I noticed a flyer on a telephone pole for a show while walking down the street from my house, so I decided to attend. What a refreshing sentence to type! I have no idea who was responsible for promoting this bill of local noise-ambient talent alongside exciting Chicago slow-core upstarts Cancer House, but they pulled out all the stops, with color posters printed and affixed to eye-level surfaces all around town. If there was an Instagram promotional campaign happening as well, my algorithm neglected to scoop it my way, but let’s hope that there wasn’t, and that the kids are once again relying on paper and staples to spread the word.

Taking place at the pestily-named & Space (that band “@” should play there), we strode up past the BDSM burlesque show on the warehouse’s second floor and into the third floor venue, nestled in a quaintly decaying corner of the Chinatown neighborhood. Greeted warmly at the door, the instructions were to remove our shoes and find a spot to sit on the sprung subfloor of what was an avant-garde dance studio by day. I confirmed that we had arrived a little too late to catch the opener JS, one of the evening’s many mysteries… if it turns out I missed a solo performance from John Sharkey, it will be my biggest regret of the season.

After snagging a spot on the floor behind a guy in an unraveling Comme des Garçons sweater (worn inside out so the tag was plain to see), LN Celestine met us at our level, crouched on the floor like a catcher as she powered up her circular arc of small electronics and effects pedals. Through live looping, Celestine built up a ragged battalion of drones, bowing her violin and singing wordless notes into a microphone in sparse iterations. For a crowd dressed almost exclusively in browns and blacks, this sort of Realtree hunting-cap ambient fit right in, summoned to life over the hiss-cracks of freshly-popped seltzers and beers in the audience. The Grouper aesthetic tells us that the end is near, that the technology we so desperately cling to will soon be dumped in the woods next to yesteryear’s tractor, rusted and mossed over, and it clearly resonates with this generation of art-minded young people who have only ever read about prosperity. LN Celestine offered a peaceful space for decay.

As LXV pulled his folding table over to the front of the room with the help of a friend, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Miller Lite company is aware of how many table-top noise sets it has fueled. This Philadelphia-based “sound arranger and independent researcher” had too much intertwined gear to carry piece by piece, and once situated, he began his set softly, can of Lite on hand. The crowd talked over it for at least a good five opening minutes, though as LXV offered no visual or overtly sonic signs of a performance taking place, it was excusable, maybe even desired by this field-recording-friendly artist. As the crowd quieted, he created an amorphous buzz of static and nocturnal thump with slow, unhurried changes. I was reminded of Fennesz’s Black Sea, were the filthy contaminants of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River flushed into those sparkling waters, though mostly LXV’s set captured the restless, inert sensation of when you’re trying to fall asleep on a plane but can’t. The performance probably went on a little too long for my tastes, eventually, slowly wrapping up in what felt like footage of a waterfall played in reverse at quarter-speed.

As I willingly forwent the empty Togo-style chair in the back of the room for a floor spot front-and-center, Chicago’s Cancer House situated themselves among their travel-sized amps and pared-down trap kit, the band only half-honoring the venue’s no-shoes policy. This quintet are copacetic with the not-yet-codified crop of younger artists who are finding novel ways to fuse aspects of emo, drone, noise, folk, electronics and shoegaze into something identifiable as new, a penchant reflected even just locally by groups like They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Scena, Her New Knife (a personal fave) and Chemical. Cancer House’s songs this evening were elegiac and pointed – the mix of expansively forlorn guitars and in-the-pocket slow-core drumming was decidedly Earth-like (circa Hex and The Bees Made Honey), though the softly vulnerable vocals, risky guitar phrasing, technical flubs and sensitive delivery recalled the more esoteric end of ’90s emo ala I Hate Myself, Still Life and Don Martin Three. I didn’t realize I wanted or needed the concept of an emo Earth, but Cancer House made it irresistible – I even found myself on board for the sole screamo breakdown of the set, multiple vocalists doubled-over screaming (with or without microphone assistance) in the manner of Saetia and Jeromes Dream. Bassist/vocalist Lily Sharratt’s voice added a calming presence, with the same wide-eyed, unintelligible delivery as Bilinda Butcher, like a deer in the headlights who knows something you don’t and centered far more live than on their album The Moth. I’m not sure Butcher ever scrolled through the lyrics on her iPhone with her big toe while playing, though. All in all, a captivating performance, and I hope our discouraging world offers them enough time and resources to see where it might take them.

A friend recently posed the question to me: are Gun Outfit really good, or are they just really cool? I didn’t know the answer, with only limited experience listening to the lauded underground band, but all it took was a short walk on a Monday night in February to formulate some thoughts on the matter. Gun Outfit were slated to perform at Beautiful World Syndicate, a record shop whose modest, slapdash in-person appearance belies their unprecedented Discogs business; records are priced to move, graded fairly, and sold by the truckload. As of this writing, their account has 232,297 ratings with 99.9% positive feedback… it’s like if Doordash was owned and operated by half a dozen punks who smelled like weed. Alongside renowned local shredder Emily Robb, Scena and Sam Silbert rounded out the bill, two acts that were new to me. All that’s left is to roll through!

