Plus: A Chicago Singer’s Perfect Song & A New Local Pop Scene
1. Hieroglyphic Being.
“Jamal Moss, better known by his stage name Hieroglyphic Being, grew up in the Pullman neighborhood of south Chicago, where each day was ‘Russian roulette,’ he said, and the murder rate was double what it is now,” the Lafayette, Indiana Journal & Courier reports.
Moss left home after graduating high school at the age of 16. He was accepted into Northwestern University, but his foster parents couldn’t afford tuition. So Moss trekked to the north side of town and “hustled,” selling mixtapes on street corners and working as a bouncer in underground clubs. He slept on the beach. He kept himself clean.
“Nobody’s going to help you if you stink,” he said. “I wasn’t one of those gutter punks.”
The tapes he sold were the cheapest he could get hold of – cassettes from drug stores, VHS tapes from second-hand clothing shops. He didn’t make beats at first, but instead experimented with soundscapes.
“It was more therapeutic than anything,” Moss said.
Ambient background music this was not. As Moss learned to play with textures and melodies, those soundscapes morphed into a blend of experimental and acid-house music, beats that both pay tribute to and defy the 1980s Chicago house music of Frankie Knuckles.
After three years of living on the streets and beaches, Moss matriculated at Northwestern University. He graduated with a major in cultural anthropology and a minor in ethnographic film studies.
Now Moss, 40, is known as Hieroglyphic Being, one of the hottest DJs in the underground/IDM scene in Chicago. He’s also the proprietor of Mathematics, an independent and cooperative record label supporting avant-garde electronic artists.
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A set from the Boiler Room a year ago.
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2. Judge: Lady Gaga Did Not Rip Off Chicago Songwriter.
No, she ripped off Madonna.
3. How A Chicago Recording Studio Saved The Guess Who.
4. The Island Of Misfit Toys.
5. The-Drum Are Building An Amazing Experimental Pop Scene In Chicago Whether They Want To Or Not.
6. Photo Gallery: Spring Awakening 2014 At Soldier Field.
7. Gospel Singer Kefee Is Dead.
“The singer, who was reportedly pregnant, fell into a coma while on a flight to Chicago, in the United States of America, where she was working, making videos amongst other things.”
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The Life of Times of the Branama Queen.
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8. Insider Trader’s Daughter.
“Family tragedy, a teenaged runaway, living in an abandoned cabin in the woods. It may read like the lyrics to a song, but it’s singer-songwriter Courtney Yasmineh’s reality.
“When I was 16 in Chicago, my dad was indicted for insider trading,” Yasmineh said.
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Here’s her band’s SXSW video.
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9. A Brief Conversation About Chicago Rapper/Singer Tink’s Perfect Song.
10. Trib Photographer: Why Is There Still A 3-Song Limit At Concerts?
11. Archive of the late Bob Abrahamian’s WHPK soul show.
12. Now: Chicago XXXVI.
“Chicago frontman Robert Lamm says the band added the word ‘Now’ to their album’s Roman-numeral title to emphasize that it’s current music. The rocker explains that many people just assume that what Chicago does is all what you hear on classic rock radio, or that Chicago is some dinosaur-like presence on the tour circuit,’ and they ‘wanted to kind of change that perception.'”
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The album drops July 8th. Here’s a preview.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on June 19, 2014