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Pauline Anna Strom’s new album, Angel Tears in Sunlight, features the first new work in 30 years from the legendary Bay Area electronic music composer. Strom made her album debut with 1982’s Trans-Millenia Consort, a limited-edition vinyl and cassette release she’d recorded in her San Francisco home. Despite its humble beginnings, the album has become highly sought-after by devotees of instrumental, synthesizer-driven space music and the tranquil ambient styles loosely grouped under the banner of “new age....

After Ira Glass’s address at this year’s Third Coast International Audio Festival (which you can read all about here), I saw a window of opportunity to ask him a question. As he exited stage right and began to pack his gear into worn ziplock bags and cloth pouches, I racked my brain for a good question that wouldn’t be met with a canned answer. In a couple of minutes the lights would come on and a line of admirers would surely form, bursting with questions he probably gets all the time....

The Chosen Few Picnic is the Saturday nearest July 4, and its single day provides Chicagoans with a blueprint for the perfect summer: all you need is good music, friends and family, and lots of barbecue. House DJ collective the Chosen Few launched the picnic in 1990 as part of the Hatchett family barbecue behind the Museum of Science and Industry—DJs Andre and Tony Hatchett are original members of the Chosen Few....

Thom Yorke may be best known as front man of legendary British art-rock group Radiohead, but he’s also amassed an impressive discography on his own, putting out several solo releases, a 2013 album with his side group Atoms for Peace, and the score for 2018’s Suspiria remake. His third album under his own name, last year’s Anima, is the best expression of his musical philosophy yet. While Radiohead has long incorporated dance music, Yorke fully commits to electronica in his outside work....

If you want to know one of the reasons why Donald Trump won the election—or, more to the point, why Hillary Clinton lost—check out the thousands of e-mails Mayor Rahm Emanel released this week—kicking and screaming—thanks to a lawsuit filed by the Better Government Association. Reading Rahm’s e-mails reminded me of the stories Mick Dumke and I used to write about the mayor’s first-term appointment book. He’d set aside time to meet with bankers, CEOs, and other money men, but rarely met with labor leaders, activists, or ordinary citizens....

In June, the label arm of the Chicago-born Teklife footwork collective released its first flexi disc, “Juke Me Baby” by Reginald Cosper Jr., aka Sirr TMo Sama. Cosper builds the track on an ascending, bone-dry percussive pattern, weaving in a few different vocal samples and several drum loops; he never lets up on the gas, which gives the song’s ever-shifting, palpitating drive enough energy to power a midsize city. Cosper understands footwork with an intimacy that draws from his time as a producer, DJ, and dancer—he’s so good on his feet that last year the Chicago Dancemakers Forum gave him one of its four Greenhouse Awards to develop new work....

The Soulection Radio Tour is not your average concert. There isn’t some big-name rock band, pop singer, or rapper leading the audience on a transcendental musical ride. Rather, Soulection Radio cofounder-host Joe Kay crafts a perfectly curated set list of dusties, alternative hip-hop and R&B jams, and mainstream hits from a DJ booth in the middle of the stage, operating in a fashion similar to Soulection, the online radio show produced by his LA-based independent artist collective Soulection Radio....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. The Trap Set podcast I’ve been obsessed with The Trap Set podcast lately—it’s not just for drummers, it’s also by drummers. Host Joe Wong interviews some of the best percussionists of the past and present about their personal stories and spiritual and emotional connections to the drum set, rather than geeking out over gear, techniques, or chops....

Q: I have a significant collection of sex toys from earlier years. I’m thinking of getting rid of most of them, and it seems such a waste for them to end up in the landfill. What’s an environmentally responsible way to dispose of dildos? I wish there was a place I could donate them where they could be used again. Many of them are quality silicone types, they’ve never been used on a person without a condom, and they’ve been thoroughly cleaned....

The central image of this allegorical performance, written collectively by Quenna Lené Barrett, Christabel Donkor, Danielle Littman, Jessamyn Fitzpatrick, Clair Fuller, and Nik Zaleski and directed by Barrett and Zaleski, is a 16-year-old woman named Jane Doe. She sits on a dock, emptying the water out of a red aluminum canoe in preparation for a launch. As the title makes clear, the canoe is her body, and her journey consists of the many discoveries she makes and the changes she goes through when she finds she is pregnant and has to decide between single teen motherhood or terminating the pregnancy....

