Who: Dead Machines, The Haunting, Bruce Lamont, Folk & Violence, Face Worker
Where: The Mopery, 2734 N. Milwaukee
When: Friday, January 23, 9:00 p.m.
How much: $5
What: Back around 2000, right around when John Olson (he of the 800 releases-and-counting American Tapes label, as well as umpteen projects like Spykes, Universal Indians, Weapons, Full Scales, Graveyards, etc.) joined Wolf Eyes, spearheading an atomic fireball of new energy into an already great band, he started another project that at the time met with a bit less fanfare, but which has grown into one of the best noise/improv duos on the planet. Dead Machines, a project between Olson and his wife, Tovah (she also of Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, Tovah D-Day, the Jasons, and others, and proprietor of the Tovinator label), churned out a steady torrent of top-qual basement brain gargling, not only on the hyper-prolific American Tapes, but labels like Hanson, Ecstatic Peace!, Hospital, and Troubleman.
The duo's sound has gone from fairly intuitive to complete mind-meld in the intervening nine years...like the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and others of that ilk, you can hear them not only finishing each other's ideas, or thoughts, but their breaths. Of course, this isn't your standard squeak-creak-discuss-the-new-issue-of-Cadence-magazine improv show, as the group performs their Ur-brain psychic two-step on all manner of home-modified electronic goodies and almost shamanic reed instruments. The final shudder of machines not readily forgotten.
Also on the bill: The Haunting, a similarly-configured duo of Mike Connelly, also of Wolf Eyes and Hair Police, and his wife Tara. The two groups have done split releases together (including a pressing of a private show in which the only audience was -- ta dah! -- the other band! Basically a double-date pressed in an edition of 300 copies), and have some similarities, though to my ears, Mike and Tara invoke a mood more suited to a creaking, abandoned Victorian-style home in the middle of an abandoned part of town, as opposed to the Machines', who sound more like someone slowly melting the piano from the end of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T in a bonfire made of tires.
Joining these out-of-towners will be Yakuza frontman Bruce Lamont; Folk & Violence, a recent group that includes current and ex-members of Plastic Crimewave, Druids of Huge, and Psyontologists; and Face Worker, a group I got nothin' on. Not at all, sorry.
