Chicago-based, self-described goth pop duo Clubdrugs have developed a reputation both locally and regionally for a genre-defying sound and for captivating live performances. The duo’s latest single, the recently released “Waiting” is a sleek and slickly produced, hook-driven and club friendly bop featuring glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling thump and a sinuous and propulsive bass line that serve as a lush bed for Maria’s yearning vocal to ethereally float over. It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for the lovelorn and heartbroken to dance while crying their hearts out on the dance floor.
While being a dance floor anthem, the song as the duo explain is a love song — but at its core, a sad one. “‘Waiting’ tells the story of that excruciating, kick in the chest love can be sometimes be — where the heartbreak takes over all of your senses, all your thoughts, every moment of the day.” Clubdrugs’ Maria adds “You lay in bed at night, begging for sleep to come, but the pain and regret just reverberates inside your head — pleading desperately for relief.”
The accompanying self-directed video for “Waiting” encapsulates the set up of a live Clubdrugs set — the duo performing in front of fuzzy yet slickly edited stock footage from old movies, advertisements, art and of the band themselves.
Back in 2013, Chicago-based post-punk act Disappears — founding member Brian Case (vocals, guitar) along with Noah Leger (drums), Jonathan van Herirk (guitar) and Damon Carruesco (bass) — released two related yet very different efforts that are among some of my favorite albums of the past decade or so — the atmospheric and tempestuous Kone EP and the tense, raging Era.
In 2017, Carruesco left the band. Disappears’ remaining members — Case, Lager and van Herrik — eventually decided to continue onward, but under a new name, and new sonic direction and songwriting approach as FACS. With 2018’s full-length debut as FACS, Negative Houses, the trio quickly established an intense, cathartic and heavy sound, although it’s not always obvious.
The Chicago-based outfit’s fifth album, last year’s Still Life in Decay was a decidedly focused that saw the band at what may arguably be their most solidified. The apocalyptic chaos of their previous album was pushed away in favor of examination with a remarkable and uneasy clarity, while being a sort of addendum to 2021’s Present Tense. Although Alianna Kalaba made an amicable last stand with the band on the album’s material, the album saw the band’s incredibly tight rhythm section dancing and twisting around each other like a double helix rather than inside it, creating a lattice, in which Case wove his guitar lines in and around, much like creeping vines as you’d hear on album tracks “When You Say” and “Slogan.”
The JOVM mainstays — currently Case, Van Herik and Leger — will be releasing the “North America Endless”/”Take Me to Your Heart” single through Sub Pop. The limited release will be on white vinyl and limited to 1,000 copies, and features the original A-side “North America Endless” and on the B-side, a cover of Eurythmics “Take Me to Your Heart.”
“North America Endless” sees the trio at their most forceful yet melodic. Anchored around a shimmering and reverb-soaked, sustain-driven guitar line, thunderous and angular drumming paired with Case’s delivery, which evokes and expresses the anxiety, despair, cognitive dissonance and dissociation of modern American life.
“We had been talking a lot about how to incorporate melody in a new way with the material we were starting to write after Still Life in Decay, and this was one of the first experiments with that,” FACS’ Brian Case says of the new single. “I had this inverted Polvo thing I had been playing around with that Jonathan married to a really nice Frippy sustained lead, and it kind of just wrote itself. Lyrically, it’s about the dissociation needed to live in this country and the powerlessness that can bring. Noah’s beat at the end of the song is one of my favorites from him.”
Regarding the cover of Eurythmics’ “Take Me to Your Heart,” Case says the song is “A band favorite, we’ve been kicking around a version of this since we first started FACS, but for some reason just got around to completing it now. This song has a lot of elements we keep in focus when we write – repetition, space, off-the-grid melodies, and mantra-like lyrics that can be construed in a few ways based on what perspective you view them from.”
The tense Joshua Ford-directed accompanying video for “North America Endless” follows a woman through the slow-burn descent into numbing dissociation and madness.
With Spring just around the corner, that means Summer Festival announcement season is upon us. So let’s get to it.
Founded back in 2006, Pitchfork Music Festival has proven to be one of the most welcoming, accessible and rewarding festival experiences in the global festival circuit, hosting 60,000 music fans of all ages from across the globe in Chicago, one of my favorite cities in the world. Each year, the festival prides itself on a distinct blend of discovery and tradition through showcasing the best up-and-coming acts, touring stalwarts and legends like.
Through a collection of its varied vendors and an annual specialty record fair, the festival works to support local businesses, while promoting Chicago arts and food communities as a whole.
The 18th edition of the Pitchfork Music Festival returns to Chicago’s Union Park, and will take place Friday, July 19, 2024 through Sunday, July 21, 2024. Yesterday, festival organizers announced the festival’s headliners and its full lineup.
FRIDAY Black Pumas Jai Paul 100 gecs JeffRosenstock Yaeji SudanArchives Amen Dunes billywoods&KennySegal Tkay Maidza Doss MLBuch Rosali AngryBlackmen Black Duck
SATURDAY Jamie xx Carly Rae Jepsen JessieWare De La Soul UNWOUND Bratmobile Wednesday Water From Your Eyes SweepingPromises feeble little horse HotlineTNT KaraJackson L’Rain Lifeguard
Tickets are on sale right now, and they include single and three-day passes in three tiers — General Admission, PLUS and VIP:
General Admission tickets are $109 for a single day pass and $219 for a three-day pass.
