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DJ Earl demonstrates footwork’s deep roots on Bass + Funk & Soul
Since Chicago footwork producer and Teklife member DJ Earl dropped his breakthrough 2016 debut, Open Your Eyes, he’s traveled far outside the city and branched out into different sounds. In 2017, Earl...
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As Dark Mark, singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan has himself a merry little...
Mark Lanegan has made an album to satisfy the yuletide yearnings of those who find holly and hellfire equally enchanting. Even before his old band Screaming Trees hung it up in 2000, the...
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Chicago hip-hop duo Local Nobodies might need a new name soon
In their hip-hop duo Local Nobodies, Chicago rapper Sulaiman and funk multi-instrumentalist Chris Mathien (who also leads the band Mathien) unlock each other’s debonair charms in song. On their...
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Prolific Japanese artists Boris and Merzbow bid farewell to 2020 together
I tried to tally up the total number of releases by noise wizard Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow, and polymorphous metal trio Boris before I started writing about their new joint album, but it...
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Live Skull combine new songs with a resurrected 1989 Peel Session on...
Few recordings transport me directly to a time and place like Dusted, the 1987 album by foundational New York noise-rock band Live Skull. Founded in 1982 by guitarists Tom Paine and Mark C., Live...
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Sui generis duo Beautifulish constructs alien sound worlds
Percussionist Samuel Scranton and bassoonist Katherine Young (who was, in the distant past, a Reader editorial staffer) combine improvised and composed material in the sui generis duo Beautifulish....
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One-man black-metal outfit Old Growth finds serenity in nature and death on...
German one-man primal black-metal outfit Old Growth has dropped a remarkable debut. The project of a musician who goes by Shaman Animist, Mossweaver is dedicated to the theme of reverence for...
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Chicago rock group Sonny Falls bring a hard-won optimism to their second album
In the bad bad not good year that was 2020, optimism often felt as plausible as a unicorn. That’s a big part of why the recent second album from Sonny Falls, All That Has Come Apart / Once Did Not...
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Megalophobe offers drones for mourning on Music for Resistance Fantasies
Though it came out in mid-December, too late to make most “best of 2020” lists, Megalophobe’s Music for Resistance Fantasies (Nefarious Industries) deserves to be remembered as one of the most iconic...
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Why is everyone horny for Bridgerton?
Indulging in Netflix’s latest phenomenon to see what the fuss is about It was only a matter of time before I would watch Bridgerton. For one, I'm more hungry for new content now than ever, devouring...
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Barry Gibb reinvents Bee Gees cuts as country songs with help from friends
When I heard that the lone surviving Bee Gee, Barry Gibb, was releasing a country album, I didn’t bat an eye. Though the band are best known for the falsetto-laden hits of their disco years, and...
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Chicago singer-songwriter Nayla Jungheim juices up her tender debut album...
Chicago indie singer-songwriter Nayla Jungheim knows that putting her own needs first is the best defense against a cruel and indifferent world. She made her new debut album, the lively and...
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White Suns merge harsh noise experiments and punk rhythms on The Lower Way
Over the past dozen years, White Suns have created a perfect marriage of folding-table harsh noise and streamlined punk, and the New York trio’s latest full-length, The Lower Way (their first for...
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Steve Earle says farewell to his son with the new J.T.
Nothing is more precious than the relationship between parent and child, and it’s a hell of a thing when they’re separated by death—especially when the child is the one to go. Justin Townes Earle, the...
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Cellist-fronted metal trio Grayceon implore humanity to fight for a...
In their nearly 15 years as a band, San Francisco’s Grayceon have reimagined the traditional shapes of metal with challenging song structures, thought-provoking lyrics, and a sound that often feels...
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Viagra Boys find the sweetness in self-destruction on Welfare Jazz
Viagra Boys’ career as acid-punk raconteurs has been fueled by mutually assured destruction—they’ve pumped their bodies full of illicit substances and squared off with toxic masculinity to a frenzied...
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DJ Corey grew up immersed in footwork, and he’s learned it inside and out
Chicago producer DJ Corey is footwork royalty. His father, DJ Clent, got hooked on ghetto house in the early 90s, and by the end of that decade had established a career in the faster, more aggressive...
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Chicago EBM producer Understudy brings a little light into his music’s murky...
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...
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Chicago rapper 엔도 Endo trains his sights on the top of pop playlists
Chicago rapper 엔도 Endo began releasing his dance-indebted tracks in 2018, and he’s since gravitated toward a loose collective of experimental pop, hip-hop, and dance musicians supported by production...
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Reality Anonymous reinvigorate Chicago’s weird pop scene with The Ghost Host...
Chicago’s music scene is rich, colorful, and full of variety—even during the pandemic—but in recent years I haven’t noticed much of what I call “weird pop,” exemplified in decades past by strangely...
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