Mirroring those explorations, the live band has expanded to a thirteen-piece pseudo-orchestra, featuring brass, strings, and backup vocalists. The arrangement and plush sound of the full band mark a far departure from the stark and mellow recordings that defined his early sound. Rather, they use the dynamic range of instrumentation to craft lively soundscapes that complement his swooning poetic vocals.

They played to a packed house, filling a venue that bears one detail, making it startlingly appropriate to their music: assigned seating. Or, most importantly, seating. He’s always performed a show that is just as at home in a coffee shop as a standing-room-only venue. But with the current direction, now more than ever he and his band seem to be doing something more akin to theatre than a rock show.

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In all four cases, the gang of artists took a rhythmically streamlined approach to the music, foregoing AC’s tendency towards chaotic syncopation and arhythmic structures. In other words, it’s totally Animal Collective, but the foot tapping, head bobbing version, unsuitable to a crowd of cross-armed hipsters. Nay, this is an EP worthy of lacing up your finest boogie shoes.

Interestingly, in the case of “Monkey Riches,” the first two remixes play up a seven-note sample, lifted by AC from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, the album from which Kubrick got the soundtrack for The Shining. On the original, however, it’s an easy to ignore background track, coming in at the crescendo about 2:20 into the song.

Throughout, the EP plays like a codeine rattled fantasia of gangster/house fusion. It’s a score for the electronica kids, and a bigger score for hipsters dying for a record to which they might let slip out the old ironic foxtrot.

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Controversy doesn’t necessarily capture it. In other words, there’s very little going on in his music that’s salacious. But the meshing of post-dub bass with down-tempo ballad-ish vocals evokes, amongst a host of other thoughts and feelings, some head scratching.

Although it doesn’t translate via his recorded work, Blake’s live shows are definitively identifiable by the low-end frequencies that literally dominate the listener’s attention. Notably, artist’s most confusing choice is the use of the said low-frequencies for their melodic qualities as opposed to rhythmic: dub-step fans shouldn’t expect the drops defining that genre. By the same token, fans of his sing-songy dirge-reminiscent vocals should anticipate them being lost in a droning sea of bass. It was probably most obvious during his performance of “I never learnt to share,” with three different vocals in place, a wall of slow, tyrannical, bowel-jarring, chest-cavity-invading bass drowned out almost everything – Blake, his guitarist, and the drummer.

There isn’t quite the ‘ghost of humanity in a digital world’ zeitgeist that rocketed Radiohead into popularity with OK Computer. Nor is there really the thoughtfulness as a lyricist one might associate with others in the singer-songwriter niche (though the timbre and execution in Blake’s singing voice are spot-on).

But despite all that, Blake and his band did manage to achieve some really striking moments of clarity, emerging from the murkiness, that force a conscientious listener to reconsider dismissing his music. The happy medium might be in its literal experiential qualities: whether or not the music resonates emotionally, the bass will resonate with you, physically. It’s trance music, achieved by vibration rather than rhythm. And, at least on paper, that’s got a lot of potential.

The post A little better than white noise: James Blake at the Metro appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The concept: a pastiche of offerings from both studio and performance artists, composing an evening of literary and musical performances, a film screening (Smile, a documentary chronicling reality in the epidemically violent corners of South Chicago), a little gallery walking, and a participatory art installation, for good measure.

The installation, conceived and contributed by Lakeview’s Bottle & Bottega, featured a papier máché recreation of the Chicago skyline, serving as canvas to a crowd-sourced mural.

And for those who came to peruse and not to paint, select participants in the Rise Artists Prospectus competition had work on display throughout the open loft-style lobby, ranging from sculpture and installation to paintings, mixed media, and glass etching. The pieces were judged, and the artist selected for the most promising work wins a 3-month Artist in Residency space at the Lacuna Lofts, and $200 at Blick Art Stores.

