COLLECTIVE
Artists of the Chair Company
Lawton Hall
Lawton Hall is a composer and the head engineer at Chair Company. His concert music has been performed internationally and he has produced music for ad campaigns for major regional brands. He regularly collaborates with filmmakers and other artists. Lawton co-founded Chair Company with Nathaniel Heuer (of Hello Death) in 2016.
Hello Death
Hello Death is a Milwaukee band. Their deliberate execution of strong writing, challenging harmonies and folk instrumentation make for a symphonic quality voiced with a minimalist approach.
Their full-length self-titled debut album was recorded at April Base Studios in March of 2012. It was engineered by Jaime Hansen, produced by Daniel Spack and Nathaniel Heuer, Mastered by Jeff Lipton and released on June 14th, 2013.
Samba da Vida
All-ages Brazilian Samba troupe playing music from Rio, Sao Paulo and Salvador, Bahia is featured in parades and performances throughout Greater Milwaukee. Led by educator and percussionist Julio Pabon.
Marielle Allschwang & The Visitations
Marielle Allschwang is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. After a solo performance in Milwaukee, she was swept up by a band-caravan called Group of the Altos, from which Hello Death also formed. A few years later, she started reworking old songs and writing new ones with fellow-Alto, Adam Krause. What began as an exploration of meticulously-composed guitar counterpoint melodies became, with the lyrics Marielle was inevitably impelled to set to these foundations, Marielle Allschwang & The Visitations. MA&V has performed in a number of iterations: sometimes Marielle plays alone; sometimes the generative seed of the band—Marielle & Adam—perform as a duo; sometimes she tours with a power trio; but all of the Visitations together are a force.
Released on cassette on Gloss Records in 2015, Allschwang’s debut album, Dead Not Done, was featured on year-end “Best of” lists by Milwaukee Record, Shepherd Express, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and lauded for its “Lynchian beauty and grace” (Milwaukee Record). Dead Not Done soon found its way onto vinyl, which was released in December 2016 along with the video for “Aquarium” (dir. Heather Hass). “Aquarium” will be featured in the 2017 Milwaukee Film Festival. Marielle Allschwang & The Visitations' forthcoming album was recorded at The Chair Company in July 2017.
Rose of the West
Based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Gina Barrington of Rose of the West entwines her home’s roots and the hardy, perseverant work ethic of her fellow Midwesterners to bind together a beautiful-but-structured, glossy-but-substantial and temperate-but-temperamental style of pop, following the cues of her home’s famously-infamous seasonal changes. Driving those currents are frosty synths, translucent sunbeams of guitar and piano, nimble, verdant bass lines and a tempestuous, gutsy kick from clear-cut percussion and Barrington’s articulately crystalline-but-sultry vocals. Cool versus bright. Warmth versus ice. This juxtaposition comes from a life-long magnetism to that cool-versus-bright sound.