Show Diary: Beyond the Gate with Stephen O'Malley and François J. Bonnet
Been a while! I wanted to churn something out so I figured I'd talk about one of my favorite concert experiences, since there's a new one in this ongoing concert series in Chicago called Beyond the Gate.
A cursory search engine hunt yields very little about Beyond the Gate other than that it's curated by Empty Bottle Presents, the "curatorial and production arm" of The Empty Bottle which has been a bar venue in Chicago since 1992. Aside from Beyond the Gate, they also have a concert series called Plantasia, an immersive experience at Garfield Park Conservatory which I walked in 2015. Still, there's plenty of official and attendant written treatises on the ambient, transformative, and sometimes religious experiences that occur at these shows, so the content is not mysterious. Musicians and musical groups play among the dead in the Bohemian National Cemetery either within the crematorium, or outside.
In 2023, I embarked on a lark to Chicago for a weekend and took in one of these shows headlined by a musician I hold dear: guitarist Stephen O'Malley with his most recent collaborator composer François J. Bonnet both hot off of Cylene II, a collaborative studio album and part two in a meditative, tense electroacoustic experiment in minimalism. I've followed Stephen O'Malley's work mostly for power ambient duo Sunn O))) and horror-post-jazz ensemble Æthenor, but the list goes on concerning projects he's spearheaded and been a member of and I believe most of not all of them have elevated the genre he's played in.
For the past few years, he's been taking his aural experiments into more electro-acoustic and Musique concrète direction with albums under his belt such as 2018's Rêve Noir (and its sequel, 2023's Sept duos pour guitare acoustique & piano préparé) where in tandem with pianist/composer Anthony Pateras he unplugs and borders on silence, adding new sounds to his already dense wheelhouse among mystic doom metal and texturally rich drone metal, so for someone like me who thrives between sine waves and loves a good ambient record that barely sounds like music, Stephen O'Malley has kept me enraptured for going on 15 years. I've seen him play at a Masonic Temple and a bar, so why not a crematorium?
I arrive with my friend with plenty of time in early December, scoping out the massive fenced in compound and looking for parking. I had no idea parking was available just outside of the crematorium on the cemetery grounds, so I circle for a while until I land on a parking lot on the opposite side of the cemetery. While we're driving, we notice a severely bent outward piece of fence, looking like some beast had escaped its confines. We walk about 50% of the perimeter and finally get inside the grounds of the cemetery the correct way, and approach the building. Of course, people drive into the cemetery, we did not consider that there would be parking inside, but we made our choice, so we soldier on into the building.
The place is cavernous. A gorgeous, domed room with slanted floors that lead to the stage, lined with pews. There’s a podium with programs for the show resting on it, as well as a list of herbal drinks one can buy. I have a non alcoholic one. My Sorcerer’s Tonic is strawberry shrub, black pepper, and lemon tonic. We sit a few rows back, as many people have already found seats, but we’re close enough. The programs provided have some information about the time the show is taking place, and some information about the musicians. The lights dim, and the opener Michael Vallera plays first.
I appreciate that the opener is sitting at the edge of the raised area where two tables house pedalboards, it feels a bit more ceremonious I guess, that he is more among us than on the stage. He sits there with his amplified electric guitar, and I found his set to be energetic, at least compared to what I expected. His plucked sounds cycle back into each other, calling back to passages previously played in new ways that feel like a spiral over the course of 25 or so minutes, then he departs as unceremoniously as he arrived, to the same calmly reverent applause that swirls in the acoustics of the domed ceiling not unlike Vallera’s own guitar. It was an exploration of texture that evoked a humid, fog laden forest to me. Even hearing his fingers slide along the strings reminded me of small birds.
The lights go down, and it’s dark in the room now except for the two tables, lit from under and behind. Stephen O’Malley and François J. Bonnet sit at their respective tables, sharing a feast of pedalboards and begin to play. The space is immediately filled with the low hum of feedback as the two pass notes between them as though looking over exotic stones or following a trail left by an animal. It is not loud per se, but the sound resonates in parts of my body that I only feel when seeing Stephen O’Malley play. In 2017 and again in 2019 I saw Sunn O))) perform two very different concerts. They’re experiences I’ll never forget because of how the sound was wielded. The maximalist sound bath that eroded my senses away was distinct to what happened to me during the show in the Bohemian National Cemetery. Hours from home in a place I had never been, I forgot myself for a few moments.
Where I had to stand and take myself to task during Sunn O)))’s drone metal performance lest I pass out from the sheer weight of the sound, the pair of composers’ music lifted me and pulled me apart. The abstract, minimal interplay didn’t fill the same kind of register the studio efforts of Cylene and Cylene II did, the sound crawled along the floor before it floated up and into the ceiling to reverberate, it felt like one could reach out and pluck the tones like strings themselves, rather than sound simply filling the space.
The late show ended, and I was left unchanged, if a little tired. I had my eyes closed for most of it, and the experience was bracing! I had seen only one other ‘ambient’ artist play, and it was a sight to behold: Lustmord played at the COSI planetarium with a light show tailored for it, but this was an experience that would stick with me in a much different way. We decided to wander the crematorium, and found a hall lined with little alcoves behind glass where the remains of hundreds of people lie. This moved me so profoundly, I was consumed with the thought of each of these people who shared the show with us. How Cylene slipped into the remains of these people, and what it could have been like to experience the sound like that. Each little alcove had a photograph of the person who resided there, and some personal effects.
We left, but my friend did not want to hike the extra length of the cemetery’s perimeter, so instead of heading for the southern gate, we headed north: deeper into the cemetery. This was obviously a mistake. He felt like we would be able to locate the bend in the fence, but I was skeptical. The cemetery was enormous, and I was exhausted. Eventually we approached a flooded area, and no paved walkway. To this day I’ll never forget the feeling of walking in the mire of the dead, soaking my shoes with the parking garage we parked near in sight. The fence was low enough in this area to vault, so we did. I drove the several hours home the next day, with the sound still ringing in my ears, and the thoughts of how much of it remained with the people who were laid to rest in that crematorium.
More photos and an equally reverent review of the show here at Avant Music News.
