Roasting and selling coffee isn’t the only way Ben Crowell, founder of Glassworks Coffee, can do a number on your nerves. His band Sheet Ghosts specialize in lush, synth-heavy, rock-adjacent soundtracks for imaginary horror films. Last October they gave away an album download with orders of a seasonal blend, and this Friday, October 23, they’re releasing the EP Did It Ever Happen? on File 13 Records (albeit more conventionally, with no coffee). Crowell has built a crew of fellow spirits—including former Swans percussionist Thor Harris, Three Mile Pilot and Black Heart Procession front man Pall Jenkins, and File 13 honcho Justin Sinkovich—to imbue tracks such as “Nothing but the Night” with eerie, pulsing resonances.
On their boisterously bumping third LP, Keeper of the Void, self-described Chicago “doom funk” crew Gramps the Vamp say they’ve left the known musical universe. Leader Maxx McGathey explains that the LP’s ten songs are “glimpses into different dimensions and galaxies, telling stories of strange and unknown phenomena that only the imagination can reveal.” Folks, please say hi to Sun Ra on your way back! The album comes out Friday, October 23, and last week the band dropped a loopy, Svengoolie-ready video for non-album single “The Bardo Bash.”
- The video for non-album single “The Bardo Bash”
On Friday, October 23, the Inner-City Muslim Action Network will release This Love Thing, the first collaborative album from IMAN executive director Rami Nashashibi, who lives in Chicago, and Buffalo-based artist and activist Drea d’Nur. Nashashibi plays guitar and d’Nur sings lead, and the album also features guests such as oud player Ronnie Malley, rapper Brother Ali, singer-rapper Maimouna Youssef, and Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ’s Sanctuary Choir. Louisville councilman-elect and rapper Jecorey “1200” Arthur appears on early single “Mama Please,” a slow-boiling, soulful tribute to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police violence—its video also advocates for the passage of Cariol’s Law, which would require cops to intervene to stop police brutality and protect them from retaliation when they do. v
- The video for “Mama Please”
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