Doug Malone, 33, has worked as a recording engineer since 2015, when he began interning at Humboldt Park studio Minbal while studying music composition at Columbia. In 2017 Malone bought the business, renamed it Jamdek, and took over as lead engineer. (He also plays in local trio Courtesy.) Jamdek suspended sessions for live tracking during the March shutdown, but resumed them in May. When essential businesses were allowed to stay open, that conversation with a band was like, “OK, we’re gonna record, but don’t bring anyone in here....

Brian Blade is among the most meticulously reactive drummers at work today in any genre. He tailors his composerly touch to fit any band he’s involved with. For instance, in the Wayne Shorter Quartet he plays with mercurial explosiveness, while in cornetist Ron Miles’s Circuit Rider he adds melodic grace. In 2009 Blade made Mama Rosa (Verve), a singer-songwriter endeavor, accompanying his own voice with a guitar. That work explores a combination of ethereal melody and humid atmosphere similar to some of the music of Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, and Daniel Lanois—all of whom he’s played behind....

Mewithoutyou’s Pale Horses While one Philadelphia band comes through town this week en route to calling it quits—that would be Pattern Is Movement, who play Lincoln Hall tonight—another one visits Chicago just ahead of releasing a new album. Mewithoutyou, a third-wave emo group that never fit in with its contemporaries, is about to release its sixth album, Pale Horses. But before that happens the five-piece headlines the Abbey (formerly Abbey Pub) tomorrow night....

The late Jay B. Ross created a lot of legends during his nearly five decades as an entertainment lawyer, not least because he went to bat for the likes of Muddy Waters and James Brown. But Chicago house-music institution Rachael Cain, aka Screamin’ Rachael, shares a story that’s less often told. In the late 70s and early 80s, Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy helped birth the city’s thriving and influential house scene, and in 1983 Cain herself cofounded pioneering dance-music label Trax Records....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Tori Marlan’s 1999 feature “Brickyard Blues” is the Reader at its best: an obsessively detailed examination of a part of city life that you’d never bother to think about—the brick—and the people whose lives revolve around it. Marlan introduces us to the world of brick stackers—independent contractors who toil long hours for low pay, cleaning and stacking “Chicago common” bricks at demolition sites....

Kevin Hsia’s attention to detail is evident in the way he’s cuffed his military trousers, buttoned his denim shearling jacket, and sprinkled subtle pops of color all over his outfit. The 30-year-old DJ, radio host, and digital marketer describes his style as “modern-classic, through a playful lens that combines vintage, workwear, and at times, tailoring.” “I heard somewhere that a new piece of clothing that feels foreign at first becomes part of ‘you’ after three wears,” he says....

It reached almost 100 degrees in Minnesota on the day that Erica and Adam got married. Frank cried. I did, too, but it was because I was happy. I waited for Frank to realize I had stopped walking. Wearing a sweater over my favorite nightie, I savored the comfort of our couch and held a mug that once held a bouquet of flowers he’d sent to work on my birthday....

The Back Room Deal features radio personality and longtime Reader political writer Ben Joravsky arguing local Chicago politics with Reader staff writer Maya Dukmasova. With sharp wit and stinging analysis, Joravsky and Dukmasova cut through the smoky haze of the elections to offer you a glimpse of the current Chicago races—ward-level and, of course, mayoral. Will these historic elections be determined in back-room deals, like so many in Chicago’s past? Let Ben and Maya talk you through it....

Hip-hop has a great way of encouraging nerdiness. By that I don’t mean nerdcore, a rap subgenre so focused on geek culture that it reeks like a Trekkie who’s stayed at C2E2 too long to shower between days. I’m talking about how accepting the hip-hop community can be of people who are singularly focused on cultural artifacts that the outside world considers niche at best. Which brings me to Chicago rap duo O....

