Peter Gannushkin/downtownmusic.net

Chicago Underground Duo play Roulette on July 15 as part of Spy Music Fest.

This week, the Voice sat down with Northern Spy head-honchos Tom Abbs and Adam Downey to talk about the second installment of the label's Spy Music Festival, which will engulf this city's landscape from Friday through mid-July.

But in typical unselfish fashion, Abbs and Downey weren't in a self-congratulatory mood over their ascendant label, the impending celebration, and the lineup of killer shows. Instead, Abbs and Downey were not only intent on fixing the wrongs they encountered at their former label, ESP-Disk', by paying back decades-old royalties to that label's artists, they were itching for the same rep AUM Fidelity label head Steven Joerg has: to be as completely fair to their artists as possible.

That righteous ethos extends into being there 100% in support of musicians in need like Brooklyn guitarist and N-Spyer Tom Carter, who is facing an uphill battle after falling ill while on tour in Germany. Read on for outtakes that didn't make it into this week's piece.

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"That's exactly what I'm going for: psychedelic yacht-rock."

There's no keeping-up with Colin Langenus these days. Ever since the USA Is a Monster, America's premiere prog-noise outfit for most of the last decade, called it a day in 2009, the burly singer-songwriter and guitarist has been hurdling through the murky ether of his raw creativity at warp speed. Unlike drummer and longtime Monster cohort Tom Hohmann (who relocated to rural southeast Michigan to start a new-age-punk farm and commune), Langenus stayed put in New York, eventually hopping from Brooklyn to Queens. Musically speaking, though, he's undergone a drastic transformation over the last year and a half. Kicking the noise rock to the curb, Langenus now oversees two groups: the CSC Funk Band, a large and unruly ensemble churning out eccentric Afrobeat for freakers and weirdoes, and the Colin L. Orchestra, another big band that produces a cloudy blend of classic rock, country folk, and Rhys Chatham-inspired minimalism. On top of all this, he's been involved in a bevy of short-lived multi-media projects, from Bongladesh (which released a hellishly psychedelic long-form video not too far back) to a month-long residency at Zebulon Café last autumn. Oh, and by the way, the Monster recently released a posthumous album, R.I.P., on the Northern Spy label.

So yeah, dude is busy. Even interviewing Langenus is an art project in and of itself: The guy is nervy, garrulous, and exploding with energy. Though he successfully juggles about a million things, he isn't keen on supplying specifics; he's also a big fan of stream-of-consciousness conversation that's about as direct as the hedge maze in The Shining. He and I chatted not long before the CSC Funk Band, whose debut full-length is due out on the Fat Beats imprint this year, went out on its winter tour of the West Coast.

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