Gossip Wolf always likes to hear about a new solo album from a member of Ensemble dal Niente—the long-running local contemporary-classical corps has built a spotless reputation for adventurous programming and technical excellence, and its members often pop up in far-flung musical contexts around town. Among the most prolific is multi-instrumentalist Emma Hospelhorn, who has played flutes, keyboards, and bass guitar on recordings by V.V. Lightbody, Mute Duo, and garage band Hollows, and also maintains duos with cellist Katinka Kleijn (acoustic instruments augmented with homemade circuits) and computer-music specialist Ben Sutherland (an electroacoustic collaboration called the Machine Is Neither, which has created music for a dancer triggering sounds with a motion-capture suit). On Friday, May 20, Hospelhorn releases her debut solo album, The Carillon Towers, under the name Em Spel; its pop-adjacent experimental folk features her lovely, elastic vocals, her flute, and her intricately programmed electronics, along with standout performances by guests such as Kleijn and Lightbody. On Thursday, May 26, Em Spel will celebrate with a record-release show at Constellation, with openers Health & Beauty and Elenna Sindler. 

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Ever since the Chicago Cubs took a wrecking ball to the core of players that won the World Series in 2016, the goal for Cubs’ president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer was to develop the farm system and build the next great Cubs’ baseball team.

The results of Hoyer’s work at the Major League level has yet to be seen as the team has been forced to field career minor leaguers such as Frank Schwindel, Patrick Wisdom, and Rafael Ortega as the team’s prospects continue to develop within the minor league system.

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The Chicago Bulls front office has expressed concerns about Lonzo Ball regarding his knee injury that forced him to miss 47 games this past season. NBCS Chicago’s David Kaplan discussed on his ESPN1000 show how the lack of progress has become an area of serious concern for the front office and coaching staff.

“I am hearing that there are serious concerns within the front office of the Chicago Bulls that Lonzo Ball’s knee is NOT getting better,” Kaplan said. “They’ve been out for two weeks — he couldn’t play in that series. If they were starting the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday, he could not play.”

Lonzo Ball suffered a small meniscus tear in January and also had a bone bruise in the same knee. He underwent surgery and the initial timetable for return was about two months but every time his conditioning was ramped up, he suffered setbacks which forced him to miss the end of the regular season and the entire playoff series versus the Milwaukee Bucks.

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The title and story behind Cave In’s 2019 LP, Final Transmission, led many to believe that the eclectic rock band’s two-and-a-half-decade run had come to an end. Following the tragic passing of bassist and vocalist Caleb Scofield in 2018, the group fleshed out the last demos they’d made with him and turned them into a complete record. It seemed like a fitting conclusion to the band’s arc as well as a heartfelt goodbye to the man who’d given them so much of their heart and soul. But to the delight of Caveheads such as myself, the band have decided to carry on. Their new album, Heavy Pendulum (Relapse), isn’t just another collection of songs in their catalog; it’s another step in the evolution of a band whose shifting sound is one of their biggest assets and most defining features. 

Cave In emerged from the mid-90s Boston hardcore scene, and their 1998 debut LP, Until Your Heart Stops, essentially reinvented metalcore with unrelenting, knotty, incredibly complex dual-guitar shredding topped with the even more shredded vocals of front man Stephen Brodsky. Finding out what new musical moves a Cave In record would contain soon became one of the most exciting things about following the band: In 2000, they issued their prog-rock space-metal masterpiece, Jupiter, where Brodsky traded in his scream for a velvety falsetto. They toyed with shoegaze-adjacent indie rock on 2003’s Antenna, then blended sludge metal with space rock on 2005’s Perfect Pitch Black and 2011’s White Silence. Since Scofield’s death, Converge bassist Nate Newton has stepped in, and his grimy, groovy low end is a perfect fit. Heavy Pendulum is Cave In’s most straightforward, focused release to date, with direct heavy-metal riffing laying the groundwork for Brodsky’s signature vocal hooks (and the occasional trade-off with Newton’s menacing growl). Cave In’s beloved stargazing space-guitar leads are less of a presence, but the record is fun, catchy, and heavy as hell—once again, the band show us a fresh new side of their sound rather than something expected. Still, when 12-minute album closer “Wavering Angel” kicks in with “Stairway to Heaven”-style flutes and guitar leads worthy of Steve Hackett from Genesis, you’re immediately reminded that the opulent, prog-loving, metalhead side of Cave In that you’ve loved all along hasn’t gone anywhere.

