September 23, 2005 | Section Three Chicago Reader | September 23, 2005 | Section Three 5
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4CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 | SECTION THREE CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 | SECTION THREE 5 [email protected] The Meter www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter The Treatment A day-by-day guide to our What It Takes Critic’s Choices and other previews friday 23 WILLIAM BASINSKI New Yorker William to Be the New Black c Basinski has been involved in music for more than two decades—he’s played saxophone in a variety of experimen- tal contexts and helps run Arcadia, a Brooklyn performance The local art punks are doing for their space. But his greatest acclaim has come in the last few years, as a rash of releases from Raster-Noton, Die Stadt, and his second album what they never did for their first. own 2062 label have collected his gorgeous ambient music. The records are relatively new, but much of the music on them By Bob Mehr was made in the early 80s, when Basinski began experiment- ou’d never guess to watch her that ing with tape loops; some pieces are lovely collages that mix Patti Gran has stage fright. Liz bits of Muzak with shortwave radio static, while others are Y built on layers of terse piano parts. The passage of time is the Phair used to freeze like a deer in headlights, and Chan Marshall would crucial element in his greatest work, The Disintegration Loops, hide behind her hair or even turn her which 2062 released on four CDs in 2003. Basinski recorded back on the crowd. But Gran, who sings the source music for The Disintegration Loops in 1982; as he and plays guitar with popular local art was digitizing the tapes in the summer of 2001, they began to punks the New Black, is a powerful literally fall apart on his reel-to-reel machine. “The iron oxide front woman with a hair-raising voice particles were gradually turning to dust and dropping into the and a magnetic stage presence. Trouble tape machine, leaving plastic spots on the tape,” Basinski writes is, her confidence is only a veneer. “It’s in the liner notes. He adds that he felt as if he were “recording pretty bad,” she says. “I’m generally just the death of this sweeping melody,” but in fact something new about to puke before I go on.” was created instead. As the serene repetitions of slowed-down “It’s actually pretty funny,” says string passages soldier on, the dropouts multiply and the com- bassist and singer Liam Kimball. position recedes further and further into the void; the music “There have been a couple times, right seems to be erasing itself. By the end what’s left is little more before we’re about to go on, when I than flickers of scratchy sound. All of Basinski’s tape-loop work look over and she’ll have disappeared.” is beautiful and haunting—it’s a tactile kind of ambient music Gran’s nerves will be getting a thor- that’s far removed from the antiseptic soundscapes we usually ough working over this fall: the New associate with the term. But nothing matches the happen- Black’s second full-length, Time Attack stance beauty of The Disintegration Loops. This show is part (Thick Records), comes out September of the Adventures in Modern Music festival; see page 30 for a 27. The band’s playing a pair of CD- complete schedule. Isolee headlines, Henry Grimes plays release parties this weekend, then third, Basinski plays second, and Lungfish’s Daniel Higgs leaving on a three-week stateside tour opens. a 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276- in October. 3600 or 866-468-3401, $15. —Peter Margasak As anxious as Gran gets about shows, she’s been looking for chances to make music for much of her life. Born and raised in the suburbs of Miami, she was a full-fledged metalhead by the time she got her first electric guitar at UCKER 15. “I wanted to learn every freakin’ AM DR Pantera song,” she says. “I wanted to AD shred really badly.” A year later, in 1995, 13 & God she was into stuff like Fugazi and Sonic BLACK DICE, 13 &GOD, BLOOD ON THE Youth, but her first band, the Red Shift, Y didn’t hold together long—she couldn’t WALL Last August New York’s BLACK DICE played one of find enough like-minded players. the most aimless, self-indulgent sets of music I suffered “Miami’s a wretched place to grow up through all year, so I was heartened to see Aaron Warren JIM NEWBERR confess that the band’s had a hard time performing live musically,” she says. “It was all dance Rachel Shindelman, Nick Kraska, Patti Gran, Liam Kimball music and death metal—like really since