The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. Each year we invite artists from across the country and around the globe to perform music with their home-made or circuit bent instruments, teach workshops to adults and children alike, create beautiful art installations and to generally come together, face to face, and showcase the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture.
The Tronic was formed in 2008 by Gregg Jarvis aka Gj-Rvus and Thomas Bell aka ADDj as an improvisational live jazz-tronic band w/ DJ sensibilities and instrumental proficiency. Their unique approach to improvisation blurs the lines between the live musician, composer and dj. The unit begins improvising then loops real, virtual, circuit bent toys and homemade instruments in real time. They then mix and manipulate the loops and improvise layers on top of the spontaneous composition . Anything from serene beauty, viscious groove to stumbling chaoss may occur - anytime. The Tronic is truly a foward-thinking modern jazz ensemble
Gregg Jarvis is a drummer, percussionist and sonic composer from the NYC/Hudson Valley area. Thomas Bell is a bassist, composer artist and gallery owner in Brooklyn. With over 50 combined years of various ensemble playing and immersing themselves in nearly every genre of music, there are no boundaries safe from The Tronic.
This wild experimental artist from Chicago uses electric kazoos, tape loops, and more to craft far-out, wonderfully confounding songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 15, 2021
A brave experimental record from the Cecilia Lopez & Ingrid Laubrock running darting sax lines through dense electronics & processing. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 10, 2023
Described as a series of “self-exorcisms,” “Ego De Espinhos” is a brain-melting foray into experimental electronics. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 4, 2019
Persuasion’s “Quartermass” EP is a collection of dark, dubby techno, with an emphasis on deep rhythms and ghostly tones. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 8, 2018