Interpol bassist Carlos Dengler has joined the retreat…from Interpol. Neither the band nor the purveyor of its crucial low end has disclosed anything more revealing than a Hollywood divorce statement (“He has decided to follow another path, and to pursue new goals”), but given the precipitous defection of fans since 2002’s Turn on the Bright Lights, it’s clear the NYC brooders are poised at the proverbial fork in the road.
Read MoreLollapalooza 2010: Golgol Bordello + Edward Sharpe + AFI + Social Distortion + Cut Copy /
Every three-day festival has at least one wonky day, and Saturday, you are it. Of course there are exceptions. Gogol Bordello, with its frenetic polka beats and can't-help-but-make-you-smile accordion, acts like a cochlear palette cleanser amidst the musics of the Western persuasion. If these New York gypsies are at all road-weary from what seems to be perennial touring, they are masking it well. If the Gogols are joy in a minor key, then Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are the major key analogue. Hearing "Om Nashi Me" chanted on a record may conjure up thoughts of Father Yod and Yahowa 13, or at least breakfast at Victory's Banner, but live it makes not hugging the person next to you an impossibility. There were no arms crossed or feet planted here in the Shire...er, Sony bloggie Stage.
Read MoreLollapalooza 2010: Lady Gaga /
When an unfathomable number of little digital camera screens transform the August night sky several shades lighter, held aloft both by young hands and those a bit more weathered, it's time to acknowledge that this is no ordinary Lolla headliner. There are those of a certain disposition who have managed to remain happily ignorant of the goings-on of Gaga, save the occasional strain of "Bad Romance" escaping a car window, and I am of that disposition. Heading south of Buckingham fountain with little more than a long-standing leeriness of anything referred to as a "phenomenon," this Gaga-Noob was about to learn a few things:
Read MoreFive Reasons Not to Miss X Japan's American Debut /
Barring Erykah Badu disrobing onstage to re-create her eyebrow-raising music video for “Window Seat,” the only act threatening to out-spectacle Lady Gaga this weekend is hair-metal übergroup X Japan. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. But festivalgoers bypassing worthy Brooklynites Yeasayer on Sunday 8 will witness one of the rarest performances ever to sonically obliterate a Lolla stage. The pants are suffocatingly tight, the makeup excessive and unapologetic, the drumming machine-gun fast and the ballads so melodramatic you’ll be clutching your Hello Kitty plush for reassurance. Here are five good reasons this Mothra-sized Tokyo export will be the sleeper highlight of the festival.
Read MoreSusanna and the Magical Orchestra at Schubas /
Listening to Susanna Wallumrød and Morten Qvenild reinterpret Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, KISS and Joy Division is the equivalent of donning a pair of red-lensed sunglasses: The picture remains undistorted, but the panorama takes on an unfamiliar luminosity. The duo’s third full-length, 3, was released in 2009, but Susanna and the Magical Orchestra is only now embarking on its inaugural North American tour. The Norwegians already enjoy traction with indie audiences through unimpeachable reworkings of Leonard Cohen’s devastator “Hallelujah,” as well as Wallumrød’s solo work, most notably in her spectral duets with singer-songwriter Will Oldham.
Read MoreThe Books at Millennium Park /
If there is such a thing as a new paradigm in music, the Books may be it. With a just-south-of-precious moniker, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong have made careers out of mining thrift stores for found audio, assembling bits and pieces from home videos and hypnosis tapes, to create an aural backdrop for their guitar/banjo/vocal/cello compositions. Sampling is a well-trod scheme for musicians, but the pair’s peerless talent lies in its use of esoteric and previously unheard clips, as well as its refusal to use these files as a nostalgic gimmick.
Read MoreSpanning the Spectralists /
Ensemble dal niente has made its mark in Chicago’s thriving new-music scene by refusing to retreat from even the gnarliest contemporary music while remaining unafraid to tackle the occasional pop tune. “We play Radiohead arrangements, music by crazy Italian hippies like Scelsi and Chicago Symphony composers in residence like [Augusta Read] Thomas and [Mark-Anthony] Turnage,” says ensemble conductor Michael Lewanski, who also leads DePaul University’s Chamber Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble. The Ravenswood resident credits the twenty- to thirtysomething musicians’ energy and their lack of egos for digesting what he calls an “OMG-hard” repertoire. “Given that most of the music we play is extremely demanding, stressful and technically challenging, we really can’t do anything other than just be humble and have fun with it. I’d say the most frequently heard question at a dal niente rehearsal is, ‘Who screwed that up? Me or you?’”
Read MoreThee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra at Lincoln Hall /
“Those Marines knew what they had coming,” an inebriated fan shouted, interrupting Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s otherwise stellar Logan Square Auditorium set in 2008, the last time the group made its way down from Montreal. Singer-guitarist Efrim Menuck’s sometimes anarchic worldview might inadvertently invite such outbursts, but the Mt. Zion cofounder immediately shut down the request for “God Bless Our Dead Marines.”
Read MoreGabriel Prokofiev - GéNIA /
Being born into a famous family can be a blessing or a curse. For Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of classical composition titan Sergei, the surname can lead to both increased attention and unfair expectations. Fortunately, the handle has been no hindrance. Hot on the heels of his excellent 2009 release, Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, the hip modern composer, DJ and Nonclassical label founder returns with Piano Book No. 1, a compelling collaboration with Ukrainian pianist GéNIA, for whom the scores were written.
