UR Chicago

A Chicago-based online magazine and blog covering music, art, and nerdery.

[urchicago]

Heading out to the west coast this summer? Don’t miss HARD Summer Music Festival in SoCal!

Of all the summer music fest lineups that I’ve seen, this has to be my favorite and one of the most interesting.  With a top tier boasting names like Kid Cudi, Major Lazer, RL Grime, Excision, and Dillon Francis - HARD knows what’s up with bringing out solid headliners.  But for me, it’s the lower tier artists that are most interesting: Lick, Blanke, Hekler, and G-Rex are some of the most cutting edge artists in electronic music right now and they’ll all be at HARD Summer!  Not to mention those awesome b2b sets - Excision & NGHTMRE, Flux Pavilion & Netsky, and Flosstradamus with 4B!  This is going to be bonkers.  Click the poster for tickets and follow HARD Summer via the links below!

Follow HARD Summer: Website | Facebook | Twitter | IG

[urchicago]

Don’t miss the enchanting ionnalee at Bottom Lounge next month on 4/28!  

Her new album, REMEMBER THE FUTURE, is out on May 31st and be pre-ordered right here. Speaking on the album, ionnalee shares  "To me, the album has a kinetic energy. I felt much more confident and free when producing it, both as an artist and a producer. It’s a hopeful visionary story of daring to dream, and shooting for the stars, despite the paradoxical underlying chafing dystopia that we are destroying our planet."  Check out the new video for ‘OPEN SEA’ from the album below and click the flyer to go buy tickets //

Follow ionnalee: Website | Facebook | Soundcloud | Spotify | IG

[urchicago]

Tickets almost sold out for EXCISION w/Doctor P, Bear Grillz, Sullivan King, and so many more at Navy Pier this weekend!

This is sure to be one of the biggest and baddest shows to grace Chicago soil this year.  I’ve seen Excision (review here) and to this day, his show is one of my absolute most favorites.  It’s like nothing you’ll ever see or hear, something that truly must be experienced to be believed.  Tickets are still available, so click that flyer & enjoy some bass in your face! -NMJ Follow EXCISION: Website | Facebook | Soundcloud | Twitter | IG

[urchicago]

LISTEN UP!: SLOOZE // ‘Aftermath’

When it comes to the darker, bleaker end of the electronic music landscape, no one exists in that space more comfortably than that of Canadian artist Slooze.  Every new track seems to peel back another layer of this prodigious and ballsy producer, each song expanding upon the advances of its predecessor. ‘Aftermath’ finds Slooze firmly locked into a glitched-out, meticulously crafted groove of brilliant drum programming and his signature lava-like bass - seriously, it OOZES.  You have to hear it to believe it.  But if everything before this was to show us what he’s capable of sonically, ‘Aftermath’ is his most visceral stab at the dance floor thus far.  You can just as soon bang your head to it as well as shake your ass to the punchy af beat of the first drop.  There’s no doubt that we’ll be hearing this dropped in countless DJ sets over the coming months.  Check this guy out & follow his ascension through new frontiers in bass music because Slooze is undeniably at the forefront of it all.  Watch this space for more on Slooze......

Follow SLOOZE: Facebook | Soundcloud | Spotify | Twitter | IG

[urchicago]

KAYZO w/1788-L, Wooli, and more at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago this Saturday!

Tickets are still available for what is sure to be a captivating and next-level live music experience courtesy of Kayzo and a slew of other groundbreaking artists!  The Unleashed show is Kayzo’s way of taking electronic music to a whole new level, inviting hard rock/metal to join the party and wrapping it all up in a visually intensive evening.  This is not a show you should miss, check this link for a behind the scenes preview of what to expect from the show.

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS

Follow Kayzo: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Soundcloud

Follow 1788-L: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Soundcloud

Follow Wooli: Facebook | Twitter | Soundcloud

[urchicago]

BONNAROO ANNOUNCES LINEUP FOR THE OTHER TENT

Bonnaroo sure isn't pulling any punches in 2019! They just announced the Other Tent lineup & it goes hard.  My personal favorites are Liquid Stranger & RL GRIME on Friday, WHIPPED CREAM & TOKiMONSTA on Saturday with a sure to be killer Sunday set from ILLENIUM.  Thursday night is clearly going to be nuts as well. Grab your tickets at https://www.bonnaroo.com/tickets/ - they even let you do payment plans!

[urchicago]

New N64 game coming out || 40 Winks

I remember they hype for this back in 1998. Lost games always grab my interest for some reason, so the fact that 40 winks is finally seeing a release thanks to kick starter just butters my biscuit. To get in on the retro action, visit the kickstarter and pledge! Sadly, I don’t think they reached their goal for the Dreamcast version, so N64 carts only! Relive those classic early 3d platforming days! 

[urchicago]

NEW INTERVIEW: Richard Tilkin | The Strange Name Movie by Justin Tucker As you can see in the byline, my name is Justin Tucker. I share my name with the Baltimore Ravens kicker and Super Bowl champion. Someone makes a joke every so often, but it’s never caused me any degree of grief or embarrassment. My name could be a lot more strange. It could be Howard Schmuck, Ronald McDonald or, worse yet, Donald Trump. Everyday folks with peculiar names are the subjects of The Strange Name Movie, an interesting short subject documentary by director Richard Tilkin. The film reveals how people’s various strange names have shaped their lives and built their characters, rendering them more resilient than the rest of us. I recently exchanged emails with director Tilkin of Boston Digital Productions about the christening of his latest film and the current state of documentaries. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

NEW MINISTRY SONG || ‘ANTIFA’

This little ball of energy is the first track released from Ministry’s upcoming album AMERIKKKANT out March 9th 2018 on Nuclear Blast records. I love that little flangey second guitar going on in this song, reminds me of classic Ministry. Check out the track listing, he’s got one for 4chan!

