Zanias/ Into The All

  Cold Wave seems to be on goth's foggy grey border.   Its hard to find sometimes. The GPS often fucks up and leads me well into Industrial country and I gotta ask for directions.  The Hideout audience when hosting Zanias, Fee Lion, and Visceral Anatomy did not look all that different from Burlington the night after for Cruz de Navajas.  These labels are elusive as magnetic north. Goth is like a shot gun blast that scares the wildlife away like the tiniest whisper of a camera click taking your soul instead of your picture.  Y'all need to relax. Sometimes you use such a term as a way to not use the g word. So we define around it.  I'm comfortable calling Alison Lewis/ Zanias  cold wave.   Dark, electronic and detached, longing for homes that are far far away......Australia, Berlin, Malaysia specifically.  Just pondering the miles between those names is intimidating.  Even during my travels to Whitby Gothic Weekend, the worry for home was a potent wire not to cross. The pigeons would remind me of the pet dove I left behind.  There is an awareness of the distance and a longing for human contact.  The first time seeing her in the first band Linea Aspera I can remember feeling so remote from the music of this artist, feeling like I'm seeing a star as close as this telescope....ehm...YouTube video can get me. There was so much work this artist put out.  Since Linea Aspera all her projects were each bands I would listen to separately forever, and still so remote.  The relationship with the music started with wonder, and built into it is this vast distance that you are aware. This is someone I may never see live.
  Let me go to this specific Tuesday night at Danny's in Wicker Park. I go with Marci. I believe Grun Wasser played that night. There was a long line to get in, but eventually we did. After the front room, all the back rooms seem intimate. Your natural inclination is to follow the hallway until the end. There are rooms on each side of the hallway, its almost like a private home and some eccentric fuck  has this party at his place. Anyway, so we go all the way to where the hallway leads and the very last end was everyone I saw the Friday before at Hideout.  Zanias, Fee Lion, Visceral Anatomy. That train that was so far over the horizon that I was longing for it.... I forgot that I was standing right in the middle of the tracks. I was suddenly the third grader in the teachers lounge....I was awestruck by a fucking bullet train.  This is so Frank Lloyd wrong!  This is either so fucking far and away that you want to see it, or a fly in their soup/windshield, depending on which metaphor.  My own social awkwardness kicked in.  I was wearing my newly bought Zanias shirt that I got from her  previous tour. I did not want her to see me with it and think I wanted undue attention. This twisted shyness just fucking grips you like its Carrie's mom screaming "They are all gonna laugh at you!" The music suddenly is so close, like I'm a fly doin' the backstroke in their soup.  I was just feeling that way, and was looking for a graceful quick exit before I feel too awkward. But you know, its nice to see her stay longer in Chicago.
  If you are already a fan of her, then  Aletheia and Idoru.... you just become a fan of her and everything that lead up to those songs. Its like stumbling into Unity Temple after walking out of a gas station designed by the same guy.  You recognized what little that you got to know was the tip to this beautiful ice berg palace.  So this will sweep up the first time fan as well. I see beautifully the delicate intangible tether that leads from Linea Aspera to the newest Into The All. What does it mean to mention Frank Llloyd Wright and his fucking filling station? It means even that was a palace. It means nothing was small or insignificant. Everything he built was grand, big or small.  I can see the consistent continuum with Zanias. I am into it all. So I treasure my small collection of her work like a collector of ancient and rare books.  Alison Lewis has been busy since at least 2011 with Linea Aspera. Dark, sleek and cold. She credits Dead Can Dance, Coil as a major influences, observing closely how  Lisa Gerrard sings. I think having produced her music within a span of less than and within a decade it can define that decade. It can be what we are nostalgic for in 20 or 30 years, and it can be what inspires another girl studying science to be a musician.
Zig