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 […]
Author Archives: Monica Kendrick
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Chicago metal explorers Yakuza return with Sutra, their first album in more than a decade
Has it really been more than a decade since Yakuza released an album? Yes it has, and I’m probably not the only Chicago metal fan who feels old about it. When the avant-garde metal outfit first sidled onto the local scene in 1999, they threw down a gauntlet: clarinet and saxophone weren’t often thought of […]
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Dorthia Cottrell explores the horror and comfort of death on Death Folk Country
Singer-songwriter Dorthia Cottrell hails from King George, Virginia, a rural town about an hour and a half from Washington, D.C. Best known as front woman of underrated Richmond doom-metal band Windhand, Cottrell also makes solo recordings that recall the beauty and terror of the music of her youth—the folk songs she heard with family as […]
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Acid King return to form with the powerful Beyond Vision
Acid King’s new full-length, Beyond Vision (Blues Funeral), wasn’t originally intended to be an Acid King record at all. As lead guitarist, front woman, and sole permanent member Lori S. (aka Lori Joseph) told Guitar World magazine in a February interview, she meant to make an experimental collaborative album with guitarist Jason Landrian of Black […]
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Kora master Sona Jobarteh channels traditional Gambian music through a modern mindset
Sona Jobarteh was born in London to a family of Gambian griots, musicians and storytellers who maintain the oral tradition that keeps the histories of their people alive. Jobarteh’s family is one of five in West Africa associated with the kora, an instrument that combines features of a harp and a lute, with a large […]
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Chicago metal explorers Arriver get personal on Azimuth
Genre-bending Chicago metal quartet Arriver formed in 2006 with a lineup that had plenty of experience with a varied tonal palette: Dan Sullivan and Rob Sullivan contributed to Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co., while Dan McAdam and Joe Kaplan had played in Viza-Noir. The group are known for concept albums with historical subjects; 2012’s […]
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Chicago band Anatomy of Habit explore dark moods on Black Openings
UPDATE as of Sat 2/11/2023, 5:00 PM: Anatomy of Habit had to drop off the bill for tonight’s Cobra Lounge show due to illness, but will reschedule sometime in the future. Kill Scenes and Twice Dark will still be performing. Refunds are available at point of purchase. Chicago band Anatomy of Habit have been around […]
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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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Chris Connelly captures Nico’s good side on a sprawling new tribute album
Chicago singer-songwriter Chris Connelly regularly releases an album of new material on his November birthday. For his latest record, Eulogy to Christa: A Tribute to the Music and Mystique of Nico, he hit that annual deadline with the digital version on Bandcamp, but the physical edition (a deluxe double CD) didn’t ship till early December. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]