Free Shit
Monday, February 6, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 5:24 PM
Ground Lift Media's beat-maker showcase, Face Melt, will reach its lucky 13th installment at Subterranean on February 24. In keeping with their usual MO, the Face Melt crew have released yet another compilation of instrumentals by local producers from the more experimental corners of Chicago hip-hop, who together form a slightly less whimsical and more pragmatic companion to the Low End Theory scene out in medical-marijuana-giddy Los Angeles.
Just like last time, downloading the Face Melt comp for free
via Bandcamp will get you free admission to the showcase, which will include some of the featured artists. One of them is Void Pedal,
who I like quite a bit.
Ground Lift will present another event slightly sooner: Saturday, February 18, is the latest Chicago installment of the annual Dre Day celebration, which with every passing year comes ever closer to federal recognition. Or at least I hope that's the case.
Tags: Face Melt, Ground Lift Media, Dre Day, Void Pedal
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Posted
by Peter Margasak on
Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:04 PM
In March extraordinary flutist
Claire Chase, founder and director of
International Contemporary Ensemble, will release her second collection of solo performances,
Terrestre (New Focus).
I was a huge fan of her 2009 debut,
Aliento, and the new one looks equally tantalizing, with works by Kaija Saariaho, Franco Donatoni, Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, and Dai Fujikura (who wrote his piece,
Glacier, specifically for Chase). Yet the energetic flutist is already on to the next thing, and this Friday evening she'll give
a free concert at the Art Institute's Fullerton Hall with a totally different program.
Continue reading »
Tags: Claire Chase, International Contemporary Ensemble, Terrestre, Aliento, Marcos Balter, flute, contemporary classical music, Art Institute of Chicago
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Posted
by Sam Worley on
Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 4:00 PM
In a 2007
Boston Globe profile, Neil Swidey introduced the world to Seamus, the Romney family dog, by way of an anecdote about Mitt, the Romney family patriarch, strapping the pooch to the top of the car for a 12-hour ride from Boston to Ontario. (In a canine carrier, mind you. Tricked out with a little windshield!) The nominal punch line is that the dog defecated wetly on top of the car while the Romney clan drove it down the highway, but this is one of those rare instances in which shit doesn’t necessarily make the story funnier—which is to say that it’s the sort of anecdote that begins with a grown man strapping a dog to the top of a station wagon. Or, as Gail Collins recently put it in an online chat with David Brooks, “Dog on the roof of the car. Dog on the roof of the car.” Gail Collins is
obsessed with this story. She’s cited it, says Swidey, in more than 30 columns.
Continue reading »
Tags: Mitt Romney, Gail Collins, Neil Swidey, Boston Globe, Next Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Jim Romenesko, Seamus
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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 4:30 PM
I sort of figured that by the time I knocked off work on Friday—which, just to remind you, was December 30—I would be done writing about music that came out in 2011. I should have known better. A couple of Chicago beat makers slipped in just before the deadline and dropped a couple cuts that are worth noting.
Continue reading »
Tags: Chicago, hip-hop, dance music, Cool Kids, Chuck Inglish, Egyptian Lover, Dr. Dre, Flying Lotus, Flosstradamus, X-Files, Video
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Posted
by Deanna Isaacs on
Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 4:03 PM
- Fetchcomms/Wikimedia Commons
Just as this so-far tolerable winter turns a tad unpleasant, along comes the Art Institute with a great reason to get indoors: its annual (mandatory) gift of
free admission for the local audience. Unfortunately, the AI's generosity doesn't extend to weekends, when most of us could make it.
Continue reading »
Tags: Art Institute of Chicago, Bertrand Goldberg
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Posted
by Miles Raymer on
Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 3:10 PM
Thanks to several converging factors—the elevated profile of the rap mix-tape format, the decreasing cost of digital recording, the Internet—it's become common for musicians to not even bother charging money for their albums. In fact you could probably keep up a pretty solid rotation of new music and not spend a cent, even without touching the untold gigabytes of material illicitly uploaded to Mediafire. After the jump I share some of my favorite free albums of 2011.
