Roulette’s annual Mixology Festival highlights novel approaches to technology in music and media arts, since 1991, and is supported in-part by mediaThe Foundation.

Ami Dang, bookworms, Madeline Stepien (fka pent)

Amrita “Ami” Kaur Dang is a South Asian-American vocalist, sitarist, composer and producer from Baltimore. Her sound blends elements of North Indian classical, noise/ambient electronics, beat-driven psych and experimental dance pop. The work references her hybrid identity as a first-generation South Asian-American, Sikh upbringing, musical education, as well as the chaos and spirituality of the landscapes of both Baltimore and urban India. Picking up her first sitar when she was twelve years old, Dang has studied North Indian classical music (voice and sitar) in both New Delhi and Maryland, and she also holds a degree in music technology & composition from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. Following in the footsteps of artists like Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, she seeks to advance the sound of contemporary experimental, pop, and electronic music with the sounds of South Asia—through vocals and sitar, ragas, and sampling. And vice versa, she aims to bring a broader sound palette to the legacy of South Asian music. These goals are a lifelong mission. To that end, she has collaborated with Animal Collective, William Cashion (of Future Islands), James Acaster, Thor Harris—to name a few. She has provided tour support for Beach House, black midi, Grimes, Lower Dens, Florist and more. 

nik Dawson (bookworms) is a Los Angeles-born, New York-based electronic composer who produces and performs sound works under the name bookworms. bookworms work is often concerned with various modes of representation and interpretation through audio and non-linear living sonic histories. By way of advanced synthesis, generative sequencing and audio collage, Dawson accesses detuned realities, and conjures harmonics, rhythms and ghosts of the truths which they have come to signify across time and space through repetition…a multi-dimensional blues. bookworms has released music through L.I.E.S. Records, Anòmia, BANK Records, DFA, Bánh Mi Verlag, and Break World Records. nik’s debut album Xenophobe was a double-LP of inspired dissections of rhythmic musical lineages; whereas the second album Appropriation Loops, expressed impressionistic concerns with “”recurrent, fluctuant feedback loops in popular and unpopular culture.” Dawson has performed in varying contexts internationally, ranging from clubs like Contact Tokyo and squat raves in Germany and Mexico, to festivals like Out Festival Portugal and Off Festival Katowice, to art spaces and museums like MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Fine Arts alongside the likes of Charlemagne Palestine, Moor Mother, Drew McDowell, DJ Stingray, Sun Ra Arkestra, and Rrose. bookworms curated  a monthly residency, Confused House at Bossa Nova Civic Club in Brooklyn that has been a curated zone for open-format electronic experimentation since 2013, hosting performances from artists such as Juliana Huxtable, Traxx, Bill Kouligas, Foodman, and Shyboi. Dawson also co-founded the Confused House record label with Jason Letkiewicz aka Steve Summers.

Madeline Stepien is a composer and sound artist based in New York City. 

Her compositions and performances examine phenomena of artificial sound via digitally constructed environments and various modes of synthesis. Through these techniques she dissects, reconstructs and subverts the aesthetic and political value of the “unnatural”. 

Operating under the alias “pent” from 2020-2024, she developed her practice through a plethora of live performances & recorded material that range from live interventions in club environments to fixed media installations.