Bio / EPK

Kirsten Carey is a composer, guitarist, shamisen player, and sound editor. She has toured across the USA, Canada, Japan, Europe, and Thailand. Her unique voice has been showcased at the International Society for Improvised Music conference (2014), Banff International Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music (2018), Edgefest (2018), the Co-Incidence Festival (2018), and Strange Beautiful Music (2023). Her wide-reaching work gained recognition from the Asian Cultural Council (2019) and Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2023), who awarded Carey grants for music research and collaborative works in Japan.

Carey's distinctive guitar solo is featured on noise rap trio clipping.'s song for the soundtrack to the Emmy Award-winning TV series Rick and Morty. Her duo with MacArthur fellow Tyshawn Sorey opened for the Sun Ra Arkestra. Carey has also shared the stage with luminaries like Wadada Leo Smith, Elliott Sharp, Mishio Ogawa, Karl Berger, Michiyo Yagi, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and Weasel Walter, and shared bills with the influential acts like Deerhoof, Thumbscrew, Nicole Mitchell, Evicshen, and Circuit Des Yeux.

Carey’s diverse array of projects began with The Ulysses Project, a 2013 song cycle about James Joyce’s Ulysses. The Uroboros Sextet, which blends free jazz with rock and new music, earned features in Downbeat and All About Jazz. Her album Mature Defense Mechanism with Aaron Edgcomb released on Relative Pitch Records in 2024, and the duo’s set at the Skanu Mezs festival in Riga, Latvia was highlighted alongside Autrechre’s by the Queitus.

Art rock / mixed media duo Throwaway released their latest album on Chicago’s FPE Records in 2022, garnering praise in Post-Trash, The Detroit Metro Times, Ghettoblaster Magazine, and more. Throwaway’s music videos have been selected twice for the prestigious Ann Arbor Film Festival, showcasing in 2020 and 2024. The band is currently working on a rock opera.

Carey wrote additional music for episode 5 of the hit Netflix Japan drama House of Ninjas, which also features her shamisen playing throughout the main score. She has been commissioned to write compositions for acclaimed musicians such as Chris Sies of Latitude 49 and Boston’s Hinge Ensemble. She scored the award-winning independent film ‘Taken For Granted’ (dir. Manasi Patel) and wrote the current slate of music for The One Piece Podcast.

As a tsugaru shamisen player, Carey has won third place in the Bachido Cup in 2023 and performed at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s sakura festival in 2024.

Carey additionally works as a freelance anime and gaming correspondent, contributing articles to esteemed platforms like The Daily Beast, Polygon, IGN, The Mary Sue, and Screen Rant. Her expertise extends to sound editing, with contributions to prominent projects like Magnolia Picture’s A Glitch In The Matrix (which competed at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival) and Disney's The Lion Guard.

Kirsten Carey is an Eventide Artist and is also proud to showcase products from Red Panda and Earthquaker Devices.

Press quotes

“Carey and Edgcomb stretch the expressive possibilities of guitar and drums. Their playing is like being dropped into a debris field. Initially perplexing, the duo’s strength is their ability to work with wrecked components, corralling the shrapnel into something transfixing.” - the Quietus

“[Carey] turns the process of choice into music… The characteristics of her guitar sound worked as a narrative element to attract other sounds.” - Tokyo Sightsong

“[Carey]’s sextet offered an infectious, driving energy with heavy riffs and knotty time signatures combining with Carey's distorted chords to create something that was neither jazz, nor rock, but something all its own. Short, well-conceived (and wryly-named) pieces… kept lots of heads bobbing during the group's set.” - All About Jazz (on the Uroboros Sextet)

“Experimentation at its best.” - Ghettoblaster Magazine (on Throwaway)

“If we told you you've never heard anything like Kirsten Carey, it's not just another throwaway line... but you probably haven't even seen anything like Carey, either.” - Detroit Metro Times

“Despite intimately knowing the circle of fifths, Carey can sound like someone who's chugged a fifth while headbanging to The Melvins .. or be chill enough to play a concert for an experimental music program for really little kids in a Hollywood public library.” - Pulp