DA WEI WANG
Projects
For as long as the lifespan of some of Ono’s fans, Da Wei has proudly offered guitar services to this legendary Chicago institution. Launched in 1980, Ono lays a foundation of transgressive urban cacophony. The vocalist, travis travis, croons a dieesis of America’s history of institutionalized racism and violence.
über-legendary Chicago avant-everything cult freakazoids ONO are one of those radical groups who’ve earned that tag as “one of the most influential bands you’ve never heard of.”
— By Brad Cohan, Village Voice
Read more about Ono in the Comp Magazine feature.
American Dreams Records
Vinyl & CD Album
May 2020
It’s been “Red Summer” for over a hundred years. While the term “Red Summer” typically refers to the race-driven violence in the Summer of 1919 across the United States, its repercussions, its vocabulary can be felt or heard on every corner of every street. In Chicago, it has a special significance, as Chicago was one of two catalysts for that era’s violence, exploded by invisible racial borders along the South Side, a phenomenon that exists today, constantly considered by long-running gospel industrial band ONO.
This experimental free improv band from Chicago is composed of Asian Improv Records alumn, Jeff Chan on saxophone, rhythm extraordinaire Jerome Bryerton on drums, and Da Wei on guitar. Explosive as the Big Bang and magnetic to quantum minds. The Tentacles conjure lines of force that multiply, coalesce, then implode into manifold intersecting fragments.
Balance Point Acoustics
CD Album
September 2022
An excerpt from the liner notes of Preserves: “Sights and sounds move from place to place with promiscuous gesture. Ships, airplanes, and churning whirlpools appeal more to mechanical economies than street feet sharing pulse rate interiorities. The people twist on metric rails. Oxygen converters reflect swinging diatonics. Blackouts resound. Triggers blackout pots, pans, tin cans, and appropriate Lydian roots, talking tanks, and time-sliced wildlife.”
— travis, co-founder of Chicago’s venerable noise/rock/punk band, Ono
This project is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
This project is partially supported by an Individual Artists Program grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
Gleaming Shard brings together a duo of hardened, scar-ravaged veterans from the fringe Chicago music scene – Da Wei Wang (prepared guitars) and Jerome Bryerton (gongs, cymbals). The duo does not perform music. Rather, it sculpts an ambient environment by weaving a moving network of harmonies, microtones and polyrhythms. It molds a palpable space with the vibrations and particles that zigzag throughout the world. As light speeds through epic distances, away from the singular origins of the Universe, so the duo’s music evolves gradually over the eons, if it perceptibly develops at all.
Balance Point Acoustics
CD Album
2024
This album is inspired by the harmonies of Earth’s timeless processes. The planet’s magnetosphere hums with no end, no beginning. Countless solar particles travel epic distances to collide with this charged atmosphere, crackling and sputtering. The clash of ionizing electrons sounds like waves of shattered glass falling into a vast ocean.
This project is made possible through the generous support of an Individual Artists Program Grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.