We need practical experimentation. Humans benefit from practical experiments. Isotope 217 is a practical experiment.
In the mid 1990s, a group of Chicago musicians got together for a weekly engagement at the Rainbo Club, a neighborhood tavern just south of Wicker Park. Their experiments were improvisational, exploring the electro-acoustic realm much in the fashion of Miles Davis' electric music, but with a bit of a jamaican dub sensibility and a focus on collective group movement, as opposed to climactic individual improvisations with "funky" accompaniment. The weekly engagement gradually transformed into a weekly workshop - an open rehearsal for the general public as they started to compose and rehearse sketches for the group, crafting a unique method of group improvisation and collective musical arrangement. They had become a band, and decidedly named themselves Isotope, a reference from a scene in the Sun Ra cult sci-fi film "Space Is The Place". After discovering that a British lite-jazz group from the 70s had adopted the same sobriquet, they settled on Isotope 217, a reference from yet another sci-fi classic, "Forbidden Planet".
Isotope 217 went on to release three albums for the Thrill Jockey label, all to critical acclaim, and modest commercial success: "The Unstable Molecule" (1997), "Utonian_Automatic" (1999) and "Who Stole The I Walkman" (2000), all placing at the top of year-end critics' lists. They released an EP on Aesthetics Records, a collage of manipulated live stereo recordings from their sessions at the Rainbo Club, mixed by their good friends Mike Kandel (aka Tranquillity Bass, aka Commander Mindfuck) and Casey Rice (aka Designer). Isotope 217 has headlined some of the world's leading new music festivals, including the Verona Festival in Italy and the Moers Music Festival in Germany. They participated in an extremely unlikely but wildly successful collaboration with the Hip-Hop group Cannibal Ox and a host of other mc's from the Def Jux camp, at the Lincoln Center's Symphony Space in 2001.
"We are inspired by a collective wash of musical interests and experience that includes (but is not limited to) non-harmonic free music. harmonically-based free music. electronic dance music. acoustic dance music. ambient music. non-ambient music. We make our music with samplers, horns, drums, percussion, synthesizers, strings, computers, amplifiers and tape machines. We desire to create a musical space that examines and exploits the various relationships between the acoustic and the electronic and improvisational music and composition."
"Our sound has been compared to: Sun Ra, electric Miles Davis, early Weather Report, This Heat, Autechre, Mwandishi, Devo, Axelrod, among others. We don't really sound like any of that, but we are inspired by all the aforementioned artists, plus a lot more, and also our friends and families. Music is science, and tradition. Isotope is in the continuum, and you are, too."
so I'll be back to Chicago for a short visit in May (weekend of 5/22) for another conference. You guys playing any shows?? I'm gonna keep asking every time I'm in town until i finally get lucky :)
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