The catalog for Norman W. Long's Calumet in Dub solo exhibition at the Glass Curtain Gallery of Columbia College Chicago has been released! It features a catalog essay I wrote. I'm really grateful to everyone who made this exhibit happen and I'm honored to have been asked to participate. I opened up 2022 with a… Continue reading Norman W. Long’s Calumet in Dub Catalog Essay
"Spring Into Winter" was a perfect title for an incredibly productive Mercury Retrograde Sanity Mixtape Series which yielded 17 one-off tapes for pals and TWO seasonal mixtapes: winter 2023//forces at work and spring 2023//this is the chariot!!!!! Now all this shit is going into a box until I return from the Black Eyes reunion Easter… Continue reading Spring Into Winter: A Mercury Retrograde Sanity Mixtape Series
I documented my first research trip to Northeast Ohio for the book I am writing in my latest Substack newsletter. If you subscribe for free, you'll get an email or two a month updating you on my life and work! I also sent in my book proposal and just finished my first review for Cleveland… Continue reading Forces at Work: On the Road to the Land
I put the Land on the Bandcamp front page again, talking about the self-titled debut album by Cleveland garage rock institution, New Salem Witch Hunters. Crank that shit. Sorry, not sorry, WMMS!!!! It’s also about how it’s really challenging for bands to try to exist in Cleveland, which seems to be a central force in… Continue reading New Salem Witch Hunters Kept Garage Rock Regional and Obscure
Always a good day when I get to invoke Carl Sandburg, honestly! Nick Macri personifies everything that makes me love the artistic culture of this city and feel proud to be a part of it and this week I gave him the 🏆 Bandcamp Grammy Treatment 🏆. Check in with what he has been doing largely… Continue reading Nick Macri Embodies the Spirit of Chicago’s Creative Community
I think I broke my brain writing about this band, but the good news is that my brain only broke in order to reform as a bigger, better brain and I may even be able to do fractional math now. Please get acquainted with my favorite band in Chicago, je'raf, who are in my opinion… Continue reading The Sonic Family Tree of Chicago’s je’raf
This mixtape was crafted for my friend and elder whom I am very grateful for in the field of music journalism, Marc Masters. It was interesting to make a winter mixtape for Marc, because he had just officially graduated from winter and moved to Arizona. I was really excited to make a tape for him,… Continue reading Winter 2022//recorded syntax
Hello there! I wrote about the ever fascinating Notice Recordings for Bandcamp's Tape Label Report this past month. In addition to getting to write about a tape label with a unique and intentional approach to the form, I also got to highlight a release which is one of my favorite winter albums, a solo percussion… Continue reading Notice Recordings in February Tape Label Report
It was an honor to write about where Norman W. Long is from and his journey into sound art and back to Chicago. It's a great story about the twin deaths of the American Dream and effective unionism, classism and racism, and possibilities he is creating and recording for both personal and environmental healing in… Continue reading Norman W. Long Lifetime Achievement
It has literally been five months since I first heard the advance of this record and knew I had to write about it. Kicking off my second year of music journalism, here is a band which represents the converging of sounds, scenes, and individuals previously segregated for the last quarter century in DIY music in… Continue reading Credentials Feature Finally Live
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