When the Sky is Full of 0’s and 1’s
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While not the most accessible night of music at the bottle , it was well attended. Most of the people that where there knew what they were in for and they loved every minute of it. Even those dragged in by friends were mostly converted by the end of the night. Considering that each band that played mostly played one “song”, the time flew by, leaving us all wanting more.

First up was Good Stuff House, which contains members of another great Chicago band Zelienople . They didn’t ease us into the water at all, starting with a caterwaul of guitar noise and drum set smashing. The 3 of them, Matt Christensen and Mike Weis (Zelionople) and Scott Tuma (Souled American, Boxhead Ensemble, et al.), took us through the depths of raw noise first, slowly allowing us to emerge into a soft sublime jazz drone toward the end of their set. You could see the concentration and feel the communication between them, each note and beat picked for a specific reason to create the most perfect musical space.

The first time I saw “White/Light“:http://www.myspace.com/whitelightdrone was at one of those monday free nights at the bottle. They were second of 3 and I completely forgot what the other 2 bands were that night. I had read alot about drone musics at the time, and even tried to listen to records by Boris and SunO))) not really understanding them. After that set I realized 2 things 1) drone/metal was a hipster way of saying they listened to low-frequency ambient music and 2) this music was something that needs to be experienced live. Sitting in the bottle the crushing volume and low-frequency rumble almost made me faint. I would buy their record if I could play it in my house loud enough to do it justice. Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos used guitar, small pump organ, keyboards and multiple pedal effects to resubmerge us. Their set was the mirror image of Good Stuff House, starting with a light drone on the pump organ eventually climaxing to full guitar/keyboard/effect noise. They have a record coming out with lichens . Hopefully a record release show at the bottle will follow. That would be a show not to be missed.

The final performance of the night was something I had been waiting for all year. After seeing Rhys Chathams “Essentialist” at the wire fest (which accoording to a friend was Rhys’s first time performing in Chicago) I started to consume his whole back catalog. I knew of the man, minmalmist composing god in the realms of Glenn Branca , but never got around to listening to his stuff. For this show he was performing his Guitar Trio the same way he did at Max’s Kansas City in 1979, except with 9 guitarists instead of 3. I had a hard time convincing my co-workers the greatness of a composition that consists of one chord (E) played for over 40minutes. There is more to it then that though, there is the volume that allows the listener to hear many overtones and a heavy sense of rhythm and dynamics that draw you in. The first run through the piece was subdued but still intense. John McIntyre’s drumming was limited to mostly high-hat hits for the duration and the dynamics were primarily driven by the guitars and bass (which included a whos-who of Chicago musicians; Rob Lowe, Ben & Adam Vida, Doug McCombs, Jeff Parker, and Josh Abrams). At the conclusion, Rhys approaches the microphone and asks the crowd if they would like to hear one more song. When we answer loudly “Yes” he gets as giddy as a school girl, responding “Oh, I hoped you would say that!”. He then turns to Ben Vida and asks what key the song is in, jokingly answering his own question “B flat, right?”. The ensemble launches back into the piece again, this time accompanied by the original slides that were shown at the 1979 performance. The slides are grainy black and white photos, one of which adorns the cover of An Angel moves to fast to See . During this take the drums are powerful and the guitars have kicked it up a notch. Even though I knew what was coming I still stood with my mouth agape, the power of the piece lifting me off the floor and giving me a strange sense of vertigo. We managed to get them back on stage for an encore that consisted of a piece called “just intonation” in which everybody randomly retuned their guitar, thus completely focusing the piece on rhythm. A fitting desert for the thanksgiving sized feast that was Guitar Trio Hero’s.

Read more about Rhys Chatham here

Rhys @ myspace here and here for The Essentialist, his 5 piece metal band

Flickr set for the night here