Guillermo E. Brown (www.guillermoebrown.com) BIOGRAPHY Mr. Brown is a musician, sound designer, composer, and producer. He has recently released a solo record entitled "Black Dreams 1.0" on his own Melanine Harmonique label. In '03, released an album under the auspices of The Beat Kids, and titled "Open Rhythm System," recently debuted on the CMJ charts to wide acclaim. Time Out NY described the album as "formidable." Mr. Brown's debut solo recording, "Soul at the Hands of the Machine," was released in 2002 on Thirsty Ear Records, and has been hailed as "a marvel of agitated, crisscrossing rhythms that couldn't have come from man or machine alone." (Tom Moon, The Philadelphia Inquirer) His sound design and original compositions have been performed throughout NYC, at venues including The Public Theater, La Mama, and Makor. He performs regularly with his group, The Beat Kids, as well as solo and guest artist appearances in the NYC area and abroad. Mr. Brown was a 2002 Van Lier Fellow, and a 2001 Artist-In-Residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. (www.harvestworks.org) Mr. Brown is the drummer for the renowned David S. Ware Quartet, with whom he tours both nationally and internationally. He has recorded for Sony, Knitting Factory Records, Thirsty Ear Records, and the BBC. He has appeared, live and in recordings with Anthony Braxton, Vernon Reid and DJ Logic, William Parker's Little Huey Orchestra, Matthew Shipp, DJ Spooky, Anti-Pop Consortium, El-P, Mike Ladd, Spring Heel Jack, The Roy Campbell Quartet, Rob Reddy's Sleeping Dogs/Octet, Angelo Moore of Fishbone, Latasha Natasha Diggs, and Marlies Yearby's Movin' Spirits Dance Theater, He received a B.A. in Music from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Bard College. ARTIST STATEMENT: The recording made entirely solo with MAX/MSP software assistance from Matt Ostrowski, was the result of a Van Lier Residency at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in NYC. Armed with my voice, my body, my electronics, my instruments, and the sonic pronouncements of others I BECOME A HUMAN SOUND MACHINE. My soundrhythmnoise represents a vision of the future. Our future. I am a human sampler. Any sound/vision that enters my body becomes mine, becomes part of my cultural/ethnic arsenal. These audiovisual experiences affect me in deeply emotional ways. As a human sampler I traverse traditional cultural and social boundaries. I continue the discussion of cultural production. As artists in the United States we are specially charged with examining the particular cultural situation that we have inherited. We live in a country that gave birth to the drumset, a positive reflection of American cultural capitalism, a technological product of culture and industry. It samples, consumes and reproduces aspects of indigenous American, African, Asian, European and Middle Eastern musical/sound culture with virtuosic results. It allows the player to mimic rhythm from most anywhere. Its multi-instruments bring together ideas of commerce, democracy, capitalism, slavery, indentured labor, and the building of the New World. We live in a world where cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, and gender boundaries are continually being crossed and confused. This is the cultural confusion that I sample and put forth in my compositions. My compositions imagine the world with and without the drumset and with and without a "live" drummer. My music is set-up as a ploy to play and replay, to die and come back to life, to malfunction and be reset. This is my soundrhythmnoise plucked from my a my own brand of micro-brewed primordial ooze.