Brudenell presents...
OHMME
+ Special Guests
15.02.2019 | £5.00 ADVANDCE (+stbf) | 19:30 Doors
https://ohmmemusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/ohmmemusic/
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Already
celebrated as the “Heart of Chicago’s Music Community” (Noisey) by both
fans and tastemakers alike, OHMME (aka the duo of Sima Cunningham and
Macie Stewart) amalgamate the aggressive and the meditative on their
bold debut full-length album, Parts.
Still in their 20s, Stewart
and Cunningham are both classically trained musicians and are
established players within the Chicago music scene. They are especially
involved in performing and working for venues within the local
experimental music scene. They’re constant collaborators and have
recorded and toured with homegrown acts as varied as Tweedy, Whitney,
Chance The Rapper and Twin Peaks.
Cunningham and Stewart are
multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriters with a penchant for two
instruments in particular. "The band started because we knew we could
sing well together and we wanted to make some noise with the guitar,”
says Cunningham. Stewart elaborates, “Sima and I are both trained
classical pianists and we know many of the sonic spaces keyboards have
to offer. Since we were interested in experimenting and creating
something different from what we had both done in the past, we chose
guitar as our outlet for this band. We wanted to create both new and
uncomfortable parameters for ourselves to force us into a different
creative space.” These guitar-heavy experiments are sometimes earthy and
resounding, at other times shimmering and buzzing—swirling around the
duo's expertly crafted vocals while creating a chaotic bed of harmony.
Cunningham's smoky alto complements Stewart's higher-register croon, all
underpinned by the restrained yet highly inventive polyrhythmic
percussion of drummer Matt Carroll. Think Amber Coffman and Angel
Deradoorian-era Dirty Projectors.
Enlisting fellow Chicago cohorts Doug McCombs (Tortoise), Ken Vandermark and cellist Tomeka Reid,
OHMME recorded and self-produced Parts from Cunningham’s Logan Square
home studio, Fox Hall. With Parts, OHMME "wanted to capture a moment in
time instead of something perfect.”
The results are thrilling: from the pure pop opening track “Icon” to the
candied sludge of "Peach" to the skipping rhythms of "Parts" and the dusky
closer "Walk Me," Parts draws from influences as diverse as Kate Bush
and Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets to jazz and improvisational
music, making for an electric debut listening experience.
This range from sweetly shiny 2-minute hypnotic bangers to woozy and
sprawling 7-minute long tracks boasting moodily atmospheric wafting
guitars and piercing feedback shows a band colliding thoughtfulness and
creative ingenuity to produce music as unique as it is earworm- worthy.
With Parts, OHMME manage to organically marry a breadth of divergent
styles into an album that is cohesive, daring, and distinctly their own.