bio

                     projects                             vdeos                           images 

                
                                           press                                  links

                                                                 shows

                         

skitterkitty

 Joni Mueller - bass
Whit Wallace - electronics
Sam Hall - drums

skitterkitty operates in the space between doom, drone, and nosie rock. Their sound is built from low-frequency weight, feedback, and shifting textures that blur the line between structure and spontaneity. Sets often begin with a simple sonic idea and gradually expand into massive, immersive soundscapes.

Pulling from noise, experimental rock, and improvisational traditions, skitterkitty treats genre as raw material rather than a boundary. No two performances unfold the same way each one pushing deeper into distortion, atmosphere, and collective exploration.

Duo with Sam KlapperA new collaboration with a close collaborator, Sam Klapper.  Our work focuses around compositions that are given life through electronics and free improvisation.  The music is a constant interpretation and reinterpretation that breaths life into each performance of the work.
Broken CrowSam Klapper - Violin
Caspar Sonnet - tape
Broken Crow is Sam Klapper, Joel Nelson & Caspar Sonnet. Project formed in 2022, based in Portland, Oregon. Their work bridged a gap between contempoary classical and noise musics. The embracing of traditional instruments, and new electroacoustic forms created an original body of work not heard in todays experimental music.




With Johnny Coley



My collaboration with Johnny started out as a drawing board for musical ideas back in 2018. It was kind of a house band that could go in any direction. We have tried ideas that range from asking the question what kind of music would the characters from Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers make to taking influences from the Bay Area grindcore scene and mixing that with what we have coined “Nightmare Jazz”. The Mister Sweet Whisper record came about on a single fall day in October. We recorded the music at Sweet Wreath headquarters and then recorded Johnny’s spoken word at his apartment.


A little about the album with Johnny:
Tapping into French surrealism and transgressive American poets such as John Ashbery, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper evolve, cinema-like, with Coley as an uninhibited, almost mystical, narrator. Textural, noirish playing complements Coley’s decadent landscapes, which glide by like cigarette smoke invocations. Echoing, and at times, dissonant notes of saxophone, crystalline tones of vibraphone, and jagged guitar arrangements punctuate Coley’s dreamlike visions, populated by ballet dancers, haunting nightclubs, and ghostly car drivers.

Wistful and expansive, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper speak of Coley’s talent and natural ability to channel his poetic world into songs. A remarkable follow-up to Coley’s first two albums—Antique Sadness, from 2021, and Landscape Man, from 2022—which were praised as “exquisitely haunting, sublime, hilarious” and falling “somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz, and Intersystems,” Mister Sweet Whisper arrives in full form: unpredictable and brilliant.



Silica Gel Laura Thomas : voice, taishogoto, polyvoxaphone
Lauren Jones : voice, autoharp, organ, polyvoxaphone
Jasper Lee : pyraharp, bass, drums, guitar, vibes

 Coming out of the underground DIY scene of Birmingham, Alabama, Silica Gel's sound is a unique synthesis of early medieval music with electronics and improvisation. The core of their debut album adapts a series of songs from the 14th century satirical text Roman de Fauvel, which tells the story of a vain donkey who rises to prominence in the French royal court. Silica Gel transforms this music into a fitting political allegory for our time through distortion & repetition of language, layering time upon itself in a conceptual historical loop. The music evokes the sound of peasants being churned through the wheels of industry...disembodied voices return to us from the other side of a several hundred year technological process.
MuleskinnerJohn Albea - Accordian
Taylor Rouss - Bass
A Birmingham Alabama based acoustic drone trio dedicated to making compsotions in the tradition of contemporary folk experimental music. The ensemble workes in the lineage of Eliane Radigue, translating the sensibilities of experimental computer music into a live acoustic setting. Traditional instruments are approached as sound generators bowed, sustained, and re-imagined to produce slowly evolving textures and deep harmonic fields.


Worst Spills Jacquie Cotillard: vox, sax, pig
Ryan Brown: bass
James Elliott: drums
Brad Davis: electronics
Jasper Lee: chain, strings
Worst Spills is an experimental ensemble exploring a shadowy, genre-bending terrain sometimes described as “southern nightmare jazz.” Their music moves between spoken word, jagged improvisation, swampy grooves, and eerie electronic textures, creating soundscapes that feel both playful and unsettling. Tracks often begin as loose themes and unfold through collective improvisation, where saxophone, guitar, bass, drums, and electronics push and pull against one another while remaining tightly attuned as a group. 

Across their recordings, the band shifts fluidly from ambient drone and noise to unruly jazz jams and rhythmically tangled improvisations. Deadpan spoken passages drift through the music like fragments of strange stories, turning everyday moments into something surreal, uneasy, and occasionally darkly humorous. The result is a sound that balances grit, atmosphere, and absurdity music that feels noirish, unpredictable, and alive with tension. 

Rather than settling into any single style, the group embraces instability: doom-laden grooves collide with abstract electronics, grotesque humor interrupts ominous moods, and improvisation drives everything forward. The effect is a crooked, rollercoaster listening experience where tone, texture, and narrative blur together into a strange and compelling world.


With Taylor RoussTaylor Rouss is an improviser and conceptual musician whose work blends free jazz, sound art, and absurdist storytelling into a world of sonic mischief. Working primarily with bass, electronics, saxophones and a large collection of vintage game calls, Rouss treats unconventional sound sources as expressive instruments, building performances that move between raw improvisation, character voices, and strange narrative fragments. The results often feel like transmissions from an offbeat parallel reality—part supernatural free improv séance, part cartoonish alien language.

