Scene and Heard

Test Patterns 3

Photos by Nate Dorr + Joe Perez » With Kim Ann Foxman, Air Waves, Mike Servito, German Measles, Xray Eyeballs, Dirty Jeans, Animal, and Cowboy Mark.

Text by Jeremy Krinsley
Posted on April 20, 2009

Test Patterns number three. We knew something was missing from the first two in our eternally-running monthly party series when we went down to Don Pedro's basement to smoke a cigarette or shoot a couple pool balls: more noise, and more people. So we added a DJ party down there, curated by DJ Cowboy Mark. That meant that on top of the upstairs rock show, Kim Ann Foxman of Hercules and Love Affair et al spun the under-floor party into a woozy dance party with, as Mandy Graves, (a.k.a. Dirty Jeans) defined it quite nicely: "feel good 90s Chicago house classics, and just enough dub edits to remind you of what things used to be like when these basement parties were not so hard to come by."

We've spent some time raving about Air Waves, who more and more sound like Neil Young channelled through Nicole Schneit's anti-quavering vocal delivery and her confident bass drum backing dudes. Meanwhile, German Measles took up the Dadaist branch of the local garage rock circuit, replete with fake 'staches, trench coats, blistering decibels, and flannel... turtle necks, while the Golden Triangle side project Xray Eyeballs, took the messy, fuzzy recorded material recently released on Night People and made it messier and fuzzier. Animal opened with their guitar-drums rampage that tumbles as comfortably along avant-jazz atonality as it does through blissed-out post-rock loops and heavy stoner metal.