Sonnenzimmer definitely is an eclectic, quaint little shop that peeks out from a quiet alley off Damen Avenue in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood. Its mishmash of secondhand, vintage lamps and portable tables made out of disassembled doors help to create the space’s inviting atmosphere, but the studio’s industrial-grade hand-press and exposure unit truly make Sonnenzimmer unique.

The studio started in 2006 when Nakanishi and her boyfriend of five years, Nick Butcher, merged their painting studios. Over the past three years, their venture has flourished into a well-respected studio that has left its mark on Chicago’s screen-printing community.

In borrowing from the hand-drawn, DIY style honed by Steve Walters of Screwball Press and combining it with the precision of a screen-printing press, they have created a unique hybrid that stands out within Chicago’s gig-poster community. “We’ve gotten into the technical aspect with this equipment,” Butcher says. “It has allowed us to do finer details, and we could start experimenting with weird textures, really precise registration, and stuff that I would just avoid before.”

When it comes to creating posters, instead of taking the traditional figurative approach that is synonymous with some of the city’s most recognizable screen-printers, they have veered into the abstract realm and in the process have created a look that is distinctly their own. “For me, what helped was diving into improvised music here,” Nakanishi says, “and being really able to go down the abstract route. [Other Chicago-based screen-printers] are very at home in the figurative lobby, and I always felt intimidated because I was like, ‘Well, I can draw, kinda’ but never remotely as good as they could.”

Over the years, the two have created posters for Chicago staples like The Sea and Cake and international bands like Tokyo Police Club. The couple has also created work for a number of local musicians such as oRSo, Tim Daisy, Vox Arcana, and Male — an experimental band that counts Butcher as a member. They have mastered the ability to create posters that aren’t necessarily visually loud but that grab attention from across the room. “Our general approach is making space for quietness so that you can come close and engage,” Nakanishi says, “so that it’s not unanimous from a visual communication point. We offer a certain smallness and a little bit of room for interpretation.”

Yet if it wasn’t for some random guy standing in the corner at a house show, Sonnenzimmer might not be what it is today. Three years ago, Butcher remembers playing a solo show at “this really tiny house show, and there was this one older guy there…”

“Alone in the corner!” Nakanishi interjects.

“He wasn’t creepy,” Butcher says. “He was just like, ‘I’m here at this show because I like weird, experimental music. All you other people obviously know each other and that’s cool.’”
 

“Our general approach is making space for quietness so that you can come close and engage.  We offer a certain smallness and a little bit of room for interpretation.”

Butcher struck up a conversation with the guy in the corner, Bruce Wood. As fate would have it, the topic of screen-printing came up, and Wood mentioned that he ran a press and was planning to sell his equipment, and that they should come check it out. They decided to take him up on his offer, and when they arrived at his warehouse, they were completely blown away. “It was industrial screen-printing stuff, and we were like, ‘Holy shit! What is this stuff?’” Butcher says. “And he said, ‘It’s like any other screen-printing stuff; you’ll figure it out.’

“Basically, when we printed,” Nakanishi adds, “we just had glass and construction lights that were hooked up to a kitchen clock, and that’s the way that a lot of gig posters were made.”

Within the DIY/punk scene, screen-printed gig posters were one of the cheapest and most accessible ways for local bands to promote their shows.

“I think that historically, it was people who were doing it themselves, and they were self-taught, doing this in their kitchen,” Butcher says. The local music scene heavily influenced the screen-printing community, which basically grew out of “nice people making posters for their friend’s bands,” says Jay Ryan, the owner of Chicago poster workshop The Bird Machine and a member of local rock trio Dianogah.

It was the DIY ethos and the sense of taking creative work seriously that led Butcher and Nakanishi to make the Windy City their new hometown. Even though they came to the city from opposite ends of Earth, their paths converged in Chicago in a way that only happens when stars align.

Butcher’s initial interest in screen-printing came from an unlikely source. “I was in a Boy Scout troop…” he starts.

“I haven’t heard this one before!” Nakanishi says as she starts laughing.

While at camp, one of the Scout leaders’ shirts caught Butcher’s eye. When Butcher asked him where he got it, the Scout leader told him it was screen-printed. “I was like, ‘Whoa, you can make your own shirts?’” Butcher says. “So I always had it in the back of my head: ‘What is this screen-printing?’”

