Natalie Chami (aka TALsounds) and Whitney Johnson (aka Matchess) have been pillars of the city’s avant-garde electronic music scene for years, crafting elegantly droning ambient music on their own and engaging in thoughtful collaborations with other local artists. (Chami is also one-third of impressively far-out trio Good Willsmith, and Johnson has collaborated with the likes of Tortoise, Circuit des Yeux, and Bitchin Bajas.) Over the past few years, they’ve periodically joined forces onstage as the duo Damiana, and they’ve stolen pretty much every show Gossip Wolf has seen them play—in 2019, they opened for Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore at the Hideout and for Thou with Emma Ruth Rundle at Subterranean, and they were the best set both nights. On Friday, July 16, they’ll drop Damania’s debut album, Vines, via Chicago label Hausu Mountain, and it’s certainly worth the wait—on “Sunken Lupine,” for instance, Chami and Johnson mix subtle percussion, gentle electronics, and their swirling paired vocals into a cloud of lush, otherworldly atmospheres. The LP (with artwork by HIDE’s Heather Gabel) comes in an edition of 100 copies on clear vinyl, as well as in a regular black version and as a download; all are available via the Hausu Mountain Bandcamp page.
Happiness by Luggage
