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RONI SIZE REPRAZENT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A few years ago, when drum ‘n’ bass still looked like it might be the next big thing, plenty of artists seemed intent on proving it was “real” music by turning out sprawling, indulgent albums, as though their sheer bulk would make a statement all by itself. Roni Size and his Bristol crew, Reprazent, might’ve looked like they were trying to do the same thing with their 1997 debut, New Forms–it’s two CDs long–but its angular beauty, jazzy overtones, and neck-snapping rhythms actually warranted the extra room....

LUTHER WRIGHT & THE WRONGS 10/31, FITZGERALD’S I’m afraid this Canadian alt-country band will always be remembered for one uncharacteristically bold move–last year’s amazing Rebuild the Wall, a brilliantly executed down-home reworking of Pink Floyd’s infamous dystopian angstfest. The charms of their original material, as heard on their new album, Guitar Pickin’ Martyrs (Back Porch), are a lot more subtle: Wright’s straightforward, almost conversational songwriting (“See that rusty old crank at the top, it’s so picturesque / That’s just what I’ve become, in a nutshell I gave up more or less,” goes a snippet of the punnish “Wish Me Well”); the lonesome near yodel of his voice; the tight, richly ornamental playing of the band....

CRUELEST APRILS 2/22, EMPTY BOTTLE Singer and violist Nissa Holtkamp and singer and guitarist Daniel Schneider (who does double time in Pedal Steel Transmission) modestly refer to their duo debut, Novella, as an EP, but its eight tracks run a generous half hour, and in that time they hit only a couple sour notes (the irritating acoustic rock-chick number “Pony Express” and a rushed, antidramatic reading of the Keats poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”)....

CELLS 8/24, SCHUBAS On their new We Can Replace You (Orange) the local Cells render crappy feelings into ten burly chunks of feel-good power pop. Those giant power chords might be predictable, but Cory Hance’s voice is an unexpected touch: he’s so new-wave twerpy he makes Robin Zander sound like Ronnie James Dio. But that’s what makes this kind of plain Chicago loud rock palatable–the same sort of culture clash that takes place up on Clark Street when an all-ages punk show at Metro is opening its doors as a Cubs game is letting out....

The Strangulated Beatoffs aren’t known for their work ethic: in 16 years they’ve played live only a handful of times, and even those were barely performances. For the last one, in their native Saint Louis about three years ago, they reportedly lugged a sofa onstage, sat down, and watched TV. Plus they’re frustratingly vague and apathetic in interviews (when they bother to grant them), and their songs are so hypnotically repetitious–one ten-second sample, allegedly full of subliminal messages, constitutes almost every song–that their albums would be exercises in sheer indolence if they weren’t so damn charismatic....

The Locks, Hermit Arts, at the Loop Theater. Some artists use intricate or monumental frames to highlight scarcity and absence, throwing a piece’s minimalism into starker relief. But the strategy can backfire. Idris Goodwin’s new The Locks, about the destructive sibling rivalry between Venus and Odin Lock, is framed by Brett Neiman’s lobby installation, the “Locks Museum,” which documents its history. A breezily accurate parody of conceptual art, it may be intended as a metaphor for the emptiness of their competition or of the competitive impulse itself....

The shoestring nature of most independent record labels means they can be pretty erratic in their release schedules–the money to put out the next record often isn’t there until the previous one pays for itself. But even that doesn’t adequately explain the 25-year gap between releases for The Sirens Records, a local indie specializing in Chicago blues and boogie-woogie piano music. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » His obsession with boogie-woogie piano was sparked by Helfer’s performance at the University of Chicago Folk Festival in the early 70s....

When I grow up I want to be a nitrogen farmer. According to Donald Hey of the Loop-based Wetlands Initiative, the most efficient way to control the nitrate pollution that Illinois and other midwestern farm states send to the Gulf of Mexico would be to restore about 24 million acres of wetlands and “farm” them (Restoration Ecology, March). “Nitrogen farming involves flooding land with nutrient-rich water for a period of time sufficient to achieve denitrification–about six to eight days,” during which time “wetland microbes would strip and consume the oxygen atoms from the nitrate molecule, releasing nitrogen gas [harmlessly] to the atmosphere....

Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti died almost five years ago and his son, media magnet Femi, finally seems to be getting comfortable in the spotlight focused on him since. On “’97,” a song from his 2001 album Fight to Win (MCA), he directly addresses his father’s passing, acknowledging the loss but vowing to move on, and while the album’s creative gains are subtle ones, he’s begun to stake out his own turf....

