Bill Brovold

Guitarist, composer, painter, and producer Bill Brovold participated in several no-wave ensembles across early-’80s New York City, among them the various Rhys Chatham ensembles, before forming and leading the Michigan outfit Larval, which issued material through Knitting Factory Works and Cuneiform. Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1957, Brovold picked up the guitar during the opening years of the 1970s and concentrated at first on country styles. He relocated to New York to enroll at the School of Visual Arts, completed his studies there in 1982, and joined the Rhys Chatham Ensemble as guitarist the next year, remaining with the group for five years. During the same period he also contributed to other downtown projects such as the East Village Orchestra, Fast Forward, and the Zen Vikings alongside Ernie Brooks and James Lo, while composing scores for numerous performance artists and filmmakers throughout the decade.

After departing New York he settled in the Detroit vicinity and launched Larval in the middle of the 1990s. The ensemble placed recordings on John Zorn’s Japanese imprint Avant as well as Knitting Factory Works. Late in the decade Brovold established Koko Studios in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he captured Larval’s sessions along with those of ex-Modern Lovers guitarist John Felice, John Lamb, and Poignant Plecostomus. He continues to paint, with exhibitions including shows at Detroit’s C-Pop Gallery. Tzadik included a Brovold album in its modern composers series in 2000. Larval made its first appearance on Cuneiform with the 2003 album Obedience; the same label later issued the double-disc set Surviving Death/Alive Why? in 2007. Brovold sustained his writing and recording activity through the following ten years, performing sporadically with Larval until returning in 2017 with The Serenity Knolls, a RareNoise Records collaboration with experimental keyboardist Jamie Saft. The understated release, an unexpected direction for both participants, placed Saft on Dobro and Brovold on electric guitar within a spare, nearly meditative idiom rooted in folk traditions.