GS70 and jm wave at Rozz-Tox -- June 21.
Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Two touring indie-music acts based in the Windy City team up for one special night in Rock Island on June 21, with Rozz-Tox hosting an evening with GS70, the solo project of Anastasia Gladkova, and jm wave, the solo project of Zachary Sprenger.
Born and raised in Russia, GS70's musician and sound artist Anastasia Gladkova combines delicate vocals and warm ambient textures with industrial noises and layers of heavy guitar to speak to human vulnerability and trauma. Permeated with sentimentality and nostalgia, GS70’s music explores grief and longing for a sense of home that might have been lost. Inspired by orthodox chants and Eastern-European folk, she cherishes her culture’s century-old traditions, balancing it with a fascination for the underground scene of Soviet post-punk, shoegaze, and industrial music as a form of rebellion. Blending these influences, Anastasia creates cathartic narratives that express the emotional complexity of searching for an identity in a life complicated by an autocratic regime and separation from loved ones.
Since 2018, throughout his shifting roles playing synthesizer, drums, and guitar in the band Dendrons (Innovative Leisure, Earth Libraries), Chicago musician Sprenger has been steadily refining their home-recording practice and producing equally mutable demos in the background. Named after their late cat Keke who often sat beside them while recording, the result is the self-released debut, Key x Two: a subdued and honest collage of the aforementioned tracks made using acoustic and electronic instrumentation and experimental processes. Using modular synthesizer, mangled samples, acoustic and fuzzed-out guitar, piano, and lap steel, Sprenger aims to straddle the line between blissful ambiance and cathartic noise, and continues to adapt their sonic trajectory.
GS70 and jm wave perform their co-headlining engagement in Rock Island with an additional set by Gabriel Dowie, a musical project currently exploring ethereal and intimate textures, extended harmony, and asymmetric forms and rhythms whose lyrics focus on post-Christian alienation, betrayal, depression, and evil. The all-ages June 21 concert event begins at 8 p.m., admission is $10 at the door (cash only), and more information on the night is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.
