A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
Yellow Eyes at Subterranean on Sat 8/6 In my preview of this show, I compared the lunging, turbulent fury of Yellow Eyes’ Sick With Bloom to a spectacular spring flood, and they’re even more powerful onstage. The vagaries of live amplification turn most black-metal percussion into a hissing wash punctuated with rapid-fire kick drum, but Yellow Eyes’ drummer pushes himself so viciously, painfully hard that you can hear every crack of the snare even in his most frenzied blastbeats. Among active USBM bands, only False does so much to remind you how overwhelming this music is supposed to sound in person.
Jon Mueller, “What I Thought You Said” This track from the 2016 album Tongues has it all: chanting, noise, menacing whispered vocals, meditative drum patterns, an inscrutable title, and a run time of nearly 20 minutes. Jon Mueller’s solo work under the Rhythmplex umbrella is complex and cryptic, allowing you to get impossibly lost inside your own head—where sometimes it’s safe and sometimes it’s not. Fortunately, Mueller lives in Milwaukee and visits Chicago frequently—most recently on his tour with Sumac. RIYL being in a trance.
Perihelion by Rempis/Abrams/Ra + Baker
