The Body and Big|Brave are both known for their takes on pulverizing, minimalist postmetal, but their new collaborative album, Leaving None but Small Birds (Thrill Jockey), gazes at the infinite possibilities of traditional folk music through a warped and weathered all-seeing eye. Crafted in the studio with engineer-producer Seth Manchester (a frequent collaborator of the […]
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Byron Westbrook blurs the boundaries between natural and man-made environments on Mirror Views
There’s more than one way to immerse yourself in sound, and electronic musician Byron Westbrook seems to be working his way through as many options as he can. He’s run the soundboard for Phill Niblock, the loudest man in minimalism; under the name Corridors, he’s conducted concerts for absent instruments that involved audience members passing […]
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The Reverend Marvin Yancy’s solo career lasted just one great album
If some sort of god or higher power exists, it clearly has a dark sense of humor—otherwise why send us plagues, floods, and fires, till even nonbelievers start to worry about the end times? And only a divine being with a cruel streak would’ve taken the Reverend Marvin Yancy from this earthly plane so young, […]
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Former Oshwa bandleader Alicia Walter makes a grand entrance as a solo artist
In the 2010s, Alicia Walter led criminally underappreciated Chicago band Oshwa, who played dizzying, dramatic math-rock with the finesse of a tween Mensa member simultaneously solving three Rubik’s Cubes. Walter moved to New York in 2016, the same year Oshwa released their final album, I We You Me, but her Chicago connections remain strong: this […]
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Local folk act DPCD releases a ruminative, intimate new album
In October 2019, Gossip Wolf praised local folk project DPCD for crafting immaculate, autumnal songs “as potently specific as the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.” It thus seems seasonally appropriate that DPCD will self-release its new album, It’s Hard for a Rich Man to Enter the Kingdom of God, on Friday, October 1, and that […]
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Trevor Dunn and Sannety mix and match electronics, experimentation, and rhythm as SpermChurch
Bassist Trevor Dunn has forged relationships with polyglot saxophonist and composer John Zorn, avant-garde reedist Ben Goldberg, and scads of other jazz-world luminaries. He plays on Diatom Ribbons, a career-defining 2019 record by jazz keyboardist Kris Davis, but his contributions have largely gone unheralded, subsumed in the overall greatness of the album. Despite these accomplishments, […]
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Sound artist and onetime Chicagoan Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe adds new layers to the Candyman story
Folklore can be the ultimate game of telephone. As a historical form of collective communication, it brings communities together while expressing what makes them unique, and the content of its stories changes as newer generations tell them from their own perspectives. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s score for Nia DaCosta’s new film, Candyman, exemplifies how distortion—whether […]
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Okay’s best song balances sunny and sinister
In 2005, I was working in Los Angeles for a few weeks on an outdoor collaborative project with an art group called Temporary Services that I was part of at the time. We were gathering materials and building structures on a vacant lot in Echo Park, across the street from a branch of the Los […]
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Joe Camarillo’s friends and bandmates come together to celebrate the drummer’s life and music
Since the start of the pandemic, Chicago has lost an incredible number of artists whose contributions to the local music community helped shape the sound of the city and beyond. They include drummer and vocalist Joe Camarillo, who passed away in January following a stroke. Since the mid-80s, when he was a high school student […]
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Ensemble dal Niente and Ken Vandermark explore the ties between chamber music and jazz
Ensemble dal Niente commissions and selects new music that earns the designation “new” not just because it’s freshly composed; it also challenges both players and audiences to experience performance in new ways. This program, jointly presented by Ear Taxi and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, draws on the resources of Chicago in two ways. First, […]
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Meat Wave cram a lot of noisy energy and emotion into six songs on Volcano Park
Chicago punk trio Meat Wave were planning on touring for much of 2020 to push a new LP, but COVID cleared their calendar and delayed their album (as it did for so many working bands). Rather than sit around and wait, the band hunkered down to write, record, and self-release an EP of new material […]
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Edward Vaughn goes from engineering to shredding
To most Chicagoans, “Englewood” and “rock” are hardly synonymous, but guitarist Edward Vaughn reps his hood proudly as he follows his rock-star dreams. And where he’s from isn’t the only thing about him that points away from rock ’n’ roll: he also has a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering. “I’m from Englewood, so […]
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Melvia “Chick” Rodgers-Williams brings her big voice to the 15th annual Chi-town Blues Festival
Melvia “Chick” Rodgers-Williams is a dynamic, versatile blues and soul vocalist with a pretty sparse recorded legacy (mostly under her maiden name, Melvia “Chick” Rodgers). She’s deft and audacious enough to take on warhorses such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and Aretha Franklin’s “Dr. Feelgood,” retaining the power and feel of the originals while making […]
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Chicago indie-rock mainstays Eleventh Dream Day celebrate their 14th album, Since Grazed
When Chicago indie-rock stalwarts Eleventh Dream Day released their 14th album (and first in five years), Since Grazed, in April 2021, the pandemic prevented them from having a proper release party. The group, formed in 1983, are creeping up on their 40th anniversary, and though they didn’t hold together this long by being impatient, they […]
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Chicago musical wonder Macie Stewart takes command of her path on Mouth Full of Glass
Macie Stewart has her hands in so many different musical projects it’s a wonder she finds the time to sleep. She coleads enchanting art-rock band Ohmme, of course, which she cofounded with Sima Cunningham in 2014, but aside from her best-known gig, Stewart plays violin in a duo with cellist Lia Kohl, makes up one-third […]