Last month Domino Records released a deluxe version of High Land, Hard Rain, the 1983 debut album by the Scottish pop band Aztec Camera. The release added a second disc of B-sides, live tracks, a BBC Radio session, and some utterly lame remixes from the time of the record’s origin. I can’t deny that the album triggers a sense of nostalgia in me—I bought the record when it first came out and listened to it religiously, and I saw the band in ’83 when they toured the U....

Hip-hop wunderkind Timothy Jones, aka DJ Timbuck2, passed away December 19, and his friends have banded together to put on a tribute show: tomorrow night’s Timbuck2uesday at Metro. Jones launched a series called Timbuck2uesdays seven years ago at the Shrine, spinning hip-hop every week; he brought the night to Beauty Bar five years back. Timbuck2uesdays was just one of the platforms from which Jones (also a WGCI on-air personality and Treated Crew member) helped hold the Chicago hip-hop scene together....

You might notice, browsing Best of Chicago, that we’re big on specifics. We at the Reader use the occasion of our annual Best of Chicago edition to steer you to the people, places, and things you might not otherwise find, along a route you might not otherwise take. Craving red meat? Allow us to recommend not the city’s best NY strip, but its best NY strip at a strip club. Want to work out your issues with local elected officials—or at least watch them beat the crap out of each other?...

If Nottingham’s Sleaford Mods have anything that might be considered a breakout single it’s “Jobseeker,” a track that landed them on the BBC’s Later . . . With Jools Holland in 2015. The hyperaggressive and starkly minimal duo were a sight never before seen on the late-night circuit, right away making them something of a black sheep for the mainstream variety show. Foregrounded by an old busted laptop resting on a keg, beat maker Andrew Fearn slammed a plastic cup of beer while awkwardly bobbing to a simple, driving beat that sounded like a gloomy Casio keyboard demo....

First, let’s tackle the nickname controversy. I recently took part in a Twitter debate about the proper nickname for the six-way intersection of Damen, North, and Milwaukee. “Stop calling it Six Corners,” exhorted Robert Loerzel (winner of the Reader‘s 2016 reader poll for Best Chicagoan to Follow on Twitter), arguing that the real Six Corners is in Portage Park. First CDOT staffer Mike Amsden provided some basic stats, telling the audience that the department had observed more than 5,000 pedestrian crossings at the junction during the morning and evening rush hours of April 18....

In a column last week, Tribune op-ed writer Eric Zorn sideswiped a chain of community newspapers that don’t meet his standards. Zorn’s subject was the right-wing reaction to New Trier High School’s recent all-day, all-school “white privilege” seminar. It’s led to three conservative candidates running insurgency campaigns for seats on the New Trier Township board. Of these campaigns, Zorn wrote in passing: Proft also hosts a weekly podcast, Illinois Rising Radio, up until last year with IPI’s vice president of policy, Michael Lucci....

On a cloudy Saturday earlier this month, a group of about 30 people spent the afternoon gathered in the basement of Christ Lutheran Church in Albany Park. This group, a mix of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens who live in the area, were there for a workshop aimed at educating the neighborhood on what to do if federal immigration agents show up and start knocking on people’s doors. An estimated 511,000 undocumented immigrants lived in Illinois as of 2014, according to a report commissioned by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights....

Michael Gebert Almond croissants at Beurrage Are we entering a golden age of French pastry in Chicago? That might be a tall claim, but it’s a fact that within the last year we’ve had three new places open doing superb croissants and other pastries with classical technique. Two of them are in foodie parts of town; it’s not surprising that a Bad Wolf Coffee is making lush kouign-amann in Lakeview/Roscoe Village, or that Cellar Door Provisions is cranking out dark, crispy croissants in Logan Square....

In 2016, Philadelphia neo-shoegaze band Nothing released their second studio album, Tired of Tomorrow—a triumph of modern rock. Blending the wall-of-sound influence of massive-sounding 90s bands like Slowdive, Smashing Pumpkins, and My Bloody Valentine with crushingly personal lyricism and a gorgeous, melancholy sense of melody, Nothing took the musical elements they had been working with since they formed in 2010 and soared above and beyond it all. But the perfection of Tired of Tomorrow makes the band’s follow-up, the brand-new Dance on the Blacktop (Relapse), feel a disappointment by comparison....

With his consuming 85-minute drama The Wolf at the End of the Block, given a compelling Teatro Vista world premiere under Ricardo Gutiérrez’s air-tight direction, Chicago playwright Ike Holter shows he’s gloriously out of step with current trends among big-name, award-winning American playwrights. While like many of them he writes about pressing social issues, here the debilitating effects of police oppression on a majority-nonwhite community like Humboldt Park, he never wastes a moment, never lets his characters dawdle through extended demonstrations of their quirks, never diddles around the edges of his story in search of “interesting” but dramatically irrelevant encounters....

