Erica Mei Gamble releases a set of minimalist beats and electronics four years in the making

Erica Mei Gamble has been a key part of Chicago’s DIY experimental- and dance-music communities for more than a decade. She has several musical projects—including Sarica, A+E, and her S&M-themed goth horror duo with Sarah Leitten, Dungeon Mother—and she’s also the scene’s most diligent video preservationist. Gamble has posted sets by hundreds of artists dating back to 2010 on her YouTube channel, TemporaryCorrespondence, and nearly all are worth watching. (Seeing Gamble set up her tripod and camera before a show is a good sign it’ll be especially juicy.) For the past few years, Gamble has been recording bracingly minimal jams as Temp., and earlier this month she compiled nine of them for a CD release, Taking Notes, via Jordan Reyes’s label American Dreams. Tracks such as “What’s Beyond?” (with a haunting monologue by Leitten) and “Evening” oscillate between eerie soundscapes and glitchy, downtempo electronics.

Erica Mei Gamble created the tracks on Taking Notes between 2018 and 2022.

On Saturday, November 26, Metro hosts the fifth annual John Walt Day, which features sets by Pivot Gang rappers Saba, MFn Melo, Joseph Chilliams, and Frsh Waters as well as crew producer daedaePivot. Chicago duo DCG Brothers share the bill—they aren’t part of Pivot, but they’re fellow west siders. This wolf hopes the Pivot MCs will team up to perform their recent group singles, the sweltering “Aang” and the light-on-its-feet “911.”

The visualizer for “Aang” uses footage of Pivot Gang producer Squeak, who was shot dead in summer 2021.

Pivot Gang’s “911”

This month Chicago rapper Matt Muse is running the fourth annual Love & Nappyness Hair Care Drive. You can donate new or unused personal-hygiene and hair-care products at six drop-off points—including the Silver Room, Semicolon Bookstore, and FortuneHouse. All items will be donated to Maria Shelter and Saint Leonard’s Ministries. The drive ends Sunday, December 11, and that night Thalia Hall hosts the Long Hair Don’t Care Show with Tobi Lou, Matt Muse, and Senite and sets by DJ Ca$h Era.

The October 2021 Matt Muse single “Rapport”

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