July 17th
Luggage Store Gallery 8:00pm
1007 Market St, @ 6th SF
HEAVY GUERRILLA
Dina Emerson/Bob Marsh/Joseph Zitt/Ian Yeager/Rent Romus/Phillip Everett/Matt Davignon
O’RORKE/EUBANKS/SHIURBA
Brian Eubanks (Portland), soprano sax/John Shiurba, guitar/Simon O'Rorke (New Zealand), perc
RECURSIVE HERETICS
Scott Looney/Aaron Bennett

July 18th
Community Music Center 8:00 pm
544 Capp St.  SAN FRANCISCO, CA
IMPROVISING PIANO SUMMIT
MATTHEW GOODHEART
SCOTT LOONEY with guest Tim DuRouche, drums
GUST BURNS (Seattle)

July 19th
Music Union Hall 8:30 pm
116 9th St. SAN FRANCISCO, CA
MRLECTRONIC (San Diego)
Robert Montoya/Lisle Ellis - electronics
BURNS/SMITH/DUROUCHE trio (Seattle)
Gust Burns - piano / Damon Smith - double bass / Tim DuRouche - drums

July 20th
Music Union Hall 7:30 pm
116 9th St. @ Mission, SF
KliP TRIO
Garth Powell, Elliot Kallen, John Lauffenburger
TRI-CORNERED TENT SHOW, LEGION OF DAGON
CD Release performance of music inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Fungi of Yuggoth
Ray Scheaffer/Andre Custodio/Phillip Everett/Jeff Hobbs/Rent Romus
 

ABOUT EDGETONE RECORDS
 

Founded by saxophonist/composer/producer Rent Romus, Edgetone Records originally began in 1991 to support modern jazz. In 2000 the label expanded to support the many unsung or under appreciated artists of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond by encompassing experimental, avant guard, new sonic, and postmodern jazz.
Unlike many music corporate structures that mimic a parasite, Edgetone is dedicated to a symbiotic relationship between artist and company by releasing music by musicians who are “self-producers”, with a mind for business, and not just looking for the enslavement of the “deal”. Musicians who do not want to compromise their music to fit into a narrow definition of "commercially viable”, and those that double their efforts to support their ideas and dreams define what we are all about. Although there are many artists that need the administrative strong hold of a major label to run their lives, there are many like the artists of Edgetone that have what it takes to stand on their own.
It is the desire of Edgetone to make available recordings and creative products that act to support diverse creative music and art that is otherwise being pushed aside, misunderstood or, under represented by standard media. Aside from modern jazz, the new sonic series is the flagship and guiding light of Edgetone including the new Razor series pushing the envelope into the new century.
 
 

ARTISTS

Heavy Guerrilla is a collective entity loosely slammed together by Rent Romus to explore sound qualities and deep underbrush.  The group originally began as 500lb Guerrilla soon finding itself waxing and waning in size heavier than 500 pounds.  Thus Heavy Guerrilla was born mixing free form improv, freejazz, and everything else inbetween stopping for no one leaving no tracks, invisible to the naked ear.
Spontaneous smoke signals, coded slight of eye, take no prisoners

Recursive Heretics explores the concept of feedback at all levels between a performer and a processor in a live improvisational setting. Together they explore the concept of feedback in live performance as the saxophone sound is transformed by live, automated and manipulated signal processing using a customized Max/MSP setup. The results of this processing vary from subtle shifts in the original sound to a completely unique and distinct voice. The processed sound is then fed back to the player, who alters his playing to react to the processed reaction, which is then reacted upon by the processor, and so on, achieving a conversation of ever widening scope and depth, larger than either player or processor could create alone.

