Mike Weis:

Mike Weis is the percussionist for the two decades-long Chicago ambient-rock band, Zelienople and an accomplished improviser with projects that include Slow Bell Trio, Good Stuff House, Simon Scott/Mike Weis duo and others. Weis has trained with master drummers from ritual music traditions such as West African Ewe music and Korean Shaman and Buddhist music. Ring The Bell for the 10,000 Forgotten Things is Weis’ sixth solo album, following releases on Type,
Barge, Notice, Monastral and Granny.

This show will be a celebration of the release of Ring The Bell for the 10,000 Forgotten Things, an album and limited edition catalog-style photography book on Monastral.

“There are rare moments of encounter – recordings which defy genre, cultural boundary, and temporal association, reaching toward a universal expression – of all places and times, and of none. Mike Weis’ new LP Sound Practice, is one such case.”

“It is unquestionably one of the most essential, ambitious, and important albums of the year.” –The Hum

“One of Weis’s great virtues as a drummer has always been his ability to self-edit without inhibition. There’s no gratuitous technique, no overplaying, no overwhelming the other musicians. But at the same time, he knows when to hit a drum hard, and he isn’t shy about doing so. He may be taken with Korean and Moroccan ceremonial music and the more reflective side of free improvisation, but he’s also a guy who grew up in the classic rock wilderness of Indiana; he understands the power of a heavy sound.” – Chicago Reader

Sound Practice
ESS Quarantine Concert

P.M. Tummala

P.M. Tummala is a multi-instrumentalist and producer who explores identity and false memories as a sound companion to Indian modernism on his new album, Abstractions in Meera. With instrumentation that includes sampler, synthesizers, vibraphone, electric piano, and tape, he spins a dreamlike, lost-in-time collage of warped melodies and ghostly rhythms that creates an alternate aural history of Indian soundtrack music.

“In the music of P.M. Tummala, history gets absorbed, entangled, and reawakened…the Chicago-based producer concocts hazy worlds that alternately focus and blur. In the process, he nods toward some of his inspirations, particularly the Bollywood music he heard as a child. Nothing on Abstractions in Meera plays like a direct quote or nostalgic sentiment, though. Everything passes through the clouds of Tummala’s memory, emerging as a kaleidoscope in which chords, beats, and voices swirl together like colored liquids combining in a glass.” – Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp: November 2021

“Abstractions in Meera is high quality dream music – and there is something hugely potent and generously laced throughout its numerous brain-tickling folds.” – Obladada

“There’s no one combining the kind of sounds and influences that Tummala does..this is beyond the meditative ideology which has become widespread within the world of experimentation. Abstractions in Meera is a spiritual journey. Tummala captures something truly freeing with these recordings. More freeing than anything else released this year, in fact.” – Sun 13

Abstractions in Meera
ESS Quarantine Concert

Allen Moore

Allen Moore is a visual and sound artist from Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago’s South Side, whose work converses with the signifiers of African-American culture. He uses handmade records cast from graphite to create collages of hypnotic textures and rhythms that resonate like hymns of fractured nostalgia. His latest album, Lived a deviL, Lived a deviL is social sound art that plays like a dubbed-out, Afrofuturist beat-tape of half-remembered dreams.

“Sonically, Moore treads in unexplored zones. Scratched-out voices fight through the static on pieces like “Dysonic 119” and “Prescient Wobble,” the haunted voices beaming through time into modern corridors…Lived a deviL is a potent statement with a distinctive voice.” – Foxy Digitalis

“On eerie, otherworldly tracks such as “Black Is Beautiful,” Moore’s crackling thumps and old soul samples sound like transmissions from beyond the edge of the known universe.” – Chicago Reader

“With oscillating loops and samples put through a meat grinder, the results are a swathe of fever-dream ambient soundscapes…It’s a snapshot from the confusion we call life, with Allen Moore producing some of the most interesting sounds and ideas so far in 2021.” – Sun 13

Lived a deviL
ESS Quaratine Concert

Rocio Zavala

Rocio Zavala is a sound artist and musician who works with handmade instruments including synthesizers, zither, and other electronics. Invisible Miracles is her debut album recorded over a period of a few years in Chicago and Mexico and will be released in Spring 2022.

Soundcloud
ESS Quarantine Concert

$15 Tickets available at door