On Fillmore

On Fillmore is a duo from Chicago, Illinois consisting of bassist Darin Gray and drummer Glenn Kotche.

In the summer of 2000, after supporting Jim O'Rourke's performance at the Meltdown festival in London, Darin and Glenn ended up stranded in a Florida airport. Not only did this fight for sanity galvanize their friendship, it was in these tortured hours that they carved out their plans for their new music exploration - an upright bass and percussion duo that they would call On Fillmore.

With their concepts in tow, Darin and Glenn started their first traverse as On Fillmore. The duo's first recording is still probably the group's most bizarre document to date - an improvisation that sounds like it was played on instruments from the Civil War, and in fact could very well be the antique soundtrack from that time. But as musician's fate would have it, the long stretch of Interstate 55 that divided Darin and Glenn seemed too far to justify a monogamous band relationship. In late 2000, Glenn was invited to help breath new life into Wilco, and Darin unveiled his secret affair, the electricity-bleeding Grand Ulena.

Before either of these two new commitments fully consumed our two heroes, On Fillmore recorded their second record for the Quakebasket label in early 2001. This time around, however, the band's approach was much different. On Fillmore had completely replaced their previous improvisations with highly disciplined song structure. With Glenn adding vibes to his percussion arsenal, and Darin finally fully unleashing his "Sun Ra vs. the Melvins" roots, On Fillmore created a solar humming that reflected a new breed of elastic minimalism.

In the Summer of 2004, On Fillmore headed out for their first tour, in support of their new record, Sleeps with Fishes. Culled from over a hundred hours (perhaps years?) of collective intimacy as well as distance, On Fillmore's third record relies only on the string and tuned metal combination, while layering beds of field recordings from the Chicago and Mississippi rivers, resulting in a pixellated paean to lullabies, location, and liberation. Sleeps with Fishes alchemizes the brotherhood of Thelonious Monk's "Ugly Beauty" with the gurgling reduction of contemporary compositional musics at 16 RPM.

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