Since its founding in 2013, Chicago-based Uncanned Music has developed a reputation for designing custom music experiences and sound systems for restaurants, bars, and hotels locally and internationally. The company’s work can be heard not only throughout Chicago but also in cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London.
Uncanned Music began when Scott McNiece, then a food runner and musician at Gilt Bar, started curating playlists for the restaurant. Joe Darling joined him in these efforts, and together they went on to collaborate with David Allen. This group became the core team of Uncanned Music. The company now also includes International Anthem, a jazz record label from Chicago, and Megan Pattison from Los Angeles, who leads curatorial projects.
Among Uncanned’s Chicago clients are Bisous, El Che Steakhouse & Bar, Soho House Chicago in the West Loop; Marz Community Brewing Co. in Bridgeport; Pleasant House Pub in Pilsen; Mott St. in Wicker Park; and Sparrow in the Gold Coast neighborhood.
“Sparrow is one of our longest-running clients and a bit of direction Peter Vestinos gave us early on prevails as our North Star — he wanted Sparrow to sound like a midcentury club in the Caribbean blending Afro-Latin sounds with the music they heard coming out of jazz clubs in the U.S. We’ve been working to curate that reverse perspective for about 10 years now!”
Uncanned’s services go beyond playlist curation. They design sound systems and provide acoustic treatments such as ceiling installations and rugs to help improve sound quality while allowing guests to converse comfortably.
“It helps create a better experience interpersonally because you can turn the audio up and hear the quality of the audio well, but you’re also able to speak without shouting,” said Darling. “That helps to disarm people and make them feel comfortable and maybe just sink in a little bit deeper.”
The company is known for refurbishing vintage reel-to-reel tape players for venues both locally—like Sportsman’s Club—and abroad. These machines can play an hour-and-a-half of music per side.
“It’s one way to be able to set it and forget it a bit for operators and also not have to have any sort of decision fatigue over what’s going to play next when there are so many other priorities in a space like that,” Darling said.
“We basically take contemporary music and download high-resolution digital files. Then we’re able to mix it together almost like a DJ music suite, so the song playing and the upcoming song are somewhat blended together,” he added.
For every project, Uncanned works closely with venue operators before passing their ideas along to curatorial partners—including artists, DJs, and journalists across the country—to develop playlists tailored for different times of day or service periods.
“Getting mixes from these contributors and discovering new music has been really inspiring for me,” Darling said. “Especially with streaming music and algorithmic kind of applications, you end up feeling like you don’t get to discover as much as you would like.”
Playlists are updated monthly depending on client needs—a process meant both for patrons’ enjoyment as well as staff who listen daily.
Additionally, after opening a new venue, Uncanned sometimes provides on-site support by recording tapes or DJing during initial operations.
“We’re not the most technologically convenient option as we’re doing something that’s more analog and more personal,” Darling said.
While some creative businesses express concern about artificial intelligence affecting their industry, Darling said this is not an issue for Uncanned: “Honestly, we don’t feel threatened by it because we’ve been touting the human touch for so many years now, and we think that’s what people want to connect with,” he said. “We are trying to push in that direction of keeping people intentionally listening to their environment. It’s fun for us to be able to passively DJ for all these spaces all over the country.”
