It’s a common refrain in the city: Chicago summer is so worth the wait. Newbies and transplants can feel the buzz of opportunity in the air when the weather starts to turn. Visceral summer memories fuel locals through even the coldest, darkest months. And many of those memories involve food and drink—cookouts, summer cocktails, farmers’ […]
Author Archives: Philip Montoro
Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid, and he’s also split two national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and one in in 2020 for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. Philip has played scrap metal in Lozenge, drummed with the Disasters, the Afflictions, and Brilliant Pebbles, and sung for the White Outs. He wrote the column Beer and Metal from 2012 till 2015, and hopes to do so again one day. You can also follow him on Twitter.
Posted inMusic
Samantha Jordan, aka Austin-based rapper and activist FURY
Chicago native and Austin resident Samantha Jordan, 33, has been rapping as FURY since 2015, with a sound that emphasizes live-band instrumentation and politically conscious lyrics. Her community activism focuses on housing justice, and until recently she worked in rental assistance for Oak Park Regional Housing. In January 2022, her proposal for renovations to Columbus […]
Posted inMusic
Third Coast Percussion rebuild Jlin’s experimental footwork by hand
I love Third Coast Percussion—I ranked their 2018 release Paddle to the Sea number one on my list of the best Chicago albums of the 2010s—and I’m a big fan of Jlin. So when I heard that TCP had commissioned music from my favorite experimental footwork producer, I started counting down the days till they’d […]
Posted inMusic
Celia Rose, cofounder of music agency What Up Pitches
Celia Rose is one of the three founders of What Up Pitches, a music agency that combines a production house and a sync-licensing operation. Her colleagues, Mariela Arredondo and Pei Pei Chung, are both based in Los Angeles, but Rose lives here in Lincoln Square. They launched What Up Pitches a little over two years […]
Posted inMusic
Meshuggah grind deeper into the tunnel that only they can dig
Meshuggah have developed an approach to progressive death metal so distinctive and compelling that it’s spawned an entire subgenre of imitators. And right from its title, the Swedish band’s ninth album, Immutable, announces that it won’t try to fix what isn’t broken. The elements Meshuggah have made familiar over the past three decades are all […]
Posted inMusic
Raja Kirik refit a subversive Javanese trance tradition for modern uprisings
When my colleague Leor Galil looked back on 2021, he said he’d listened to 750 new-to-him releases that year. I won’t pretend to be in his league, but in 2021 I did have a clear favorite album—not a common thing for me—and I figure it’s never too late to share. The duo Raja Kirik, based […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best Thai food for the money
Talard Thai Asian Market (5353 N. Broadway) opened in fall 2019, and in summer 2020 it launched a cash-only hot bar in the back of the store. Like the similar hot bar at Immm Rice & Beyond, it approximates the cheap but reliable offerings of the classic Thai rice-curry shop, glorified in the West as […]
Posted inMusic
Sending love letters from Saba’s future
“Saba’s releases are such special moments for Chicago and the west side,” Reader contributor Tara C. Mahadevan posted to Twitter this week. His previous album, 2018’s Care for Me, claimed the top spot when we polled 57 local critics about their ten favorite Chicago records of the 2010s—and Saba has three releases among the 338 […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A note on this week’s cover
I left the workshop inspired, not just by the conservators’ exhaustive attention to detail but also by the musical machines in their care.
Posted inMusic
Making music immortal
“There’s a satisfaction in knowing that our work will survive us by generations. That’s something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.” Pipe organ conservator Jeff Weiler, 62, founded what became JL Weiler, Inc. in 1983. The company’s workshop near 18th and Canal employs ten people, who work to restore, […]
Posted inMusic
Kampala-based producer Slikback soundtracks the death algorithm
On Tuesday, September 14, my friend James Kennedy publishes his second novel, a sci-fi thriller called Dare to Know. (His first, the YA fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish, was reviewed in the Reader in 2008.) I’m not going to attempt to rate the new book, because I’ve destroyed my credibility on that front by admitting […]
Posted inMusic
Third Coast Percussion evolves along with the pandemic
Reba Cafarelli is managing director for Third Coast Percussion, working primarily in booking, marketing, and day-to-day operations. The ensemble is incorporated as a nonprofit, and it has a board of directors and three full-time employees in addition to its four members. In May 2022 Third Coast Percussion plans to release its next album, which will […]
Posted inMusic
Dana Hall, jazz drummer and educator
“Being in the room and feeling the heartbeat of the people that you’re with, that’s really a large part of what makes the music what it is.”
Posted inMusic
Flowers for an unsung casualty of the post-Nirvana feeding frenzy
Steel Pole Bath Tub made lurid, thrilling, messy noise rock that didn’t sound quite like anybody else.
Posted inMusic
Hali Palombo, composer and shortwave radio enthusiast
“A lot of the most fascinating audio that I’ve found has been things that most people would just skip over.”