Critic’s Choice - Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader 6/25/09 Critic’s Choice - Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader 6/25/09 - “As one of the guitarists in Bardo Pond, Michael Gibbons helps make some of the heaviest psychedelic rock going.

His solo music as 500mg, however, while nothing I’d call lightweight, achieves escape velocity with ease by shedding the baggage of rock ’n’ roll in favor of a seriously bent vision of folk. On his 2007 album Apocatastisis (Three Lobed) echo-laden sitar and hand drums do a wobbly dance (“Exegesis”) and maniacally sawed fiddle chases down microphone feedback (“Chapel Perilous”); on 2004’s Vertical Approach (Galactic Zoo Disk/Eclipse) rustic jaw harp and ill-tuned shortwave radio usher in the pensive guitar raga “Miserable Miracle.”

On the latest 500mg release, the 2008 live album Another Order of Existence (Archive), Gibbons plays an acoustic guitar, but he treats it with so much distortion that it sounds like something from Neil Young’s soundtrack to Dead Man.

At tonight’s event, a release party for the eighth issue of Galactic Zoo Dossier, he shares the bill with a rare screening of No Deposit No Return Blues, an affectionate and deeply musical film portrait of visionary 60s guitarist Sandy Bull. The film screens first, followed by Ultimate Vag, 500mg, and headliners DRMWPN. Drag City DJs spin between sets.


Schedule
8p - Film "No Deposit No Return Blues"
9p - Ultimate Vag
9:45p - Drag City DJs
10p - 500MG
1045p - Drag City DJs
11p - DRMWPN