Last week, Chicago Latinx artist collective and label Future Rootz teamed up with Toronto counterpart Canal Sounds to reissue Yoyi, a trippy Afro-Cuban album that Cuban multi-instrumentalist Jorge Soler León released under the name Grupo los Yoyi in 1977. Yoyi originally came out on the Areito imprint of EGREM, which for decades was Cuba’s only […]
Author Archives: Leor Galil
Posted inMusic
Scottish hip-hop group Young Fathers embrace their light on Heavy Heavy
Update Tue 9/27: Young Fathers have postponed this show till April 11, 2024. The new date is also at the Vic, and all tickets already bought will be honored or refunded. For about a decade, Scottish trio Young Fathers have been releasing subterranean-sounding experimental hip-hop songs whose strange arrangements combine brawny percussion, squeaky synths, polyphonic […]
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Shoegaze pioneers Slowdive drop a new album just in time for the colder days ahead
I realize I’m in the minority when I say I love the days when autumn bleeds into winter. I love the crisp air that descends with the first seasonal chill; I love the smell of trees shedding the last of their leaves; I love that it all reminds me to embrace the warmth of cozy […]
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How do Delaney Bailey’s intimate songs speak to you?
The earliest Spotify track uploaded by Indiana-raised singer-songwriter Delaney Bailey is the gentle 2020 song “Loving & Losing,” whose delicate, cycling acoustic guitar melody sounds like wind chimes in the breeze. Before the official release of the song, Bailey uploaded a TikTok video where she performs part of it in a dim, cluttered room. Lyrics […]
Posted inChicagoans of Note
Josh Horton, music videographer
I discovered the work of videographer Josh Horton through local music-media outlet Real Ones, which began as a podcast in 2020 and evolved to produce concerts and shoot interviews with local and national artists. Horton has shot Real Ones interviews at several festivals. He immersed himself in Chicago’s overlapping hip-hop and R&B scenes after graduating […]
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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2023
In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
Hammered dulcimer player Joel Styzens celebrates a lushly orchestrated new solo album
Gossip Wolf first became acquainted with multi-instrumentalist Joel Styzens via his remarkable hammered dulcimer playing on the Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble album III, which Reader writer Bill Meyer praised in May for its attempts at “musical transcendence.” As you might expect from that record’s shimmering acoustic textures and accessible melodies, Styzens’s own compositions play out across […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
House veteran Craig Loftis needs help to keep the music going at the Lodge
In late August, veteran Chicago house DJ and organizer Craig Loftis launched a GoFundMe to try to save the Great Lakes Elks Lodge in Washington Park from closure. Loftis says the building is more than 100 years old, and that the Elks have occupied it for 86 years. He also runs an underground house club […]
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Dead Lucid suture together postpunk and psych rock into tantalizing freak-outs
Chicago rock trio Dead Lucid self-released their debut, titled simply EP, in 2016, and since then they’ve tightened up their bedraggled, bluesy psych-rock style by borrowing from classic postpunk. On their self-released third EP, May’s Vision, they summon an austere composure to compress their former fuzz and fury into newly sparse arrangements. The EP’s best […]
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DJ Deeon brought the Low End to the world
In the mid- and late 1980s, Deeon Boyd built a reputation as one of the best DJs in Chicago’s Low End. He lived in Stateway Gardens in Bronzeville, and he’d spin records in the projects. “He liked playing music for people,” says Tranz, a hip-hop producer from the Low End. “He would set up outside […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
Jazz pianist Pat Leary celebrates a sleek, bustling electric trio album
Pianist Pat Leary has played in so many local ensembles it’d be easy to lose count. These days he tickles the ivories in Latin R&B band Partywatcher and indie country outfit Thompson Springs, accompanies jazz singer Livia Gazzolo, and improvises in free-jazz quartet Heuristic with saxophonist and flutist Eric Novak, bassist Jeff Wheaton, and drummer […]
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Precocious Neophyte’s home-recorded dream pop sounds bigger than the sky
Update: Precocious Neophyte have canceled this September appearance. The band’s next scheduled show is Mon 10/2 at Cafe Mustache in support of Jyonson Tsu, current vocalist for Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO. By 2021, I knew every dusty corner of my two-bedroom apartment so well—and my world during that stage of the […]
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The Trenchies will make you believe in indie rock’s future
Chicago four-piece the Trenchies combine self-aware bookishness with carefully controlled energy, which work together to give their whimsical indie rock its irresistible momentum—their songs can make you feel like your day is filled with unforeseen possibilities. On their self-released debut EP, March’s You Are Listening To, the Trenchies juggle goofy funk (“Talk Show”), slacker pop […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
Dave Rempis steps away from Elastic Arts after more than 20 years of service
For more than two decades, saxophonist Dave Rempis has been a key community builder in the improvised-music scene, both locally and internationally, working behind the scenes as well as onstage. He’s made incalculable contributions during his long association with Chicago nonprofit Elastic Arts: since 2002 he’s booked its Thursday-night Improvised Music Series, and he’s served […]
Posted inMusic
ARC Music Festival’s dance extravaganza is a hell of a way to send off summer
By halfway through the summer, I’m reliably burned out on music festivals, and lots of them I wouldn’t attend even if I were still in tip-top shape. So you know that a festival is special if I’m willing to tell you to spend one of your dwindling number of precious summer weekends paying to hang […]