Chicago Underground Duo

Chicago Underground Duo—that is, multi-instrumentalists Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor—are a testament to long and boundless friendships, to a relationship that allows you to pursue any new frontier. Taylor and Mazurek first played together as teenagers in the late ‘80s in Chicago; through the next decade, they bounded inside of that city’s fertile scene, where underground rock, jazz, and experimental composition constantly commingled in acts like Tortoise and Gastr del Sol. When they finally released their debut together in 1998, they called it 12º of Freedom, an apt descriptor of their subsequent hybrids of hard bop and aggressive electronics, radiant gamelan and heady Afrobeat, fluttering Tropicália and diaphanous drifts. Mazurek and Taylor have remained so flexible that the Duo has, at times, expanded into a trio, quartet, and orchestra—and even shifted to the São Paulo Underground.

On 2025’s Hyperglyph, their first Duo album in nearly a dozen years, Taylor and Mazurek once again find new ground to explore. As Mazurek’s trumpet summons Fela Kuti on opener “Click Song,” Taylor’s rhythm suggests a drum circle of one, emphatic and alluring. On “Rhythm Cloth,” they dance down a Mwandishi hall of mirrors, then toward the noise-rock of Lightning Bolt on “Contents of Your Heavenly Body” as Mazurek volleys between trumpet solos and spoke-sung imprecations. It is all a preamble, though, for the three-part “Egyptian Suite,” where a spirited tangle between the pair gives way to a sublime drone that in turn gives way to some of their most ferocious playing ever. It’s a map of exactly why the Duo has been so compelling for three decades, at least whenever the impulse has struck.