Elton Chueng, 33, began his career as a professional recording engineer with an internship at Classick Studios in 2011. He’s since worked with some of the brightest stars to emerge from Chicago’s hip-hop scene in the past decade, including Saba, Noname, Smino, and Chance the Rapper. In November his contributions to Yebba’s 2021 debut, Dawn, […]
Category: Music
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Semiratruth’s Moonlandin’ elevates her music to a new plane
Semiratruth Garrett remembers the exact day her creative life opened up. It wasn’t the afternoon in 2014 when she first recorded a song at Harold Washington Library’s YouMedia lab, or the day several years later when she rapped her way onto Netflix’s 2019 hip-hop competition, Rhythm + Flow—though both those moments are also burned into […]
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Local drummer and bandleader Tim Daisy introduces two new bands
In January 2021, I profiled local percussionist Tim Daisy by detailing his creative response to the limitations imposed by COVID-19. At the time, he had just issued a virtual collaboration with electronic musician Ikue Mori on his own label, Relay Recordings. While Daisy has continued to exploit the potentialities of home recording and technologically facilitated […]
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Lyra Pramuk makes cybernetic Gregorian rave music
Lyra Pramuk’s music has a sparklingly ethereal, woodland quality—like disco meets Midsommar (minus any residual fascism). The Berlin-based artist was born in Pennsylvania and grew up singing in small-town church choirs. While going through the motions of performing as a boy content to sing religious songs in the round, she developed a rich, private online […]
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Cloakroom tap into their dreamier side on Dissolution Wave
On the untouchable 2017 LP Time Well, Cloakroom dialed in and perfected their take on modern slowcore, blending Hum-flavored space rock and atomically heavy walls of guitars with syrupy, dreary, and heart-wrenchingly sad vocal melodies. The Northwest Indiana trio have since undergone a lineup shift, and some members have also spread their wings in other […]
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New-music combo Honestly Same debut their improvised meditations
Gossip Wolf has yet to hear a note from Honestly Same, but the temptation is strong to refer to the five-piece improvising collective as a supergroup—kind of like Temple of the Dog for the local new-music scene! The quintet is packed with big-time talent: percussionist Samuel Scranton (half of the duo Beautifulish), synthesizer player Zach […]
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Progressive death-metal band Monochromatic Black deliver the brutality on Vicissitude
In 2018, Long Island progressive death-metal band Monochromatic Black threw down the gauntlet with a video for their debut single, “The Herd,” announcing themselves as a force to be reckoned with. The following year, they released their first EP, Pneuma, to considerable acclaim: it’s an intense, versatile, and strikingly assured burst of brutality that hit […]
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Violist Jessica Pavone brings good vibrations to the new When No One Around You Is There but Nowhere to Be Found
About a decade ago, back trouble forced Jessica Pavone to stop playing viola for nearly two years. Since her return, the impact of music upon the health and well-being of both performers and listeners has been one of the New York-based artist’s essential concerns. When she was composing the material for her most recent ensemble […]
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Krautrock legend Michael Rother and electronic explorer Vittoria Maccabruni make weird beautiful music on As Long as the Light
I was a wee lad with little journalism experience in 1998, when I interviewed German guitar god Michael Rother, who’d cofounded pioneering experimental rock outfits Neu! and Harmonia in the 70s. Not only did I hit him with a cliched question about his biggest influences, but I also pressed him when he said that no […]
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On the new W, Boris find serene sounds amid their continuous sonic explorations
As Boris continue to steer in and out of avant-rock territory, the 30-year-old Japanese band increasingly splinter genre ideas and expectations fans might foist upon them. The trio have been prolific during the pandemic, releasing nearly a dozen albums whose variety almost necessitates a disregard for boundaries: they include studio full-lengths, EPs, and live and […]
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Lazy Bill Lucas came into his own as a bandleader in his last decade
Snowstorms, cold snaps, the most contagious wave of COVID-19 yet—it’s clearly time for the Secret History of Chicago Music to begin its yearly Winter Blues series. That’s where I cover the city’s great unheralded blues artists, many of whom gigged constantly but barely had the means to get by, let alone record their music. Many […]
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Clementine Wink drops the most surreal Hen of the Woods album yet
Clementine Wink is probably best known to Gossip Wolf readers as the bassist for local industrial trio Civic Center, and for good reason—her melodic bass lines often provide the driving heartbeat of the band’s booming, brooding jams. Wink also releases compelling solo music as Hen of the Woods, expertly blending found sounds, sampled recordings, off-kilter […]
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Emily Blue makes 80s pop for every era on The Afterlove
I won’t pretend it’s possible to rank pop music from different decades in a defensible way, but Emily Blue’s new self-released third album, The Afterlove, makes a great case for the whimsy and arena-size ambition of the 1980s. Blue largely eschews nostalgia, despite using synth sounds from a bygone era, instead reimagining the futuristic idealism […]
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Chicago’s Kreutzer Sonata play hardcore for the whole gang
Chicago four-piece the Kreutzer Sonata play raw hardcore in clipped, stentorian bursts so that each song exposes new gristle. On the new Cradle to the Grave (No Time/Don’t Panic), hammering drums sprint in Tasmanian-devil circles, austere guitars scorch the fastest path to the next melody, and Adam Kreutzer hollers lyrics about the woes of the […]
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Hana Vu carves new pop landscapes with Public Storage
Storage units, with their heavy padlocked doors and stockpiles of intimate possessions, are ripe for metaphors about emotional compartmentalization. On her debut album, Public Storage, Los Angeles guitarist and songwriter Hana Vu finds inspiration there, drawing on memories of the storage units her family used during their frequent moves and her subsequent feelings of displacement. […]