EXOTIC BOULDERS

Johannes Bergmark amplified found objects
Damian Bisciglia amplified found and modified objects, electronics
Joseph Hammer real-time tape loops, electronics
Mitchell Brown analog electronics

Exotic Boulders came out of the mail contact between Bergmark and Bisciglia (connected through Adam Bohman in London). When Bergmark had a solo tour on the US West Coast in 2005, Bisciglia put Bergmark in touch with his collaborators in Erotic Boulders, Brown and Hammer for a concert at the Open Gate Concert Series at Eagle Rock Cultural Community Center in Los Angeles, CA. Bisciglia very rarely plays in public, but the next year he made one of those rare exceptions for the premiere of Exotic Boulders, an expansion of the other group with Bergmark, after some recording sessions in Brown's home studio. The pictures below are taken at that occasion.

Johannes Bergmark is an improviser, electro-acoustic music and text-sound composer, sound poet, writer, piano technician and surrealist. He plays improvised and live electronic music for invented instruments of his own design, selected objects, the musical saw, toys, voice and electronics. He has toured internationally and collaborated with other artists worldwide, made sound sculptures, interactive sound installations and taught and lectured. In some settings he has also acted, danced, used objects or done jester tricks. Bergmark was residing in Los Angeles in 2006 but otherwise lives in Szczecin, Poland and Stockholm, Sweden, and was active in the organization for radical and experimental art Fylkingen (Stockholm), at the electronic music studio EMS and in the Surrealist Group in Stockholm. Currently his main focus is the development of different multi-disciplinary works with Anna Bergmark.

bergmark.org

Mitchell Brown (left in this picture) often takes cues of focused listening from the developmentally disabled children he has assisted daily since '95 at a special education school in Glendale. In some of the children, the reduced capability to interact with others allows them to flourish internally through self-stimulation of the senses in a solipsistic manner. Brown doubles as Professor Cantaloupe while DJ-ing on KXLU on Wednesday nights for a children's show, The Kids Are Alright, and Glossolalia, a sound-art show. He runs the Melon Expander record label, supporting humble hermits working in the field of electronic, electro-acoustic and various head musics, new and archival.  

www.myspace.com/magneticbrown www.melonexpander.com

Joseph Hammer (right in this picture), a sound artist from Los Angeles, has actively created experimental works since 1980. His practice draws on the complexities of the process of listening and playing, reflecting on the role of the audience versus the performer, and uses music as it influences our notion of time, memory and intimacy as the basis for improvisation and abstraction. As a member of the trio Solid Eye, Hammer has performed widely (including a one month tour of Japan) and is an influential contributor to the Los Angeles underground sound community. The analog tape loop is his magic carpet, marrying sound fragments in ferric oxide.

www.josephhammer.com