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Canadian producer Jamison Isaak, who began releasing music as Teen Daze in 2010, emerged as part of a loosely defined scene specializing in hushed, woozy, and intimate electronic songs, which felt like bedroom recordings even when their creators used more robust studios. The ironic poet laureate of late-aughties indie culture, Hipster Runoff founder Carles, dubbed this style “chillwave.” The trend crashed a year or two later, and Isaak is one of a handful of chillwave veterans who’s continued to explore the boundaries of the aesthetic....

You wouldn’t be alone if your first response to a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert listing was to wonder, “Are they still around?” Ardent fans excepted, listeners mostly lost track of the Zippers after their late-90s heyday—but the show ain’t over yet. The Squirrel Nut Zippers formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1993 (taking their name from a brand of old-time candy) with six members, including James “Jimbo” Mathus and his wife at the time, Katharine Whalen....

Percussionist Tyshawn Sorey has never concerned himself much with doing what a “jazz” drummer is supposed to do. Though his talent in that area is beyond doubt, it’s only a part of his full diapason. He’s a world-class composer who’s dramatically focused his vision in recent years. He’s a powerhouse player, yet on his brilliant 2014 trio album, Alloy (Pi), he’s a faint presence on the music’s surface, playing with exquisite subtlety and allowing remarkable pianist Cory Smythe to dominate the performances of Sorey’s compositions—which owe more to Morton Feldman than to Mark Feldman....

For the better part of the 20th century the Art Institute hosted “Chicago and Vicinity,” an annual exhibition that focused on art made by artists living in the city. The museum discontinued the series in the mid-1980s, but Shane Campbell Gallery has now revived it in the 8,550-square-foot space of its new South Loop location. In this edition of “Chicago and Vicinity,” 91 separate works produced by 50 artists currently residing in Chicago are sporadically arranged around the gallery....

Embarrassing Theater Critic Admission: I’ve never seen Marsha Norman‘s 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, ‘Night, Mother, onstage. And technically, I still haven’t. But at least I can now say that I’ve seen it, thanks to Invictus Theatre’s current livestreaming production. Norman’s play carries within its DNA a trap for actors, especially for whoever plays Jessie. If she’s too downbeat and defeated from the start, then there presumably isn’t much of a trajectory for her to explore in the 90-some minutes before the inevitable....

Michael Winner’s Death Wish (1974) is artless, cynical garbage, advancing a misanthropic view of American cities in which disenfranchised people roam the streets like savages, raping, looting, and killing as though it were all they knew how to do. This lays the groundwork for the action classic’s crude celebration of vigilante justice, which shows how one good guy with enough brute force can clean up the city. Playing the good guy, Charles Bronson projects little charisma, and his unfeeling performance works hand in glove with Winner’s clodhopper direction....

It seems like a silly distinction to me, OPENS, one that comes from a place of insecurity. (And a “no other dick” rule would make most gay open relationships impossible.) But sometimes, working with your partner’s insecurities—accepting them, not fighting them—is the key to a successful open relationship. And since many bisexuals in monogamous opposite-sex relationships often ask to open the relationship because they want to act on their same-sex attractions (or, indeed, have their first same-sex encounter), keeping outside sex same-sex—at least at first—isn’t an entirely unreasonable request....

Certain sounds predictably light up my brain’s pleasure receptors—a singer’s voice almost breaking, a somber synth melody, autumnal cycling guitars a la my favorite emo albums. I couldn’t have anticipated obsessing over “My Stance,” a standout track from Back 2 Ballin, the debut full-length mixtape by local rapper Adamn Killa. A rapper rhyming “you” with “poo-poo” and “doo-doo” over a sample of Russian pop duo T.a.t.u.’s 2002 breakout single “All the Things She Said” doesn’t scream “play this over and over again,” at least not on paper....

Shy Technology call Chicago home, but their music is spiritually in sync with a type of melancholic and massive indie rock I’ve come to associate with Scotland; if front man David Coulson sang with a brogue I might have taken the band for Edinburgh four-piece We Were Promised Jetpacks. On their recent single “Crazy Kind” and their three-song EP, Fine Print (both on New Black Market), Shy Technology carve out soundscapes that are smooth and frictionless until they climax with the violence of waves crashing upon craggy seaside boulders....

