Cold Grey Eye: Noise-induced eyelid hallucinations performing at the festival!

-How long have you been performing experimental music in Orange County and
which other artists or labels do you work closely with?-

If memory serves me correctly, I started playing with Primer[Jerry Lloyd(of Feverdreams and Between Ravens & Crows) & Paul Bonser] around 2001/2002. After Paul left Jerry and I remained to become Cold Grey Eye. Jerry left and now Kirk Pickler(of Drum Jester Devotional & Upside Down Face) and I will continue CGE.
We've played several shows with the URCK/Hop-Frog fellows over the years.


-What instrumentation do you use to create your sounds and what is your live set like?-

We use treated guitar, hand percussion, contact-miked objects/homemade instruments, laptop loops and sometimes processed vocals(live and sampled).
We mostly improvise our live set, nothing flashy in terms of performance, occasionally some video. I hope people trip out like I do when listening to this kind of music.


-How did you become interested in experimental music and what are your major influences?-

One of my earliest memories is enjoying the noise of chalk on the classroom wall. At age 8 I remember being so affected by the dying soldier letting out that strange scream in Day of the Dead, also around that time the sounds from The Exorcist and The Shining. Not much else until the junior year of high school when I started to do my own thing. A teacher lent me a William S. Burroughs novel which led me to the Re/Search and Creation Books publications. At home I would use my VCR, turntable, cassette deck and CD player all at once to mix sounds together and listen to them sync in and out, overtake each other, form hybrid waves.
The influences that stand out the most for me are: the dark psychadelica of Throbbing Gristle's "The Old Man Smiled", the traumatic barrages of Brighter Death Now, the eclectic Controlled Bleeding, the visceral Einstürzende Neubauten, the pensive Raison d'être, noisy Sonic Youth, the sound design of David Lynch films, pretty much any episode of The Twilight Zone and film characters who smile and accept their doom.


-What are you looking forward to from this fest?-

Meeting interesting people/artists/musicians and seeing noise-induced eyelid hallucinations!