The ’90s Chicago Underground

If much of the Chicago scene in the ‘90s seemed to be pushing beyond conventional rock boundaries, Eleventh Dream Day, formed by Rick Rizzo and Janet Beveridge Bean in the early ‘80s, kept a torch burning for punk-informed drive and Crazy Horse–ish drift. The band’s aptly titled eighth record was equal parts noisy and jammy (as on the Sonic Youth–like “View From the Rim” or the shimmering drone collage “Motion Sickness”), wiry and anthemic (“Two Smart Cookies,” where Rizzo and Bean share lead vocals), and patient and textural (trudging, enveloping closer “Last Call”). As distinctive as the group’s blend was, moments here, such as “Writes a Letter Home,” bordered on the post-rock stylings that were then taking hold thanks in large part to McCombs’s other band Tortoise, showing that this was a community in constant dialogue. 

Chicago’s jazz and rock undergrounds mingled freely in the ‘90s, producing compelling efforts like this one-off document of the so-called Denison/Kimball Trio — actually the duo of Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison and Laughing Hyenas / Mule drummer Jim Kimball — operating as an actual trio with the addition of Ken Vandermark on reeds. It’s a comfortable fit, with Vandermark, an avowed aficionado of left-field rock, easily finding a foothold in the pair’s quirky blend of avant-lounge-jazz stylings and ominous post-punk soundscapes. It’s a rare treat to hear the saxophonist and Denison trade squirrely lines on “Monte’s Casino” and to hear Vandermark rip over a tense, pounding groove on the title track.

Jim O’Rourke was enormously prolific in the ‘90s, constructing intricate long-form electro-acoustic music, helping to pioneer new forms of avant-garde pop with Gastr del Sol and solo releases like Eureka, and producing records for U.S. Maple, Smog and others. But he had still other aesthetic imperatives to fulfill, one of which took shape here, on an album that combined spiky, primal industrial-meets-post-punk rock with abstract sound collage in a way that strongly recalled late ‘70s / early ‘80s London intergenre experimentalists This Heat. Performed by a crew of heavyweight players — including Cheer-Accident members Thymme Jones and Dylan Posa, and Dazzling Killmen bassist Darin Gray — and spliced and reassembled after the fact by O’Rourke (credited with razor blade, among other implements), the album played out as brilliantly unnerving ear candy, with volatile climaxes erupting out of spare atmospherics, and an overall sense of a soundworld constantly at risk of fracturing or collapsing altogether.

Even while pursuing various outré sonic adventures, the members of the AACM never distanced themselves from the blues, R&B and the other more populist musical traditions that informed them early on. Roscoe Mitchell drove home that point on this 1994 session, which found him teaming with his Art Ensemble of Chicago comrade Malachi Favors, local pal and AACM co-founder Jodie Christian, and master drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath for an eclectic set paying tribute to another early AACM member, Donald Myrick, a saxophonist who worked with Howlin’ Wolf, Earth Wind & Fire and many other illustrious names. It’s a treat to hear Mitchell blowing on his father Roscoe Sr.’s R&B tune “Walking in the Moonlight” and swinging in good-natured fashion on his own title track and Lester Bowie’s bop-informed “Zero,” while also making room for free-form excursions like the potently bizarre “Dragons” and a series of probing duets with Favors.

The Chicago Underground project has taken many forms over the years, from a trio all the way up to an orchestra, but its most basic incarnation is the musical brotherhood of cornetist Rob Mazurek and percussionist Chad Taylor. This debut LP by the duo hinted at the many fertile territories they would explore for decades to come, including earthy, conversational horn-and-drum free jazz — clearly informed by both Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s classic duo sessions, and Bill Dixon’s radical textural experiments — and chamber-music-like reflections for piano and vibraphone, featuring another frequent Underground associate, the quietly masterful guitarist Jeff Parker.