At some point in the near future, Chance the Rapper will meet with Illinois governor Bruce Rauner to discuss funding Chicago’s public schools. (They were supposed to meet today, but the meeting got canceled because of the tornadoes in central Illinois.) Let’s start with the Chicago Public Schools. They’re broker than usual and looking to chop 20 days from the school-year, including 13 days of instruction, in part because Rauner vetoed a $215 million appropriation CPS had been expecting....

The Bar Issue 2014: everything old is new again Must visit: Violet Hour Wicker Park’s hidden Violet Hour is a dark, sumptuously appointed retreat from the harsh world outside, attended by nattily dressed barkeeps who exhibit a balletic facility with jigger, shaker, and glass. Under the remote guidance of “head intoxicologist” Toby Maloney, the seasonal cocktail menu employs house-made bitters, fresh juices and garnishes, and multiple types of ice in different shapes, sizes, and temperatures....

Chicago jazz pianist John Wright earned his reputation with a string of LPs for the Prestige label in the early 60s—his 1960 debut made such an impression that its title, South Side Soul, remains his nickname to this day. His discography has been sparse since then, but he’s never stopped playing for long, and he’s just had an especially eventful week. On Friday, August 29, Wright spoke at the ceremony to formally designate the 3800 block of South Prairie “Dinah Washington Way,” reminiscing about his interactions with the great singer in the 1950s....

Gossip Wolf loves WBEZ’s Winter Block Party, an all-ages hip-hop fest copresented by Young Chicago Authors. This year it takes over Metro on Saturday, January 28, beginning at noon with a free celebration of hip-hop arts that includes a dance workshop, a DJ battle, and a graffiti wall. The ticketed concert at 7 PM ($10, $6 for students) is a doozy, with seven local female acts spanning generations; unimpeachable soul singer Jamila Woods headlines....

Une Annee’s Quad with bottled siblings present and future: Airing of Grievances, Maya, and Life Beyond Death When I reviewed Goose Island’s Belgian Fest in September, I pointed out that not one brewer had brought a quadrupel—a conspicuous lapse, given that the quad is among the few Belgian styles that even an entry-level beer nerd can tell you about. They’re customarily dark and strong, with a rich, malty body and mellow flavors of fruit and spice from specialized yeasts; Rochefort, La Trappe, St....

One of the great stories in Chicago jazz over the past few years has been the resurgence of guitarist George Freeman, a key figure in one of the city’s most celebrated jazz families. He’s now outlived his brothers Von (a brilliant saxophonist) and Bruz (a drummer), and at age 90 Freeman is about to drop one of the strongest recordings of his career. In 2013 Constellation owner and drummer Mike Reed approached guitarist Mike Allemana, who spent years in Von’s working band at the New Apartment Lounge, about putting together an organ combo with Freeman....

Synthesizers and chili go together like . . . well, like nothing else really. The pairing is as strange as it is ridiculous, and that’s kind of the point of the Synth-Chili Cook-Off, in which four musicians will each make a chili and perform an original “sonic interpretation” of it using a synthesizer—it’s a real thing, and it’s happening Sunday at the Empty Bottle. The absurdity of the event isn’t lost on the founders, Brett Naucke (Catholic Tapes) and Beau Wanzer (Streetwalker, Mutant Beat Dance), and I’m reminded of something Naucke told me when I wrote a feature-length preview of the first Synth-Chili Cook-Off:...

Fred Falke French DJ and producer Fred Falke plays at Primary Nightclub on east Division Street on Friday night. I’ll be out of town, but it might be worth the trek into ground zero of drunken-lout territory to catch him play. As Miles Raymer points out in his Soundboard write-up, Falke has spent the past few years doing more remix work for commercial artists like Kesha and Katy Perry. But there was a time when Falke and frequent collaborator Alan Braxe were pumping out the kind of effects-heavy disco-house that one could hear in some of Basement Jaxx’s late-90s work or on some of the deeper cuts on Daft Punk‘s Discovery (“Voyager” feels like one giant homage to Braxe and Falke’s aesthetic)....

This Sunday, Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art will present a free program of short films featuring artist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 of complications from AIDS. At the same time, the Rogers Park gallery Iceberg Projects is presenting David Wojnarowicz: Flesh of My Flesh, an exhibit of his visual art, through August 4. These two events mark the first major memorials to Wojnarowicz in Chicago, coinciding with an exhibit of his work at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City....

After ending his long-running indie-pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Chicago-­based musician Owen Ashworth launched Orindal Records. It was part of a musical rebirth, but more a spiritual move than a sonic one: the label’s first release, a 2011 split, features one of the first singles from Ashworth’s post-Casiotone project, Advance Base, which like its predecessor trades in warm, wistful songs. When I wrote a Reader feature about his career ahead of Advance Base’s 2015 album, Nephew in the Wild, Ashworth told me he saw Orindal as a home for recordings that otherwise wouldn’t exist....