[DID NOT ATTEND: July 24, 2022] Peeesseye / TALsounds
Peeesseye is an experimental band co-founded by Chris Forsyth, who has gone on to do some amazing work on guitar. I’m going to let Ars Nova Workshop summarize them better than I ever could:
Peeesseye was formed in 2002 in Brooklyn by Chris Forsyth, Jaime Fennelly, and Fritz Welch. Though their instrumentation changed as often as their sound, the core elements were always Fennelly’s combination of harmoniums, oscillators and feedback, Forsyth’s alternately spacious and cutthroat guitar playing, and Welch’s hyper-mutated vocals and possessed percussion.
They persistently kept listeners off balance over the course of the ensuing decade, both through chameleonic stylistic shifts from one release to the next as well as with the unpredictable eclecticism of the music itself. Gestural lowercase formalism might explode into blaring noise, sprawling psychedelia shatter into raucous free improv, back porch minimalism mutate into avant-trickster performance art—all engaged with a sense of emotionally engaged intensity that forged a unity in their often evolving sound.
The group splintered geographically and musically after a final show in Antwerp in 2011, with Fennelly pursuing theatrically Kosmiche synth gleam as Mind Over Mirrors from bases in Washington State, Chicago, Maine, and North Carolina; Forsyth carving out his own territory as a bandleader and lyrical guitar anti-hero upon relocating to Philadelphia in 2009, most notably with his Solar Motel Band; and Welch shifting from music/noise/sound to various performance scenarios to visual art extrusion in his adopted hometown of Glasgow, Scotland.
After more than a decade apart, Peeesseye is reconvening for two performances to mark the 20 years since they first made noise together.
I love Forsyth, but i didn’t know much about Peeesseye. I assumed it was hard to listen to, but I still really wanted to go to this show.
Then it turned out that I got tickets for Mitski that night–with the whole family on board. So I had to miss out on this bizarre evening.
TALsounds is the ambient solo moniker of Chicago-based experimental artist Natalie Chami, who is also a member of the trio Good Willsmith, one half of the duo l’éternèbre, and a co-founder of the Screaming Claws collective.
The music seems to be synthy and chill. Almost a direct opposite of the noise of Peeesseye. Although some of the songs add some texture, it is mostly synth playing.
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