![]() ![]() The lyrics of their songs are derived from current events and news stories, and most of their songs don’t last past the two minute mark while flowing in and out of complex poly-rhythmic displays of musical prowess. Paper Mice have become a fixture in the Chicago DIY and math rock community since the late 2000’s, blending an interesting style of post-punk with experimental song structures that sounds like pure Chicago rock. ![]() Here are some bands we like and recommend: Math & Atlases: Chicago is a compilation album my band Space Blood curated with the goal of trying to showcase some of our favourite bands in Chicago right now. There’s definitely a feeling in Chicago in the scene that anything is possible musically, and experimentalism in not just bands’ music, but also in live performance is gaining speed without a track to guide it and has made Chicago again a really interesting place for music. ![]() Shows advertised as noise or noise-rock shows can have bands interpreting what noise as a genre is or can be in a multitude of ways that can either hit or miss the mark, but continues the tradition of Midwestern DIY culture and experimental music. Terms like post-metal or post-rock or noise-rock can’t be assumed for any given musical expectations, and a house show or venue show with 3-4 math-rock bands can have each band sounding totally different from each other with different approaches and influences steering bands in different directions within one local scene. While much of recent music memory in the Chicago DIY scene has been dominated by clean-tone, tapping guitars or the so-called emo driven “Twinkle-Core” there has been a growing growl of noise-rock starting to rise to the surface and finger-tapping started to make way for angular riffs and loud drums. ![]() One thing Chicago has that’s hard to find in other places is a very diverse musical landscape within music sub-genres. Places that represented Chicago’s music past like the legendary Fireside Bowl are doing shows again, but now the bands playing there are local up-and-coming math rock, emo, and post-punk bands, some of which weren’t even born yet when bands started packing the place 20 years ago. Echoes of the past are still very apparent in the scene, and it’s easy to go to a local math-rock show and hear people talk about the good old days of seeing Tortoise at Lounge Ax or Don Caballero at Fireside Bowl, and yearly music fests like PRF BBQ (Professional Recording Forum is run by Steve Albini’s recording studio Electrical Audio) where one can be lucky enough to see a rare show by 90’s local legends like Dianogah or Pinebender, which to someone like me who wasn’t around to see what the scene was like 10-20 years ago it’s like seeing a glimpse into the past. There is a definite changing of the guard that has slowly been taking place over the past half decade, with a new generation of musicians ushering a new sound not necessarily knowing or caring of the lush history to the music scene, led by the old vanguard of the previous generation, they now populate and are influencing. The past couple years has seen a resurgence in the popularity of the music that put the Chicago math-rock/post-rock music scene on the map in the 1990’s. Chicago is a city of echoes, and those can echoes can also be heard in the local music scene. Chicago is a 20 th Century city functioning in the 21 st Century, and it’s evident from everywhere you go, from the old and mostly abandoned industrial corridors that snake their way through the vast city landscape to the rows of early to mid-century skyscrapers that stand out like living ruins amongst the ever changing communities and neighbourhoods that stretch far from the fields and beyond the reach of the city skyline. I’ve always imagined the 2007 album City of Echoes by Chicago post-metal masterminds Pelican had to be about the city from which they hailed from. The recently released Math & Atlases: Chicago compilation focusing on some of the best math rock / post punk / whatever bands from the eponymous city caught our attention so we asked the man behind it, Will Covert from Space Blood, to give us a bit of an insider’s view of the scene in the Windy City. ![]()
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