Chicago noise-rock trio Den is saying good-bye to bassist Ray Keenan, who’s moving to Austin. To replace him, vocalist and electronics whiz Adam Harris and drummer Ian Piirtola have recruited Corey Mahaney, a sound artist who records as Crodar. “He’s one of those dudes that’s just a very natural gifted musician,” Harris says. (Crodar’s Movie EP came out via Harris’s label, Retrograde Tapes.) Den have already played a couple shows with Mahaney, and their first full-length, Exhausted, comes out soon on BLVD Records; the title track is on Soundcloud at bit.ly/denstired.
For a couple years Quenchers Saloon has hosted the monthly series Soundtrack Serenade, which features an ace cover band—also called Soundtrack Serenade—playing the entire soundtrack of a movie, along with a screening of the flick and a trivia contest. Recent installments have showcased The Royal Tenenbaums and Forrest Gump, and October’s event, on Tue 10/8, is looking dynamite! The band will play the tunes from rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, and in keeping with the film’s running gag about the bizarre deaths that befall the band’s drummers, 11 local worthies will take turns behind the kit—among them jazz-scene mainstays Tim Daisy, Makaya McCraven, and Eric Montzka. We know they can play in far-out time signatures—let’s hope they can make it to 11!
Rolling Stone just named Chance the Rapper its “Hot MC” of 2013, so now people who subscribe only to magazines with annual cover stories on the Beatles might finally learn about Acid Rap. In an interview for RS, Chance revealed that he recently did voice-over work for an episode of Adult Swim’s Black Dynamite, an animated series based on the 2009 movie of the same name—a thoroughly underrated blaxploitation parody. Chance put words in the mouth of Bob Marley, so that episode is basically guaranteed to be worth some room on your DVR.
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