Side Yard Sounds presents: Neal Markowski + Oblivious Newton Jon

Saturday, June 8th, 2024
7:00 PM 9:00 PM
Compound Yellow

$15 or pay what you can

BYOB

Neal Markowski is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. As a composer, he takes equal inspiration from the concepts and use of volume, tuning, and modified instruments, as he does the record-making process.  As a performer, he’s split his time between playing in bands (Daddy’s Boy, Future Living, Blank Banker, and more) and performing works by Alvin Lucier, Ikue Mori, and John Cage (among others.)

Neal also runs the Silent Co-op record label.  Silent Co-op’s next release, Auditor / Wailer, will be out on LP in early June, to be followed by Blank Banker’s Intervallic Travails later in 2024.  Neal lives in Chicago and named his dog after Black Flag’s best singer.

Performing under the moniker Oblivious Newton Jon, Jon Strasheim uses this project as a way to rediscover the joy in improvisational music after years of burnout from obligations to follow certain traditions. The musician trapped in a rat’s nest of patch cables creates mazes of atmospheric whirs to approach each performance as its own puzzle within a puzzle; processing unique solutions as the therapy needed to shake up the routine and return to joy.