Experimental Sound Studio

02/28/2025

This Saturday, March 1st at Parachute HiFi join ESS for a Creative Audio Archive DJ set by CAA Archives Manager James Wetzel. Swing by from 7-11 PM for great food, drinks, and sounds!

02/28/2025

Check out the new addition to our rack! A matched pair of EL8-X Distressors. Who likes dynamic range anyway!?!? 🤷🤷‍♀️🔊💥🪨

02/14/2025

Chicago Creative Machines returns to ESS this February 23, full schedule below!

Chicago Creative Machines is a lecture-performance series featuring artists who use machine learning and ML-adjacent tools and techniques in their creative practice. All events are free and open to the public.

Series II Schedule
Sunday, February 23 - Patrícia Alves-Oliveira
Sunday, March 2 - FluCoMa Workshop with Ted Moore
Sunday, March 9 - Caitlyn Min-ji Au
Sunday, March 16 - Bryan Pardo

In-person at ESS, 5925 N. Ravenswood Ave
Streaming live online for viewing anywhere
https://buff.ly/41eV6oN

02/11/2025

Come connect and share with the Patchbent Community!

This casual meetup at Dark Matter Coffee’s Star Lounge is an open time to hang out and see what others have been working on.

Follow the link in the bio to rsvp - you can sign up to share a project or simply attend to listen and connect.

Patchbent is a learning community for women, trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people in sound and related practices. All levels welcome, no experience needed.

02/02/2025

Gather with us! In 2025 ESS is launching a series of Virtual Happy “Hours,” 30 minute zooms featuring curated video content, and a lively chat - no camera needed!

The first one takes place Thursday, February 13 from 4:30-5pm CT. It’s themed on education, in anticipation of a robust slate of workshops this spring, with offerings from , Chicago Creative Machines, and Patchbent Sessions.

These Virtual Happy Hours are open to all ESS supporters (that can mean as little as $1!) who choose to be “Plugged-In” on the support form. Link in bio.

Come, be in community with us and hear something new along the way. ✨

01/31/2025

We are deeply saddened by the passing of Susan Alcorn, a brilliant and singular voice on the pedal steel. In tribute, we are sharing previously unreleased concert footage from her 2018 Option performance at ESS — a stunning solo set followed by an interview with Ken Vandermark (link in bio).

Susan’s artistry was unlike any other, and we are grateful to have this moment to share.

01/31/2025

List of Demands by Damon Locks - Out today on !!!
We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Damon on recording this new record at our studio.

“This Friday January 31st, Damon Locks – the Chicago-based visual artist, educator, musician, deejay, and vocalist who is known as the voice of Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, former frontman of legendary punk band Trenchmouth, and leader of latter day liberation music collective Black Monument Ensemble – releases his debut solo album, List of Demands.
List of Demands marks Locks’s first foray into creating an entire album based off of his poetry and texts; but the signature collage work heard in his recent New Future City Radio and ongoing Black Monument Ensemble output is distinctly present in this new 12-song cycle of bite-sized Nikki Giovanni-meets-MF DOOM-style rhythm experiments.
The album’s sample-based constructions are steeped in a lifetime of not only keen cultural observation, but direct communal participation in the culture. Locks’ decades-long resume connects the dots between experimental improvisation, sample based hip hop, punk, and poetry – each done at the highest level and with a list of collaborators that could spin the head of even the most jaded listener. With his sheer presence as a communal hub himself, Locks has repeatedly demonstrated his capacity to jump-start an entire personality spectrum into action. With List of Demands he does just that, again, projecting an ecstatic positivity via his nuanced grasp of reality, and lucidly articulating the ever-evasive concept of what could be.”

01/29/2025

We are excited to announce our first workshop series of the year in collaboration with the brilliant people at the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines (CCAM)

Space is limited so reserve your spot today!
4-session workshop fee = $160
registration and more information at link in bio.

Intro to Microsound is a 4-session course which will introduce students to the Gen~ programming environment inside of MaxMSP. Graham Wakefield, a student of Curtis Roads, created Gen~ to allow for the visually patching and coding of audio at the level of an individual sample of digital signal (i.e. the programs we will write will run more than 41000 times per second).

In the course of 4 weeks, we will go from working with constructing sound one single sample at a time to diffusing dynamic and long-form sonic textures via microsound techniques such as granular and pulsar synthesis. We will also discuss multichannel and hardware applications (e.g. mc.gen~ and OopsyDaisy).

This course will serve as a technical introduction to Gen~ couched in the environment’s conceptual strengths: microsound and processual composition. We welcome both experienced sound programmers as well as brave newcomers; both will walk about with new techniques and new ways of thinking about working with sound.

Students will download a custom code library developed to speed up iteration. It will include examples ahead of time they’re invited to study ahead of class. It will also include some custom operators (you may know this as abstractions or objects in Max/MSP or functions in programming languages).

During class, we’ll rebuild through the examples, giving the opportunity to ask questions about presented materials. Sometimes there may also be ~30 mins of unstructured work time, when you can ask questions of instructors particular to your own explorations.

01/28/2025

Check it out! We’ve upgraded our studio monitors to a beautiful pair of Barefoot Footprint03 tri-amplified 3-way speakers!!!! They sound amazing and look sick with our Neotek. Book some time to hear them for yourself. And thanks to all the supporters who purchased a ‘winter special session’ at the end of the year. Looking forward to working with you! 🔈🔊🔉

01/22/2025

A new project is in the works from Terri Kapsalis, featuring Damon Locks and Ken Vandermark. ❄️🎙️ On this cold day of the new year, it feels good to be back in the studio, surrounded by creativity. ✨ More updates from Terri coming later this spring. 🌿

12/21/2024

It’s that time of year! From December 21-January 9, ESS goes on our annual all-staff break. During this time, we make a valiant attempt to step away from daily tasks and take time to truly rest.

