Our (fairly) regular roundup of Music & Arts related news from Chicago-based web media, featuring thoughts and insight from some of the city’s most dedicated writers.
- Chicago’s dance-music community says good-bye to Phil Free Art
Plus: Jack Black drops in on Mikal Cronin at the Bottle, Marc Arcuri makes “disco grunge” as Orphan Schlitz, and more.
by Leor Galil and J.R. Nelson
Gossip Wolf is sad to report that Phillip Pelipada—better known to Chicago’s dance-music community as Phil Free Art—died last week at age 44. Pelipada was well-known in town for his inimitable positivity, for giving out copies of his intricately hand-drawn rave zine, Free Art, and for DJing scorching sets of house, freestyle, and jungle in clubs and on Vocalo and WHPK, among other places.… - Jazz grows under Ernest Dawkins’s feet
By staying put in his hometown, this Chicago saxophonist has nurtured generations of musicians—and a south-side festival that’s now in its 16th year.
by David Whiteis
Chicago saxophonist Ernest Dawkins has pursued music professionally for nearly 40 years, and in that time he’s built a legacy that’s among the city’s richest. Over the decades his New Horizons Ensemble, active since the late 70s, has included some of modern jazz’s most gifted stylists and innovators, among them bassist Yosef Ben Israel, guitarist Jeff Parker, drummer Avreeayl Ra, and trumpeter Marquis Hill (who won the Thelonious Monk Competition this year).… - Yonatan Gat With Local Openers The Avantist and Crown Larks 9/20 @ Schubas
Yonatan Gat took the stage for five frenzied years with the raucous, rampaging Israeli rock trio Monotonix in the late 2000s. Now he’s flying solo, but the freeform, ecstatic energy remains, and he’ll be bringing it to Schubas Tavern on Sunday night alongside local favorites The Avantist and Crown Larks.
Gat’s prowess as a guitarist has been widely acknowledged by sources from The Village Voice to The New York Times. In his Monotonix days he was known for his rabid garage-punk aesthetic, but since leaving the band his playing has diversified to include strong Brazilian and jazz influences. Raw distortion still pervades his songs, but now it shrouds deft and playful melodies rather than jagged power chords. On his latest LP, Director–which consists of live recordings of Gat and his new bandmates improvising–Gat finds a tone that harkens back to the great avant-garde players of the late 1960s, his riffs laced with a warm reverb over a tight, frenetic rhythm section.
That Director was recorded live is hardly a surprise, as chaotic MC5-esque performances have been a hallmark of Gat’s work since his days in Monotonix. His band typically sets up on the floor, among the audience, and everyone in attendance loses themselves in a sweat-soaked conversion of matter into energy. It’s unclear at this point how Schubas will make such a setup work, but the gorgeous all-wooden interior of the venue makes bad acoustics a near impossibility, no matter from whence the music comes.
Opening the evening will be The Avantist and Crown Larks, two of the city’s better rock outfits. The Avantist blends new wave and punk aesthetics with modern indie production to craft dance-y songs reminiscent of Kings of Leon, while the Crown Larks blast off into cosmic territory with the proggy, psychedelic intensity of a present-day King Crimson (minus Robert Fripp’s signature sound). Both bands put on lively shows that should provide the perfect prelude to the wildman who is Yonatan Gat.
The show starts at 8:00 pm on Sunday evening. You can buy tickets for $10 here, or for $12 at the door.
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