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Future Rootz teams up to reissue a rare album of trippy 70s Afro-Cuban funk

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 […]

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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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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.” […]

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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 […]

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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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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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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 […]

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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 […]