Emeralds cofounder Steve Hauschildt has been crafting intricate, techno-inflected ambient music since long before that experimental Cleveland trio split up in early 2013. Last week Hauschildt, who now lives in Chicago, dropped Dissolvi (Ghostly International), an album of gentle, crystalline synths and steady techno pulses. On Saturday, August 11, he celebrates with a release show at Sleeping Village; also on the bill are Michael Vallera and Julianna Barwick, who appears on standout Dissolvi track “Saccade....

It, the new big-budget adaptation of the first half of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel, might have worked better as a silent film. The movie is visually striking but lacks a single well-developed character; the human subjects are defined by one trait a piece, and they have little to say that couldn’t be conveyed by simple title cards. Director Andy Muschietti has a strong sense of blocking—his arrangement of people vis-à-vis the spaces they inhabit is always dynamic and pleasurable to look at....

Northwestern University Press James Magruder’s new story collection, Let Me See It, covers most of the key points of the coming-of-age of gay men in the 1970s and ’80s as experienced by first cousins Tom Amelio and Elliott Biddler. There are the charged childhood friendships, adolescent awkwardnesses, painful college crushes on straight or closeted boys, romances with older men, the difficulties of negotiating the attentions of straight women and the prejudices of family members, and, finally, the Plague....

Ken Krimstein draws wacky gag cartoons—one classic shows two adjacent storefronts: the window sign in the left one reads MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY, while the window sign on the right reads MEDICAL CHEEZ DOODLES DISPENSARY—but the artist doesn’t look the least bit demented. He’s more like a cross between a boomer hipster and the favored uncle who shares his best anecdotes at first-night seder. I would never have pegged him as a midcentury philosophy buff....

There’s a culture war going on in Jefferson Park, a middle-class community in Chicago’s northwest-side bungalow belt that’s home to many city and county workers. Some longtime residents want the neighborhood to remain an enclave of low-slung houses and two-flats, where driving and parking are prioritized. Others, many of them newer arrivals, want to see the community become more urban, with more apartments near the Jefferson Park Transit Center, and better conditions for walking and biking....

In 1922 the Chicago Tribune held an architectural design competition for its new Michigan Avenue headquarters. The judges selected architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood’s proposal: a neo-Gothic tower, the kind typically seen in 12th- to 16th-century Europe, denoted by a buttressed crown and heavy ornamentation such as gargoyles, fantastical engravings, and scalloping. At the request of Colonel Robert McCormick, who headed the Tribune at the time, correspondents took stones from such monuments as the Great Pyramid, the Parthenon, Notre-Dame Cathedral, and 145 other architectural triumphs....

Ghanaian barbershop sign from “Sportin’ Waves” Please your pupils with something visually appealing this weekend. Here’s what’s going down in visual arts. Friday 2/14 Sunday 2/16

ERIC KLEIN Youth Code Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Peter English Pattern is Movement Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

I had planned to do a story about Ukrainian Village’s the Winchester for a while—mainly about how, in a city of places that say they’re “neighborhood” restaurants (but don’t open until dinner), the Winchester really aims to be an all-day neighborhood hangout, available before sunset and doing quality food at night that makes it a competitor to places that have the luxury of focusing on dinner alone. It’s a tough thing to pull off—you can get typed as a breakfast/brunch place and then people have a hard time thinking of you as a serious dinner spot (that’s been the case with Logan Square’s Jam, which has made several attempts to launch dinner)....

Launched back in 1998, the European Union Film Festival has grown into one of the city’s very best cinematic events, the only serious rival in size and quality to the venerable Chicago International Film Festival. This year, through April 3, Gene Siskel Film Festival presents 64 new features from EU member nations, including Chicago premieres of new work by Daniel Auteuil (Fanny, Marius), Francois Ozon (Young & Beautiful), Paul Verhoeven (Tricked), Lukas Moodysson (We Are the Best!...

Dutch drummer Han Bennink, who turns 75 next month, has been an unrelenting creative force in jazz and improvised music since the early 60s. In 1964 he played on Eric Dolphy’s legendary final record, Last Date, and in ’67 he formed the Instant Composers Pool with pianist Misha Mengelberg (who died two weeks ago) and reedist Willem Breuker. He has an instantly recognizable sound—loud, chaotic, furiously swinging—and he’s applied it to hundreds of records....

Blog posts about rising LA R&B duo They. tend to reference the genre they label themselves with on some of their Soundcloud uploads—“grunge&b.”—but otherwise describe them in quite different ways. That reflects producer Dante Jones and singer Drew Love’s chameleonic songwriting history as much as it does their marketing: before teaming up, Love wrote with Jeremih, while Jones worked on projects for Nickelodeon and got a Grammy for his contributions to Kelly Clarkson’s “Mr....

Liezl Estipona Welcome to Night Vale Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

The Amazing Catfish Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Since he became an advocate for marijuana legalization more than a decade ago, Mason Tvert, now director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, says he’s been approached countless times by people who tell him he should stop using the word “marijuana” because of its racist origins within the context of America’s war on drugs. “Harry Anslinger is the most influential person no one has ever heard of,” says Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (2015)....

The Square Freshly nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary category, Jehane Noujaim’s The Square chronicles the Egyptian Revolution from Mubarak to Morsi and beyond, focusing on a small group of protesters who occupied Cairo’s Tahrir Square and watched their crusade for more representative government yield an elected government that didn’t represent them. It opens Friday for a weeklong run at Gene Siskel Film Center, and it shouldn’t be missed....

There are a few reasons why midwesterners find it difficult to describe the region’s food. By Aimee Levitt Local chefs are using fresh, seasonal ingredients to class up classic comfort foods, from pasties to a dinner of meat and potatoes. By Julia Thiel Illinois’s dairy heritage has been resurrected by a former pencil pusher who just wanted healthy milk for his family. By Mike Sula Farmer Andy Hazzard and baker Ellen King conduct the great Midwestern Bread Experiment....

Clive Owen as a high school English teacher in Words and Pictures Like many Chicagoans, I’m eagerly looking forward to the David Bowie exhibit that opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art later this month. I’m also excited about the upcoming Doc Films series (copresented by the MCA) of movies featuring Bowie, which occupies the second Thursday-night slot on Doc’s fall calendar. Bowie’s records have always exhibited strong affinities with cinema....