Common Sage opens their doors for a night of sonic sauntering

The cozy DIY space presents a pair of touring Midwestern experimental artists, Edward Breitweiser and Swim Ignorant Fire, with local opener Silas Be, on June 29.

Since last fall, house venue Common Sage has not-so-quietly become a semi-monthly bastion to exploratory and revelatory musical experimentation. For the first event of the summer on June 29, cordial curators and hosts Tim Russell and Liz Sexe invite us into what they’ve characterized as a “night of sonic sauntering” starting at 8 p.m.

Edward Breitweiser, director of pt.fwd (Point Forward) series in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, headlines. For his most recent solo release, Tones For Our Bones, Breitweiser constructs a 19-minute drone piece inspired by Chick Corea’s swinging 1968 track, “Tones for Joan’s Bones.” An improvisatory squall of electric-bass feedback mingles with modular synths. The initial meditation of a buzzing, transformer-like hum spikes into caterwauling waves, as if the listener is moving through a caged dreamscape of electrical transmission substations.

At this show, expect to hear Breitweiser in a more tempered capacity, as he’ll be performing new “ecosystems”—works that implement methods of the former Tones recording, while also introducing feedback loops and (other) tones and textures from handcrafted electronics.

Prolific sound artist Swim Ignorant Fire (SIF), who also hails from Central Illinois, joins Breitweiser on this tour. A moniker of Stephen Holliger, SIF exists in a myriad of collaborative configurations, often complexly melding an array of field recordings into a tapestry of ecstatic ambient noise. A recently released EP, Smeared, begins with a cavernous and aqueous echo. Layered sonic manipulations lead into a reversed-looped, mellifluously skittering and twittering soundscape that’s at once organic and synthetic in palette.

Defying succinct characterization, Holliger’s prep specially for this show also typifies an enduring emphasis on the relationship between synthetic and organic origins. He’s set to perform compositions for bass guitar and pedal steel with pre-recorded samples on a Roland sampler.

Local tinkerer and sound sculptor Silas Be will open the evening of soundplay with improvisations that pull from his influences of field-recorded textures, hand percussion, lo-fi beats, vocals, and what he has intriguingly defined as “household noises.” All of which seems perfectly suited for this house show.