Continue reading »
Tags: Tiger Bones, Stagnant Pools, the Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Terius Nash, the-Dream, Danny Brown, ASAP Rocky, Gucci Mane, Wacka Flocka Flame, Death Grips, Nikki Lynette, Mr. Muthafuckin' Exquire, Iggy Azalea, Starlito, Don Trip
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Posted
by Tony Adler on
Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 5:27 PM
- Scrooge with Ignorance and Want
As Goodman Theatre's latest
A Christmas Carol proves, you don't need to work very hard to make the equation between Charles Dickens's Ebenezer Scrooge and the current crop of one-percenters. Scrooge is already in finance. He lends at usurious rates, makes clucking comments about taxes (though he at least seems to acknowledge their usefulness, if only for keeping the prisons and poor houses in operation), and hoards his personal wealth while overworking and severely underpaying that prototypical 99-percenter, Bob Crachit.
Continue reading »
Tags: Occupy My Heart, Occupy Players, Occupy Chicago, A Christmas Carol, Goodman Theatre
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Thursday, December 22, 2011
Posted
by Luca Cimarusti on
Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 4:00 PM
I love the Weeknd. And apparently everyone else in the world does too, because it's nearly impossible to find a year-end list without a mention of his first mix tape,
House of Balloons. This morning the Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) dropped his third record of the year,
Echoes of Silence (downloadable for free from
his website). I feel like
we've come to terms with the fact that Tesfaye won't top House of Balloons (hands-down my favorite record of 2011, by the way), at least not anytime soon, but that doesn't stop
Echoes of Silence from being an incredibly satisfying listen. The record, like most of Tesfaye's work, is dark, moody, and introspective, but opens with an uncharacteristic burst of lighthearted fun: a
sick Michael Jackson cover.
Continue reading »
Tags: Weeknd, Echoes of Silence, House of Balloons, Thursday, Abel Tesfaye, Michael Jackson, video, Video
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Thursday, December 8, 2011
Posted
by Sam Worley on
Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 1:30 PM
On Friday night, the Art Institute opens its show
“Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977” with an outdoor screening of Andy Warhol’s eight-hour film
Empire. This is no simple movies-in-the-park affair: the museum plans to project
Empire from the third floor of the Modern Wing
onto 12 upper stories of the Aon Center, starting at 6 PM. Warhol shot this single, stationary take of the Empire State Building between 8:06 PM and 2:42 AM on July 25 and 26, 1964, slowing it down to achieve the eight-hour running time. It’s nothing more than a document of the transition between day and night—the point of the film, Warhol said, was to “see time go by.” Outdoor viewers can catch the show anyplace south of the Aon building, which borders Millennium Park on the north. The Evening Associates, the young-professionals affiliate of the Art Institute, is also hosting a
party inside the museum (8-11 PM, $60-$80). It includes hors d’oeuvres, drinks, music by a DJ, and a sneak peek of “Light Years,” which opens to the public on 12/13.
Tags: Andy Warhol, Art Institute of Chicago, Aon Center, Empire, Empire State Building, Light Years, Evening Associates
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Posted
by Kate Schmidt on
Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 4:00 PM
- A/S/L Media
- Truffles from Katherine Anne Confections
Tomorrow, Thursday, December 8, from 7 to 9 PM,
Chief O'Neill's ("The
pub you've been practicing for") is hosting a complimentary wine and cheese tasting to introduce its new wine list of close to 100 bottles.
Also tomorrow evening is a truffle-making class at Katherine Anne Confections, where with the assistance of owner Katherine Duncan, teams of three to five people will undertake the process, from ganache making to rolling. The $50 package includes appetizers, wine, recipes and tips, and a package of four freshly made truffles as a takeaway. Reservations required.
Continue reading »
Tags: Chief O'Neill's, Katherine Anne Confections, truffles, free pizza, Pizza Persona, Troy Graves, Cantina 46, cochinita pibil, the Rice Table, Bia for Mia, Indonesian food, rijsttafel, Balinese dance, gamelan music, the Gypsy Pop-up, Scott Jambrosek, Oliver Poilevey
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