Aphex TwinSyro (Warp) Vashti BunyanHeartleap (DiCristina) The digital market has disrupted plenty of things about the way music is created, distributed, and even defined. EPs used to be stopgaps between full-lengths, and mixtapes were collections of freestyles and slapdash cuts; these days, though, MCs are releasing album-length EPs and mixtapes as polished as commercial LPs. NehruvianDoom, a collaboration between young New York MC Bishop Nehru and mysterious rapper-producer Doom, feels like an old-world mixtape and an EP at the same time—it’s a tad too short, and the half-baked tracks are cobbled together....

Jeff Cagle Penrose Brewing’s first three year-round beers: Proto Gradus, P-2, and Navette Penrose Brewing of Geneva, Illinois, threw a Chicago launch party last Monday at a lovely Humboldt Park studio space shared by Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting. Because that was a week ago, Karl Klockars at Time Out and Chuck Sudo at Chicagoist have beaten me to the punch, and their posts both include a fair amount of the brewery’s backstory....

When Sam Smith opened the Perry Mansion Cultural Center in 2010, his preeminent goal was to reclaim and reshape the narrative of black life in America. “You build bridges by having the ability to control your image and your story, and [black people] don’t get to do that,” Smith says. And with each exhibit, he’s been able to tell this story piece by piece, but its culmination will come in a few years when he’s completed building a slave ship in the basement for an exhibit that will be called “The Slave Experience....

Is that Nocturo Culto of Darkthrone gracing the B Side of the Reader in full black-metal regalia? No, that’s actually little old Lorde—it’s just an issue that’s passed through the hands of local artist Zachary Hart Baker. Since the beginning of the year, Baker has been attacking Reader covers with a black Sharpie, turning them into his own versions of Marduk and Mayhem band photos. He makes the cover subjects up with corpse paint, gives them long, scraggly beards, and outfits them with black leather, chains, and spiked gauntlets....

Bridge of Spies feels like Steven Spielberg’s belated Father’s Day gift to America, a handsome-looking film about history, national values, and other things you can talk about with your dad over a good sandwich. It invites discussion through long, talky scenes about morally ambiguous matters, reminding us that certain things require care and reason and can’t be settled right away. The film ends in the early 1960s on an unresolved note—the conflicts of the story may have been settled, but the Cold War rages on—and this is Spielberg’s way of encouraging viewers to continue the conversations raised by the film after they leave the theater....

Ten years ago, local musician Christopher Saathoff, a collaborator with Alex White and member of Chin Up Chin Up, was tragically hit and killed by a drunk driver on Western Avenue while leaving the Empty Bottle, and tonight that same club is hosting a celebration of his life and legacy. The show, headlined by a solo set from White, is a benefit for the Christopher Saathoff Foundation, a charitable organization opened up in his name to help children in need across the world....

A couple weeks ago Battles released the album artwork for their forthcoming album, La Di Da Di, which features an array of breakfast food arranged in a diagonal line atop a manilla backdrop. I was tickled by the design when I first saw it, but in that moment I’d somehow forgotten about a recent split cassette that also features a collage of grub fit for a morning meal: Drawing Trees and Ant’lrd’s Balanced Breakfast....

Dance is both a common form of bonding and a point of contention for black women. They are often the creators of new dance forms, but rarely see their labor reap anything other than derision. And in the traditional world of dance, most black women work against the mold. Consider New York-based choreographer Camille A. Brown. A recipient of multiple awards including a Bessie (the dance world’s Tony), she approaches dance as a method of provocative storytelling and confrontation....

The cover of Minutes of Sleep Back in November, I caught the Brooklyn DJ and musician Francis Harris opening for DJ Sprinkles at Smart Bar. I knew nothing of Harris’s music and found his inclusion on the bill odd. Most of what he played felt like clubby, monotonous tech-house with no relationship to Sprinkles’s deeply gorgeous, intricately textured house music. But maybe I just caught Harris on an off night—I’ve been playing his most recent album, Minutes of Sleep (Scissor & Thread), on most mornings and sometimes in the wee hours....

Jennifer Painter Emilie Weibel The Swiss singer Emilie Weibel moved to New York in 2006, lured by the city’s potent jazz scene to further her education. She first studied with the excellent trumpeter Ralph Alessi at his School for Improvisational Music before enrolling at the City College of New York. I don’t know what her sound and practice was like back then, but her aesthetic these days is impressively broad, and on her recent solo debut album, Omoo (Inner Circle Music), jazz informs rather than defines her work....

To make the drink extrafishy, Staniszeski rimmed the glass with his pickled herring tincture and garnished it with pickled herring two ways: beer battered and lightly seared. Surprisingly, he says, the cocktail isn’t bad; he compares it to a “salinity-based manhattan.” Watch out for the garnish, though. “Once you eat pickled herring,” Staniszeski says, “that’s all you’re going to taste for the rest of the day.”

In the Reader‘s Fall Arts preview, I described bassist Matthew Lux as “the Kevin Bacon of Chicago music, connected to just about every important living player in the city.” Unfortunately, most people not directly involved in the scene don’t even know who he is, despite his staggering resumé. Since graduating from Lane Tech in 1991, Lux has worked as a regular sideman in a number of important groups, including Isotope 217 and several bands led by cornetist Rob Mazurek....

This is the fourth installment in our occasional series on segregation in Chicago’s schools. Parker is “deliberately composed of a diverse group of people so that we may learn how to honor the dignity and experience of every human being.” But socioeconomically diverse schools are the exception in CPS. Nearly a third of Chicago’s 658 public schools have enrollments that are at least 95 percent low-income. Reich’s essay continued: “By lowering the taxes of the donor and diminishing the tax revenues that would otherwise have been collected and partly distributed to rich and poor schools alike, federal and state governments are in effect subsidizing the charitable activity of parents who donate to their child’s school....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Dave Hoekstra, author, WGN weekend radio host, and former Reader contributor. “My favorite recipe in the book is the lima beans from Charleston. So many of these places are mom-and-pops, so it was hard to fact-check. This place in Charleston, they weren’t going to e-mail me a recipe. I made a separate trip and drove back to Charleston just to sit in the kitchen and get this recipe dictated....

Paul McGee Lost Lake

Chiya Chai Cafe 2770 N. Milwaukee Runner-Up Hema’s Kitchen

464 N. Halsted 312-421-0077 piccolosognorestaurant.com Runner-Up La Scarola

bitchesgottaeat.blogspot.com Runner-Up Alex Kotlowitz