Author: Calder Sell

Two days after the midterm elections, two Chicago-based multi-instrumentalists Nnamdi Ogbonnaya and Sen Morimoto will be arriving in Madison to share their latest musical creations. If the elections go your way, it's time for you to get funky and weird. If the elections don't go your way, it's still time to get funky and weird. Both artists are emerging from a Chicago scene that seems to continuously generate new acts that propel genres forward into unchartered realms. Each artist is also rising from a life of many instruments and many bands into a more focused solo career. The two members of the sooper Tour will play at High Noon Saloon November 8th.

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya has played so many instruments and has been in so many different bands that it is hard to keep track of. Some of the acts he has been affiliated with in the past include Itto, Teen Cult, Nervous Passenger, and The Para-medics Pisces at the Animal Fair. Now Ogbonnaya has focused his talents on his solo projects as well as playing the drums for the band Monobody who just put out their latest album, Raytracing on November 1st. Perhaps the best way to describe Ogbonnaya's work is avant pop where he utilizes elements of popular music while also doing something completely weird and experimental to those elements. Then again, Ogbonnaya's Facebook account may have done better: goonish. Ogbonnaya's buzz as a solo artist took off after his 2017 album, Drool, featuring one Sen Morimoto on the opening track, “Cindy oso”.

Another artist coming from an eclectic background of bands and instruments, Sen Morimoto's latest solo work, Cannonball!, deals with combining his jazz saxophone into the style of hip hop. Morimoto was born in Kyoto, Japan, grew up in Massachusetts, and finally arrived in Chicago in 2014 where he has recorded on Ogbonnaya's label, Sooper Records. The Thursday show should be a “Sooper” fun mix of funky, jazzy, eccentric, odd, hip hoppy sounds. These two are an act you are going to want to experience for yourself.