Borborygmus first rumbled onto the San Diego music scene at the dawn of the millennium as the performing unit of the newly formed Trummerflora collective, an experimental music coalition.
"The name refers to bowel sounds," explains percussionist/improvisationist Marcos Fernandes. "The gurgling, rumbling, or growling noise from the abdomen caused by the muscular contractions of peristalsis, the process that moves the contents of the stomach and intestines downward. The group has been rumbling around the San Diego area since 2000. The sounds they make are the perfectly normal gurgles and growls from the belly of the musical underground."
The ensemble's energetic live performances can be heard on the album No Stars Please (2001, Accretions). The Wire described it as "collective improvising: a pool of players immersed in the unfolding of a continuous present, egos submerged in the sound stream. The stream's currents tug towards free jazz, the extremities of rock, the 20th-century chamber avant-garde, and electroacoustic strangeness." Though active only for about a year, the group's rumbling effects can be heard on many of Trummerflora's releases. After nearly five years, Borborygmus reared its multitudinous head once again at Trummerflora's Spring Reverb '06 concert.
The Trummerflora Collective is an independent group of music makers that embraces the pluralistic nature of creative music as an important means of artistic expression for the individual and the community and provides an atmosphere that nurtures the creative development of its members.