Zebra Secrets emerged from room 115 of the San Francisco Art Institute in February 2021, when the pandemic had hollowed out the beloved building to just a handful of die-hard artists. John Seden, John Alderman, and Brent Johnson began constructing tiny psychic worlds, with longtime collaborator Tyler Harwood gradually grafting himself into their world from sinking New Orleans.

Their improvisation functions as real-time psychological archaeology—channeling whatever’s churning beneath the surface and letting it transform on a dime. Each session becomes a séance, reaching toward ghostly animal frequencies and otherworldly intelligence through sound that collapses different moods and moments into single pieces, cathartic and haunted, like intercepted communications between worlds that refuse to stay separate. They have shared the stage with Culturcide’s Dan Workman on occasion.

Eight cassette releases and counting.