Last month I traveled to Belfast to attend the Northern Ireland Music Prize, because this year’s ceremony included the debut of the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award—named for the late Belfast-born artist who’d become one of Chicago’s most important and beloved musical transplants. Cassidy, who led the group Butterfly Child, was an old friend of mine […]
Category: Music
Posted inGossip Wolf
Partywatcher honors his Dominican roots with his first all-Spanish release
For seven years, Chicago musician Jochy Saldivar has been releasing suave R&B-inflected pop as Partywatcher, and this Friday he drops the EP El Tipo, his first release sung entirely in Spanish. The new EP also breaks stylistically from Partywatcher’s 2022 EP, Moreno, which leans heavily on 80s synth pop dosed with reggaeton; by contrast, El […]
Posted inMusic
Balikbayan Worldwide takes Filipino dance music global
On Saturday, October 21, more than a hundred people packed a white-walled warehouse in Hermosa to get sweaty to Filipino dance music. It was the launch party for the newest imprint of Feeltrip Records, Balikbayan Worldwide, which focuses on sounds from the southeast Asian diaspora. To many of the partiers, the event was just an […]
Posted inChicagoans of Note
Izzi Vasquez, music-adjacent multimedia artist
Izzi Vasquez is a multimedia artist who has helped some of Chicago’s most celebrated musicians with the visuals for their visions. Vasquez has created animations and designed album packaging for the likes of Kaina, Sen Morimoto, Nnamdï, and Kara Jackson. In their art, Vasquez gives new form to the lessons they learned from their grandmother, […]
Posted inCity of Win
Loona Dae opens up a new world of psychedelic R&B
“When I started skating, I was definitely in a creative rut, and I needed to push myself in a way,” says Chicago R&B singer Loona Dae. “It’s scary to fall, but I found a lot of refuge in skating because it’s just you and the skateboard. It taught me to trust myself more and rewired […]
Posted inGossip Wolf
The inimitable but intermittent Roctober roars back with a hefty double issue
When Gossip Wolf checked in a few years back with Reader contributor, Chic-a-Go-Go cofounder, and Promontory talent buyer Jake Austen, he’d just rebooted his wide-ranging, infectiously enthusiastic, and absurdly thorough music and culture zine, Roctober, originally launched more than 30 years ago. Issue 52 arrived in fall 2020 after a seven-year hiatus, but the wait […]
Posted inThe Secret History of Chicago Music
There’s still time to catch up with the Joy Poppers
When I started the Secret History of Chicago Music in 2005, I had a rule: no artists from the 1990s. Not enough time had passed, I figured, for them to be forgotten. It’s been 18 years, though, and the local scene is full of people who don’t remember the 90s—or who weren’t even born then. […]
Posted inConcert Preview
Will Miller’s Resavoir makes a serene return with a new self-titled album
Resavoir, the experimental jazz project of Chicago multi-instrumentalist and producer Will Miller, returned this month with a new self-titled album on local label International Anthem. As with Resavoir’s 2019 debut, Miller conceived and largely produced the material alone in his home, and the recordings feature contributions from friends and fellow Chicago musicians—among them guitarist and […]
Posted inMusic
Reflection, resilience, and now remembrance in Crossing Borders Music’s focus on Arab string quartets
In 2020, Toronto-based Palestinian-Jordanian composer Shireen Abu Khader founded Dozan World—an offshoot of Dozan wa Awtar Music Establishment, the celebrated choir she established in 2002—as a hub for Levantine composers to share their music. Local chamber-music nonprofit Crossing Borders Music, which specializes in Western classical works by non-Western composers, most recently visited the Dozan catalog […]
Posted inMusic
Bar Italia create a stir with low-key minimalist indie pop
London trio Bar Italia formed in 2019, and though the world of live music screeched to a halt the following year, they powered through by writing and recording at full steam. They released their studio debut, Quarrel, in September 2020, showcasing an understated sound that joined lo-fi postpunk with indie-pop experimentation redolent of the 80s […]
Posted inMusic
Hometown hero Mavis Staples provides inspiration at Cahn Auditorium
Mavis Staples is more rock ’n’ roll than any of us. Who else declined a marriage proposal from Bob Dylan in the early 60s because she felt she was too young to be tied down? Who else got divorced less than a year after getting hitched in 1964 because she refused to quit singing at […]
Posted inMusic
Improvised music co-op Catalytic Sound holds its fourth annual festival in five cities, including Chicago
For nearly as long as free improvisation has been a musical practice, improvising artists have engaged in collective action to build outlets for their creative expression. Catalytic Sound was formed in 2012 by 30 musicians from Europe and the United States who recognized the necessity to have a shared platform for disseminating information and selling […]
Posted inMusic
Mandy, Indiana conjure the punk-rock city we’d be thrilled to live in
The art-rock of Mandy, Indiana conjures the spirit of May 1968, when French students and workers spent seven weeks in an orgiastic, decentralized uprising against capitalism and state violence. That’s partly because vocalist Valentine Caulfield uses French lyrics to deliver brutal indictments of patriarchy, imperialism, and white supremacy. But it also comes from the unmistakable […]
Posted inMusic
Multidisciplinary artist Eartheater explores rebirth and transformation on Powders
When Eartheater sings, her voice carries like pollen and decaying floral tendrils adrift in a rush of hot wind. The New York-based multidisciplinary artist debuted in 2015 with two releases (Metalepsis and RIP Chrysalis) on local avant-garde electronic label Hausu Mountain. She’s gone on to become one of the biggest names in art-pop, and in […]
Posted inMusic
OutPastMidnight and Doso show Chicago hip-hop’s newest dimensions at Gman
Chicago rapper Doso caught my attention four years ago by tinkering confidently and smoothly with a variety of instrumental styles, and he plays up that skill on October’s Safe Travels (A Rugged Interest, Inc.). He raps over minimal nu-funk (“Holding on Loosely”), sleek and frictionless pop punk (“Upside Down”), and a sentimental ballad built atop […]