News

People everywhere are always asking us, "what's up with J-New? Has she made a new record? Will she play my birthday party?" All the time! Sometimes when we're in the john, cuddled up to the urinal, and we hear "Do you know Joanna...?" So often, we leave people hanging. But not today! Come on, ask us! No, she won't play your birthday party, but we can safely report: Joanna Newsom did ACL and tore that shit up right good! No, not that ACL,... (read more)

The internet creeps hard sometimes. Usually the trash that floats into our inbox sticks to the standard, semi-personalized ads for sex written by ESL students. But after a few glasses of Tang and Purple on Time. at full volume, the poetry in these messages start to appear like ghosts in a samurai movie, hippies in the sunshine or, so we’re told, pirate ships in a magic eye poster. Spam is the new outsider art, man, coming to a contemporary art museum near you any day... (read more)

On January 25, 2012 Dragonslayer comes to Chicago for a one night only event at the Music Box - remember? Jesus, it seems like we've been talking about it forever! And well we should - because this documentary film is coming at us so hard from the opposite side of our "whoops, now it's sleeting in Chicago"-style existence, its gonna take a few mental breaths so as not to get the mental bends as we slide to the bottom of the contempo-California skate-punk metier that... (read more)

Relax, brainiacs — Brain Pulse Music is here! After years of researching the bioelectric functions of the human brain, combined with the traumatic aftershocks of Japan's Great East Earthquake, Masaki Batoh has emerged from his furthest incursion into the deep space and mystery of the human condition with an album meant to calm and aid in the healing of all around him. It has been Batoh's long-standing intention to create a machine that would interface with brain waves in a therapeutic way allowing the... (read more)

Remember when getting up off the floor and going to a rock show felt like a fun thing to do (it totally still is, but keep reading, ok?)? One where the potential for an exciting, possibly dangerous experience that could leave you with scars, the kind where you could eat the bar and lose your shirt and wet yourself and still go home with the chick (or dude) with the shaved head (or...)? Those memorable instances of pure, vacant joy are always aided and abetted... (read more)

Now when the music stops, find yourself a chair and sit on it. No pushin' people on the ground, no sittin' before the music stops, no "duck, duck, goose digressions," for Christ's almighty sake. And no, you can't go to the bathroom right now. This is important. No poutin' shoutin' or fuss aboutin', alright? Now, if you are lucky enough to be in the grace-a God and he wills that you win our little contest, your good friend and soundsystem operator Brigadeer Damus will take... (read more)

Dawn McCarthy heads the Faun Fables stable, and therefore is clearly no stranger to the stage. Typical Faun Fables performances are often quite theatrical, and of course, their Transit Rider album was itself a musical that, when toured, was performed theatrically. We're psyched to see Dawn dust off her acting hat once again, this time in The Crucible's production of MACHINE: A World Premiere Fire Opera. Dawn plays a lead as Brigid in the production, based on a sci-fi short by Derek J.... (read more)

It's been a wicked dry spell of seven years since the filthy unit of Mick Turner, Jim White, and Warren Ellis graced the world with a full-length of any kind. Sure, they've had their hands in many different pies in between then and now, as men are wont to eat fruit from different trees like the evolved chimps they are, but nothing comes close to what occurs when The Dirty Three lock themselves in a room with the tape rolling to milk whatever... (read more)

AZITA moved some waves in 2011 for GODdamn sure - releasing Disturbing The Air, an LPs-worth of piano and voice composition-waves; playing dates in the US o' A and over the waves into Europe, as well as landing in top ten spots in waves all across the planet - and we're expecting even more of her in 2012! Why shouldn't we? Her muse is clearly peaking and her key-playing and vocal chording is more precise and powerful than ever. AZITA never misses an opportunity... (read more)

Achtung baby humans and adult humans alike! All tableau vivant still-lifers have been reassigned to re-education at Camp David. Please vacate space and enter the multiverse to visi-grab the new The Howling Hex moving picture music video, available for viewing mandatory ahora. You will learn how to "read" the media, represented in trite-but-ubiquitous tabloid form (a sample prototype that every American can understand), in order to scan coded messages from God and absorb vibrational knowledge on a variety of histostorio-cultural fronts, including tidbits on JonBenet,... (read more)