Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Chicago Reader on Kwaidan Show 3/26/2012

























Link here.

Kwaidan, Winters in Osaka, Trevor de Brauw, Dead Dragon Mountain
When: Mon., March 26, 9:30 p.m.

In their own projects, drummer Mike Weis (Zelienople), guitarist Andre Foisy (Locrian), and synth player Neil Jendon explore long tones, drones, and textures, so it's hardly a shock that as the local trio Kwaidan they'd twist those same elements into yet another exquisite permutation. Their new self-titled cassette for Accidental Guest Recordings—recorded live at their first show, in December at Impala Gallery—is a single totally improvised 37-minute piece. Weis ebbs and flows, riding an insistent two-hit kick-drum figure and working over his cymbals and other metal objects to create hovering sizzles, terse pings, and resonant scrapes; Foisy's output is sometimes recognizable as a guitar, especially when he plays moaning figures that recall Loren Mazzacane Connors, but often his effects-heavy washes could be coming from just about anything that plugs in. Jendon's hypnotic drones can also be mystifying as to their source—he's a guitarist too, and at first I thought he'd appeared in that role here. He makes chameleonic noises with his homemade synthesizer, which at times blend into the shimmering of Weis's cymbals and at others mesh with Foisy's shape-shifting guitar. —Peter Margasak Winters in Osaka, Pelican guitarist Trevor de Brauw, and Dead Dragon Mountain open.