RATSKIN RECORDS presents …..

The long awaited return of RATSKIN RECORDS Explastical Series

$5-20 / 7PM SHARP masks required / encouraged /

with live performances from…..

ZACHARY JAMES WATKINS

Zachary James Watkins studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. Zachary has received commissions from Cornish College of The Arts, The Microscores Project, the Beam Foundation, Somnubutone Radio Series free103point9.org, sfsound and the Seattle Chamber Players. His 2006 composition Suite for String Quartet was awarded the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for Composition and has subsequently been performed at the Labs 25th Anniversary Celebration, the Labor Sonor Series at Kule in Berlin Germany and in Seattle Wa, as part of the 2nd Annual Town Hall New Music Marathon featuring violist Eyvind Kang. Zachary has performed in numerous festivals across the United States, Mexico and Europe and his band Black Spirituals opened for pionering Drone Metal bandEarth during their 2015 European tour. In 2008, Zachary premiered a new multi-media work entitled Country Western as part of the Meridian Gallery's Composers in Performance Series that received grants from the The American Music Center and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. An excerpt of this piece is published on a compilation album entitled "The Harmonic Series" along side Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Theresa Wong Charles Curtis and Duane Pitre among others. Zachary designed the sound and composed music for the plays "I have loved Strangers" produced by Just Theatre, which listed "top ten of 2007" in the East Bay Express and the 8th Annual ReOrient Theatre Festival. His sound art work entitled Third Floor::Designed Obsolescence, "spoke as a metaphor for the breakdown of the dream of technology and the myth of our society's permanence," review by Susan Noyes Platt in the Summer 05 issue of ARTLIES. Zachary releases music on the labels Sige, Cassauna, Confront (UK), The Tapeworm and Touch (UK). Novembre Magazine (DE), ITCH (ZA), Walrus Press and the New York Miniature Ensemble have published his writings and scores. Zachary has been an artist in resident at the Espy Foundation, Djerassi and the Headlands Center for The Arts.

GOLDEN CHAMPAGNE FLAVORED SWEATSHIRT

Golden Champagne Flavored Sweatshirt Self taught multi disciplinary artist- electronic music producer/watercolor/pen/cross-processed photo manipulation/digital art ​ Musical expression is an incredibly cathartic experience. Expectant is my debut release- presented as an auditory voyage through my anxiety, confusion and depression. ​ Recording music has completely changed my approach to artistry and creativity.

Currently, in my art journey, I am pushing against the idea that my art must reflect the political aspects of my existence. I am weary of Black women having to be the pawns of men- uplifting an entire community with no compensation. Being drained by weak, “well-meaning” whites who are fueled and energized by the exploitation of Black suffering with no real efforts for change.

Shaping my existential rage and anxiety into a journey of self actualization through color and sound has been a profound

LA MACACOA

La Macacoa is Puerto Rican Bay Area experimental sound artist Alexandra Buschman-Román (she/they). As a singer and improviser, they use multiple microphones, electronic hardware, and body gestures/movement to expand the voice. As a composer and electronic percussionist, they draw from Afro-Caribbean music and Taino (indigenous Caribbean) stories. Performances are mystical rituals.

Part of Alexandra’s roots are in the Puerto Rican classical and electronic music vanguard studying composition at the Music Conservatory with Manuel Ceide (Berio student), and Rafael Aponte Ledée (Ginastera student). They moved to Oakland in 2007 to study Composition and Improvisation with Fred Frith, Chris Brown, and Maggie Payne, and Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros at Mills College.

Alexandra is half of avant-tropical duo Las Sucias, with Danishta Rivero. They also perform and tour under monicker Demonsleeper, singing songs about nightmares and lucid dreams using dark ambient, drone noise, and heavy somnambulist pulses

MEANSTREETZ + RICHARDS

Stevie Richards (Melbourne, Australia) and Mike Meanstreetz (Los Angeles, CA) will be performing a duo of improvised saxophone, drums/percussion and electronics for a fall tour of the North American West Coast

Stevie Richards is a DIY electronics and woodwind player and performer currently based in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia. Stevie has performed in Europe, United States, Mexico and Japan and is an active participant in the avant-garde / improvisation environment of Naarm / Melbourne. Stevie has performed in many past and ongoing ensembles worldwide playing noise, free jazz, ambient and electroacoustic music both as a soloist and through deliberate international collaboration.

Collaborators past and present have included: Morishige Yasumune, Tetuzi Akiyama, Takeo Toyama, Takumi Moriya, E-Da, Seiichi Yamamoto, Alessandra Rombolà, Geir Opdal, Øivind Olsen, Espen Friberg, Villem Jahu, Ryosuke Kiyasu, Whitehorse, Cavies !, Ray of Creation, Mike Meanstreetz, Robbie Avenaim, Doug Lynner, Jon Bafus, Masami Kawaguchi, Paloma Carrasco Lopez, Nuno Veiga, Arne Borgan, Andrea S Giordano, Nathan Hubbard, Rick Jensen, Sharon Gal, Johan Moir, Breeze Smith, Martin Q Larsson, Rory Brown, Simon Toldam,Rama Parwata, Aviva Endean, Akio Jeimus, Elvis Aljus, Moment Trigger, Matthew Brown, Brad Smith,Carmen Chan Schoenborn and Kota Yamauchi.

Mike Meanstreetz is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist whose non-tradtional craft seeds new genres while reaping the fallen fruit of old. Auditory, visual, and word rarely appear in the singular, most often materializing in a tangle of synaesthesia. His rigorerd wabi-sabi invites the daydream and its ushering of both resonant and dissonant perspectives/perceptions in an inclusive synthesis betweenst. Most of his work focuses on the improvised, situational and shared, and is rooted in the belief that collaboration is a practical divination of that fount pushing all. Sonically his practice primarily explores and expands upon both more metrical genre adjacent sensibilities and more fluid extended techniques via drum kit/percussion, musique concrete/electronic manipulation, and harmonically loaded electro-acoustic nylon MIDI triggered guitar. In these various modes he has performed throughout the US, Mexico and Europe.

More than 25 years after his first experimental solo release under the namesake, he currently operates the 1234 Test Kitchen studio in Los Angeles, both the seat of his practice and recording love, and has performed and recorded in various combos including: Anna Homler, John Wiese (Sissy Spacek), Los Angeles Free Music Society )including Joe Pott's Airway), Martín Escalante, Henry Barnes (Amps for Christ), Patrick Shiroishi, Hayden Jiménez (Hidhawk), Rob Magill, Tatsuya Nakatani (Nakatani Gong Orchestra), Arrington de Dionyso, Derek Monypeny, Divinebrick, Stevie Richards, Danilo Casti+Dalila Kayros, Pure Shit, Gasp, Whereas, Anything and Sobbing Honey

MALOCCULSION

Malocculsion, or Michael Daddona, is a sound, visual, and performance artist currently based in Oakland,CA, currently exploring relationships of sound, the body and the exterior space in which they exist, psychosis, mortality, the prison system and the omnipresent entropic trap door of life. Through high tension multimedia performances , videos, photography, sculpture, curation, and other various documents, Malocculsion explores the negative spaces of our perceived realities, and the social and physical spaces that surround us