Cave In’s Heavy Pendulum is available through a Bandcamp.

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Generally, I like to tell a joke or two in these columns, looking to underscore the absurdity of politics with a little dark humor.

But no joking this time.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old white supremicist armed with a semiautomatic rifle walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and started shooting people.

Black people, mostly. 

Payton Gendron was there to kill Black people. Or as Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, told reporters: “This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many Black lives as he possibly could.”

Before police arrested Gendron, he’d killed ten. Injured three others. And then he pleaded not guilty, even though he’d been livestreaming his rampage, perhaps looking to “inspire” other white suprecimists to do the same. As he himself was “inspired” by white supremacists who came before him.

Crazy, crazy shit.

Most of the country—or the relatively sane people—reacted with horror at this senseless slaughter brought on by racial hate.

And then there was Laura Loomer, who I will now quote, as much as I don’t want to. ’Cause sooner or later we have to confront this shit. Writing on her Telegram social media page, Loomer said . . .

“Planned Parenthood has still targeted and killed more black people than the Buffalo supermarket shooter.”

Wow. More crazy.

Karen Hawkins, my editor, and I talk a lot about the batshit crazy that swamps our country. But Loomer’s comments go beyond routine crazy.

Her comments are an attempt to minimize the slaughter—or rationalize it. Next Loomer and others like her will turn Gendron into some kind of hero who was taking some kind of stand. Like they did with Kyle Rittenhouse up in Kenosha.

I need to point out that Loomer is no ordinary asshole chiming in on social media.

No, she’s a Republican candidate for Congress in the 11th Congressional District in Florida. A self-proclaimed “Islamophobe,” as though that’s something to be proud of, she has a decent chance of winning the August 23 Republican primary.

She’d then join Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and all the other wackos in the Republican congressional caucus.

Oh, yes—and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in New York, don’t forget her. Once upon a time, she passed for a moderate. Now she’s running with the herd.

Like Stefanik, Loomer subscribes to a theory gaining strength in Republican circles. It’s called white replacement—or great replacement—and the essential theme is that Democrats are conniving to replace real Americans (i.e., white ones) with Black or Brown people.

Black or Brown people who will never be real Americans, the theory goes, no matter how long they or their ancestors have lived here.

Perhaps the most prominent apostle of a version of this theory is the most passive-aggressive one—Tucker Carlson, the FOX talking head. 

I call him passive-aggressive because he pretends he’s not espousing hate, even as he is.

The original proponents of white replacement made no attempt to hide their hate. And they didn’t limit themselves to blaming Democrats.

They blamed it on “the Jews.” And so in 2017 we had Nazis marching through the streets of Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

That’s the first time I became aware of this so-called theory. Several prominent Republicans denounced the Nazis. But not Donald Trump. He said there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the protests. Fine Nazis? And with that the hate seeped deeper into the bloodstream of the Republican Party.

As I said, Gendron is a proponent of white replacement. It’s all there in the 180-page manifesto he wrote.

That seems to be the thing with these deranged murderers. They not only feel compelled to slaughter people, but they apparently want others to follow in their footsteps.

So it was that Robert Bowers justified shooting 11 congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

And Patrick Crusius did the same when he gunned down 23 Latino people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

And Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people at two different mosques in New Zealand in 2019.

Jewish, Black, Latino, and Muslim people—senselessly slaughtered for being who they are.

Now, you’d think that mainstream politicians would want to be far removed from white replacement theory.

But at the moment it’s gaining popularity in the Republican Party. Polls show that nearly 50 percent of Republican voters think it’s real.

