If you’re still COVID-hesitant about sitting in the dark with strangers at the theater, then A Theater in the Dark is here to help! The company, which focuses on creating original audio dramas, returns with A Matter of Red Herrings, a 1920s-style detective noir comedy by Greg Garrison about a pair of gumshoes in Chicago […]
Tag: Indonesia
Posted inMusic
Raja Kirik refit a subversive Javanese trance tradition for modern uprisings
When my colleague Leor Galil looked back on 2021, he said he’d listened to 750 new-to-him releases that year. I won’t pretend to be in his league, but in 2021 I did have a clear favorite album—not a common thing for me—and I figure it’s never too late to share. The duo Raja Kirik, based […]
Posted inMusic
Trevor Dunn and Sannety mix and match electronics, experimentation, and rhythm as SpermChurch
Bassist Trevor Dunn has forged relationships with polyglot saxophonist and composer John Zorn, avant-garde reedist Ben Goldberg, and scads of other jazz-world luminaries. He plays on Diatom Ribbons, a career-defining 2019 record by jazz keyboardist Kris Davis, but his contributions have largely gone unheralded, subsumed in the overall greatness of the album. Despite these accomplishments, […]
Posted inMusic
Altin Gün adds synthpop to their eclectic arsenal on Yol
Altin Gün kicked off last year with a Grammy nomination (their 2019 release Gece was up for Best World Music Album) and major festival bookings such as SXSW and Coachella. But like virtually every other working band, they got sidelined by circumstances beyond their control. Nearly a year later, this group of Dutch, Turkish, and […]
Posted inFilm
Raya and the Last Dragon’s representation dilemma
Even with Asian-American talent on and off the screen, the film reflects back a myth of monolith.
Posted inMusic
Indonesian avant-garde duo Senyawa confront the apocalypse with community
“Ideas that are seen as progressive, modern, or radical always have these associations that come from the West,” said Senyawa vocalist Rully Shabara in a February interview with Reader contributor Joshua Minsoo Kim for his online music zine Tone Glow. “But is that true?” Shabara, 38, and instrument inventor Wukir Suryadi, 43, founded this Indonesian […]
Posted inBlogs
Mayor Rahm discovers winter can be cold in Chicago
Close the schools in Chiberia, or open them? The mayor tried to have it both ways.
Posted inFilm
The Act of Killing’s theater of war
In Joshua Oppenheimer’s unforgettable documentary, Indonesian executioners re-create their killings for the camera.
Posted inFood & Drink
The virtues of Indonesian at Rickshaw Republic
Rickshaw Republic provides a delectable education in the regional street food of Indonesia.
Posted inBlogs
The happy revolutionary
“Fetish expert” Robert Dunlap screens his documentary “Xaviera Hollander, ‘The Happy Hooker’ – Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary,” Thursday at the Portage Theater.
Posted inBlogs
The New York Times returns to its philistine roots
An ugly and xenophobic New York Times review of Opera Jawa shows how little things have changed since the 1960s.