Live Concert Photography: Glitter Creeps Present ONO with Ganser and Courtesy at The Empty Bottle 4/16/18

Live Concert Photography: Glitter Creeps Present ONO with Ganser and Courtesy at The Empty Bottle 4/16/18

Currently comprised of founding members Travis, P. Michael Ono and Shannon Rose Riley, along with Rebeca Ono, Jesse Thomas, Da Way, Jake Acosta, Adam Wolak, Mimi Ono, Ric Graham, Mark Berrend, Hellene Brooks, Harvey X, Brett nuke, Ben Baker Billington and Connor Tomaka, the Chicago-based “avant-industrial gospel” collective ONO can trace its origins back to the late 70s and early 80s — and during their initial run, the collective received attention in Chicago for material that while being thematically centered in the biography of their frontman — a very proud, gay, black man, who served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and was personally influenced by the cultural upheavals of The Stonewall Riots and of the riots in Chicago, Newark, Memphis, Louisville and elsewhere manages to sonically be a unique genre-defying blur of sounds and styles including gospel, industrial rock, art rock, noise rock, poetry and performance art.

The act’s founding members, along with a collective of collaborators from a variety of racial backgrounds and ethnicities, across several generations and genders reunited after a 30 year hiatus — and according to the members of the band, they were motivated to reunite after Plastic Crimewave’s Steve Krakow interviewed the band for a secret history of Chicago music-theme comic series published in Chicago Reader. Since the band’s reunion, they’ve released two albums 2012’s Albino and 2014’s Diegesis and have been touring and playing shows, introducing their their unique sound and live set to new audiences, which has further cemented the collective’s reputation for being one of Chicago’s most influential bands that many outside of Chicago really haven’t heard of.

Interestingly, the renowned Chicago based experimental rock collective headlined a Glitter Punks hosted show at The Empty Bottle back in April that featured JOVM post-punk mainstays Ganser, who were celebrating the release of their full-length debut Odd Talk and Chicago-based post-punk act Courtesy. Check out photos from the show below.

With the release of their debut EP, This Feels Like Living, the members of the Chicago, IL-based post-punk act Ganser received attention locally for an art rock-leaning post punk/noise rock sound largely influenced by Sonic Youth and Magazine, and as you may recall, the band’s full-length debut Odd Talk, which was released earlier this year, focuses on communications breakdowns, with the song’s narrators desperately seeking meaning in hopeless confusion and messiness — and throughout the album, each song’s narrator seems as though they were literally sorting though syllables and signals in an attempt to find the right words to say what they wanted or needed to say; but with a grimly comic sensibility.

Opening the night was Courtesy. Comprised of Kirk Rawlings, Drew Ryan and Doug Malone, the band specializes in an angular post-punk sound centered around synths, power chords and a propulsive rhythm section. Their set was focused around their latest full-length album Slow Bruise, which at the time hadn’t been released.