I don’t go out to see local bands play nearly enough as I should. Chicago has an amazingly vibrant music scene, with a lot of great little intimate venues. The advantage of seeing local bands play local shows? Beyond the hipster-sneer of it? Well:

A) They’re Cheap ( $8 v. $80)

B) They’re Passionate (no phoned in We’re-doing-this-reunion-tour-cause-we’re-broke garbage)

C) They’re (a lot of the times) Really Freaking Good. Or at least that was the case for Splor and Frequilibrium, whom I say play Chicago’s Tonic Room.

Tonic Room is one of those narrow, rectangular shaped venues that bring to mind standing inside a train car. Some unassociated facts about the place:

-It’s a shadowy bar lit with these scarlet glass candle holders. Gives it this sort of ‘cozy’ quality, if that’s not a monstrously lame thing to say.

-The men’s room, every surface stickered and scrawled on, houses two urinals and a toilet. No door or wall separates the three porcelain palaces. ‘Cozy’ isn’t used as warmly in this case.

-A projector screen hangs behind where the band plays, on a sort of raised little platform (not quite a ‘stage’). A diligently working guy, sitting at the bar with his head bent forward, projects onto the screen via his laptop both the band’s names and/or logos, and a barrage of images, video clips, and general schizophrenic madness. Such examples include clips and images of cats splicing into each other against a cosmic backdrop, hot dogs of various toppings that rain and swirl from the top of the screen, and various clips of Miley Cyrus spliced together against a warping, hallucinogenic background.

This projector screen, playing and morphing simultaneously with the music, fits both groups, compliments their style. If I had to define them both genre-wise, I would call them ‘Jam Bands’ (though both groups have their own flavors and ways of going about writing and performing their songs. ‘Prog Rock’ works pretty good, too). In the center of the Venn diagram of Splor and Frequilibrium’s musical influences are bands like "Umphrey's Mcgee" and "Grateful Dead"; with psychedelic overtones, they are bands who put raw, musical prowess and technique at the forefront of their songs. Groups with tunes upwards of seven minutes in length that spiral into these amazingly layered musical breakdowns. They are bands that welcome musical improvisation to the stage with open arms. Really, really damn good improvisation, too. The visuals compliment the acoustics, most definitely. Plus sometimes in the middle of the song, the band members standing in the screen's light would have their faces painted in this moving, almost fluid psychedelic light. Gave the whole show a kinda 60's, art rock feel.

Though I can’t speak worth a dime for the nuts and bolts of what each band was doing, I can speak as an audience member. And as an audience member, I was like 'Woah.' Like a good 'Woah.' The rest of the room seemed pleased too; though there wasn't much dancing, Tonic Room was a mass of heads nodding up and down to the music, as if all in furious agreement.

SPLOR

Splor’s Facebook ‘About Me’ calls their music 'self-branded "adventure-music,"' and '1 parts shred, 2 parts prog, a hint of improv, garnish with gnar. The perfect splor.' Which is like, damn! How do I describe them any better than that? Thanks for doing my job for me, boys!

But Splor - a few guys with long hair, bandannas (minus the drummer, who, I must say, played the entire set with an open mouthed grin like he was having the best night of his life up on that stage. I wanna live my life the way Splor’s drummer does.) These guys are violently talented. Like it goes all around; Splor’s music has lots of thrashing, throbbing bass lines, which are slapped and plucked with ferocity and intricacy by the bass player (who played the show in PJ pants). Watching the dude play bass is kind of astounding. I noticed multiple moments of people nudging their friends and pointing at the bassist like ‘holy s*** check that s***.' And yet as good as he is, the other dudes are just as good. Everyone in their group holds their own, a 4-piece set of insanely talented guys you can tell all are really good friends, whose music skydives from funkadelic to thrashing metal.

Plus they sing songs about, and I don’t lie here, robots who have existential crises because they can’t dance. Which, the band vocally assured us, we can all relate to. How can you not give them a listen? Their music gets intense, too- at one point, when one of Splor's songs devolved into a fierce, noise-heavy cacophony, this older dude, wearing what I honestly think were thick rimmed 3-D glasses, was rocking his head back and forth to the tunes so intensely he honestly could have been in the midst of overwhelmed panic. But that's the thing with Splor; their music shifts and slinks, changes its tempo and groove, and yet through all of it, heavy or slick, you can't help but bob your head along with it. It's music you dance to, music you 'splor to.'

From what I hear, they’ll be releasing some new music sometime soon, album or otherwise. In the meantime, here’s their Bandcamp page. Check these guys out, live especially if you get the chance. They are as entertaining as, well, a robot who can't dance.

FREQUILIBRIUM

So not only are these guys also grotesquely talented musicians, but they're so dang young. The bass player's only 16 and, as a friend of mine said, "must have a pinkie of steel." Dude's talented, but so are all of them. One of the great things about seeing Frequilibrium play is their willingness to improvise. A lot of their songs ended with a spiraling, impromptu jam, where one of the band members would throw out a little piece of music, a bass line let's say, and the others would watch buds play and try to match their key or tempo or *correct music word* and have to adjust on the spot. And they were able to, too. There was never a wonky moment in the music, it never fell flat or had a hole in it, which is pretty amazing in itself.

Fun fact about "Frequilibrium": two of the band members are brothers, and their Mom sings along with their songs when she comes to their shows.

Frequilibrium is less on the 'thrash' side of things and more so on the psychedelic, 'Dead' sphere of influence. While "Splor" does a lot more 'story' songs, "Frequilibrium" has a lot more traditional songs with catchy as hell hooks. One such song is called "Can't Carry the World," which I suggest you give a listen to right this very moment.

Like "Splor", see these guys play live if you can. This is the kind of music that, quite obviously, comes to life when you see it played in front of you, when you realize that complicated, fun music like this is created by a group of real, talented people, who not only are entertaining you, but are having a good old time doing it, too.

So hey, why not go out to see these guys, or any of the local scenes in Chicago one of these upcoming weekends? Spread some local love.