Create the world you want to see. That should be the model for most creators and curators, and yet people align themselves with the status quo. Rather than question their surroundings and strive to create something bigger and better, many create work (be it music, film or visual art) that traffics in the same aesthetics and politics of its predecessors.
Meagan Fredette, a journalist and music fan, aimed to buck that type of output with her Milk Pleasures party. Taking place once a month at Logan Square cocktail bar and experimental music venue The Whistler, Milk Pleasures is a night dedicated to the magic of ambient music. From noise rock to dream pop, Fredette curates and DJs an evening built on sonic textures that lull the senses.
The local ambient scene, much like other scenes bubbling under the surface (the synth pop scene comes to mind), is poised to break through on a larger scale with audiences both familiar with the genre’s musical twists and turns, as well as new fans. Many performers and dedicated nights operate on the underground level, but Fredette aims to produce an evening with a wider reach. “I felt like there was a lot of potential for this music to be explored,” Fredette said. “It felt like a different frontier for this music to be popular.”
After a brief tenure in New York, Fredette returned to Chicago and felt underwhelmed by the city’s lack of ambient options that also broke from constrictions of the current scene. Newly inspired, Fredette created a night of her own.
Besides operating outside of the DIY hemisphere, Milk Pleasures is dedicated to creating a diverse, inclusive atmosphere for guests. “I don’t totally want to say the scene has been totally co-opted by white sides, but that’s the people in charge, that’s the people at the DIY spots, that’s the people doing the booking,” she offered. The goal of a more diverse and inclusive environment, which should be universal for any music scene, has only recently garnered large-scale favor with event promoters in more mainstream venues (Chances Dances, which recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, is a notable exception.).
She chose the Whistler because of the numerous opportunities and meanings it held. “I felt like it was the one bar that no matter what kind of subculture you exist in, you go there,” she said. “Goths go there. Punks go there. Weirdo neighborhood types go there.”
This latest iteration of the party will include a performance by Ganser, a Chicago-based post punk band led by two women, one of whom is of color. The group makes snarly, captivating music that washes the listener in layers of guitar. It is pleasurable, if not familiar work that sounds pulled out of the genius and drive of the ’80s. The group, Fredette says, fits her goals in creating the party. “I just wanted a way to bring out other people who are being ignored or not represented because they are women or they’re people of color or they’re trans people,” she said. “That’s a part of my life and that’s a part of my ethics.”
And like every party Fredette throws, Milk Pleasures will transform the Whistler into a safe, visually captivating space. Fredette favors the power of aesthetics, the ways in which the things we see and touch can create and support alternative narratives of comfort and joy. “I organize my world by the way things work and the way they are presented,” she said. Music has the power to not only fascinate but also thrill the listener.
For someone like Fredette, who frequently writes about music for publications such as Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, music also has the possibility of building new worlds, ones that she can visualize with ease upon each new spin.
“I decided to start my night with the intention to play the kind of music that I really like but do it in a way that was diverse and represented a much richer fabric of what this music is about,” Fredette added. And in her vision of the ambient sounds that unify Milk Pleasures, she sees an open and welcoming place filled with beauty and ease. With each month, she gets closer to making that ideal a complete reality.
Britt Julious is a freelancer.
Twitter @chitribent
When: 9 p.m. Sunday
Where: The Whistler, 2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Tickets: Free (21+); www.whistlerchicago.com