Sonic Reducer Overage: Sir Richard Bishop, Hospitals, David Dondero, Hightower, and more
By Kimberly Chun
Yes, you had to work like a dog for that Fourth of July hot dog - and to get ready for the long weekend. Wasn’t it worth it? Now’s the time to get out and get into trouble.
Sir Richard Bishop and His Freak of Araby Ensemble
The Sun City Girls son and Oakland resident also rises, this time in SF, with Oaxacan as his backing ensemble, on the closing show of his tour. For more on Bishop, go to this edition of Sonic Reducer. With Oaxacan and Rubber O Cement. Fri/3, 10 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.
Extreme Animals
The Pittsburgh-San Diego booty melters flaunt it at this light-show-bedazzled happening. With Nero's Day at Disneyland, Bulbs, and Teengirl Fantasy. Fri/3, 8 p.m., $6. Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell, Oakl. www.lobotgallery.com
Hospitals
The raging Adam Stonehouse project recently got a lotta love from UK’s Wire. With Photobooth and Baths. Fri/3, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. (415) 923-0923.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Wilco, the Hunches, Chelsea Handler, Lazer Sword, and more
By Kimberly Chun
I’m a music lover... get me out of the house! Guess what, help has arrived - in more forms than we could fit into print.
Sugar and Gold\
The Bay dance fiends refuses to drown in their own shit. With Music for Animals and Castledoor. Thurs/25, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.
The Hunches
Knuckling down for a freaked-out, “Disease Free” frenzy, the Portland, Ore.-Bay Area garage oddballs slough into the sunset with a series of farewell shows. With Long Legged Woman and Blimp. Fri/26, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. (415) 923-0923.
Interview by Marke B. Photo by Alex Warnow. From our summer SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour -- on stands in the Guardian now.
For 15 years, the much-loved and lovable warm-weather Sunset parties have shaken various hills, isles, parks, patios, and boats with funky, techy house sounds. Launched by underground hero DJ Galen in 1994 (has it really been that long?), the outdoor Sunset gigs have amassed a huge following of excited party newbies and familiar old-school faces — and now their kids! Early on in the game, Galen was joined by fellow Bay favorite DJs Solar and J-Bird, and the three — collectively known as Pacific Sound (www.pacificsound.net) — have kept the vibe strong ever since. This year saw a remarkable expansion on the Sunset fan base: attendance at the season opener at Stafford Lake reached almost 4,000, and Pacific Sound just launched an annual — and truly moving — party on Treasure Island that had multiple generations putting their hands in the air. "The vision was to take electronic music out of the dirty warehouses, away from the dodgy promoters, and into the sunshine," says J-Bird. Summer's just begun, and Pacific Sound, with several gangbuster parties lined up, keeps delivering.
SFBG You guys have been a major part of the party scene here for a while. What do you think of it right now?
Pacific Sound There's a foundation for creativity in San Francisco — that is something that will never change. Also, there definitely is quite a bit more international talent coming here than 10 years ago. It's this constant exposure to musical stylings from around the world that will facilitate a thriving scene. The recent crackdowns by the SFPD and ABC may be dampening some spirits, but it will never stop our creative heritage.
SFBGYou mean all the pressure on venues lately ...
Interview by Billy Jam. Photo by Leo Herrera. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour -- on stands in the Guardian this week.
Like so much music and art these days, turntablism is easier to find online than in a public space. A turntablist can easily record their scratch practice session, upload it to YouTube, and sit back and wait for feedback to show up on their screen. But for sheer enjoyment, creative interaction, and advancement of the art form, turntable pyrotechnics really need to be experienced in the live, raw setting of DJ battles or sessions. That's why Bay Area turntablist duo Deeandroid and Celskiii recently decided to revive their hands-on scratch DJ club night, Skratchpad. Bay Area turntable fiends, missing the party's lively conviviality since it shut down earlier in the decade, were getting antsy.
The super-skilled, Vallejo-born female scratch duo who've toured with the likes of KRS-One now tears it up twice monthly at the Cellar in San Francisco. There, DJs from the aspiring to the established (Swift Rock, Shortkut, and Teeko have each turned in memorable sets) join the two and others like Winst-One and Bizibeats to carry on the sacred Bay scratch tradition. Skratchpad boasts two rooms, one with open tables for guest beat-juggling and the other for just plain getting down, and takes mighty inspiration from legendary late-1990s hip-hop joint Beat Lounge, where Deeandroid and Celskiii — and many others on the scene — got their start. Skratchpad even hosts the occasional DJ Q&A session, but all answers must be phrased in the form of turntable pyrotechnics only.
