Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Gossip Wolf has been following local label and multimedia collective FeelTrip for ages, and the crew keeps growing. Cofounder David Beltran (aka producer Starfoxxx) says that FeelTrip recently launched the imprint Reptilian Traxx, which he’ll run with Matt Engers (aka producer Sophagus) and FeelTrip’s in-house video director, Joshua Patterson (aka new-age act the Druid Beat). Beltran says Reptilian Traxx will release obscure electronic music, classic-sounding club tracks, and “anything not jangle pop....
UPDATE Monday, September 23, 12:55 PM: The Cerrone concert has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Disco and pop music would be diminished had French drummer, producer, composer, and bandleader Marc Cerrone never taken an interest in dance music. In the early 70s, he got his first taste of fame as a founding member of Kongas, which melded Afropop rhythms, South American percussion, limber funk, and early disco in dance-driven rock singles....
Even considering how much interesting material the Chicago hip-hop scene has produced already this year, the past few weeks have felt like an early Christmas. On September 7, for example, rapper and producer DGainz (probably best known as the videographer who lent drill its caustic visuals in the early 2010s) dropped the pop-heavy Oddball. The following day, Lil Chris (a member of west-side group M.I.C who’s made videos with DGainz) released a mixtape called Conscious Trap, whose title defies the convention of separating rappers into “street” and “backpack” categories....
This week’s gig poster advertises a party—a real-live party with music and people all in a room together!—organized at Elastic Arts in Logan Square by a collective of artists, musicians, and dancers called the Stylin’ Out Network. Throughout lockdown, the collective hosted DJ sets on their Twitch channel, and this event celebrates the return of their quarterly ST(ART) UP series, which pairs DJs from the collective with live performers and visual artists....
The days are getting longer, so you’ll need even more to do to fill the time. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 5/24: Hosted by DNAinfo’s Jen Sabella and CPS teacher Erika Wozniak, the Girl Talk premieres at the Hideout (1354 W. Wabansia). The talk show will highlight amazing women in Chicago. 6:30 PM For more stuff to do this week—and every day—check out our Agenda page.
Further Out At the end of last year, when I first saw Cloakroom live, I commented that when they were on stage their crushing wall of heavy and spacey guitars reminded me of Illinois alt-rock legends Hum—as opposed to the softer side they display on their debut full-length, Infinity. So it only makes sense that when the northwest-Indiana trio holed up to work on that record’s follow-up, their new Run for Cover Records double LP, Further Out—which gets its official release party this Sat 2/7 at Beat Kitchen—they brought Hum front man Matt Talbott on board for production and engineering duties....
Local sludge-metal/noise-rock freaks Cacaw called it a day in 2011. Upon their collapse, half the band—Zack Weil and Kyle Reynolds—started Oozing Wound with Unmanned Ship bassist Kevin Cribbin. The other two members, guitarist-vocalist Anya Davidson and bassist-vocalist Carrie Vinarsky, backed away from music to focus on their visual art. Davidson is a comics artist—in the past few years she’s written and drawn a book’s worth of the strip Band for Life as well as the graphic novels School Spirits and Lovers in the Garden—and Vinarsky is on the grind as a tattoo artist....
This morning I heard a story on NPR in which a scientist asserted that listening to music that you like can reduce pain. As if we needed a doctor to tell us something so obvious. For many years few albums have reduced pain—whether physical or mental—like Crazy Rhythms, the brilliant 1980 debut album by Hoboken’s the Feelies. I’m not going to bother explaining how the group transplanted the strum-driven sound of the Velvet Underground into a wildly propulsive, hypnotic sound all its own....
You’ll sink about six inches into the leather banquettes at Formento’s, the 859th new Italian restaurant to open in Chicago during the last 18 months or so. It’s a nice detail that might persuade you that you’ve arrived at your grandfather’s Italian restaurant, which of course you haven’t. Formento’s comes from what is now known as B. Hospitality, the folks behind the Bristol and Balena, who have striven to distinguish themselves from the horde by opening a proudly Italian-American red-sauce joint....