The Pitchfork PLUS upgrade, which includes a range of exclusive amenities is $199 for a single-day pass and $399 for a three-day pass.
The Pitchfork VIP upgrade, which includes offerings such as side-stage or front of stage viewing at the two main stages, unlimited access to backstage lounges, complimentary beverages, daily catered meals, mobile charing stations, tarot readings, massages, access to reserved parking and more. The Pitchfork VIP upgrade is $379 one a one-day pass and $699 for a three-day pass.
Payment plans are available for all ticket types. More details are available here.
Ravdawg is a mysterious and emerging Chicago based electronic music producer and DJ, who generally specializes in tech house and bass. Over the past handful of weeks, the Chicago-based producer and DJ has released a handful of tracks, that included:
“Your Body,” a deep house banger, built around glistening synths oscillations, a fluttering flute, skittering hi-hats, tweeter and woofer rattling beats paired with a pitched-up, soulful vocal sample that manages to remind me a bit of Octo Octa and others.
The Chicago-based producer’s latest single “Believe in Me” is a euphoric and club friendly bit of house music built around skittering hi hats, glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling thump, and a pitched and chopped up vocal sample. It’s a track that reminds me of sweaty summer nights on the dance floor.
Ravdawg is a mysterious and emerging Chicago based electronic music producer and DJ, who generally specializes in tech house and bass. Over the past handful of weeks, the Chicago-based producer and DJ has released a handful of tracks, including the Larry Levan-like “U Know U Know,” which I wrote about earlier this month.
Their latest single “Your Body” is a deep house banger, built around glistening synths oscillations, a fluttering flute, skittering hi-hats, tweeter and woofer rattling beats paired with a pitched-up, soulful vocal sample that manages to remind me a bit of Octo Octa and others.
Ravdawg is a mysterious and emerging Chicago based electronic music producer and DJ, who generally specializes in tech house and bass. Their latest single “U Know U Know” is a slickly produced and swaggering bit of Larry Levan-like house music built around glistening synth arpeggios and skittering beats paired with a soulful vocal sample.
Chicago-based hip-hop duo Angry Blackmen — Quentin Branch and Brian Warren — features members, who individually spent their time stretching their creative arms and tapping into different sounds for a couple of years, before Warren suggested that they collaborate together as a duo towards the end of 2016.
Branch and Warren exploded into the underground and experimental hip-hop scenes with their debut single “OK!,” a track that showcased the pair’s adept ability to spit bars. Their second single “Riot!” was a near-complete shift in sound that remained tethered to the sonic foundation that they’d first built.
Their debut EP, 2019’s Talkshit! was released to attention and acclaim, before eventually catching the attention of Philadelphia-based progressive label Deathbomb Arc, known for its avant and eclectic roster featuring releases from Death Grips, JPEGMAFIA, JOVM mainstays clipping., Julia Holter, U.S. Girls and others.
Deathbomb Arc went on to release the duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s HEADSHOTS! and its follow-up EP, 2021’S REALITY!, both of which saw the duo expanding their range sonically while further honing their craft.
The Chicago-based duo’s highly-anticipated 11-song, Formants-produced sophomore album The Legend of ABM is slated for a January 26, 2024 release through Deathbomb Arc. The album reportedly sees Branch and Warren spinning tales of depression, existentialism, self-reflection, tragedy and survival that are unvarnished, lived-in and downright ugly paired with soundscapes that seem to come from a dystopian, apocalyptic future, informed by our hellish present. The result: Two talented emcees providing a passionate yet introspective look at the world at large, with their raw, pathos-infused lyrics educating the listener of our increasingly dystopian, fucked up, apocalyptic world — from the eyes, hearts and perspective of young Black men.
Clocking in at about 30-minutes, the album thematically is a coming of age narrative centered around Black men navigating America, inspired by Richard Matheson’s 1954 post-apocalyptic horror novel I Am Legend. “For us, this album is kinda like our villain origin story, a bedtime story and introduction to those who have and haven’t heard of us yet. Black men have historically been the boogie men of America, so I think it’s fitting that we tell our own legend.”
Late last year, I wrote about two of The Legend of ABM singles:
“Stanley Kubrick,” a song that featured Branch’s and Warren’s dizzyingly rapid fire, dexterous, braggadocio-filled bars and verses over a minimalist, industrial-like production that paired skittering trap beats with stormy and uneasy bursts of feedback and distortion. Sonically, “Stanley Kubrick” seamlessly meshed trap with the slow-burning and creeping dread of There Existed an Addiction to Blood-era clipping.‘
“Sabotage” a song that featured Branch and Warren trading rapid fire, dexterous, densely worded yet introspective and deeply personal bars and verses describing their love/hate relationship with modern, American capitalism and their struggles with mental health and the struggle to survive in a mad, mad, mad world. The song sees its emcees vacillating between righteous outrage and heart wrenching despair over a glitchy and woozy production featuring tweeter and woofer rattling 808, skittering beats and noisy arpeggiated synth glitch.
The Legend of ABM‘s third and latest single “Dead Men Tell No Lies” is a brooding track featuring industrial clang and clatter, menacing and buzzing synths paired with skittering beats. And in this uneasy, hellscape Angry Blackmen’s Branch and Warren, along with rising New Jersey-based emcee Fatboi Sharif share trade hauntingly nihilistic verses, which both describes the existential hopelessness, despair and rage of living in a brutally inequitable, corrupt, racist society while adding upon the album’s overall themes of nihilism, tragedy and survival.
