Abstract explorations through real, unreal, and perhaps more real realms await the adventurous.

Experimental musicians Arrington de Dionyso and Ben Bennett are journeying to the Gray Coast Guild Hall in Quilcene on Wednesday, Feb. 22 to offer an evening of genre-expanding improvisational sonic revelry.

With deep roots in punk rock’s destructive aesthetic, tearing down musical standards in an effort for liberation, de Dionyso’s music traverses territories of human and animal, sacred and absurd.

His compositions embrace sounds as colors and tones as tools with which to paint using techniques like circular overtones whispered through bamboo flutes or the penetrating and deeply guttural howls of amplified throat singing.

PRELIMINARY PROBING

This raucous ruckus began resounding out of him right away.

“I think I was pretty set in my path from a very young age,” de Dionyso said.

Raised by ministers, he found himself pulled to the music, but not in the way most might be.

“After services were over, I would run to the church organ before they shut it off and try to pound a few keys before I would get shuffled away,” de Dionyso recalled.

Around age 3 or 4, his parents attempted to sit him down with a piano teacher from the church to tie him up in simple lessons.

“I was having a fine time on my own banging on the piano keys and making sounds that I liked, and then they made me go to this lady’s house, and you know just, ‘Mr. Frog goes hop, hop hop hop,’ you know where she’s making you play one note at a time,” he said.

“It was absolutely insufferable. I couldn’t stand it, and so I didn’t last more than one or two lessons,” he added.

Still the unknown kept calling in song, despite his being shaken from those early instrumentations.

In kindergarten, an African drumming ensemble held a presentation for his school with masked dancers that took him aback.

“They were jumping, and leaping, and doing flips all over the place,” de Dionyso recalled.

With a crowd of somewhere between 15 to 20 drummers, their pounding pierced him.

“It was this massive sensory overload, and it was so exciting and so visceral, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is it! This is amazing.’”

CONJECTURAL CONJURING

Later, through libraries, he was able to find his way back to the experience with recordings of music from around the world.

A world he went around himself in service to the sounds.

De Dionyso’s travels have crossed numerous countries, including multiple returns to Indonesia where the jathilan, a traditional Javanese trance dance, possessed him.

“It’s an incredible thing even just as a bystander to see it, but then to be invited to be performing with some of these groups is such an incredible honor and literally the experience of a lifetime,” he said.

As the dancers are worked into a trance under the spell of shamans and sonics, the music moves into moans, yells, and sighs, creating an eerie, entrancing ambiance the likes of which can be heard in many of de Dionyso’s recordings.

“Part of what I try to do is maybe translate some of those experiences into music that could be shared here,” he said.

This level of intensity, however, isn’t always for the uninitiated.

“If you haven’t been exposed to a lot of it, you might hear one example and not really have the listening tools to be able to discern what’s happening,” de Dionyso said.

Like his lifetime of exploring the world through sound, he believes it requires effort and openness.

“I think a lot of it is really about ear training. If all you listen to is a specific type of very formulated, Western pop music — and nowadays most if it’s digitally made on a computer, it’s not even real instruments — if that’s all you listen to, you could compare that to a person that’s only eating heavy carbohydrates and sugar. There’s not a lot of nutrients in that, in my opinion.”

For those willing to work, the rewards are rich.

“I think it’s thoroughly cleansing and purifying. It does incredible wonders for the mood, just your overall state of mind and attitude about life.”

“Sound can be a natural antidepressant. It’s energizing,” de Dionyso said.

While there are bottomless levels for deep divers, there’s still plenty to enjoy on the surface.

“Even if we don’t talk about the spiritual ideas behind it, just the very basic effects on health and mental-health, and that kind of energizing force in the music, that alone makes it all worthwhile,” he said.

Ben Bennett swirls in a style all his own while playing his unique set of percussion instruments.

INSTIGATING INVESTIGATIONS

These days, he’s often healing through the howls of his own invention, the bromiophone.

“The bromiophone is kind of like an extension for the bass clarinet. It still uses the basic mouthpiece and the neck, it just gives you sort of bigger sounding possibilities,” de Dionyso said.

Ben Bennett will be accompanying him with percussion, though exactly how would be hard to say.

Bennett is most famous for his 300 episode series of videos called “Sitting and Smiling” that record endurance art performances where he looks into the camera while sitting and smiling motionless for four hours.

When making music, however, Bennett comes to life through an assortment of unique instruments many of which are homemade or found objects.

“He’s really incredible, and he’s totally wild, and he’s got this thoroughly unique style of drumming that is just all his own way of playing,” de Dionyso said.

They first met during de Dionyso’s “This Saxophone Kills Fascists” tour in 2017.

“It was music, it was a concert tour. But there was an impetus of activism behind it and trying to organize communities of cultural resistance,” de Dionyso recalled.

While many might find the pair unusual, the blend of reed and drum is customary.

“All over the world you hear people combining the sound of these really sort of harsh, shrill reed instruments with percussion ensembles and it’s the same thing that makes jazz so exciting,” de Dionyso said.

He sees a magic in this match that is unmatched.

“The sound of reeds and percussion instruments is like this automatically invigoration combinations of sounds, and if you play long enough and listen to it long enough, there are these sort of trance inducing vibrational frequencies that sometimes go along with that,” de Dionyso said.

Their event at the Gray Coast Guild Hall will even harken back to the African drum performance of de Dionyso’s childhood by including a dance performance.

“I really like those kinds of meetings between sound and movement,” de Dionyso said.

The all-ages show has a $5 to $25 suggested donation. For more information, go to griefcircus.com/offerings.