Lydia Lunch has spent decades trolling through the subterranean sick-home black and blues creating a musical legacy that started burning down the house in 1977 with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and continues to this day. From No Wave teen terror to Muse of the Cinema of Transgression, whether as hardcore spoken word harbinger or chanteuse provocateur she has relentlessly sought new collaborators with whom to dissect passion, obsession and desire.

A bruising retrospective of Lydia Lunch’s music from Teenage Jesus, 8 Eyed Spy, Shotgun Wedding until present day featuring Lydia, Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), Tim Dahl, Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore).

Chicago quartet Toupée conjures a sweet blue nostalgie dangereuse – an ol’ lilt and spacey croon flecked with doom. Like a mystery drug, their live show induces the best of waking dreams and the worst of waking nightmares.

The screech. The wail. The slanted-floor nausea. There’s not a word for the signature cyclical howling that Chicago’s Running have harnessed and tortured into submission. They play with their food before they eat…flay into a terse punk trance, a Kraut-beat psycho riff for ages, mesmerize or terrorize…but invariably they unleash The Sound upon us just when it seems most likely to bring back your lunch. That they’ve built such a mean, spare, and evil band around such chaos is to our benefit – the circular mayhem alone would be a fascinating stand-alone curiosity – but lucky for us, they’ve captured their cacophonous, rotten heart in the black glove of blank-stare punk. 

Psychedelic/Punk/Rock Band on HoZac Records.