Ed Hermann Percussion Performance

This rare performance by four talented musicians was one for the books. Ed Hermann directed the ensemble in which he, Jason Adasiewicz, Adam Vida, and Sam Hertz played on Tom Nunn's electro-acoustic instruments. Each made of common materials, the instruments remind us of how pervasive sound and music can be – we need only listen.

In case you weren't here to witness it, or if you just want to relive the magic, here is there six-song set. Enjoy!

Ed Hermann Percussion Performance by Experimental Sound Studio

Will Faber: Live @ ESS - Recording

Will Faber - Live @ ESS by Experimental Sound Studio

Also check out more photos of the performance HERE

Brian Harnetty - Live @ ESS

A BIG thanks to Brian Harnetty for his entrancing performance last Friday. Check out the set below!

Remember to check out Brian's 6-channel sound installation - an interpretive commission based on his research into the Sun Ra/El Saturn collection at Creative Audio Archive. The exhibition will be open in the Audible Gallery at ESS November 12–December 19, 2010.

Brian Harnetty - Live @ ESS by Experimental Sound Studio

Will Faber: Live @ ESS - November 20, 8:00pm

Will Faber is a musician and researcher whose work engages the interactions of melodies, noise, rhythms, and repetition. He is currently a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago and plays in the group El is a Sound of Joy.

At ESS he will perform three pieces for guitars, flutes, metallic percussion, electronics, and shortwave radio that draw on themes of memory and history, and explorations of critical and imagined geographies. http://willfaber.wordpress.com

$10 suggested donation / $7 students and ESS members

Brian Harnetty: Live @ ESS

Brian Harnetty presents The Star-Faced One – an interpretive commission based on his research into the Sun Ra/El Saturn collection at Creative Audio Archive (CAA).

Join us for the Opening Reception on Friday, November 12, 6pm-9pm.




The exhibition will be on display in the Audible Gallery at ESS Nov.12 - Dec 19, 2010

ESS Mentioned on TOLIVEFORLOVE

We want to thank Emily Purpura for the charming mention of ESS on her blog TOLIVEFORLOVE.com. We are glad that you enjoyed the Tim Kaiser performance, and we hope that you return soon! Here is an excerpt from her post...


"ESS is tucked away on the Northside of Chicago. Unless you know someone special, you probably wouldn’t know its there. Their space contains a gallery, a couple studios and a small performance space. Oh and the garden!

The staff at ESS are very welcoming and friendly. They are open to discussing what they do and don’t assume that you are 'in the know.' Inside ESS is cozy and yet there are open spaces, nooks and crannies to explore if you’re feeling overwhelmed..."

Emily Purpura is an merchant, an urban nomad, and a scavenger princess! TOLIVEFORLOVE is her motto, her memoir, and melody. Read more about her adventures and merchandise on her blog.

Tim Kaiser: Live @ ESS - Recording

Tim Kaiser - Live @ ESS 10.30.2010 by Experimental Sound Studio

Melissa St. Pierre and Gangwish - Live @ ESS

Melissa St. Pierre and Gangwish - Live @ ESS by Experimental Sound Studio

ESS wants to give a very big thanks to Melissa St. Pierre, Gangwish, and to everyone that came to the shows. We look forward to seeing you all here again soon.

Tim Kaiser: Live @ ESS - Saturday, October 30, 2010

Check out this amazing clip of Tim Kaiser on Make...

Like what you hear/see/smell? Come see Tim Kaiser Live @ ESS on Saturday, October 30, 2010. Guaranteed to blow your mind!

Animal Hospital with Neil Jendon: Live @ ESS

Kevin Micka and Neil Jendon play in studio on October 16, 2010 as part of the Outer Ear performance series.

Check out our upcoming performance schedule here.

Olivia Block's Chicago

Check out this great article at SoundAndMusic.org by our friend Olivia Block

[Excerpt about ESS]
ESS is a non-profit organization run by artist Lou Mallozzi, one of the most prolific curators of experimental music and sound art in the city. The ESS space, located in Edgewater, has a recording studio/performance space, and a one-room gallery featuring visual and sound installations. The Outer Ear festival, hosted by ESS, brings in international artists to present work in the space. Much like Lampo, the Outer Ear fest often works with the School of the Art Institute in bringing the artists to Chicago. I record and rehearse a lot in the ESS studio, using the piano to test sound preparations. The room sounds beautiful for acoustic instruments. I recently had a recording session at ESS where all I did was drop handfuls of beans over and over on a bass drum, and I didn’t have to explain to anyone why I wanted to do that. ESS recently hosted an event called Vinsonic, where electronic music pieces were paired with wines in a tasting/listening combination.

Scrappers at the Film Center

Come see Scrappers at the Gene Siskel Film Center running from October 8th - 14th.  Scrappers was Co-Directed by Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas with the sound design done at Experimental Sound Studio by Jonathan Schenke.


Scrappers trailer:

Check out some of the press Scrappers has been getting:

-TimeOut Chicago review by Hank Sartin

-Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times

-An interview with the Co-Directors at Gapers Block

The dates for the theatrical run are:

-Friday, October 8th, 8pm — w/ filmmaker Q&A

-Monday, October 11th, 8pm

-Wednesday, October 13th, 8:15pm

-Thursday, October 14th, 8:15pm — w/ filmmaker Q&A

http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/scrappers

Stephanie Nadeau: "Is it Farther or Further"

ESS is pleased to present Stephanie Nadeau's "Is it Farther or Further", an exhibition of photographs, prints, conceptual drawings and a music box driven by Antarctic winds that explore real and imagined concepts of distance. From the artist:

As our population grows and we increasingly see ourselves as mastering vastness, our perception of distance diminishes, just as every new communication and transportation technology we invent shrinks the world further and makes the journey obsolete. We begin to speak of a distance disassociated from miles and meters, a metaphorical ‘further’ that relates to depth, distance by degree: a relation to what came before. Distance here is a function of time, not a measurement of length. We are far apart but further together.

