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Phone: (410)-646-7334 |
Email: info@orionsound.com |
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Saturday, April 24th, 8:00pm
Algernon
Algernon
, one of Chicago's fastest rising young bands, features a unique line-up of dual guitars, vibes, bass and drums. The band is led by guitarist and composer Dave Miller, who has already built an impressive and wide-ranging number of collaborations in the few years since he arrived in Chicago. In addition to Algernon, Miller is also a member of, among other bands, Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls (Delmark/Naim Records), Zing! (ears&eyes Records), blink. (Thirsty Ear Records), and Tim Daisy's New Fracture Quartet (Multi Kulti Records). The other members of Algernon are second guitarist Toby Summerfield (who was a member of Detroit's Larval for many years), vibes player Katie Wiegman, bassist Tom Perona, and drummer Cory Healey (who is a member of Fareed Haque's Flat Earth Ensemble).Algernon was formed by Dave Miller in the early part of 2004 when a gig with his funk band at the time was cancelled a week before the date. He took this as the opportunity to write some new music for a new ensemble – music in which he could combine a large number of musical influences without allowing any one to become the dominant sound. The music that Miller composed for his new ensemble – Algernon – combined elements from a wide range of music that he loved: avant-garde jazz, experimental rock (60s psychedelic rock, Jimi Hendrix, 13th Floor Elevators), kraut-rock (Harmonia, Can and Neu!), the late 70s art-punk and no-wave scene (Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca) and post-rock (Tortoise, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground, Godspeed!, Talk Talk). Despite Miller’s strong jazz background, his new ensemble was not to be an improvising band. Miller’s music for Algernon was basically wholly scored; the very small amount of improvisation that the music contains is more about atmosphere(s) than about solos.
He quickly wrote music for a gig – the music later became Algernon’s first album, Charlie Changed His Mind – had one rehearsal with the musicians, and then did the gig. This nascent rehearsal and performance excited Miller enough that he realized that this new sound was something that he wanted to further pursue. However, he was unable to work steadily with the band until after he graduated in May 2005 from Northern Illinois University (where he did his senior thesis on the music of Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh) and moved to Chicago in September.
Arriving in the exciting and very fertile environment that is the current musical scene in Chicago, Miller solidified a new Algernon lineup and began composing new material. The group started playing out a few times per month, a schedule that it maintains to this day. Algernon’s second album, Familiar Espionage, was recorded in October of 2006 and released in December of 2007. The band played Chicago’s ears&eyes Festival in both 2007 and 2008, and in the summer and fall of 2008 toured in the midwest and southwest to support the album.
By the end of the 2008, most of the material was written for what would eventually become Algernon’s third album (and first on Cuneiform), Ghost Surveillance. For this album, Miller expanded the sound of the group with the aim of mining some new sonic possibilities, incorporating synths into its live shows (and eventually onto the recording as well). In addition, he wanted to capture a live sound that was simultaneously well recorded and really raw. To do that, the band recorded at Steve Albini's well known studio, Electrical Audio, doing their utmost to capture both the band's live energy and a 'room sound' as much as possible.
Ergo
An electro-acoustic sonic arts/jazz trio, Ergo seamlessly interweaves jazz and electronica to create music of stark melodic beauty, enveloping texture, and sonic spaciousness. The New York City based group consists of musicians who have played together in various forms since 2003: composer/leader Brett Sroka on trombone and laptop, Carl Maguire on Rhodes electric piano and analog synth, and Shawn Baltazor on drums. Time Out-NY noted that the three
“are all part of a generation for which Autechre and Sigur Ros are as pressing concerns as Armstrong and Sun Ra. That's certainly evident in the band's timbral sophistication, spacey contours and slinky grooves." Drawing from Post-Rock as well as post-Coltrane, remaining oblivious to boundaries of genre or form, and assembling trombones, electronic circuits, drumskins and synths as sonically components on an infinitively textured instrumental palette, Ergo resculpts and edits a widely diverse and musical heritage into a starkly beautiful, and truly ‘cool’ 21st Century sonic jazz form.Brett Sroka began his music career as a jazz trombonist, composer and band leader. His first CD, called
Hearsay, came out on the label Fresh Sound - New Talent in 2002 and immediately captured the jazz world’s attention. In Hearsay, Sroka led a sextet that included jazz pianist Jason Moran; the music “navigate[d] between structured composition and improvisational freedom”[flavorpil.net]. All About Jazz lauded it as “an auspicious debut” and noted that “With his arranging and compositional skills, and his trombone chops, comparisons to the late Trombone Master, J.J. Johnson, are inevitable, and deserved.”Shortly after Hearsay’s release, Sroka became fascinated with electronic music. He surrounded himself with synthesizers and software, seeking, in his own words, “to reconcile the six hundred years of technology between trombone and computer.” Sroka began assembling musicians of similarly elastic and adventurous temperaments in New York City. They began playing local shows in clubs receptive to genre-defiant music like the Mercury Lounge, 55 Bar, and Galapagos, as well as elsewhere in the Northeast Coast, including Providence’s AS220. Gradually an idiosyncratic dynamic began to cohere among Sroka and his fellow musicians, and the group Ergo was born.