And before you practice your pinkie raising and start polishing the cufflinks, remember: it’s a goddamn party. Revolution Brewery and Tito’s vodka held down a hosted bar that lasted until late in the night. A portion of the proceeds for the event went to the Young Chicago Authors association, who featured readings and literary performances early in the evening, which gave way to a host of DJs, including local favourites Team Bayside High, as well as a genre-pushing performance from frenetic electro-instrumental indie-pop group, Gemini Club.

Running a feature in conjunction with Uber (an exceptionally awesome smartphone cab-hailing app), attendees were whisked to and from the event with ease and convenience. Whether or not they remembered the return trip? We’re lookin’ at you Tito’s.

See more photos from the RISE party here.

The post Five Happy Hours and a Happening: The Numbered Days, RISE appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Efterklang headlined this Wednesday at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, along with uber-chill, extremely talented opener Nightlands. The latter group lay the groundwork for a trance-ish evening of indie-pop and art rock. Their excellent use of vocal harmony and lead singer’s on-point performance complemented the four-piece perfectly, backed by drums, Hartley’s guitar, and two synth stations. And if the evening had simply continued as such, that would have been totally fine.

But out comes Efterklang, a group of rakish prototypical hipsters whose first impression might lead a more judgey set to conclude that they’re all style and no substance. And then, amidst a swooning background of drums and sparse starry-eyed electro-synth, Katinka Fogh Vindelev begins to sing. Classically trained for music performance in Denmark (the band’s country of origin, and former operating base, prior to their recent relocation to Berlin), Vindelev delivers stunning operatic vocals, transcending what, in another band’s hands, might run the risk of being gimmicky or pretentious, and instead tying together a jaw-dropping mélange of sonic texture and rapturous stagecraft. If something’s rotten in Denmark, it’s definitely not the music schools. And if there’s such thing as love at first note, Katinka might have a few new suitors in Chicago.

Next onto the stage comes front man Casper Clausen; confident and charming, his stage presence drips with a crooner’s sense of classic showmanship, and his deep vocal delivery gets upstaged only by his striking falsetto. He invokes a sense of gravity from the music that balances well against his cheery disposition between tunes.

Thus helmed, the band goes on to deliver a powerful set featuring mostly tracks from their newest release, Pyramida, a full-length LP deriving its source material from 1000+ field recordings, collected by the band on an island called Spitsbergen, off the northern coast of Norway. The island is home to a defunct Russian mining town, called Pyramiden (hence the album’s title), and inspires the album’s intense engagement with isolation and the human spirit therein. The music itself is trippy and beautiful, while staying accessibly rockin’, and no one’s having more fun with it than the band’s own members, all of which translate into a truly exceptional live show.

The post Falling for Katinka: Efterklang with Nightlands live appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Sin Label hooked up DJs Superfriends and Kody Madro with the event to lay out a dub and EDM-heavy soundtrack. Free beer from Revolution Brewery for the first hour ushered the majority of attendees in the door early, with the sold-out event rounding out completely around 10:30. The smilebooth snapped group shots for posterity, while Bottle & Bottega’s collaborative group mural, done paint-by-numbers style by members of the crowd, filled in throughout the evening. Local artists Free Kids set the cherry atop the evening with a group of neon glow stick-filled piñatas: glowing human bodies with giraffe heads, floating above the crowd, and occasionally kicking Quip members in the face. Fucking. Awesome. But why, you ask?

Marc Uible, like others of the millennial mindset, noticed a problem: the sort of congregating we do in cyberspace has gone un-paralleled by real world space. Uible posits that while the hyper-democratization of information and socializing on the internet has developed our ability to engage with the niche topics that interest us, physical spaces for like minds to congregate around those topics haven’t evolved at the same pace. Or maybe at all. Uible’s remedy: partying.

His event company, the Numbered Days, hosted 4 parties last year, and aims to host 11 more this year. So if your hyper-niche interest isn’t in glowing giraffe-headed piñatas or collaborative murals, remain calm. The Numbered Days has more to come.

See more photos on our Facebook page here, tag yourself in one while you’re at it.

The post The Numbered Days Loft Party takes over Chicago appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Title track ‘Good Morning Blues’ introduces a well-rounded appreciation of the classics, both hip-hop and blues alike. Building on a chugging rhythmic style, Mackey’s crackling overdrive casts the hooky playing in a warm light. His timing accomplishes the heavy lifting while looking like he’s barely lifted a finger, just off and just right.

