Since the start of the pandemic, Bandcamp has passed along its usual share of sales revenue to artists and labels 17 times, usually on the first Friday of the month. You probably already knew that, since you clicked on a story about the 18th such Bandcamp Friday—but you might not be aware that the site […]
Category: Music
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Fire-damaged venue Golden Dagger raises funds to help it reopen
Independent Lincoln Park music venue, bar, and coffeehouse Golden Dagger (previously known as Tonic Room) suffered damage from a fire on Friday, November 26. Owner Donnie Biggins says an employee on-site called him just after noon that day to report she smelled smoke. “Luckily no one was really buying coffee. The tenants upstairs weren’t home,” […]
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Chicago rapper Femdot invested in himself, and it pays off with Not for Sale
On September 7, Chicago rapper Femi Adigun (aka Femdot, often styled femdot.) tweeted a loosie called “happyseptember.” that he’d recorded on a recent late night. “A lot of times I record to get words I can’t get out any other way,” he wrote in his post. “Wrote this cause it helped me. But maybe it […]
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Desert Liminal make art for artifice with Glass Fate
The lead single from Desert Liminal’s latest album bursts with a gut punch of a line: “I don’t need no southbound highway sign to tell me hell is real.” Glass Fate, the Chicago experimental pop band’s second full-length, overflows with similarly oblique and poetic imagery—lilac tides and blood moons and sunlit roads line a journey […]
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Baroness play fan-picked favorites on their first tour since the pandemic
Savannah metal band Baroness have named all their albums after colors, which before you even press play can evoke a sort of psychedelic synaesthesia and prepare your mind for what it’s about to receive. Led by guitarist and vocalist John Dyer Baizley, who’s also unquestionably one of the greatest album-cover and poster artists of his […]
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Dormant Illinois indie-rock project Easter returns for its flowers
The south suburbs loom large in the recent history of Chicagoland indie rock, and not just because they gave the city two of its best recent exports, Nnamdï and Ratboys. Oak Forest native Kyle Lang, for example, got into the local scene by playing house shows in the south suburbs with his band Easter, where […]
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Edgar Miller’s handmade homes have become wellsprings of inspiration for local artists
Like a scarlet pane of firelight shining from a brick-and-mortar facade, a red door on the 1700 block of North Wells announces the presence of a little piece of magic in the Old Town neighborhood. “You just walk beyond that barrier and you leave your life behind—a calm washes over you and you’re in this […]
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Chicago’s record stores make for minimally miserable Black Friday destinations
Record Store Day usually takes place in the spring (well, before the pandemic it did), but in 2011 its organizers launched a Black Friday spin-off. Since then I’ve become increasingly weary of this invented retail holiday. Even though RSD promotes independent brick-and-mortar music shops—unquestionably a good idea—its list of special releases has become saturated with […]
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Blues and soul-blues group Mzz Reese & Reese’s Pieces will hit your sweet spot
Singer Mzz Reese has become a Chicagoland favorite for her burnished alto voice, expansive blues and soul-blues repertoire, and playfully flirtatious, warm-hearted stage presence. But what really sets her apart is the professionalism of her show. Reese and her band—waggishly christened Reese’s Pieces—charge through a tightly constructed set consisting of well-known standards and too-often-neglected soul […]
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David Weathersby, documentary filmmaker
David Weathersby is a filmmaker and founder of video production company City Vanguard, which focuses on documentaries about underrepresented communities of color. In 2018, he received a Black Excellence Award for The Color of Art from the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago, and in 2019, his documentary Thee Debauchery Ball won the audience award […]
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Round Trip Records opens its brick-and-mortar shop after almost two years of pandemic delays
Chicago has a brand-new record store: Round Trip Records in North Park! Co-owner Paul Nixon says the shop has been in the works since November 2019, when he left his longtime gig at Laurie’s Planet of Sound. Shortly he and Round Trip co-owner David Baker started selling records online and at the Chicagoland Record & CD […]
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Houston shoegaze outfit Narrow Head reissue their glorious debut, Satisfaction
In the years since Nicky Palermo of Philadephia hardcore band Horror Show released a demo tape under the name Nothing in 2011, it’s become a sort of running joke in the scene that hardcore kids grow up and turn shoegaze. It’s a logical progression: hardcore’s raw, heavy sounds are built to express loss, pain, or […]
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Robert Görl celebrates 40 years of DAF and departed bandmate Gabi Delgado on Nur noch Einer
When I heard there would be a new DAF LP by the end of the year, I gasped. In the 1980s, the German duo of Gabriel “Gabi” Delgado and Robert Görl produced some of the most exhilarating and fiercely danceable electro-punk that ever made fans of a bunch of dudes in black leather, but the […]
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Olivia Block’s latest album is a psychedelic vision of a hurting world
Local sound artist Olivia Block has created most of her albums with years of painstaking work in her home studio, so you might not expect that lockdown life would bring about profound changes in her music. But Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea, released this month by Room40, is unlike anything else in her discography. […]
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Chicago rockers Kirby Grip explore low earth orbit on Portrait of Bliss
Chicago rockers Kirby Grip debuted in 2019 with American Cheese, an upbeat EP that animated its clean power-pop hooks with excitable emo propulsion. American Cheese standout “Chopped Party,” though, adopted a space-rock sound paired with stargazing lyrics, hinting at a direction Kirby Grip are now exploring in earnest on the new self-released full-length Portrait of […]