DANCE | For sale: Chrissy Murderbot’s record collection
Local electronic producer Chris Shively, aka Chrissy Murderbot, who runs the labels Sleazetone and Loose Squares, is slimming down his record collection. Last Monday he put about 90 percent of it, which works out to more than 700 pieces, up for sale at online music catalog and marketplace Discogs to help ease the pain of an upcoming move.
“I’ve got a lot of plastic in my house that I don’t touch that often,” he says. “I’m trying to get all this stuff gone before I move in August so that I don’t have to lift it in the dead of summer.”
The music Shively is selling, like the music he makes, comes from all over the dance-music map—jungle, Chicago house, dubstep, ghetto house, juke—and also includes unexpected oddities like the Robert Redford-narrated nature record The Language and Music of the Wolves. Shively didn’t balk at unloading the sort of hard-to-find albums that collectors cherish, and he’s likewise parting with sentimental records from his youth. Anyone can buy the rare Ragga Jungle Dubs comp or a 1999 seven-inch from Coldcut, a British electronic duo he loved as a teenager.
Shively only intends to keep records he’s made or that friends have produced and given to him. “Anything that doesn’t meet that criteria is out of my life,” he says.
—Leor Galil
METAL | Buried at Sea return for Alehorn of Power
It might not seem like Buried at Sea have been gone all that long, on account of they released Ghost in 2007, but it’s been almost seven years since the Chicago drone-doom masters have played a show. That changes Sat 6/11, when the band reconvenes for the Alehorn of Power fest at Double Door—the lineup will be the same as always, with Sanford Parker on guitar and vocals, Jason Depew on guitar, Brian Sowell on bass and vocals, and Bill Daniel on drums. Sowell lives in LA now and Depew is in Portland, Oregon, but Parker says Buried at Sea never officially broke up—when Bible of the Devil drummer Greg Spalding, who books Alehorn of Power, called him out of the blue about playing the fest, he wasted no time contacting the rest of the band. “We’ve remained really good friends over the years, so it just seemed like the right thing to do,” Parker says. “Hopefully more shows will follow.”
This is the fifth Alehorn of Power—it’s not strictly annual, since Spalding skipped 2010—and past luminaries have included Trouble, Slough Feg, Ludicra, the Gates of Slumber, and Hammers of Misfortune. UK stoner-metal badasses Orange Goblin headline this year; the rest of the bill, top to bottom, is Nachtmystium, Bible of the Devil, Buried at Sea, and Zuul. The show starts at 8:30 PM, and tickets are $18 to $20. Buried at Sea are worth seeing live even if you’ve got their records memorized—chances are you don’t have a stereo capable of the skull-softening volume necessary to do justice to these guys’ sound, which is so thick and heavy you’d swear they’d strung their guitars with 12-foot lengths of cable.
Some local and sorta-local releases of note: The new Jungle Rot LP, Kill On Command, comes out June 21, and strangely it’s on Victory Records—I guess selling all those Emmure albums to mouth-breathing kids means the label can afford to lose money on thrashy trad death metal from a bunch of olds. Black September just reissued last fall’s The Forbidden Gates Beyond via their new label, Prosthetic. And Pharaoh, who are based in Philly but whose lineup includes Dawnbringer mastermind Chris Black on drums, put out the EP Ten Years on Cruz del Sur June 7. —Philip Montoro
EXPERIMENTAL | Utech and Okka Disk throw parties in Milwaukee
Between the second Neon Marshmallow fest—Friday through Sunday at the Empty Bottle—and Friday’s Lampo concert at the Graham Foundation by German sound artist Marcus Schmickler, experimental-music fans may not be much inclined to take road trips this weekend. But two more big events for fans of the adventurous are a 90-minute drive away in Milwaukee.
The third annual Okka Fest runs Fri 6/10 through Sun 6/12 at the Sugar Maple and the Palm Tavern, both owned by former Hopleaf bartender Bruno Johnson, who started the free-jazz label Okka Disk in Chicago in 1994. As usual, most of the bill is from Chicago, but a couple of Europeans make it worth the trip: Swedish reedist Mats Gustafsson and Viennese electronicist Christof Kurzmann will play in a new trio with Ken Vandermark on Friday night and make solo appearances Saturday (Gustafsson) and Sunday (Kurzmann). Sun Rooms, a trio led by vibist Jason Adasiewicz, plays on Friday (Adasiewicz also duets with Gustafsson on Saturday), and a formidable new configuration called the Chicago Double Quartet (half of which is the Extraordinary Popular Delusions) plays on Sunday. For more see mysugarmaple.com/okka3/okka.html.
Milwaukee’s Utech Records hosts its own one-day festival Sat 6/11 at the Cactus Club. The label initially focused on free improvisation and noise (with lots of releases by Chicagoans), but recently it’s shifted toward experimental metal, drone, and harrowing art-rock. Four of the festival’s acts—Locrian, Mammifer, House of Low Culture, and RM74—will play the Hideout on Monday, and HoLC is collaborating for both shows with James Plotkin (Khanate, Jodis), who also performs his own set in Milwaukee. Rounding out the bill: Horseback, Jon Mueller, Gog (recommended by Thrill Jockey’s Bettina Richards in a recent In Rotation), William Fowler Collins, Ural Umbo, and Ithi. For more see utechrecords.com/URMF.html. —Peter Margasak