Wednesday October 15th
Swan Dive
$15
8pm

Maria Chavez
Trigger Object
Xylyn Hathaway

Born in Lima, Peru and based in NYC, Maria Chávez is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ. Coincidence, chance and failures are themes that unite her work across mediums, including improvised performance, sound and marble sculpture, visual art, book objects and an extensive history with multi-channel installation. Her approach is rooted in Deep Listening, a form of embodied listening developed by her late mentor Pauline Oliveros. Maria’s relationship with Oliveros was recently covered in a BBC3 radio episode of Afterwords, chronicling the late composers impact on a new generation of artists. She also graced the cover of The Wire in April 2023 with The Turntable Trio.

Maria is the only abstract turntablist in the world who performs with a rare needle known as the RAKE Double Needle. This special device contains two needles on one head, allowing it to read two different segments of a single record at the same time. Paired with her inimitable ability to create unforgettable sonic experiences from shards of broken records, each performance is truly unique.

Maria’s practice is profoundly expansive, responsive and curious. Her work has been featured and supported by a myriad of institutions over the past decades including Rewire Festival, Counterflows Festival, Donau Festival, MoMA PS1, The Getty, DOCUMENTA 14, the JUDD Foundation, Cambridge University Press and many, many more. Chavez’s 2012 book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable has garnered a reputation as both an academic resource on turntablism and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists.

Vern Avola is a composer, multimedia artist, instructor, and champion of friendship, based in Portland, Oregon. Known for their solo project Trigger Object, as well as performances under the monikers EMS, Avola, and Dirty Centaur, Avola’s work thrives in the unpredictable, messy corners of life, weaving together deep electronic soundscapes, raw energy, and a wry sense of humor. Their music geomaps the hidden layers of the present moment—from the guttural subterranean and the hallways of punk and DIY culture to themes of consensual abduction and flight. Avola’s compositions hold space for the physical and emotional stretches that emerge as emblems of safety in a world grappling with political predestination and societal truths. Through their work, Avola invites listeners to think and exist beyond the confines of man’s algorithm, offering a sonic refuge that is both disorienting and illuminating.

As the founder of EMS Records, Avola has created a platform primarily dedicated to their own releases, crafting limited-run LPs, cassettes, and CDs that feel like treasures for the weirdos and wanderers. Their music has also found a home on respected labels such as Sige Recordings, An Out Recordings, Accident Prone Records, and Nadine Records. Avola’s sound has been described as “wonderfully crunchy and kinetic,” with a “delirious, Amanita Muscaria-soaked sense of dynamics”—raw, unfiltered, and shaped by the randomness of life: a stray conversation, an unexpected noise, or a fleeting moment in nature.

Avola’s collaborative work includes projects with artists like Daniel Menche (as Bear Spray), Ian Gorman Weiland (as Elrond), and Vo Vo (An Out Recordings), . They’ve also been a member of bands like Prizehog (2006–2015) and Shrew Florist (2005–2012). Live performances are where Avola truly shines, using the energy of the room as an instrument to create communal, alive moments that blur the line between artist and audience.

Xylyn Hathaway has become a conduit of vulgar-beauty-jazz music that sinks teeth into the space it fills. She paints canvas into composition and wield an upright bass like bazookas, exploding hearts open peeled backwards into one bouquet of manic laughter from the pit of your chest.
Xylyn is a cherished figure and friend in our jazz community; born on Earth, one stones throw west from the palpitating heart of downtown Portland, Oregon.
A forager for chanterelles, she was raised on the farm in Newberg with Grandma. When Grandma died they lost the old farmhouse, red and white and alive in the decaying cherry walnut orchards. Grandma lives in Noble Pioneer Cemetery now, Xylyn in Southwest Portland.
As a band leader, Xylyn’s musical visions unfold and sprout behemoth architecture dimly lit, oozing spirits from the gills as it gasps for it’s first breath beneath thumps quantized in fractals. She propels a soloist or a broken poet off cliffs into jupiter’s hurricane eye.
She plays with cats like George Colligan, like Ron Steen, like anybody making big nasty music to be hurt and healed by in this wet crow city.
Xylyn Hathaway’s heart and music exude peace and play and oozing spirits, dancing between us, around us, below the violent ocean dismembered by big old stones.”

• David Barber