Azita

Azita (born Azita Youssefi in 1971) is an experimental musician and artist from Chicago. She is usually associated with the Chicago now-wave scene, which included bands like the Flying Luttenbachers, U.S. Maple and Bobby Conn.

Born in the U.S. to Iranian parents, she spent part of her childhood in Iran and was attending grade school in Tehran when the Iranian revolution began in late 1978. Her family moved back to the United States soon after, and in the late 1980s, Azita began studying art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Disillusioned with the visual arts as a medium for expression, she turned to performance art and sound, and in 1991, formed the Scissor Girls. The Scissor Girls broke up in late 1996, but playing bass in the acclaimed, spastic noise-rock group was not the only thing Azita was up to during the first half of the 1990s. Well known in the Chicago music scene for her surreal, otherworldly costumes, Azita could be found with her head stuck in the bass drum of bands like Shellac while doing sound at the now-defunct Chicago rock club called the Fireside Bowl.

In late 1995, Azita played synthesizer for a short-lived Weasel Walter/Jim O'Rourke project Miss High-Heel. During the same year, she self-released her first solo work "Music for Scattered Brains" on vinyl.

Bride of No-No was another Azita project known for extreme theatrics, with band members disguising themselves onstage in what has been described as mummy-like burkhas. [ [http://www.chicagoreader.com/hitsville/000804.html Armstrong, Liz. "Here Comes the Bride." Chicago Reader, August 4, 2000.] ]

While she was in Bride of No-No, Azita returned to her child-hood instrument, the piano, and wrote what would eventually be released under her own name: "Enantiodromia", in 2003, and "Life on the Fly"(2004). Descriptions of this release varied, from comparisons with Steely Dan [ [http://www.chicagoreader.com/hitsville/030307.html Margasak, Peter. "There Goes the Bride/Postscripts." Chicago Reader, March 7, 2003.] ] to comparisons with "a bad Rod Stewart album from the early 80's", the switch from atonal noise rock surprised many listeners who were more familiar with the atonal noise rock of her earlier work.

Discography

AZ
* Music for Scattered Brains (CD, Atavistic, 1997; LP, SG Research, 1995)Scissor Girls
* We People Space With Phantoms (LP/CD, Atavistic, 1995)
* Here is the "Is-Not" (CD, Atavistic, 1997)Bride of No-No
* B.O.N.N. Apetit! (LP/CD, Atavistic, 2000)
* II (LP/CD, Atavistic, 2003)Azita
* Enantiodromia (LP/CD, Drag City, 2003)
* Life on the Fly (LP/CD, Drag City, 2004)
* Detail From the Mountain Side (CD, Drag City, 2006)

Art

* Cover art on To Live and Shave in L.A.'s "Ride a Cock Over Horse" 7" (Menlo Park Recordings, 1996)
* Artwork for the LP/CD "Music for Scattered Brains - AZ"

References