Friday, January 21, 2011
Music / Free Shit / Post No Bills / Swag Chris Brokaw Sneaks Into Chicago for a Free Sunday Set
Posted by Peter Margasak on 01.21.11 at 01:57 PM
Last year Brokaw made a terrific instrumental acoustic record for Vin du Select Qualitite, a burgeoning vinyl-only label focusing on solo guitar music that's also issued records by Mark McGuire of Emeralds and Joshua Blatchley of Mountain Home. VDSQ Volume 3, as it's titled, opens with the brief "God's Forgotten Rooster," a sort of false start that suggests we're in for an album of Brokaw's frantic interpretations of John Fahey fingerstyle. The disc moves on to cover a wide range of approaches, most favoring broader strokes rather than intricate fingerpicking. Some tunes have use hard strumming to generate rocklike propulsion beneath succinct flashes of melodic filigree, others tap into the rolling arpeggios of British folk music, and still others use a kind of ambient soundscaping approach.
Brokaw is currently driving across the country and at the last minute decided to play a handful of low-key shows along the way, including one this Sunday at 6:30 PM at the Milwaukee Avenue location of Reckless Records. Also performing is Matthew Mullane, a recent transplant to Chicago from Cleveland, who's got his own VDSQ album due later this year. The only extensive piece of music I've heard by him is the gripping, abstract, seemingly improvised "Double Negative," which merges electronics, clarinets, guitar, and some other stuff I can't positively ID; it's billed to his Non Group project, and you can download it for free at the Homophoni website.
Steve Lowenthal, who runs VDSQ, made recently made a mix tape that includes acoustic guitar pieces from Brokaw and Mullane (as well as Jack Rose, Sir Richard Bishop, and Glenn Jones), and it's downloadable from +|+ website.
Today's playlist:
Reverend Charlie Jackson, God's Got It (CaseQuarter)
Anne-Sophie Mutter & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Berg: Violinkonzer; Rihm, Gesungene Zeit (Deutsche Grammophon)
Miguel Angel, Samba Na Onda (Whatmusic)
Arve Henriksen and Elling Vanberg, Ellivan (NORCD)
Luc Ferrari, Chantal (Ohm Editions)
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