In April 2023, experimental dance producer and DJ Care launched the Mages Guild label with a 27-track compilation called Midimagick Beta Test. “I started it because it didn’t really feel like there was a platform in Chicago for experimental music that was more dance oriented—or even, a little bit more fun and party oriented, but still experimental,” Care says. Since then, the collective of producers involved in Mages Guild have been so active in Chicago’s underground dance scene that their work caught the attention of the film programmers behind the Music Box Theatre’s Front Row series. On Friday, July 12, several Mages Guild producers will perform as part of a preshow for a midnight screening of 2009 sci-fi flick Gamer presented by Front Row and programmer Olivia Hunter Willke.
Care first became enthralled with experimental dance through Counter-Strike frag videos and became hooked by a memorable one featuring an Aphex Twin song. She then fell for Winnipeg musician Venetian Snares and trawled online forums and Bandcamp in search of unfamiliar breakcore. In late 2019, Care met some of her closest friends in the Chicago breakcore community at a show featuring 99Jakes and Laura Les. But after the pandemic, Care and her friends had a hard time finding events that suited their tastes. “That part of the scene—of breakcore/hardcore—did not really come back very strong for a while,” Care says. “Before we were calling ourselves Mages Guild, we were one of the first groups back from COVID to start booking stuff like that again.”
Since dropping Midimagick Beta Test, Mages Guild has put out 15 more releases, most recently last month’s Let My Heart Love Again by Seattle breakcore artist Maedasalt. Most of the label’s contributors live in the Chicago area, including techno stylist DJ IBA, ceramicist and noise artist Melon Sprout, and IDM producer Donkey Basketball (aka Lifeguard drummer Isaac Lowenstein); Care aims to have a new release by label stars EasyG0ingTech out soon.
Mages Guild kicks off Friday night’s activities in the Music Box Lounge at 10 PM, with sets by Kira600 and Yuritech (aka DJ Magitech and Toxicyurilovetriangle). Care performs with plunderphonics VJ Taylor Dye at 11:30 PM in the Music Box’s main theater.
Mages Guild’s 27-track compilation called Midimagick Beta Test and music by DJ Care
Lincoln Park alternative haven Neo closed in 2015, but its annual reunion continues unabated. On Saturday, July 13, Metro hosts the Neo Reunion 2024 party to honor the 45th anniversary of the club’s opening. Neo founder DJ Suzanne Shelton, who launched the club in July 1979, has organized a lineup of record spinners from every era of Neo history, and each one will play music they spun during their respective time behind the decks. Shelton brings the sound of the club’s first few years to the fore, while Jeff Moyer—who played the very last song at Neo—reps its final years. “I want to honor the legacy and all the people who love it,” Shelton says, “because 45 years is kind of unthinkable. For me, doing this reunion gives everybody who loved [Neo] the opportunity to celebrate that.”
At this year’s reunion, Shelton will share her set with Metro and Smart Bar founder Joe Shanahan; he was an early Neo regular and felt compelled to open his own club after spinning at Neo in late 1981. “I’ve been wanting to have him be part of this reunion in a DJ capacity for a long time,” Shelton says. Shelton also recruited memoirist Steve Silver (former Exit doorman and Pigface and Naked Raygun tour manager) to read during the party. “He’ll do a ten-minute story about what the club scene was like back in the early days of Neo,” Shelton says.
The festivities continue on Thursday, July 18, with a free screening of Eric Richter’s 2350 Last Call: The Neo Story at Sulzer Regional Library in Lincoln Square. The library’s assistant director, Yvette Garcia, a Neo patron back in the day, has organized a corresponding exhibit of the club’s history. Shelton, Richter, Cold Waves Festival founder Jason Novak, DJ Scary Lady Sarah, and Neo doorman Brian Dickie will speak on a panel following the screening; it begins at 6 PM.
The International Latino Cultural Center (ILCC)—aka Chicago’s premier multidisciplinary Pan-Latino organization—has reinvigorated its summer music programming for the 2024 season. On Tuesday, July 16, Chilean singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and Audiotree Live alum Pascuala Ilabaca will grace the stage at Reggies Music Joint with her smooth vocals, her spirited accordion playing, and her feisty band Fauna at 7 PM for $20. Three days prior, on Saturday, July 13, Ecuadorian Latin rock artist Eljuri brings Concerts for Democracy: Amplifying Voices for Social Change to Riis Park, which lets Chicagoans register to vote on-site while enjoying the show. The concert is the latest in the free ten-part Levitt VIBE Belmont Cragin Music Series, which is part of a three-city pilot program (alongside events in Indianapolis and Oakland) that brings diverse music to community destinations.
The Chicago edition is held at Riis Park every Saturday from 2 to 4 PM. It has already featured Argentinian tropical punks Kumbia Queers and Brazilian jazz and samba stars Silvia Manrique and Marcel Bonfim, among others. Future bookings will include Haitian-Canadian singer-songwriter Wesli and Indigenous Guatemalan songwriter Sara Curruchich, who sings in Spanish and the Kaqchikel Mayan language.
The ILCC is no stranger to releasing a flood of Pan-Latino theater, music, dance, film, literature, and culinary arts to the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, which the Chicago Recovery Plan reports is 79 percent Hispanic and Latino. On the music side last year, ILCC put on 33 concerts at 18 venues and hosted Chicago’s first-ever Latino Dance Festival. “There are very few cultural options [in Belmont Cragin]. It’s pretty much a cultural desert,” ILCC deputy executive director Mateo Mulcahy says. “And so the idea was to bring music to communities that don’t have those types of options.”
Update Wed 7/10, 6 PM: This story has been amended to add the name of a programmer involved in the Gamer screening.
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