“Making Darkwaves Over Chicago”

by Dan Dinello

PROJEKT’S TWO-NIGHT SHOWCASE A SUCCESS.

The gothic underground emerged in Chicago for the two-day Projekt festival, a celebration of the label’s “ethereal, gothic, dark ambient” music. Featuring nine acts that rarely perform live — including the debut of Projekt creator/owner Sam Rosenthal’s own group, Black Tape for a Blue Girl — the festival lured fans from all over the globe.

Many hardcore goths were so anxious to gt inside that each night several hundred vampires, angels, witches, martyrs, undertakers, velvetized medievalists, and pierced, rubberized fetishists lined up outside the ornate Vic Theatre and risked massive makeup meltdown under the hot June sun. Once inside, they were immediately entranced by the festival’s most evocative music as  tribal-ambient musician Steve Roach opened the show on both nights. Surrounded by stacks of keyboards & assorted percussion, enmeshed in organic electronic cables, Roach appeared to be wired into his instruments. He played nonstop, hour-long sets of turbulent environmental noise, primal rhythms, and cascading drones dominated by thunderous blasts of a didgeridoo.

In 1983, Rosenthal created Projekt in his hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a vehicle for his own music. For ten years he operated in Los Angeles, adding groups who reflected his dark personal aesthetic. Now living in Chicago, Rosenthal used the festival to call attention to his cult label. “To prove you’re real, you have to play live,” he says. Mysterious atmospherics and turbulent moods characterize the Projekt sound/image: Projekt fills the dark ethereal void created when British avant-pop label 4AD — original home of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil — abandoned the doom-laden style and its gothic fans.

“It’s a compliment to be compared to 4AD,” says Rosenthal. “They put out some great stuff.”

Lycia played withing a thick graveyard fog that often obliterated guitarist/vocalist Mike VanPortfleet & Vocalist Tara VanFlower. Their dark, shimmering space-out music was initially mesmerizing but lacked variation. Love Spirals Downwards and Soul Whirling Somewhere embraced a bare-bones presentation, eschewing visual effects, gothic-styled clothing, and all instrumentation but acoustic guitar. LSD fared best: The audience was enraptured by Suzanne Perry’s airy angelic voice, serene as a soft breze. SWS’s gothic folk-singer Michael Plaster missed the layered electronic textures of his albums. His fragile, mournful voice seemed lost in the cosmos.

Eden, marked by Sean Bowley’s morbidly intense vocals, started slowly but reached apocalyptic power by the end of their set. Arcanta evoked a mystical/religious atmosphere through sacred chanting, haunting percussion, & majestic melodies. Attrition’s driving industrial-lite dance rhythms and Thanatos’ standard rock instrumentation provided variation. Thanatos’ William Tucker tore off angry, scorching guitar leads next to sneering vocalist Padraic Ogl. Their set was somewhat clouded by distractingly inappropriate militaristic/Nazi imagery and cheesy video effects projected behind the band.

Clearly the highlight of the festival were Black Tape for a Blue Girl. Oscar Herrera and Lucian Casselman sang melodramatic vocals amid heavy smoke and blue/magenta light. Each song seamlessly flowed into the next w/ambient transitions provided by Mera Roberts’ sorrowful cello & Rosenthal’s swirling electronics. After moving from aching romance to passionate bliss to tortured betrayal, Black Tape ended the festival on a quiet note.

Though Love Spirals Downwards’ Ryan Lum reported that his un-gothic orange psychedelic shirt got mocked by vampires, and despite Ogl spitting up wine on the Electric Hellfire Club’s Thomas Thorn, there was a community feeling in the air. Band members hung out in the audience to hear the other bands and talk to fans. Performers and audience were unified through the music. LSD’s Suzanne Perry said, “I felt like it was gathering of old friends from all across the country.”

Enough tickets were sold for Rosenthal to declare the festival a success and entertain the idea of putting on another one next year.