II. HEALTH&BEAUTY is the moniker of Brian J. Sulpizio. Hailing rom Chicago’s Near-Northwest Side, Brian is equal parts jazz drummer and rock n’ roll guitarist. Health&Beauty began in 2004, and has since had approximately a dozen collaborators across two albums. When Health&Beauty joined us for our October Residency at the now-defunct Abbey Lounge in 2008, the trio featured Sulpizio on guitar, Nick Morrison on bass, and Dan Slakel on the upturned buckets. It is that constant upheaval and revision that makes Health&Beauty what it is. “Too Boring,” for example, was recorded with several layers of percussion. When the trio went on tour last October, Morrison echoed the recorded sounds by draping a cloth over the strings of his bass and scratching them with a butterknife. They evoke the frenetic, transcendental angst of Sonny Sharrock, the deliberate and variant sharp noise of Derek Bailey, a nasty low-down and dirty blues-rock something between Hendrix and, for lack of a sonic comparison, Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia.

The two albums, It Was Almost Certainly a Small Child, and the forthcoming The Cottonwood Leaf, Fallen, Likens to a Rat Having Died were both recorded and produced by Sulpizio at his Chicago-based studio, The Chateau, which exists to provide exceptional high-fidelity recording and mixing to creative projects lacking the financial means to pursue recording in the high-end studios. Outside of his musical pursuits, Brian can be found working at this stupid job or that. He wears jeans to work when his boss is out.