That leaves mainstream politicians in a quandary. If they denounce it, they risk alienating their base. So many stay silent. They crawl under a metaphorical table, pretending they don’t see the hate that’s there in front of their face.

Obviously, the lunatics with the high-powered weaponry are the greatest danger. But the silent bunch are also a threat. In their silence, they enable the shooters.

As I write this, the highest-ranking Republican elected official to speak out against white supremacy is Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney tweeted on Monday. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

Obviously, I’ve had my issues—to put it mildly—with the Cheneys over the years. But at this moment I can’t be picky about my allies in the fight against fascist white supremacy.

So thank you, Congresswoman Cheney. Now what about the rest of you Republicans?

Right here in Illinois we have five Republican frontrunners clamoring to be the party’s nominee in November’s general election against Governor J.B. Pritzker.

Their names are Richard Irvin, Darren Bailey, Paul Schimpf, Gary Rabine, and Jesse Sullivan. 

I’m still waiting for one of them to denounce white replacement theory.

In their silence, with each passing day, those Nazis marching through Charlottesville become closer to the center of the Republican Party.

Illinois Republicans, time to crawl out from under the table and take a stand.

The Latest from the Ben Joravsky Show

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The title and story behind Cave In’s 2019 LP, Final Transmission, led many to believe that the eclectic rock band’s two-and-a-half-decade run had come to an end. Following the tragic passing of bassist and vocalist Caleb Scofield in 2018, the group fleshed out the last demos they’d made with him and turned them into a complete record. It seemed like a fitting conclusion to the band’s arc as well as a heartfelt goodbye to the man who’d given them so much of their heart and soul. But to the delight of Caveheads such as myself, the band have decided to carry on. Their new album, Heavy Pendulum (Relapse), isn’t just another collection of songs in their catalog; it’s another step in the evolution of a band whose shifting sound is one of their biggest assets and most defining features. 

Cave In emerged from the mid-90s Boston hardcore scene, and their 1998 debut LP, Until Your Heart Stops, essentially reinvented metalcore with unrelenting, knotty, incredibly complex dual-guitar shredding topped with the even more shredded vocals of front man Stephen Brodsky. Finding out what new musical moves a Cave In record would contain soon became one of the most exciting things about following the band: In 2000, they issued their prog-rock space-metal masterpiece, Jupiter, where Brodsky traded in his scream for a velvety falsetto. They toyed with shoegaze-adjacent indie rock on 2003’s Antenna, then blended sludge metal with space rock on 2005’s Perfect Pitch Black and 2011’s White Silence. Since Scofield’s death, Converge bassist Nate Newton has stepped in, and his grimy, groovy low end is a perfect fit. Heavy Pendulum is Cave In’s most straightforward, focused release to date, with direct heavy-metal riffing laying the groundwork for Brodsky’s signature vocal hooks (and the occasional trade-off with Newton’s menacing growl). Cave In’s beloved stargazing space-guitar leads are less of a presence, but the record is fun, catchy, and heavy as hell—once again, the band show us a fresh new side of their sound rather than something expected. Still, when 12-minute album closer “Wavering Angel” kicks in with “Stairway to Heaven”-style flutes and guitar leads worthy of Steve Hackett from Genesis, you’re immediately reminded that the opulent, prog-loving, metalhead side of Cave In that you’ve loved all along hasn’t gone anywhere.

Cave In’s Heavy Pendulum is available through a Bandcamp.

Read More

Generally, I like to tell a joke or two in these columns, looking to underscore the absurdity of politics with a little dark humor.

But no joking this time.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old white supremicist armed with a semiautomatic rifle walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and started shooting people.

Black people, mostly. 

Payton Gendron was there to kill Black people. Or as Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, told reporters: “This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many Black lives as he possibly could.”

Before police arrested Gendron, he’d killed ten. Injured three others. And then he pleaded not guilty, even though he’d been livestreaming his rampage, perhaps looking to “inspire” other white suprecimists to do the same. As he himself was “inspired” by white supremacists who came before him.

Crazy, crazy shit.

