“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 get 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.
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