Donny Mahlmeister is a Chicago/Oak Park based musician and designer with a focus on improvised music using modular synthesizers, guitar, lap steel and other electronic processing. His recent solo work encompasses elements of minimalist soundscapes intersected with abstract gestural movements. In addition to his solo work he currently collaborates with Jamie Levinson as Levinson/Mahlmeister (Trouble in Mind Records) and Theo Katsaounis (Joan Of Arc). Most recently he curated of series of improvised electro/acoustic performances at the Compound Yellow Gallery in Oak Park. Prior to moving to Oak Park, Donny had been a long-standing member of the Chicago and Midwest rock and improvised scenes, working with A Tundra, Early Day Miners, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Tobin Summerfield, Ryan Packard, Jamie Branch, Catherine Young and Bill McKay.
Comprised of synthesists Jamie Levinson & Donny Mahlmeister, the Chicago duo uses modular synthesizers in combination with tactile instruments (Levinson is a drummer/percussionist & Mahlmeister a guitarist) to create cinematic snapshots of sonance. While the duo absolutely gives glances toward artists like Eno, Lanois, Reich, Riley & the kosmische places and spaces of Deuter, they are absolutely of the NOW, in step with ambient explorers like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Panabrite. They perform their compositions & improvisations live, reacting to each other in conversation (not only with each other's physical playing, but their respective synth patches), creating a dazzling harmony with the natural & synthetic as well as the tactile & the intangible.
Instinct Control is a project of Ryan ⊥ Dunn primarily utilizing the unintended, soul-salvage of planned obsolescence through direct physical contact with the circuitry of tape players. Instinct Control considers instrumentality, expectations and the musician’s gesture—resisting the implied philosophies of settings, knobs, planned instruments, reveling in chance and dialogue, performing sound with an object that is fickle to changes in environment and performer. instinctcontrol.bandcamp.com Dunn is a media and performance artist considering the implications and manipulation of mediation and communication. he is invested in open culture, expanded field interventions and the primacy of experience as product, and redefining the roles of creativity and pedagogy as both inexorably intertwined and problematically so. He has performed across the US as well as internationally. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Ryan now lives and practices in Chicago. He has a BA from Reed College, an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is co-founder and currently runs the DIY space Tritriangle (tritriangle.net), an alternative performative media space in Chicago’s Wicker Park as an artist run social practice.