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The CHIRP Blog
DJ Mick writesThe CHIRP Radio Interview: Sharperheart
by CHIRP Radio DJ and Features Co-Director Mick R (Listen to his most recent shows / Read his blog)
A grim urgency shoots through your veins like shot of nitrogen. A corkscrew sensation fans through the fibers of your spine. Your feet begin moving before your mind catches up. Your momentum carries you through a tangle of blind corners and underground corridors.
What are you looking for? What are you running from? You don’t know. All you can know that there is a sharp pain in your chest a panicked desire to move flooding your mind. This is the essence of Sharperheart. Welcome to the world to her world.
Sharperheart is Elma Husetovic, a producer and electronic artist, who has recently relocated from St. Louis to Chicago in order to pursue her passion for the dark, mystic power of sound. Last month she released a self-titled EP dripping with claustrophobically caustic atmosphere and inertial aggression. It is a twisted treaty of miasmic malevolence, that ruminates on the realities of addiction, lament, and the wars waged inside one’s own head. It sounds like hell on Earth, bubbling up from the abyss and flowing into a club near you.
Eddie writesTop Five: Best Crate Digging Finds (Vol. 1)
by Eddie Satyago
Music is one of a few things that can be both disposable and irreplaceable. Think about how often you listen to music without giving it much thought, like when you’re shopping, going out to eat or drink, or driving in your car with the radio on.
I used to work for a radio station where we would give away CD samplers with one or two good songs and 6 or 7 bland rock songs that only appeared on there thanks to pay—I mean the station really believed in that singer-songwriter who happened to be related to or blackmailed the head of A&R at The Big Record Company owned by The Bigger Media Company. Leftover samplers were used as coasters in the office or we’d stuff them into prizes that would be shipped out to winners every week.
When I left commercial radio, I decided that I needed to appreciate music more. Even that mediocre singer-songwriter on the sampler didn’t deserve their life’s work to turn into a coaster for a soda made by a sponsor of the station.
Here are six albums (5 on CDs and 1 on vinyl) that I found while crate digging through various record stores, secondhand shops, garage sales, and other places where forgotten music has collected dust.
Hot Chip, Made In The Dark (Domino, 2008)
My favorite song is on this album. It’s “One Pure Thought.” It was love at first sound when I heard it in the spring of 2008. I was living in Orlando, working at Walt Disney World thanks to their college program. I was in my apartment cleaning the kitchen when the song appeared on an iTunes station I had on for background noise. I stopped wiping the kitchen counters to listen to this song. I downloaded the song as soon as it finished.
By the time I upgraded to a new laptop the following year, “One Pure Thought” was played almost 500 times, according to my iTunes library. In 2018, a full decade after its release, Made In The Dark was in the back room at Open Books Pilsen, in a row of movie soundtracks and other electronic music. At the time, CDs were $2 each and they were strongly suggesting cash.
I walked back to the car, pulled out the quarters I would use for toll roads and played the album in its entirety while enjoying a late afternoon summer drive. I miss both having a working CD player in my car AND to be able to just drive for awhile without breaking the bank.
DJ Mick writesThe CHIRP Radio Interview: Jacky Boy
by CHIRP Radio DJ and Features Co-Director Mick R (Listen to his most recent shows / Read his blog)
It's the same thing, day in, day out. Wake, go to work, have a dinner, go to bed. The in-between parts of these predictable, routine segments of your day are mostly filled in by mistakes, doubts, and compulsive behavior.
A couple of weeks, months, and years of this rat-in-a-wheel kind of plot can make anyone ready to throw themselves into traffic. Life can feel like one big bowl of gruel. Like one grey, undifferentiated mush. And it's this chain of stunted progression that Indiana's Jacky Boy are looking to break.
Comprised of drummer Mark Edlin, guitarist Zac Canale, and guitarist and vocalist Steve Marino, the Bloomington band has just released their second album Mush on Darling Recordings.
By plugging into the buzzy verve of late '90s and early '00s alternative rock and bringing the larger than life hooks of groups like Foo Fighters and Third Eye Blind back to the level of the oil stains on the floor of your parent's garage, they have drafted a set of enthusiastic power-pop that shows that speaks directly to the inner optimism of slackers everywhere. Just because life isn't going the way you'd hope it would, doesn't mean you can't bare its brunt with a genuine smile.
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (May 9 - May 15)
Upcoming Events:
- Tuesday May 10: CHIRP Radio welcomes Bambara to Sleeping Village
- Thursday May 12: CHIRP Radio welcomes Julianna Barwick to Lincoln Hall
- Thursday May 12: CHIRP Radio welcomes Destroyer to Thalia Hall
- Sunday May 15: CHIRP Radio's CD Blowout Sale at Burning Bush Brewery
- Friday May 27 - Saturday May 28: CHIRP Radio welcomes Makaya McCraven to Lincoln Hall
- Thursday June 9: CHIRP Radio welcomes Jordana to Schubas
On the Podcast:
- Mick R has a chat with Zac Bron of Smooth Rogers and Elijah Montez of Daydream Review
On the Blog:
- Eddie S takes a listen to two versions of "I Wanna Be Adored"
- Clarence E and Kevin F share thoughts on Nomadland
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 5/2/22:
Winged Wheel – No Island (12XU)
Kevin Fullam writesThe Fourth Wall: Nomadland
Welcome to The Fourth Wall, CHIRP's e-conversation on cinema. This week's subject is the 2020 Oscar-winning film Nomadland.
This edition is written by CHIRP Radio volunteers Kevin Fullam and Clarence Ewing.
Kevin:
When you grow up with all the trappings of middle-class suburbia, it's hard to imagine a Shadow America out there, roaming the land. Poor neighborhoods? Sure. The homeless? Absolutely. But not three million transients (according to the BBC) who shuttle from town to town across our country, living out of their vehicles and subsisting on odd jobs along the way.
While you'd never describe these drifters as wealthy, they're largely not indigent either. And for the most part, their decisions to eschew the conventions of modern living don't seem to be born out of financial calamity. Theirs is a conscious lifestyle choice. Who are these people? What drives them? This is the backdrop of director Chloé Zhao's Nomadland, based on a 2017 novel of the same name by Jessica Bruder.
Like The Rider, Zhao's previous film, Nomadland might as well be cinéma vérité as it follows the life of Fern (Frances McDormand) while she travels the country in her rickety van. Outside of an intertitle which explains the collapse of her Nevada hometown following a mine closure, the exposition is minimal, and much of the film revolves around Fern's survival. Today's work might be at an Amazon distribution center, while next month's employer could be a state park. After that? Perhaps a gig as a line cook.
All the while, her van needs upkeep. Rinse. Repeat. Fern ain't the loquacious type, and her backstory is parceled out in dribs and drabs. Eventually you learn that she lost her husband right around the time when the town went under, which might account for her steely, detached disposition.