Mario Diaz de León

"For the third full length document of his classical works, Mario Diaz de Leon presents his most unified offering to date, distilling the modernistic hellfire of his previous releases to a crystalline essence. "Sanctuary" is an album length piece created in collaboration with TAK Ensemble, a brilliant NYC based quintet devoted to energetic and virtuosic performances of contemporary music. Featuring soprano voice, flute, violin, bass clarinet, marimba, and the composers own synthesizer work, the album is a hypnotic and ritualistic journey through realms of angelic and demonic experience, combining acoustic and electronic elements with visionary intensity.Since 2002, Mario Diaz de Leon has created a significant body of new works for acoustic instruments and electronics. Following his teenage years playing hardcore punk, metal, and electronic music, Diaz de Leon was inspired by the mystically oriented modernisms of Stockhausen, Scelsi, Messiaen, and Dumitrescu, and soon after developed his signature style while a student at Oberlin Conservatory. His debut album as composer, ""Enter Houses Of"" was released in 2009 on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and praised by the New York Times for its ""hallucinatory intensity"". A second album, entitled ""The Soul is the Arena"", was released in 2015 on Denovali, and was named a notable recording of the year by New Yorker Magazine. Pitchfork wrote that the album ""combines his interests seamlessly into music that throbs with snarling exuberance."" Both releases were performed by his longtime collaborators in the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).He currently leads the metal band Luminous Vault as vocalist and guitarist, whose "Charismata" EP was released on Profound Lore Records in spring 2017. From 2012-2016, his solo electronic project Oneirogen (o-NI-ro-jen) toured internationally and released three full length albums on Denovali. He collaborated with director Zev Deans to create the score for Alien: Biotic, a short film commissioned by Fox as part of th...