Rouss’s work is also shaped by conceptual performance practices, including interpretations of experimental scores and actions that foreground gesture, sound, and situation. Whether performing structured conceptual pieces, intimate improvisations, or ensemble recordings, his music draws from everyday encounters, humor, and lived experience—creating work that feels simultaneously strange, grounded, and alive in the moment.

Ghost FoodA supernaturally inclined collaboration between Joel Nelson, Paul Wilm, and Derrick Moton
It was so unintentional. He just came over and started doing weird shit. He had this thing he brought with cardboard tubes that he started singing into. And then we had a ghostly experience in the house. Even MayMay started walking towards the door and we were just playing....and we thought someone came into the house and walked into the other room or something. That's what all those references are, it's all about that ghost encounter we had.
Paul was singing into the tube, and I was playing the trogotronic, and it sounded like a human voice...the synth sounded like a human voice...i think it was the frequencies we were hitting,...i think it really triggered a ghostly experience for us....it was very vocal, very much in that range...and it just had this feeling like there was a human presence there......and that's what's audible on the first track.

So we were in the music room.......i wasn't even talking to Paul yet, and we were playing...and I looked up, and MayMay was there and looked toward the door (in the other room) as if you had come home. It was an audible stimulation that someone was there...it was a fascinating thing that we shared. It was a weird experience to have with someone.....to have the exact same feeling. So that's where the name came from...Ghost Food. Like a ghost that eats sounds.


FM RadioTwo wiley eyed dude ranchers from Alabama embark on a psychedelic journey into the heart of the promised land: California. They immediately get ripped off while sleeping in a restaurant and must buy new shoes at Target. A strange force leads them to piss on the front steps of the church of Scientology in Hollywood. They grow hungry. Luckily a man named "Lemonade" offers them a ride to the purple desert where they find refuge in a large glass box that looks like a practice chamber for a Las Vegas magician. They have a photo session. Eventually they eat chicken adobo in a state of amazement. Horrified by every blue skied new town, they keep on truckin....trippin' balls on wall to wall sunshine and cryin'.

FM Radio is a new project by John Albea (Arabada) and Joel Nelson (Worst Spills, Silica Gel). Crunching out a catchy suite of songs with a minimal array of sounds including mangled guitar loops, electronic treatments and lyrical reverie, the duo's debut shines like true AM gold mixed with Stockhausen.

Their debut album has a loose travel narrative with washes of radio static and fractured transmissions that underscore the feeling of the world passing by the window while you're living in between the channels.


With Davey Williams
There is no question that Davey Williams made many friendships, collaborations, and was an influence and mentor to generations of rising young artists. Trans museq is proud to introduce the work of guitarist Joel Nelson in his tribute album to Davey Williams, which they recorded together in June of 2018. The posthumous release of this material is from their duo session in Birmingham, Alabama that features Joel on electric guitar with Davey accompanying on the electric sitar. Many strings, four hands, two head sympatico.

I am forever thankful to Davey for his kindness. He made it possible in so many ways for me to carry on and keep making music
With Jordan Glenn
I can’t say enough good things about Jordan Glenn. I was lucky to have played music with him while I was in Oakland California. His is one of the best drummers I have ever met and a good friend. We were lucky enough to be able to record this this record during extremely turblent times.
With Dylan Burchett
Dylan is someone who is honest and clear about his music. I’ve had the pleasure of making music with him for many years, and his friendship mixed with extreme musical skills have been important to many of the recordings he has helped  me make.


Dylan Burchett is an interdisciplinary artist and musician. His work explores the formal development of sounds produced by everyday actions and the sonic tendencies of common objects. These experiments often stretch the unspoken rules inherent to particular methods of musical and artistic production to their furthest points, with the goal of drawing attention to the ways by which our non-aural expectations shape our reception of sound-based work.
FluxnoixJess Marie Walker: flusdrawxing, flusvoxing
Joel Nelson : guitar, clarinet
Cody Iott : electronics, guitar
Michael Pihakis : guitar
Jasper Lee : bass
Walker Yancey : percussion

Flusnoix, a Montevallo, Alabama-based group of musicians, was founded by Jess Marie Walker and her need to connect drawing and making music. The group’s improvisations were recorded in March 2016 at the Kewahatchee Lounge in Birmingham. Using flusdrawxing and flusvoxing in other performances and art installations lead to the creation of Flusnoix.

It’s hard to tell what’s on the scratchy black and white photo of the cover; we might be in a cave, we might be in a field, and if you stare hard enough, you can make out the shape of a woman in a flowing skirt standing rigidly in the space. The tape opens in the same mysterious way, with sparse tones weaving through space. Gentle plucks and chirps overtones reminiscent of cars driving past an open window fill the air. The next track, “it ran” ramps up the energy, and we do feel we’re on the run, bobbing through quirky needling sounds, like a guitar being played underwater. Put on “into” while getting ready for your next date; it’s a sexy and relaxing track that’ll give you confidence and calmness.

To see these musicians perform together must be quite an experience, as their pieces fit together in the most natural way, as though they’ve been playing together since the dawn of time. To know they’re an improvisational group is to understand the level of talent they have.