Lisle Ellis has been an active performer on acoustic bass, and a composer, conductor, curator and director of orchestras, and small ensembles for more than twenty-five years. The force and beauty of his art, both visual and musical, is apparent in all that he creates. Ellis began playing bass in 1963, and in 1973,he enrolled in the music Department at Douglas College, Vancouver, where he studied with Milan Hurt of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
From 1975-1979, Ellis studied in New York at the renowned Creative Music Studio (CMS) with many of the luminaries of creative music. The most developmentally influential of these musicians was Cecil Taylor. Since that time, Ellis has worked with many players associated with Taylor including Andrew Cyrille, Raphe Malik, as well as the late Jimmy Lyons and Glenn Spearman.
The current direction of his music is highly experimental integrating the bass with electronics. Presently he divides his time between San Diego and San Francisco.

Gust Burns Plays improvised/composed new music from a perspective influenced by both jazz and “classical”/avant-garde traditions. He also sees the rap and hip-hop music he grew up with as having an influence on his musical sensibility.The pool of musicians and artists with whom Gust works is ever growing and expanding; he has worked with improvisers such as Jack Wright, Damon Smith, Wally Shoup, Mike Bisio, Jacob Lindsay, Greg Campbell, Reuben Radding, Travis Baker, Garth Powell, Bob Marsh, Ilyas Ahmed, and many others, as well as dancer/choreographer Heather Gibbons.

Damon Smith has Collaborated with dancers, actors and poets including Poet Jack Brewer, scoring actor William Whaley's adaptation of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" for actor and double bass and the west coast premier of the final collaboration of Merce Cunningham and John Cage; "Ocean," Highly Influenced By modern visual arts, Damon studied painting for a short time with Tom Schultz (see cover of bpa 002) This has resulted in a notation system called "Color Architecture," dedicated to him.
Damon has performed with; Peter Brötzmann, Cecil Taylor, the "Deep Space Posse" (led by Tyrone Hill & Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra), Peter Kowald, Glenn Spearman, Frank Gratkowski, Joëlle léandre, Jeb Bishop, John Tchicai, Andrew Voit, Douglas Ewart, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Eugene Chadbourne, Joe Biaza, Biggi Vinkeloe, Elliot Sharp, Wolfgang Fuchs, Luc Houtkamp, Peter Van Bergen, Mike Watt, Chris Cutler, William Hooker, Miya Masaoka, J.A. Deane, J.D. Parran, Sebi Tramantana, Mathew Goodheart, Gino Robair, Carla Khilstead, Tony Bevan, Alan Silva, Boris Hauf, Tim Perkis, Jackson Krall, Eddie Gale, Gianni Gebbia, Fred Frith, Jaap Blonk, Jon Raskin, Phill Gelb, Marco Eneidi, Donald Robinson, J.D. Parran, Oluyemi Thomas, Prince Lasha, Henry Kaiser, John Butcher, Collin Stetson, Hugh, Livingston.
 

The musicians who make up the KLiP trio have worked together off and on in various configurations for more than twelve years and have performed in a wide variety of venues, from concert stages to college campuses and nightclubs throughout California. Their backgrounds are as eclectic as their music, reflecting their involvement in western classical music, avant-garde jazz, industrial, electronic music, as well as funk, bebop, rock, and world music. Individually, they have recorded and/or performed with Marshall Allen, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, Bill Champlin, Gianni Gebbia, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Kowald, Milcho Leviev, Eddie Moore, Jimmy Rowles, Wadada Leo Smith, Glenn Spearman, Saadet Turkos, Phil Upchurch, and Bennie Wallace.

Tri-Cornered Tent Show is an Urban, Electro-Acoustic Folk Improv. Free improvisation and orchestrated sound sculpture.
Philip M. Everett began playing Drums and Percussion at the age of 13, and has studied with George Marsh and Eddie Moore. His main musical influences are Sun Ra, Harry Partch, Karlheinz Stockhausen,Sunny Murray, Anthony Braxton.

Ray Schaeffer currently performs on fretless 6 string , fretted 4 and 8 string basses using a host of electronic effects that are incorporated to be part of the instrument. After studying music theory and upright bass in high school and junior college, Ray has performed in a diverse array of ensembles from full orchestra to folk rock bands, and experimental improv groups going back to the 70s.

