It starts with the hips—that’s the first thing you’ll notice when you watch Divino Niño play live. The Chicago-based five-piece can’t seem to stand still onstage. First their swaggering hips […]
Category: Music
Posted inMusic
Bandcamp Friday meets the World Music Festival
Over the past two and a half years, I’ve assembled a lot of lists for Bandcamp Friday. I like sharing music that’s unfamiliar to people, and the occasion of a […]
Posted inMusic
UK electronic-noise duo Petbrick create a tantalizing sonic universe on their new album, Liminal
Plenty of bands do a lot with compact lineups, but few can match the huge black-hole vortex of sound that Petbrick creates. The London-based duo of British multi-instrumentalist and producer […]
Posted inMusic
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival returns to full flower
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival defied the pandemic with ingenious safety accommodations in 2020, presenting 18 brief pop-up concerts in parks, pedways, and sidewalks between 40th and 61st Streets, all […]
Posted inMusic
Discussing the Sun remix pop genres into a forlorn sound that’s all its own
I’ve heard plenty of great songs that capture the dissociative lonesomeness and strange thrills of navigating interpersonal relationships now that so much human communication is sucked up by the vortex […]
Posted inMusic
Ben Zucker’s stirring compositions are built on a lifetime of musical curiosity
Born in Pennsylvania, Ben Zucker lived in Berkeley, New England, and London before moving to Chicago for a graduate composition program at Northwestern University. He was excited to come here […]
Posted inMusic
Ganser find the freedom beyond despair on Nothing You Do Matters
Dread can be suffocating, but Ganser make it work like a spark. On their new EP, Nothing You Do Matters (Felte), the Chicago postpunk four-piece take cues from dance punk […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A performance for the people
On a cloudy afternoon a couple of Saturdays ago, faint lyrics could be heard echoing down Marshall Boulevard, which exits Douglass Park on the park’s south side. The sound was […]
Posted inMusic
Magma turn up the positivity on their new album, Kãrtëhl
Formed by drummer Christian Vander in Paris in 1969, Magma have made a career of defying convention, and the fact that they’re still actively recording and playing live today is […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago mainstay Douglas McCombs dazzles on his first-ever solo LP
If you’ve paid even the slightest bit of attention to Chicago music over the past, say, 35 years, you’ve surely heard Douglas McCombs. He’s held down the low end for […]
Posted inMusic
With Natural Brown Prom Queen, experimental pop fiddler Sudan Archives looks inward
When she filmed the music video for “OMG BRITT,” a trap anthem off of her new record, Natural Brown Prom Queen, Brittney Parks was determined to smash a violin on […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]
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 […]
Posted inMusic
Fire-Toolz sails even further off the map with a genre-obliterating new EP
Gossip Wolf has long believed that physical releases from Fire-Toolz, the wonderfully disorienting flagship project of local electronic musician Angel Marcloid, will one day be swapped among fans and sought […]
Posted inMusic
Tar play their first show in five years to celebrate Smashed Plastic
Chicago posthardcore four-piece Tar broke up in 1995, and the number of times they’ve reunited for a show since then you can count on one hand—this gig will be the […]