Multi-instrumentalist Hal Russell was a key influence on Chicago’s ‘90s underground upstarts including Weasel Walter — whose Flying Luttenbachers outfit derived their moniker from Russell’s birth name and originally featured Russell in the lineup — and Ken Vandermark, who worked in Russell’s NRG Ensemble early on. The latter group carried on after Russell’s death in 1992, with Vandermark joining longtime members Mars Williams (saxophone), Steve Hunt (drums), Kent Kessler (bass) and Brian Sandstrom (trumpet, bass and wild, fuzzed-out guitar). On this, their final release, they upheld Russell’s commitment to avant-jazz intensity in many forms, from the post–Ornette Coleman scramble of the Williams-composed title track to the rubato calm of Vandermark’s “No Reply.” Less celebrated than either the early AACM outfits or ‘90s standouts like the Vandermark 5, the NRG Ensemble were nevertheless a key link in the chain of adventurous Chicago jazz, and this offering showed how vital they remained up to the end.

A new chapter in the long, slow-building career of Chicago saxophonist and early AACM member Fred Anderson began in the ‘90s, when he began recording with a variety of visiting musicians. This excellent set finds him in the company of Peter Kowald, the German bassist who played a key role in the development of free jazz in Europe, and drummer Hamid Drake, Anderson’s frequent collaborator, who had made some of his first recordings alongside the saxophonist around 20 years prior and would continue to work with him up until Anderson’s death in 2010. The three have no problem establishing a common language, with the rhythm section’s busy yet highly attuned churn buoying Anderson’s soulful, unhurried flow on opener “Straight, But Not Straight.” Later, they dig deep into a ballad-like texture on “To Those Who Know,” and cohere around Drake’s lively hand-drum patterns on “Multidimensional Reality.” As on many other vital jazz efforts of the era, the setting for this recording — the Velvet Lounge, Anderson’s own long-running club in the city’s South Loop — is an important element here, and a reminder of the saxophonist’s place as a pillar of the Chicago scene.

Rock music seemed to reach an inscrutable endpoint with Talker, the third full-length by U.S. Maple. The group always embodied a shadowy insularity, but here, an increased sense of space threw their highly peculiar language — marked by limping, lurching rhythms, disembodied riffs and the disquieting rasp of vocalist Al Johnson — into stark relief. A quarter century on, the pieces here feel no less mysterious or strangely alluring. Songs like “Go to Bruises” and “Apollo, Don’t You Crust” are master classes in avant-rock composition, disguising a huge amount of intent beneath a stream-of-consciousness facade.

In Ken Vandermark’s voluminous, still-growing portfolio of projects, the Vandermark 5 still stands out as his key early ensemble, and one of the defining avant-jazz groups of the late ‘90s and beyond. The unique blend of influences that informed the band is on full display here, in a program that embraces springy groove, Euro-style free improv and even chilled-out cool jazz, reflected respectively in “Sucker Punch,” “8K” and “New Luggage,” pieces dedicated in turns to Phelps “Catfish” Collins, Peter Brötzmann and Shelly Manne. Vandermark’s sharp, ear-catching writing, a trio of compelling soloists (Vandermark, who plays both clarinets and tenor sax; Mars Williams on saxophones; and Jeb Bishop, a double threat on trombone and often-incendiary guitar), and the versatile rhythm team of bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Tim Mulvenna make this a small group with the richness of an orchestra.

If the abrasive noise-punk trio Big Black was the band that put Steve Albini on the map, Shellac — formed in 1992 after the dissolution of the short-lived Rapeman — marked the renowned engineer’s greatest accomplishment as a performing musician. The trio of Albini, bassist and sometime vocalist Bob Weston, and drummer Todd Trainer had their sound dialed in right from the start, as reflected on a series of early singles, so their debut LP, At Action Park, documented a confident and fully coherent vision: a brand of post-hardcore rock that was as snarky as it was thunderous. One of the great pleasures of the era was hearing the band lock into a huge, stomping groove as Albini snarled out some wry, insular narrative, as he did on standouts here like “My Black Ass” and “Il Porno Star.” And, much like just about every other Albini-recorded album from the era, At Action Park sounds immaculate — stark and punishing yet pulsing with life.

