Led by programmer Geoff Barrow and singer and lyricist Beth Gibbons, the electronic-music group Portishead create something very close to ambient trance music, but with a dedication to drama and dynamics that neutralizes the music’s characteristic sameness. While synthesizers, samples, and programming are among their tools, they insert enough acoustic instruments–real drums, even a trumpet […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 28
Issue of Apr. 20 – 26, 1995
Posted inNews & Politics
Ignorance Was Bliss
“Muller says, “I have no problem with color or race. It doesn’t matter to me who you sleep with or what color you are. I could care less.’ Yet on the air he belittles Asians, women, blacks, Hispanics, midgets, homosexuals, the retarded, the disabled.” Re: “Morning Mouth,” cover story, 31 March 1995. To the editors: […]
Posted inArts & Culture
David Murray With The Ritual Trio
Saxophonist David Murray has a lengthy, ongoing relationship with Chicago percussionist Kahil El’Zabar. Since the duo’s simpatico performance on The Golden Sea (Sound Aspects)–the first pairing of the hornman’s freedom-seeking revisionism and the timekeeper’s meditative appropriation of African roots–their compelling juxtaposition of fiery postbop blowing and serene rhythms has matured into something of a musical […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Teatro Lo’il Maxil
Headquartered in San Cristobal de las Casas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, this ensemble (whose name means “monkey business”) began ten years ago as an outreach program of Sna Jtz’ibajom (House of the Writer), an agency dedicated to reclaiming the Mayan heritage suppressed since the coming of the Spanish Catholic conquerors. Working under […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Canadian Tragedy
Pete [Margasak]– On our “new music” station, CFNY in Toronto, it was reported how you trashed the Tragically Hip [Spot Check, March 31], our national heroes. Our national export to the music scene of the world. A lot of people just probably passed off what you had to say, seeing where and who it was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Silkworm
Seattle’s Silkworm released two amazing albums last year: In the West (C/Z), which languished in the can for nearly a year before its release last January, and last fall’s even better Libertine (El Recordo). Their early-90s noise-‘n’-melody excursions may have sounded virtually indistinguishable from those of America’s ever-growing pack of seven-inch producers, but incessant touring […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Temporary Girl: The Office Christmas Party
Chicago-based solo performance artist Lisa Kotin works in some of America’s premier blue-chip companies as a temp–a position that has given her enough material to create two witty shows based on her experience in corporate America. Her new two-act show, Temporary Girl: The Office Christmas Party, is a sequel to her 1992 hit, Temporary Girl, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Objectivity Lessons
Editor, I would like to thank Fred Camper for his review of my installation, Apparatus for the Distillation of Vague Intuitions, at the Randolph Street Gallery [March 17]. I find it odd that never in his lengthy description does he talk about the work within the context of contemporary art practice. Rather, he assumes with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Coyote’s Latest Howl
Raymond Benkoczy gives Around the Coyote a new look
Posted inNews & Politics
An Ex-Reader Writes
Dear Reader, I vow to no longer read your paper. In [the March 31] edition someone [Peter Margasak] trashed the Tragically Hip. How could he? The Tragically Hip is the best thing to happen to music since the guitar was invented. Who ever wrote that paragraph should be fired and go back to listening to […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Excuse me, I have a library appointment about some diagnostic tests. Suburban author (Sweet Reprieve) Ginny Maier: “I believe you could literally put yourself through medical school, with the exception of practicing surgery, by studying medicine at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library.” Promises, promises. In December 1993 Mayor Daley said the Chicago Department of Housing […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
Like mandala, Margaret Jenkins’s The Gates: Far Away Near tries to paint a picture of the entire world from every possible point of view. In fact The Gates tries to paint consciousness, not just things. Only a mystic would attempt a task so outrageously ambitious, and Jenkins and her collaborators fashion a worthy mandala by […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Naked Rage
A Certain Level of Denial Karen Finley at Steppenwolf Theatre, through April 23 Naked except for a flower-festooned hat and black slip-on shoes, Karen Finley lies motionless onstage in a tightly framed box of light roughly the size of a grave. One moment she speaks as a dispassionate psychiatrist barely able to conceal his sexist […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Shock Value
Dear Reader: Thankfully, Terry Brennan has solved an age-old dilemma by neatly identifying what it is that begins to make a piece of art, art (“Attention Getters,” February 17, 1995). He identifies the “extraordinary” factor, where a piece of art needs to have an exceptional quality to be engaging and to have a chance at […]