A few years ago Jeremy Bushnell and Chris Miller, who perform together as the drone-noise duo Number None, started putting out CD-Rs of their music on their own Rebis label. But in 2005 they decided to go legit and release proper CDs by other bands–in large part to document a scene they saw emerging around them. “The tag we started using as an organizing principle was the New Electronic Sublime,” says Bushnell. “The old version of the music was John Cale’s early stuff with the Dream Syndicate, La Monte Young, and those people.” Lately, he says, a new crop of artists has arisen–Axolotl and the Skaters on the west coast, for instance, and Double Leopards on the east. “It seemed like there was a group of people all over the country working with a heavy drone, electrically charged with a lot of distortion, but aiming for this transcendence or this sublimity.”
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Rebis’s first formal release was a compilation that featured tracks from Number None and the Skaters, among others. Since then they’ve paid more attention to the circle of locals working with drone–they’ve put out an album by White/Light and a two-disc comp called Lead Into Gold, which includes White/Light along with the Zoo Wheel and a cooperative effort from Bird Show and Lichens. Many of Chicago’s drone-based bands are side projects, and incestuous collaborations are the norm: White/Light is the duo of sound engineer and keyboardist Jeremy Lemos and Ambulette guitarist Matt Clark, Bird Show and the Zoo Wheel are solo efforts from Town and Country members Ben Vida and Liz Payne, respectively, and Lichens is Robert Lowe of the barely extant 90 Day Men, who sometimes plays with Lemos and Clark as White/Lichens. The scene’s flagship group, Dreamweapon, is essentially Town and Country plus several other musicians, including Lowe. Each act has a distinctive sound, but hovering, meditative long tones pervade every one.
“I definitely think there is a community,” says Lowe, “and it seems like a lot of the people involved in it are drawing from each other in a totally positive way. There does seem to be a movement, which I think is great. A lot of people are discovering music that isn’t Western, and I think that might be the biggest part of it.”
But so far no one seems to be running out of ideas, even within the obvious limitations of the genre. This year two acts have put out solid full-lengths: Bird Show’s Lightning Ghost came out on Kranky, the Zoo Wheel’s First Born, Grand Days on Lucky Kitchen. Lowe has been especially busy–a new Lichens disc on Kranky and a new White/Lichens album on Holy Mountain are both due in early 2007, and a collaborative recording with Bird Show is in the works.
