free music for the people!
LB plays in the ovens and snip snap and as casual leg. Keith was in the rories and makes music by himself and with others. Together they make music about bodies, the horrors of capitalism, environmental collapse, and aging. Sometimes it’s fun.
Their first album is 10 songs in 28 minutes. Guitar, drums, vocals. Punk/post-punk energy.
FREE PALESTINE
Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, October 28 from 2-4pm, and features Hali Palombo and Meredith Haines!
Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!
Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/
Hali Palombo is an avid practitioner of “plunderphonics”: sampling existing musical/aural works and intertwining them into something brand new, whether it’s shortwave radio and CB radio samples, wax cylinder audio, and field recordings taken from Midwestern points of interest. Through her music and art, she aims to make the perceived ordinary hypnotic, haunting and memorable.
Meredith Haines is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working with sound, installation, performance, and video. Her work engages the political capacities of sound, and explores noise as a method of social resistance. She has performed and exhibited work all over the country at venues such as No Nation, High Concept Labs, New Boone Gallery, AS220, Space 1026, and the DUMBO Dance Festival.
After earning a BFA in dance and choreography at Temple University and working as a musician in Philadelphia for over a decade, Meredith’s work led her to Chicago in 2019 to earn her Master’s in Sound Arts and Industries at Northwestern University on a merit scholarship. She is a current Fellow Artist-in-Residence at High Concept Labs in Chicago, Illinois, and also performs under the moniker, MAIR
Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, June from 2-4pm, and features [star] and Pastel Fractal!
Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!
Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/
[star] pronounced Hypothetical Star, was conceived by an Artist and a Satellite Engineer in New Mexico during Covid-19 lockdown.
They perform at venues with their original music, video projections, & lecture performance. In person [star] brings a touchable archive of lesser-known Space artifacts, musical instruments, and Space themed ephemera creating a Space peace jamm.
*Audience members are invited to cruise in an oral/drawn speculative future for Space exploration and related concerns and affinities. (e.g. Do you want to go to Mars?)
https://hypotheticalstar.bandcamp.com/
While Pastel Fractal is CAREfully rolling out the soft-hued data patterns (of Chicagoans, by bicycle, on floppy disks, and inspired by seashells), Pastel is just the keystone of a poly-disciplinary trifecta. This trifecta incessantly re-commissions obsolete creative tools, re-presents Chicagoans’ public-service rhetoric, and re-cursively unfolds a self-critical lifestyle dynamic punctuated by live multimedia performances, intricate M.I.D.I. compositions, and heavily branded objects + apparati. The persons known as “data_DISK jockey ȺƉǤ” and “Conch Shell” complete this trifecta.
Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Sunday, April 23 from 2-4pm.
Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!
The first show after a pandemically long hiatus features Amanda Kraus and Helena Ford.
Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/
photo by Daniel Kraus
Amanda Kraus is a local educator/percussionist. She can be found online at amandakraus.org/music.
Previous work in various ensembles:
Arc Pair (ongoing)
March 25, 2020 ESS Quarantine Concert
Previous Jefferson Park EXP performance Nov 1, 2020
Boob Sweat (2017)
PLAN Quartet (2019)
Helena Ford (Chicago, IL) is a Chicago experimental musician. Her practice focuses on drone and durational performances, incorporating elements of musique concrete, minimalism, and free improvisation. Her primary instruments include no-input mixing board, baritone guitar, and synthesizers.
In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday December 12 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!
Jessica Gabriel is a multidisciplinary artist, puppeteer, life model, permaculturalist, poet, clown, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Her project tay_ploops is based on tape loops and other textures.
Jenna Boyles aka Jenna Junk is an interdisciplinary artist and magnet for things no one else wants. Joyfully defying landfills, she gleans sound from objects labeled “trash” and “obsolete.” Rewiring old electronics and embedding conductive textiles into trash instruments, she articulates the ubiquity and resonance of unwanted things. Touching upon the resilience and power of memory held within material, her performances play between the sensitivity and unpredictability of squishy-bodies and hard-wired machines. She received her MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Her costumes and illuminated objects have appeared in parades and forests, on rivers and beaches. Jenna has performed at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago IL and was a recent New Media Artist in residence at Mana Contemporary Chicago.
IG: @jennajunk
In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday November 21 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!
‘immerse in the lake’ is a remote live coding performance for two laptop performers distributed on two different continents. The performance is based on processing sound generated by crowdsourced and personal site-specific field recordings from Chicago throughout the year. The piece is a real-time improvisation and a free interpretation of John Cage’s ‘A Dip in the Lake’.
