Jacob Felix Heule is an improvising percussionist with a special interest in friction techniques. His music is shaped by intuition, listening, and following where the sounds lead. He embraces limited instrumentation - usually playing just a single drum - as a commitment to exploring the depth of his instruments. He uses a wide array of found objects and extended techniques to create a unique and idiosyncratic sound vocabulary. He also plays drum set and electronics.
Heule has been in active in the San Francisco Bay Area music scene since the early 2000s, and has played hundreds of shows in basements, warehouses, and squats around the world, with groups such as Ettrick, Basshaters, Sult, and Voicehandler.
Heule frequently collaborates with Danishta Rivero, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Guro Moe, Haavard Skaset, Matt Chandler, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Corcoran. He has long been active as an organizer, and since 2015 has been facilitating a monthly improvisation workshop, Doors That Only Open in Silence.
Heule's practice is unified with his work as an audio engineer. His playing explores nuances of sound with the same obsessive attention to detail as an engineer perfecting a mix (and vice versa). He does live sound full-time for Bay Area arts organizations large and small, and has also worked on albums by artists such as Keiji Haino, Marshall Trammell, and Burmese.
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Videos
Jacob Felix Heule, Clarke Robinson, Matt Ingalls