MESH is a collective of improvisers located in Los Angeles. The organizing principle behind MESH is to bring together unique improvisers to create long-form sonic works through recorded media. The energy is open and non-structured and thrives on free improvisation. Recent gatherings have manifested in the form of recording sessions at Casa Berenice Recordings and a performance at Human Resources in Los Angeles. MESH mostly lives in an electro-acoustic world. The music often lands in ambient textures but is definitely prone to outbursts and has a wide dynamic range.

MESH started in 2018 when a group of LA based improvisers traveled to a remote cabin in Iceland to play and record together. It was an experiment in psychogeography, collaboration, and sound. The end result was a performance in Reykjavik and a complete album of our works. It was a truly unique experience. However, lugging recording equipment halfway around the world and dealing with travel logistics proved to be a bit daunting. Inspired by our work in Iceland, a few months later we started Casa Berenice Recordings at our house in Los Angeles where we continue to host all manner of MESH sessions and house concerts.

Archie Carey: bassoon and electronics         Clay Chaplin: laptop and electronics        Corey Fogel: percussion

Kristina Haraldsdottir: viola and electronics         Heather Lockie: viola and electronics        Stephanie Cheng Smith: violin and electronics

Archie Carey

Archie Carey is a bassoonist and composer living in Los Angeles and working in the world. He considers the art of music as a meditative and stimulating creative process whether it’s learning to play a new piece on the bassoon or composing a new piece with pen, paper, stones, sand, field recordings, analog electronics, and more. Archie has presented his own work at REDCAT, The Portland Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, SOMArts, and many other spaces and places throughout the US, Germany, Vietnam, Israel, and Iceland. His work as a composer aims to magnify sound, pitch, timbre, and environment to make the subtlest details a point of focus, creating a meditative space for both listener and performer. Archie’s music has been described as “convincing, and a creative use of extended techniques to project a vivid image…..warm and elegant piece that exploits the full color palette of the brass and woodwinds.” (Sequenza 21).
Archie is a founding member of wild Up, and The Joshua Trio, and has performed regularly with The Dogstar Orchestra, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, and other adventurous music groups in and around Los Angeles.

Clay Chaplin

Clay Chaplin is a sound artist, improviser, and audio engineer from Los Angeles who explores the realms of audio-visual improvisation, sound synthesis, field recording, electronics, and computer processing for creative sonic expression. He has worked on many projects involving experimental music, video, audio recording, and interactive computer systems. Clay’s works have been performed internationally including performances at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Bent Festival, the S.L.Á.T.U.R. festival, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektroakustiche Musik (DEGEM) studios, the Ear Zoom Sonic Arts festival, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conferences, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (CCM), and many others. Clay has been composer in residence at STEIM and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College. He is currently the Director of the Computer Music and Experimental Media Studios and teaches experimental sound practices at CalArts in Los Angeles.

Stephanie Cheng Smith

Stephanie Cheng Smith is a composer, performer and programmer who creates interactive pieces, installations, improvisations and through-composed works. She often uses electronics, violin and light, and her explorations with motor arrays have been featured in the latest issue of Experimental Music Yearbook. Smith’s performances and residencies include Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM, Amsterdam), PACT Zollverein (Essen), liebig12 (Berlin), Re-New Digital Arts Festival (Copenhagen), EcoSono (Caribbean), Centre for the Living Arts (Mobile), Megapolis Arts Festival (Baltimore), and—in Los Angeles—Machine Project, LA Film Forum, REDCAT, and the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS). She has also made appearances on webcasts such as EarMeal, Experimental Half-Hour, KCHUNG and dublab. Smith frequently performs electronic music under the name Stephie’s Castle, is a member of networked music ensemble bitpanic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons experimental performance group Lil’ Jürg Frey, and has composed for and performed as a member of the Dog Star Orchestra. Serving on the wulf.’s Artistic Advisory Board, she also curates and produces experimental music concerts in the Los Angeles area and on Twitch.tv.

Corey Fogel

Corey Fogel is a drummer and artist living in Los Angeles, CA. His practice is based in momentary encounters between music and objects, textiles, foods, and other collaborators. Fogel engages the viewer to consider sound as a medium on par with paint and cellulose, a constant in our daily lives. He challenges us to consider the contexts in which we create, store, and understand music performance.

Fogel’s works have been presented at Machine Project, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Human Resources, Los Angeles; Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles; The Wulf, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca, REDCAT; Los Angeles; and New Music for Strings Festival: Reykjavik. His performance work was also included in J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival and West of Rome’s Trespass Parade. Corey was awarded The California Community Foundation 2014 Fellowship in Visual Arts

Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir

Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir equally performs as a violist, composer/sound artist and improviser. She has in recent years been based in Reykjavík, Iceland and in the Los Angeles area, where she performs as a soloist and with ensembles, groups and songwriters. She has premiered pieces especially written for her at festivals such as Tectonics and Dark Music Days. Her electro-acoustic improvisations, explore the subtle and the extreme through the rich sonorities of the viola mixed with field recordings, synthesized sounds and voice. In composition she likes to experiment with sound, space, bodies, objects humor, lights and movement. Kristín has written for Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Nordic Affect and Trio XelmYa among others.