If you were to classify a label that releases improvisational jazz and experimental music in limited runs of 100 CD-Rs as one that lives on the margins of obscurity, you’d be right on. But when Brian Labycz began the Peira label in 2007, he wasn’t focused on the masses—he just wanted to release a duo album he’d recorded with bassist Jason Roebke.
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Labycz, 34, had wedged himself into Chicago’s improv community upon his return from a stint in Japan in 2003, where he lived for four years. When he first started performing in the late 90s he was a laptopper interested in processing field recordings. But once he became acquainted with members of the eventual jazz and improv collective Umbrella Music—by hanging out at Heaven Gallery and attending the Empty Bottle’s now-defunct Wednesday jazz series, he tweaked his setup and created his own interface. He first built a custom midi controller but now plays a modular synth.
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“The jazz guys think I’m a noise guy and the noise guys think I’m a jazz guy. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good noise show, but I definitely enjoy playing with the acoustic guys. It’s more challenging.”
“The last time I played [experimental/noise venue] Enemy with Mythic Birds, there was this guy from Texas, and he was just blown away that there was a group with three bass clarinets and a synthesizer,” Labycz recalls. “He told me that this was like his dream band but that he would never be able to assemble it back home. It would be too hard to find three bass clarinetists, let alone ones willing to play more abstract. Chicago has a collaborative spirit in everything.”