Michael Lewin - If I Were a Bird /
As the recording industry grapples with the reluctance of music lovers to pony up for tunes, one obvious remedy is the production of swanky packaging. And pianist Michael Lewin’s first release with the Dorian Sono Luminus label rewards paying customers with a beauty of an album. Bound as a miniature hardcover book, If I Were a Bird: A Piano Aviary brims with paintings by John J. Audubon as well as the performer’s own program notes for each of these 20 ambrosial vignettes.
Read MoreJóhann Jóhannsson at Lincoln Hall /
Often in thrillers—and every movie M. Night Shyamalan ever made—there’s that eureka montage in which the main character realizes his whole reality is a lie. At that moment, the soundtrack ominously swells. With expansive string cascades and spectral electronics, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson frequently dwells in this territory, especially on his latest, And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, his original score to Marc Craste’s animated film Varmints.
Read MoreJunk in the Trunk /
The four members of Third Coast Percussion have resorted to Dumpster diving. Mallet-slingers Owen Clayton Condon, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore aren’t freegans or recent victims of the recession. They’re merely on a quest to find new sources of percussive possibility, some of which can be had only in an alley.
Read MoreMarx the Spot /
For a sport in which men routinely pound each other’s faces into raspberry cobbler, a crushing stomp of a 2008 theme song by Ministry frontman and lifelong Blackhawks fan Al Jourgensen gets the requisite adrenaline pumping for Toews, Kane and co. But for generations of Red, White and Black supporters, there’s only one Chicago hockey battle cry: “Here Come the Hawks!” Chicagoan Dick Marx’s commercial music studios wrote and recorded that adorably perky, swingin’ anthem as well as many of the advertising industry’s most familiar tunes of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Read MoreFrank Martin - Golgotha /
Looking like a page torn from Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell, Rembrandt’s 1653 sketch The Three Crosses served as the inspiration for Frank Martin’s landmark oratorio, Golgotha. During the worldwide tumult of 1945, the Swiss composer began to transform a diminutive 15"?x?18" etching into a 90-minute leviathan for mixed choir, vocal soloists, organ and orchestra.
Read MoreThe Magnetic Fields at Harris Theater /
Only in L.A. would you find a gaggle of coke-hoovering coeds unaware that they are being exclusively targeted from the stage with the lyric “I hate California girls.” The Magnetic Fields’ singer-pianist Claudia Gonson relished sharing this tour tale with Chicago audiences in March of 2008, following the release of their full-length Distortion.
Read MorePorn! Destruction! Opera? /
Opera Cabal is rapidly depleting IKEA’s inventory of straight-back kitchen chairs. As part of its Chicago premiere of USW, a bold sensory exploration of Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, the progressive company is smashing prefab furniture. A 19th-century cello and 21st-century MacBook Pro have also been victims of the fledgling opera company’s production—the former courtesy of American Airlines baggage handlers, the latter stolen by an “anonymous jerk,” according to music director and cofounder Nicholas DeMaison.
Read MoreMC Maguire - Trash of Civilizations /
MC Maguire’s moniker sounds like that of a rapper, and there is indeed a sampler’s mind-set at work in the Canadian postmodernist’s brainy mishmashes. The composer’s mission statement, per his website, is to save art from extinction via “reevaluation of high-art aesthetics in the light of popular culture’s ubiquitous, formulaic infectiousness.” The tone of the opening track on MC Maguire’s latest, Trash of Civilizations, mirrors Girl Talk’s ADHD cutting-and-pasting but replaces the whimsy with kaffiyeh-wearing grad-student pretension and moody video-game scores.
Read MoreYefim Bronfman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra /
One of the most in-demand concert pianists, Yefim “Fima” Bronfman must have an absurd number of frequent-flier miles. His current itinerary takes the Soviet-born Uzbekistani from Schenectady to Dubrovnik to Osaka, stopping everywhere in between. The 51-year-old returns to Chicago to join guest conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, a work largely eclipsed by the composer’s second, more instantly popular piano concerto.
Read MoreOopera Skaala - A Madrigal Opera /
New York label Orange Mountain Music’s latest, Philip Glass’s A Madrigal Opera, proffers fans of the minimalist icon perhaps the most incompetent handling of the composer’s music pressed to disc. The cycling arpeggios found throughout Glass’s scores are admittedly more difficult to play accurately on a string instrument than the fixed-pitch piano or keyboard, but for the eight-minute solo “Opening,” violinist Linda Hedlund’s intonation is a veritable moving target. Few violinists possess the facility of a Gidon Kremer, whose shimmering 1993 recording of the composer’s Concerto for Violin combines staggering virtuosity with technical acumen, but Hedlund’s wayward pitch here is exacerbated by a flat reading that is more Kreutzer étude than overture.
Read MoreOwen Pallett - Heartland /
Was it trademark infringement that drove Owen Pallett to drop his Final Fantasy moniker? Or perhaps a worry that zealous PlayStation gamers might start showing up at his gigs demanding “One-Winged Angel”? His new label, Domino, would have us believe the former, but the Toronto violinist-singer’s writing has matured beyond video-game nostalgia with his latest and choicest to date, Heartland.
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