For her livestreamed concert in the Jefferson Park EXP series last December, Chicago experimental musician Kimberly Sutton trained her camera on a pair of lit candles and several speaker cones of various sizes, resting on their backs like bowls and filled with water or sand. As the vibrations from the speakers increased, liquid and sand and flame started to tremble and flicker, forming restless and intricate interference patterns. Eventually the hums and throbs grew intense enough that the water began to bubble and spatter; you could see the sound leaping free of its cages and making a bid for freedom.
Helt put out Four in One Combine in 2008, the same year he properly launched Pan y Rosas Discos as a netlabel. It had started informally a couple years before, but at that point it was little more than a name to put on what he calls “slightly fancy” CD-R releases of his band’s music. Around the time of Four in One Combine, he decided CD-Rs were too much trouble and started just releasing Rories tracks as MP3s. It was so easy that he realized he could do the same for his friends.
The label’s expanded purview includes the 2012 release String Theory by Chicago composer, cellist, and electronic musician Sarah J. Ritch. “It has some of my traditional tonal acoustic music compositions,” she says. “And then I also had a couple of my electronic pieces and some electroacoustic hybrids.” The album is a marvelous hodgepodge of Ritch’s interests across classical and improv. “Oftentimes when I try to describe my music, some feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s not focused,” she admits, laughing.
Hayes has recorded for Pan y Rosas Discos herself. In 2016 the label released her album Manipulation, whose poptronica improvisations feel almost danceable until the floor collapses and synthetic life-forms start to ooze and flop and skitter in. The electronic instrument she uses on Manipulation (and in much of her music) is of her own design, but she hasn’t named it. “I’m really interested in the idea from queer theory of not overcategorizing things,” she says. “It’s just my instrument, I guess.”
Branch manager Eileen Dohnalek was enthusiastic about the idea too—though she says that a handful of older patrons were initially a little taken aback. Staff have tried to be careful to put up signage so people will know that the library is going to be less quiet than usual.
The shift to livestreams has also made it much easier for Helt to invite performers from beyond Chicago. Lauren Sarah Hayes was back in Phoenix after her first live tour when lockdown arrived in March 2020, and she loved the idea of being able to perform for an audience in some form. Her half-hour Jefferson Park EXP concert in November 2020 takes full advantage of the format to create an audiovisual assault. The screen shifts and segments with colors and effects, through which you can sometimes see Hayes speaking into a microphone or manipulating what looks like a video game controller to create power-electronics squalls and blasts of noise. Even further afield, Mariela Arzadun, aka Florconvenas, contributed a performance from Buenos Aires in August. She soundtracked a series of overlapping abstract visuals and nature videos with minimalist electronic patterns evolving into drones—it’s like watching some ominous extradimensional life cycle.