Spectrum Dances 2002 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Choreographer Michael McStraw sets the tone with the first piece, Craving. To music by Seal featuring the lyrics “We’re never gonna survive, unless…we get a little crazy,” he has Paula Frasz dump a shirtful of flashlights onto the stage and then arrange them so that her progress in any direction is obstructed. She then proceeds to roll in them, shine them at the audience and in her own face, and dodge among them....

This upstairs-downstairs comedy-drama, set in 1932 in an English country house, is probably Robert Altman’s most accomplished film since the 70s. Among its virtues are the discipline exercised by its fine English cast, a good script by Julian Fellowes (based on ideas by Altman and costar Bob Balaban) that incorporates certain aspects of Agatha Christie-style whodunit, and the interesting ground rule that no guest be shown unless a servant is present in the same scene....

Men showing off: some things don’t change. Gus Giordano’s 1966 Gang Hep, reconstructed for this concert by current artistic director Nan Giordano (his daughter), pays tribute to Jerome Robbins’s 1957 choreography for West Side Story. So we see challenges–playing crack the whip, slapping the floor–as well as handstands and airborne cartwheels. Yet the girls in this dance for ten are unimpressed–one in particular, whose pique at her boyfriend escalates into all-out war....

Bridget Brown doesn’t have strong feelings about panty hose. But a few years ago the title “A History of Panty Hose in America” popped into her head and wouldn’t leave. “I guess I thought it had potential,” says the Madison-based graphic designer and fiction writer. “A lot of my stuff comes from the title or a first line that I wasn’t able to let go of until I followed it to its absurd outcome....

MICHAEL HURLEY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Because oddball folkie Michael Hurley records so rarely–he’s put out only a dozen albums in the last 35 years–there’s a temptation to call every new one a “comeback.” But this irascible character has made sure there’s nothing to come back to: he operates as a hobbyist, hitting the road when he feels like it, playing whatever songs strike his fancy, and then, when he’s had enough, retreating to attend to his other hobbies, which include painting, cooking, and fixing cars and eight-track tapes....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to a July report in the British newspaper the Guardian, Great Britain is upgrading courthouse facilities on tiny Pitcairn Island (about 3,000 miles from New Zealand in the South Pacific) in response to the claims of investigators who suspect as many as 20 past and current residents of engaging in sex with children. (Only four dozen people presently live on the island–many of them descendants of the original settlers, the famous Bounty mutineers–but it has roughly 400 citizens....

Trent Harris: The Beaver Trilogy Though Gary’s life boasts its share of muscle cars, cheerleaders, and high school coaches, his engaging idiosyncrasies offset these commonplaces: stenciled on the driver’s side window of his coupe is Farrah Fawcett’s profile. The townspeople clearly admire his cross-dressing impersonations, and when he’s preparing for the talent show, Gary gets his makeup done in a mortuary. This stirring scene kicks off the movie’s meditation on celebrity....

The Heart of the World By Jonathan Rosenbaum Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s not an experimental film in any normal sense–unless one thinks of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, a work with which it has a few unexpected glancing affinities. But then there’s nothing remotely normal about any of the Maddin films I’ve seen, all of which were made in Winnipeg and appear to have penetrating if indirect things to say about Canada, allegorically or otherwise....

Printworks gallery in River North has represented Audrey Niffenegger, now 40, since she was 23 and barely out of the School of the Art Institute. “Ferocious Bon Bons,” which opened the Friday after Labor Day, is her eighth exhibit there. “There’s always been a buzz about Audrey,” says Bob Hiebert, Printworks’ co-owner. “She’s one of those people whose work somehow lodges in people’s subconscious.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Music listings are compiled by LAURA KOPEN and RENALDO MIGALDI (classical, fairs and festivals) from information available Tuesday. We advise calling ahead for confirmation. Please send listings information, in-cluding a phone number for use by the public, to Reader Music Listings, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611, or send a fax to 312-828-9926, or send E-mail to musiclistings@chicagoreader.com. FIONA APPLE, JURASSIC 5 Next Saturday, March 11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N....

Brazilian singer-songwriter Vinicius Cantuaria has said that moving to New York in the mid-90s gave him the freedom to develop his own take on his native traditions. As a teenager Cantuaria played in the early-70s Brazilian prog-rock band O Terco before delving into bossa nova; he spent ten years as Caetano Veloso’s guitarist, and both Veloso and Gal Costa recorded some of his songs. A number of slick solo bossa albums in the 80s brought him moderate success, but his creative breakthrough came when he started working with Arto Lindsay, who produced his first American album....