"Andrew Durham and Danny Kamins grew up together in Houston, meeting toward the end of grade school at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in the Montrose. While attending different high schools, they still managed to go to shows and compete in an occasional fencing match.

And then they pretty much went in opposite directions.

Durham, a St. Pius X High School graduate, worked in Mississippi on a barge for the summer before landing at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Kamins, the son of Benjamin Kamins, principal bassoonist of the Houston Symphony from 1981 to 2003 and current professor of bassoon at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, headed to Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory of Music after completing his education at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts's jazz department.

Durham bounced back and forth between Texas and the West Coast, going to Evergreen and the University of Texas at Austin. He was introduced to metal, noise, grindcore and power violence. He bought an electric bass. He worked hard labor gigs.

"The sounds from these jobs definitely have a lot to do with my playing. I remember the constant throbbing drone from the diesel generator that ran the cannery in Alaska where I worked," says Durham. "Also, the chugging and screeching of a chainsaw, the fall of timber and the silence on either end. I would also go shooting in Capitol Forest, a heavily logged state forest. I really fell in love with huge sounds that dominate the space for a moment, but are framed by silence."

Meanwhile, at Oberlin, Kamins, who plays almost all of the saxes (baritone, tenor, alto, soprano) as well as flute, clarinet and bass clarinet, studied with the greats such as Gary Bartz, Wendell Logan, Billy Hart and classical saxophonist Paul Cohen. After college, Kamins played and taught in the Cleveland area, moved to Chicago for about four years and then made his way back to Houston in 2015.

When Durham returned to Houston in 2013, he first sought out a similar noise and punk scene he had become involved with in Olympia. Then he attended a They, Who Sound event, the weekly Monday-night Houston improv series at AvantGarden curated by David Dove of Nameless Sound. At first, he wasn't really feeling the music, but then he started working with mainstays Rebecca Novak, Sandy Ewen and Damon Smith.

"I had already been doing that a little but that technique grew a lot from my exposure to the Houston improv scene," says Durham. "I use a whippet cracker as a slide [and] a screwdriver to lift the strings so I have an angle for bowing them. I copied Sandy's technique of using steel wool over the pickups." [...]"-Steve Jansen, Houston Press