"Yan Jun was born in 1973 and he grew up in Lanzhou in the province Gansu, where during his teenage years he started writing poetry. He has lived in Beijing since 1999 where he has worked as a music critic, focusing mainly on Chinese underground rock. He founded the record label Sub Jam in 2000, which has since produced a lot of alternative Chinese music. He started making his own music in 2004. Whilst this may be seen as relatively late, his music making can be considered just one of several strings to Yan Jun's bow, along with performance, poetry, writing and curating.

Yan Jun's aesthetic is like a reflection of this borderless, non-hierarchical musical melting pot where everything seems possible. His main sounding materials are field recordings and noise. Esthetically he is interested in sound characteristics such as high frequencies, noise and silence. He plays live, as a soloist or with other musicians and uses lo-tech apparatus, often in improvisation and thus plays a part in the international 'improv' scene. As a composer and musician, he also explores the sonic consequences of body movements, works with video, makes sound installations and writes his own texts for his media works. It comes as no surprise that he has been presented to the Shanghai Biennale, has received a honorarium mention at Prix Ars Electronica and has been invited to the Berlin and Rotterdam international poetry festivals.

With and through different media, Yan Jun is exploring the poetic side of the everyday and of basic materials, exemplified in a few of his works from the last years. Recently, for "Living Room Tour," in Beijing 2014, he visited several private living rooms and from this made a collage of audio and video recordings. The live work "Gestures (Two)" depicts a scene which revolves around a slowly moving and silent figure who is captured in his movements by swarming photographers. In this rather still and quiet performance, the sound of the camera shutters and the flashes give a minimalist commentary on the implication of performing, listening and documentation.

In "Let's act", which was conducted in 2014 in Rotterdam, Yan Jun elegantly links the various cultural activities his oeuvre presents. A text written by Yan Jun about noise and the instrumentalization of noise is juxtaposed with field-recordings and video shots from everyday life. Here noise, rather than being composed, is drawn from a variety of essential parts of life such as communication and social gathering. The work thus artistically displays some of the main features of Yan Jun's music and art. Although he uses a broad range of techniques, he maintains a strong focus and concentration on the everyday and on the importance of the visual as well as an auditive reality."-Andreas Engström

"Jean-Luc Guionnet is an elusive figure. A Parisian artist active in many fields (music, visual arts, cinema), he has mostly worked in electro-acoustics but also has a career in free improvisation, playing alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, church organ, and piano. He has collaborated with Éric La Casa, Éric Cordier, and André Almuro on tape music. His main free improv and jazz projects include Hubbub, Schams, Return of the New Thing, and the Joe Rosenberg quintet.

Guionnet made scientific studies before shifting to fine arts. He studied musique concrete under Iannis Xenakis and Michel Zbar, but also pursued studies in philosophy (esthetics) with Geneviève Clancy. His first works date from the late '80s and are mostly collaborations with filmmaker André Almuro (some have been issued by Ground Fault). Then came a lasting partnership with electro-acousticians Éric Cordier and Éric La Casa. Together they wrote the series "Afflux." Guionnet also produces the Ateliers de Création Radiophoniques ("creative radio workshops") for France Culture. His eclecticism has kept him at bay of recognition -- because to the eye of the press it strips him from some credibility and because running careers in philosophy (he was co-director for the review Terre des Signes from 1993 to 1996), painting (he exhibited from 1992 to 1997), and music simultaneously tends to be time-consuming.

The release of an eponymous CD by Dan Warburton's free jazz quartet Return of the New Thing in 1999 on the respected label Leo Records introduced Guionnet to a wider audience. Since then his activities as an improviser have constantly stretched toward the fringes of experimentalism. His participation in the French-Swiss group Hubbub and his duo with guitarist Olivier Benoit (&Un, 2002) follow the school of Berlin reductionism."

"Matija Schellander, born 1981 in Ludmannsdorf-Bilčovs, Austria.

He studied contrabass at the Konservatorium Wien and graduated in the computer music and new media class (ELAK) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Schellander lives and works as a composer, contrabassist and electronic musician in Vienna where he composes for music ensembles, theater plays, contemporary dance performances and makes soundtracks for films.

A vast variety of influences - from Musique Concrete to Hip-hop, Techno, Improv, Jazz, New Music, Early Music to traditional and Film music - identify Matija Schellanders works, which he either produces or records himself or writes for instruments. Sound colors, sampling, and organically moving Sound Images are central artistic elements of Matija Schellander's works.

He works on solo projects and collaborates with several international artists.

Together with Maja Osojnik he founded the electroacoustic duo Rdeča Raketa. He frequently works on performance-based field recordings with Italian sound artist Attila Faravelli.

He regularly collaborates with stage directors Ivna Žic and Franz-Xaver Mayr at Theater Neumarkt Zürich, Theater Basel, Schauspielhaus Graz, Schauspielhaus Wien, Theater Ulm, among many others.

In 2015 the double CD "foreign correspondents" with Noid and Ryu Hankil - a document of their east Asia tour - was released.

The quartet blue mistake, red mistake with Yan Jun, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Seijiro Murayama was founded in 2018. The CD on Ftarri Records Tokyo will be released in 2020.

The sound comic Wendy Pferd Tod Mexiko - produced in collaboration with author Natascha Gangl and composer Maja Osojnik - was awarded best radio-play at the Berlin Radio play Festival in 2018. The trios new piece Revanche der Schlangenfrau. Frei nach Unica Zürn had it´s premiere in 2020."

"Percussionist Seijiro Murayama was born in 1957 in Nagasaki, Japan. He started performing improvised music in 1972, under some influence of Vinko Globokar and musicologist Fumio Koizumi. After graduated from Tokyo University in 1982 in Urdu studies he toured the USA with Keiji Haino as part of the seminal psychedelic band Fushitsusha. Returning to Japan after a period in NYC he continued playing drums and electronics in K.K. Null's noise/rock band A.N.P. (Absolut Null Punkt), while further exploring free improvisation. A relocation to France in 1999 led to collaborations that extended into dance, theatre and performance as well as ongoing partnerships with musicians Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric Cordier, Michel Doneda, Mattin, Lionel Marchetti, among many others. After over a decade in Europe he relocated back to Japan in 2013.

His artistic principal is to work with the idea of the plural or inter-disciplinary relationships between music and other disciplines of art: dance, video, paintings, photos, literature etc. In this way, he collaborates with musicians, composers, and sound artists. Improvisation is always the major concern for him, even if it is not his artistic goal. His approach is based on the attention to space and place, to the energy of the audience and to the quality and perception of silence on various levels."