• Paul Metzger
A virtuoso on a 23 string banjo he built himself, Metzger’s Idiosyncratic & deeply original long form improvisations at times bring to mind American primitive guitar, the sarod of Hindustani music, or the Chinese Erhu. But refracted through his singular musical mind he creates a sonic universe all his own. Metzger’s “home made” aesthetic puts him alongside DIY mavericks like Eugene Chadbourne and his electric rake, and Charlie Nothing and his dingulators, but Metzger also posses a penchant to extract every possible sound out of an instrument that is reminiscent of the exhaustive instrumental explorations of Derek Baily. His many releases over the years have garnered high praise and helped establish him as a central voice in the world of Avant-Garde & Experimental Folk. Metzger creates a unique music evocative of some magical forgotten age, but simultaneously one deeply rooted in the eternal present when fingers touch strings.“…Metzger’s banjo and guitar contain multitudes. Suspended between past and future, honouring the tradition while hijacking it, listening for its voice while revelling in its inarticulacies; this is how the thing sings. And the song, in the obsessive extensions of Metzger’s instruments, truly has no ending.” – The Wirehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQAPrbDY0qshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa0Z9z6SsSk

https://paulmetzger.net/

• John Saint Pelvyn
Guitarist, therminist, singer, and player of some species of dismantled electrified folk, John Saint Pelvyn is on tour this fall with his new solo release A Clerical Error in Shasta County Shouldn’t have to Ruin a Saturday Night from Seeland/Electro Motive Records. An affinity for the likes of John Fahey, Loren Mazzacane-Connors, and Sandy Bull can be heard here, but the comparisons quickly fall away as one takes in this ambidextrous musical sensibility. He will sing otherworldly vocal duets with his theremin while simultaneously accompanying himself fingerpicking, or will throw modulated feedback tones across otherwise inviting harmonic landscapes based on blues & folk motifs, overshadowing them with clouds of squelch that loom like an approaching post-noise squall, but that ultimately swell and punctuate more like the tone clusters of Henry Cowell or the lyrical saxophone of Frank Lowe.

“When wandering the stage singing into the F-holes of his electric arch top bringing forth arpeggios of feedback, or waving the neck of his guitar in the vicinity of a howling theremin, indeed, he seems to be playing the very air itself.” – Electro Motive

https://midheaven.com/item/a-clerical-error-in-shasta-county-shouldnt-have-to-ruin-a-saturday-night-by-saintpelvyn-john

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNN8Wkk5WPA

https://vimeo.com/174954482

• SKINCAGE

Tucson’s own! Skincage is a one-man noise/ambient/looping project in studio and live incarnations. Recordings are typically the result of meticulous studio work but when I play live I explore the moment with whatever hardware and chance materials I can use.

• Steven Matheson
Steven Matheson is a filmaker working at the borders of both documentary and fictional narrative forms, exploring the ways that the “everyday” can be re-framed and opened up as terrain for fictional re-invention, aesthetic experimentation and social criticism. His film work has been exhibited extensively internationally, at such venues as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the ICA in London, and Amsterdam’s World Wide Video Festival.

• Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel
This absurdist, microscopic film noir follows the activities of an underground network of ill people, desperate to create alternative methods of self-care in a world where natural resources are disappearing. While examining the meaning of health, disease, and well-being in the post-industrial world, Apple Grown In Wind Tunnel imagines the development of a culture at the margins, linked by illicit radio broadcasts, toxic waste sites, the highway, and ultimately by the overwhelming desire to find a cure.