Unnatural Ways
Unnatural Ways

Ava Mendoza- guitar, compositions, Dominique Leone- synthesizers, Nick Tamburro- drums

We recorded and produced a studio demo in limited edition for Unnatural Ways' Feb. 2013 European tour. The cdrs sold like little hotcakes, so we decided to print a few more when we got home.

About UW: This power trio winds its way through complex heavy rock, avant-jazz and warped, noisy blues. Unpretentious and visceral, the music marries the intense energy of early free jazz to instantly memorable tunes. The players push their own vocabularies and the written music to put on a powerful and unpredictable live show.

Recorded by Jason Stamberger 1/13/13
Mixed by Ava Mendoza
Artwork and design by Theresa Currie

SOLD OUT!

Ava Mendoza with Nick Tamburro
Quit Your Unnatural Ways

Ava Mendoza- guitar, compositions, Nick Tamburro- drums

"... while there's quite a lot of far-flung jazz chops converging all at once, the whole thing is clothed in a shroud of overdriven distortion and roomy fuzz. It's hard to tell who's kicking whose ass here, but my guess is that these two both walked away from the session bruised and battered in the best way possible. Love Taps? Nay -- these are love wallops, Mendoza's sharp harmonic angles and pummeling rhythm up against Tamburro's storm of cymbals... Mendoza's Weird Forest release was an example of how the guitar beat all odds to rule 2012 with extreme prejudice." -Tiny Mix Tapes

"...a visceral and insightful exploration into the [jazz] form, with as much grit, blood and bile as a Lightning Bolt album. While the tracks might start off with some kind of form, Mendoza has a unique talent of being able to deconstruct this as she plays, devolving the sounds into noise and grinding emotion." -Boomkat

"Beneath all of the weird effects and improvisational benders, there’s a solid bedrock of technical skill. Mendoza’s not an entirely earthbound player… incendiary, mind-melting leads… Guitar geeks who want a dose of the weird stuff will find plenty to lap up across this album’s 36 minutes." -Adam Strom, Dusted Magazine

"...like lurching freak-out cyclo-metal, Beefheartian free jazz and bent psych(opath)edelic guitar frenzy melded together into one sick rampage, nothing like it around at the moment but it's scary, like Henry Cow and Butthole Surfers at a pig fucking contest in some dark woods... there's shades of weird dusty blues, Chris Corsano-esque mayhem, Stooges dirt and a right brooding atmosphere throughout, all this laced with real freewheeling lysergic mischief and played with the gleeful adventure of improvising spirits. 'Quit Your Unnatural Ways' is a blast, it reeks of total loose-limbed, bloody minded conviction!" -NormanRecords

free stream HERE

Buy it HERE from the label, Weird Forest

Ava Mendoza
Shadow Stories

"What obscure, overlooked master playing in some slashing, raw-yet-virtuosic manner is this?" asked Nels Cline.
In this, her solo debut, guitarist Ava Mendoza starts from old melodies already tattooed on your brain, then applies sufficient heat to peel that paint leaving you re-pinked and wondering what's next.
What's next are original compositions, heavy, gorgeous, oddly reverby, layers that build, blister and flake away to alight indelibly on your mind. Just as Mendoza reprises those traditional tunes, you discover she's walked you far into a lost countryside. How, or whether, to get back will be your own business.
Gatefold package with artwork by Suzanne Shaffer, mastered by Jake Rodriguez, and liner notes from Nels Cline.

CDS SOLD OUT!
AVAILABLE VIA PAYPAL- $9
For free lossless digital files of Shadow Stories click here

Mute Socialite
Cheap Clocks 7"

"...cartoon-music like melodies and distorted riffs delivered with thrashcore levels of intensity, and the background swirls with various weird percussion sounds and herk-jerky rhythms being pounded out on junk objects, prepared guitar noise and tapes. Mute Socialite are in a similiar vein of heavy skronk as bands like Naked City, Last Exit and Flying Luttenbachers, and there's lots of free jazz in their sound with both songs often collapsing into all-devouring black holes of improvised blast, emitting a dense roar of horns, guitar noise, electronics and blastbeats before kicking right back into their funky cartoon jazz groove and angular prog.This 7" is limited to 531 copies and comes in a variety of orange vinyl variations and a couple of different covers." -CRUCIAL BLAST

Violet Smith

AVAILBLE VIA PAYPAL- $5

Mute Socialite
More Popular Than Presidents and Generals

"Mute Socialite... draw freely from free-jazz, improv, metal, and noise to create pounding and unorthodox sonic vignettes that are impressive for their velocity as well as their technical dexterity... the songs are engaging and controlled... and there's nothing fey or abstract about their demanding sonic wallop. This is an experimental / free-jazz album that hardcore metalheads can appreciate (or should that be the other way around?), with plenty of dynamics and surprising changes in direction to go with the hyperkinetic drumming, machine-gun riffing, and howling guitar excess." - The One True Dead Angel
"Rapid-fire, agile pieces, a slashing noisy attack with thickly dissonant chords. A sense of abandon but played with precision. Solid, crisp rhythms and speedy riffs -- so you can rock out *and* enjoy your brutal harsh noise all at once...The skeleton of prog's multifaceted writing, the blood of 150-degree speed metal, the overcaffeinated nerves of well executed punk rock." -Craig Matsumoto, KZSU Zookeeper

AVAILBLE VIA PAYPAL- Cds $7, LPs $13

Lindsay/Mendoza/Smith/Walter
Jus

Jacob Lindsay (Ab, Bb, bass and contrabass clarinets); Ava Mendoza (guitar); Damon Smith (7-string ergo-bass and lloopp) and Weasel Walter (drums, percussion and bagpipe chanter)

"... tapestries of microtonal and adumbrating silences are woven into many of the tracks on Jus... As the growling undertow from the contrabass clarinet remains almost static, a sequence of pitch-sliding string movements takes centrestage. Adagio in tempo, Mendoza’s finger-styled picks and multi effects link up with Smith’s seminal string shaking and Walter’s rolls, pops and drags until the interface fades into intermittent silences." -Ken Waxman, Jazzword

"This is a particularly strong improv date from four of the Bay Area's finest." - Downtown Music Gallery

AVAILBLE VIA PAYPAL- $7

Ava Mendoza
Corporeal Crises

    A collection of tape (fixed media) pieces, created 2004-2007. The pieces form a five-part series based on the human body-- voice, blood, muscles, guts, and brain. Chaotic but highly organized, harsh but still melodic at times. Mixing board feedback, prepared guitar, tape-generated noise, moog and other analog synths, and Max/MSP were used.

to the larynx! metastasis
blood.pulse's memento song

AVAILBLE VIA PAYPAL- $6