Of all the offbeat collectives that flourished in Chicago in the ‘90s, few were more consistently challenging and rewarding than Cheer-Accident, an absurdist-minded avant-rock ensemble active in various forms since the early ‘80s, and orbiting around multi-instrumentalist, singer and lone consistent member Thymme Jones. No one album tells the full Cheer-Accident story, but Enduring the American Dream touched on their many strengths, including unsettling sound collage, wistful baroque pop and hard-edged prog, often co-existing in a single track, as on epics here like “Dismantling the Berlin Waltz” and “Desert Song.” While Cheer-Accident maintained a connection to the broader Chicago avant-garde — through Jones’ collaborations with Gastr del Sol and others, and Vandermark 5 member Jeb Bishop guesting here and elsewhere in their catalog — they were at this time and still remain a world unto themselves, yielding an output that’s both confounding and strangely affecting.

Starting in the mid-’80s, AACM veteran Edward Wilkerson Jr. put forth a rich and winningly eclectic jazz vision with his long-running group 8 Bold Souls. Their third LP showed off Wilkerson’s knack for deploying the ensemble like a little big band, interweaving lush ensemble arrangements with gutsy solos on pieces such as “A Little Encouragement.” At other times, as on the title track, the octet behaves almost like an avant-garde chamber group. As a whole, Ant Farm reveals how, by the ‘90s, in the wake of AACM forebears like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the distinctions between various wings and factions of jazz had eroded, resulting in a generation of players-composers like Wilkerson who could comfortably draw from anywhere on the genre’s sonic spectrum, and make it all cohere — with crucial support in this case from reedist Mwata Bowden, cellist Naomi Millender and others among the Souls’ formidable roster.

Across their career, Gastr del Sol — the duo of former Bastro and Squirrel Bait member David Grubbs, and solo tape composer, producer and all-around experimental-music maven Jim O’Rourke — jumbled together their many far-flung influences into a sui generis union of avant-garde sonics and more conventional song-based moves. Upgrade & Afterlife was in some ways their most difficult release, but its shadowy depths nonetheless contained numerous unconventional pleasures: the glitched-out drone of opening track “Our Exquisite Replica of ‘Eternity,’” the gradually blooming prog-meets-post-rock of “Hello Spiral,” the ghostly electroacoustic wash of “The Sea Incertain” and most enchanting of all, an epic cover of John Fahey’s “Dry Bones in the Valley” featuring mesmerizing violin textures from minimalist pioneer Tony Conrad. Music this weird has rarely felt so warm.

The Jesus Lizard emerged fully formed on their 1990 debut, Head, and honed their sound to a menacing, unhinged perfection on follow-ups Goat and Liar, so it was probably a smart call for them to broaden their sonic palette for album number four. Down has a mixed reputation — especially among the band members themselves, who have repeatedly rated it as a subpar entry in their catalog, citing underbaked material and unsatisfactory recording job by Steve Albini — but it can be hard to see why, as the album contains some of the group’s most nuanced and rewarding material. While early Lizard focused on bluntness and bludgeon, here they stretched out into noirish swing (“The Associate”), wild-eyed boogie rock (“Destroy Before Reading”) and even their version of poignant power-balladry (“Elegy”). And the harder-hitting pieces, such as the convulsive “Mistletoe,” the skulking, flailing “American BB” and the trudging, Zeppelin-y “Horse” showed that the scuzzy core of their aesthetic remained fully intact.

The Flying Luttenbachers have mutated constantly throughout their 30-year-plus history. Here, the band, which began as a scrappy avant-jazz unit and progressed toward No Wave–y skronk rock, took its first steps toward another key influence: extreme metal, evidenced in the hurtling blastbeats played by drummer/bandleader Weasel Walter on tracks such as “Storm of Shit” and “Murder Machine Muzak.” Sporting a then-new lineup of Walter, guitarist Chuck Falzone and bassist Bill Pisarri, the group juggled proggy pointillism with art-punk blurt and a liberal dose of sputtering chaos, modeling how the many sonic oddities bubbling up from the ‘90s Chicago underground might cross-pollinate in provocative ways.

