One phase of life ends and another takes it place. The area in the middle is where the pulling apart and gluing happens. It can be quiet, it can be lonesome, but it will always be. There’s peace found within the process for some, depending on their level of experience and frequency related to change.
Drummer Ben Baker Billington and guitarists Mark Shippy and Daniel Wyche unite for their first recording: a 47-minute, ripping, hypnotic improvisation in three parts, released last year on Austin-based record label and multimedia imprint, Astral Spirits. Billington, Shippy, and Wyche are all heavy-hitters in Chicago experimental and DIY music. Billington drums with ONO, the Industrial
Take One “I don’t know if I should hug or slap the shit out of you.” My now deceased stepfather once said this to me after he picked me up from the local precinct after being arrested my one and only time. This message rings in my head quite often in my adult life, and
Talk of the elders and the ancestors has popped up a lot in my sphere recently. So much so that it has taken me the better part of a month to sit down and focus on how to express the wave of emotional African-based experiences that have come my way. Two spiritual readings in the
In tarot, The Three of Cups is often pictured as three women raising their glasses in celebration and signifies forces coming together to focus on a common emotional or creative goal. I pulled this card during a tarot reading that happened to coincide with the final moments of my initial listen of MZM, the wonderful
What do you think of when you hear the word solitude? Do you think of your lonely moments during difficult times in your life? Does the hauntingly beautiful composition by Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, and Eddie DeLange come to mind (especially Billie Holliday’s 1952 version)? Or do you think of solitude as space, or mood,
Drummer, saxophonist, electric guitarist & electric bassist, Weasel Walter’s latest recording, A Pound of Flesh, is a four CD set consisting of nearly five hours of music. This isn’t your average cup of tea. The music is challenging and you will need to focus on the emerging sounds from each track. Weasel Walter plays drums
Zero Point’s Thoughts Become Matter is the kind of album I want on with a good glass of wine late at night. It is mellow and still at times, evident on “Surrender, Surrender,” allowing us to slow with it and feel the weight of each note. The instruments on the album move carefully. Though it has
As a youth, I received a lot of talks from the elders in my family. Many of these talks circled around growing pains that were to come in my life and the assurance of how little control that I would have over some of them. The topics ranged from sexual consent, economic (in)stability, and educational
I enjoy eating breakfast and find it pretty necessary to have some sort of complimentary caffeinated beverage with the first meal of the day. The combination of the two is not something I can really explain well (I’m a music historian, not a taste buds expert). Usually, I reach for a few different fruits, maybe
