Mario Diaz de Leon

Mario Diaz de Leon is a composer of extreme instrumental music, combining a devotion to Stockhausen-style modernism with a love of noise, drone, and black metal. His works have been described as "21st century chamber music that couples crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex" (Wire Magazine).

His debut album as composer, "Enter Houses Of" was released in 2009 on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and praised by the New York Times for its "hallucinatory intensity". A second album, entitled "The Soul is the Arena", was released in 2015 on the Denovali label. Both recordings were performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom he has collaborated extensively since 2006.

His works have recently been presented at Chicago Symphony Center, Hakuju Hall (Tokyo), Venice Biennale, Lucerne Festival, Musica Nova Helsinki, National Gallery of Art (DC) and Roulette (Brooklyn). In 2016, he was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to write a new work for brass and electronics.

As a solo performer, he is active under the name Oneirogen (o-NI-ro-jen), an experimental project known for its merging of ethereal synths, brutal distortion, and noise influences. Since 2012, Oneirogen has toured internationally and released three full length LPs and two EPs on the Denovali label. He is also the vocalist and guitarist of the death/black metal band Luminous Vault.

Born in Minnesota in 1979, he grew up playing guitar in hardcore punk and metal bands before attending the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied electronic music and composition. He has lived in in New York City since 2004, and received his doctorate in music composition from Columbia University in 2013.