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Chris Schlarb is a musician, writer, father and husband. He is also the owner and founder of Sounds Are Active, a Long Beach, California-based record label specializing in jazz, experimental, electronic and other progressive musics. In almost ten years Sounds Are Active has released over forty albums by artists as varied as The Weird Weeds, Soul-Junk, Melk The G6-49, Bizzart, C.J. Boyd and Create (!). In 2006 he produced and released the Sean Carnage directed film 40 BANDS/80 MINUTES! which Ann Powers of the L.A. Times described as “frenetic… the spirit of this über-independent effort can’t be denied.”

In addition to releasing music with a number of different groups, Chris has also released solo electric guitar music under the name Xn. In 2007 he released the first album under his own name, Twilight & Ghost Stories, a massive five-year work with over forty collaborating musicians, on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Along with Orlando Greenhill and Steve Richardson he co-founded the free form ensemble Create (!) in 1999. Together they have performed at both the hallowed Project Blowed and the nearby Leimert Park Jazz Festival, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. and alongside Why? and Wobbly at the legendary, and sadly defunct, Ramp in Berkeley, CA. For more than half a decade, the group has authored and taught the Create (!) Workshops at schools and parks throughout Los Angeles County. The group was also featured in Todd S. Jenkins‘ exhaustive 400+ page Free Jazz And Free Improvisation : An Encyclopedia, citing the group as an important contributor to the future of the free jazz idiom. Currently Create (!) counts over fifty musicians as members.

In 2003 Chris created and curated the improvisational series NOTICE which attempted to bridge the gap between electronic, jazz, noise, classical, hip-hop and modern music. At the time it was the only on going series of its kind in Long Beach or nearby Orange County. Flavorpill wrote: “NOTICE inspires musicians to feed off each other, in turn making the audience feel it’s participating merely by attending.” In two years NOTICE gathered many hundreds of listeners in a small coffee house and presented them with challenging, uncompromising music, which had never been heard before.

Soon after the final NOTICE event in 2004, Chris performed and collaborated with installation artists Megan and Murray McMillan in 27 Acknowledged and Sanctioned People. Later, he and fine artist/drummer Tom Steck created I Heart Lung, an outlet for their manic free jazz skronk and drone-fed meditations which Tiny Mix Tapes called “some of the most high energy free-jazz to spit out of America.” In 2005 the group toured the US alongside Castanets (with whom they released a limited edition split 12″) and Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice. In 2007 the group will release their first full length album, Interoceans.

A distinct and versatile musician who has performed on the stages of both the BET Black Image Awards and avant-garde stronghold Tonic, Chris Schlarb has performed, recorded and collaborated with Dave Easley (of the Brian Blade Fellowship), Nels Cline, Languis, Sufjan Stevens, Lynn Johnston, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Walter Kitundu, Freestyle Fellowship producer Omid, Castanets, Glenn Bach, Noah Phillips, The Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens, Abstract Rude, Dave Longstreth (of Dirty Projectors), Parker Paul, John Kannenberg, Kris Tiner, David Kendall and Half Handed Cloud.

Chris has recorded music for the Asthmatic Kitty, Macro-Eden Records, Pete Records and Sounds Are Active record labels. He has also produced and arranged albums for Liz Janes & Create (!), ellul, Night of the Wrecking Ball, Anthony Shadduck Quartet, Acid Reign, belltower, and Bizzart in addition to albums for I Heart Lung, Create (!), Xn. and others.

Chris has had the honor of being published by Sound Collector Audio Review, Bandoppler, L.A. Record, Dailysonic, The Topeka-Capital Journal, and LAist.com. He also keeps a current booklist maintained on this site.

Most importantly he is a husband to his wife, erstwhile chef and reluctant photographer, Adriana Lucero-Schlarb and father of two beautiful children.