Purveyors of: Throbbing jazz-tinged and electro-flecked punches to the eardrum.
File next to: Jaga Jazzist, Add N to (X).

Chicago Underground Duo — veteran collaborators Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor — take wonderful elements from a wide variety of forms and brew it up into a murky, oppressive gumbo that is somehow both violent in its assault yet delicate in its intricacy. Their newest release, Locus, came out in March 2014 on Northern Spy and features production by John McEntire of Tortoise / Sea and Cake fame. Dean Williams talked to the duo from an undisclosed location (it might have been Pennsylvania).

Where am I catching you guys?

Chad Taylor: We're driving towards Louisville, Kentucky right now.

Rob Mazurek: I think we're in Pennsylvania? I'm not sure.

What were you listening to right now, when the phone rang?

RM: Gerald Cleaver's Black Host - he's another artist on Northern Spy.

How's the tour been so far? Any highlights?

RM: It's been fucking excellent. We've been kicking ass, man.

Ahh, I --

RM: Just kicking ASS, man. KICKING ASS. 

I am going to make sure to italicize, bold and underline that when I type it up. 

RM: (Laughs) We rocked Brooklyn like nobody's business. We also played in some smaller towns like Harrisburg - great show there. 

CT: Baltimore was great.

So what can we expect from the duo in Toronto?

R: Fireworks. FIRE. WORKS. 

What's the rig that you're playing out with right now? How are you going to capture the sound and feel of the record live?

CT: I have my mbira, which I've been playing for a while — it's a traditional African instrument, from Zimbabwe. It's like a very advanced thumb piano.

RM: I'm playing through this modular synthesizer that I built, with modules from Make Noise and The Harvestman - some hardcore electronics, and we've got the sampler taking care of business on the low end.

CT: You can also expect to mostly hear tracks from the record — not necessarily in order or from start to finish, but you'll hear it.

There's so much aggression in the drums on the record, but you guys seem all about the love — are these punishing beats just your version of Tough Love, or what?

CT: You know, our thing has always been about bringing the emotion into the music, you know? So any emotion that develops is good as far as I'm concerned. Usually when people think about electronic music, they think of it as being very cold or heartless, but our thing has always been to put a lot of emotion back into it. It’s a characteristic of our sound.

The record has a lot of moments with a really free, improvisational feel. I’m curious how much was “written” in a traditional sense and how much was figured out on the floor?

CT: There’s songwriting, and improvisation in perhaps equal parts, but a third and equal element to those is post-production. We did, I would say, a third of each to piece this together. That’s sort of how we’ve done all of our records, really.

You’re fixing in the mix, that kind of thing. Or maybe you’re breaking it in the mix.

RM: We’re big fans of blowin’ shit out.

CT: And for us, whoever we’re working with while recording is a huge, important part. It’s really a trio, man — us and whoever we’re recording with — and in this case, we were lucky enough to be working with John McEntire. It was almost spooky, I’d have a suggestion for something and he’d suddenly do it before I’d even said it out loud.

RM: You tell him how you want it to sound and he does it. He’s a master at manipulating sound and getting to the heart of what you want to hear.

You’ve been working under this name for a while — and the nature of how people find out about music and are exposed to culture in general has changed so much — so what does ‘Underground’ mean to you guys these days?

CT: That’s an interesting question. For us, I think it just comes down to going against convention; going against the grain.

RM: The music we do is marginalized by the general population. That makes it underground. It’s as simple as that, man.

CT: We play Chicago Underground Music.

Check out Chicago Underground Duo play this Thursday, May 1^st, with Not The Wind, Not The Flag, King Weather, and DJ Daniel Vila at The Garrison (1197 Dundas St. W.) Doors 8:00 PM / 19+.