Justin Sinkovich

Dotcom startups might be a dime a dozen, but what about reincarnations? At its launch in 1999, Epitonic.com was a pioneer in the online music service realm, offering the “ability to download and stream what was selected carefully by a staff of editors,” says Justin Sinkovich, one of the site’s original co-founders, providing cutting-edge tracks along with playlists and suggestions of other music for its followers. As an online environment for people to discover new and obscure artists with a legal, safe and easy-to-use format, Epitonic.com garnered a large and loyal fanbase; however, the company’s finances “began going under water,” Sinkovich says, explaining its dormancy since 2004. Twelve years to the day after its first launch, Epitonic relaunched its site on March 8, after Sinkovich reacquired its rights. “Sponsorship and advertisement is a much healthier marketplace” than it was in 1999, “iTunes was not around and people weren’t as comfortable shopping online,” says Sinkovich, now a full-time faculty member at Columbia College. (Tiana Olewnick)

By Janine Schaults

South Siders might have a bone to pick with Everest for agreeing to herald in the 2011 baseball season with the Cubs instead of a certain World Series-winning team, but what do a couple of follicly blessed California boys know anyway?

“We understand [the rivalry], but we’re kind of neutral when it comes to baseball,” guitarist Joel Graves explains in regard to the band’s early morning gig scheduled for Opening Day. “I feel like an underdog sometimes and I look at the Cubs and how can you not love an underdog like the Cubs?”

The comparison falls flat upon a quick rundown of the quintet’s brief but illustrious history. After forming in 2007, the band immediately entered the studio, knocking out its debut “Ghost Notes” in a mere two weeks, which caught the ear of Neil Young. Impressed by its nuts-and-bolts songwriting swathed in a sheen of mellow gold, the Canadian rocker placed the album on the roster of his Vapor Records and took the group out on tour (including a one-of-a-kind doubleheader at Madison Square Garden). Bolstered by the Hall of Famer’s stamp of approval, Warner Bros. joined the fray for Everest’s 2010 sophomore effort, “On Approach.” Read the rest of this entry »

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What was a devout eighteenth-century Lutheran doing writing a Latin setting of the Roman Catholic Mass? We’ll never know for sure, but Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Mass in b minor” stands as the greatest Mass setting ever put to music and represents the last statement on sacred music from the composer who still reigns as the supreme musical genius of all time and who spent most of his life composing sacred music.

Chicago Chorale artistic director Bruce Tammen has expressed his own wish in the group’s press release that “we all come to understand, through experiencing [Bach’s “Mass in b minor”] that the work represents “not only the best that we humans can come up with,” but that it represents a transcendent goodness that shows that “there is more to us, more to hope for and plan for and celebrate, than the brutality, the violence, the hatred, which we daily confront in one another.” For Tammen, just knowing that “a human being, one of us,” composed “this monumental and life-transforming work… should make us better people.”

What is particularly odd is that such a sublime work was the product of a disgruntled composer who was miserable in his job as cantor at Leipzig where he was underpaid and overworked. Despite composing works unparalleled in quality and quantity during these years, Bach was not much appreciated by his employers, a squabbling town council, who thought his work teaching and looking after the schoolboys at Saint Thomas’ was as important as his composing for and supervising performances at the two town churches. Read the rest of this entry »

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Words like authentic and gritty get thrown around in just about everything written on Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. Sure, Lewis worked at a pawn shop and taught himself how to play guitar while gigging around Austin, Texas. His music certainly references recordings dating back to the middle of the twentieth century, mixing in as much soul and funk as he does Electric Flag and handfuls of big-band blues groups. Releasing “Scandalous” through the Lost Highway imprint isn’t set to distance the performer and his band from the onset of Stax euphoria, but it does present a band stepping towards the realization of a unique voice.

2009’s “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!” introduced Lewis and his ensemble to a national audience. With its danceable back beat, efforts like “I’m Broke,” owing as much to Isaac Hayes as R.L. Burnside, present an ample band, playing predictable tunes. The expected isn’t always a bad thing and Lewis gives us all a shot of gutsy hollering, perhaps best avoided by feminists. “Big Booty Woman” can’t please everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

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For a while, it was confusing why Ripley Johnson put Wooden Shjips on hold and focused on Moon Duo. The latter group’s first efforts weren’t far removed from the Shjips’ reliance on tripped-out rock tropes and dismissal of traditional song structure, embracing squalid improvisations doused in echo. Eventually, the duo—Johnson and Sanae Yamada—emerged as a unit unto itself. “Mazes,” the group’s recently released sophomore effort, points towards the pair’s own aural bent.

Willful or not, efforts like the album’s title track tie the combo into a pervasive beach-band thing. “Mazes,” though, outstrips most of those youngsters’ efforts by dint of its repetitive guitar phasing and kosmische back beat. Johnson’s singing even reveals a bit of emotion and moves away from the monotone obscurity of Wooden Shjips’ washed-out vocal cuts. Moon Duo’s psych now wraps around pop song-craft. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Allison Bohl

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This young band out of Lafayette, Louisiana—one of this year’s buzz bands at SXSW—is clearly inspired by late-sixties pop. Their single “People Want To Be Happy” seems to draw direct inspiration from The Beatles’ later numbers like “Honey Pie” and “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” while “Miniature Day Parade” brings back memories of psychedelic-era Beach Boys.

