Brent Gutzeit and T.V. Pow

TV Pow are Chicago's electronic musicians Brent Gutzeit, Michael Hartman and Todd Carter. Carter and Gutzeit with Doug Lussenhop had been members since 1997 of the drone project Medium.

TV Pow's albums, influenced by Japanese noise-core (where both Gutzeit and Hartman used to live), include: Away Team (Box Media, 1998), recorded in may 1997 and containing four suites (First Jump Viewmaster in Tow, An Open Call for a Bike Ride, This Detroit Simulation Inaudible, An Orange Lake, Still Orangeing, the last one with two guitarists), We Are Everyone In The Room (Erstwhile, 2001), Being Nice Is Funny (Staalplaat, 2001), the 20-minute mini-album Despite Ourselves (Fire Inc, 2002), offer atonal and chaotic electronic music. Television Power Electric (Gentle Giant, 1999) and Television Power Electric 2 (2000) featured an expanded line-up, and consisted of improvisations later manipulated in the studio. Power Friends and Devoted Lovers (2004) and Burned Bridges and Lost Loves (2005) were remix albums. Other TV Pow albums include: Friendship Patrol (Not For Profit), a sequence of 69 microscopic pieces, and America Says Farwell (En Of), that featured the electric koto.

Tv Pow's mastermind Brent Gutzeit collaborated with James Plotkin on Mosquito Dream (Kranky, 1999), and launched the project Wheaton Research with Living Under a Thin Film (Bake, 2000). Gutzeit's first solo album was Losing Every Day (Kissy, 2003), a collage of field recordings and ambient drones.

The three lengthy instrumental tracks of Drug Money (Kranky, 2004) simply refine Gutzeit's aesthetics. The 14-minute collage Piano Motor Skills #2 opens amid a menacing magma that gets more sinister as soon as bells are heard in the distance, and then closer and closer. The ghostly vision disappears in an "om"-like cosmic drone that gets thicker and thicker, like a supernova explosion as it is being focused by a telescope, which then slowly clears up and spreads out, revealing the magnitude of emptiness in the cosmos. The overall effect is not unlike Lightwave's electronic music. At 22 minutes, Riding Horses is a less cinematic, more static, piece, that takes a bass tone and slowly modifies it, indirectly emphasizing the psychological qualities of sound. Slowly, the rumble evolves and grows, like an organic species observed at a microscope. This is very slowly, delicate ambient music a` la Harold Budd. 400 Blows, just a bit shorter, is also rather indulgent: the long long tone goes nowhere. Ultimately, the album relies only on the first track to mesmerize the listener.

Everyoned (Brillante, 2004) is a chamber-jazz supergroup formed by Brent Gutzeit, Tim Kinsella of Joan Of Arc, Liz Payne and Ben Vida of Town And Country, Chris Connelly.

TV Pow's Presents (2006) was an album of jazztronica that blended laptop and piano, with the trio (Todd Carter, Brent Cutzeit and Michael Hartman) playing both acoustic and electronic instruments.

TV Pow later released: Gas Money (2008), The Personal Touch (2011), a collaboration with Chicago's quartet The M's, Theatre Poo (2015), containing the 32-minute Theatre Poo Quartet (Brent Gutzeit, Michael Hartman, Thomas Deater, Todd Carter) the 46-minute Theatre Poo Duo (Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman), 912 (2015), containing a 56-minute piece, Escape From Autoworld (2015), which contains the 40-minute Karaoke Strategies, TV Pow (2016), Watch Like Nobody's Dancing (2018), etc.

Gutzeit released a lot of solo music, like the 70-minute pieces of Shoem (2015) and Toska (2015), and the solo albums Sisyphus Resting (2016) and Pop Music (2018), besides a collaboration with Kevin Drumm , Roby's Residue (2021).

Hartmann released the solo albums Emi Semi Umi (2002) and The Noise Album (2007).

Carter was also active in Lemme In Masha, which released Lightening Telegrams (2018).

Todd Carter and Brent Gutzeit also formed the Sun Ra-inspired Galactic Unity Ensemble that recorded We Have Always Been Here (2017), with Adam Vida of U.S. Maple, Tim Kinsella of Joan Of Arc, jazz trumpeter Jaimie Branch, jazz percussionist Michael Zerang, and others. Meditation Too (8:10) evokes Buddhist temples. The Beginning/End Of Space/Time (12:12) is mostly an experiment in percussive sounds. Multihuman (16:42) is the highlight: a seamless fusion of minimalism, free-jazz and acid-rock.