Zelienople, Odawas, Jorma Whittaker, Mike Tamburo
INFO 773-472-5139
The two of them, along with Christensen’s old friend Brian Harding, had already started Zelienople, and since then they’ve stuck to making music at their own pace–they play out inconsistently, never tour, and haven’t ever bothered recording in a proper studio. Most people have no idea who they are, but over the past few years their haunting, homemade drone pop has emerged as one of the most distinctive sounds in the city.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In the past four years the local label Loose Thread has released two Zelienople albums and reissued another, and since 2005 the group has put out a series of discs on tiny labels from Finland, New Zealand, and Oklahoma: Ink, Ghost Ship, and the brand-new Stone Academy. The more recent tracks, all based on patient, elegant long tones, switch between ghostly acoustic songs and hazy, hypnotic instrumentals.
Though Zelienople had piles of rehearsal recordings, they didn’t decide to make an actual album till 2001. Their debut, Pajama Avenue, came out the next year on Loose Thread, run by another friend from the Rogers Park practice space.
The subsequent Ghost Ship, on the New Zealand label PseudoArcana, was a leap into pure drone, entirely instrumental and with even the percussion confined to washes and textures. Last month’s Stone Academy, released on CD by Digitalis and on vinyl by Root Strata, restores songlike structures to the picture, but not the rock-band underpinnings of the early discs.
Last Friday morning during rush hour a man set himself on fire near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. He hadn’t been officially identified at press time, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they’re certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene who recorded more than 2,000 live shows. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package Monday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, started making calls and discovered that though police won’t confirm it was Ritscher until they get the results of dental tests, an officer told one of Ritscher’s sisters that all evidence points to the body being his. Ritscher’s car was found nearby, and he hasn’t shown up for work since Thursday. What’s more, on Ritscher’s Web site Chicago Rash Audio Potential, a compendium of invaluable show postings, artwork, and photography, are a suicide note and an obituary. Both indicate that he was deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and pinpoint it as a motive for suicide (though no method is specified). A note found at the scene of the immolation reportedly read “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