We hope you’ll do the same, to the extent that you’re able.

See you in the new year. We can’t wait to share what’s coming up.

Photo: performance by Bambi Kunst as part of Florasonic: In Relation to Ferns, 2024

12/20/2024

Want to be more involved in a community of folks interested in experimental music & sound art?

ESS has restructured our membership and support so that ANYONE who donates ANY AMOUNT can choose to PLUG-IN to education and community opportunities throughout the year.

Support art AND connect with like-minded folks in 2025? Yes please! 🙌

All opportunities are designed for in-person and virtual engagement so that you don’t need to live in Chicago to be in the mix.

Link to support in bio. ✨

12/17/2024

Reminder that the 2024 Annual ESS Winter Recording Special is available until the end of the year! $250 for a 4 hour session.

DETAILS
-$250 for a 4-hour session with a professional engineer (that’s a $50 savings!) AND a one-year ESS membership

-Must be purchased by December 31, 2024

-Must be used by December 31, 2025

-Limit ONE Winter Special per person

-Additional hours may be booked at the time of scheduling for the rate of $75/hour

-Must be booked as a single 4-hour session; cannot split the hours between multiple days; does not include site-specific or video work; may be applied to mixing and mastering

Link:
https://buff.ly/3P1Rkbg

12/12/2024

ESS is proud to be a 2024 Ruth Arts Core Grants Recipient! We are so grateful to Ruth Arts for their empathetic, committed, and connected approach to grantmaking.

Every year Ruth Arts choose a theme for grant proposals, which we at ESS take as an opportunity to reflect on our recent work and rearticulate our vision and approach. This year the prompt was: "What are the ways your organization practices improvisation? How are you creatively shaping and shifting your work to ensure you are working towards the future you want?"

The simplified version of our answer to this is that we are improvising constantly, in every facet of our work because we have intentionally structured ESS as a collection of malleable resources, platforms, and networks all working in service of supporting and propelling artists' visions. Both internally and externally, we strive to operate as a collection of people working with and for other people. The way this manifests changes year to year, and sometimes within the space of one program, in response to what artists say they need and what the work demands.

We look forward to working with you in the coming year and to continuing to find ways of connecting artists and resources.

12/06/2024

Warm yourself up with one of our ESS long sleeves. So warm you'll still be smiling in 19 degree weather! Featuring a classic ESS logo on the front and sleeves.

ESS Long-Sleeve T-shirt with classic ESS logo on front and sleeves. 100% Cotton. Printed on Bella+Canvas Airlume Jersey. T-shirt design by James Wetzel.

11/29/2024

IT’S TIME: the 2024 Annual ESS Winter Recording Special is live! 🎉 $250 for a 4 hour session.

👉 Purchase before 6pm Saturday, 11/30 will have a chance to win 2 tickets to see Hayden Pedigo at Epiphany Center for the Arts on 12/1.

Link to purchase: https://ess.org/news/2024winterrecordingspecial

DETAILS
-$250 for a 4-hour session with a professional engineer (that’s a $50 savings!) AND a one-year ESS membership

-Must be purchased by December 31, 2024

-Must be used by December 31, 2025

-Limit ONE Winter Special per person

-Additional hours may be booked at the time of scheduling for the rate of $75/hour

-Must be booked as a single 4-hour session; cannot split the hours between multiple days; does not include site-specific or video work; may be applied to mixing and mastering

11/20/2024

In the early spring of 2023, ESS and Fence invited visual and sound artist Spencer Hutchinson and poet and writer Alyssa Perry to participate in the first cross-disciplinary exchange and collaboration between our nonprofit arts organizations. ESS and Fence opened their sound and text archives to the two artists, so each might gamely cross over into exploration and encounter works from the less familiar field.

Their corresponding textual creations can be found in the pages of Fence issue 41 and via the links that follow:

https://buff.ly/4eLglSp
https://buff.ly/3AScsgG

Tragically, Spencer passed away earlier this year. His artworks, video, and music are a richly various and lasting legacy - Fence included links to all sorts of his astonishing projects on their Tribute page:

https://buff.ly/3AQ1qIV

Next time you're at ESS, we hope you'll take a moment to enjoy a work that Spencer donated to ESS last fall, which we are honored to now have permanently installed in the main ESS stairway (last picture).

11/20/2024

Join us this Friday, November 22nd for the opening of SUN RA: an exploration of the Sun Ra/El Saturn Collection at The Fourtunehouse Art Center from 3PM - 9PM.

Pictured are some photos from the archives at ESS.

The SUN RA/EL SATURN COLLECTION consists of approximately 600 tapes dating from the 1950s-1993 that represent the work of iconoclastic composer and bandleader Sun Ra. The recordings provide a unique documentation of Sun Ra’s creative process, including his work with the Arkestra and its offshoots, vocal groups in Chicago, legendary trumpeter/composer Hobart Dotson, and African percussionists in New York. The collection consists of rehearsal tapes, recordings of live concerts, home recordings of sketches and experiments, and master tapes of material likely intended for commercial release. A number of tapes include lectures and recitations by Ra of original unpublished texts, which offer rare insight into his unique philosophy and a broader context for his musical ideas.

The exhibition will feature contemporary works with samples of tapes, cassettes, reels, and other physical media forms from the collection.

This project is made possible with support from the Reva and David Logan Foundation.

https://buff.ly/4fEcUxN