On his bracing new album Cruel Optimism (Room40) veteran Australian sound artist Lawrence English subtly erases boundaries between ambient drift and industrial roar, forging aqueous instrumentals that seem to occupy an entire world. Normally he creates his turbulent recordings entirely on his own, as he did with the 2014’s bruising Wilderness of Mirrors—an appropriate precursor […]
Tag: Vol. 46 No. 24
Issue of Mar. 23 – 29, 2017
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R&B chameleons They. borrow from scattered pop sources in their quest to get to the top
Blog posts about rising LA R&B duo They. tend to reference the genre they label themselves with on some of their Soundcloud uploads—“grunge&b.”—but otherwise describe them in quite different ways. That reflects producer Dante Jones and singer Drew Love’s chameleonic songwriting history as much as it does their marketing: before teaming up, Love wrote with […]
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On Raw Rock Fury Ecstatic Vision blend MC5-style riffs with Beefheart freak vocals
As far as groove-driven heavy psych bands go, Philly’s Ecstatic Vision, right down to their grandiloquent name, ain’t necessarily cracking any mold. But then again, who says they’re trying to? A blend of drenched, swirling MC5-style riffs, Krautrock-influenced rhythms, and Beefheart-like freak vocals, the new Raw Rock Fury (Relapse) is very much a shrine to […]
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Kneebody blend rhythmic muscularity and lyric tenderness on their new album Anti-Hero
Muscular quintet Kneebody have spent more than a decade pushing against the limitations of jazz, forging an instrumental approach distinguished by high-level improvisation and a bruising ensemble attack. The band’s strong new album Anti-Hero (Motema) builds on that tradition: it’s essentially jazz-rock fusion, though their sound underlines the uselessness of that coinage. Drummer Nate Wood, […]
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The improvisational Boxhead Ensemble return to the scene of their first soundtrack triumph
It’s been 20 years since Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back first screened in Chicago. A black-and-white documentary about the encroachment of modernization on America’s last frontier, it was shot in the Aleutian Islands by directors Braden King and Laura Moya, but its gray-shaded score was tracked at the South Loop’s Truckstop Audio […]
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The Daniel Schnyder chamber opera Charlie Parker’s Yardbird receives its Chicago premiere
Contemporary jazz saxophonist and composer Daniel Schnyder’s 90-minute chamber opera about legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker was first performed in Philadelphia in 2015, and it’s receiving its Chicago premiere under the auspices of Lyric Opera. The libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly begins with Parker’s death at 34—brought on by drugs, alcohol, and a […]
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Local indie hip-hop label Closed Sessions took a gamble in 2016 that paid off
Closed Sessions cofounders Alex Fruchter and Michael Kolar went into 2016 viewing it as a make-or-break year. Well, not only did the young hip-hop imprint put out two full-lengths that helped define the local scene during a period when Chicago’s hip-hop community made itself well-known nationally—that’d be Kweku Collins’s Nat Love and Jamila Woods’s Heavn—but […]