Classically-trained cellist and singer Kelsey Lu is one of those artists that bridges worlds. She’s technically a pop musician, but her approach to pop is startlingly bare-bones, strikingly ornamented and boldly styled. She’s one of those talents that seems to do it all, working in fashion, cinema and wide-ranging musical collaborations (including some incredible tracks with Boys Noize, of all people) with a fluidity that makes you wonder why everyone else needs to try so hard. “Jazz ain’t dead, it’s in us all” she sings on “Blood,” from her 2019 album of the same name. Lu’s vibrant, exploratory music is a living testament.
L’Rain is the collaborative unit led by Taja Cheek - multi-instrumentalist, multi-disciplinary artist, and an overall unmissable force in the NY arts community. L’Rain’s most recent album, I Killed Your Dog, is a self-described “anti-breakup” record that floats in woozy pools of melted neo-soul. Many artists step up to the plate of lo fi, ‘80s influenced R&B and strike out. L’Rain hits the mark, conjuring the feel of warbly VHS dubs and languid car rides with half-working AC and your favorite mixtapes precisely by avoiding any of the trappings of nostalgia. There’s an inherent glow and slo-mo grace to I Killed Your Dog that feels just right. Instruments blur into each other, uncannily conjured sounds slip in and out of focus, and, over it all, Cheek basks in the glow, serving up unhurried, seductively cool demolitions. “I felt so soft in my insides / I just let the sweet fruit die / I killed your dog.”
Avant guitarist Bill Nace has been a longtime collaborator of Gordon’s, working with her in the droning, freewheeling duo Body / Head. His approach has a raw softness, a brutal materiality, or perhaps a worn-in intimacy that invites listeners to sit for a spell amidst waves of gently undulating, grotty noise. His music harnesses the sound of detritus, at times evoking malfunctioning equipment (is that noise on “The Giant” a looped sample of a broken cable?). Late into Sonic Youth’s tenure, the group issued a series of noise exercises and collaborations with some of experimental music’s most active luminaries on their own SYR label. Gordon’s work with Nace extends this practice, fusing her trademark vocals with unrestrained, free range skronk.
For this show, Nace joins up with Circuit des Yeux, the alias of Chicago vocalist/composer Haley Fohr. Using her 4-octave voice to its fullest capacity, Fohr’s songwriting goes all in on soaring, dramatic arrangements. The cinematic grandeur and sweeping intensity of her works is undeniable. “I have a very vivid inner world, and my emotions are huge,” she told The Quietus in an interview. Discussing her collaborations with Nace, she said “I think our duo works due to our abilities within extended technique. We both have a very unique and singular approach to our instrument. Our music is ecstatic and very push-pull, like a maniacal conversation in some coded alien language.”
Nace also joins members of Philadelphia’s Heavenly Bodies and Long Hots for the three-way collab Full Size. The former modernizes the sprawling template of space rock, playing with a jagged energy and sneering edge. The latter embraces jangly, punkish snottiness. Fellow Philadelphian Matt Krefting’s sorrowful, eerie works feel like ethnomusicological recordings of a hermit, playing alone deep in the forest. His album Finer Points is a strange, elliptical and mesmerizing listen.
These artists will be spread between two rooms, with Gordon, Lu and L’Rain in the Atrium, and Nace & co taking over our second room. Performances will be staggered, allowing audiences to follow the journey through hand-hewn noise-adjacence, rapturous chamber pop, lysergic R&B and, of course, Kim Gordon (aka 2024’s best Soundcloud rapper).