “Different Love” which is streaming on Troma Entertainment’s TromaNow App. Devereaux’s music is available for purchase on his “Max Devereaux Archive” bandcamp page. He is currently recording new material and preparing for his first tour of Japan in the fall.

Hen of the Woods is the noise project of Los Angeles-based musician Clementine Wink. Raised in Berwyn and inoculated with a DIY work ethic in the Chicago punk scene(s) of the 2010s, she draws inspiration from sources as disparate as musique concrète, surrealism, disco, Catholicism, hip hop, psychiatry, and the Youth International Party. Since 2017, Hen of the Woods (named for the edible mushroom Grifola frondosa) has utilized an ever-growing variety of sounds including guitar, no-input mixing board, cello, and audio samples. Listeners are encouraged to think about the nature(s) of sound as a physical, social, and potentially spiritual occurrence.

Insufficient Despair is Ryan Gan, a noise/experimental music artist based in Torrance. Centered in no-input mixing, storytelling, and voice, Gan is influenced by feedback innovators Nakamura Toshimaru and David Tudor as well as the local Los Angeles Noise scene. He has organized and performed group exhibitions at Coaxial Arts and Torrance Art Museum and as well as performed at soundpedro, The Handbag Factory, Santa Ana Noise Fest, Club Blob Tub, The Beatnik Lounge, and Suspirum Art Space. Insufficient Despair will also be performing at this year’s 2024 High Desert Soundings