POSTPONED!: TALsounds 'Acquiesce' Record Release ▲ Sam Prekop

TALsounds 'Acquiesce' Record Release ▲ Sam Prekop

@ Constellation Chicago

8:30 PM | 21+ |

TALsounds 'Acquiesce' Record Release ▲ Sam Prekop @ Constellation Chicago 8:30 PM | 21+ | Tickets | Facebook Event

For an artist whose career is almost entirely improvisational, TALsounds has refined a stunning style of music that sounds as meticulous as it does surprising. Since picking the moniker nine years ago, Natalie Chami has been flitting between experimental electronica, mood-driven minimalism, and classically trained choral singing as a solo artist in Chicago. On her fifth album, Acquiesce , she dives inward without constraints and invites the listener to do the same, to lose track of time, and to let emotion dictate what happens next.  Chami is a DIY staple within Chicago’s electronic scene as a solo artist, a member of Good Willsmith, and a frequent collaborator of Brett Naucke, Matchess, and others. Over the years, she’s honed her skills onstage, particularly her ability to block out what’s happening around her to instead focus on her subconscious, letting it guide where she steers each song. Whether she’s opening for Merzbow or Mary Lattimore, Tim Hecker or Tortoise, Mdou Moctar or Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Chami is adept at fitting the unique vibe of each concert despite never actually deviating from her music’s core sound — a prime example of her percipience and sense of control. 

All of this funnels into Acquiesce , her newest album as TALsounds. Recorded at home as improvised sessions, the album is a fluid extrapolation of her thoughts, worries, and stresses, later trimmed down and reformatted into songs. Chami treats her voice like an instrument that breathes calm into interwoven electronic parts, often leaning into vowels instead of phrases, particularly the tall, forward sound of “i” words like “time,” “find,” and “decide.” Performed entirely by Chami and produced by Cooper Crain (Bitchin' Bajas, Cave), Acquiesce is full of entrancing moments, be it the trumpet-like call in “Muted Decision,” the typewriter beat of “Instance,” the flickering vocals in “Else,” or the alien-like glitching of “Dynasty.” It picks up from the stirring sounds of her 2017 record Love Sick— named one of the best albums of the decade by Chicago Reader —and closes its eyes, as if in meditation, to reflect on what’s next. 

Acquiesce will be released on vinyl and digital formats on May 22, via NNA Tapes. 

Photo credit Maria Tzeka