For a couple months now, Gossip Wolf has been revisiting Yes Strings Attached, the new duo album from bassist and shamisen player Tatsu Aoki and guitarist Da Wei Wang. Aoki is also a filmmaker, composer, and founder of the Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival; Wang makes experimental solo music and adds his beguiling stylings to […]
Tag: Electrical Audio
Posted inMusic
Yautja perfect their maximalist metal on The Lurch
Nashville metal trio Yautja are a great example of how the old adage “less is more” doesn’t always apply. For ten years now, these three dudes—whose band name is also the species name of the fictional extraterrestrial hunters in the Predator franchise—have been throwing everything into their maximalist music, and getting better and better results. […]
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Norwegian noise-rockers Årabrot delve into dark pop on Norwegian Gothic
Norwegian noise-rock band Årabrot have undergone many personnel changes over their two-decade career, and front man, composer, and sole constant member Kjetil Nernes has brought forth a different phase in the group’s sound with every one. In recent years, his main collaborator has been Swedish-Norwegian electronic producer and singer Karin Park; they’re also a married […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago duo Cleared atomize their stark rock sound on The Key
Recording studios have reputations, and Chicago’s Electrical Audio is well-known as the place to go if you want to capture how your band really sounds. But when Michael Vallera and Steven Hess of local duo Cleared entered that establishment in spring 2019, they were in the early phase of a transformation. Their first four albums […]
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Laura Jane Grace grapples with modern times on the urgent, stripped-down Stay Alive
Lockdown has been hard on Laura Jane Grace. The front woman of Against Me! and Devouring Mothers is a natural performer with a strong social-media presence, but lately her Twitter account has been full of laments for the pre-pandemic live-music experience. On October 1, she surprised her fans with Stay Alive, a raw, stripped-down acoustic […]
Posted inMusic
Beach Bunny jump straight to the championship round
Lili Trifilio and her indie-punk band have climbed from Chicago’s DIY scene to stages most musicians never reach, and their first studio album, Honeymoon, comes out just this week.
Posted inMusic
Two of Chicago’s rising dark rock groups collaborate in the studio and onstage
It would be worth an outing to the Empty Bottle just to see two of the most compelling bands Chicago has produced in recent years on one bill. Dark postrock trio Lume entered the fray last year with their full-length debut, Wrung Out (Equal Vision), a raw, emotional, and cinematically dreary work that examines loss […]
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Metropolitan Brewing teams up with Pelican for the biere de garde Cold Hope
Beer and Metal returns to review a long-gestating collaboration by beloved Chicago institutions Pelican and Metropolitan Brewing.
Posted inMusic
Natural Information Society make the stage a home—and vice versa
Joshua Abrams and Lisa Alvarado of Natural Information Society help give the Chicago collective’s transcendent minimalism a family feeling.
Posted inMusic
Drone titans Sunn O))) play two shows at Rockefeller Chapel and release the beautiful new Life Metal
Update on Friday, April 19, at 4:30 PM: Papa M is no longer on the bill for the Friday show. Sunn O))) will play at 9 PM. Papa M is still scheduled for the Monday show. If you’ve ever heard the music of dark-hooded dronemeisters Sunn O))), you may have reached the conclusion that its […]
Posted inBlogs
There’s a chorus of kittens on the gig poster of the week
This week’s featured gig poster was designed by Jay Ryan.
Posted inMusic
Meat Wave drummer Ryan Wizniak on a deranged 1978 synth-pop masterpiece
Current musical obsessions of Meat Wave drummer Ryan Wizniak, Meg MacDuff of Bleach Party and Montrose Man, and the Reader’s Luca Cimarusti
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best group of veterans of the Blue Man backing band
Electric Hawk Drummer Noah Leger, who plays in ultraminimal postpunk outfit Disappears, holds down a day job behind the kit in the Blue Man Group’s onstage backing band. In 2009, after years of throwing ideas around, he and two other Blue Man musicians, Las Vegas natives Mike Burns (guitar) and Graham McLachlan (bass), put their […]
Posted inMusic
Daniel Knox gives our derelicts the beautiful music they deserve
He learned to play piano in hotel lobbies and likes to wander the city alone at night. Now he’s made one of the best singer-songwriter albums of the year.
Posted inBlogs
Electric Hawk share an early taste of their imminent second album tonight at the Hideout
Bombastic, gratuitously complicated, and thoroughly great, “Sex Embargo” appears on Electric Hawk II, due out April 14.