Category Archives: Chicago

MP3: Sic Alps – “Glyphs”


MP3: Sic Alps-Glyphs

Sic Alps are set to drop a new album on the record label Drag City on  September 11th. Above is “Glyphs” which is conveniently enough on the upcoming Sic Alps album called Sic Alps..

tour dates with thee Oh Sees after the jump

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Nelsonville Fest Preview: Mucca Pazza

Note: I’ll be trickling out some previews for sets that I’ll be sure to catch at the Nelsonville Music Festival throughout the week.   This is a rough chronological order.

Mucca Pazza isn’t necessarily a band who’s album would end up in my stereo on a Sunday morning, but live… good lord what a treat.   The self-dubbed “circus-punk” clan of 3o or so characters made up of horns and percussion and cheerleaders and who-knows-what else don thrift store band uniforms and make a spectacle of your middle school marching band nightmares.    One part Sousa, one part Klezmer, and at least one part pure funk, these Chicagoans  bring pure unadulterated joyous  fun.  Truly a highlight of the festival.

Listen: Chief Keef “I Don’t Like” ( Good Music Remix Ft. Pusha-T, Kanye West, Jadakiss, Big Sean)

  (pusha-t.com)

New Music: Wild Belle – Keep You

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NOMO bandleader, Iron & Wine live member and fellow Midwesterner Elliot Bergman has a new project called Wild Belle.
Their first single “Keep You” is a sexy dubbed out psychedelic pop jam. Here it above and on their bandcamp.

 

 

Video: Common “Blue Sky”

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Common’s video for “Blue Sky” off his upcoming album The Dreamer, The Believer

Catching up with Brian Harnetty

If I were to scribble my own Overlooked in Ohio piece, Brian Harnetty would likely be my artist of choice. I’ve written about Columbus’s gentle giant quite a few times, and I began wondering what Harnetty has been up to lately. Turns out, quite a bit.

Like he did for his collaboration with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Silent City, and his previous full-length, American Winter, Harnetty continues his excavation of the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives in Kentucky, finding old folk songs, interviews and other odds & ends from Appalachia and layering the found sounds with his own instrumentation. His new album will be called Rawhead & Bloodybones, and it’s a collection of old archival folk tales as told by children. “The combination of the children’s innocence and the often gruesome tales is a pretty powerful combination already. I added some instrumental parts, and other samples,” Harnetty says. This one will be out in late winter/early spring of next year — on vinyl this time, too.

Harnetty also has a sound installation that will open Nov. 12 at a sound art gallery called the Audible Gallery, which is part of the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. The installation is based on the archives of enigmatic jazz musician Sun Ra. (He’s hopeful that this, too, may become an album, pending permission from the Sun Ra archives trustees.) Full description of the installation below. I particularly like this excerpt from Harnetty: “I am not a jazz musician. I cannot lay claim to Sun Ra’s history, nor can I ever fully understand him or his music. But I can listen, intently, and enter a dialogue, bringing my own knowledge and thought and experience.”
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Video:Jay Electronica-Live at the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago

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Jay Electronica brought a bunch of hippies on stage with him this weekend at the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago.
This video has Jay rocking “Googley Eyes” over PaceWon’s 1998 single “I Declare War”, I had forgotten Ski Beatz produced that song until this moment.
Jay transitions into “Eternal Sunshine for A Spotless Mind”, a song where the New Orleans emcee raps for like 9 minutes of loops from the movie of the same name. This performance is enteraining for two reasons. 1)Hippies actually try to dance to a loop from an incredibly depressing movie and no drum. 2)Security starts throwing the crowd off the stage. Jay times it so that half the crowd gets thrown-off while he is saying “you can fit in with the close minded at the sit-ins” then turns around right on when some kid is being violently removed at the exact part where Jay exclaims “fuck rap. fuck that. this god-hop” and raps it in the face of the security.
This video ends with Jay Elect doing an accapella of “The Ghost of Christopher Wallace” which has the best literary referancing lyric of 2010 “the flow is so Tolstoy, Fyoder Dostoe , half-oyster, half shrimp fully dressed po boy”.

MP3:Adulture & OCD Automatic-Paper Cat(Sammy Bananas Remix)

MP3:Adulture & OCD Automatic-Paper Cat (Sammy Bananas Remix)

(via  Fools Gold via Rcrd Label)

I got up with  Adulture when I was in Chi for Pitchfork.  The Columbus ex-pat has a weekly at the Smart Bar and is still pumping out music, as evident by this  Sammy Bananas remix.