"Is it Farther or Further" includes graphite drawings, images culled from the internet and from Nadeau's personal snapshot library, and an Aeolian harp powered by a live feed of wind speed information from an automated weather station in Antarctica. Through these varied media, Nadeau investigates the human need for solidarity, her own unconscious search for sameness in her travels and our relationship to once remote, now disappearing landscapes.

www.stephanienadeau.com

Check out the NewCity Art review here:

http://art.newcity.com/2010/09/27/review-stephanie-nadeauexperimental-sound-studio/

Also, Listen to an excerpt of Dave Rempis' performance from opening night.

Dave Rempis [excerpt] ESS September 24 2010 by Experimental Sound Studio

Sept. 26: Lawrence English and David Daniell at ESS

There is going to be a very special performance on Sunday Sept. 26 at ESS. Lawrence English will be coming all the way from Brisbane Australia and performing here as part of a six stop American tour. Lawrence is known as curator of the Room 40 label and as an artist who has recorded for labels like Touch and 12k. As Tokafi put it in a prelude to this interview:
Not content with merely being regarded as one Sound Art's hardest working acts, not remotely satisfied with running the Room40 imprint as well as its more pop-oriented sister Someone Good and not even happy with curating and organising a plethora of concerts and art events all across Australasia, English has set out to tour the planet in search of stimulating new sounds and embarked on a mission to allow audiences to participate in his auditory excursions. From a musical perspective, there is a clear correlation between his studio output, his live performances and his travels. As he points out in our interview, which took a full year to realise, the different places he visits feed back directly into his work, yielding both timbral inspiration and philosophical ideas for long-term, process-oriented projects.
Lawrence most recently went to Antarctica to do field recording. I wonder if there is any chance he'll share some of those sounds on the 26th.
Savvy Chicagoans ought to be aware of the work guitarist David Daniell has been doing. Just the other week he was playing in a trio with Rhys Chatham at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Thrill Jockey has released a trio recording David completed with Christian Fennesz and Tony Buck and a duo recording with Doug McCombs. Very few musicians can release that much music and maintain the level of quality that David has. The show, in the confines of Studio A, will be one to remember.
Lawrence English photo courtesy of tokafi. David Daniell photo courtesy of Front Porch Productions.

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Michael Zerang

Gapers Block has published a thorough interview with Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang.
Michael will be curating an upcoming series of Saturday night performances at Studio A at ESS. Anyone who remembers Michael's concert series at The Candlestick Maker in Albany Park (much less the Solstice Concert Series with Hamid Darke or Michael's work at Links Hall way back when) will be looking forward to this new series as much as I am. Keep an eye on this space for more details as shows are announced.

"I love sounds just as they are..."

Welcome to the ESS blog!

SPACE/TIME is the new blog brought to you by the team at Experimental Sound Studio. Check back often for frequent updates as we explore the visions of some of the most unique sound artists and musicians from around the world. SPACE/TIME will offer original material from various ESS recording sessions and events, document live in-house performances, and present educational posts that focus on studio techniques and gear. Also look for a variety of new video tutorials, collective art projects, and community outreach programs.

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." -Albert Einstein

John Cage gives us a window into how he thinks about art in time and space, and shares his viewpoint of how he listens to sound. "I love sounds just as they are and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are."

Motion Studies [Prairie] Opening TODAY!

Come see Shawn Decker's latest piece at The Experimental Sound Studio Audible Gallery.

The opening reception will be tonight, August 27th 6:00 - 9:00 pm.

"This piece is a large-scale sound installation that investigates simple sounds combined with architectonics, landscape and unpredictable patternmaking. A field of thin rods, each with a small loudspeaker and motor, produces clicking sounds and slight quivers in computer-generated patterns. The effect is like the swaying movements encountered in windblown prairies with tall grass or in Midwestern wheat fields, all the more evocative because of the elegant minimalist finish of the installation’s sculptural-kinetic elements.

Curator Lou Mallozzi says of the installation: "the listener/viewer is immediately put into a state like that of observing a landscape, an elusive and uncanny state where one feels not outside the landscape, but truly a part of it even as it acts of its own accord and one feels one’s way through it. Simultaneously romantic and prosaic, 'Motion Studies (Prairie)' is both unashamed of its artifice and mesmerizing in its transportative effect." I hope you can join us for the opening reception."

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Exhibition: Aug 27 - Sep 19


Gallery hours: Sat. and Sun 1-4, or by appointment

MotionStudies[Prairie] by Shawn Decker -Part 2

MotionStudies[Prairie] by Shawn Decker -Part 1

A preliminary version of Motion Studies (Prairie) - currently under development - will show at the Experimental Sound Studio's Audible Gallery. This special "sneak peek" exhibition will premier a small version of the complete work prior to its first public showing at full scale. The exhibition will open on Aug 27. More information about the opening can be found HERE.

www.shawndecker.com

What the Future Sounded Like - EMS

Here is a great 3 part documentary about Electronic Music Studios (EMS) in London.



What the Future Sounded Like: Part 2, Part 3