Most of the country—or the relatively sane people—reacted with horror at this senseless slaughter brought on by racial hate.

And then there was Laura Loomer, who I will now quote, as much as I don’t want to. ’Cause sooner or later we have to confront this shit. Writing on her Telegram social media page, Loomer said . . .

“Planned Parenthood has still targeted and killed more black people than the Buffalo supermarket shooter.”

Wow. More crazy.

Karen Hawkins, my editor, and I talk a lot about the batshit crazy that swamps our country. But Loomer’s comments go beyond routine crazy.

Her comments are an attempt to minimize the slaughter—or rationalize it. Next Loomer and others like her will turn Gendron into some kind of hero who was taking some kind of stand. Like they did with Kyle Rittenhouse up in Kenosha.

I need to point out that Loomer is no ordinary asshole chiming in on social media.

No, she’s a Republican candidate for Congress in the 11th Congressional District in Florida. A self-proclaimed “Islamophobe,” as though that’s something to be proud of, she has a decent chance of winning the August 23 Republican primary.

She’d then join Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and all the other wackos in the Republican congressional caucus.

Oh, yes—and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik in New York, don’t forget her. Once upon a time, she passed for a moderate. Now she’s running with the herd.

Like Stefanik, Loomer subscribes to a theory gaining strength in Republican circles. It’s called white replacement—or great replacement—and the essential theme is that Democrats are conniving to replace real Americans (i.e., white ones) with Black or Brown people.

Black or Brown people who will never be real Americans, the theory goes, no matter how long they or their ancestors have lived here.

Perhaps the most prominent apostle of a version of this theory is the most passive-aggressive one—Tucker Carlson, the FOX talking head. 

I call him passive-aggressive because he pretends he’s not espousing hate, even as he is.

The original proponents of white replacement made no attempt to hide their hate. And they didn’t limit themselves to blaming Democrats.

They blamed it on “the Jews.” And so in 2017 we had Nazis marching through the streets of Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

That’s the first time I became aware of this so-called theory. Several prominent Republicans denounced the Nazis. But not Donald Trump. He said there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the protests. Fine Nazis? And with that the hate seeped deeper into the bloodstream of the Republican Party.

As I said, Gendron is a proponent of white replacement. It’s all there in the 180-page manifesto he wrote.

That seems to be the thing with these deranged murderers. They not only feel compelled to slaughter people, but they apparently want others to follow in their footsteps.

So it was that Robert Bowers justified shooting 11 congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

And Patrick Crusius did the same when he gunned down 23 Latino people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

And Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people at two different mosques in New Zealand in 2019.

Jewish, Black, Latino, and Muslim people—senselessly slaughtered for being who they are.

Now, you’d think that mainstream politicians would want to be far removed from white replacement theory.

But at the moment it’s gaining popularity in the Republican Party. Polls show that nearly 50 percent of Republican voters think it’s real.

That leaves mainstream politicians in a quandary. If they denounce it, they risk alienating their base. So many stay silent. They crawl under a metaphorical table, pretending they don’t see the hate that’s there in front of their face.

Obviously, the lunatics with the high-powered weaponry are the greatest danger. But the silent bunch are also a threat. In their silence, they enable the shooters.

As I write this, the highest-ranking Republican elected official to speak out against white supremacy is Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney tweeted on Monday. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

Obviously, I’ve had my issues—to put it mildly—with the Cheneys over the years. But at this moment I can’t be picky about my allies in the fight against fascist white supremacy.

So thank you, Congresswoman Cheney. Now what about the rest of you Republicans?

Right here in Illinois we have five Republican frontrunners clamoring to be the party’s nominee in November’s general election against Governor J.B. Pritzker.

Their names are Richard Irvin, Darren Bailey, Paul Schimpf, Gary Rabine, and Jesse Sullivan. 

I’m still waiting for one of them to denounce white replacement theory.

In their silence, with each passing day, those Nazis marching through Charlottesville become closer to the center of the Republican Party.

Illinois Republicans, time to crawl out from under the table and take a stand.

The Latest from the Ben Joravsky Show

Read More