Since moving to Hyde Park, the Silver Room Block Party has blossomed into one of Chicago’s most important cultural institutions.
Tag: Vol. 48 No. 41
Issue of Jul. 18 – 24, 2019
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We’re giving away two three-day passes to Pitchfork 2019
For a chance to win, take your best shot at identifying all the people, places, and things in Jason Wyatt Frederick’s cover illustration.
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Can ComplexCon do justice to Chicago streetwear?
Leaders from two generations of the local streetwear scene talk about ComplexCon’s pros and cons.
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Underground supergroup Sick Gazelle take an unexpectedly pleasing dive into postrock on Odum
There was no way that Sick Gazelle weren’t going to be good. This trio of recording engineer and Veloce mastermind Eric Block on guitar, Yakuza and Bloodiest front man Bruce Lamont on saxophone, and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums could’ve ventured down practically any musical path imaginable, and any one of them would’ve been […]
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Cam puts a psychological spin on country pop
Cam’s lyrics cut to the core of interpersonal relationships like a breakthrough in a therapy session, perhaps because the California singer-songwriter studied psychology and worked as a researcher before pursuing her country-pop dreams. On her 2017 single “Diane,” she gives a voice to the auburn-haired strumpet of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” responding to the original tune’s […]
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Austin’s Temple of Angels match postrock aesthetics with metallic power
Austin quintet Temple of Angels have been flying low under the radar since they dropped their self-titled debut EP in 2017, but they’ve cut their way out of the undergrowth of a dark postpunk forest to build a following through touring and judicious festival bookings, including SXSW and Austin Terror Fest. Last year’s full-length Foiled […]
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Harpist Billy Branch draws from blues history to invigorate his sound
Blues tributes are too often dire affairs—note-for-note reworkings of timeworn ideas and riffs that betray an almost puritanical obsession with “authenticity.” That approach, of course, dishonors the spirit of the music it purports to celebrate—Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James, all of whom attract frequent tributes, weren’t purists or revivalists but instead radically reimagined […]
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The full schedule for the 2019 Pitchfork Music Festival
Every set listed in order, from the AACM Great Black Music Ensemble on Friday afternoon to Robyn on Sunday night
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Black Midi makes indie rock with lots of sharp edges
London quartet Black Midi have been getting lots of good press, including an ecstatic Pitchfork review of their 2019 debut, Schlagenheim (Rough Trade). It’s not hard to see why: the band deftly reference the spiky, difficult, complicated music of edgy rock geniuses such as Wire, Sonic Youth, and King Crimson without sounding directly derivative of […]
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Cate Le Bon settles into her pleasant weirdness on Reward
Cate Le Bon makes pleasant weirdo pop music. It’s not so experimental that you couldn’t imagine it on mainstream radio, and in fact her songs have been used in TV shows, including the award-winning comedy-drama Transparent and the British rich-kid reality show Made in Chelsea. Le Bon’s lyrics come across like they’re borrowed from poems […]
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Teklife producer DJ Phil brings a nuanced touch to footwork
Footwork is often characterized by aggressive sounds and high speeds, but Chicago producer and Teklife member DJ Phil fills in the music’s framework with remarkable restraint. In the solo recordings he’s dropped on the Web over the past few years, he uses samples to set the mood, often providing them with so much breathing room […]
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Miguel Atwood-Ferguson translates the works of of hip-hop prodigy J Dilla into orchestral majesty
Shortly after the 2006 death of James Dewitt Yancey, best known as J Dilla, Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, arranger, composer, and producer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson began creating orchestral homages to the Detroit hip-hop producer and rapper. Though Yancey had spoken publicly about his health struggles, his passing at age 32 (due to complications from lupus and a […]
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Galcher Lustwerk merges rap and deep house in his spellbinding songs
Cleveland native Galcher Lustwerk (who prefers to leave his birth name unknown) raps and produces deep-house instrumentals, but you can’t properly describe his music as some combination of house and hip-hop (and he absolutely does not make “hip-house”). Now based in New York, Lustwerk primarily appears interested in spellbinding grooves, in which he siphons trancelike […]
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London composer Cosmo Sheldrake channels beloved oddball songwriters on The Much Much How How and I
If you think the album title The Much Much How How and I is whimsical and amusing, you’ll probably love the fey, fabulous, and hokey music of its creator, London composer and multi-instrumentalist Cosmo Sheldrake. On his 2018 full-length debut, released by Transgressive Records, Sheldrake doesn’t quite attain the cracked genius of oddball predecessors such […]
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If you only see one act at ComplexCon Chicago, make it peerless local rapper Lucki
Come November, the music press will start churning out “decade in review” pieces. Though I can’t predict their contents (and frankly don’t want to), I anticipate there’ll be several listicles ranking Chicago rappers—and any such roundup would be incomplete without Lucki Camel Jr. He dropped his debut mixtape, Alternative Trap, in 2013, and though he […]