Brass Bed—Jonny Campos (guitar), Christiaan Mader (vocals and guitar), Andrew Toups (keyboards) and Peter Dehart (bass)—has its beginnings with experimentalism in the studio. They reportedly once used an electric toothbrush to create the sound of a drum, while guitarist Campos frequently uses a cello bow on his pedal steel guitar to create a whole new array of sounds in the same manner Jimmy Page did in the seventies with his Gibson Les Paul. The band hits Chicago this week on tour in support of its new release “Melt White.” (Ernest Barteldes)

April 4 at Pancho’s Cafeteria, 2200 North California, (773)772-7811, 8pm.

Following a productive 2010, Guti begins this year with his first album on the Desolat label, “Patio de Juegos.” The record exploits his penchant for driving, percussive creations and signals a continuation of his successful run at producing house music.

The title translates from Spanish to English as “playground,” which is apt in regards to both sound and the number of featured collaborations. DJs will welcome the rhythmic tools offered by most of the tracks, while others foster a balance that qualifies “Patio de Juegos” for a start-to-finish listen on the home stereo.

Guti invites support from tech-house luminaries Guy Gerber and Ryan Crosson, each adding their telltale influence to the album’s driving beats and pervasive, Latin percussion patterns. The high-profile cameo on “Lucio El Anarquista” by renowned tango singer and composer Daniel Melingo certainly stands out. His unmistakably raspy vocals permeate the track’s pounding beats and wandering piano loop. The downtempo departure of “Still Here” is quite memorable, eschewing layers of percussion for a minimal shuffle and melancholy keys.

Proving he can play well with others, Guti’s first full-length effort highlights his diverse musical background as well as his production skills, and establishes him one to watch for the foreseeable future. (John Alex Colon)

Guti
“Patio de Juegos”
(Desolat)

By Dave Cantor

“I don’t know if I want a drummer,” Blueprint says over the phone from Austin’s SXSW. “That’s the main problem with live hip-hop. I feel like when people get a drummer, they try to sound like the Roots.” The Columbus-based emcee and producer doesn’t take issue with the Philly stalwarts, but he’s been on a fifteen-year journey to make his own music, not variations on someone else’s.

“Adventures in Counter-Culture,” Blueprint’s newest long-player, is set to arrive in early April. And while the disc isn’t exactly a revelatory step forward for the medium, it does rank as a further investigation of what hip-hop is to this performer. Blueprint’s music has occasionally embraced synthetic keyboard lines and an assortment of other instrumentation in addition to the sample-based work he contributed to wrongfully ignored albums like Illogic’s “Got Lyrics?” dating back to 2001. His latest set of songs assimilate a dance-floor aesthetic, which might be difficult for some longtime admirers. Along the way to completing “Adventures,” Blueprint realized live shows were going to have to evolve alongside his recordings.

Read the rest of this entry »

Muti conducts Nabucco

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Another week of high drama for CSO music director Riccardo Muti, despite the fact that he is no longer in Chicago and is not expected to return until next month’s CSO concert performances of Verdi’s “Otello.” Against the explicit orders of his Northwestern doctors who felt he should have at least two more weeks of rest here, Muti flew to Rome and conducted his scheduled opening March 12 performance of Verdi’s “Nabucco” at Opera di Roma. Muti, who missed much of his inaugural fall residency due to what Italian doctors diagnosed as exhaustion, and all of his winter residency after collapsing here during a rehearsal on February 3 and having subsequent facial surgery and a pacemaker installed, has yet to address why he would so directly defy doctors’ orders. Even the press office of the Opera di Roma noted publicly that Muti was appearing against doctors’ orders, the company clearly wanting to absolve itself of any responsibility for what could happen.

CSO president Deborah Rutter attended the performance in Rome and said that Muti was “in great shape,” but noted that he “was lifting his left arm a little lower than usual.” Rutter also said that Muti had allowed an assistant conductor to prepare the work before he arrived, “something that he rarely does” so that he could come in and take over at the last possible moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Farina

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The “Mayhem at The Mid” event series presents its “Windy City All Stars” edition on Friday night, during which both of the venue’s rooms will be overwhelmed by the sounds of Chicago house music. The artist lineup ranges from classic to cutting-edge, from Mark Farina and Specter, to Justin Long and Tyrel Williams. Farina, the force behind Mushroom Jazz, is celebrating a birthday, which would make for a sold-out show on its own. Audio Soul Project, the brainchild of Fresh Meat Records honcho, Mazi, will deliver a live performance that, following the praise of last year’s “Hip Shake Heartache” album, just might be the event’s defining moment. Farina and Mazi both specialize in the swinging rhythms and chunky beats derived from the collision of funk, deep house and jazz. Justin Long and Tyrel Williams exert some left-field influence on the affair, bringing the tech-inspired sound of their .dotbleep residency (Smart Bar) to the decks. Tetrode co-founder and loft-party veteran, Specter, adds his ambient-fused house style to the lineup, which also includes All About founder Luis Baro and Mid residents Just Joey and John Curley. (John Alex Colón)

March 25 at The Mid, 306 North Halsted, (312)265-3990. 9pm. $10 advance, $20 door.