Norwegian artist Helge Sten, who makes music as Deathprod, trades not in massive dynamic shifts but in uniformly gray ambient soundscapes. He typically uses a variegated array of homemade electronics, samplers, out-of-date processors, and other audio detritus that echo, hiss, and throb like futuristic boilers arduously coming online while retro steampunk conglomerations cough and doppler […]
Tag: Vol. 52 No. 7
Issue of January 12, 2023
Fifty years of struggle
Frank Chapman discusses the history of the movement for community control of the Chicago police.
by Jim Daley
On the cover: Photo by Alec Ozawa. For more of Ozawa’s work, go to ozawacreativeco.com
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inMusic
Garage rockers Bass Drum of Death embrace collaboration on Say I Won’t
Bass Drum of Death’s music feels like a headbanging night of fun and questionable decisions. At its best, it satiates with the brevity and heft of the greatest punk rock. At its worst, it gets the band lumped into a box with similar artists such as the White Stripes, Wavves, and Ty Segall. Fortunately, these […]
Posted inMusic
Prolific composer John Cale kicks off 2023 with a double album
It’s hard to convey how much the music of John Cale means to me. The Welsh-born polymath cofounded the Velvet Underground, bringing a crucial avant-garde perspective to the band; he’d worked with experimental titans Tony Conrad and La Monte Young back when Lou Reed was still writing teenage doo-wop pastiches. When Cale left the band […]
Posted inMusic
NYC dance producer Doss invites everybody into her upbeat, big-tent pop
New York City producer and songwriter Doss arranges sounds from the past three decades of dance-music history into effervescent pop collages. Doss was friends and collaborators with late hyperpop lodestar Sophie, which partly explains why her work pops up in Spotify’s hyperpop playlist—not everybody considers Doss a hyperpop artist, but her presence there benefits the […]
Posted inFilm
Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
This engrossing 2022 documentary chronicles the 50-year-and-counting collaboration between two literary lions: political biographer Robert Caro, who turned 87 on October 30, 2022, and his editor, Robert Gottlieb, who turned 91 on April 29, 2022.
Posted inFilm
The Pale Blue Eye
The center of the film is Bale’s performance—a frozen surface which cracks open to reveal icy, rushing depths—and the cold New York landscape, with swirls of snow and bare tree limbs against the stark sky.
Posted inFilm
A Man Called Otto
I haven’t read the 2012 Swedish book or 2015 film that this is based on, but I can’t imagine either could be half as tone-deaf.
Posted inFilm
Chicago’s 90-year-old film treasure
The nation’s oldest and longest-running college film society is located right under our noses on Chicago’s south side at the University of Chicago.
Posted inMusic
Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy put their spin on the Modern Lovers’ classic debut
Michael Shannon calls Brooklyn home these days, but the award-winning actor and founder of A Red Orchid Theatre still spends enough time in Chicago to remain one of the city’s most cherished nightlife figures—he’s right up there with Sharkula and the Tamale Guy. He played the main antagonist in The Shape of Water, and in […]
Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Are you ready for some Foodball?
Back in days of yore, when Ludlow Liquors first swung its doors open in Avondale, the work of its kitchen and first chef was described as a “permanent food installation.” In the years since, there’s been nothing permanent about it, as it has been home to an ever-shifting but always interesting cast of weird and […]
Posted inBook Review
Inside Ling Ma’s darkly funny fiction
I don’t usually get ensnared by a book. But Ling Ma’s short story collection, Bliss Montage, was different. I started reading it Thanksgiving morning and literally could not stop. There was something urgent in Ma’s writing, something that demanded full attention. It might be her distinctive voice—wry, witty, relatable. Or her sentences—carefully crafted, but not […]
Posted inStreet View
The champions of swagger
“We got a lot of swagger. We don’t even have to open our mouths—they just see it,” said Greg Sims, 34. I met Greg and his twin brother Glenn when we attended “Champions of Success,” a panel discussion about the state of the fashion industry in Chicago that happened in November at the Kimpton Gray […]
Posted inFilm
A more representative call sheet
Despite the increased spotlight on marginalized voices in the ever-evolving film landscape, criticism doesn’t particularly reflect that. The majority of film critics still tend to be straight, white males, unrepresentative of the world around them. The Call Sheet is a new magazine that aims to disrupt that.