Up first was Sam Silbert, though he was far from alone. Seated with his dime-store acoustic guitar, Silbert was surrounded by friends on drums, bass, a second acoustic guitar, and keys. With multiple hoodies and ballcaps in position (the bassist even pulled off an impressive sunglasses-on-hood-over-hat technique), the group strummed along to Silbert’s rootsy indie-folk. Perhaps too weary for his young age, Silbert sang with what I would chalk up as more nerves than pretentiousness, his words obscured by his hesitant, mic-avoidant delivery (though what I could hear revealed a capable voice). The band were having a fine ol’ time together, catching each other’s eyes to hit the chord changes and song endings. I liked the tune where they bopped around a bass-line redolent of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” in their Realtree outdoor hunting gear, though it remains unconfirmed if any of them have actually split firewood or simply looked the part. MJ Lenderman and Ryan Davis came to mind as somewhat responsible for this particular resurgent strain of knee-slapping rural-rock; there’s plenty of time and opportunity for Sam Silbert to become one of their peers.

Scena were up next, though not in any apparent hurry. As if there wasn’t enough inherent sadism in a four-band Monday night bill! Performing as a duo (or a trio, depending on how you value technology) – bass-guitarist, guitarist/vocalist, iPhone for backing tracks – Scena’s soundcheck bled into meandering, ambient drones that may or may not have been their first “song”. From there, they moved into a suite of morose, hypnotic guitar music that disregarded time in a rewarding way. The second song’s hushed chords over looped trip-hop drums recalled Duster; other pieces reflected the grey tide pools of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and the narcotic swirl of Flying Saucer Attack. More music emanated from the pre-recorded iPhone tracks than the two human players for quite a large portion of the set, but until this becomes a typical trope, I find it to be an odd yet entertaining juxtaposition in a live setting. The crowd noticeably thinned out during Scena’s set, to the point where the temperature in the room dropped; a satisfying effect for music that felt so desperately lonely. I simply put my winter beanie back on and gazed into the pale blue light reflected from the foil-embossed patterns of a copy of Danzig’s Danzig 4P on the wall, drawn in by the mysterious sound of Scena.

With Silbert’s friends smoking outside and Scena having artfully siphoned away the remaining audience’s energy, the blowtorch guitar of Emily Robb arrived in the nick of time. Unaccompanied and unbothered, Robb exuded a confidence found in both master musicians and Mardi Gras drunkards. After a couple shorter pieces, she asked the crowd if it was loud enough, and when someone meekly quipped, “It’s never loud enough”, she hollered back, “You asked for it!”, cranked her amp and left the people next to me no choice but to plug their ears with their pointer fingers for the rest of the set. Huzzah! With so much touring under her belt at this point, Robb was comfortably in command, harnessing the primitive origins of fuzz guitar and doing donuts in the parking lot with it. One song seemed to meld the first part of Television’s “Friction” with Link Wray’s “Rumble”, though it was the extended closer that took us higher, a chugging biker-metal loop that she scattered, smothered and covered like ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres gatefold image.

This leads us back to the original question. Are Gun Outfit a style-over-substance ensemble championed by hip elites since the mid ’00s? It’s kind of an unfair question, or at least an unfair place to start, but their set provided a decisive answer: they’re the real deal! Now based in Los Angeles, and boasting none other than living legend Henry Barnes (of goddamn Amps For Christ and Man Is The Bastard!) on bass, this charming quartet delivered the goods: a polished mix of tender Americana indie and desert-dry garage. Drummer Daniel Swire carried the poise, pizzazz and prescription glasses of ’90s Max Weinberg, raising and lowering his volume with impressive ease. Swire brought a tasteful, sophisticated spark to the patina-rich melodies of Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith – I’ve been searching for a word to best describe the delicate, complicated emotions their songs conjured, but keep landing dumbly on “beautiful”. Sharp has a friendly speak-sing, a thoughtful and reserved middle child between Stephen Malkmus and Kurt Vile, and Keith’s voice held it like hands, soft and firm. With the aura-cleansing presence of Henry Barnes in the back, the neck of his bass occasionally bobbing dangerously over Swire’s head, I felt foolish for being a suspicious outsider to this nourishing band mere hours earlier. After hearing one song in particular, I knew I wanted to hear it again, so I memorized as many lyrics as I could to look it up when I got home. Turns out it’s “Teardrops (Classic Hell On Earth)”, listed to appear on the group’s sixth formal full-length Process And Reality (set for a May 2026 release). There’s a Mike Stoltz-directed live video of “Teardrops” out there on the web that I’m happy to recommend – it’s been tiding me over as I wait for the studio recording. If you’ve been reading Yellow Green Red for a while, this surely won’t be the first time my folly is your gain.