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American composer Carl Stone has been making sample-based music for decades, but his recent albums Baroo and Himalaya (his first solo releases in 12 years) show that he’s still refining his craft. These days he primarily deals with what composer John Oswald christened “plunderphonics”—meticulously cutting up samples of music from around the world and transforming them into evocative new pieces. Stone has experimented with this technique in the past, such as on his 1990 composition “Mom’s,” but his latest results are far more emotive and technically impressive....

The view is divided by screens and mirrors in Jane Jerardi‘s delicate hold. Fragmentation by the frame creates incomplete views of arms and torsos, close and deliberate. You hear the squeak of the pencil, the rustle of paper—a voiceover, separated from the person dancing in the grass, says, “How can I expand my box?” Kato again, teaching a Muppet-esque puppet how to say “excuse me” in Japanese, Spence Warren speaking poetry on the street, a remarkably present duet with Nora Sharp bridging Brooklyn and Chicago at Links Hall’s 96 Hours Festival....

On Saturday, September 12, six days before London experimental-pop artist A.G. Cook released his album Apple, the founder of label and collective PC Music assembled more than 20 like-minded acts for a livestream festival called Appleville. Hosted by a custom website with an embedded Twitch stream, this self-described “tribute to live computer music” starred Cook, kaleidoscopic indie trio Kero Kero Bonito, bedroom-pop phenom Clairo, irreverent dance duo 100 Gecs, and bona fide pop star Charli XCX (who’d hired Cook to be her creative director in 2016)....

In the Thai horror film Ghost Lab, Thanapob Leeratanakachorn plays Wee, an introverted young residency doctor who spends all of his time at the hospital. When he’s not on duty, he’s quietly caring for his comatose mother. Wee’s coworker Gla, played by Paris Intarakomalyasut, is quite the opposite, a lighthearted prankster and charismatic boyfriend. But every time Wee is at his mother’s bedside, Gla is working on a secret project all his own....

In February, members of Chicago’s upper crust were invited to visit the sleeping quarters of one of the least successful painters in the history of art. Some were even granted the opportunity to spend a night there. For “Van Gogh’s Bedrooms,” now showing through May 10 at the Art Institute, the museum partnered with Airbnb to offer visitors the chance to rent an actual re-creation of the famous painting Bedroom in Arles (1888) in an apartment in River North for a night....

Is there life after Cubs home World Series games and candy corn? We think yes—in fact, there’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Mon 10/31: More than 2,000 costumed Chicagoans march through Boystown during the 20th anniversary edition of the Northalsted Halloween Parade (Belmont and Halsted). It’s preceded by the Ruby Red Relay, in which local business owners race in drag to raise money for the Legacy Project....

After two decades of performances at the Auditorium Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet will move its company to the Lyric Opera House at the conclusion of the 2019-2020 season, making this year the last holiday season during which Christopher’s Wheeldon’s version of The Nutcracker will grace the Auditorium Theatre’s stage. Ahead of this big step forward for the company, Gregg Benkovich, shoe manager for the Joffrey Ballet, helped crunch the numbers on the overwhelming numbers of slipper- and pointe-shoe-clad smaller steps (as well as assemblés, pirouettes, and arabesques) that will have preceded the move next season....

Inside the Parmer Activity Center of De La Salle Institute in Bronzeville on April 24, the low rumble of some 2,500 voices mixed with the frenetic howl of Guns N’ Roses. Then, out of the darkness, the noise of the crowd rose into a thunder as the two men in the center ring attacked. You could practically smell the testosterone in the murky mix of sweat and beer in the air....

While the Hawaiian shirts and one-hitters came out for this weekend’s Lollapalooza, the fans at the third annual Fed Up Fest wore their rattiest denim vests and favorite political buttons. To judge by the name of the queercore collective that organizes the festival, you might not expect it to be a celebration of love and support, but its mission statement calls for just that. “We believe that at the center of liberation is radical love for each other and ourselves,” the organizers write on their Facebook page....