Chicago is a lucky spot for people who like emerging and otherwise overlooked visual art. We have a bunch of college programs in the area that recruit and keep globally savvy artists in our midst, and a bevy of nonprofit institutions that work hard to support both challenging art and the artists who make it. While you can still find groupings of galleries clustered together in some neighborhoods, the global economy doesn’t sustain the “gallery scene” mythology that used to dominate the art world discourse in major cities....

I was getting a haircut at Madison Street Barbers recently when I mentioned that I play hockey just down the street at Johnny’s IceHouse, one of the city’s few indoor rinks and the only sheet of ice in a 16-square-mile area encompassing the city’s west side and many other neighborhoods. The lack of access and long history of racial tension surrounding the sport have hampered efforts to diversify its ranks....

Chicago Dance History Project commemorates five years of collecting oral histories with icons of theatrical dance in Chicago with an interview marathon on January 31, recently designated Chicago Dance History Project Day in a proclamation by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “The City of Chicago is thrilled to celebrate our diverse and legendary local dance community. The seven-hour Interview Marathon represents decades of dance history personified in more than 40 interview subjects—presented by the critically important Chicago Dance History Project, which investigates, documents, and presents the histories of dance in Chicago,” says Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Mark Kelly, who will be speaking at the event....

Freewheeling Chicago band Snooze play math rock like they’re trying to be inexplicable. They’re fans of emo, metal, and prog, and though that’s comfortably ordinary in this subgenre, I’d be hard-pressed to think of another such group who’ve opened an EP by segueing quickly from a distorted electronic hodgepodge reminiscent of footwork into a soothing polyrhythm (2017’s Actually, Extremely) or who’ve prefaced a whimsical, whiplash-inducing romp with a honeyed a cappella melody (“Amicus Pawsterum,” off 2019’s Familiaris)....

This heavy-psych band from Washington, D.C., caused a stir when they released their self-titled debut album in 2000: they seemed to have tapped a vein of blues-based trippy rock from the early 70s that had lingered underground in its purest form while the genre was mined and embellished by innovators such as Deep Purple, Hawkwind, and Uriah Heep. Dead Meadow had a successful stint on Matador Records, releasing pitch-perfect instant museum pieces Old Growth and Shivering King and Others (and others), before founding their own label, Xemu, in 2010....

On Yarrow (Six Shooter), the first studio album in four years by veteran Canadian folk-rock band Deep Dark Woods, the group continues to pursue singer Ryan Boldt’s harrowing end-time visions, putting a modern spin on murder ballads, apocalyptic natural disasters, and frayed love affairs. At times Boldt’s prosaic touch makes the music fall flat, no matter how crisply his bandmates shape the guitar-driven arrangements or how beautifully guest harmony singers Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum (aka Kacy & Clayton) bring richness and variety to his introspective mumbling; his uninspired imagery and tentative delivery on “Deep Flooding Waters” conjure the destructive force of a sun shower....

This week’s featured poster reminds me of the heyday of punk-rock flyers: skilled artists spending their free time turning classic cartoon characters (and mid-80s skateboard graphics) into monsters of their own making, all for the thrill of wheat-pasting their work onto random light poles. What I’m saying is that I could easily see this one tacked to some board-up—and the concert the flyer advertises is at one of the old-school music venues that I’m happy to see back open and thriving....

Joy Productions’ inaugural show, Exit, Pursued by a Bear, begins with a compelling image: Kyle Carter (Aaron Wertheim) sits in a recliner, tied down with a comically epic amount of duct tape, in a rural southern shack. He’s inert, passed out before the play begins, and doesn’t stir until slapped awake by his wife, Nan Carter (Dani Mohrbach). Nan has had enough of his drunkenness and abuse and aims to leave him for bear food....

For ten years now, Chicago Psych Fest has been warping minds. Organized by musician and artist (and longtime Reader contributor) Steve Krakow and local artist Matt Ginsberg, the three-day festival is much like the classic shows held at the Fillmore (in San Francisco and NYC), the Kinetic Playground (in Chicago), the Grande Ballroom (Detroit), and the Boston Tea Party (guess) during the genre’s earliest days, featuring combinations of younger acts, veteran bands, and even influences from outside fuzz-tone rock....

There’s plenty to do this week before the holidays hit like a ton of yule logs. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 12/19: Daymaker‘s sloppy punk starts a mosh pit at the Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western). The Reader‘s Noah Berlatsky writes, “[Erin] Daymaker’s a bit of a mess and a bit of a known quantity—snotty punk rawk bands are scattered across the midwest as liberally as abandoned industrial plants—but Delaney’s pissed-off charisma oozes from the recording, and the band embraces its underdog status with winningly mean-spirited resolve....