drummer Hisham Bharoocha left in early 2004. scary KKK death-metal bands too. Stuttering, wobbly electronic beats are front and center on Needless to say, I was out of place. So of the B-52’s. I’ve always liked that call- come to the fore. From the serrated their new album, Broken Ear Record (DFA/Astralwerks), around 2001, I picked a city to move to and-response male-female vocal thing, aggression of the title track to the goth- providing a loose armature on which to hang grating synth and came up with Chicago.” and I loved the way her voice sounded. pop whimsy of “Devil in My Car” to the blubberings, effects-drenched guitar spaz, quasi-tribal Kimball, who’d been struggling to So we kinda went from there.” ragged punk swagger of “Der Spook,” chanting, and sine-wave squeals. The vague rhythms give get a decent band going in The two-vocalist lineup recorded an Time Attack is tightly wound, some- the listener something to grab onto, but it still mostly Albuquerque’s insular music scene, EP—basically a glorified four-song times vicious, and always engaging, a sounds like a bunch of yobbos way too impressed with their made the same decision in the summer demo—that summer at their practice controlled explosion streaked with cool effects pedals. of 2000. Shortly after arriving in space. In late 2003 they checked into sweet girl-group vocal melodies and 13 & GOD is an unlikely collaboration between various Chicago he Electrical Audio with engineer Greg flashy new-wave keyboards. Several of members of whiny Berkeley hip-hop-rock nutjobs Russian Circles, started playing Norman—Gran’s first experience in a the tracks showcase Gran’s evolving Themselves and the elegant Munich post-rock-pop band the New Black, Hanalei, in a four-piece proper studio—to make their self-titled guitar style—since the first record she’s Notwist. Their eponymous debut, released earlier this year Maps & Atlases, called the full-length debut, released in March of learned that her small hands allow her on Anticon Records, captures the disparity between their Karma With a K South of No last year by Thick Records. to pick a hummingbird-fast buzz on a styles, but the two groups also improve each other. The WHEN Fri 9/23, 8 PM North with The New Black didn’t tour in the single string. Kraska’s agitated playing piercing nasality of Themselves vocalist Doseone is tem- WHERE Texas Ballroom, guitarist and States to support the disc, but a is full of perverse fills that loop outward pered by the serene crooning of the Notwist’s Markus Acher, 3012 S. Archer (third singer Jack European booking agent offered to set from the nailed-down grooves, and and the German band, unfortunately toothless in recent floor) Flash, who’s up six weeks overseas—which the band Shindelman presses her keys into times, gets a nice rhythmic kick from the Californians. PRICE $5, all-ages currently nearly missed altogether because of service to provide not just texture but On its second album, Awesomer (Social Registry), the INFO www.texasball fronting Bang! Gran’s stage fright and fear of flying. melody, rhythm, and startling, arbitrary Brooklyn trio BLOOD ON THE WALL looks back to the late room.com Bang!, and “She called me right before we were stabs and squiggles. 80s, when indie rock was more a concept than a sound and drummer Nick supposed to leave, asking, ‘Nobody’s As he did on the first LP, Norman labels like Homestead, SST, and Touch and Go were releas- New Black, Kraska, who’s gonna be upset if we don’t go, right?’ I performs a few inspired feats of studio ing records by scads of inventive posthardcore acts. The AM Syndicate, Life now in the was like, ‘Patti, actually, everybody’s wizardry. The brief lead track, “Mere band juggles the sound of midperiod Sonic Youth, grinding During Wartime DJs New Black. gonna be upset,’” says Kimball. Cats,” is a piano instrumental that’s soft-loud Pixies dynamics, and Yo La Tengo’s early Velvets WHEN Sat 9/24, 9 PM Meanwhile The band made the trip on their own swallowed by a noisy collage assembled fixation—they’re more interested in retracing paths than WHERE The Hideout, Gran was dime, but managed to break even. “It from mashed-together snippets of every blazing them, but at least they picked some good maps. 1354 W. Wabansia floundering, was a great experience overall,” Kimball song on the record, and the eerie Black Dice headline, 13 & God plays third, Blood on the PRICE $8 unable to says. “’Cause the kids over there are whirring that threads through “Red Wall plays second, and Boy in Static opens. a 8:30 PM, INFO 773-227-4433 “crack the pretty excited to see anything.