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When noisy Brooklyn-based no-wave outfit the Dreebs called it a day in 2014, the last thing I expected to arise from the fallout was really great hip-hop. The Dreebs were the deranged trio of vocalist and electric violinist Adam Markiewicz, drummer Shannon Sigley, and prepared-guitar player Jordan Bernstein, and on their final record, Bait an Orchard (on via Rotted Tooth Recordings, run by former Oozing Wound drummer Kyle Reynolds), they pounded out an alien racket....

Julien Baker’s 2015 debut album, Sprained Ankle, and its 2017 follow-up, Turn Out the Lights, centered the singer-songwriter’s sometimes fragile but always sincere voice as she journeyed through addiction and came to terms with her sexuality and spirituality. Her songs were bold in their lyrical honesty and unadorned presentation: Sprained Ankle featured just Baker and her guitar, and while Turn Out the Lights added guest violin and woodwinds, it still focused on her singing, which wedded her sadness and struggles to guitar-driven melodies....

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh Asked about segregation in yesterday’s debate on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel noted that Chicago and Illinois voters have elected a lot of African-Americans. Chicago’s most fundamental problem finally got a scrap of attention in the mayoral campaign last night. Fifty-one minutes into a one-hour debate on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, moderator Phil Ponce asked the candidates why Chicago is still so segregated. The candidates then discussed the issue for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds....

“You’re a traitor to me.” Everything about Roan @ the Gates, the magnificent show by playwright Christina Telesca Gorman, directed by Lexi Saunders, hangs on the way Nat (Jasmine Bracey) chooses to inflect that line. Nat speaks it to Roan (Brenda Barrie), a dissident NSA whistleblower and Nat’s wife. Much like Edward Snowden, Roan makes a series of revelations about American intelligence so damning that she has to secure emergency asylum in Russia....

Yesterday hip-hop collective Treated Crew and footwork outfit Teklife released Live From Your Mama’s House, a collaborative EP helmed by Treated Crew rapper Mic Terror. The MC got the idea for the collaboration after his collective performed with the late Teklife leader DJ Rashad during a Pitchfork Music Festival set in 2013. “I was sitting there listenin’ to Rashad’s whole set, and I was listenin’ to it like how he was flippin’ ‘C....

Chicago Reader Inaugural Pride Block Party with Marz Community Brewing Presented by Nue Vodka Sunday, June 23, 2019, 1-9 p.m. 3630 South Iron Street, Chicago $10 | all ages; kids under 10 free | wheelchair accessible | Free parking CHICAGO – The Chicago Reader celebrates the city’s rich and diverse 50 years of honoring LGBTQ+ community legacy at its first-ever all-day, all-ages block party in partnership with Marz Community Brewing Sunday, June 23, 1-9 p....

With Christmas and the New Year right around the corner, it’s time to write about the good things in life, not just the bad—the presents under the tree, if you will, as opposed to the coals in the stockings. So un-thank you very much, Republican congressman Peter Roskam of DuPage County, for using your influence to help write a bill that will lead to higher taxes or social service cuts or both for your constituents....

In the summer of 1995, bassist Caithlin De Marrais, guitarist Kyle Fischer, and drummer Bill Kuehn formed Rainer Maria—which would become one of the elite national acts of emo’s second wave. De Marrais and Fischer had met in a poetry-writing workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the band toured the basement circuit and recorded frequently, with a sound that drew on the sort of emotive posthardcore whose lineage can be traced back to Sunny Day Real Estate....

Since 2015, Experimental Sound Studio has been intermittently hosting a weekly music salon called Option, where a who’s who of musicians and composers from Chicago and abroad—among them William Parker, Magda Mayas, Angel Bat Dawid, Paul Lytton, and Zeena Parkins—perform live and then sit for interviews with series curators Ken Vandermark, Tim Daisy, and Andrew Clinkman. ESS has long maintained an extensive archive of Option sets and conversations on its YouTube page, and it swiftly adapted to COVID-19 by moving the series online—each event is streamed, often live, and then added to the archive....

In light of the Chicago Teachers Union’s recent vote to walk out for a one-day strike on April 1, I have a suggestion for Mayor Emanuel to help boost his wretched standing with the citizenry and maybe even help with the school-funding crisis. In fact, a considerable number of teachers aren’t even sure they want to go on the one-day strike. What’s needed more than ever is a source of money to help pay the bills....

Andre Vasquez had never run for public office before launching his campaign for 40th Ward alderman in April, but he’s been in plenty of battles. As a Lane Tech student in the mid-90s, he’d spend his weekends crisscrossing Navy Pier, entering impromptu cyphers where he’d freestyle against other ambitious young rappers from all over Chicago. Vasquez says he competed in more than 1,000 battles and lost only seven times—though admittedly that’s by his own count....