As a graphic-design student at Middle Tennessee State University, Butcher spent most of his free time in the screen-printing department and planned to move to Chicago after graduation. Ryan was a heavy influence on his work, and it was Butcher’s dream to intern at The Bird Machine. “I got a lot of requests for people to be interns, and it just never seemed like a good idea,” Ryan says. “Then I get this e-mail from this one guy in Tennessee who I never met…but it was something about the images that he sent and his tone that seemed like a good idea.” So Butcher packed up and relocated to Chicago, and everything basically fell into place. “I interned with Jay and met a bunch of other printmakers in Chicago,” Butcher says, “and it just kind of rolled from there.”

“What about you?” he asks as he turns towards his girlfriend.

Nakanishi’s journey to Chicago spans continents. Originally from California, her family moved to Switzerland when she was a teenager. She became interested in Switzerland’s design and poster culture, which was engrained in the national consciousness. As a typography student at Berufsschule für Gestaltung Zürich, she developed a precise, modernist approach that is synonymous with Swiss design. “Poster culture is very prestigious,” Nakanishi says.

“It has to do with the cultural education. It’s political; it has really formed Swiss identity in the design world. You couldn’t just be there and be like, ‘I want to be a rock-star artist,’ because the poster world just isn’t conceived that way.”

Yet even from 4,000 miles away, she was still fluent in Chicago’s DIY/punk scene via Punk Planet magazine. In 2003, she also decided to make a go of it in Chicago and sent an e-mail to Punk Planet’s founder, Dan Sinker. “Suddenly, there is this e-mail from this woman in Switzerland,” Sinker says, “and she’s like, ‘I want to come to Chicago and do an internship with Punk Planet.’ I had to write back and be like, ‘Okay, we can’t pay you, and we can‘t put you up, but if you want to come out, we’d love to have you.” A few months later, Nakanishi was living in Chicago.

Butcher and Nakanishi initially met during their interning days because Punk Planet and The Bird Machine split an office space. Working with their mentors allowed the two to flourish and really come into their own. Butcher continued to hone the techniques that Ryan had passed on to him. “Nick has really become a master of taking screen-printing as a process, and he treats each print as though it were a painting,” Ryan says.

Nakanishi found a medium between her rigorous design education and the DIY mentality that she admired. Those around her started taking notice. “She came from the most rigorous design education that you can get,” Sinker says, “where there is literally no such thing as unintentional design or happy accidents. She would get so stressed out about designs, and we would be like, ‘That’s fantastic.’ You can clearly see that her work now is much looser than she was before and that she understands that there is a certain serendipity to this stuff…but it’s still very Swiss.”

Being in Chicago among fellow poster artists like Mat Daly, Dan Grzeca, and Diana Sudyka showed Butcher and Nakanishi how to blend the local aesthetic into their work, but being around each other showed them how to make their style all their own.

“I think that what sets them apart is their color palette, their design sense,” Daly says. “There is something very handmade about their images. It’s a very interesting combination.”

In many ways, they balance one another out. Butcher was fascinated by the clean, modernist technique synonymous with Swiss design and was influenced by Nakanishi’s minimalist approach. She, on the other hand, looked to Butcher to center her if she overthinks an image from a conceptual standpoint.

“I have felt most proud of the stuff that we did together because she has a really hardcore typography background,” Butcher says, “whereas I come from more of a printmaking background. When those two are combined, it’s just more compelling than the stuff that we were doing individually.” And their styles have become so intertwined that they have begun to forge a niche within Chicago’s printing community. “[Their styles] are deceptively similar,” says Ryan Kapp, another lauded Chicago-based artist. “But in getting to know them, I think that’s why their posters really mesh well together.”

Butcher and Nakanishi are incredibly grateful to those in Chicago’s screen-printing community who have taken them under their wing, and they want to continue to foster that sense of community. While Butcher was visiting some friends in Austin, he decided to work on a fine-art print series in their studio.

