Yellow Swans
Thurs/15, Li Po Lounge

WHILE I'M LOATH to admit my familiarity with the Moz and his minions, there's something to the line "we hate it when our friends become successful." For disclosure's sake, I also have to admit I was once in a band, none too successful, with Yellow Swans' guitar mangler Gabriel Mindel, and I have watched his Portland noise project morph from an awkward hatchling to a self-assured and annoyingly prolific powerhouse that's hard to hate on. Their latest CD-R releases on their own Collective Jyrk label – Against Sleep and Nightmare and lies will truth become unless we sing song of truth – are better too. Yellow Swans add a layer of mush to the increasingly crunchy progression, wilderness howls absorbed into locomotive heft, and you get a sort of postapocalyptic answer to minimalism, as in "no structure is left standing." Also playing, former Get Hustle organist Mark Evan Burden's Silentist is a reputed one-man extravaganza combining death metal drums and howls gone baroque. The new lineup of Curse of the Birthmark (with the ubiquitous Weasel Walter on keys) promises to grope your ears, and the mustache-meets-machinery mystique of Oakland's Sixes should freak the flock as well. 9 p.m., 916 Grant, S.F. Call for price. (415) 982-0072. (George Chen)