Dood is mainly way into learning everything he can about Chicago House, and seeing what the world has in store.

A Transmission About Liz Phair from the Actual Guyville

Much print has been spilled in the most recent flurry of Liz Phair news, and a lot of it just clearly misses the fucking point.

As an artistic piece I still think Exile In Guyville is an amazing piece of emotional honesty. I could care less what motivated Liz Phair to write the songs, and from what I can tell she was an artist first and foremost, but she wanted validation from Nash Kato and that crew, so I think that supplied the drive to actually get her stuff released. I think the “potty mouth / slutty blowjob queen / Exile On Mainstreet / priveleged rich kid going bohemian” thing is an angle that lazy journalists employed then, and still employ. One watch of the Guyville Redux DVD that comes with the reissue is paints a much better representation of the indie scene at the time — Chicago in particular — and the way she actually fit into things at the time.

But I think she was/is an artist with a limited well from which to draw. There’s a reason the good songs on later discs were mostly reworkings of stuff from the Girlysound tapes. I think she hit upon a bright burst of inspiration at a certain point in her life and after that was gone she didn’t have anything else unique to say.

Another journalist and I were having an argument recently over whether or not Guyville is even a feminist work. I argued it wasn’t philosophically, but understood that since it empowered so many women some folks just lump it in as a “feminist work.” And I think that’s the most important thing, and one that gets severely overlooked since almost everyone that’s ever written about the album is male, and they totally fucking miss this point just about every single time, but when that disc came out there were a LOT of girls that were suddenly like, OH my GOD, I think those same things too. And it’s O.K. I’m not alone!”

Who cares if Phair never writes another decent song, or that her career nowadays is one naked grab for attention after another? That’s her business, and I don’t hold it against her one whit, and I think it’s idiotic for people to hate on her for trying to make a career within today’s totally fucked up music industry. What matters is that, once upon a time, she created a piece of art that gave a lot of people courage by shouting universal truths previously held behind closed doors. For that Liz Phair will always have my respect.

The Hood Internet vs Chicago

The Hood Internet has gone and remixed an entire city! This fun mashup album features a ton of bands and the songs range from the straight up insane (Kanye + Wilco + the Super Bowl Shuffle!) to some really great stuff, like this Andrew Bird track I’m posting up.

MP3: Simple X-plosion (Diverse vs Andrew Bird)

Click here to download the full album for free.

Tracklisting:

1. Intro
2. Pro Nails Forever (Kid Sister vs Walter Meego)
3. Frog Minutes (Shawnna vs LMNOP)
4. Cakeicide (Hollywood Holt vs Prairie Cartel)
5. Juke And Pop (Mic Terror vs Green Velvet)
6. Superbowl Jesus (Kanye West + 1985 Bears vs Wilco)
7. Trenchache (Juice vs Liz Phair)
8. 80s Problems (Tha Basix vs Mahjongg)
9. When Baby Mamas Collide (Qualo vs Chin Up Chin Up)
10. Simple X-plosion (Diverse vs Andrew Bird)
11. Your Love Iz What It Iz (The Cool Kids vs Frankie Knuckles)
12. Sisters Of Chicago-Rillas (Rhymefest vs The Changes)
13. I Ain’t That Bowie (Twista vs The Sea And Cake)
14. Hay Electric (Crucial Conflict vs Reds and Blue)
15. Watch My Big Feet Jump (Dude N Nem + Twista vs Office)
16. Ten-Day High (Do Or Die + Kanye West vs Tortoise)
17. Eatchyo Stigmata (Yea Big + Kid Static vs Ministry)
18. Smash That There (Yung Berg vs The Smashing Pumpkins)
19. Stages Of Standby (Psalm One vs Kleenex Girl Wonder)
20. Can You Eat Some More Heavy Fists Of Love? (Kanye West + GLC vs Bumps + Terminal 4 + Big Black)
21. I Used To Love The Blue Line (Common vs Bang! Bang!)
22. I Gotcha Trees (Lupe Fiasco vs May Or May Not)
23. What Chu Like, Old Mare? (Da Brat vs Sleep Out)
24. Kells-Tone For The Painfully In Love (R. Kelly vs Casiotone For The Painfully Alone)