11/22/23
Doors 7pm, Music 8pm
$10-15 sliding scale

A night of ambient and experimental elctronic music featuring:

Dustin Wong is a highly inventive guitarist whose fluid, playful compositions make heavy usage of loop and delay pedals. Initially known for his work with Baltimore-based noise rock groups Ecstatic Sunshine and Ponytail during the 2000s, he released several acclaimed solo albums throughout the following decade, including 2013's Mediation of Ecstatic Energy and 2018's Fluid World Building 101 with Shaman Bambu, which reflected the increasing use of electronics in his music. He also embarked on a fruitful collaboration with Japanese pop musician Takako Minekawa that began with the playful experiments of 2013's Toropical Circle and extended to improvised ambient pieces such as 2019's Kannazuki. His work during the 2020s has included the gleeful post-minimalism of Perpetual Morphosis (2023), in addition to collaborations with Brin and Patrick Shiroishi. (via allmusic)

Saapato is the musical project of upstate NY based multi-instrumentalist Brendan Principato. Focused on the intersection of ecology and music Saaapto most recently returned from an artist residency with the Alaska State Park Service just outside of Juneau Alaska recording whale and bird migrations. In 2022, Saapato was in residency with the National Park Service on Fire Island's National Seashore. Saapato's work aims to blend wildlife-centric field recordings with more musical elements in an attempt to have people reconsider their place within the natural world. His fourth full length record and first with famed-ambient-label Aural Canyon, "Somewhere Else", releases November 3rd. It's an album that attempts to depict a series of intangible yet intimately personal psychic spaces that live inside all of our heads; foggy rooms from our childhoods, familiar smells, mis-rememberings, dreams, seasons, and routines all blurring together to become our own continuous mental perception of “now.”

James Bernard is a California-based sound artist and audio engineer whose three decades in music have yielded some of the most notable ambient electronic works of our era, both as a solo artist and across an array of collaborations. With extensive experience as a product specialist for the likes of Korg, Propellerhead and Spectrasonics, he approaches his creations with a unique depth of technological prowess, suffusing every piece with well-crafted texture and rich tonality.

Bernard became obsessed by the sounds of the burgeoning video game industry of the 1980s and a fervent desire to understand the inner workings of their formulation. Though his early education was centered on trumpet and piano, and some of his first sessions behind the recording desk were for local hardcore and cover bands, he was turned on to circuits and synthesis by a friend who was a lead sound designer at Korg. A concurrent discovery of rave culture, Aphex Twin, The Future Sound of Londonand the exploratory second side of David Bowie’s Low LP enriched a rapidly expanding perspective, and his first works took shape.

The landmark début, Atmospherics (Rising High Records, 1994), placed Bernard in the upper echelon of producers during the initial golden age of cerebral electronic composition. Its journey through spaced-out synth layers and disembodied vocal découpage landed with confident force, and many of its motifs and methods have been extrapolated and explored throughout the prolific discography that followed, leaving distinct sonic fingerprints on each entry.

With his considerable base of knowledge, and an evolving process born of intuition and improvisation, Bernard primarily uses standard and modular analog synths, TB-303 bass sequencer and – more recently – six-string bass guitar for its particular warmth and range. Adorned by a stable of effects and reverb, his output runs a gamut from the celestial to the terrestrial, all of it imbued with careful pacing and melodic mastery. Highlights include Atwater (A Strangely Isolated Place, 2019), Fragments(Past Inside the Present, 2019) and the acid-tinged a sliver of silver (self-released, 2022).

Bernard has also brought his aesthetics to a variety of collaborations – most notably with his wife Cynthia Bernard (aka marine eyes) under their moniker awakened souls, as well as on the album Departing in Descent with bvdub (Past Inside the Present, 2022) and efforts alongside The Album Leaf, zakè, Markus Guentner, and Mixmaster Mike (of Beastie Boys fame). In this spirit he likewise lends a keen and educated ear to his mastering work as owner and chief engineer at Ambient Mountain House, which specializes in the kind of subtlety and nuance that many studios often lack.

When out in the wider world, Bernard savors the benevolent and communal nature of live performance, and honors his lifelong love of sea otters with regular head-clearing expeditions to Otter Cove in Monterey. 🦦🦦
jamesbernard.bandcamp.com
ambientmountainhouse.com

Mask wearing is highly recommended indoors. N/95, KN/95, surgical masks suggested and provided.