Blog

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago usually involved teenaged dreams of escaping the cookie cutter lifestyle for something bigger and essentially better. Some people succeed in dodging their parents’ footsteps and making their own luck as a musician or artist, while others remain stuck in high school drama and pleased with familiarity. Daphne Willis grew up in my hometown and has been grinding the music industry since I was lonely fresh meat at Fremd High School. Willis certainly falls into the former category of Fremd alum since her career as female musician has amplified since graduation. Read More…

Andy Kiel, Jim Wittmann, and Andrew Hertzberg aren’t homeless or begging for money to waste on wretched addictions. Instead they’ve been performing on the streets, at festivals, radio stations, and venues under the stellar moniker Moon Furies for an important cause. On May 17th, the trio commenced their mission to raise money and perform 100 shows in 100 days for cancer research, specifically to support Andrew’s mother after she was diagnosed with throat cancer. Their musical output is a blend of starry-eyed synths and celestial harmonies, but while playing in the streets, the band is forced to strip back to acoustics and impromptu verses. Read More…

Meaningless communication is inevitable. Most egotistical folk tend to perpetually spew garbage out of their mouths just for the sheer pleasure of hearing their own agitating voices. Assuming that you’re completely enthralled with such endless banter, these types of conversations may, at times, become increasingly difficult to escape from. When you happen to cross paths with these aforementioned narcissists, chances are instead of engaging your auditory system with pointless waste, all you absorb from the encounter can be summed up along the lines of “blah blah blah…” Boring.

Despite having an impassive band name, the guys from Chicago-based Blah Blah Blah aren’t interested in nudging catchy hyperboles down the lobes of their growing fan-base or bragging about their “original” sound. Read More…

Chicago DJ Alex Zelenka has been arranging techno fueled mixes and spreading his digital love across the country for a while now. A copious amount of his electronic output features remixes of Zelenka’s close friends and popular duo, Crystal Castles. But the Windy City native doesn’t limit himself to specific styles and sounds when experimenting in his computerized lab. Zelenka also fills his techno palette with remixes featuring Lykke Li, Underworld and Thom Yorke (amongst others). The dude has fought tooth and nail to achieve a global fan base and doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon. Here’s Zelenka’s newest promo mix “Killer.”

Killer (Live Mix) by Alex Zelenka

Read More…

Still rubbing bellies from the Tex Mex and Lone Star gut rot they willing indulged in during SXSW a few weeks back, for this installment of Sounds Good we caught up with Chicago psychedelics Secret Colours. Jump down as we talk with Tommy Evans and Dave Stach, both of which play guitar and sing, about the aforementioned mentioned official/unofficial beer of Texas, a rad ragtag Wicker Park skate and party house, and the benefits of being Adrien Brody’s massive lady lovin’ schnoz. Also, pick up their stellar debut here. Read More…

Last week I introduced a Chicago-based music collaboration to the blog called The Howl Moon. Led in production by Anthony Reese (with a bunch of like-minded friends thrown in including Chi-town producer/DJ Alex Zelenka), the group’s just-released debut EP entitled These Are My Friends delivers four tracks of synth-based electro-orchestral rock that aims high and liberates the reverb soaked melodies of all their astral juices. That’s right, say it again: astral juices. Besides a somewhat vague bio listed on the group’s website, there wasn’t much information on Reese and company, so I decided to shoot him an email with some questions. Listen to the slow-building “Secrets” here and find the interview below. Read More…

Being one of sixteen bands currently in the running to land a much-coveted prize package (in which the Cadillac of components is none other than a Rolling Stone magazine cover), Chicago’s Empires have been all over the Windy City circuit, encouraging anyone, fans or otherwise, to vote the rock ‘n roll quartet into the next round. With results presently waiting to be disclosed March 16th (last time I checked, the band looked to be a round two shoe-in), we caught up with the Chicago-natives’ drummer, Ryan Luciani (pictured right), and asked him about Chicago winters, subcompact automobiles, and (of course) the ongoing contest. Read More…

If My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, the two robots from Daft Punk, AC-adapted 2010 chillwave (as if there was a chillwave in 2009), and the long-haired über Euro dude from Babylon Zoo were to lock themselves in a Wicker Park coach house for six oiled-up hours, then proceed to get “kinda crazy,” Chicago’s Save The Clocktower is the dense sex steam that would casually rise up from the small crack existing between the dirt floor and door. The three piece (Greg Newton, Sean Paras, and Jimmy Shenk) plays and records the brand of electronic pop music that successfully puddle jumps between genres, which is great when done proficiently, plus they’ve got a new LP dropping this week entitled Carousel (record release show Feb. 26th at The Hideout). Below the three longtime friends answer some questions for our Sounds Good feature. Jump down to see STC’s take on fast-food mashups, their new album, and Chicago’s crème de la crème, the mofo Tamale Guy. Read More…

“We’re definitely making big songs,” explains vyle, the Chicago area rapper, who along with producer Eliot Lipp, make up the progressive new collaboration AUBURN. “It’s both a continuation and innovation of our influences. Combining top-forty sounds, the music we grew up with, and material that’s simply ingrained within ourselves as artists.” Read More…

When you hear Shawn Rosenblatt, the young Chicagoan multi-instrumentalist who conjures up material for psych-pop band Netherfriends, namecheck such an inside-turned out author as Brett Easton Ellis, it’s almost impossible not to write him off as a side-burned hipster blowhard. One who is too quick for his own good and probably spends way too many minutes and dollar (dollar) bills hanging around Myopic Books.

Now, depending on which pic the Google image search gives you, Rosenblatt may or may not exhibit sideburns. And since he’s been playing on the road for the better part of the past year, he’s probably not wasting time talking lit shit with Wicker Park’s secondhand novel elite (and definitely NOT taking pictures ‘cause we all know Myopic does NOT like people taking pictures). But the fact remains, Rosenblatt decided to open 2010’s Barry and Sherry with a song that bears the Ellis name and carries a chorus paying the American Psycho author lyrical lip service. Which, depending on his audience, can be a bit presumptuous; especially when done in a format that’s meant to garner multiple plays. (Not to mention the cinematic adaptation of Ellis’ 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction had James van der Beek play the suicidal leather-man Patrick Bateman. And everyone recognizes that Dawson should be, and always will be, relevant to the Creek and the Creek only. Joey and my 2002-self told me so.)

Literary references outdated by at least five years (or the first 180 pages of Glamorama) notwithstanding, this is VEOBA’s mostly-weekly Sounds Good feature. So of course I think Rosenblatt and his band’s output is good. Good in the way that certain big cities have the capacity to feel as small as a two stoplight town; despite being surrounded by millions of blurred-out and fast moving faces. So in other words, yeah, pretty good. Read More…