In July, I attended a community meeting at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater about the city’s plan to turn the Park District facility into a temporary shelter for asylum seekers. A group of protesters, angry that much of the armory’s programming would be relocated or otherwise disrupted, carried bright yellow signs reading “Don’t Displace Us.” […]
Author Archives: Joshua Minsoo Kim
Posted inMusic
Joyce Wrice brings classic 90s R&B into a new era
Joyce Wrice draws from a deep well of classic 90s R&B. The Los Angeles singer’s 2021 single “On One,” from her self-released debut album, Overgrown, recalls the days when Mary J. Blige and Brandy reigned the airwaves and MTV. The grooves of its slick bass line burrow deep, providing a topographical foundation over which Wrice’s […]
Posted inMusic
House producer Jayda G celebrates her father’s life on Guy
When Canadian producer Jayda Guy, who makes music as Jayda G, was a child, her father began spending hours in a room with a specific goal: to record his life story. William Richard Guy had grown sick, and as his health declined he enlisted the help of Guy’s older sister to compile 11 hours of […]
Posted inMusic
French coldwave legends Martin Dupont embark on their first U.S. tour
Martin Dupont was one of the most enigmatic and exhilarating coldwave bands of the 1980s. The group was founded in 1980 in Marseille, France, by songwriter and bassist Alain Seghir, who wanted to explore new wave after spending time in rock and jazz bands. Over the next few years he linked up with several musically […]
Posted inMusic
Electro-industrial artist Debby Friday explores a world of emotion
Debby Friday kicks off the title track that opens her debut album, Good Luck (Sub Pop), with a fiery declaration: “Get it while it’s hot!” The Nigerian-born, Toronto-based artist sounds commanding atop the song’s lurching electro-industrial beats, but even as she confidently seizes our attention, there’s a sense that she’s tormented too. When she exclaims […]
Posted inFilm
Review: Pacifiction
Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra has spent his career untangling and reframing historical and literary figures as avenues to think about history, power, and the human condition. He created a minimalist, slow-cinema take on Don Quixote with 2006’s Honour of the Knights, invoked Casanova and Dracula in 2013’s Story of My Death, and looked to 18th […]
Posted inMusic Feature
Scent and sound
It’s been seven years since my group of intrepid friends decided to explore the world of perfumes. “If you take five minutes to research them,” my friend Sam explained, “you’ll find that they’re way more interesting and complex than you ever realized.” He was right, and before long, I bought a handful of perfume samples […]
Posted inMusic
Brakence makes glitchy emo-pop that’s as confessional as it is inventive
Over the past few years, Randy Finell—the enigmatic 21-year-old Ohioan releasing music as Brakence—has avoided interviews and other press appearances while racking up tens of millions of streams. He lets his openly confessional music speak for itself. On “Fifthenigma,” a Soundcloud upload from 2016, he mixes samples and jittery beats under his warbling vocals, crafting […]
Posted inMusic
Nour Mobarak’s works reveal the human voice’s many truths and possibilities
Nour Mobarak’s conceptual projects are intriguing on paper and thrilling in execution. For her 2019 debut album, Father Fugue (Recital), the Cairo-born, Los Angeles-based artist created a homey collage of voice recordings. Its first half includes conversations with her father, Jean Mobarak, who speaks several languages but is only capable of retaining memories for 30 […]
Posted inMusic
John McCowen brings the contrabass clarinet into extraordinary territories
John McCowen has made a career of transforming the contrabass clarinet into an instrument all his own. Born in Carbondale and now based in Reykjavik, Iceland, the composer got involved with music as a hardcore vocalist in the mid-2000s, then spent several years playing saxophone and flute with stoner outfit Tweak Bird before turning his […]
Posted inMusic
Joan La Barbara is a treasure of America’s avant-garde
Philadelphia-born composer and vocalist Joan La Barbara was formally trained as a classical singer, but by the late 1960s, she’d decided she wanted to push her artistry into unfamiliar territories. She found her inspiration in New York, especially from scat singers, free improvisers, and the jazz avant-garde. In her early experiments, she taught herself to […]
Posted inMusic
Ben Zucker’s stirring compositions are built on a lifetime of musical curiosity
Born in Pennsylvania, Ben Zucker lived in Berkeley, New England, and London before moving to Chicago for a graduate composition program at Northwestern University. He was excited to come here to study because he’d been a longtime fan of the city’s rich, varied musical scenes, including the jazz stalwarts in the AACM and the adventurous […]
Posted inMusic
The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022
The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too. Americans don’t […]
Posted inConcert Preview
Mayorkun has grown swiftly into one of Nigeria’s most reliable pop stars
In early 2016, Nigerian songwriter Mayorkun posted a video of himself covering “The Money,” a 2015 single by Nigerian American pop star Davido. At the time, Mayorkun was dissatisfied with his banking job, and when he submitted his resignation letter, he fortuitously received a DM the same day from Davido, who had seen the clip […]
Posted inFilm
Embracing analog
If you’re looking to fall in love with film and its potential to inspire, look no further than Celluloid Now.