Visda Goudarzi and Anna Xambó started this collaboration in summer 2021 for the performance “Livesourcing: Audience Participation in a Live Coding Performance” premiered at Ear Taxi Festival, Chicago, IL, USA. https://youtu.be/FQXAOBvSZBk
Visda Goudarzi is a computer musician working at the intersection of audio and human-computer interaction. Her research interests include sound and music computing, live coding, and data sonification, sound synthesis, and the application of new media in art. She designs and performs using interactive and participatory sonic interfaces. Her sonic works include live electronic performances, live coding and data driven sound. She is an Assistant Professor of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago.
https://www.colum.edu/academics/faculty/detail/visda-goudarzi.html
Anna Xambó is an experimental electronic music producer and researcher. Her research and practice focus on sound and music computing systems looking at novel approaches to collaborative, participatory, and live coding experiences. To date, she has released three solo recordings: “init” (2010, Carpal Tunnel), “On the Go” (2013, Carpal Tunnel) and “H2RI” (2018, pan y rosas). Her solo and group performances have been presented internationally in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in music and audio technology at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK) and a member of the Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute of Sonic Creativity (MTI^2).
Gerard Roma investigates the inner life of sounds by poking at computers and other electronic circuits. His work often involves digital transformation of recorded sound textures coerced into algorithmic forms via live coding and self-made audio-visual instruments.
In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Saturday November 13 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!
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Becky Grajeda and Beth McDonald first started collaborating in the mid-2010’s, performing several pieces with a variety of musicians, speakers, and actors. After the social and artistic isolation of 2020, they were eager to collaborate on a new project, but didn’t feel safe to resume in-person performance in front of audiences. This facilitated a rare opportunity to explore sound worlds both new and old, without the deadline of a particular performance date or artistic goal. This recording is one waypoint on this exploration, and is the result of several months of improvisation, research, and drinking seltzer.
http://www.beckygrajeda.com/
https://bethtuba.com/
Jon Strasheim’s project Oblivious Newton Jon began in 2018 as an outlet for Jon to explore the relationships between sound, noise, and music through a set of lenses different than he had previously used in his music career. Using electrical power noise as the source sound, Jon processes this noise through multiple series of effects pedals that operate as a sort of makeshift synthesizer. Accompany Jon as he attempts to navigate his way home from his explorations of noises interacting with each other in their overlapping circles of harmony and chaos.
Orlando is a musician from Campina Grande, a country town in the state of Paraíba, Brazil. He has been involved with activities related to popular music since 1995 when he began his career as an upright bassist.
In his new album, Flying With Dry Leaves, Orlando, in partnership with MakinaGuru (his notebook), takes a trip through the electric and upright bass and its multitude of sounds. Through poetic, free, open, and improvised expressions he seeks to take new paths to express his hope for clearer and freer days. There are four tracks that explore electronic textures and the sounds of daily life in times of seemingly eternal quarantine. Flying With Dry Leaves pays homage to those who are gone and the endless ways that life moves on, always moving forward. Orlando’s music is concerned with cultivating the beauty that exists in continuing to imagine days in which a better world is possible.
In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday December 20 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!
Noisebringers were created by mistake. (“There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” ― Bob Ross) A large and loving family consisting of Brice Catherin (your friendly elderly cellist next door), Henry McPherson (pianist and meme artist), and Maria Sappho (pianist and non-composer). Says Sappho, “We can not tell you what we have to offer, as this is an improvisational concert. If you are unsure of what an improvisational concert might be, be assured you are asking the right questions.”
They will present a film ritual: Tente, the mushroom that the crocodile ate, that they created with Afulodidim Nikefolosi (a figure in answer to the challenge: show me a contemporary mixture of Amos Tutuola and Zora Neale Hurston.)
https://www.mariasappho.com/noisebringer
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Lorenzo Gomez Oviedo is a composer and improviser from Argentina. His works explore soundscapes using analog recordings, sound interpretation of everyday objects, etc. He also organizes the experimental music lable, Adaptador Records. Currently, he performs in a duo with Karim Villalba focused on improvisation based collaborations with artists from other disciplines such as dance, poetry and drawing.
Jenn Kirby is a composer, performer and music technologist from Ireland and currently based in Scotland. She has a diverse creative output, including instrumental composition, electroacoustic music and avant-pop. Her music has been described as having a “sense of adventure and experimentalism.” Jenn’s performance work is centred around hybrid instrument design, building software, re-purposing hardware, and processing improvised vocalisations. She is a lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland.
Her first album on pan y rosas, Being Time, explores an obsession with time and the temporality of sound and experience. Time perceived simultaneously as experiential and retrospective. Time around us, time within us. Listening and being as a temporal experience. A constant flow of now through stillness and trajectory. Electroacoustic, noise, sometimes harmonic. A variety of instruments and sound sources. The voice.