Last year’s inaugural Intonation Music Festival was a collaboration between indie-rock Web site Pitchfork, concert promoter and musician Mike Reed, and event-planning company Skyline Chicago, but despite the festival’s spectacular success its organizers split up before the start of planning for the 2006 installment. Pitchfork and Reed have launched the Pitchfork Music Festival, which debuts at the end of July, and Skyline has announced that it will continue Intonation with a different musical curator each year. This weekend’s bookings are the work of Vice, the label owned by the tastemaking lifestyle magazine of the same name.
Local clubs will host several official Intonation pre- and afterparties: On Friday night Russian Circles, Oakley Hall, and the Favourite Sons play the Empty Bottle and MSTRKRFT, Chromeo, Bald Eagle, and Jordan Zawideh DJ at Smart Bar. DJs also spin Saturday night at Sonotheque and Sunday night at the Funky Buddha Lounge. –Miles Raymer
1:30 Erase Errata
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Erase Errata’s third full-length, Nightlife (Kill Rock Stars), has been a long time coming thanks to the band’s complicated transition from four-piece to trio, but it’s finally out in July. In the album’s lush, angular disco-punk I hear bits of the obsessively spiky riffs of the Fall, the full-bodied, declamatory vocals of Siouxsie Sioux, the racing, California-desert drone of X, even a bit of Sonic Youth’s subway-tunnel guitar turbulence–and personally I’m glad those have all been familiar sounds for a generation or so, ’cause otherwise so many flavors scooped into the same sundae cup might make me a little queasy. As players these women seem to have finally wrapped up their R & D phase: their music’s as aggressive as old-time postpunk and sometimes calls to mind 90s girl hardcore like Pet UFO, but they’ve got a better feel for the sweet spot of a hook than either. The athletic rhythms and self-assured singing even make the polemical lyrics (“Murder, manslaughter / All funded by my tax dollar”) sound righteous instead of shrill. AS a Vice Stage
Most of the world only knows Devin the Dude from his cameo on Dr. Dre’s Chronic 2001, but his self-lacerating humor and quirky, impeccable flow have earned him a devoted cult following. While Dre’s struggling to keep up his platinum-gangsta image between Gwen Stefani sessions, Devin’s smoking rival rappers casually, even lazily–the same way he smokes roaches out of the ashtray. MR a Vice Stage
4:35 High on Fire
6:55 Boredoms
