WGlenn Branca was an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. Branca received a 2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
WJames Chance, also known as James White, is an American saxophonist, keyboard player, songwriter and singer.
WRhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions. He has lived in France since 1987.
WCristina Monet Zilkha, known during her recording career simply as Cristina, was an American singer and writer, best known for her no wave recordings made for ZE Records in the late 1970s and early 1980s in New York City. She "was a pioneer in blending the artsiness and attitude of punk with the joyful energy of disco and pop.... [which] helped pave the way for the massive successes of her contemporaries, like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and anticipated the rise of confrontational but danceable alt-pop acts..." in a mode that was at once "campy, self-aware, and infectious."
WRichard Edson is an American actor and musician.
WMichael Rolfe Gira is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, author and artist. He is the main force behind the New York City musical group Swans and fronted Angels of Light. He is also the founder of Young God Records.
WKim Althea Gordon is an American musician, singer, songwriter and bassist, guitarist, and vocalist in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating from Los Angeles's Otis College of Art and Design, she moved to New York City to begin an art career. There, she formed Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore in 1981. She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released a total of six albums on independent labels before the end of the 1980s. They would subsequently release nine studio albums on the major label DGC Records, beginning with Goo in 1990. Gordon was also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993.
WJames Robert Jarmusch is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, and composer. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Paterson (2016), and The Dead Don't Die (2019). Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician, Jarmusch has composed music for his films and released two albums with Jozef van Wissem.
WArthur Morgan "Arto" Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer.
WLydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, actress and self-empowerment speaker. Her career was spawned by the New York City no wave scene in the 1970s, predominantly as the singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
WBlonde Redhead is an American alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace that formed in New York City in 1993. The band's earliest albums were noted for their noise rock influences, though their sound evolved by the early 2000s with the releases of Misery is a Butterfly (2004) and 23 (2007), which both incorporated elements of dream pop, shoegaze and other genres. They have released nine regular studio albums and have toured internationally.
WMartine-Elisabeth "Lizzy" Mercier Descloux was a French musician, singer-songwriter, composer, actress, writer and painter.
WThurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moore was ranked 34th in Rolling Stone's 2004 edition of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." In May 2012, Spin published a staff-selected list of the top 100 rock guitarists, and ranked Moore and his Sonic Youth bandmate Lee Ranaldo together at number 1.
WIkue Mori , also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, electronic musician, composer, and graphic designer.
WJudy Nylon is a widely influential multidisciplinary American artist who moved to London in 1970. She was half of the punk rock music group Snatch, which also featured fellow American expat Patti Palladin. Rock music aficionados living in New York City and London during the era spanning glam, punk and no wave are likely to appreciate her influence, the bulk of which has not been preserved in print nor on vinyl or CD. NME's Paul Tickell proclaimed her LP Pal Judy (1982), coproduced by Nylon and Adrian Sherwood, "a classic rainy day bit of sound and song to drift away to."
WBlonde Redhead is an American alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace that formed in New York City in 1993. The band's earliest albums were noted for their noise rock influences, though their sound evolved by the early 2000s with the releases of Misery is a Butterfly (2004) and 23 (2007), which both incorporated elements of dream pop, shoegaze and other genres. They have released nine regular studio albums and have toured internationally.
WBlonde Redhead is an American alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace that formed in New York City in 1993. The band's earliest albums were noted for their noise rock influences, though their sound evolved by the early 2000s with the releases of Misery is a Butterfly (2004) and 23 (2007), which both incorporated elements of dream pop, shoegaze and other genres. They have released nine regular studio albums and have toured internationally.
WLee Mark Ranaldo is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. In May 2012, Spin published a staff selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1.
WNorman Westberg is a guitarist from Detroit best known for his work with Swans. Present through almost the entirety of the band's existence, Westberg was brought on for Swans' debut album Filth (1983) and appeared on every album through 1991's White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. Westberg became a full-time Swans member once again when Michael Gira reactivated the group in 2010.