Red Bull has revealed that the national final for its third annual Dance Your Style competition will take place in Chicago on May 20, with related programming in the days leading up to the event. The announcement took place at an invitation-only launch party for the 2023 season on February 22 at Smartbar, less than […]
Tag: footwork
Posted inMusic
Third Coast Percussion rebuild Jlin’s experimental footwork by hand
I love Third Coast Percussion—I ranked their 2018 release Paddle to the Sea number one on my list of the best Chicago albums of the 2010s—and I’m a big fan of Jlin. So when I heard that TCP had commissioned music from my favorite experimental footwork producer, I started counting down the days till they’d […]
Posted inMusic
Heavee knows the code to bind footwork and video-game music
The producers who created footwork’s molten polyrhythms designed them to give dancers the flexibility to switch tactics in the middle of a battle. Yes, there are specific moves (Ghost! Erk n Jerk!), but the ever-changing percussion and bass patterns create a destabilized space where footworkers can “choose their own adventure,” as it were, by adapting […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best footwork video displayed on Merchandise Mart
I generally avoided the Chicago Riverwalk even before the pandemic, but Footnotes gave me a genuinely great reason to spend a night gazing up at Merch Mart.
Posted inMusic
Synth-pop songwriter Warm Human shines even on odds and ends
Gossip Wolf first took a shine to the synth-pop jams of Meredith Johnston, aka Warm Human, when she dropped her standout debut full-length, Ghastly, in 2019. Over the past few years, Johnston has proved impressively prolific, releasing a string of radio-worthy singles and album-length projects whose tone ping-pongs all over the place—she mixes up misty […]
Posted inMusic
Jana Rush engineers her own empowerment
Experimental footwork producer Jana Rush recorded her breathtaking new album, Painful Enlightenment, while battling depression, but she’s careful not to romanticize that fact. “At that time, I couldn’t be consistent with anything. I could start something and good luck with finishing it,” Rush explains. “The loss of hope, it’s a strange and empty feeling, and […]
Posted inMusic
Pioneering footwork producer RP Boo bares his soul on Established!
Footwork music’s whimsical, tempestuous take on house wouldn’t exist without Chicago producer Kavain Space, better known as RP Boo. In the mid-90s, he drew from his experience DJing for House-O-Matics dancers to devise skittish, hyperactive tracks that proved too puzzling for Dance Mania, a staple label of the scene that provided a home for the […]
Posted inMusic
DJ Manny centers love on his R&B-infused new album, Signals in My Head
Manuel Gaines, who performs as DJ Manny, was ten years old when he first heard footwork music at a party. Before long, the Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based producer met two titans of the genre, DJ Spinn and the late DJ Rashad, with whom he eventually collaborated on a handful of tracks. Manny has multiple releases under his […]
Posted inMusic
Rock critic Jessica Hopper publishes an expanded edition of her first book
Rock critic Jessica Hopper publishes a hugely expanded edition of her first book, Bryan Away (aka Elliot Korte) drops an album of lush folk-pop, and more.
Posted inMusic
Christopher Santoso, aka DJ and producer Please and Issa Party label founder
“I try and make the music for the dancers—like Teklife, Beatdown House, everybody in the footwork community. It’s all for them.”
Posted inMusic
Chicago producer Vince Kaichan steers footwork toward serenity on Lost in Time
Chicago electronic producer Vince Kaichan is an omnivorous listener—or at least that’s the impression I get from the hodgepodge of styles in his own music. For roughly a decade now, he’s tussled with chiptune melodies, jazz-influenced lite-funk grooves, and serrated funk carioca rhythms. Recently, Kaichan has taken a shine to footwork, and his years of […]
Posted inMusic
Jessica Risker combines her two loves with the podcast Music Therapy
Jessica Risker combines her two loves with the podcast Music Therapy, footwork crew the Era drop a dreamy rap single, and more.
Posted inMusic
Casper McFadden’s breakcore fuels optimistic dreams
In a recent video interview with New York City arts and culture site Lumka, Chicago producer Casper McFadden explained that he made his new second album, Stasis (Log), while his landlord renovated his bedroom over the summer. The construction took longer than anticipated, and McFadden spent months stuck on his couch, unable to access the […]
Posted inMusic
DJ Corey grew up immersed in footwork, and he’s learned it inside and out
Chicago producer DJ Corey is footwork royalty. His father, DJ Clent, got hooked on ghetto house in the early 90s, and by the end of that decade had established a career in the faster, more aggressive styles of juke and footwork. Clent began nurturing his son’s interest in music long before Corey could make tracks […]
Posted inMusic
DJ Earl demonstrates footwork’s deep roots on Bass + Funk & Soul
Since Chicago footwork producer and Teklife member DJ Earl dropped his breakthrough 2016 debut, Open Your Eyes, he’s traveled far outside the city and branched out into different sounds. In 2017, Earl dropped a genre-splicing dance full-length called 50 Backwoods with in-demand Brooklyn producer Nick Hook, and this year his collaborations have included the hip-hop […]