Treasurer

Just happened to catch this on a Free Monday at Empty Bottle that I did not know that morning I'd go. Treasurer already had me sold by the time they played their last song  Los Amigos  the last song I believe.  Its the one song I recall for sure they played that is on the CD. I've played it like its the first time repeatedly.  Its muscular like you just did more pull-ups than you thought you could. They were generous enough to just  give me their CD.  So for me the performance and the CD are almost two separate things tethered by one song. No matter. Their name......last week  it had only one meaning and it was not the name of a band I would like...a lot.  Now I'm all into Brochure, their 6 song EP. Singer's voice is chill, almost in a speaking tone and in stark contrast to the raging bass behind her. It works to invite hmm deeper thoughtful moments when slowed down like in Rural Geometry. The bass is what I noticed first. Its the only guitar they got. It just induces movement in your hips, as if they had better ears for it. Thats the id telling you something. The guy played it with an infectious enthusiasm. He played aggressively yet I can still hear the singer, she was not drowned out. The guy dripped sweat from his forehead. I imagine it was probably Venn that sold me first but I don't know. This is something I certainly would want to see again. You can tell where their songs sink into individual stretches like in a jam session. The Country Is Behind Me has the aggression of the bass give the girls voice this awesome background for her to strut. In none of these songs I know what is being spoken. The impressions here therefore are way fucking subjective and will evolve as the music finds its permanent space in the minds interior castle. I hope this is the first in many times to see them. Their music is sharp, messy, energetic with a calming almost whispering mysterious voice. You don't listen with you're ears as much as with the hips, the body. For me that's the bass in front. If this post strikes as short....well at least its not the usual long winded take.
Zig

Circuit Des Yeux at the MCA....and The Owl

Its not worth the effort to try to park near the Museum of Contemporary Art. So I took the train, the Orange line to the Red line. It was Tuesday night with a bitter chill that intimidates. But I was on a mission to see Circuit Des Yeux. I'm gonna remember the cold as part of the CDY experience, like icy breath. This is what sees me through the winter, if I can make the show. If I can make it up the stairs with fog in the glasses and a limp in my step in time to see something. I make it. Its now background not obstacle. I'm handed a flier with information about who is playing.  Oh, wow! This thing here says Haley moved to Chicago's south side. That's very rare and commendable. Usually when people move to Chicago its more likely north in the city, and without a glance south of Cermak.  The walls inside the MCA are white, brightly lit. The difference is very stark when you walk in, almost needing sunglasses.  Mine have fog, but I can't see through that. I didn't really look around much I just wanted to make it to this thing. Where she plays I believe is the cafeteria. Its just Haley Fohr and her acoustic guitar, only it .......isn't. Her voice is deep.  I fully intended to post this before the 19th December...that's not happening. But she leaves a heavy imprint live as well as in recording.  Over Due is what I bought from Ms Haley at MCA and it is absolutely crazy. I was still in the shock and awe phase when listening to My Name Is Rune, just to name one and then I walked into The Owl. Haley had a full band with drummer and keyboardist.   Verma played before and I am happy to say I was on time for that as well. So there is a post on them later.  Live performances are very singular moments. If you became familiar with the previous releases like CDY3 and Portrait you can still expect differences in the live performances. There were songs I immediately recognized.  Some I did not. With the drummer she sounded like early Dead Can Dance. That was not even in mind during the Empty Bottle gig. This time she reminded me like early DCD! Completely unexpected. I believe I was dancing to it even. I was right in front. This is not the kind of dark music that I expect to dance and yet the movements came. Perhaps in submerging myself in it I find the rhythm. That drummer was on fire and it was Haley that soaked him kerosene before lighting him up. When she says "I am a peach", (at least that is what it sounds like) she means the kind that bites you.