When Blair Braverman and I finally managed to get each other on the phone to talk about her new book Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, she was huddled in a stairway, the quietest place she could find at O’Hare, just a short while before her flight to Anchorage, where she was scheduled to pick up her sled dogs, nine puppies and four adult huskies, and then drive them home to northern Wisconsin....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Media Keiana Barrett says she wants to oust Seventh Ward alderman Natashia Holmes but isn’t using armed private investigators to help her do it. Keiana Barrett says she didn’t send guys with guns to talk to people supporting her opponent. Holmes was appointed alderman by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013, after predecessor Sandi Jackson and her husband, former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., were convicted of misusing campaign funds....

Local synth wizard Beau Wanzer formed outre club-music group Mutant Beat Dance a decade ago with house producer Melvin Oliphant III (aka Traxx), and in a recent interview with music site Strange Sounds From Beyond, he likens their work to the films of twisted, cheeky B-movie horror director Frank Henenlotter. “I show up with my deformed Siamese twin brother attached to my waist and Melvin tries to pry it off me,” Wanzer says....

When I interviewed the executive director of what was then Rape Victim Advocates a few years ago, she told me they recommend saying these three things when someone discloses that they’re a survivor of sexual violence: 1) I believe you; 2) it’s not your fault; and 3) you have options and resources. The recent airing of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly documentary series fueled this list of Chicago organizations making that third one a reality for tens of thousands of survivors every year....

As befits a pair of master percussionists at the height of their powers, Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang often play abroad. In recent months Drake has toured Europe with Joe McPhee and the DKV Trio, and played an incendiary duet with Malian xylophonist Aly Keita at the Sant’Anna Arresi Jazz Festival in Sardinia. Zerang has performed gigs in Slovenia and the United Arab Emirates with Karkhana, an electric jazz band that includes musicians from Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul....

John Corbett’s introduction to the Reader‘s overview of the 2019 Chicago Jazz Festival began: “An old pair of shoes, the United States Postal Service, a loving spouse—when things have been around awhile, it’s all too easy to take them for granted. The Chicago Jazz Festival has been with us for more than four decades.” With any luck your favorite footwear is holding up—and your relationship too, if you’ve got one—because 2020 has been hell on the other two....

“I’ve been a dancer all my life,” says CounterBalance founder Ginger Lane. Trained primarily in ballet, Lane performed, taught, choreographed, and briefly owned a dance studio in Wilmette before a spinal cord injury in 1984 resulted in quadriplegia. Yet Lane did not allow her injury to sideline her. Instead, she channeled her creative energy into independent living and disability rights at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab), where she provided peer support services and disability awareness training, before joining the independent living center Access Living to coordinate its Arts and Culture Project in 2008....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news brief. Governor Bruce Rauner won’t say if he holds moral responsibility for veterans’ home deaths Governor Bruce Rauner says Illinois is taking “aggressive action” to keep Quincy Veterans’ Home resident, “but he declined to say if he bears any moral responsibility after more cases of Legionnaires’ disease were found at the facility following a 2015 outbreak that left a dozen people dead,” according to the Tribune....

In 2016, Chicago alt-country singer-songwriter Isabel Olive began performing and recording as Half Gringa, a name that refers to her Venezuelan ancestry. As she told music writer Britt Julious in the Trib that year, she wants to use Half Gringa to explore complicated questions about ethnicity and identity. Olive knows she’s unlikely to find easy answers, or even complete ones, and she articulates that on her new self-released second album, Force to Reckon....

Who knew that flanking a mutative hip-hop personality with old-school Ghostbusters, Batman, and Wrestlemania pinball machines would feel so right? For the fourth year in a row, Kool Keith—who has also gone by Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, and a slew of other monikers—will descend upon Chicago’s most legit arcade bar for a merry evening of performance and carousing that’s been anointed “A Very Kool Xmas.” Spawned in 2014 from a playful Twitter back-and-forth between Keith and Logan Arcade mensch and owner Jim Zespy, the event has become a bizarro, well-oiled holiday get-down featuring the idiosyncratic and colorful vet rapper working through his deep catalog about the future, space, and the future in space....

Often, as I’ve strolled past the colorful storefronts of Chicago’s Chinatown, I’ve noticed many cheap department-store-type mountain bikes—Huffys, Murrays, and Magnas—cable-locked to racks, poles, and fences along Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue. I wondered if they belonged to recent immigrants to the neighborhood, toiling at blue-collar jobs in pursuit of the American dream. “Many residents, and especially workers in Chinatown’s core, use bicycles as their main form of transportation,” according to the vision plan....