Almost three months after Francisco “Frank” Cruz, 58, was fatally struck on his bicycle by a hit-and-run van driver in West Garfield Park, police still haven’t made an arrest. That’s despite the fact that a security camera captured an image of the vehicle that hit him, which was marked with the phone number for a local real estate company. On October 12 the personal injury firm Disparti Law Group filed the wrongful death suit against Advanced Realty and the unnamed van driver in Cook County circuit court on behalf of Isabelle Cruz....

French multi-instrumentalist James Kent, who makes music as Perturbator, has a lifelong history with synthesizers—his parents were in a band that used them—and he negotiates the possibilities of his instruments as fluently as a native tongue. Though Kent has a background as a black-metal guitarist, he prefers to work alone, and as he told Tunecore in 2016, he found electronic music to be the best genre for that. Kent burst onto the scene in 2012, dropping two Perturbator full-lengths and three EPs in one year....

Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images Joe Dante has a plan. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • Justice Anthony Kennedy—usually the swing vote on the Supreme Court—condemning solitary confinement with references to Kalief Browder and Fyodor Dostoyevsky? —Mick Dumke • About the interdisciplinary artist whose latest show is a demonstration of his ongoing project to download, print, and bind all of Wikipedia? —Aimee Levitt

Courtesy U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images Hey, remember that whole Deepwater Horizon thing? Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That Tribune Media CEO Peter Liguori’s total compensation in 2014 was $23 million? —Tal Rosenberg • That Spotted Cow, the noted Wisconsin beer that’s only available within state limits, was being served illegally in a Minnesota bar? —Drew Hunt

The four films playing this month in the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Umetsugu Inoue series represent only a fraction of the Japanese director’s work. Inoue, who died in 2010 at age 86, directed more than 100 theatrical features and 300 television productions. Yet the series does spotlight his prolificness—three of the four selections were made in 1957—as well as his versatility. The films include a backstage melodrama (The Stormy Man), a boxing picture (The Winner), a nautical adventure (The Eagle and the Hawk), and a family musical (The Green Music Box)....

Boise native Eilen Jewell has been recording Americana and roots music for close to 15 years, and she continues to find new material and new approaches; in concert, she’s as likely to launch into a rousing Loretta Lynn cover as a down-and-dirty blues jam. Her most recent album, 2017’s Down Hearted Blues (Signature), focuses on the latter. In a strolling version of “Down Hearted Blues,” Jewell’s stripped-down washboard and banjo arrangement and her nasal near yodel make the tune sound more like Jimmie Rodgers than Bessie Smith, who made it famous with her 1923 recording....

Far From the Madding Crowd Have a hearty helping of Hardy this week with our review of Far From the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan as an eligible young woman besieged by prospective husbands. Ben Sachs takes a look at The D Train, starring Jack Black as a former high school loser now organizing a class reunion and James Marsden as the old classmate he hopes might ignite the party....

Fire can heal. It’s an idea that has been the center of ArtReach’s practice since the introduction of Project Fire in 2015, its flagship glassblowing program focused on serving young Chicagoans dealing with violence-related trauma. Since 1990, ArtReach has existed in one form or another to connect traumatized communities in the city to arts education and practices. Now, in its 30th year, the Garfield Park-based organization is changing its name to Firebird Community Arts and focusing further on the flame....

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 hardware they prefer to produce music of uncanny visceral power. Lehn’s analog synthesizer mastery is rooted in free improvisation, while Schmickler’s digital synthesis has a foundation in techno. Working together, they find a elusive yet thrilling common ground. On last year’s terrific Neue Bilder (Mikroton) their fast-moving, rapidly morphing collisions defy identification....

A question frequently posed during our recent election season is this one: How in God’s name did we get to this point? When did the freedom to carry a loaded gun hidden on the person of someone who has no idea how to handle it come to be considered a “traditional conservative principle”?

About a year ago, I was standing on a corner near the Reader‘s River North offices, picket sign in hand, pleading with passersby to help save the publication. The paper’s editorial employees, my colleagues, were well into a second year of contract negotiations with management, and things were looking pretty gloomy, to say the least. So let me pause from my usual rage against the machine to thank the readers in Readerland who signed our petitions and offered words of support....