Degenerate Art Ensemble (often abbreviated DAE) is a Seattle-based multi-art performance company whose work is inspired by punk, comics, cinema, nightmares and fairy tales driven by live music and visceral movement theater and dance.
Kohl has described the group's philosophy as follows: "We aim to achieve the intensity of a sacrificial rite to tear away the waking world revealing alternate realities filled with characters that are transformers expressing unimaginable possibilities.
[1] Kohl, whom both composes and conducts the music for the group, utilizes both traditional and newly designed instruments to create the unique sounds for DAE and the Big Band Garage Orchestra.
[3] In 2001 Degenerate Art Ensemble formed its first "Big Band Garage Orchestra" with a lineup of drums, guitar, bass, two trumpets, tenor sax, violin, percussion and Nishimura on vocals with Kohl conducting.
[4] The group played a punk-jazz style with extreme dynamics ranging from gentle lullabies like Dreams from Wounded Mouth (co-composed by Kohl and Nishimura) to furious jazz/punk/thrash tunes like "Oni Goroshi" (composed by Jherek Bischoff).
DAE has worked with Seattle photographer Steven Miller on multiple projects including Predator's Songstress and Cuckoo Crow to create the elaborate visuals used in performances.
[11] Degenerate Art Ensemble grew out of an earlier group led by Kohl and Nishimura called The Young Composers Collective founded in Seattle in 1994, a morphing 17-20 member big band / orchestra that hosted performance artists, modern classical / jazz / rock composers and world-music practitioners performing wildly mixed programs in rock clubs around Seattle and eventually the San Francisco Bay Area.