With their LAST TOUR EVER wrapping up in California this weekend, I give you my final goodbye to Chapterhouse who will lapse into obscurity for the last time.
Here’s my review of Saturday’s Lincoln Hall show in Chicago.
“You’re never gonna see us again,” cried Stephen Patman of Reading, England’s shoegazers Chapterhouse, after an hour-and-a-half set of emotional and aural highs. The band kicked off their last ever tour at Lincoln Hall to a nearly sold-out crowd at midnight Saturday, playing Chicago for the first time in 16 years.
It’s tough not to recall the 2008 My Bloody Valentine reunion at All Tomorrow’s Parties New York Festival (which I covered for Yahoo! Music), when the ‘gazer gods reunited for their first U.S. show in 16 years. The Jesus and Mary Chain also reunited in 2007, making Chapterhouse the most obscure end of the scene’s revival spectrum–a wave that has been prompted partly by the resurgence of nugaze bands and 2nd generation fans in the latter half of the 2000s.
German electronica musician and producer Ulrich Schnauss joined Chicago’s Airiel at the end of their set and segued into his own 45-minute whirlwind of Robin Guthrie-inspired drone meditations. Schnauss steadily pruned his synth knobs throughout the set and crackled into and out of acid-house grooves, with visual projections of cityscapes behind him and the crowd swaying throughout. Even while arriving at a thundercloud finish, he didn’t break a sweat.
You can read the full review, and see photo extras, on Gapers Block here.