[urchicago]

NEW REVIEW: Cuphead | Xbox One/PC by Pawl Schwartz Cuphead is the story of a 1930s style cartoon that is Mickey Mouse from the neck down, and a tea cup from the neck up. As Cuphead, you and your pal Mugman hit up the casinos one night and get caught up in a simple game of dice with Satan (you know, normal everyday stuff). You, of course, lose everything and end up in debt to Satan, which is a terrible place to be. In order to be released from this debt, you have to use your magical snappy fingers to shoot at and defeat different cartoon beings to collect their souls and return them to Satan. Don’t worry, they all sold their souls willingly and contractually; Satan is just making you do the hard work to collect them, which is quite far from easy. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

UR Stoned || Patrick Stewart smokes weed everyday 

Patrick Stewart aka Captain Picard has revealed that he uses marijuana daily for medical reasons. Here’s to weed, a great pain management alternative to opiates in this time of unfortunate death and crisis. Credit for the article goes to the AV club. 

[urchicago]

Meerkat Press has revealed the cover for Seb Doubinsky’s upcoming novel Missing Signal!

If you are not already familiar with Seb, please check out our review of his latest novel Omega Gray

Seb’s writing is both lucid and bizarre, somewhat akin to Jeff Vandermeer (who just put out the excellent book ‘Borne’), but a little more disturbing and beautiful. And with more drugs, usually. 

If you are a fan of Bizarre Fiction, Bizarro, Genre-bending, or Science Fiction, then Mr Doubinsky is someone that you should already be following. He is one of few current authors with raw and original talent, and he is putting out books regularly. 

Missing Signal will be out in August 2018. 

[urchicago]

INTERVIEW: Victoria Loustalot | author of Living Like Audrey by Andrew DeCanniere Without a doubt, one of the most interesting reads of the fall has to be Victoria Loustalot’s recently released Living Like Audrey: Life Lessons from the Fairest Lady of All (Lyons Press, 2017), which takes a look at the life of film (and fashion) icon Audrey Hepburn, the lessons that we might take away from the way that she lived her life, and how we might incorporate those lessons into our own lives. Read on to see what Victoria had to say about Audrey, how the book came about, and much more. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

INTERVIEW: Shusei of Aletheia Games

by Pawl Schwartz The dream: To once again play Sega games on Sega hardware. I have, for years, still held out hope that Sega will return to its former 90s glory and be no longer on the sidelines of gaming by soldiering on as a third party developer for other company’s hardware. One man going by the name Shusei shares this dream, and he has gotten fed up with waiting. Shusei and his team Aletheia Games are creating a new console called “Razor,” planned to span multiple console generations with the highest of high-spec hardware; all so that they can hand the Razor over to Sega and let them run with it as their new console. Will it work? There have been some similar attempts at a Sega hardware revival in the past such as Project Dream, which fell apart due to infighting as you can read in the link. The Razor and Shusei are taking a different approach and going grassroots, encouraging fans to bring the Razor to Sega’s attention while it is in development, and hoping that Sega is smart enough to bite and invite the Razor and possibly i’s dev team to be an official Sega product. Can Shusei make Sega great again? Details are a little scarce at this stage, so I contacted Shusei to find out more. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

UR INTERVIEW: Grant Lawrence | Author of Dirty Windshields by Andrew DeCanniere Ever since I learned of Grant Lawrence‘s third book, Dirty Windshields (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017), which offers readers a sort of behind-the-scenes look at The Smugglers, I have been eagerly awaiting its release, and finally had the opportunity to read it this past spring. A couple of weeks ago, I had opportunity to speak with Grant about his engaging new book. Read on to see what he had to say about his inspiration for this, his latest book, touring with the band, and much, much more. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

NEW INTERVIEW: Julia Dahl by Andrew DeCanniere Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to speak with the author of one of my all-time favorite series, Julia Dahl, regarding her third novel, Conviction (Minotaur Books, 2017), which came out on March 28th, and which I have been looking forward to ever since I finished reading the second novel in the series, Run You Down (Minotaur Books, 2015). The book, which takes place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn — home to both an Orthodox Jewish and black population — has Rebekah Roberts (around whom the whole series centers) investigating a possible wrongful conviction that occurred twenty-two years earlier, shortly after the riots that took place there. Read on to see what she had to say about the inspiration for her book, wrongful convictions, the importance of women in the justice system, the importance of transparency in police departments and much more. Read on, reader...

[urchicago]

NEW INTERVIEW: Bill Ayers by Justin Tucker In the wake of the election Donald Trump, the opposition to the President was immediately emboldened, and a movement coalesced. Thousands of folks took to the streets and became involved in political activism for the first time. The election of Donald Trump also provoked Facets Multimedia to action by hosting a series of Teach-Ins featuring provocative films that explore particular topics. The first film of the series was director Michael Radford’s adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, starring the late John Hurt. After the screening, there was a discussion led by the controversial activist and retired UIC professor Bill Ayers, best known as a leader of the Weather Underground. I recently had a conversation with the proud dissident to discuss the impact of Orwell, the election of Trump, and the American tradition of radicalism. What follows is an edited transcription of our discussion. Read on, reader...