On Mar 15th, Winter Sounds 2025 continues its third and final installation of the 2025 winter series at Compound Yellow. The performers and the listeners will be immersed in sound with special Quadraphonic Performances! The performers will be preparing their pieces to have sonic elements be dynamically thrown around the room to 4 different speakers, which will create a unique sonic spatial experience. Please come with curiosity! The performers will be located in the center of the space so we encourage listeners to move around during the performances, as every spot will provide a slightly different aural picture. Hope to see you there!

Tickets available here: https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/compound-yellow/winter-sounds-mahlmeister-schoenecker-drasii-perkins-davison

Donny Mahlmeister / Jim Schoenecker:

Jim and Donny will be performing as a duo playing the classic modular synthesizers of Serge and Buchla respectively. 

Donny is an Oak Park based musician and designer with a focus on improvised music using modular synthesizers, guitar, lap steel and other electronic processing. His recent solo work encompasses elements of minimalist soundscapes intersected with abstract guestural movements. In addition to his solo work he currently collaborates with Jamie Levinson and Theo Katsaounis as The Shape Of. Prior to moving to Oak Park, Donny had been a long-standing member of the Chicago and Midwest rock and improvised scenes, working with A Tundra, Judson Claiborne, Early Day Miners, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Toby Summerfield, Ryan Packard, Jamie Branch, Catherine Young and Bill McKay. 

With a musical history rooted in experimental electronics, minimalism and techno, Jim has now found himself deep into Buchla. Drawn to the incredible sound and superior user interface, he started with a Music Easel and now is working with full 100 and 200 Series systems.   In addition to his solo work, Jim had performed / recorded with: Sample and Fold,Collections of Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir, Bon Iver, Dartanjal, Jon Mueller, Marcus Schmickler, Bhob Rainey and James Plotkin among others and had released music on: Zod, Toxic Recordings, Jagjaguwar, Nobody Owns Records, Table of the Elements, Addict Records, Topscore USA and Crouton Records

Drasii:

Drasii is the duo of Chris Kalis and Lisa Armstrong. Since emerging as an offshoot of Chandeliers, a legend of Chicago’s late-aughts loft party scene, the pair’s sound emissions have gotten trancier, deeper, slinkier. Their new LP, Spirito Celeste (FPE Records, October 4), introduces bliss directly to the brain, flirting with the warm pads of the future and the gnarly blur of the past. Infused with the industrial sounds of the city, it evokes the visceral, spiritual, and communal strains of Chicago House and Detroit Techno, a sort of eternal pulse reaching through generations of party people.

Michael Perkins:

Since the late 90s pianist/composer Michael Perkins has been regularly performing and recording in the punk, electronic, and jazz scenes in and around Chicago. He’s worked as a session musician on many recordings for bands like Atari Star, Das Kapital, and The Lavellas as well recording with his own groups such as Sig Transit Gloria, Written in the Sand, Far Rad, and Mr 666. Michael has been continuing to play jazz and blues on a regular basis in addition to the occasional free improvised electronic music set.

Joshua Davison:

As half of the experimental IDM act String Theory, Joshua recorded music for some wonderful independent electronic labels, including Manchester's Skam, Chicago's Consumers Research and Development, and Milwaukee's Wobblyhead. He describes his industrial-kosmische tone poems as collaborations between the machine ensemble and its operator. The complexity and randomness of shift-registers, channeled by hand into drifting voltage landscapes.