Since the early 2000’s Portland-based writer/actor/solo performer Joe von Appen has been staging his serio-comic, surrealistic character-based monologues in legendary venues like On The Boards in Seattle and Highways Performance Space and Gallery in Santa Monica.  His work has been described as “a morbidly comic tour of American desire and delusion” (The Stranger) and “a massive inside out hallucination” (Backstage Magazine). 

Von Appen eventually started tailoring his performance for the urgency of live music venues.  Fast-paced, fever driven monologues over warped ambient soundscapes, sharing stages with Why? Barr and Starfucker.

Billy is an experimental noise project by Portland based musician Rose Moore. She conveys themes of isolation and depression through harsh noise and self deprecating prose. She specializes in no input mixing, blending the genre of industrial music and power electronics with spoken word poetry.

She has performed in Portland since 2015 and has since honed a skill for organizing various events. She created “The Ensemble”, a group of 10 musicians who improvise in a round robin style during an hour long performance. “The Ensemble” which had its sixth installment in Portland in spring 2026. The fourth Ensemble had a successful installment in Berlin in 2024.