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Indiana singer-songwriter Omar Apollo finds success through a kaleidoscopic...
Indiana singer-songwriter Omar Apollo excels in the gray spaces between genres and scenes. On a string of singles he’s uploaded to Soundcloud over the past year, he transposes heart-wrenching,...
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Ruby Boots explores the tug of war between roots and restlessness on Don’t...
Bex Chilcott, aka Ruby Boots, left her mother’s home in Perth, Australia, as a teenager in the mid-90s, and by age 20 she was working on a pearl-fishing boat on the northwest coast—a job that let her...
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Michigan rapper NF finds the place where Christian hip-hop and Eminem meet
There’s a white Michigan rapper with a whiplash-inducing staccato flow who shocked the pop music world when he topped the Billboard 200 last year. No, it isn’t Eminem; yes, Marshall Mathers’s Revival...
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Oak Park native Amir ElSaffar moves beyond cross-cultural hybrids with Rivers...
Oak Park native Amir ElSaffar has built his career pursuing a rigorous curiosity and commitment to art, and one of his greatest accomplishments is his ravishing hybrid of postbop and traditional Iraqi...
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Veteran Chicago reedist adapts a mentor roll in his visceral new Chicago...
Throughout his career reedist Ken Vandermark has often sought out elders as collaborators, working with Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Fred Anderson, and Robert Barry, among others. Vandermark...
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Chicago rapper Adot finds his musical voice by getting lost along the way
In a December interview with the music site Elevator, Chicago rapper Adot said he follows his gut when it comes to musical direction rather than adhering to a strict sound. Putting it more succinctly,...
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club rides to live, lives to ride
After a mixed reception for their 2008 instrumental album The Effects of 333, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seemed to be on a stabler course with the addition of Leah Shapiro, who took over the drum...
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Chip-Hop artist Mega Ran brings nerd anthems to the arcade machines at Emporium
The weaponization of nerd culture has been a nightmare. From the outset, satirical representations like the Revenge of the Nerds series were riddled with toxic misogyny, but the modern-day real-life...
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Nate Wooley’s quartet of rising stars headlines a benefit for Experimental...
If you measure the power of a provocation by its enemies, Aram Saroyan’s “Lighght” is a megaton bomb. Fifteen years after the one-word poem was included in the 1965 edition of The American Literary...
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Local metal unit the Atlas Moth have a glorious return to form on Coma Noir
On the Atlas Moth’s brand-new Coma Noir, their fourth full-length and first for LA-based Prosthetic Records, the local heavy-metal monsters turn the focus back toward the earth-shaking sludge that...
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24 Frames, the final feature from Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, may send...
Digitally altered scenes of animals, weather, and natural landscapes reveal the hidden complexity behind simple images. Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who died in 2016 at age 76, often employed...
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Chicago rapper Cupcakke doubles down on incisive raps that go beyond raunch
Last year an independent Chicago rapper who found success while making bold, insightful tracks about black life on the city’s south side appeared onstage at Lollapalooza. I could be describing Chance...
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Oh Sees return to blammo psych-rock after detouring into baroque pop on last...
It’s hard to keep up with the prolificacy of John Dwyer, who devotes most of his creative energy to his long-running and often flawless Oh Sees. While I was in the process of digesting the lacerating...
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Robert Plant may have moved back home to England, but he hasn’t returned to...
A few years ago Robert Plant returned to England, where he reunited with some of his trusted bandmates and forged some new bonds. During his fruitful stay in the U.S. he immersed himself in country...
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Beguiling New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins is a little bit...
On Play Till You Win (Cassandra Complex), New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins recorded a song called “Tennessee Waltz.” It’s an original, rather than the country classic by Pee Wee King made...
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Canadian composer and musician Martin Arnold opens the third Frequency...
One thing’s for sure—you can’t pin Martin Arnold down. On The Split Veleta, his volume in Another Timbre Records’ recent five-album survey of Canadian composers, the pensive violin and piano melodies...
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German improvisers bridge divides to produce viscerally abstract, powerful music
These two purveyors of experimental electronic music based in Cologne, Germany, have forged a dynamic partnership over the last two decades, bridging differences in age, musical backgrounds, and the...
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French-Israeli singer Keren Ann returns after a five-year silence with her...
After releasing her middling 2011 album, 101, and giving birth to her first child, French-Israeli singer Keren Ann largely retreated from the music business apart from some work in theater and film....
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Scandinavia’s powerful Atomic settle into life with drummer Hans Hulbækmo and...
On last year’s Six Easy Pieces (Odin), the long-running Scandinavian freebop quintet Atomic truly settled into life with drummer Hans Hulbækmo, who replaced founding percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love in...
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With their stark but powerful melodies Ethers are much less subtle than they...
Though reckless garage-rock foursome Heavy Times weathered several mutations, one consistent component of the band was the subtle, yet heady hooks in underrated frontman Bo Hansen’s songwriting. A...
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