Festival season is winding down as this weekend sees this year’s World Music Festival coming to an end. Some of the world music masters still set to play are Fareed Haque & the Flat Earth Ensemble and Brock McGuire Band on Fri 9/20, Babá Ken Okulolo & the Nigerian Brothers and Bloco Maximo on Sat 9/1. There’s also an all-day closing ceremony on Sun 9/22 at the Chicago Cultural Center.
The fourth installment of the outrageous Cathedral of the Black Goat festival comes to LiveWire Lounge this weekend, with shows on Friday and Saturday night. The festival, which is headlined by the delightfully named Goatpenis, has celebrated gross, Satanic black metal three times before, and the organizers claim that this time around will be the last. If seeing a band called Satanik Goat Ritual isn’t your thing, there are a few other cool festivals going down this weekend as well, including Goose Island’s 312 Urban Block Party, which features Tokyo Police Club and Low; the Chicago Food Social at Kendall College, which is headlined by R. Stevie Moore; and the Englewood Jazz Festival at the Hamilton Park Cultural Center, whose line-up includes Ernest Dawkins and Henry Johnson.
As usual, there are a ton of other great shows going on around town as well. Check out what some of our writers had to say about a few hot Soundboard picks after the jump.
Fri 9/20: Disappears at Empty Bottle
Local sci-fi-garage-Kraut masters Disappears return home from a tour on Friday and celebrate the release of their fourth LP, Era, at this show. “Disappears have been stretching out into negative space, using strategically deployed emptiness to push their druggy, creepy sound into deeper and darker places—[front man Brian] Case plays with the croak in his voice as though he’s trying to see just how much like a serial killer he can sound,” writes Kevin Warwick. “The new Era (Kranky) opens with ‘Girl,’ a noisy vintage Disappears track that’s a bring-down from the first note, with a descending bass line and Case’s distorted ravings. The mood gets decidedly weirder from there—the same sort of weird as David Lynch’s macabre ideas about what Hollywood truly is—and it makes for the best, most peculiar material the band has released to date.”
Fri 9/20: Dustin Wong at Hideout
Solo guitar virtuoso Dustin Wong comes to the Hideout on Friday, with openers Cave. Kevin Warwick writes, “It’s freakish what one guitarist can do with a cosmic amount of wherewithal and a carefully chosen lineup of looping pedals and other effects. Dustin Wong (formerly of hypercolorful Baltimore art-rock weirdos Ponytail) has just released another solo record, Meditation of Ecstatic Energy (Thrill Jockey), once again showing off his left-brain prowess at stacking guitar loops—one on top of another till they’re an enveloping mass, all swirling and jigging together—and slicing through the calculated pileup with piercing, high-pitched solos that chiptune bands probably wish they could replicate.”
Sat 9/21: Scout Niblett at Hideout
Scout Niblett plays at the Hideout on Saturday, oddly enough with openers Dope Body, whose groovy noise rock seems to clash with her honest and heartfelt sound. “There are lots of breakup records, but few seethe with fury like Emma ‘Scout’ Niblett’s recent It’s Up to Emma (Drag City),” writes Peter Margasak. “The album has an austere, acidic sound, and the opening track, ‘Gun,’ makes it perfectly clear where her mind is: ‘I think I’m gonna buy me a gun,’ she snarls. As the record progresses, its portrait of her emotional state grows more tangled until the only thing it’s easy to be sure about is that her relationship is irrevocably destroyed. She doesn’t threaten violence again, but she stays angry, using her lean, blues-kissed songs as though they could grab her ex by the shoulders and shake him—on ‘Second Chance Dreams,’ though, she allows that her own conflicted feelings make for a murky situation. On ‘Can’t Fool Me Now’ she begins to tap into the cathartic power of self-reclamation, concentrating her contempt into a dusky, clenched drawl, her voice gilded only by cranky, biting guitar chords and long tones on overdubbed violins and violas.”