Conor Mackey plays guitar in postrock group Monobody, which is how you know he has unpredictable energy—any musician tasked with creating rogue jazz flourishes and postmetal freakouts while Nnamdi Ogbonnaya plays his high-wire drums is definitely operating on another level. Mackey studied music theory and composition at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and since graduating […]
Tag: ambient
Posted inMusic
As Earthen Sea, Jacob Long makes dub-damaged bangers for dystopian dance floors
Jacob Long has been knee-deep in the DIY punk underground over the past two decades, spending time in a couple of beloved bands. In the early aughts, Long doled out a batshit-crazy mess of postpunk and free jazz with his pals in the way-too-short-lived Dischord Records outfit Black Eyes before jetting from D.C. to San […]
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TALsounds makes ambient music we can only dream of on Acquiesce
It’s easy to get the impression that Natalie Chami dreams in music—she’s immersed in it in practically every minute of her waking life. By day, she teaches choir, vocal technique, and music technology at the Chicago High School for the Arts. She spends her free time immersed in Chicago’s experimental-music community, making noisy drones as […]
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Fire-Toolz captures the many colors of the rainbow bridge
Chicago experimentalist Angel Marcloid tries to contain the fractured emotional spectrum of loss with an album for her dead cat.
Posted inFilm
Minimal techno master Wolfgang Voigt returns to his ‘imaginary, misty forest’
Minimal techno master Wolfgang Voigt returns to Chicago with his most beloved project, Gas, and answers questions from Whitney Johnson of Matchess.
Posted inMusic
TALsounds steps into the same river twice
To support Love Sick, TALsounds’ biggest album yet, Natalie Chami has learned to replay the beautiful ambient pop songs she improvised to record it.
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Singer-songwriter Adam Gottlieb on an album to fortify fighters for justice
Current musical obsessions of singer-songwriter Adam Gottlieb, blues musician Andy Willis, and Reader writer Leor Galil
Posted inBlogs
David Yow stars in a brand-new video for Wrekmeister Harmonies
The creepy clip and with the dark ambient project’s new record are released today.
Posted inBlogs
Chicago singer-producer Cole M. Johnson offers up inspired experimental R&B
He’s a, um, “Keeper.”
Posted inBlogs
Chord’s only performance of 2013 features more than one chord
Ambient drone collective Chord play their only show of the year tomorrow. They also play more than one chord.
Posted inBlogs
Benoit Pioulard’s meditative ambient pop appeals to the pleasure centers
Thomas Meluch’s Benoit Pioulard brings its lovely ambient pop to the Empty Bottle on Wednesday
Posted inBlogs
Bringing Cexy Back
Rapper, producer, and Magic: the Gathering enthusiast Rjyan Kidwell, aka Cex, is one of the most consistently underrated and constantly adventurous musicians of the past decade. A few years ago, around the time his slightly tweaked, slightly too-cute electro-rap started to earn him a measure of popularity, he blew his crossover potential by taking a […]
Posted inBlogs
5/26 — Wolfgang Voigt at the Cultural Center
Voigt, the German techno artist also known as Gas, performs for free at the Claudia Cassidy Theater tonight.