Local garage rockers CoCoComa went on hiatus four years ago, but on Sunday their most recent lineup—guitarist-organist Anthony Cozzi, bassist Tyler J. Brock, guitarist Lisa Roe, and drummer Bill Roe—regrouped to play the wedding of their friend J.J. Wright. “He was one of our earliest and most enthusiastic fans, so we couldn’t say no,” says Bill. Rehearsals have gone well, and CoCoComa have extended the reunion—as Bill says, “We thought it’d be cool to play something else nonformal....
Goose Island is far from an island unto itself these days. Thanks to its 2011 sale to Anheuser-Busch and its parent company, Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate InBev, it’s expanded its reach—you can now sip beers from Chicago’s “craft brewery” in all 50 states and all over the world, from São Paolo to Shanghai. May 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of Goose Island. To celebrate this occasion and commemorate our founder John Hall’s love of English beer, we collaborated with Fuller’s of London to create a 30th Anniversary Ale....
In late July a fire destroyed Mucho Culo, a near-west-side studio, performance space, and multimedia outlet as well as the home of local DJ and musician Erik Voit, aka Pranas. Voit made it out of the building with his laptop, hard drive, and Maschine Studio controller, but he had to abandon the rest of his music gear—keyboards, turntables, guitars, basses, microphones, synths—and audio/video equipment. “I estimate I had about $60,000 to $70,000 worth of stuff,” he says....
On March 12, the dancers of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago were onstage preparing for opening night of their spring program, Ohad Naharin’s DECADANCE/CHICAGO, at the Harris Theater. They continued to rehearse until 5 PM, the hour when Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced guidelines for the cancellation of large-scale and community events to stem the spread of COVID-19. “How could we justify performing [that] night when the following day was not safe?...
Hadiya Pendleton was killed more than three years ago, and her murder has become emblematic of Chicago’s plague of violence; Pendleton, a 15-year-old King College Prep student, was shot in the back in Kenwood park a week after she’d traveled to perform at events surrounding Obama’s second inauguration, and her death reverberated throughout the country. Pendleton would’ve turned 19 tomorrow, and that evening her life will be honored as part of the second-annual Wear Orange Party for Peace, a free barbecue and concert at Harold Washington Playlot Park....
It’s been 65 years since the New Yorker‘s A.J. Liebling dubbed Chicago the Second City, a “not-quite metropolis.” As it’s now reached retirement age, the notion ought to be collecting its gold watch and hitting the links and one day in the very near future gumming down its last spoonful of pudding before dying in obscurity. But alas, Chicago’s also-ran self-image persists: the city as subordinate, generally lacking, suffering by comparison....
I schedule an appointment to play with bunnies hoping it takes the ease off existing during a pandemic. Marley, a black lop-eared bunny at Cuddle Bunny, hops around and evades my pets to nuzzle his playmate Moo. Marley licks his head as Moo burrows into his chest. I nudge my girlfriend and say, “That one’s you.” “Enclosures were not our initial plan, but they help keep people socially distant and rabbits contained,” says Burdick about the three fenced play pens that separate the bunnies for customers to play with....
A journalist scolds an athlete at the risk of sounding like a schoolmarm. Or do I mean an idiot? Armour lowered the boom. “Hope Solo is a distraction U.S. Soccer can no longer afford. . .” her lecture began. “Solo has embarrassed her team and the country she represents one time too many.” Armour didn’t explain who Solo was distracting, or what she was distracting them from, or why this was a horrible thing to do, but whatever....
In 2016 Gossip Wolf noted the formation of visionary local drone-song duo Mending, aka crystal-voiced singer Kate Adams and sound artist Joshua Dumas. This past August, Mending began releasing a four-hour, 40-song cycle called We Gathered at Wakerobin Hollow, whose graceful, narratively compelling music “follows a family and friends across four decades as they spread out from their small hometown until climate instability and authoritarian government draw them home again,” in the words of the band....
Molasses was born from the ashes of influential Dutch band the Devil’s Blood. Founded in 2006 by guitarist and vocalist Selim Lemouchi (“SL”) and fronted by his sister Farida (“the Mouth of Satan”), they took their name from a Watain song but never went full black metal. Instead they made sweeping, elegant, complex, and ethereal heavy psych informed by occult-rock progenitors such as Coven, Black Sabbath, and Roky Erickson and colored by Selim’s satanism and other spiritual beliefs....