Inspired by his experiences, he wanted to try a similar concept at Sonnenzimmer. As a result, he and Nakanishi created the Art Print Series and invited their fellow artist friends to use the studio for a week to create a custom art print. “I guess the overall idea was to open up the studio and make this more than just our screen-printing studio, and make it have more of a community feel,” Butcher says. “Which I think we did because at the end of the first series, we were able to have an exhibit.” Although the series is currently on hiatus while they figure out the long-term logistics, the two plan to continue finding ways to foster a sense of camaraderie. “We want to give back like Punk Planet and Bird Machine did for us,” Nakanishi says.

Dianogah: Qhnnnl (Southern Records, 8/12/08)

Dianogah: "A Breaks B"

Essayist and self-proclaimed “dean of American rock critics” Robert Christgau once wrote, “Great bands keep creating from what they know, and figuring it out as they do.”

Chicago’s Dianogah (consisting of bassists Jay Ryan and Jason Harvey and drummer Kip McCabe) has spent the last 12 years crafting unique compositions primarily from its two basses and drums, incorporated minimal guitar, or keyboards when the situation called for it. On its newest album, Qhnnnl, coming six years after its most recent album (the John McEntire-recorded Millions Of Brazilians), Dianogah is branching into new territory, using its bass-centric background in exciting new ways.

“We’ve been a band for a really long time, and I think now we’re trying to shrug off how captive we are to our instrumentation," McCabe says. "We’ve explored a lot of what we can do rhythmically and melodically. I think our next step was breaking away from what seemed easier to do with our instruments and trying to do something different."

Dianogah formed in 1995 and quickly became a staple of the vivacious Chicago independent music scene. “You had all these vibrant labels working here," Ryan says. "You had bands that were operating on a really small level, like ours, all the way to the more popular indie-rock bands, like Shellac, Tortoise, and The Sea And Cake. There was very much a “do-it-yourself” attitude. That was the thing people said about Chicago."

Now, in 2008, Dianogah is operating in largely the same self-sufficient manner, but in a changing scene. Harvey comments, “The whole point of this was to have fun, and the fact that anyone would come to see us play, the fact that anyone would still put out our record, is great because it’s just our fun thing to do. Now every Tom, Dick, and Harry band has a booking agent, a PR guy, a label, a manager. When we started out, we felt lucky that we would have a label to release our record.”
 

“We’ve been a band for a really long time, and I think now we’re trying to shrug off how captive we are to our instrumentation. We’ve explored a lot of what we can do rhythmically and melodically. I think our next step was breaking away from what seemed easier to do with our instruments."

Ryan, who also runs his own screen-printing studio, The Bird Machine, adds, “I think it’s fair to say we’ve always had super-low expectations of the band. We can probably go to any city in America and a dozen people will come out, and maybe four of them will have heard of us, and that’s cool. We don’t expect 300 people to come out, and we don’t get frustrated when 300 people don’t show up.” The rampant careerism of current Chicago bands is somewhat at odds with the community from which Dianogah arose. Still, Dianogah perseveres, and, in 2008, the band is shaping up to be stronger than ever.

Dianogah's first three albums are in-depth explorations of bass guitars, seductive rhythms, and intertwining melodies. By the time Millions of Brazilians was released, the wandering melodies threatened to drift away entirely. “I think we realized after the last couple records," Harvey says, "that the quieter songs don’t end up making it into our live set very often because they seem to be the things that bore people when we’re playing them.”

The new Dianogah is a different beast. “We all bought a distortion pedal,” McCabe explains. Ryan adds, “To name names, we all got into Meshuggah a lot. I finally got around to discovering the Melvins, and listened to them a lot, which is really late in the game. Our musical tastes have continued to develop and have tended towards some heavier stuff.” Which isn’t to say that Dianogah has gone metal. But on several new songs, there is a rock-oriented, often noisy approach that was only vaguely hinted at on previous albums.

On the other hand, several new tracks rank with the most beautiful work it has made. Chicago violinist Andrew Bird appears on four new songs, adding subtle counterpoint to the most direct and intensely melodic songs of Dianogah’s intensely melodic career. “A year or two ago, he came and played a show with us and just played on some older songs,” Harvey says. “He reinterpreted guitar parts or keyboard parts, and did them on the violin in his own way. We were all floored by what he had done, just really excited, and agreed that we have got to get him, if he’ll do it, on the new record. So we gave him a tape of everything, and he picked the ones that he wanted to write stuff for.”

