Miriam Fanger

Lasers and Fast and Shit perform Pittsburgh

This band is one of the most promising acts to appear in Chicago in the past few years. Their live shows have set them apart from their stoner-spazz rock counterparts, with an elaborate light set up that they bring to each show. Yes, you see correctly, lead vocalist joe is ‘playing’ the lights. I can’t imagine these guys ever quit working being that they build their own amps, and drummer, Mizzola plays in like ten other great Chicago bands. Look out for Lasers and Fast and Shit’s new 7″, Introduction, out now.

Carlos Icaza, aka DJ Tropicaza

Anybody could roll down the list of bands that Mexico City’s Carlos Icaza is in, or credit him for his incredible work with the Vampi Soul people, but until you have met this brilliant, record collecting, drum-battering-anomaly in person, you have only read into a small semblance of what Icaza is all about. When I first met him, I had no idea who he was. He commented on a record I was playing at a bar and then a week later, my friends and I hadn’t missed a single gig he played in Chicago, including the loft party we all spun together the following Saturday. I have been addicted to this mix that he posted and it doesn’t even compare to his live sets. Who knew so many soul standards sounded twice as funky recorded in Mexico in the 60s.

Charlie Megna’s artwork at People Lounge, Chicago

Chicago artist Charlie Megna leads a simple life of skateboarding, painting, and drinking with friends. I envy him. Perhaps it’s this casual mid-west approach to urban life that provides him the tongue-in-cheek platform with which he pokes at modern life from. With content ranging from oil consumption to technological advances, state pride to abstract kitty cats, he can also draw a very pretty tree. A good number of Megna’s paintings are currently hanging at People Lounge in Wicker Park, and will be up for the remainder of the month. Read more

Everything Is Terrible website

I met one of the Chicago contributors of this New York, LA, Chicago collaboration site in front of a local bike shop this past summer. He was happily showing off his latest thrift store VHS scores to a mutual friend of ours. I slept on the “blog” he said he was collecting the tapes for for some time. Sometimes I make mistakes. Everything is Terrible is a brilliant library of all things unsettling. These are not posts of mindless YouTube anomalies. These are serious and hilarious documentations of what could be lost on most people were it not for these ironic excavators.

Tristeza’s new album, Fate Unfolds

From the surreal opening to the feverish end, Fate Unfolds captivates with a tonal palette that is both broad and gripping. Indie kings of the southwest, Tristeza, have been at it for slightly over a decade. Their latest full-length delivers without a drop of disappointment. Fate Unfolds is drenched with the seemingly long lost art of crafting an album that plays as one solid piece. I could pick several ’singles’ that I hear on this record, but to do anything but drop the needle and park it does a huge disservice to the artistry and arrangement of this record as a whole. Herein are huge washes of guitars and synths, layered with drums dubbing back and forth from programmed to acoustic with ease and a backbeat that is anything but ‘indie rock’. Read more

Lasers and Fast and Shit perform Pittsburgh

This band is one of the most promising acts to appear in Chicago in the past few years. Their live shows have set them apart from their stoner-spazz rock counterparts, with an elaborate light set up that they bring to each show. Yes, you see correctly, lead vocalist joe is ‘playing’ the lights. I can’t imagine these guys ever quit working being that they build their own amps, and drummer, Mizzola plays in like ten other great Chicago bands. Look out for Lasers and Fast and Shit’s new 7″, Introduction, out now.