Del Rey will perform a live score to the animated sci-fi classic Fantastic Planet at Lincoln Hall in Chicago on Thursday, May 5. They'll be joined on the bill by drone merchants White/Light, who will provide accompaniment to a film by Chicago experimental filmmaker Alexander Stewart.
Lincoln Hall will provide an ideal setting for the screenings as the club is a converted movie theater.
Since their inception in 1997 in the attic of a three-flat in Ukrainian Village, Del Rey has been keeping Chicago's instrumental rock torch aflame, purveying their brand of sonic lyricism and rhythmic textuality from countless stages and speakers.
In 2010, they released their fourth full-length, Immemorial, in North America via At A Loss Recordings (in Europe via Golden Antenna), which fused the punishing grace of the band's riff- and percussion-driven sound to a more evocative, melodic sensibility.
Del Ret will also be doing their first European tour in May and June.
The beautiful and surreal imagery of Fantastic Planet (1973) may be the perfect cinematic complement for Del Rey's cosmic soundscapes and epic odysseys. In the film, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, humans are kept as pets by blue humanoid alien giants called Traags. Said to be based on the Soviet occupation of the Czech Republic, the story centers on a human named Terr, who escapes the Traags and incites other humans to revolt. Del Rey will also be performing the score in Spain later in May as part of a tour based around their upcoming show at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona.
Last seen curating the "Face the Strange" series at the Museum of Contemporary Art this Spring, White/Light create minimalist drone compositions that emphasize subtle tonal variations, sustained notes, and other properties of sound. For this show they'll provide the soundtrack for Cosmicrusts, a work by filmmaker and animator Alexander Stewart.
