Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

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Billing themselves as "five rail-thin longhairs from Reading, England," Chapterhouse slipped through the cracks during the early '90s, as bands like My Bloody Valentine and Jesus & Mary Chain had long cornered the shoegaze niche - and Nirvana went and silenced the fuzz with the grating angst of Nevermind, anyway. The group's 1991 debut, Whirlpool, would've had a much bigger impact if it had been released just a year or two later when youth culture was ready to chill out again. The boys have reunited after a two-decade split, with their sets dripping with numbing distortion and tinny drums that cut right through it with glee. Ulrich Schnauss is a Germany-based knob-twiddler who likewise coddles the shoegaze movement, sampling Chapterhouse among the originators to map out a lofty landscape of ambient spin-offs. Chicago-based Airiel is the youngest act on the bill, plucked by Schnauss back in 2008 to tour the UK and Ireland, perhaps foreshadowing an impending revival. (Gavin Paul)