“Hell Hound” fleshes out a variant style from Mackey, drawing an obvious connection between his loping melodic style and Kenny Burrel’s. This remains the only truly deviant track, the bulk of the playing borrowing it’s inspiration from Chicago heavy hitters like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

Cityreal’s bruised but perseverant lyrical style rides comfortably alongside the blues, allowing up-tempo tracks like ‘It’s Time’ to pull off a notable vein of melancholy. But in the same breath, Mackey handles all the choruses on the record, limiting Cityreal’s contribution to verse lyrics; not that there’s anything implicitly wrong with that, save maybe the risk of feeling formulaic. It’s a record wrought with passion and flecked with real beauty.

Official video for “Passing Me By”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MEBEYiW1mQ

The post Album review: Cityreal & Wes Mackey “Good Morning Blues” appeared first on Quip Magazine.

I’m on the corner waiting for our photographer, Brandon Farrington, to find parking, and as doors open, a group of bouncers exuding a heady mixture of would-be Lucha Libre stars and CIA types bark out instructions with precision to ready IDs for entry (i.e. “show me your papers, schnell!”). As a barrage of, lets say, under-dressed youths ricochet off the impenetrable bouncers’ ID checkpoint, the call goes up that only state IDs will be accepted, no high school or middle school ID cards allowed. At first it’s only a few, but before long about a quarter to a third of the line start to begrudgingly admit to themselves that they are, indeed, not going to get in. Some hinting at tears, others blaming each other for not having been born several years farther in the past, they scuttle off into the side streets of Logan Square, to do whatever it is fourteen year old kids without structure do.

So, entering the mammoth venue, the music has already begun, a medium-tempo concoction of house music, with a few nods to top-40 thrown in for good measure. Those who actually made it inside seem to have forgotten the tension on the street, and the party feels no worse for wear. Scanning the crowd of shirtless bros and woefully beach-garbed girls, Brandon’s summation seemed worthy of print: “it’s like walking into an STD…”

All venereal infections aside, the brunt of the party doesn’t really kick in until R3HAB gets into the booth. He spins a straightforward blend of pop-friendly house, replete with the hard-hitting drops one comes to expect of any EDM show worth its bath salts. But the main event, Mr. Aoki himself, is the true crux of the pandemonium. There’s a flurry of bodies grinding together; squinting your eyes and skimming the top of the crowd, one perceives a sea of glowing neon and upturned faces, limbs breaching the surface at chaotic intervals, wails hovering momentarily before drowning out, under booming audio. And presiding over it all, the sort-of-obviously Jesus-mimicking MC himself, and heir to the Benihana empire, Steve. It’s a weird, weird scene down there.

The post Steve Aoki surfing through the Congress appeared first on Quip Magazine.

For their first holiday event, the station hosted a talented line-up of indie-rock/alternative acts, including headliners AWOLNATION and up-and-comers Youngblood Hawke. The venue’s cave-like interior and impeccable sound quality translated into a barreling and atmospheric party. With no re-entry at the front door, the restrooms were clogged with smokers jockeying for stalls in which to sneak in a few drags, between sets. Changeover was quick, with a tolerable quantity of hammy Christmas jokes and audience-appeasing self-promotion from the radio station’s representatives, accompanied, naturally, by a garrulous brood of bawdy lady-elves.

As the event let out, the nearby Riviera theater’s show was also ending, simultaneously choking the streets with partially Santa-fied hipsters and holiday revelers, all of which felt somewhat off-kilter, maybe due to the unseasonably warm temperatures; 60 degrees just doesn’t scream December, nor Christmas. So while Q87.7 made a valiant and memorable effort this year, the only Grinch to be successful in its Xmas-thievery this month seems to have been the weather. Not that anyone’s complaining about shorts in December.

