SOUND TYPE: Mars Kumari x Alex Smith

WHEN
8PM
Friday, July 11, 2025
Where
Theater, Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA

The second act of SOUND TYPE 2025 features Marks Kumari, the youngest and newest member of Deadverse Recordings. She amalgamates her heady blend of dark ambient, witch house, hip hop, industrial, trip hop and hauntology into a sound that is wholly her own.

Guest writer Alex Smith is an artist, writer, curator, “musician”/noise-maker based in Philadelphia, whose work reflects that dichotomy– stark, beautiful, wrought with Afrofuturist tension, avant garde fashion/assemblage, and dynamic visual presentation. Stay tuned for more information about the public seminar!

SOUND TYPE Music Festival is a multi-part series of live concerts and public seminars that pair musicians with writers to reflect on music practice and critical feedback pushing against category, form and stereotype. Join us at all five groundbreaking and genre-defying live events and discussions through 2025!

SOUND TYPE Concert: Mars Kumari

concert

8 PM–9:30 PM on July 11, 2025

$20

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Mars Kumari

"When the French philosopher Jacques Derrida defined the lingering Marxism of late-Capitalist society as hauntological, mashing together the words “haunting” and “ontology,” he couldn’t have imagined what the era might sound like. Bay Area beat maestra Mars Kumari captures the grit and grief of loss we all feel now, haunted as we are by what was here and is now missing."
- Roy Christopher

Alex Smith aka ALEXOTERIC

Alex Smith is an artist, writer, curator, “musician”/noise-maker, living in the cosmically kinetic city of Philadelphia. His work reflects that dichotomy– stark, beautiful, wrought with Afrotopian tension, avant garde fashion/assemblage, and dynamic visual presentation. His sci-fi inspired worlds collide with queer/radical reimaginings of the fantastic. From collage work, to zines, to bands and solo music performances, to promoting other bands and performers via curation and cultural critique and arts reporting, Smith transcends the concept of “renaissance man” and works from the Afrofturist vision– all things, all the time, each aspect of his work informing the other. Smith won the 2020 Pew Fellowship of the Arts, presenting work such as his short story collection Arkdust (Rosarium Publishing), his experimental art-punk bands (Rainbow Crimes, Solarized, Spectral Forces, Glitch Proverbs), the cyberpunk superhero indie comic book series Black Vans, among others. He invites you to join him in the chromatic exploration of the unknown, his art a visual portal to that liminal space.

SOUND TYPE: Mars Kumari x Alex Smith

WHEN

Where

SOUND TYPE Concert: Mars Kumari