Chris Schlarb

On May 13, 2000 the Chicago Underground Quartet played one of the most searing and transcendent sets of music I’ve ever witnessed, as part of the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz & Improvised Music. Cornetist Rob Mazurek, guitarist Jeff Parker, drummer Chad Taylor, and bassist Noel Kupersmith performed with a fiery singularity of purpose, ripping through its set like a bulldozer, albeit a machine marked by nuance and soulfulness. The following year the same line-up—which had previously made two albums for Delmark as the Chicago Underground Trio despite, with Parker nominally billed as a guest—dropped its eponymous debut on Thrill Jockey, serving up one of the strongest entries in the city’s modern history. Little did anyone know it would be nineteen years for the follow-up to surface.

"There is no double album that would not be improved by removing it's worst songs and making it a single album…" With these words, Psychic Temple mastermind Chris Schlarb set out to prove himself wrong. Here's how he did it.In the modern history of rock music, the double album stands as the ultimate creative indulgence. A moment for an artist to make their grand statement amid the excess of four sides of vinyl. And yet, there is not one double LP that escapes the curse of filler: "Wah-Wah" on All Things Must Pass, "Night Flight" on Physical Graffiti, "Piggies" on the White Album, "Angel" on Tusk, etc. In 2016, Schlarb opened BIG EGO, a commercial recording studio in the same Long Beach neighborhood he grew up in.

The brand-new solo album from The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn, released in tandem with his memoir. Make It Right is a commentary between literal and metaphorical ruminating – a dialogue between memoirist and musician - a vulnerable, more reflective Wynn than previously heard.