House music never went out of style, but not everybody knows about its culture, its history, or even its existence—and a legion of those newbies fell for house this year, thanks to new dance-oriented albums from superstars Drake and Beyoncé. The latter recruited figures from across house history for Renaissance, including Chicago native Honey Redmond, […]
Tag: Ron Hardy
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Thirty years ago, a Black queer zine captured the scene that birthed house
Robert Ford and Trent Adkins shaped the bold, subversive, gossipy, funny, deeply engaged voice of Thing, which was felled by the AIDS pandemic in 1993.
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Chicago EBM producer Understudy brings a little light into his music’s murky throb on a new compilation
Few contemporary musicians can simultaneously disturb me and get me dancing quite like Jack Brockman. The Chicagoan fronts industrial trio Civic Center, whose recent vinyl debut for American Dreams (June’s The Ground Below) tamps down its members’ more aggressively deranged inclinations but still manages to sound pretty surreal. He also makes solo EBM tracks as […]
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The Chosen Few Picnic & Festival comes to everybody’s backyards
For its 30th anniversary, one of the world’s largest house-music parties has been pushed online by the pandemic—but it might reach even more people that way.
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Local producers Tensei create an electronic canvas of astral soul
Local producers Tensei create an electronic canvas of astral soul, Chicago house producer Derrick “Sleezy D” Harris passes away, and more.
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Plugging into Chicago’s forgotten house venues
A tour and oral history of the long-gone spaces that birthed one of the foundational sounds in modern pop
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Marcus Mixx has lost his home, but he still has house
Marcus Mixx’s early records fetch hundreds of dollars apiece from a cult of collectors, but he just wants a space of his own to make his new tracks.
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The Reader’s guaranteed unboring homegrown Halloween mix
Nothing against “Monster Mash,” but Chicago has spawned lots of scary songs that sound good all year—these 13 tracks cover house, psych rock, techno, boogie, hip-hop, extreme metal, pop punk, and more.
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Entertainment lawyer Jay B. Ross fought for the people who made the music he loved
An expert negotiator, he went to bat for stars as big as James Brown and Muddy Waters, but he also clawed back royalties for countless forgotten artists who’d never gotten their due.
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A people’s history of Kevin Coval
Louder Than a Bomb cofounder Kevin Coval in the words of people in Chicago’s poetry, spoken-word, and hip-hop scenes whose lives he’s touched
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Get moving to Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’ before the house group plays Grant Park
Phuture plays a free show Friday evening at the Spirit of Music Garden, and tonight two of the group’s members will talk about the rise of acid house at the Apple store on Michigan Avenue.
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How Merle’s 2000 EP became a cult house hit
Chicago dance label Stripped & Chewed reissue the underground record from house veteran Merwyn Sanders this month.
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How the USA fell for EDM, chapter one
In these excerpts from his lively and meticulous new book, The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America, longtime Reader contributor Michaelangelo Matos chronicles the three-decade ascent of EDM.
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Decades later, Steve Poindexter’s raw house 12-inch Street Fighter is finally released
Recorded in the 90s with Johnny Key and Track Master Scott, Street Fighter showcases the raw underground Chicago sound in fine form.
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Gossip Wolf: An off-the-grid show by Swedish industrial legends Brighter Death Now
An off-the-grid show by Swedish industrial legends Brighter Death Now, a compilation of rare Chicago house from Kstarke, and more