Posted inMusic

Futuristic indie-rock juggernaut Brainiac celebrate their legacy with two Chicago reunion shows

The story of Brainiac still haunts Ohio indie-rock fans and appreciators of deliriously weird electronic rock and pop. This Dayton band—who loved to annoy zine editors by styling their name 3RA1N1AC—formed in 1992 and released three brilliant, ever-surprising albums that made them feel like a harbinger of subversive, futuristic rock to come. By the time […]

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Alash bring traditional Tuvan throat singing to the Old Town School

Alash are a Tuvan trio of singers and multi-instrumentalists Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam, and Ayan Shirizhik. Founded in 2005, the group perform khoomei, also known as Tuvan throat singing, a traditional vocal style practiced in Tuva, Mongolia, and Siberia, in which singers manipulate their mouths and throats to layer overtones over a fundamental pitch, often […]

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Louisville metal outfit Volcandra finds escapism through video games on Border World

Louisville melodic black-metal quintet Volcandra announced their arrival in style in the winter of 2020 with a striking debut, Into the Azure. Brimming with versatility and creative energy, the record blended some of the best elements of Scandinavian and American black metal with a progressive lightness of being that gave a certain radiance to their […]

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Chicago’s Black Cross Hotel hex us with their postpunk- and horror-inspired debut

One of the few silver linings of the pandemic shutting down the entire concert industry for a prolonged stretch was that it occasionally prompted longtime musician friends to collaborate in projects they might not have had time for otherwise. Sometimes the results sound so natural—as they do in local rock powerhouse Black Cross Hotel—that it […]

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Jordan Reyes explores Zen at the release show for his album Everything Is Always

Experimental musician Jordan Reyes has dipped his fingers into many genres. His early works display his devotion to the modular synth, but he’s increasingly branched out in unpredictable directions, like flood waters overflowing a creek. The Chicago-based musician (and occasional Reader contributor) delved into dark ambient on 2020’s Fairchild Soundtrack + Border Land (a score […]

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Swedish power-metal titans Sabaton continue to explore the Great War

Founded in 1999, Swedish power-metal veterans Sabaton cast a microscopic gaze on the horrors of war with a sweeping, majestic, and anthemic sound that walks the line between empathizing with humans on the battlefield and glorifying the unglorifiable. Their records deliver poetic lessons in military history (usually European), and though they aim to stay as […]

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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022

The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too.  Americans don’t […]

Posted inConcert Preview

Guitarist Yonatan Gat and the Eastern Medicine Singers combine avant-garde jazz and rock with Native American music

UPDATE: As of Sunday 10/2/2022, the Medicine Singers and Yonatan Gat concert scheduled for the Empty Bottle has been canceled. Contact ticket point of purchase for refund information. The Eastern Medicine Singers are a traditional Algonquin drum and vocal group based in Rhode Island. They sing mostly in several Algonquian languages, some of which are […]