Doors: 9PM / Show: 10PM / 21+  Chris Sutter is a Chicago music lifer. Over the past two decades, you could walk into a venue and see him screaming his lungs out over jagged guitar riffs with Meat Wave or Truman & His Trophy; he'd occasionally even step into friends’ bands just for kicks. When he’s not on stage, you’re just as likely to spot him working at the Empty Bottle, absorbing influence by osmosis from the club’s storied walls. It’s why after decades spent playing in bands with distinct points-of-view, Sutter wanted to see what would happen if he wrote music without any goal other than to see where the songs would take him.  The genesis of Mass Text had been percolating for years until, in 2024, Sutter posted a pair of songs to Bandcamp and gave his nebulous project a formal introduction. Since then, Sutter has played shows where Mass Text was a full band, and also toured Europe opening for Dehd with just himself and a sequencer. While Mass Text is a solo project, it’s also a collective, pulling pieces of the people in Sutter’s orbit and crafting them into Perfect New Knife, the debut Mass Text album.  “It’s been ever-changing the way that the music has come about, and even the vibe of the project,” says Sutter. “I think I spent a lot of time toiling over what Mass Text even is though, through working on stuff, and just being excited about it all, it became clear that it has to be everything; everything that I’m thinking and feeling. The only throughline is that I’m making it.”      Omni began as a way for Philip Frobos (bass + vocals) and Frankie Broyles (guitars + drums + keys) to practice creative spontaneity in contrast to the slower meticulous methods their then other bands employed. One fateful night in 2013, the then-roommates devised an Eno-inspired creative game: Would it be possible to write an entire song (arrangement + lyrics, etc.) all in one three hour night session? Whereas most bands begin sculpting a riff or progression brought in by one member, Omni revelled at the chance to begin each songwriting session with a true tabula rosa with no goal in mind except trusting the process. These sessions often began with a melodic bass line that was then quickly complemented by syncopated pointillist guitar (Frankie almost never voices full chords on guitar in Omni). Philip would then retreat to a quiet area to write lyrics as quickly as possible while Frankie worked on writing and recording the drum parts. Seeking the definitive by chance, any accidents that happened in the takes became baked into the song’s arrangements; An extra measure here or resting a beat too long there forced the band to come up with creative musical solutions.