Among the more embarrassing displays of Second City syndrome is the desperate thirst for a Chicago “celebrity culture,” especially local media outlets’ relentless quest to frame the city as “star-powered.” This manifests in lame party coverage—from store openings attended by a few self-mythologizing fashion bloggers and an errant Bulls player to fund-raising galas catering to North Shore socialites, dutifully emceed by Bill Kurtis—as well as secondhand reporting about literally anything any remotely Chicago-related famous person says, wears, eats, or tweets....

Tone Glow became a must-read for experimental-music fans not long after editor Joshua Minsoo Kim (who’s also a Reader contributor) began publishing it as a blog in 2015, and since December 2019 it’s been an excellent online newsletter focusing on interviews and reviews. Even when Tone Glow writers talk to relatively familiar figures such as Shirley Collins, Jim O’Rourke, Young Marble Giants, and Annea Lockwood, their deep research and insightful questions make the conversations fresh and fascinating....

We here at the Reader have made no secret of our deep and abiding love for the Chicago Humanities Fest. Our biggest complaint, besides being forced to choose which events to go to instead of just getting to go to them all, is that the festival comes but once a year. Well, OK, that’s not entirely true: for the past few years, the CHF crew has stealthily been scheduling individual events throughout the winter and spring....

As this wretched excuse for a presidential election staggers to an end, the time has come for me to tally up the costs—both political and financial—of Donald Trump’s candidacy for Republicans in Illinois. Before I dive in, a word or two on behalf of Trump. Yes, yes, get ready—I’m about to say something sort of nice about the Donald. Proft is a political strategist and conservative talk show host who’s emerged as Rauner’s go-to-guy running key elections across the state....

Late last year the Reader reported on a protest organized by more than 40 Riviera Theatre stagehands who claimed they’d been illegally fired in September 2015 by venerable Chicago-based promoter Jam Productions, which owns and operates several important local venues, including the Riv, Park West, and the Vic Theatre. The workers believed Jam was retaliating because they’d begun signing cards authorizing a union election—but unionization activity is legally protected by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935....

The country is reeling. The shooting of 11 Dallas police officers—five of whom were killed—came while they patrolled a peaceful protest against police violence. Two civilians were also wounded, according to the Dallas mayor’s office. It’s a tragic, saddening act of violence that’s likely to inflame already heated tensions over issues of race and policing. Hate crimes laws were created to stiffen penalties for crimes against individuals or groups based on immutable identities, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity....

While sheltering at home in San Juan during Puerto Rico’s lockdown this spring, Ìfé bandleader Otura Mun wrote a new EP, The Living Dead | Ashé Bogbo Egun. The producer, composer, and percussionist, born Mark Underwood in Indiana, is also a babalawo, a priest who practices divination in accordance with the traditions of Ifá, a religion rooted in West Africa that coevolved with Christianity after it was carried to the Caribbean by the slave trade....

Veteran Chicago hip-hop activist, manager, and promoter Jamie “J. Milla” Sevier died Saturday, April 18, at age 47. As a kid, Sevier got into breakdancing and graffiti, and he’d joined Chi-ROCK Nation by the time he met longtime friend Carrico “Kingdom Rock” Sanders, founder of the Ill State Assassins crew, in the early 1990s. They’d crossed paths because both were organizing against an attempt to ban hip-hop from local radio. “Jamie has always been the bullhorn for Chicago,” Sanders says....

Not only is 2020 the Year of Chicago Music, it’s also the 35th year for the nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC), which provides business expertise and training to creatives and their organizations citywide. To celebrate, the A&BC has launched the #ChiMusic35 campaign at ChiMusic35.com, which includes a public poll to determine the consensus 35 greatest moments in Chicago music history as well as a raffle to benefit the A&BC’s work supporting creative communities struggling with the impact of COVID-19 in the city’s disinvested neighborhoods....

The best comics are deadpan. They don’t telegraph that they are going to be funny, they just are. In the same way, the best thrillers don’t let us in too early on the fact that we’re watching a thriller. Steven Dietz’s 2015 play about a mother trying to steal her daughter away from a cult begins with a rather flat, naturalistic conversation between a woman and a man who we slowly realize must be a cult deprogrammer....

As severe storms struck Chicago on Sunday night, Ella Williams was coming home from a music-video shoot. Walking to her apartment, she felt a strange yet familiar sensation. “There was a time where every little headache I got would spark anxiety and depression,” she says. “After I would get one, I would think, ‘Yeah, my life is over. I have brain damage.’ I don’t have brain damage. I’m fine, but I was overcoming the fear of my body not working....