Music
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Whoa Music News Chief Keef's sentencing: The view from the courtroom
Posted by Leor Galil on 01.17.13 at 05:49 PM
And yet the scene inside the Cook County Juvenile Court Building was fairly modest; a group mostly made up of journalists, legal professionals, and Keef's family filled three wooden benches in a small, off-white courtroom. The room's sparse decor—a clock on one wall, a calendar on the other, and a droopy American flag behind Judge Carl Anthony Walker's seat—was hardly reminiscent of the lavish lifestyle Keef enjoys rapping about. The rapper himself walked in wearing a navy-blue sweatshirt and sweatpants that bore the letters JTDC ("Juvenile Temporary Detention Center") instead of his usual Louis Vuitton and Salvatore Ferragamo gear.
Outside the courtroom he has an outsize, violent persona, but inside he was a 17-year-old who goes by Keith Cozart. Lately the online conversation about Keef has focused on white cultural tourism via violent music by African-Americans, but it didn't come up in the conversations among cops and court officers that I overhead in the courtroom prior to Judge Walker's entrance—I heard more about young Chicagoans who are grappling with real violence. In the courtroom Cozart's rap career was almost of no consequence—except for the fact that it was used as evidence to keep him behind bars (and a reason to let him go).
Do This Music Best shows to see: Magic Trick, Meek Mill, Underoath, Tomorrow Never Knows
Posted by Philip Montoro on 01.17.13 at 02:09 PM
Reader writers also weighed in on Hundred Waters (opening for Freelance Whales on Sat 1/19 at Lincoln Hall) and the Black Madonna (who plays Sat 1/19 at the Hideout, after a non-TNK show at Smart Bar), and they've only scratched the surface of the fest: just for starters, Ssion's set opening for Niki & the Dove (Fri 1/18 at Lincoln Hall) is sure to be ridiculously fabulous and fabulously ridiculous, and King Dude (opening for Chelsea Wolfe at Schubas on Sat 1/19) turns up in In Rotation this week as one of the picks by Alma Negra guitarist and front woman Erin Page.
Of course, even in January one festival can't monopolize all the good concerts happening in Chicago, and as always we've got more for you on our Soundboard page. Highlights after the jump:
Do This Music A chill Portishead remix and a very unchill Skrillex incident
Posted by Miles Raymer on 01.17.13 at 01:23 PM
But it's entirely possible that you aren't all the way there yet, which would be perfectly understandable. Today's kind of just a regular old Thursday in January, which after the frantic pace of the holidays (and the couple of weeks of socially accepted goldbricking that follows it) can seem even less exciting than a typical almost-end-of-the-week.
In that case I suggest hitting the jump to check out two videos that I think might help you get there, wherever the there is you need to go. One is a remix from 1996 of Aaliyah's "If Your Girl Only Knew," based around a sample of Portishead's "Numb" and featuring a guest verse by Missy "Still Not Giving Us That Comeback She Promised" Elliott that bumps nicely even if you're not a big 90s nostalgic type. The other video is of Skrillex accidentally lighting his hair on fire. Thursday just got a whole lot more inspiring.
12 O'Clock Track Music 12 O'Clock Track: D.C. postpunk band Imperial China, "Creative License"
Posted by Leor Galil on 01.17.13 at 12:00 PM
Today's 12 O'Clock Track is the fourth song off How We Connect, "Creative License."
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Year in Review Music Post No Bills My favorite albums of 2012, numbers 20 through 11
Posted by Peter Margasak on 01.16.13 at 03:02 PM
Part three of this week's countdown:
20. Sharon Van Etten, Tramp (Secretly Canadian) On the stunning Tramp, Sharon Van Etten continues to transform herself: once a folk-inspired wallflower, she's now an emotional powerhouse with a sound too big for any one genre. Her voice brings solidity and grandeur to the lovely melodies—she shows impressive range in her overdubbed vocal harmonies, and her baroque embellishments never feel overdone.
Whoa Media Film Music Life Is but a Dream: Beyonce as Deleuze
Posted by Drew Hunt on 01.16.13 at 02:32 PM
As detailed in a recent interview with GQ, Beyonce appears hell-bent on documenting every single moment of her waking life. Stored in what writer Amy Wallace calls the "official Beyoncé archive," a "temperature-controlled digital-storage facility," is "virtually every existing photograph of her . . . every interview she's ever done; every video of every show she's ever performed; every diary entry she's ever recorded while looking into the unblinking eye of her laptop." The majority of the film is purportedly culled from this archive, which is also said to include "thousands of hours of private footage, compiled by a 'visual director' Beyonce employs who has shot practically her every waking moment, up to sixteen hours a day, since 2005."
Narcissism Music Outkast isn't reuniting—deal with it
Posted by Leor Galil on 01.16.13 at 01:10 PM
Yesterday Andre took a break from doing his "Gillette shit" to talk with Spin magazine and clear the air about the "Pink Matter" remix as well as his involvement in a reworked version of a recent T.I. track that Andre appears on called "Sorry." As he told Spin, his contributions to those tracks were as a solo artist and there was no talk of them being part of some Outkast project:
12 O'Clock Track Music Post No Bills 12 O'Clock Track: Sand, "White Nights"
Posted by Peter Margasak on 01.16.13 at 12:00 PM
But yesterday the reality that Ryan doesn't live here anymore sunk in deeper with me thanks to the release of the debut album Sky Bleached (Cuneiform) by his new LA trio, Sand. The group features another ex-Chicagoan, Devin Hoff, on bass and Tim Young, a ubiquitous session musician, on electric guitar. Four of the ten pieces were written by Ryan in collaboration with his bandmates, while he composed five on his own; the tenth piece is a version of Paul Motian's "White Magic." Ryan and Hoff carve out deep, loping, and lean grooves—a bit fusion-kissed but totally unfussy—for Young to extrapolate within, at great length. Ryan uses a variety of time signatures, but the group never draws attention to any technical trickiness; the performances are marked by impressive rhythmic elasticity and melodic generosity, to the point where this sounds like an instrumental rock band more than a jazz trio, not that it matters in the end. Some of the songs bring a heavy punch and distorted crunch, but more often than not the sounds are clean. Today's 12 O'Clock Track is the airy album opener, "White Nights," which you can hear after the jump.
Gig Posters Arts Music Visual Art Gig poster of the week
Posted by Luca Cimarusti on 01.16.13 at 07:32 AM
SHOW: Neurosis, Bloodiest, and the Atlas Moth at Metro on 12/30
MORE INFO: shawnkknight.com
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Arts Music Visual Art Hardcore band Single Mothers sell their life on the road
Posted by Leor Galil on 01.15.13 at 05:06 PM
- Leor Galil
- Single Mothers' tour camera
It's also easy for a band to catch peoples' eyes with a unique piece of merchandise, which is just what Canadian hardcore act and recent Hot Charity signees Single Mothers did Saturday night. I caught the group when they opened for beloved melodic-hardcore band Quicksand at the Metro on Saturday, and they were selling one particular item that piqued my interest: a used Kodak disposable point-and-shoot camera. Single Mothers' tour manager Dylan Smith told me the guys decided to buy a bunch of these cameras and take them on their tour with Quicksand, using each one to document a 24-hour period of the trek and then sell it to whomever was interested. I quickly threw down five dollars for the camera, which captured their experiences in Detroit and Chicago, and got Smith's e-mail address to pass along the photos once I got them processed—he told me he had no idea what would come of any of the cameras, and I was more than happy to share the pictures and get the anecdotes behind all of them.
