The Fuse Factory | Columbus, Ohio

Our December Frequency Fridays show features Columbusites Ryan Jewell and Sineqube (aka Kevin Holland), along with Paul Metzger, an instrument inventor from Minnesota who plays a modified guitar and a banjo with 23 strings. Date: Friday, December 2. Location: Wild Goose Creative (2491 Summit St. 43202). Admission: $10. Doors open 8pm. Our Frequency Fridays 2011-2012 season is supported by a generous grant from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

About the performers:

In 1979, Paul Metzger drilled a few innocent holes into a Yamaha acoustic guitar. A self taught musician with 5 years of playing behind him, Metzger was growing tired of the conventions of the instrument. This lobotomy was the first of many surgeries that would follow in years to come. Strings were added, subtracted, added again; the frets of the neck were disemboweled and retrofitted with a sarod like metal fingerboard plate; paint was splattered over it, a rejigged music box was affixed to the guitar’s belly, a crash cymbal mounted to its bottom. On the face of it, the instrument took on the look of a piece of tramp art. Thirty years on, Metzger plays the same guitar in rotation with a heavily modified 23 string banjo in a tireless – often isolated – search for a musical style of his own which he finally took public for the first time in 2002. His sonic vocabulary ranges from deeply satisfying & impulsive outer cosmos ragadelia to clangorous, rapidly punctuated percussive workouts. Metzger has been described as a virtuoso and a visionary whose live performances are vital, deeply visceral and simply breathtaking.

Metzger has played more than 500 shows worldwide on bills with a diverse array of artists including blues legends Spider John Koerner & Tony Glover, Japanese metal act Boris, new wave revivalists Gang Gang Dance, psych acts Amen Dunes and Six Organs of Admittance, moperockers Low and fellow string journeymen Sir Richard Bishop and Jack Rose. Notable festival appearances include the Festival Météo (France), Suoni per il Popolo (Montreal, Canada), Two Rivers (Portland, Maine) and events sponsored by WFMU and The Wire magazine. He has been profiled on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and recorded for Amsterdam’s legendary VPRO radio.

sineqube.com is a repository for the music & software of Kevin Holland, a classically-trained guitarist, composer, electronic musician and Max/MSP developer. Kevin began studying music in earnest at the age of 10. Although picking up the French horn came relatively quickly, it soon became apparent this was not his passion. Several years on the piano proved useful in developing an early sense of theory and an understanding of intervallic relationships, but it wasn’t until beginning guitar at 13 that he felt at home with the right instrument. More than 20 years later, it is still his primary musical force. At university, he studied music theory and composition, and received private classical guitar instruction. During this period, he served as a composer’s apprentice, fulfilling copyediting duties, attending world premieres, studying orchestration, and gaining further insight into his craft. After graduating with his music degree, Kevin realized that the sounds in his head came from instruments that didn’t exist, and so began a voracious appetite for synthesis, which helped him to approximate externally the private ensembles that played in his mind.

Around 2000, Max/MSP became a major part of his work, and since that time, Kevin has released several standalone music applications under the sineqube moniker to great reception. Most of them freeware, he believes firmly that budget should not be a restraint on an artist’s creativity. Over the years, Kevin began tinkering with various other instruments including kalimba, lap harp, crystal flute, bass, doumbek, tongue drum, and ukulele, to name a few, owing greatly to a time when new instruments would be purchased over groceries. All of these sounds have contributed to his composition and helped blur the line between the acoustic and the synthetic. His recent live sets incorporate custom software, live improvised guitar, and audience participation via repurposed video game controllers. He wants to break down the barrier between the lone electronic performer mysteriously clicking buttons behind a laptop and the passive audience unaware of the alchemy behind the scenes.

Ryan Jewell is a musician, improviser and sound artist currently living in Columbus, Ohio. He studied percussion and electronic composition techniques at Capital University and has since studied drum set with Susie Ibarra and tabla with Dr. Lowell Lybarger. In addition to being a frequent traveler of the US, he has toured extensively as a soloist and collaborator in Europe, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Jewell has also performed at a number of international festivals including the SOWIESO 1 and Les Sciences Bruitistes festivals in Paris, the International Noise Conference in Miami, SXSW in Austin, Neon Marshmallow in Chicago and the Kraak Festival in Brussels. He has had the honor to perform, collaborate and record with a diverse array of artists such as Greg Kelley, C. Spencer Yeh, Nate Wooley, Christine Sehnaoui, Bhob Rainey, Jandek, Mike Shiflet, Envenomist, Larry Marotta, Vic Rawlings, Fossils, Rafael Toral, Psychedelic Horseshit, Pink Reason, Jason Zeh, Wasteland Jazz Unit, and many more.