The recently reissued zine ran for 10 issues from 1989 to 1993, as house "was blowing up." By Elias Leight Thing MagazineCourtesy PhotoIn 1986. In 1986, Simone Bouyer worked a day job in Chicago at the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather while painting in her spare time. “I was having a problem getting [...]
The festival's fifth edition happens August 29-31 at Chicago's Union Park. Chicago’s ARC Music Festival has announced a sprawling 2025 lineup featuring nearly 100 artists. The fifth edition of the house-focused festival will feature performances by Jamie xx, Amelie Lens, Adam Beyer, Richie Hawtin, John Summit, Luciano, Fisher, Blond:ish, Eric Prydz (who will play [...]
To celebrate 40 years of house music, we joined Mike Dunn at Chicago's ARC Music Festival and dived into the story behind his house anthem, ‘God Made Me Phunky’ https://youtu.be/-c9T7vWJN0Q?si=B_gRK_48gkSekpmz Mike Dunn shares the story behind the making of his house classic, 'God Made Me Phunky'. Released in 1994, Dunn explains how the track [...]
Peven Everett means business. In a rare interview with Kwame Safo, the Chicago singer and multi-instrumentalist shares his views on the importance of developing musicianship and songwriting, learning from the greats, power being taken away from artists, dealing with industry blacklisting, and much more For many years I've wanted to speak to Peven Everett across [...]
In honor of Women's History Month... https://youtu.be/zjW0IYPZuA8?si=rEprtEUDF23DrOQz
Traxman started to make music with the simple aim of making people dance and have a good time. That hasn’t changed, but since he started out in the '80s, Corky Strong’s masterful productions and DJ sets have marked him out as a house music great. He has been at the forefront of three different [...]
Mike Clark. Agent X. The Ambassador. He’s one of the most pivotal, most essential figures in electronic music history, holding down the underground for Detroit house music before such a thing existed. In that time he’s worn a number of guises. Clark was part of one of the early DJ groups in the [...]
Electronic dance music, or “EDM” as the world has come to know it, has been around for decades. Since 2012, the “umbrella genre” has experienced an economic explosion the likes of which no one could have foreseen in terms of its multi-billion-dollar profitability. Make no mistake, though, that the so-called “EDM boom” was actually [...]
House, Techno, & the 80s: How black culture birthed the EDM era [Part One] Anybody who’s been in involved in dance music for the last ten years or so could easily list off some of the biggest producers in the scene: Avicii, Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, deadmau5, or Calvin Harris, to name a few. While the influence these major [...]
It’s time for sonic reparations “Let me tell you something about house music. It’s not just a groove; house is a feeling…” *This article was originally published on September 2, 2016 So goes “The Word” — a classic a cappella by Chicago producer Aaron-Carl Ragland, since sampled on countless white label records played in club [...]