Thursday April 09, 2026 | 8:00 pm | $10-25 sliding scale
Killick with John Jansen | Marie Herrington, Dave Benham, Paul Rubenstein
The return of Killick Appalachian Trance Metal performer from Georgia joined by area-instrument builder John Jansen. An improvised blind date of local openers Marie Herrington (voice/electronics), Dave Benham (voice/handmade flutes/electronics), and Paul Rubenstein (invented instruments).
Killick Hinds lives in Athens, Georgia. His music is Appalachian Trance Metal made on unusual stringed instruments with an emphasis on unquantifiable rhythms, intuitive intonation, and shamanistic ROYGBIV. The primary sonic influences on Killick are animals, wind, water, fire, electrical hum, and silence. Pop-culture mashups and ancient and obscure forms infuse his music; the effect more closely resembles speech patterns and emotionally-drawn architecture than it does conventional Western music. Despite its eclectic nature the sounds are surprisingly familiar and accessible to audiences of all ages and levels of musical involvement. Killick has worked with countless amazing artists from around the world. After 41 years of playing he loves it all more than ever. Over 300 albums can be found through:
John C. L. Jansen lives between workshops, stages, and tuning systems. His music grows from the harmonic series, just intonation, and the strange resonances that appear when wood, wire, and electricity are combined in unusual ways. Originally trained as a classical guitarist, he now treats the instrument less as a fixed object than as a question: what new sounds emerge when the block of wood and strings we call the guitar is reimagined?
His music has been heard across the United States in concerts, festivals, recordings, and occasional appearances in film, theatre, and other unexpected places.
Jansen lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, where he runs his luthier company JLJ Instruments. He is currently pursuing a DMA in composition at the Peabody Conservatory.
Marie Herrington is a contemporary voice specialist who composes and performs music that fixates on the capabilities of the human voice, and how far it can go beyond the norm. International award winning composer, Marie has composed music for a multitude of choirs including but not exclusive to NYC’s C4: Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, The Handel Choir of Baltimore, and The Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus. On the opposite side of her vocal compositions, you can find many pieces for solo voice and fixed/live electronics on her album Laugh Like Birds, or in other pieces that she’s premiered around Baltimore City. Marie’s current main collaborators are Ben Zervigon and the members of New Orleans’ Alluvium Ensemble, which she’s been a member of since 2020; Ladies Out Loud which is a trio started by Marie, Leah Wenger, and Elisheva Pront; soprano Sofia Scattareggia; and the band San Junipero whom she writes for and performs music with.
Paul Rubenstein is a composer and multi-instrumental musician who invents and builds most of the instruments he plays. While running a jazz and world music show for WHRW at SUNY Binghamton, he built his first microtonal guitar. He went on to invent more electric, fretless and movable-fretted stringed instruments, and electric, tuned percussion instruments, all microtonally capable. He studied Javanese Gamelan in Seattle, then later at UMBC. Performed in Neem (rock), Bakshish (avant-world), and Spacepeople (experimental). He studied music composition at Cornish College in Seattle and at Bard College (MFA). For Urban Arts Partnership, he taught New York City high school students how to design and build electric guitars, amplifiers, and oscillators, digital recording and production, microtonal music compositon and improvisation. In NYC, he performed solo and with Bombay Down at Tonic, Knitting Factory and elsewhere. https://paulrubenstein.bandcamp.com/
Dave Benham is a Baltimore flute player who also builds flutes and designs digital synthesizers. He performs solo on both types of instruments and frequently combines them together. You can check out videos of his VCV Rack modules here.
