White/Light

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Location

  • Chicago, IL

Artist Biography

ON THE "BLACK ACTS" CD/LP DUE OUT THIS FALL ON SMELLS LIKE RECORDS:

Second instrumental long-player from the princes of the Chicago drone herd, Jeremy Lemos and Matt Clark. Brainwave-flattering guitar & analog gadget noise jams, warm on the tails of their highly-praised 2007 collaboration with one-man psych-weirdo Lichens. Said Matt, to his momma: "You know, like Folke Rabe and his kid brother, with Ray-Bans and a Jazzmaster, man. Doesn't that make sense? Isn't that what we need right now?" Yeah, a United State of White/Light sounds alllll right. To be released later in 2008.

Selected Press

Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos come up with seemingly endless variations on guitar drone as White/Light—and though the band's name was inspired by the Velvets' feedback-drenched White Light/White Heat, they also claim as influences Earth 2, Fripp and Eno, and the guitar solo on the title track from Maggot Brain. The drifting, ambient pieces on the duo's self-titled debut on Rebis Records are at once graceful and harrowing, and while they don't adhere to conventional song forms they do develop according to a certain logic. Clark and Lemos layer low-end rumbles, high-frequency sine waves, and lacerating bursts into constellations of sound that reward close listening, and even though the tone of each piece is essentially fixed, the two constantly rejigger details to keep the record full of surprises. [...] The music has an almost orchestral depth, awash in the sort of resonant glow that comes from a love of sound for its own sake.

Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

White/Light is the Velvets-fixated duo of Matt Clark and Jeremy Lemos, who both have roots in the contemporary underground. Clark played in Chicago's Joan of Arc, while Lemos has associations with Sonic Youth and Jim O'Rourke through his soundboard work. Together the pair work huge cylinders of melodic drone into repeat cycles as evocatively wired as 'Krautrock'-era Faust, only to shackle them to great monolithic riffs borne of the classic Melvins/Earth tradition.

David Keenan, The Wire