Josh Messer

Prince Has Died

He was 57, and found at home this morning. The report comes from TMZ and has since been confirmed by multiple sources. Don’t really have the words right now. [continued]
Chicago is America’s Festival City in 2016

Don’t let the proclamation in the headline deceive you: there are gobs, literal dozens, of great American music festivals outside of Chicago. In the same breath, there is also no denying that with seven major-billing music festivals, and at least a half dozen smaller options, Chicago has in 2016 ascended to a top-ranked spot as a [continued]
Essentials: “Feel It Now” – Gold Dash

I had been taking a little bit of a break from blogging while sorting my way through a stupid-busy spring, when this tune hit my inbox — and I can’t pass up talking about it for just a moment. “Feel It Now” is upbeat and sounds warm enough to bask in its glow. Rich with texture and [continued]
Essentials: Phife Dawg’s Body of Work with ATCQ

One thing we always strive to avoid with our writing is being opportunistic. This week, we lost Phife Dawg, frontman of the seminal rap group, A Tribe Called Quest. You’ve read the tributes, you know his legacy. Hip-hop wouldn’t be hip-hop without Phife. My good friend and fellow hip-hop head Brent Tactic acutely noted that Phife’s modestly-stated [continued]
Review: Star Wars Headspace Hits Its Mark

There’s no need to make this a particularly lengthy review, so I won’t — I surmised before the release last month that Star Wars Headspace would hit big and it has. It opened at #1 on the Billboard Dance charts, all the productions are ‘good’ at the very least, and it appears that Disney has found [continued]
Buzzbands Have Insisted 2016 Is Their Come-Back Year

If you liked music in the Year of Our Lord 2008, then congratulations: today is the day you’ve been waiting eight years for. It was admittedly not worth the wait, but today is a really good day for internet-age music fans who were all about this shit before hashtag EDM neon loose-pooped all over the cool points we worked so [continued]
Essentials: “High On Hope” – Microglobe & Machinedrum

Anyone paying half-attention to the creative side of bass music right now assuredly knows that 160 bpm is the current magic number, the happy medium between dubstep’s 140 and drum and bass’ 174 that has been ruling the Chicago area for years via juke and footwork. Indelibly a part of this movement that now extends [continued]
ESSENTIALS: “Full Throttle” – Amp Live + Plivva

Kairos Audio is the home for a wide variety of catchy, weird bass music – and to be completely honest, not all of it is my bag. On first listen of “Full Throttle” it’s a seeming simplistic tune, but there’s something wonderfully primed for DJs and danceability about that simplicity. Amp Live and Plivva deliver [continued]
Op-Ed: Why Rick Rubin Taking On Star Wars Will Be Electronic Music’s Biggest Win Since Daft Punk

The story got a good amount of buzz, but I’m not sure how many people noticed the gravity of the announcement that Rick Rubin had assembled a crack team of producers to remix Star Wars sounds into an album’s worth of varied electronic and dance tracks, called Star Wars: Headspace. On the surface, it sounds [continued]
Essentials: “Palms” (feat. Amory) – TastyTreat

It’s an increasingly rare occurrence that someone can describe their sound as ‘future r&b’ without my disinterest following a minute or less into the song. The term is played out and means nothing and meant nothing and aren’t we all just trying to be futuristic at this point? Enter TastyTreat, who laughs at that, produces something ridiculous on [continued]