22 Jul 2020

Virtual Concerts: 49th-Annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, July 31 and August 1

By Reader Staff

The in-person concerts and workshops for this year's celebration may be canceled due to COVID-19, but the jazz music, on July 31 and August 1, will most certainly go on in the 49th-Annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, with six national and local bands performing in the virtual event held in tribute to the legendary cornet player and Davenport native.

14 Jul 2020

Bo Jaywalker, Various Releases: May to July, 2020

By Max Allison

Davenport-based experimental folk artist/singer-songwriter/“???”-core producer Bo Jaywalker has dropped no less than eight individual releases on his Bandcamp page since the last time we checked in with him regarding his Bo Jaywalker LP in April.

11 Jul 2020

dead lizard grin, “We Are Shadows Dispersing Upon the Warm Spring Air”

By Max Allison

dead lizard grin (a.k.a. Terry Skaggs) follows up on his excellent April release Notes from a Temporary World with a new full-length titled We Are Shadows Dispersing Upon the Warm Spring Air. While the composer/synthesist/producer tries out a palette of tones here that remain in line with his typically zoned out and transportive drone/ambient excursions, this album finds him shifting his practice toward the twin poles of absolute formless drift and more animated, even beat-driven composition.

09 Jul 2020

Let's Play Desert Island!: A Music Reviewer's Five Favorite Albums of All Time

By Max Allison

The very act of paring down your favorite albums will always have value. There’s something warm and cozy about imagining those albums existing as discrete milestones in music history, having reached so many ears in their compact form, entertaining outside of the framework of infinite availability and almost too-comfortable omni-selection that streaming has produced. With that in mind, here are my picks.

06 Jul 2020

All Screwed Up: A Celebration of DJ Screw

By Max Allison

Robert Earl Davis Jr., better known to the world as DJ Screw, passed away nearly 20 years ago in the year 2000, but his legacy and the diaspora of his musical trademarks remain as strong as ever.

23 Jun 2020

“The Matt Barber Experience,” July 2

By Reader Staff

Accompanied by an entire repertoire of jazz standards and iconic pop hits, a 2005 graduate of Rock Island High School returns to the Quad Cities – performing for live audiences for the first time since March – in The Matt Barber Experience, the July 2 concert event at Davenport's Grape Life Wine Store & Lounge that finds Barber and his touring musicians performing classics from the five albums he has recorded since 2007.

20 Jun 2020

Chaircrusher, “DAY DAY”

By Max Allison

A new collection of music titled DAY DAY from Iowa City's electronic artist and composer Kent Williams, a.k.a. Chaircrusher, hit Bandcamp sometime in the recent past. Though the album has a release date of October 2020 listed, it’s available in full to stream and purchase now – perhaps a sign that Williams is, in fact, living in the future.

17 Jun 2020

“Joseph Hall's Elvis Rock 'n' Roll Remember Show,” June 27

By Reader Staff

With Maquoketa's Ohnward Fine Arts Center set to re-open by adhering to Iowa's social-distancing guidelines, the venue will officially welcome patrons back on June 27 in the stage celebration Joseph Hall's Elvis Rock 'n' Roll Remember Show, a salute to the King of Rock 'n' Roll led by one of the United States' most lauded tribute artists and a former competitor on America's Got Talent.

17 Jun 2020

Experiment Without Inhibition: A Celebration of Anthony Braxton

By Max Allison

Braxton’s work long ago shattered the divide between the gritty, atonal language of improvised free jazz performance and the typically cloistered world of academic classical and minimalist composition, and he continues to expand in unexpected directions with new works that emerge to this day.

15 Jun 2020

Discrete Directions: Rina Sawayama’s "SAWAYAMA"

By Max Allison

In a sea of carbon-copied hits that sound like they were genetically engineered in a lab, alchemized into being with the same few ingredients and signifiers that topped the charts a couple weeks before, the best pop music to emerge from any given era stands out by surveying recent musical trends and streaking off in the completely opposite direction. More than a process of picking a sub-genre no one has heard in five years or so and hopping into it just for the sake of a novel juxtaposition, to shock fans for a moment before they keep scrolling down the feed, the artists who succeed at bucking trends and emerging with something unique do so by embracing the weirder or potentially more “uncool” aspects of their own musical interests.

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