The high point of this collaboration might be “A Breaks B,” which not only features Bird’s poignant string work but also a vocal duet between Jay Ryan and Pawner’s Society singer Stephanie Morris. Millions Of Brazilians was the first Dianogah album to feature no vocals at all, and on prior albums As Seen From Above and Battle Champions, vocals were already scarce. On Qhnnnl, Dianogah has brought singing to more songs than ever before.

McCabe says, “We’re a bit challenged tonally, in that we have two basses and drums, and there’s a lot of room. One of the things that interested me about adding a female vocalist was the tone.” Indeed, Morris adds a distinctive character to several songs in the same way that Bird’s violin enhances others. “Stephanie has just a really genuine, ego-free, unaffected voice that’s quite beautiful and also super subtle. I think that they’re the vocals that a band like [ours] need[s]. They’re very timid, almost like an instrument.”

It all adds up to what may be one of the most exciting, diverse, and satisfying albums of the coming year. “I think collectively we can say that we think that it is our best record," Harvey says. "I know that every band that puts out a new record probably says that. I think that [it applies to us] in terms of having an idea of what you want something to be and then having it turn out the way you hoped." Dianogah has made several worthy albums — now the band is preparing to release a potential Chicago classic.

“On the last couple records, we would end up having songs for the record, and not songs for shows," Harvey says. "So we wanted more songs for shows that were fun for us to play. 'Qhnnnl' and 'You Might Go Off,' which are songs we’ve been playing for years, are some of our favorite songs to play live because they’re fast and loud." “You Might Go Off” might be the key to the new record’s code. It is beautiful in its simplicity, and quintessentially Dianogah in its swirling melodicism, yet it is the most punk-oriented song that the band has written. For the rousing finale, the whole group shouts, “This is how we fight!”

The Bastard Noise

Borne as a side project from pioneering industrial hardcore outfit Man is the Bastard, this electro-noise trio provides a surprisingly accessible soundtrack to the Armageddon. Crackling, squealing, and howling electronics surround steady bass rhythms and eerie ambience, often while notable guest contributions — in this case, the unmistakable screams of The Locust vocalist Justin Pearson — add to the unsettling doom.

The Bastard Noise: "Tyranny Beyond Earth Epilogue"
The Bastard Noise: \"Tyranny Beyond Earth Epilogue\"

The Low Frequency in Stereo: Futuro (Rune Grammofon)

Norwegian rock quintet The Low Frequency in Stereo create unabashed pop tunes with enough appeal to make even emotionally hardened metal heads tap along. The group's electronic/rock hybrid of fuzzy, tremoloed guitar riffs, dancing organs, grooved-out melodies, and loaded effects draw parallels to plenty of contemporaries, but The Low Frequency in Stereo accomplishes this mixture in a unique fashion.

Lymbyc Systym: Carved by Glaciers [reissue] (Magic Bullet)

Before their beautiful full-length debut of Love Your Abuser on Mush Records, brothers Mike and Jared Bell made well-crafted, keyboard-driven post-rock for their Carved by Glaciers EP. The duo's heartening tunes employ piano, synthesizers, organs, xylophones, brass instruments, and much more to provide a gorgeous multi-layered mix. Coinciding with a separate split release with This Will Destroy You, also on Magic Bullet, Lymbyc Systym now has its debut EP reissued.

Lymbyc Systym: "Carved by Glaciers"
Lymbyc Systym: \"Carved by Glaciers\"

Drew Brown: Tiago La is Losing the Plot [US release] (Lex)

Though Lex Records' website would have one believe that this album doesn't exist, amazon.com begs to differ. Brown's MySpace page has a scant trio of songs, but they exhibit the eclectic singer/songwriter possibilities of this EP.

Quatre Tete: Art of the State (Sickroom)

With two EPs and a full-length album under its belt, this Chicago trio returns with its unadulterated, math-influenced mid-'90s-style rock. Fans of hard-hitting guitar/bass/drums configurations would do well to pick up Art of the State, recorded by engineer Bob Weston.

The album draws a bit of sonic inspiration from Weston's most famous group, Shellac, as well as musical brethren like The Jesus Lizard and Dianogah.