The post Q87.7 Chicago’s XMAS Extravaganza appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The front bar is a long narrow room. What limited standing space exists is flanked by hi-top tables along the exterior wall, opposite the dim wood top bar, which runs the length of the room. There’s a photo booth before the podium at the entrance to the venue itself, which serves as a box office, and bright bolts of light pop, staggered several seconds, casting momentary shadows above the attendant. Tickets, at show time, have been sold out, and a few groups of fans hem and haw at the periphery of the entrance, waiting until the show starts to find out whether or not they’ll get in.

The concert hall itself is compact, tan wainscoting punctuated by iron sconces convene on a similarly appointed woodwork frame, arching over the stage, which rises no more than a few feet above the floor of the viewing area. But for the soft cloth curtains at the windows, blocking light from the street, the place radiates a sort of Viking mead-hall esthetic. When opener Daniella Sloan comes on, the floor is about half full with a crowd whose style-persuasion falls somewhere between biker-chic (i.e. sans face tattoos, risk of being knifed, motorcycles) and granola-couture. She performs a half-dozen original songs on acoustic guitar, accompanied by a bassist. She delivers a crunchy coffee-culture ethos whose subject matter ranges between chilling out and caring more, born by a powerful alto and seductively nuanced tremolo.

At a quarter ‘til 11, Fink takes the stage to the applause of a now full hall. Someone starts chanting “Double-P,” possibly in reference to the ‘power’ represented by the versatile two-man stage outfit. For the first tune, the brooding Brit-poppy study in self-determination ‘Fear is Like Fire,’ front man Fin Greenall is accompanied by bass guitar. For the subsequent set, however, the bass is set aside in lieu of a small but deftly expressive drum-kit. Fin, on the other hand, splits his time between a dreadnaught style acoustic, and a nylon-strung Spanish guitar.

Fin’s smoky gospel vocals translate perfectly to an intimate setting, and though his set list only rearranges song-order from recent release Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet, his earnest delivery and charming stage presence render an arresting live experience.

Around midnight concert-goers spill out into the bar, some sticking around to drink, while others congregate momentarily on the corner outside. One girl is conspicuously cradling a smuggled clear plastic cup of Jack and Coke, barely hidden by the lapels of her coat. She empties the remainder of a plastic flask into her cleavage, and tosses it into the trash-can on the corner. “Fink was like Sons of Anarchy meets fried fish,” someone loudly proclaims. And baffling a description as that may be, it touches on the show’s appeal.

As much R&B as trance, as many elements of British pop as American blues and soul; Fink weaves in all of his influences evenly, never letting the gears poke through, nor letting the audience forget why they came to his show.

The post Fink, the live experience at Chicago’s Schubas Tavern appeared first on Quip Magazine.

If we apply a lesson learned from the working, bop-jazz combos of the mid 20th century, we see that these musicians, compensating for smaller size, develop an almost otherworldly ability to multi-task, and convey a near orchestral sound, a pastiche of deftly managed negative space and detail work. Fink’s three piece line-up is no exception. Utilizing dynamics and modern real-time digital-effects to their advantage, they’ve crafted a group of swelling and hypnotic sessions, which stand in defiance of the singer-songwriter niche it would otherwise be so tempting to relegate them to.

“Perfect Darkness” lays forth a minimalist drum and bass rhythm section, punctuated by sparse and contemplative guitar work, and effectively setting the stage for Greenall’s staccato vocal rhythms and smoky gospel timbre. This model informs much of the album’s song structuring, on tracks like ‘Berlin Sunrise’, and ‘Warm Shadow’ with an almost Gaelic rhythm propping up playful and taunting lyrics, delivered with a Doors-like combination of breathiness and mesmerizing blues swagger.

Or take “Yesterday Was Hard on All of Us,” a pulsating 2/4 rumination, stewing in the wake of catastrophe; the grim surmising reflected in these songs might give cause to accuse the band of chronic mopiness, were it not for their acute ability to pull the yolk back up and into revelrous instrumentals, best exemplified on “Fear is Like Fire” and “Biscuits”.

Fink here curates a formidable collection of live performances, defiant and emotive, reserved just so, and up over the top just when you need it.

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