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The Body kick off 2021 with the their heaviest, noisiest, and bleakest...
Categorizing the doomsday sonic bludgeon wielded by Providence duo the Body over their two-decade reign of terror isn’t an easy task. Guitarist and screamer Chip King and drummer Lee Buford slice and...
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David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, and Mats Gustafsson take a musical road trip as...
The Underflow take their name from the Greek record store where guitarist David Grubbs, cornetist Rob Mazurek, and saxophonist Mats Gustafsson played their first trio gig in May 2019. But the...
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Amy Sillman breaks down art barriers
In her book Faux Pas, the painter makes a rarified field approachable with humor and profundity.“You take a picture, but you make a drawing.” I’ve tried for decades to explain why a picture made by...
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Revolution vs. reform: Judas and the Black Messiah
With knockout performances comes an examination of the need for revolutionaries when pushing for real change. Warning: This review contains spoilers. As the same argument about reform plays in a loop,...
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Rotterdam’s Rats on Rafts show off some global swagger on their new album
In their 15 years together, Rotterdam postpunk band Rats on Rafts have built a comfortable existence and a decent hometown following, but their new album, Excerpts From Chapter 3: The Mind Runs a Net...
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Weaving tangled webs with Constellations and Missed Connections
Theatre Above the Law and A Red Orchid Theatre dive into the physics and magic of being alive together. For the past year, I've been making the same (extremely bad) joke, paraphrasing the hard-boiled...
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Mukqs documents pandemic living on My Most Personal Album to Date
The multifarious outlets of Chicago experimental musician Maxwell Allison include the solo project Mukqs and the improvisational ambient trio Good Willsmith, whose Twitter account he uses to opine...
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Aki Takase, Christian Weber, and Michael Griener advance the language of...
Berlin-based pianist Aki Takase has been performing for more than 40 years, and in that time she’s engaged with contemporary composition, spoken word, and even a turntablist—the trio Lok 03 includes...
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Englewood B.U. raps with a flair for complex storytelling
Chicago’s Englewood B.U. is as much an alchemist as a rapper, combining elements to create effects that defy easy explanation. On his new debut, 99 B.U.…
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Chicagoland prog-metal band Mechina spin a vast interstellar saga almost 15...
Progressive symphonic metal group Mechina are based in Chicago’s western suburbs, but I wouldn’t blame you if their inhumanly technical sci-fi sound convinced you they weren’t from Earth. For nearly...
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Chicago’s Waltzer reinvigorates antique rock sounds on Time Traveler
Waltzer founder Sophie Sputnik spent half the 2010s fronting Fort Lauderdale blues-punk duo Killmama from behind a drum kit—she anchored the band’s sparse arrangements in time while lighting them up...
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Fillet of Solo reminds us that no one is alone
The annual festival of storytelling offers the freshest catches for COVID days. In the Before Times—before the Moth, before the Stoop, before the phrase "live lit" was even coined, much less a...
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German indie veterans the Notwist draw from Chicago’s jazz community for the...
Long-running German group the Notwist perfected their airy combination of lovelorn indie rock and tender electronic sounds nearly two decades ago, but once they got it just right, they apparently...
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R&B wizard Pink Sweat$ will take over the galaxy with his Pink Planet
There isn’t much to the story behind David Bowden’s stage name, Pink Sweat$. As the Philadelphia singer-songwriter told DJ Booth in 2018, it was inspired by a passing comment at the studio where he...
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Roscoe Mitchell and Mike Reed unearth the sonic alchemy of a live duo set...
I’m a live-music addict, and it sometimes feels completely unreal that I haven’t been to a concert in almost a year. But one of the pandemic’s few silver linings is that some musicians are digging...
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Mogwai celebrate 25 years of postrock exploration with As the Love Continues
Mogwai have never presented themselves as a sentimental band, but the (mostly) instrumental Scottish postrock group are leaning into nostalgia to commemorate their 25th year: they’re releasing their...
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John Carpenter trades build ups for lingering unease on Lost Themes III:...
John Carpenter is a master of thrills. The legendary filmmaker and composer unnerves and titillates by fusing sight and sound—how the light catches a blade or outlines a breast, for instance, and the...
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Archie Shepp and Jason Moran turn tradition into new challenges on Let My...
After saxophonist Archie Shepp became known in the 1960s as a fierce musical and political voice in what was then called the avant-garde, he charted a different path. In 1977, Shepp recorded a...
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Chicago multi-instrumentalist Alex Cowling evokes the power of the great...
Over the past few years, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Alex Cowling has released several solo albums that combine weather-beaten indie rock, spacious jazz, and easygoing folk, and he’s done it to...
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Chicago rapper Sol Patches makes daring choices feel welcoming on Vivid Image
Multidisciplinary artist Sol Patches left Chicago a few years ago to study at New York University, but our city remains embedded in her work. She opens her new album, Vivid Image (self-released via...
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