Instead of flooding Twitter Feeds and webpages with endless empty posts, at Mild Sauce we’re trying to give things some time, a listen or two (or three) and offer up what we think is some of the best music happening in Chicago right now. This week? We got two gems as Elton Aura, The Burns Twins and Andrew Bedows get together for a new EP and an old friend, Chris Mathien, offers up a fresh batch of songs, Bad Friend. Check those out below and make sure to tune into Mild Sauce Radio 24/7 for all the latest music from Chicago with new singles like these playing every night at 8 PM CST.
The Burns Twins & Bedows • Sunshower EP
Since emerging over the course of the last couple of years, The Burns Twins, literally brothers IZ and Eddie, have served as a welcome hub that has tied together varying sides of Chicago’s more eclectic sides into singles and EPs that should serve to stand the test of time in an age that is undervalued. Understudies of the likes of The Social Experiment and The O’My’s, among others, The Burns Twins have brought the underlying ideals of collaboration and creatively-minded musical experimentation forward for a new wave of young artists that seem to find a different voice, groove or sound altogether when bookended by the pair.
They’re not alone though, Andrew Bedows, who served time on the 2016 release, Sweet asl with Kaina Castillo, is back again and the trio add suburban native Elton Aura to the mix in Sunshowers EP. Expertly teased over the last couple months with some truly eye-opening partnerships, the boys continue to prove a self-determined flexibility that has allowed them to stay plenty busy in the crowded Chicago landscape. There’s certainly plenty more coming from these guys soon, at 19-years-old it’s scary to think what they’ll be making once their legal to drink. If this one is any indication, we better all pay attention.
Mathien • Bad Friend
Since at least the time I’ve been doing my thing around the city, Chris Mathien has been a name that I could consistently depend on for good music that fits into just about any part of the day and he continues to prove his maturation as an artist and a person with his latest offering, Bad Friend.
To be sure, I’ve yet to hear a project by Mathien that I don’t play back to back at least a couple of times. Since emerging from his full-band project, which similarly utilized his last name as a centerpiece, Chris has embarked on a series of adventures that have seen him move to Tennessee and then Toronto, tour the country in a car with Via Rosa and generally find himself musically in his 30s. Mathien is proof that art is a lifelong process we can only realize the end goal of if we stick to it and continue to develop. On Bad Friend, Mathien, who has called this project his best yet, seems to have found a way to bundle years of experience and a lifetime’s understanding of the world into a project that tells a story with a firmly underlined premise, while also being free enough to discover new places, revisit old ones and in turn create a project that feels as though it was executive produced by his own soul. Yeah, its deep. Check it out below and everyday on Mild Sauce Radio.