Photo illustration: Chicago Reader; Image: Google Maps The 1100 block of North Ashland, where a 2011 drive-by shooting was followed by a shooting by an off-duty Chicago police officer. For the first time in its history, the Independent Police Review Authority has recommended that a Chicago police officer involved in a shooting be separated from the force. IPRA found that officer Francisco Perez, who was off-duty and working security for a restaurant when he witnessed a drive-by shooting on North Ashland in 2011, was “inattentive to duty” for shooting 16 times at the wrong car....

Manuel Lagos Kassé Mady Diabaté Since the early 70s Kassé Mady Diabaté has been one of Mali’s greatest griots, a hereditary caste of musicians whose purpose has been to share stories, sing praises, record history, and recite poetry, among other oral traditions. Until the last few decades it was viewed as improper for someone not born into a griot caste to sing, although that restriction has long dissolved—but Diabaté is the real deal....

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness,” writes Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory, where he describes the past as a series of illuminated pictures, through which one’s character “becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life’s foolscap.” Potent backlit images magnified to eyelash-fine detail before being whisked away, with a sly billow of the curtain that brings the mechanism of the art abruptly into view also describes the magic of Manual Cinema, the homegrown puppet theater company celebrating its tenth anniversary this year....

The Chicago Reader has published a coloring book to raise funds for the paper and the artists who contributed drawings to the effort. The 52-page Reader Coloring Book is available in both PDF download and limited-edition print form. Andy Bellomo Instagram: @andybMix / Website: andybellomo.com Andy Bellomo is a visual artist, public mural artist, stained-glass artist, teacher, and performer living and working in Chicago. She is a dynamic member of the arts and LGBTQ communities and a strong activist and advocate for social change and human rights....

She had just relocated to the city from Washington, D.C. and didn’t know anyone but her family. That made the transition difficult. But she learned about an entrepreneurial training program for artists and attended the information session at Rebuild Foundation. Rebuild, which was founded by artist Theaster Gates, focuses on art, cultural development, and neighborhood transformation. Equipping artists with the tools they need to thrive is key to this mission....

Killing Joke front man Jaz Coleman has cast such a ferocious shadow across metal, postpunk, goth, industrial, dance, and more that the shape of contemporary music would be incalculably different if he and the band had never written a song. As Steve Taylor wrote in the 2006 book The A to X of Alternative Music, Killing Joke have inspired “all dark music since 1981.” In addition to his career with Killing Joke, he’s also recorded some of the world’s most masterful traditional musicians, and as a self-taught classical composer he’s worked with many great orchestras, including the London Philharmonic and the Prague Symphony Orchestra....

Anne Petersen The behemoth Chicago Craft Beer Week saturates the city May 14-24, providing a multitude of excuses to drink more beer than anyone reasonably should. Now in its sixth year, CCBW offers a mind-boggling range of beer-centric happenings, including tap takeovers, brewer meet-and-greets, special releases, homebrew competitions, and fests within the fest. The 15 events below are good bets, but there are hundreds more listed at chibeerweek.com. Fischman Liquors and Tavern pours Legends, Rarities, and Vintages (aka rare beers) from Colorado’s Avery Brewing, including several that are 17 to 18 percent ABV: Uncle Jacob’s barrel-aged imperial stout, Tweak barrel-aged imperial coffee stout, and a 2011 vintage of a strong dark ale called the Beast....

A couple years ago, Chicago archival label Numero Group launched Cabinet of Curiosities, a compilation series focused on fringe private-press releases of yore. A lot of the strange music they’ve reissued under this banner intensely evokes the eras in which its creators lived, and Cabinet of Curiosities comps are unified less by genre than by spirit. The 1980s electronic sounds on 2018’s Escape From Synth City, for example, include glacial new age (“Konya” by Al Gromer Khan), chintzy boogie (“Intellectual Thinking” by New World Music), and progressive house (“Whirr” by Reader contributor Frank Youngwerth); the LP sleeve looks like a classic NES cartridge, a theme that Numero took further by creating an Escape From Synth City side-scrolling video game....

Wednesday’s Tribune was full of opinion, but Ron Grossman, the editorials, Garrison Keillor, Richard Longworth and Jack Rakove, and Catherine Rampell were all about the same task: We think about Donald Trump so John Kass doesn’t have to. “The CIA is now the left’s champion of truth and beauty,” said Kass. And the Russians are now the bad guys, the same Russians we once championed against the “war-mongering conservative troglodytes” who never trusted them....