2016: Thomas Carnacki

Sheila Bosco, Jesse Burson, Gregory Hagan, James Kaiser, Cheryl E. Leonard, Gregory Scharpen

Thomas Carnacki is a Bay Area-based sonic entity, primarily functioning as the performance and recording outlet for Gregory Scharpen, an award-winning theatrical sound designer and film editor. Carnacki recordings and performances tend towards the textural, the subtle, the disquieting and unsettling. The live performance instantiation of Carnacki consists of a varying (if moderately consistent) rotating cast of participants, regularly including Cheryl E. Leonard, Gregory Hagan, Jesse Burson, Sheila Bosco, and Jim Kaiser. Notable collaborators include luminaries such as Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, Geraldine Fibbers), Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi (Rabbit Rabbit, Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), and Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables). Outside the Carnacki context, Scharpen has performed with Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), Colin Potter, and irr. app. (ext.), among others. Thomas Carnacki music has been featured in numerous dance and theatrical productions, HBO and PBS documentaries, and avant-garde experimental short films; and Carnacki has performed on both sides of the continent and as part of such festivals and entities as Activating The Medium, Project Soundwave, the Whitney Biennial, and the Illuminated Corridor. Carnacki has released a number of records in the past decade, the most recent being a split lp with Vulcanus 68 (the Quietus notes that the Carnacki half of the record is “a beautifully engaging and evolving series of crafted textures and tones to orbit our ears and enter our unconscious.”) Brainwashed.com also notes, in reference to 2010’s “The Disappearance of This Terrible Spool” ep, that “[Scharpen] attempts to open up listeners’ worldview to the things that are best ignored; tapping into mental states that may tap back … this is a whole other world where art and the afterlife briefly touch.”

Artist (photo by Photographer)