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, April 27 at 2pm, and features Janna Lee and Christopher Riggs / Kieran Daly!
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/
Janna Lee is a Chicago artist who uses her voice to explore various facets of herself, and blurs the line between angel and demon. In addition to being the vocalist of Snek Trio and Obsequies, her solo work combines harsh noise and haunting vocals into a maelstrom that confronts the dark side of humanity. Her versatility has garnered a diverse range of collaborations, including Bob Genghis Khan, Galaxxu, Unmanned Ship, Ben Zucker, and Scarlet Diva.
https://jannaleemusic.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Erin Workman
Kieran Daly is a composer and guitarist with concentrations in electroacoustic and improvised music. Some of his prolific work has been featured by the Chicago Reader, Flea, Hibari, Issue Project Room, Lateral Addition, Madacy Jazz, Pitchfork, Triple Canopy, and Wire Magazine.
Photo Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for Chicago Reader
Christopher Riggs is an autistic person who plays experimental music on the electric guitar. Without the use of processing or FX, they squeeze sounds from their guitar the Chicago Reader has called “brutalist, abstract, cold”.
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, March 16 from 2-4pm, and features Reversed Bear Trap and Sun Picture!
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/
Reversed Bear Trap is the musical side project of English PhD student Krista Muratore aka Krista Bloom. Krista Muratore is also a video artist, writer and general hooligan.
https://reversedbeartrap.bandcamp.com/
Sun Picture is the instrumental home studio project of Venezuelan-American musician Carlos Lowenstein.
Using everything from modular synths to live instruments, Sun Picture blends elements of ambient, dub, spiritual jazz, and Latin-American beats. This mix is approached with a restraint suggestive of krautrock’s detached stance.
Alexei Borisov was born in Moscow on December 7, 1960 and graduated from the Moscow State University where he studied History and Arts. His controversial performing career as a guitarist began in 1980 in the new-wave group, Center. The following year he formed the mod-band, Prospekt, which transformed into the shifting Notchnoi Prospekt in 1985. After the dissolution of Notchnoi Prospekt in the mid 1990s, he surfaced again in the “noise reconstruction and techno acoustics” duo F.R.U.I.T.S. with Pavel Zhagun as well as in various art/noise/industrial/impro acts like Sever, Joint Committee, Atomic Bisquit Orchestra, New Russian Alternative, Gosplan trio and more. He is a co-founder of the N&B Research Digest label and curates the international festival of experimental music, Noise and Fury. He also works as a DJ in clubs and on various radio stations in Russia and abroad.
Jelena Glazova is a sound/visual artist and poet from Riga, Latvia. She works in interdisciplinary areas of contemporary art – combining image, poetic text, experimental sound and installation in her pieces and performances. Her sphere of activity in experimental music is drone/noise, usually constructed from processed vocals. As a conceptual artist she relies on her voice as a generator, heavily altering and manipulating it through digital processing. She considers this destruction of the vocal element as a way of expressing unpronounced speech – connecting it with her practice as a poet. As a visual artist, Jelena works with physicality which extends her sound art paradigm.
Their first album as a duo for pan y rosas was recorded in Moscow and Riga in 2023 with tapes, electronics, processed vocals, laptops, and controllers. The sound contains long form drone electronics with squelches, bends and swells.
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
Reversed Bear Trap is the musical side project of English PhD student Krista Muratore aka Krista Bloom. Krista Muratore is also a video artist, writer and general hooligan.
Psionic Youth is her first album on pan y rosas. It draws on samples to blur the boundaries between mainstream pop and experimental noise music in order to explore what we can learn from sampling. Psionic Youth in particular blends pop rap, synthpop, techno, noise and black metal in a disorienting, chaotic blend that will hopefully, at the very least, make the listener smile as they recognize familiar sounds in new contexts.
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.
Violeta García is a cellist, composer and curator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She performs in many art forms including free improvisation, contemporary and trans-media experimental repertoire in violoncello and electronic music. In 2015 she founded a digital label and music series called TVL-REC, which is devoted to publishing new music, experimental groups and collectives from Latin America and organizing shows and festivals of noise and extreme music in Latin America and Europe.
Brice Catherin willingly stepped away from the contemporary music institutions in order to very freely develop a few activities: multi-instrumental cellist, improviser, composer and art performer. These activities feed into each another, so that beyond his multidisciplinary shows and improvised concerts, Brice has never stopped composing and premiering written pieces. Most of his recent projects explore the idea of democracy in art: the artists’ individual responsibilities and their place in the social group, as well as those of the members of the audience, are challenged and questioned.
Violeta and Brice brought their cello visions together for a freely improvised joint effort. Their first album as a duo is a unique trip of noise and extended string techniques in an immersive, dark winter. Fog, wood, and love surround these two Libra October-born, beautiful, humans.
Klaysstarr Nets (Iain Findlay-Walsh he/him) is a sound artist, musician and writer based in Glasgow. He teaches sound art and experimental practice at the University of Glasgow.
His first album on pan y rosas discos is a nested problem that captures a listening process. A self-occupation and a form of dreaming. One that listens to solitary listening and documents life at close proximity. Restless street sounds turned inside out. Networks feel for a now that sings.
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.