As a Chicagoan, I’ve got it easy. Pretty much every major or minor tour comes through here; big-ass fests are go-down blocks from my house annually; and I have plenty of shitty baseball teams on which to to take out my personal frustrations and shortcomings. So when I see a thing in the local press about London’s The Wire bringing their ninth annual Adventures in Modern Music series back to the Windy City for five days of “outsider sounds” at venues that I could throw a rock at from my street and hit with ease, I’m just like “oh, cool. Maybe I’ll go to that shit. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the Bears game… those fucking bums.”
But for anyone who doesn’t have my good fortune and can’t get enough glitches in their synths and synths in their glitches, I say get the hell over here right away. “Adventures in Modern Music: A Five Day Celebration of Outsider Sounds” kicks off next Wednesday (September 28) and runs through Sunday, October 2. It features a whole deep dish pizza-load of rare performances by all the experimental musicians you know and love if you read this bullshit website (including John Maus, Pelican, Ducktails, Grouper, Oval, Peaking Lights, Oneohtrix Point Never, Liturgy, Sun Araw, and more) performing non-bullshit sets at such bullshit-deterrent venues as The Empty Bottle, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and Heaven Gallery in the Wicker Park neighborhood. There’s even a movie screening or two and an oddball collaboration between lo-fi’s own Dirty Beaches and retro’s own Frankie Rose.
Tickets range from $15 to $20 a night, which really isn’t too bad when you consider that it would cost you like twice that much if the tickets were twice as expensive. Right?
AiMM schedule:
Wednesday, September 28 (The Empty Bottle)
- John Maus
- Liturgy
- Dirty Beaches & Frankie Rose
- Chandeliers
Thursday, September 29 (The Empty Bottle)
- Carlos Giffoni
- Grouper
- Starlicker
- Vockah Redu & The Cru
Friday, September 30 (The Museum of Contemporary Art)
- Oval
- Peaking Lights
- Plus a screening of collected visions from Deep Magic
Saturday, October 1 (Heaven Gallery)
- Sun Araw
- Oneohtrix Point Never
- Plus an edited screening of Staring into the Sun by Olivia Wyatt
Sunday, October 2 (The Empty Bottle)
- Pelican
- Dawn Golden & Rosy Cross
- Ducktails
- Nicholas Szczepanik
• Empty Bottle: http://www.emptybottle.com
• MCA: http://www.mcachicago.org
• Heaven Gallery: http://www.heavengallery.com
