Matchess / Dail Chambers (solo performances)
Saturday, December 10th, 2022 | 7pm Doors / 8pm Show
Off Broadway ( 3509 Lemp Ave, St. Louis, MO 63118 / map )
Whitney Johnson – viola, electronics, synthesizer
Dail Chambers – electronics, violin, voice
w/ Guest DJ: Crim Dolla Cray (spinning before, between, and after sets)
Matchess
Whitney Johnson has been ubiquitous on Chicago’s underground music scene for more than a decade. The violist, singer, and keyboardist thrives on collaboration and has contributed her talents to many rock bands and experimental projects. While in those roles, rather than emphasizing her own talents as a musician and arranger, she focuses more on filling out the sound of the whole group.
Johnson collaborates widely. Since 2013 she has been an instrumental part of Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux. She’s half of Simulation with former Chicagoan Laura Callier (who also performs as Gel Set), she has a duo with cellist Lia Kohl of Mocrep, and she released the record Vines as Damiana (Hausu Mountain, 2021) with Natalie Chami of TALsounds. She and Natalie teamed up with Brett Naucke to release The Mirror Ensemble (American Dreams Records, 2021), as well. Earlier this year, she joined Cory Plump, Matthew Rolin, and Fred Thomas to form the project Winged Wheel, releasing No Island (12XU, 2022). In the past, she has contributed viola to projects ranging from Ryley Walker and Bitchin Bajas to Flux Bikes, Profligate, amongst many others.
Johnson does have one project of her own, though—the beguiling Matchess, whose beautifully aqueous, ambient, and elusive sound world she has been developing for over thirteen years. Under that name, she performs internationally, with recent live events in Stockholm, London, New York, and Berlin. Johnson conducts her career as though hard work and beautiful music were their own rewards.
In 2022 she released the Sonescent LP on Drag City, a giant leap from psychedelic songcraft into pure psychoacoustic space, in which her songs merge with all the other sounds we hear in our body: the music of meditation, a flow of sounds and thoughts of sounds, and the natural beating of our ears as they strain to hear more.
Dail Chambers
Dail Chambers (St. Louis) is a post medium futurist. Her sounds, both healing and explorative, resonate through the hearts and minds of southern past and cosmic conversation. As a sound artist she has worked in collaboration with The Black Rabbit Whole, performed in various Saint Louis area locations and was recently included in the special edition cassette released by Close-Far with support from NMC, Afrofuturism Saint Louis.
