"Ben Bennett started playing music as a young child, took up the drums in middle school, and has always been attracted to improvisation. His interest in jazz moved steadily towards the more avant-guarde, then to free jazz, and onward into the world of free-improv. His current music stems mainly from various forms of free-improv: maximalist, reduced, noise, etc. A desire to get the most varied and visceral array of sounds from the simplest instruments has led to an ongoing process of distilling the drumset to its essential sound-maker, the vibrating membrane. Using extended techniques involving breath and friction, as well as the time-honored tradition of hitting things with sticks, he plays an evolving pile of frame drums, pre-tuned drum heads, metal things, tubes, and other objects that can be combined and recombined to get a variety of sounds during a performance. This set-up lends itself greatly towards being crammed in a backpack, strapped to a bike, dragged along the ground, or thrown down the stairs, generally without physical or psycological damage.

Recent projects include: bst.cr - trio with Ryan Jewell and Wilson Shook, Wrest - with Jack Wright and Evan Lipson, Rotty What - trio with Jack Wright and John M Bennett; Central Ohio War Coalition - with Mike Shiflet, Joe Panzner, and others; duos with Ryan Jewell, Jack Callahan, and Ben Hall; and solo performances."

"Michael Foster is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, noise, free jazz, graphic & video notation, performance art, and other forms of weird music.

Foster utilizes extensive preparations of his saxophone, augmenting it with amplification, objects, balloons, drum heads, vibrators, tapes, and samples as a method of subverting and queering the instrument�s history and traditional roles.

His current ensembles include duos with cellist Leila Bordreuil, percussionist Ben Bennett, poet/vocalist Lydia Lunch, vocalist Anais Maviel, Richard Kamerman, The Ghost (with Henry Fraser & Connor Baker), Barker Trio (with Tim Dahl, James Ilgenfritz, & Andrew Barker), While We Still Have Bodies (with Sean Ali, Ben Gerstein, & Flin van Hemmen), Weasel Walter Large Ensemble, and BDM (with Ben Bennett and David Grollman).

Selected notable venues he's performed at include Bowling Green State University (Ohio), The Stone (NYC), BimHuis (NL), Jazzfestival Groningen (NL), Fabrica Bra�o de Prata (PT), Death By Audio (NYC), Studio Loos (NL), Betalevel (Los Angeles), Webster Hall (NYC), XI20 (LT), Jazzclub Erfurt (DE), and many more."