Parisian (solo) / Oxherding & Aaron Owens (audio/visual collabroation)

Parisian

“I think there are themes of desperation/melancholic anxiety that run through everything I write these days, (the catalysts being the seemingly universal uncertainty that permeates everything right now, this isolation, and the sustained duration we’re continuing to endure it for.) Over the last year, everything has felt so threatened, and I’m writing with aggression and an urgency to communicate and be heard while I’m still here to say it…”.

Active since 2011, Parisian (the solo project of St Louis artist Ian Jones) creates highly detailed electronic dance music. While he performs live on rare occasions, and releases only small bits of his music online, Parisian still maintains a strong listenership that enthusiastically waits for new material to emerge.

By fusing disparate influences he arrives at his own unique method of production, honing a style that navigates from cut-up mechanical rhythms spliced with glitched vocal fills, to moody, lush synthetic instrumentals.

His NMC performance was documented by Foveal Media in the basement of the William A Kerr Foundation during the winter of 2021, and debuts new Parisian material he is hoping to release later this year.

• Parisian – You Don’t Know What You Want From Me
• Parisian – My Idols Are Washed
• Parisian – Girl Missing
• Parisian – I’ll Talk
• Parisian – Unravel Me

All songs written and performed by Ian Jones

Oxherding

Oxherding is the meditative electronic music project of St. Louis native Fitz Hartwig. His work focuses on creating long-form tonal explorations using a laptop, synthesizers, and field recordings. 2021 will see the release of both a collaborative work with guitarist Lake Mary and a full-length solo LP.

Fitz also operates Distant Bloom, a label dedicated to cassette and digital editions of contemplative music. Releasing music from both St. Louis artists and the broader experimental music community, tapes are released in limited editions between 50 and 100 copies. For each cassette release, a portion of label proceeds are donated to an organization of the artist’s choice, and one ton of carbon emissions is offset through Gold Standard certified projects. All digital releases are available for a sliding-scale fee at the label’s Bandcamp site.

Aaron Owens

Aaron Owens’ work focuses on marginal landscapes and the intersection of human and natural forms. Themes within his artistic practice often touch on questions of surveillance, the splintering of man from nature in popular imagination and what a holistic approach to modern ecology looks like on the ground and from above. After graduating from Sacramento State with a BS in Geography Aaron began to translate the observational and technical skills essential to the discipline into an artistic practice. His work has been shown at Washington University in St. Louis, The Granite City Arts and Design District, and Oui Galleries – Hong Kong. His work has appeared in View magazine, Tube Magazine, The Moon Zine and been featured in collaboration with music labels Distant Bloom and Dinzu Artefacts. He currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.