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Master flamenco guitarist Vicente Amigo gives two rare local performances in...
For several decades, Vicente Amigo has reigned as one of flamenco’s premier guitarists, a dazzling technician and an explosive performer carrying the torch of the great Paco de Lucía to push the...
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Chicago label Orindal deals in intimacy, even as this weekend’s Hideout...
After ending his long-running indie-pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Chicago-based musician Owen Ashworth launched Orindal Records. It was part of a musical rebirth, but more a...
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Forty years on, Wire continue to hone their postpunk attack to an elegant point
It’s mind-boggling to me that Wire released their revolutionary debut, Pink Flag, four decades ago—and that there was a time when each new album from the band felt like it had the potential to change...
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Rainer Maria’s reunion album, S/T, draws on the band’s entire history
Rainer Maria have as many lives as a cat. Formed in 1995 in Madison, Wisconsin, the three-piece emerged with a style and energy that situated them comfortably within the ranks of other midwestern emo...
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Chilean black-metal monsters Slaughtbbath wrap up two nights of noisome South...
South American metal fans have been enjoying this Chilean monster for 15 years, and it’s time for the U.S. to catch up: Slaughtbbath have been releasing a stream of vile and vicious black metal via...
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Jeers for Norm from Cheers
George Wendt steps into the fire at Second City's roast, but he may feel the burn. George Wendt has become accustomed to being greeted with good-natured shouts of "Norm!"—a reference, of course, to...
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Veteran Norwegian reedist Frode Gjerstad brings his in-between improvising...
Frode Gjerstad once explained the concept of his group Detail as “too free for the jazzers and too jazzy for the improvisers.” The 69-year-old Norwegian reedist, who currently favors alto saxophone...
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Detroit techno producer M Gun channels punk energy on his debut, Gentium
A 2013 Resident Advisor profile of Detroit producer Manuel Gonzales latched on to a particular phrase he’d used to describe his music: “It’s kind of punk.” Gonzales, who records and performs as M Gun,...
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Matthew Stevens, guitarist for Esperanza Spalding and Christian Scott, steps...
Toronto-born Matthew Stevens represents a new breed of jazz guitarist. He’s an improviser with a deep investment in harmonic exploration, but his music dispenses with most of the hallmarks of jazz, at...
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On Incidentals, Tim Berne’s Snakeoil add elements to their dense avant-garde...
In press materials for his intense new album, Incidentals (ECM), reedist and composer Tim Berne notes that the addition of guitarists Ryan Ferreira and David Torn (who also produced the record) grants...
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Olympia postpunk trio Naomi Punk go for bloat in their evocation of Wire
This damaged postpunk trio from Olympia, Washington, spend an awful lot of time lurching through their new double album, Yellow (Captured Tracks), a repetitive exercise in crude deconstruction clearly...
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On True to Self, post-Drake R&B star Bryson Tiller sulks over failed...
On his sophomore album, True to Self, Bryson Tiller keeps doing Bryson Tiller things, like lamenting over trap-infused 808s about a girlfriend’s emotional distance and the impending end of their...
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Oh Sees have changed their name again, but their ferocious psych-rock is as...
It’s hard to believe John Dwyer has been leading different incarnations of his band Oh Sees (the name has undergone numerous tweaks) for two decades now, churning out top-notch psych-rock that’s...
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Erasing the Distance puts its magic on display at the inaugural Sparkfest
The 12-year-old theater company aims to "disarm" the stigma of mental illness through art. Erasing the Distance, the 12-year-old theater collective that aims to "disarm" the stigma around mental...
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Redtwist Theatre integrates Our Town
But Thornton Wilder's classic play taps into the greatest equalizer of them all. Every classic play comes with its own set of commonplaces—those little hooks we pick up in school, giving us the...
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After wiping out, a cyclist wants the Park District to address the green...
Biking along the Lakefront Trail, Stephanie Reid was laid low by a patch of algae. She’s not the only one. Talk about a lousy way to spend your birthday. On Labor Day, Stephanie Reid was biking along...
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At The Kennison chef Bill Walker picks up where Perennial Virant left off
The new Boka group restaurant in the Hotel Lincoln makes an art of seasonal cooking. We had a lovely summer, didn't we? The world was spiraling down a planet-size shit funnel of humanity's own making,...
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Orphée et Eurydice: opera can dance
In 1774, 12 years after he composed a tradition-busting Italian opera version of the mythical tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, Christoph Willibald Gluck revised it for presentation in Paris. With an eye...
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Posthardcore heroes Quicksand returns with new music for the first time in 22...
Quicksand seemed destined to stay posthardcore’s version of a brilliant cult TV show that regrettably lasted only a season or two. Before disbanding in 1995, the New York-based four-piece released an...
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Dead Rider show delicious cracks of mental instability on its slickest, most...
The unctuous lounge-lizard croon that marks the singing of Dead Rider’s Todd Rittman has started to fray on the group’s fantastic new album, Crew Licks (Drag City), as if to suggest that his sinister...
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