contact: wintercarousel |at| gmail |.| com

ABOUT .
Winter Carousel performs playful noise/experimental music and features Diane Nelson and Kazko Peasmith. Artistic influences include stagework of The Grand Guignol and animation of Ladislaw Starevitch. Diane and Kazko have been involved with various, separate noise projects and came together to form Winter Carousel in the summer of 2001. All of Winter Carousel’s costumes were designed and constructed by Diane. Diane was first fascinated with noise when she heard about John Cage's work while in junior high school. "This interest wasn't fully realized until I met Andy Ortmann of Nihilist Records and Panicsville in 1997. He included me in his projects and I was featured on his albums, 'Last Compulsory Exercise' in 1998 and 'Evil' in 1999. Through this work I came to appreciate analog technology such as Moog synthesizers, Korg and Arps." By Diane's first solo release on the compilation, Extreme Music from Women she was hooked on creating soundscapes, despite having no musical training. She and Ortmann went on tours with such bands as Wolf Eyes, Zipperspy, Zeek Sheck, and William Bennett and played shows with bands such as Illusion of Safety, Caroliner, and Rubber-0-Cement. At the Subzero Festival in 2001 at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, "playing with no heat in the dead of winter, with the worse case of stomach flu I ever had, I met Kazko Peasmith. Her performance [in the band Blander] was awful, but I enjoyed her mannerisms. After the show, I convinced her to record with me. After a year of sonic incubation, we had our first performance on a playbill with Panicsville, Gunshop and headlined by Sudden Infant. I made insect costumes and we took our name from a stop-animation short by L. Starevitch from the mid-1900s. We were to be cute, poppy and kid-like. Instead we were awkward. Since then we became more comfortable and tried to make our performances entertaining without delving into performance art." These later performances included acts such as destroying cardboard instruments and hula-hooping while vacuuming onstage. Diane's other interests include banjo, electronics, building oscillators and filters, and visual arts such as pop-up books, painting, and welding.

DIANE NELSON is too sweet and unimposing in stature to be considered threatening or scary. Yet in spite of the politeness of her person, she creates an aggressive force with her sounds. Armed with her Realistic Synthesizer, Diane brings a pop sensibility to noise design. A fascination with circuit technology drives Diane’s desire to incorporate analog robotics into her artistic material. A former member of the noise group Panicsville, her solo audio work was last featured on the all-woman noise compilation Extreme Music From Women, produced by Whitehouse’s William Bennett.

KAZKO PEASMITH has never been professionally trained in sound engineering. She has spent several years recording and editing her own audio creations in both digital and analog settings. She first became acquainted with recording by way of home-taper analog experiments in the early nineties. She has since developed a distinct noise-beat style of music production that is almost completely digital-based. Her various projects have appeared on several compilations and independent label releases. Previously she has performed and recorded with projects such as Blander, Cock E.S.P., and Wrong. Aside from Winter Carousel, she is currently active with her solo musical project, Insect Deli. In addition to the audio arts, her interests and experience include theatre and live production and arts/media administration. Introduced to experimental music by her cousin Honolulu noise artist Jay T. Yamamoto, Kazko began contributing in 1994 to the now defunct JTY Tapes.

RELATED AND SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:

DIANE NELSON
Extreme Music From Women, various artists compilation CD (Susan Lawly, 2000)
appearances with Panicsville:
Evil?, CD (Nihilist, 1999)
The Last Compulsory Exercise, CD (Nihilist, 1997)
Rubber-O-Cement/Panicsville, Split 12" (Nihilist, 2000)

KAZKO PEASMITH
appearances with Wrong, as Julia Gilman:
Blackbean's Dirty Little Secret, various artists compilation CD (Blackbean & Placenta, 2002)
Meditations on Avant-Garde Truisms Incorporating Non-Idiomatic Improvisational Timbres and Techniques, cassette (Gameboy Recordings, 2002)
as Mammal Holiday:
Syrens: Female Noise Compilation, various artists compilation 10" (MSBR/Flenix, 1999)
Just What I Needed/Just A Cassette Single (self-released, 1998)
A Splitting Earache, split cassette with Jay T. Yamamoto (JTY Tapes, 1996)
Fruits of the Spirit, various artists compilation cassette (JTY Tapes, 1995)
as The VCM Information Society:
Miscellaneous Noise from..., cassette (JTY Tapes, 1995)
appearances as The VCM Information Society with
Jay T. Yamamoto:
Tetsuya The Lo-Fi Man vs. Radio Free Hawaii, cassette (JTY Tapes, 1995)
Lo-Fi Nation (JTY Tapes, 1994)