Lozenge

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With an instrumentation of electric accordion, analog synthesizers, bass, and four-handed junkyard percussion, the music of LOZENGE flails in the perimeters of postpunk rock excess. While active in Houston from 1992-94 and in Chicago from 1996-2003, the constant core membership of Bruckmann, Kurt Johnson, Philip Montoro, and Mark Stevens (once augmented by the now dearly departed John Robbins and occasionally joined by the very-much-alive Boris Hauf) carved out an idiosyncratic aesthetic of sensory overstimulation, poly-/a-/hyper-rhythmic propulsion, labyrinthine black humor, and tooth-rattling timbral density. In performance, LOZENGE aspired to the transformative joy of extreme energy expenditure and collective self-immolation.

LOZENGE’s second, third and fourth albums are, at long last, once again available through Bandcamp.

Performances

This grainy but historic footage is from October 2003 at Chicago’s legendary Fireside Bowl – our second of three “last show ever” blowouts thus far.

 

Further evidence that we existed appears to still lurk, here and there, in dank corners of the Vintage Internet.

 

Album Reviews

“. . . one of the most criminally underrated outfits in alt.rock”
Signal To Noise

“…a clattery, distorted racket… stop-start patterns that sound like progressive rock locked in a dank boiler room…. All the lurching and buzzing is invigorating and hilarious, unless you’re prone to motion sickness.”
New York Times

“Oboist Kyle Bruckmann is the local improv scene’s Clark Kent. He’s a generally polite and unassuming soloist, but when he fronts prog terrors Lozenge he emerges frothing and howling and mighty, as if Superman had caught rabies from Batman during some lost weekend of superheroes behaving badly . . .”
Monica Kendrick, Chicago Reader

Contact Kyle Bruckmann