Her music is a barely veiled dark engine. I mean this is a fucking animal she casually takes out for a walk. This animal sometimes escapes its tense leash and runs. Most of this impression started out from seeing her and then from listening to the music later.....and then seeing her again at The Owl. 
  The engine that produced the musician that is CDY starts with components we share with her, when the wonder is gone. There is a lot that is resonant. I sense real frustration, anger, aggression...the lot of those feelings channeled in CDY,  and no wonder. When that feeling is done, everything around can look grey and used up. The soundscape is still dark but.....different. It requires a maturity to appreciate. All these feelings packaged as Haley does are not juvenile.   I can wildly fucking speculate even more from here. 
   Haley left for Chicago from Indiana. Specifically Lafayette and Bloomington. Its noteworthy for me because it is still the midwest and still a different world from Chicago.  The most I see of Indiana is E C or Munster, sometimes Whiting.  Haley brings to Chicago a cultural distinction. Chicago becomes the natural place to go to flourish but a lot of its culture has its origins far from the metropolis.  I read her interview for The Reader with Jessica Hopper. There is a lot of her story I found resonant.  Someone with otherworldly tremendous depth and old intelligence flexes and tenses with her guitar.....out of boredom.  Writing music and perhaps not knowing what will become of it is like trust-falling. You don't know who will catch this if it is to be caught at all.  And Haley runs off to move to Chicago's south-side, culturally different from the places she chooses to play.  It will be interesting what she creates from this point forward. I speculate about Bloomington and Lafayette, Indiana. I see them places as part of what originated her music. I think here about her interview with Jessica Hopper when she describes the music scene in Lafayette. You see the power in 20 intense fans. It makes you want to be in that 20. It gives the small town its Twin Peaks edge....street cred if you will......great now Haley rolled her eyes. I see in Haley an old sophisticated soul.  I don't think she's even 26 and her music sounds over 40. Its not a stretch to see why her music draws all the bearded weirdos from the woodwork.
Zig

Gel Set

This was completely unexpected. Bittersweet  at The Whistler was supposed to be the cool down after seeing I:Scintilla at Phyllis on Division earlier. I walked in to Philly Peroxide's night at Whistler on Milwaukee. If I see friends its great but I still wished I walked in with a copy of The Promise from Jose Rivera, short and sweet and packs a punch in its 90 or so pages. I didn't ponder on that long enough because friends of mine connected to The gone-too-soon Rosen Association invited me to go The Owl a short walk away.  Gel Set was about to go on at midnight. This is a thing to know about The Owl, their fucking late shows. Already having seen a concert, yeah lets do this. The euphoria of having seen  I:Scintilla has not even worn off yet. Gel Set (Laura Callier) I have seen before with Magic Key and I believe she has toured with Fielded. Her music is effortlessly dance-floor worthy, but its not as straight-forward or obvious as dance music can be.  There are weird shadows cast before your path. Its not as straight as it seems. You have the hmm..... cleanly landed beats that seem to pander but instead lead you further away from the familiar and into the otherworld. It resonates and then weird left. Before you know it. You're too scared to stop at a gas station to ask for directions. Perhaps its the music growing on me. I danced a lot to her set this time, more than the one gig at Empty Bottle.  Gel Set is at times trance inducing with her beats. This strikes me as someone that can write dance tracks in her day dreams. They are like snowflakes falling all around her subconscious mind it seems. These snowflakes don't fall in the expected landscapes in the expected seasons.  Dimly lit like a club with a disco lighting. There is something obviously dance-oriented to her chosen sounds. If you like music that easily induces you to move but you have a short attention span, some tracks will be for you and some won't. Ms Laura does enough left turns to throw off some but not all.  To those that have been thrown off. Give her a second look. GS will grow on you and your cardio will adjust to her.  It took me this second time to finally come around. There were perhaps two other shows I missed as I was coming around. I think she opened for Fielded once and I missed that set. I wish I was on time for it now.  Catching her set this time was an accident, the next gig I shall go deliberately.
Zig

