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.