If the emblem of Wand's Plum was the stark blue cloud - a condensation, a linking between longing molecules, data hungering for more data, a flotilla of vapor between eye and sky - then Wand's new EP reeks of something more forceful, more seductive, more intoxicating, more insidious: this is "Perfume." Here are seven electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy's clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against a stench of plague.... (read more)

CARRY ON

New dawn again, right? Same old new dawn….same old promise of tomorrow! It’s all we’ve ever lived for way down here in ye ol’ Ivory Bunker. Now you can say what you will about Drag City (you were anyway before we interrupted), but it really HAS always been about something that’s new, from the very beginning and all the way up until now. The goal is to put out a record from someone we admire and trust that will... (read more)

Mike Donovan is LIVE! Here is a mysterious man, cheerful and dark. You don't want to get in too deep but it's too late. It is Donovan's way this time around, and he's flying the freak flag himself. Mike D's roots in Sic Alps and The Peacers advances down the line, with the man himself still jiving down on main street, a footloose man of the world, twisting the dial further and further left. Donovan's forthcoming solo LP, How to Get Your... (read more)

As Ty Segall's Freedom's Goblin proves, freedom should be experienced by everyone, all the time, all over the world. Thus, the Freedom's Goblin tour swerves East as we enter the final days of February! First, Ty and the Freedom Band carry the torch to Seoul, South Korea, for a different type of winter games than have dominated their northerly neighbors all month. And that's just a pit stop, as the following week, the gang lands in Tokyo for a string of Japanese dates to... (read more)

Dean Spunt and Randy Randall continue to dig deep into their seemingly endless bag of tricks with another string of tour dates beginning tonight! More than ten years removed from their debut, No Age continues to reinvent, reflect and progress in vital fashion, as proven on their latest, Snares Like A Haircut! Melding cacophonous noise, dreamlike melodies and blasting tones, No Age are bursting with fresh, roaring sounds at adrenal speed. Not bad for a couple of dads with four full lengths and countless... (read more)

Yes! Chris Gantry's fixin' to give us a whole lotta outlaw love next Thursday, when he brings his acoustic guitar and playful, badass attitude to the friendly confines of The Hideout here in Chicago! It's the first Chicago performance from Chris that we're aware of in our little lifetime, or at least all that can be revealed by our internet machine or Chris' septuagenarian mind! Regardless, this performance is a BIG DEAL as it might be your first and last chance to see this... (read more)

Bill MacKay's blissful harmonic control and just-outside-the-box guitar mannerisms diffuse into the crisp California air as he heads to the Golden State for a short hike up and down the coast next month! MacKay's fantastic voyage through refreshing experimentalism and imaginative influences is fully displayed on his Drag City debut, Esker, but his live performances are unmatched. Bill cut his teeth in various bands and projects spanning genres across Chicago scenes, and now he's ready to take a bite out of the... (read more)

On Sunday, February 11, Tom Rapp passed over from here to a place he'd already touched with his music. You can read the obituaries to get the whole story of his extraordinary path through this life. We're here to say that we'll miss him enormously; although we'd only been working together for a little over a year, we've been fans of his music for much of our lives. Working in this business with someone whose music we loved for years and never really considered meeting... (read more)

 "A month spent in an old mill in the under belly of France. River swimming thrice a day. Hot nights soundtracked by the rattle of randy frogs. Scorpion fear. In the sheets, on the face. Hours of bird watching - no phone service. No wifi. 3 DVDs: Jurassic Park 1, 2 & 3. Violin practice. Bread scoffing. Early morning coffee drinking before the sun was too hot to do anything but snooze in the thick walled house. Music in the afternoon after a dip in... (read more)

The third segment in the ongoing Hexadic series might just be its most crowd-pleasing edition, with a variety of artists from different musical worlds taking on Ben Chasny's combinatorial theory for composition, The Hexadic System. The system provides a malleable template to confront the wide array of choices one makes when playing and writing music, and this process makes the possibilities of a wide variety of artists seem even more infinite on Hexadic III! Each track takes on a distinct and dynamic... (read more)