News

Taking a trip with Bitchin Bajas through an expanding universe of sonic dimensions is as simple as cuing up your turntable, CD player, tape deck or electronic device (you lazy sods!), and as of later this month, you're invited to enjoy them through the lens of grounded terrain as well! Beginning with an engagement at Chicago's eminent Constellation on September 12th, Bitchin Bajas are off on a jaunt through the Midwest - just enough to limber up the capacitors, this will be their first tour... (read more)

A pulse, humming forth from the speakers. Rhythms fracture and divide themselves, intersecting, diverging. The pounding of a heartbeat emerges, so stressed....this is a feeling of dread. Thus passes the first moments of 1 Minute 2 Midnight, Russ Waterhouse's second solo release.
  
It's been several years since Russ participated in new music-making as part of the duo Blues Control, now on an open-ended hiatus. Since, Russ' solo work has coalesced as the relationships that had created Blues Control... (read more)

From where they sit astride the San Andreas fault,  Ty Segall  and the Fredom Band are on the brink of world domination - and they don't even have to leave town. Well, not 'til October anyway - first, there's 5 more dates to go at LA's Teragram Ballroom, where they've been on a belt-busting 10 date summer residency (every Friday night, represent!) featuring the all-new First Taste  + a whole album from Ty’s back catalog (this week/next week's transgressive time capsule: 2016's... (read more)

Jim White and George Xylouris have been friends since Jim's early days in Dirty Three. Their musical connection goes back to then and led them to start Xylouris White in 2013. Since then, they have released three albums and been touring the world. The Sisypheans is their Drag City debut and fourth release together.
 
Xylouris White's fourth installment of progressive Cretan lute compositions present the sounds of the lute, George Xylouris' vocals and Jim White's drums in an open, spacious sound-field. With... (read more)

After all these years, who’s there? Why, it’s Bill Callahan, the super-sexy solo singer, driving though the front of our house once again in his 90s vintage vehicle– the Smog-mobile! And what’s he got there in the passenger seat? Hey, it’s the 20th anniversary half-speed master vinyl edition of the Smog classic, Knock Knock, by (we’ve been over this) Smog!

Placing this LP on your turntable, you find yourself drawn ever-deeper into the sound – and it’s not just... (read more)

August is coming to a close, which can only mean one thing: Fred Armisen is touring Australia! Continuing his Comedy For Musicians But Everyone Is Welcome tour in the land down under, Fred will wear multiple hats (perhaps), play multiple instruments (again, maybe), and do all your favorite bits! The comedian who delivered the impeccable  Home Town Heroes single series, complete with singles from The Blue Jean Committee, Crisis of Conformity, and Joshua Rainhorn, is likely to do a bit of everything,... (read more)

Hey! Your main man, Papa M is out there doing the right thing on the road with a guitar slung over his shoulder. Catch the living legend, the darkness, the mystery and the beauty of the David Pajo's primary vehicle while you can! He's currently on tour with Mogwai before hopping vans (like he does genres) to support Sunn O)))! All that and a dip down to Brazil this fall? Will he play tunes from A Broke Moon Rises? Highway Songs?... (read more)

Fresh off his acclaimed solo album Fountain Fire (out earlier this year), Bill MacKay is back to harmonic atom-splitting with all six of his guitar strings in this new collaboration with cellist Katinka Kleijn---entitled STIR.

Both accomplished musicians in their own right (Bill is a guitarist-composer-songwriter, whom any Drag City fan will surely recognize and Katinka is a cellist and veteran of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among others), STIR marks their first collaboration that's been put to wax! Over the... (read more)

Radum Calls, Radum Calls is Sean O'Hagan's second solo album. His first came out in 1990, titled High Llamas - how's that for paths taken and not taken! It's clear we simply can't know what the future brings. So, nearly 30 years down that once-was road, 10-12 albums of the extreme pleasures that High Llamas song craft and sonic obsessions have provided (counting a comp and a remix record, yeah?), here's Sean again, with his second solo album. 
 
In the past decade,... (read more)

You probably already know this, but on Wednesday morning, David Berman took his own life. He’s gone. 

We have to keep reminding ourselves that it is real. Then we’re reminded that is real. Then we wish it wasn’t real. It’s like a trapeze act, and we are the worst acrobats, fumbling these truths from swing to swing. Day after day...

Everybody says these things after a suicide – and this week, we know very specifically why they do. For instance: five... (read more)