Quatre Tete: "Mouth of the Rattlesnake"
Quatre Tete: \"Mouth of the Rattlesnake\"

Eight years ago, dropped-D alt-rockers Hum played a pair of "final" shows in Chicago.  Now, almost exactly to the dates, the group reconvenes in the Windy City for a double dose of reunion performances.

This is the second Chicago show, each with duelling-bass rock trio Dianogah.  Both dates are sold out, with these tickets coming at a much more reasonable price ($20 vs. $65 on New Year's Eve).

Alan Gresik's Swing Shift Orchestra @ Green Mill

Drawing from a massive catalog, Alan Gresik's Swing Shift Orchestra replicates the big-band sounds of the 1920s and '30s with a 16-piece ensemble.  For a $6 cover, this lively set is a thrifty way to enjoy New Year's Day.

On 12/31/00, dropped-D alt-rockers Hum played their final show in Chicago, appearing with the Flaming Lips at the Metro.  Now, eight years to the date, the group reconvenes in the Windy City for a double dose of reunion performances.

ALARM intercepts transmissions from Hum singer Matt Talbott and bassist Jeff Dimpsey before these impending shows, the first of which is tonight at Chicago's Double Door.

The Champaign-Urbana, IL quartet, known widely for its 1995 hit, "Stars," wrote what local illustrator and Dianogah bassist Jay Ryan called "enormous songs about astronauts, whales, and girls."

It released four accessible yet feedback-and-metal-suffused records from 1991-1998. Its major label debut, You'd Prefer An Astronaut, the one with "Stars" on it, sold over 250,000 copies in a few months.

Hum's last Chicago show was at the Metro on New Year's Eve in 2000. Since officially disbanding, the group has played a spate of shows, mostly in Champaign, but its members' busy professional and family lives — as well as their separate musical projects (Centaur, Gazelle) — have made a Chicago return impossible.

This year they've decided to make it work. For a band with such intense, intricately arranged songs, its members are surprisingly casual about all things Hum. "It's not personally important for me [to play again with Hum]," says singer Matt Talbott. "It just sounded like fun."

We caught up with Talbott and bassist Jeff Dimpsey over the course of two weeks in early December.

Matt, how easy or difficult has it been to access the feelings behind the Hum lyrics you wrote so many years ago?

Talbott: I think one of the most difficult aspects of doing a show like this is rediscovering meaning in songs you wrote a long time ago, when you were perhaps a slightly different person.

The audience can't have a legitimate emotional experience if you're not having one, you know? Otherwise you might as well be putting your energy into a Foghat tribute band working the county fair circuit. Which, now that I think about it, actually sounds kinda cool. Maybe that's a bad example.

I've found it easier than I expected to access the original intent of my lyrics, and, in some cases, I find the same lyrics articulating new ideas, offering new interpretations of experiences I've had in the many interim years since I wrote them.

It's probably only possible because most of my stuff walks that fine line between impressionism and pure mountain gibberish.

How did Chicago's music scene influence Hum while you were writing records?

Dimpsey: I don't think that the Chicago scene influenced us, though who knows — all experiences are folded back into oneself. We played a lot of shows in Chicago, and with bands from Chicago, and Electra 2000 was recorded at Idful Studios. But if there was a musical scene from a larger town that we felt a kinship with, it was probably the scene in Kansas City at that time.

What about Kansas City did you connect with?

Talbott: There are more dirt bags out there. It's an evil place. We just seemed to fit in better and were always made to feel very welcome.

Ian Mackaye recently said that music shouldn't be your job. You should get a job and then make music because you need to. What's your reaction to Ian's comment?

Dimpsey: I suspect that this is a common thought, that there's a purity to creating art, and that any sort of compensation involved, especially the monetary kind, somehow must taint the output for the worse. I'm not sure that I agree.

I'm glad that many musicians can and have concentrated on their musical output fully without the distraction of a non-musical job. Artists such as Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Brian Eno, Willie Nelson and many, many more. I assume that these artists make music because they need to. I think that the world would be a much less rich place if artists like these were trying to write and record on evenings and weekends.

Continue reading Jarrett Dapier's interview with Hum.