I:Scintilla acoustic

 I:Scintilla did an acoustic set 12 Dec at Phylis on Division. I planned my night this way. Go see I:Scintilla and after, go to Whistler where my friend Philly Peroxide DJs. I shall dance instead of nursing this here sprained ankle! I did not count on being invited to go see Gel Set at The Owl at midnight. So this is the first of of an amazing night. To this first venue on Division I have never been to before. It feels like an eternity has grown between now and the last time I saw I:S.  Out of all the missed opportunities to see them sooner, the one that hurt is when they shared a stage with 8MM. For dragging my feet I missed the whole show, both bands. So catching  Ms Brittany do this acoustic set was a mission of sorts. So I make it. I catch something. Its not her first acoustic set of course. Its the first one I don't lean on YouTube to see. A lot of theater is stripped down when you go acoustic. There is a lot that you don't do acoustic and it was interesting and important for me to see this artist do this. All the dancing is out. The familiar movements that help you communicate are out. You sit down. Its just your voice and a guitar in a bar on a cold Thursday night. As cold nights go.......its  the kind that promotes laziness when you should be at the various stages of getting ready and fucking being there. Once you are out in it. You pretty much beat it.  I make it to a loose bar crowd that included faces that I have seen with I:S gigs before. But its been a while. When they were promoting their second album Dying And Falling that I have bought is when I started missing their shows. I'm far more familiar with the first album Optics and the all that relates. I got posters of seeing them as way back as 2007. You feel like the world has gone through countless cycles of hell and back and survived to see late 2013.  Its just Brit and a guitarist. Her voice is obliged to hover delicate like a humming bird where it once galloped and without the usual instruments. If not for captured YouTube videos this was my first time seeing this...acoustic from I:S. And it worked. She sounds wonderful. I wanted to see this, I wanted to support, and this Thursday was not cold enough to make me miss shit.  I think Brittany sang some covers. It matters different when its a few people at a bar....hmm more that that but less than a regular concert crowd. I wanted to be in the bar to hear the rare acoustic set. When they tour nationally its going to be different. This is what you can catch locally from them. I was real thankful this was no cover at the door. I was so broke. As research for this post I saw some live acoustic I:S videos on YouTube. And then say I square that with the latest gig. You want to reinforce the memory. Then it was done, and off I went for Bittersweet, Philly Peroxide's DJ night at The Whistler to kind of bask in the glow. Two separate events that relate and so complement each other, enhancing a night. And Philly's Bittersweet event was more a link in a greater chain still because of who I met there. It was not over after I:Scintilla. It was a great start, and

still something to stand on its own.
Zig

The Bellwether Syndicate

I caught part of their set, a small but significant part. The last few songs, a good view of what the greater whole is. So as late as I arrived I still caught something......a greater whole, which the performance is part of it. Bellwether Syndicate have played for their local Chicago audience before but Empty Bottle is different from Nocturna. Its different from Whitby. Presumably the Empty Bottle audience is less aware of William's Faith And The Muse past and how influential he is to a whole subculture. There are nights and venues where you fully expect or desire your black clad people. Those of us that aged with the Bauhaus/Siouxsie  shirts, and added to that collection, stayed actively identified to the culture. There is something old about this new band, and that is part of why I went. For starters if its something suggested by Scary Lady Sarah, I usually like it, and she's playing guitar (under the name Sarah Rose). And now there's William Faith, and where do I start? I got the shirts. I got a collection of CDs I can trace to him. When he decided to call Chicago home, I was happy. And I would see him regularly at Nocturna and at shoegaze or death-rock/goth themed nights.  Many fond memories of seeing other bands are extra special because he was in the audience. This was my first time seeing William Faith in his new band. They were playing from the EP The Night Watch. All the times I could have seen them....hmmm, this was it for me. This makes it for me. This was at Empty Bottle, and half the audience was non-goth. Some were people from other local bands with apparently little awareness of the subculture that shared the Bottle with them. These are people I have no expectation of seeing at Nocturna or anything remotely close to goth.  They were a perfect uninfluenced crowd. Then there was us loyal Nocturna goths, many that I've known over the years. Lots of things raced through the mind as William played that one last Faith And The Muse track.  A good five or so danced. I would have been among them had it not been for this sprained ankle. A lot of us goths really do see outside our permeable borders. We actively listen to and seek out and support a wide variety of music. Its from this subculture that I learned to support artists/musicians early. In that room I saw some of those musicians from the bands that I found out from those that dress in black....specifically the one playing guitar . From this community I learned a great many things, indeed. BellWether Syndicate is William Faith's new band with Sarah Rose (Scary Lady if you will) and Philly Peroxide. As I said before, I caught a small part of their show, and so the rest of the imprint is from listening to the EP. I must say it was a very empowering drive to hear All Fire on the way home. It cascades from there. And Sarah sings! I mean. Its her and wow!  You Can See Through Me right off starts on a casual but quick pace, but not something Sarah has to run down. All five tracks actually feel hmm, well paced....Hmmm when you've written music for a subculture that has dancing woven into its fibers, what you write will spark, direct and maintain attention.  For me the listener, vaguely I feel these are gears that somehow I have handled before and are happy to hold again. The long-term relationship I have felt at least since the FTM days flexes on the strength of Bellwether Syndicate. Did that sound right? In one performance I see a greater continuum. You see a longevity that you want to translate into one's one life.  Alright. I just need to post this. Its been a long time.
Zig