It was the Art Ensemble of Chicago who carried the torch for what it called “Great Black Music — Ancient to the Future,” but more broadly, that term served as a guiding mission statement for generations of AACM members, including those who united here as Bright Moments. For these musicians — including Art Ensemble flutist-saxophonist Joseph Jarman, then on a hiatus from the AEOC, and bassist Malachi Favors; saxophonist Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre; pianist Adegoke Steve Colson; and drummer Kahil El’Zabar — it was second nature to present a high-energy free jazz workout like Jarman’s “Song of Joy for the Predestined” alongside El’Zabar’s “Ornette,” a hypnotic excursion driven by a bass vamp and hand drums, or the percussionist’s modal swinger of a title track, a beautiful showcase for the contrasting sax styles of McIntyre and Jarman.

Tortoise’s aesthetic was well established by the time of their third LP, which made TNT feel less novel than their first two full-lengths, but equally satisfying in its vivid escapism. Pieces like “Swung From the Gutters” here refined the proggy chamber-fusion that the band dialed in on Millions Now Living Will Never Die, while “Ten-Day Interval” furthered their fascination with Steve Reich–ian mallet-percussion minimalism. Elsewhere, dubbed-out electronica and windswept Morricone-isms fleshed out what felt like an expertly curated sampler platter for indie-rock fans whose record collections were rapidly expanding right alongside those of Tortoise’s sonically omnivorous members.

Bands like Tortoise helped usher in a mellower wave for the ‘90s Chicago scene, but the Sea and Cake — which brought together Tortoise drummer John McEntire with Shrimp Boat members Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge, and Coctails guitarist Archer Prewitt — were the band that leaned in most fully to their chillest impulses, conjuring a timelessly hip brand of jazz- and soul-inflected pop, a new strain of easy listening for a crowd accustomed to having their eardrums battered at post-hardcore gigs. The Biz was an early peak for the band, where they found a way to balance balmy, synth-kissed textures with wiry funk underpinnings, stirring in songwriting smarts clearly informed by classic R&B to produce some of the loveliest indie-rock-adjacent tunes of the era.

Chicago post-rock could sometimes seem a little buttoned-up, but Isotope 217 found Tortoise members Dan Bitney, Jeff Parker and John Herndon letting loose alongside Chicago Underground cornetist Rob Mazurek and other local associates. “Phonometrics” digs into a wiry James Brown–esque funk groove, while “Beneath the Undertow” builds a smooth, danceable jam upon a sinuous vamp by bassist Matt Lux. “La Jeteé,” a showcase for the softly expressive trombone stylings of Sara P. Smith, quiets things to a dubby murmur, with closer “Audio Boxing” dialing the beat back up to a loungey simmer. A record like this now seems emblematic of a scene that had so much creativity to spare that its members were constantly spiraling out into various satellite projects, with each release feeling like a snapshot of a larger ongoing story.

In 1968, Peter Brötzmann convened an octet in Bremen, Germany, to record Machine Gun, which would become one of the defining statements of European free jazz. Close to 30 years later, with help from writer, producer and Chicago scene linchpin John Corbett, he headed up another eight-piece band, later expanded to 10 members, at beloved Windy City club the Empty Bottle. Featuring the cream of Chicago’s avant-jazz crop — including Ken Vandermark, Mars Williams, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kent Kessler, Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang — plus Swedish reed powerhouse Mats Gustafsson and legendary New York improviser Joe McPhee, the result was the start of a brilliant new chapter for Brötzmann. As heard on this self-titled debut, a three-disc set combining both live and studio performances, the ensemble was equally adept at brash blowouts and more sensitive, atomized improv excursions, and made room for a variety of pieces written by the members, including Vandermark’s action-packed suite “Other Brothers” and Bishop’s “Divide by Zero” which builds from somber theme statements to a hard-swinging, Mingus-worthy climax.