chicago
Track: Mind Maintenance – ‘The Ladder’: Chicago legends Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor bring percussive African contemplation
IF YOU’RE at all a follower of the Chicago music scene that erupted in so many directions back at the turn of the century, then the rhythmic adepts Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams will probably need no introduction; given how, they were so deeply woven into intelligent, seminal albums by the Chicago Underground Trio and all its various …
See: Axis: Sova – ‘(Don’t Wanna Have That) Dream’: Chicago psych with a noir lullaby twist
AXIS: SOVA began, as many excellent bands do, as a means to a gigging end (see similarly colonised TEKE::TEKE over at Kill Rock Stars, for example). Brett, the Sova of the equation, was watching his previous outfit Mass Shivers enter its death throes – we’re talking back in 2009 here; and having been offered an opening …
See: The video for Mind Maintenance’s ‘Glow & Glimmer’: Chicago’s Chad Taylor and Joshua Abrams step out for some exceedingly cool world-jazz melodicism
TAKE one of the finest and most intuitive leftfield jazz rhythm sections of past decades, Chicago drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Joshua Abrams, who between them amass waay over a couple hundred performance credits to their name on Discogs for artists such as the Chicago Underground Trio and all its various spiralling iterations, Brokeback, Sam …
Droppin’ Knowledge: In Chi-Town, Rashid Hadee Is On The Beat. And The Mic, Too.
In hip hop, a sample can sometimes lead you on an unexpected journey. Rashid Hadee’s first box of vinyl records came from his uncle. The Chicago rapper and producer discovered the box in a closet, and decided to listen to the LPs, one by one, and create beats from what he found. Hadee’s uncle was …
Album review: Ryley Walker – ‘Course In Fable’: Chicago baroque-folk genius brings the prog to his latest dazzler
TROUBADOUR genius touched by the hand of the Tim Buckley, collaborator on some very fine albums, sole architect of yet other records that fall very much in that same category, and one of the funniest and most candid tweeters in music: Ryley Walker is all of these. He’s set to release his new solo album, …
Track: Ryley Walker’s ‘Axis Bent’ is a baroque and complex glory; his new album’s out soon
TROUBADOUR genius touched by the hand of the Tim Buckley, collaborator on some very fine albums, sole architect of yet other records that fall very much in that same category, and one of the funniest tweeters in music, Ryley Walker has just dropped a new track, “Axis Bent”, from his early April album Course In …
SEE: The Twilite Tone – ‘Do It Properly’: dancing through the Windy City with future breaks
CHICAGO’S enlightened future breaks producer The Twilite Tone has just unveiled the video for “Do It Properly”, one of the standout tracks from his diaristic debut album for Stones Throw, The Clearing. Delight in it below. The video is something of a paean to Chicago and the life Tone lives; you can see him popping …
SEE: Slow Pulp – ‘At It Again’: a Chicago fuzzpop cracker
SLOW PULP are a band who’ve been around the block – in a really, dreadfully short space of time. Don’t wish for the kinda year singer Emily Massey’s had. No, really: don’t. Things were very much on the upward curve for the young band, outta Wisconsin and Chicago-based – on tour with Alex G, gaining …
SEE: the pristine ‘tronica of Sam Prekop’s ‘Above Our Heads’
SAM PREKOP has been building beguiling melodies with the lightest of touches for decades now; firstly with Chicago’s The Sea and Cake, and then as a solo artist. If you don’t know his self-titled debut for Thrill Jockey, you really ought; it’s masterful, light, sun-drenched, jazzy. Of recent times he’s moved further and further into …
SEE: Ganser – ‘Projector’: a post-punk despatch from our dystopia
IT CHARGES at you on wiry guitar and rumbling tom-toms, a shadowy simmer. We’re in a lecture theatre, with vocalist and keyboard player Nadia Garafalo demure in a sweater: our college lecturer on hand to guide us through the lyric video for “Projector”, the latest slice of portent-filled post-punk from Chicago’s Ganser. It serves notice …