Photos: Wire Fest [Chicago, IL; Empty Bottle; 09/20/06]

The Wire's 2006 Adventures in Modern Music festival kicked off at Chicago's Empty Bottle Wednesday night with a typically eclectic bill, featuring ambient laptopper Tim Hecker, nu-folkie Jana Hunter, metal ensemble Rhys Chatham's Essentialist, and, in an extremely rare live appearance-- one of his first since he began releasing records nearly 30 years ago-- the mysterious blues-man Jandek.

Adorned in black from head to toe, and reluctant to so much as face his audience, Jandek looked as skeletal and spectral as the music he made. Joined by a bassist and a drummer (Tortoise's John McEntire, apparently), the Corwood Industries representative unsettled in every way-- whether through stabbing jagged, atonal, blues-leaning notes out of his guitar, or non-singing clipped, cryptic phrases that never offered the solace of rhyme. For nearly two hours he played in this fashion, leaving one feeling as though he is plumbing depths far deeper than even those of despair.

Guitar composer extraordinaire Rhys Chatham played next, marking the Chicago debut of his new instrumental metal ensemble Rhys Chatham's Essentialist. The fivepiece tore through intricate, multi-part, riffy metal and sprawling, Sunn 0)))-inspired black metal, finishing with a new rendition of Guitar Trio (1977). Chatham addressed his young players with the intensive stare of a conductor, keeping time with strums on his own guitar rather than a baton. And his drummer (pitcured above) positively killed.

All that metal must have riled up the audience a bit, because Jana Hunter's wispy, gently haunting folks songs had to do battle with significant barroom banter. Not unlike Jason Molina in solo mode, Hunter manages to conjure a powerful emotional pull out of fairly simple songs that drift in, leave their impression, and then drift out just as quickly.

Canadian ambient noise maestro Tim Hecker closed things out in appropriate fashion, playing an occasionally deafening but always beautiful non-stop set of soaring tones and simmering static, including selections from his forthcoming Harmony in Ultraviolet (Kranky). The overall effect: like hearing a symphony from the inside of an airplane turbine engine. Superficially, it seemed miles away from the cold blues of Jandek, yet captured-- along with every other performer this night, in his or her own way-- a brand of alienation that likely haunts any musician adventuring on the fringes of modern music.

JANDEK
Jandek