The Chicago group DRMWPN (pronounced “Dream Weapon”) hasn’t played for several years, which made its performance last night (Jan. 31) at the Hideout noteworthy. I wrote about DRMWPN in a 2007 article for Signal to Noise magazine about Chicago’s drone music scene. The band, if that’s what it is, does just one thing: perform a single piece of music that rises and descends like a wave. DRMWPN played the final set of the final night of Chicago Psych Fest VI, with a who’s who of great Chicago musicians assembled on the stage to find that perfect chord, and it was beautiful.
The evening started with the dreamy, reverberating keyboards and vocals of Matchess. Then came three sets heavy on the jamming, by the bands Underground Symposium, Dark Fog and Unmanned Ships. Most of these musical acts performed with trippy projections of shifting colorful shapes. But when DRMWPN played, all of the light came from the spinning appliance known as the Dream Machine. The Hideout hummed as a snowstorm began outside.