Andre Custodio is a SF bay area native Percussionist/Sound Designer who studied with Brian Fergus, Bob Danielson and Carl Perazzo. He has collaborated (in some way) with Rent Romus, The Splatter Trio, David Slusser, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, LX Rudis, Fear of Math and Tom Nunn. 'Nihil Communication' is his ongoing solo project, combining reconfigured samples, digital processing, unique instruments and additive analog synthesis. He's influenced by Witold Lutoslawksi, Lustmord, The Splatter Trio, Negativland, AMM, Morbid Life Society, Cecil Taylor, Curtis Mayfield, Miguel "anga" Diaz, John Coltrane and too many others to mention.
 

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Rent Romus is a force spanning over seventeen years of creative improvised music. The current director and producer of Edgetone Records, the SIMM Music Series at the Studio 6 Musicians Union Hall, and co-curator of the Luggage Store Gallery Series with Ernesto Diaz-Infante in San Francisco, Romus has introduced countless musicians from the world over and multimedia events to the San Francisco Bay Area culture and throughout parts of the world.

During the mid 80’s, Romus enhanced his studies at the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University, where he was blessed with the wisdom and guidance from Stan Getz, guitarist Bruce Forman, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Martin, and drummer Eddie Moore. In 1984 at the age of 16, Romus re-organized directed NAYJE (the North Area Youth Jazz Ensemble), a seventeen piece big band featuring some of the best young high school and college bay area musicians at the time. In the fall of 1986, while attending the University of California at Santa Cruz, he formed the group Jazz On The Line which became the focus for his compositions and productions. JOTL was an acoustic jazz sextet that fused jazz, blues, gospel, and hip-hop into original compositions. Romus produced three albums for this group including his critically acclaimed CD Jazz On the Line with Chico Freeman, In The Moment on Edgetone Records soon to be reissued. Mid span the group changed it’s name to 2AM, and was considered one of the founding bands of the “acid jazz” scene popular in the early nineties parallel to Charlie Hunter and the like.
In 1993 seeking a more expanded format to explore, Romus formed the modern music group RKZtet, which featured ex-ESP recording artist and drum master James Zitro and former Sun Ra Arkestra cellist Kash Killion, both noted for their contribution to the development of the “new jazz” of the sixties. Later in 1994 Romus renamed the group, The Lords of Outland, and brought in soon to be film music composer Vytas Nagisetty (Brock Lee) on bass, Andrew Borger (currently drummer for Tom Waits) and Jason Olaine (Jay O), (currently AR director for Verve Records Universal) on trumpet.
The Lords of Outland recorded their first album You’ll Never Be The Same, Jazzheads Records JH9493 in 1995, and were featured on the then fledgling BET Channel National Network Show, “Jazz Central” as part of the Jazz Discovery program. That same year Romus self-produced his first overseas national tour of Denmark which featured many of Copenhagen’s young improvisers discovering such musicians as pianist/trumpet player Jonas Müller who has recently moved the S.F. Bay Area, and drummer Stefan Pasborg.
In 1996 Romus returned to Denmark for his second tour with Jonas as the Rent Romus Sound Cirkus. The group also included San Francisco basists George Cremanchi and saxophonist Alex Weiss. After returning to the U.S. they continued on to the Bay Area to finish the tour. During that year he also assisted bluesman Paris Slim produce his first major American release with guitarist Joe Lewis Walker and Sonny Rhodes. In 1997 Romus had the honor of recording with tenor sax master John Tchicai. Tchicai is best known for his work with the NY Art Quartet, NY Ear and Eye Control, and his recordings with John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The CD of this recording, Adapt…or DIE! was released at the end of 1997. In 1998 Romus released Blood Motions featuring his young Danish protégés Stefan Pasborg and bassist Jonas Westergaard.
In 2001 Romus re-opened his avant, free music lable Edgetone Records, where his current release can be found, interweaving science fiction, horror literature, improvisation, Finno-Ugric music traditions, and the inspiration of Albert Ayler.