In 2006, Ergo self-released its first CD, Quality Anatomechanical Music Since 2005, on its own Actuator label. It featured a line-up of Sroka on trombone and computer; keyboardist Carl Maguire (who also led and recorded with his group, Floriculture) on Rhodes electric piano, Prophet synthesizer, and electronic effects; and drummer Damion Reed (who also worked with Billy Higgins and recorded on Robert Glasper’s Canvas CD for Blue Note). Lauded as the year’s “Best Debut CD” by All About Jazz–NY,
Quality Anatomechanical… received widespread praise from the jazz press. Ejazznews.com called it an “Uncannily cohesive and an enormously compelling listening experience“ and praised the music as “teeming with intuitive experimentation, probing jazz dialogues and EFX-drenched avant-garde stylizations.” JazzTimes noted in its review of the CD that "Sroka is more interested in charting new musical territory than simply revisiting the traditions of J.J. Johnson". Indeed, Ergo’s music probed well beyond jazz tradition into new, electronically-charged grounds to explore, in the words of Cadence Magazine, "the intersections of electronic music, Jazz improvisation, and smart Rock bands like Radiohead or Sigur Ros.” Attempting to define Ergo’s new sound, All About Jazz noted that:“…saying it is on the “fringes of jazz” or ”beyond jazz” is a bit meaningless, but suffice it to say that there are a lot of electronics beyond what a Fender Rhodes can do, and there is nothing remotely close to a 32-bar AABA structure to be found here. You are entering a sonic universe, but more importantly, a music which reveals itself as most definitely structured and well thought out.… Many types of jazz allow you to lose yourself within them, and Quality Anatomechanical Music Since 2005 most certainly does that, but from quite a different angle. Recommended."
The success of Ergo’s debut CD prompted Ergo to be invited to perform at a variety of both jazz music and electronic music festivals. The trio played at the Williamsburg Jazz Festival in Brooklyn, NY, and at such well-known electronic festivals as the
Sonic Circuits Festival in Washington D.C. and at Risonanze (2008) in Venice, Italy. In addition, the group continued to play live at various clubs.Cuneiform, a label specializing in genre-defying music including avant jazz, signed Ergo to release its second CD, called
Multitude, Solitude. Released here. Multitude, Solitude features Ergo coming further into its own. Throughout the CD’s 6 tracks, the band refines its unique style of unadorned melody and intrepid free improvisation, incorporating a sensual approach to such post-modern sonic techniques as sampling, synthesis and signal processing. Pieces such as “Vessel” and “Actuator” journey from quiet, lonely melody to dense, tumultuous anthems. “Rana Sylvatica”, named for a frozen wood frog, features violent waves of instrumental, digital and post-processed textures and suggests transformation. In contrast, both “She Haunts Me” and “Little Shadow” bask in lush, electro-acoustic ambience.Multitude, Solitude features a lineup of composer/leader Brett Sroka on trombone and laptop, Carl Maguire on Rhodes electric piano and analog synth, and Shawn Baltazor on drums. Carl Maguire, a pianist, keyboardist and composer of knotty and oblique music, has also played with Butch Morris and Tyshawn Sorey and has released two acclaimed CDs with his own band Floriculture. Shawn Baltazor, an ebullient, eclectic drummer, also plays with Eric Reed and the Hangmen, and was recently commissioned to compose music for the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company.
The title of Multitude, Solitude contains references to contemporary culture and media theory. In his excellent, thought-provoking liner notes for the CD, media/technology theorist and philosopher Barry Vacker [www.barryvacker.net] asserts that:
Ergo is cool. …
We live in a world where the multitude are ever more informed, yet ever further from reality; they are ever more connected, ever less alone, yet ever more lonely, with ever less solitude. Against and within all these conditions, Ergo’s Multitude, Solitude represents the coolness of media and music. The songs have long, smooth, single notes that are inviting and seductive in their suggestion of subjective solitude…
…Ergo does something special that goes beyond mere minimalism. …By combining the ancient with the modern, the trombone with synthesizer, the drum with computer, Ergo also embraces the roots of music, yet is not sentimental or claiming a faux authenticity. Ergo engages the past, yet enters the future.
Multitude, Solitude conveys…a world where the multitude may be mostly lost, but solitude and individuality can still be found in the voids of the universe, in the gaps in the information, in the nothingness between the notes.”
Ergo celebrated the release of Multitude, Solitude with a performance at the internationally acclaimed 2009 Sonic Circuits Festival in Washington DC, one of largest and most prestigious festivals of electronic music in the USA.
COVER: $15 at the door; no pre-show sales
ALL-AGES SHOW!
DA RULZ: Show starts at "around" 8:00pm. You are welcome to bring whatever liquid refreshments you care to drink, and coolers are welcome. Our shows are all-ages shows, but we do not tolerate underage drinking. We do have a few couches, stools, and chairs, but you are welcome to bring your own SMALL folding chair if you'd like. The bands typically have some merchandise to sell such as T-shirts, CDs, etc., so bring your wallet and help support the music you love! Chris Lamka, owner of Of Sound Mind, is at almost all Orion shows and offers a wide variety of hard-to-find progressive rock titles at his table near the showcase room entryway.
DRIVING DIRECTIONS: Take I-95 to exit 50A, which is Caton Ave., south. If you are coming from the south beware of the merge onto Caton Ave as there is no merge area. Take Caton to the third traffic signal, which is Washington Blvd., and turn left. Follow Washington for about a quarter mile until you approach a "U-Haul" sign on your right. Turn right, just before the sign, onto Inverness. Take Inverness to its end and turn left onto Whittington Ave. Take Whittington to its end and turn right, into our parking lot. The showcase entry is door B, on your right as you enter the lot.