My name is AVA MENDOZA. I play guitars and stompboxes and write music. Currently I'm based out of Brooklyn, NY, having recently relocated here from Oakland, CA. I have played guitar for most of my life and been active for the last decade playing my own music and in many different groups. In any context I try to bring expressivity, energy and a wide sonic range to the music I play. I've toured throughout the U.S. and Europe and recorded or performed with a broad spectrum of musicians including singer Carla Bozulich (The Geraldine Fibbers, Evangelista), Fred Frith (Massacre, Henry Cow, Art Bears), Nels Cline, Weasel Walter, Tune-Yards, and more. I've played on recordings released by labels Weird Forest, Tzadik, Clean Feed, NotTwo, ugEXPLODE, Resipiscent, New Atlantis, and others.
Friendly critics have called me "Oakland's avant-jazz virtuoso" (Village Voice), "a versatile and virtuosic guitarist" (The San Francisco Film Society), "a wizard on a semi-circle of effects pedals, but… equally adept with FX-less technique," (Lars Gotrich, A Blog Supreme/NPR Jazz).

PAST MEMBERS

DOMINIQUE LEONE is a composer, keyboardist, DJ and music journalist based in San Francisco.  His records have appeared on Smalltown Supersound, Important, Feedelity and Upcode, and he regularly performs in the Bay Area, as well as having toured the US and Europe.  Dominique has worked with a wide range of artists including Matmos, R.Stevie Moore, Hans-Peter Lindstrom, Fred Frith, William Winant, Kevin Blechdom and Max Tundra.  His 2010 remix of Steve Reich's 2x5 was selected by the composer himself as top remix among hundreds of entries, and was released by Nonesuch Records shortly afterwards.  He also appeared on the Boredoms' Super Roots 10 EP, performing on Lindstrom's remix for the Japanese band.  His most recent music project was a new production of Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces opera, producing a recording with two pianists, and recording the entire vocal score for full choir and soloists himself.  He recently worked with experimental guitarist Frith on a new performance of his 1980 Gravity LP.  As a writer, Dominique has been featured in Pitchfork, AllMusic, PASTE and many other publications, and presented a paper at the 2007 EMP Pop Music Conference in Seattle, WA.

NICK TAMBURRO is a drummer who has contributed his “endlessly inventive polyrhythmic suppleness” (ThrillJockey.com) to the worlds of improvised music, jazz, death metal, indie pop, experimental rock, and orchestral & new music. He feels most at home when these separate spheres collide. Nick has played and toured extensively in the US, Europe, the UK, Scandinavia and Australia with The Dead Science (Constellation Records, named Best Jazz/Experimental Band - Seattle Weekly), Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, Daniel Johnston, Dominique Leone band, Craig Wedren / Shudder To Think, Parenthetical Girls, Jherek Bischoff, Anni Rossi, Soko and many more. He has released albums on Constellation, Weird Forest, Tomlab, Absolutely Kosher, Deathbomb Arc and Marriage Records. Outside of band settings, he has performed with Seattle performance art group Implied Violence, played percussion as part of Degenerate Art Ensemble’s Orchestra, played live films scores(The Bat for SF Film Society, Baraka for Cornell University, and shorter works for animator Stefan Gruber and for Chamber Music Day in San Francisco), composed an audiobook percussion soundtrack for the novel The Wikkeling, and performed in visual artist Chris Duncan’s multimedia museum project THE SUN.