April 12, 2013

Friday night live at Transistor: New Missionaries, Charlie Crane and Airline-X. Sound by Jon Monteverde. Color photos by Brooke Sprague. Black & white photos and video by Robert Medich.

New Missionaries formed in the fall of 2012, the night that Randi Russo, a recent transplant from New York, performed live at Transistor Chicago, the gallery/shop/performance space owned by drummer Andy Miles. Andy was so impressed by Randi’s solo set he offered to be her drummer and put the rest of a band together.  Charlie Crane (Airline-X, Feature Flick) joined the following week on lead guitar.  Eric Gannon was added on bass in 2013.

Also available: a previous Randi Russo Transistor performance from October 5, 2012.

Also check out the New Missionaries’ Transistor Session.

Charlie Crane is a multi-instrumentalist who has lent his talents to such diverse projects as The Dyes, Airline-X, Psychic Pilot, The Loudness War and The Unswept. His latest solo release, Loanwords, features 15 songs named after German vocabulary words but also functions as “a loose concept album about the post-collegiate, pre-professional trials and tribulations of folks in their early 20s,’ according to Charlie himself. He has a B.A. in Audio Arts & Acoustics from Columbia College Chicago.

Bringing the New back to New Wave, the sickness from Joy Division and The Cure, the angst from Blonde Redhead and Sonic Youth, Airline-X hail from Chicago and have already taken the city by the pants. Well, Lauren has anyway – quite a rep on that girl. The rest of the guys, well, they just make ‘em dance.

Formed in the summer of 2008, Airline-X played their first gig in early 2009. After an almost two-year hiatus, the band re-formed in 2012.