Degenerate Art Ensemble

I discovered the Degenerate Art Ensemble through an interview key member Joshua Kohl conducted with Prefix Magazine earlier in the year (check the link below). The headline accompanying the feature-- "Hungry for something different"-- had me hooked on the group before I even read the article. Eventually, I read the piece, heard the music and, naturally, fell in love. Now the question of how to tell you about this little group...

I feel like I'm wasting your precious time by attempting to distill what the Degenerate Art Ensemble, a Seattle-based music, art, and dance collective founded in 1993, are about in a few carefully chosen paragraphs. As their bio states, the collective is "constantly in a state of invention and re-invention" and as such they've been everything to everyone in the last 13 years-- a theater troupe, a 45-piece orchestra, a raging anarchist punk band, a studied free jazz group, a dance company, you name it.

Although reference points are clear at times (I hear Zorn and the Boredoms but those are cheap comparisons), one can hear elements of free improv, avant-jazz, classical composition, hardcore ferocity, and even traditional Japanese folk music on any one of the 7 records they've released (all but 2 on their own label, Degenerate Recordings).

Regardless of what the nitpickers might hear in the group's chaotic stew, it's hard to deny that the Degenerate Art Ensemble are on to something truly fresh.

Be sure to check out DAE on their west coast tour with Stolen Babies this October.

Official Site
Myspace
Interview with Prefix Magazine

Mp3s:

Oni Gorishi
Dreams From Wounded Mouth
Smoking Car