Jean-Luc Guionnet’s relationship to music is complicated, and it shows. As a youth, he drew while his father played saxophone, and he didn’t much like what he heard. When he changed his mind during his teens and started making his own music, his first instruments were keyboards, spliced tape, and drums; he only came around […]
Tag: France
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Colleen’s The Tunnel and the Clearing is a perfect summer breeze of an album
Under the name Colleen, French composer and multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott has spent the past two decades traversing musical styles: She explored hypnagogic looped samples on her 2003 debut, Everyone Alive Wants Answers, dulcet folktronica on 2005’s The Golden Morning Breaks, and chamber-music ambience on 2007’s Les Ondes Silencieuses. Schott’s work is consistent in its arresting […]
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Dark synth artist Perturbator explores destruction on Lustful Sacraments
French multi-instrumentalist James Kent, who makes music as Perturbator, has a lifelong history with synthesizers—his parents were in a band that used them—and he negotiates the possibilities of his instruments as fluently as a native tongue. Though Kent has a background as a black-metal guitarist, he prefers to work alone, and as he told Tunecore […]
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Aya Nakamura delivers pure shots of intimate emotion on Aya
French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura expresses an effortless but firm candor in her lyrics (she sings in French) that’s cleanly mirrored in her music. Her breakout single, 2018’s “Djadja,” was a relentless kiss-off; its unwavering dancehall beat and bubbling synth percussion provided the perfect backdrop to Nakamura’s exhausted yet ferocious vocals. This synchronicity permeates her third […]
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Kassel Jaeger and Jim O’Rourke take us on a journey with In Cobalt Aura Sleeps
In 2017, Paris-based electroacoustic composer Kassel Jaeger (born François Bonnet) and Chicago-born multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke joined forces for Wakes on Cerulean, a kaleidoscopic duo recording filled with shape-shifting electronics and field recordings. On their brand-new second collaborative album, In Cobalt Aura Sleeps (Editions Mego), they aim to convey a similarly rapturous experience, but the piece […]
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France’s Igorrr adds Middle Eastern motifs to its genre-splicing mashup of death metal and breakcore
In the tradition of heavy-music genre splicers such as Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, and Estradasphere, French act Igorrr hybridizes industrial death metal, breakcore, chiptune, and other genres using a dizzying array of seemingly unrelated styles and instruments. Songwriter, DJ, and guitarist Gautier Serre weaves Baroque music, Balkan folk, Eastern motifs, operatic vocals, and death […]
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French disco legend Cerrone touches down at Smart Bar
UPDATE Monday, September 23, 12:55 PM: The Cerrone concert has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Disco and pop music would be diminished had French drummer, producer, composer, and bandleader Marc Cerrone never taken an interest in dance music. In the early 70s, he got his first taste of fame as a founding […]
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Michael Madigan is now the longest-serving state house speaker in American history, and other Chicago news
Also, prompted by the highly unpopular pop tax, Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin is mulling a 2018 run against board president Toni Preckwinkle.
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What Chicago could learn from Paris’s massive labor protests
What if Illinois workers responded to austerity measures the way French workers did this week?
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Chicagoans react with horror to Paris attacks
The Chicago police, Dick Durbin, the Alliance Francaise de Chicago, and others respond to news of the shootings and explosions in France.
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Chicago Alliance Français official: ‘No words to describe’ Paris attack
The cultural center’s director is in Paris but safe, according to his colleagues.
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World Cup soccer isn’t the only occasion for flopping
How soccer strategy reflects the quest for justice through the ages.
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Reader’s Agenda Fri 1/31: Crispin Glover, Chicago Deep Freeze Festival, and Has the Film Already Started?
What’s on the Reader‘s Agenda for Friday, January 31
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12 O’Clock Track: Blastbeats forever on Aluk Todolo’s “Occult Rock I”
Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Occult Rock I” from Aluk Todolo’s album of almost the same name, Occult Rock.
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Gossip Wolf: Cheer-Accident emerges from hibernation
Cheer-Accident emerges from hibernation, Baathhaus go through plenty of “blood, glitter, and jizz” at their first video shoot, and more.