Mike Reed’s Sound & Gravity Festival takes place across Bricktown/Photo: Francesca Patella, Google Earth

Following a successful launch last year, Sound & Gravity returns to the Bricktown area between Avondale and Lakeview. Taking inspiration from multi-venue festivals like Knoxville’s Big Ears and Utrecht’s Le Guess Who?, Sound & Gravity centers around the vision of founder Mike Reed, featuring an expansive group of performers, both local and international, spanning independent rock, avant-garde jazz, folk traditions and the experimental leanings of some of this city’s most accomplished musicians. Returning to the same venues as last year—including the Reed-owned Constellation and Hungry Brain, Beat Kitchen and multiple spots within and around the Rockwell on the River event space—the second edition sprawls eastward to the Athenaeum Center and has several free events open to the public, inviting everyone to join at no cost.

While adding the Athenaeum into the mix stretches the concept of Sound & Gravity as walkable to its limit, the additional options allow for a more expansive, multi-dimensional definition of what a festival centered on music can be, who such a fest is for and what it can do for the communities it occupies and interacts with. One of the great pleasures of last year’s fest, besides running into and making new friends and acquaintances among the attendees, was the sense of adventure and wonder it unlocked. Bricktown transformed, however temporarily, into a new space for discovering and examining what gets overlooked during the day-to-day of existence. “I’d like to check that out someday” turns into “sure, let’s see what this is all about,” with pleasant surprises and unexpected yet not unwanted experiences en masse.

While this year’s fest offers numerous lower-cost single day and single venue ticket options for those looking to catch only a few acts, the best way to experience a festival like Sound & Gravity is to dive all the way in and commit to exploration. At the same time, even the most obsessive listener might scratch their head at some of the names on the lineup, have a gap in their personal schedule to fill or need a backup option or two should a venue reach capacity before they get in. To that end, here are some acts we recommend catching this weekend.

Leroy the Poet

Leroy the Poet
Rockwell Patio
Thursday, September 3, 6:30pm

Local indie rock group Leroy the Poet not only kick off this year’s Sound & Gravity, they make a compelling case for getting there early to make the most of the day and long weekend. While they’ve released only a handful of songs, the pair of lo-fi tracks on “Shaking Hands” suggest an anything goes, slacker ethos that’s the right mix of literary and relaxed for the festival. Their performance ought to pair perfectly with checking out from the workday and gazing out over the Chicago River, sipping a beverage of choice before patio season comes to a close.

Water Damage

Water Damage
Rockwell Main Event Room
Friday, September 4, 7pm

Texas noise rock troupe Water Damage’s local debut makes another strong case for getting to Sound & Gravity early on Friday. Despite being able to listen to numerous past performances, the group’s lineup is fluid and they have a propensity towards inviting guest performers to their sets, so the details of what to expect are tantalizingly uncertain. But in broad strokes, the group is guided by their mantra of “Maximum Repetition, Minimal Deviation,” with an ensemble of around ten veteran performers locking in on one groove and seeing what they can wring from it over the course of forty-ish minutes. Bring earplugs; leave crushed.

Chicago Film Society presents “Films from the Bob Koester Collection”
Athenaeum Center
Saturday September 5, 2-5pm
Free and open to the public.

The Chicago Film Society may take film preservation seriously, but what they choose to screen publicly always has a mischievous and anarchic spirit, making them perfect kindred spirits to project analog film in partnership with a music festival. While three hours of 16mm prints of jazz and blues music may either be one’s definition of paradise or sensory overload, Chicago Film Society’s talent at complementary and contrasting programming is sure to keep attendees engaged. Sourcing this exhibition from the collection of Delmark Records’ late founder Bob Koester, they promise rare footage from legends including Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. Expect plenty of other names that might be obscure to all but the most dedicated musicologists and film scholars. I’m most interested to see how the material they screen helps connect the past to the present day, and how that might suggest future pathways to consider and explore.

Setting

Setting
Beat Kitchen
Saturday, September 6, 8:45pm

Setting may hail from North Carolina’s Piedmont region, but they also have substantial local roots: synth player Jamie Fennelly lived in Chicago when his Mind Over Mirrors project was his focus, and the trio’s label is local institution Thrill Jockey. Other members Joe Westerlund and Nathan Bowles play an assortment of analog and digital instruments, resulting in a hypnotic swirl of exploratory music drawing from Appalachian folk, modular synthesis, drone, group improv music and more while remaining distinctly itself. Rooted in tradition while extending it into modern forms, the group are a perfect example of what to expect throughout Sound & Gravity: unpredictable, yet playful.

Adam O’Farrill’s “Elephant”

Adam O’Farrill’s “Elephant”
Hungry Brain
Saturday, September 6, 10:00pm

Despite the similarity in the circles fans of minimalism and jazz run in, the actual intersection of these two genres can feel sparse. The skills and techniques required for the often rigid formalism of the former can be incompatible with the freewheeling spirit of the latter. This makes a record like Adam O’Farrill’s “Elephant” feel all the more spectacular; it not only juxtaposes the two together, but creates something that feels thrilling to listen to. Still in his early thirties, O’Farrill boasts an impressive catalog of collaborators—several of whom are also playing Sound & Gravity—giving the sense that the trumpeter’s set at Hungry Brain will be an intimate yet startling display of chops, the sort savored long after. Bragging rights for being there are included.

Yellow Swans

Yellow Swans
Beat Kitchen
Sunday, September 7, 10:30pm

Yellow Swans first called it a day back in 2008, having spent the 2000s terrorizing the American underground with their brutalizing, improvised noise music. Reforming after a pandemic-era archival cleanup, the duo of Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman have played a handful of shows without losing the intensity of their initial run. Each performance of theirs is unique, and this will be the first Chicago performance since getting back together; don’t expect the recording of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” that formed the core of a recent run of shows to appear here. Saloman has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, so whatever the duo do here, expect them closing out Sound & Gravity to be especially poignant—if Beat Kitchen is even still standing after they’re done wreaking havoc.

Sound & Gravity takes place on stages in Bricktown between Avondale and Lakeview from September 3-6.