Zelienople

The members of Zelienople met in an old haunted building in Chicago, above an antique shop, where former doctors' offices had been converted into music rehearsal spaces. The loud drones of Matt Christensen and Brian Harding drew the ire of the building owners, as items were being knocked off the shelves below, but they caught the interest of percussionist Mike Weis who was renting space down the hall. The three started playing together as Zelienople in the late 90s. Early shows were alongside performance artists in loft spaces and later at the legendary Lounge Ax and Empty Bottle clubs. The trio wrote new music for each live set and then subsequently scrapped those tunes. This carried on for five years before they finally settled on an album’s worth of material to record their debut. Pajama Avenue was released in 2002 on Chicago’s Loosethread Recordings, run by musician/producer Pramod Tummala. Loosethread released the follow-ups, Sleeper Coach and Ink before Zelienople moved on to other labels - San Francisco’s Root Strata for Stone Academy; Manchester’s Type for His/Hers, Give It Up and The World is a House on Fire; and 2020’s Hold You Up on Miasmah from Berlin. Four years later, Zelienople, now expanded to a quartet with Tummala on keyboards, synths and vibraphone, are set to release Everything is Simple on France’s Shelter Press.