“Mad Dreams Of Reason” will contemplate modern geopolitics through experimental audiovisual valiance

Guest drummer Gustavo Cortiñas joins You Of All People and local video artist Enrique Rueda for two unique performances at MMSD Planetarium on February 2 and 3.

Free jazz and improvisatory post-rock collective You Of All People returns to the MMSD Planetarium this winter for another high-concept, 90-minute multimedia collaboration on Friday, February 2, and Saturday, February 3, at 8 p.m. This time the band (of Thomas Ferrella, Ed Ahrens, Nick Orlowski, Phil Redman, Kevin Schaefer, and Steve Tyska) will be joined by the guest talents of Chicago-based jazz drummer Gustavo Cortiñas and Wisconsin-based wood-sound sculptor and video artist Enrique Rueda. Originally hailing from Mexico and Colombia, respectively, the visiting duo will expand upon the conceptual template that You Of All People grounded in January 2023’s Ghost Wars, which bluntly condemned American avarice and the war machine. Mad Dreams Of Reason promises a contemporary geopolitical reflection on a grand scale and scope.

Given You Of All People’s steady atmospheric crescendos in long-form electroacoustic drones, Cortiñas’ presence—behind an impressive cymbal-heavy kit—should further augment the multitude of timbres and reverberations in the space. His appearance will also provide a bit of a teaser for his general versatility as a percussionist ahead of a forthcoming February 9 double-album release of an unedited set at Constellation Chicago from December 2022 on his label Desafio Candente Records.

The planetarium room at Vel Phillips Memorial High School presents unique challenges but also a one-of-a-kind experience in terms of the high-arched, panoramic projection. Unless you’re seated in the back row, it doesn’t allow audiences’ fields of vision to take in the full scope at once. Like the multimedia MELDT at Arts + Literature Laboratory last spring, the myriad of creators and collaborators here have tailor-made the music and video art for the planetarium space. In particular, expect Enrique Rueda’s visual editing choices and bisecting visual structures to train the eye to fixate on a particular corner or mesmerically follow effects that ripple out from one end of the dome to the other.

Known primarily for his wood-instrument sculptures that often include other materials (brass, seeds, calabash, steel, etc.), Rueda’s function-and-resonance-focused assembly of these models is well-suited for incorporating semi-improvisatory audiovisual elements. And that’s even independent of Rueda’s renowned work as a luthier in his own right and prior collaborations with You Of All People, which have produced videos that resemble gallery installations.

His surreal music videos, captured in 2020 under the Yahara River Parkway (a pedestrian trail that runs underneath East Washington), dexterously superimpose clips of You Of All People’s outdoor jams. These videos incorporate slow-moving aquatic psychedelia shot on location along with black-and-white archival footage of a point-of-view tracking shot that moves through an aged city. While the palette of these videos leans heavily on gold and auburn, Rueda will synthesize icier color schemes for Mad Dreams Of Reason. He’ll aim to translate the ambiguity of the query “How did we get here?” in the shadow of the band’s dynamic swells and insurgent spoken word.