SFBG Why revive Skratchpad now?
Celskiii If we want to keep the music and culture alive, then we have to pass it on. A lot of younger cats didn't grow up during that raw '90s era, but that doesn't mean they can't experience what we were so lucky to have been exposed to.
SFBG How exactly does the open turntable policy work?
Deeandroid You must bring your own needles, headphones, and records, sign up on the list, and wait your turn for the MC host of the night to call the DJ names. We have seven turntables and five mixers usually for the open turn session. DJs rotate after they do their thing twice or we tell them to switch.
SFBG Is it ever a problem with some DJ hogging the turns?
Sonic Reducer Overage II: Elvis Costello, Starfucker, Nihlotep
By Kimberly Chun
Get out and lend an ear - it’ll be returned, perhaps changed. Here are more intriguing shows that didn’t make it to print.
Elvis Costello
Certified rock genius - up in the house! No secrets here: in true diehard music lover form, Declan MacManus gives back to music emporiums with his one-day “Amoeba Music Tour” performances here in the Haight and then at Amoeba Hollywood. Expect him to play acoustic versions of tunes from his new Secret, Profane and Sugarcane (Hear Music) alongside Jim Lauderdale, and to sign copies of the CD (copies purchased at Amoeba come with a poster silkscreened for the event). Mon/22, noon, free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. (415) 831-1200.
Nihlotep
Drink in the unearthly screeches and high-drama doom metal sturm und drang from the San Jose group. With Vesterian and Condemned to Live. Tues/23, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
Starfucker
The Portland, Ore., combo with the oh-so-naughty moniker has somewhat innocuous origins: Josh Hodges started out with just a borrowed drum set, loop pedal, and a mic - one-off, one-man entertainment for a house party. Now, with the addition of three bandmates, Starfucker is busy reproducing the 8-bit electro pop-dance punk off its mini-album, Jupiter (Badman).
With Atole and White Cloud. Tues/23, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. (415) 621-4455.
Sonic Reducer Overage I: Polly, Poirier, Tomine, Ade, and more
By Kimberly Chun
Going out? Staying out? There's so damn much out there - consider this Sonic Reducer Overage, the Wonder Years/Part I. Look for the sequel in the next day or two.
Poirier
Jump and shake it like the riddim possess ya. The man's Caribbean and South Asian sonics keep it sweaty on his Soca Sound System EP. With Daedelus. Thurs/18, call for time and price. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001. www.mighty119.com
Miike Snow
He has a nice chunky mohawk, but the Swede is "Still an Animal." With Esser. Thurs/18, 10 p.m., $10-$12. Popscene, 330 Ritch, SF. www.popscene-sf.com
Seth and Adrian Tomine
Sacto native, onetime Berkeley resident, ex-zine maker, and now Optic Nerve graphic novelist and New Yorker illustrator Tomine returns to the scene of so many of his yarns, to talk about his Shortcomings and 32 Stories, now both out on paperback on the esteemed indie publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Seth - famed for his Palookaville comics - tags along for moral support (I kid because I love). Thurs/18, 7:30 p.m., free. Park Branch Library, 1833 Page, SF. (415) 863-8688. www.booksmith.com
Show Diary: Neko Case/Jason Lytle, Peaches, Juan McLean/the Field, Telepathe, Handsome Furs, Au Revoir Simone
Juan, two, three: the Juan Maclean. Photo by Troy Bayless.
By Kimberly Chun
Impressionistic sketches, hazy watercolor memories of the way I listened last week, before the veil of forgetfulness falls.
Dang, I wish I had a proper camera in hand to get my shutterbug on at Peaches. The lady wasn't going to let a little vault fire get in the way of her Grand Ballroom performance on June 5: she remains one of the most riveting performers to come out of electroclash on a sheer show-womanship level, and now that she has her live band, the Herms, complete with a leggy, black corseted blond guitar player who obligingly shimmies along to the boss lady's "Shake your tits, shake your dick," she's pretty unstoppable. Essentially - no lie - everyone in the room could not tear their eyes away from Peaches' ever-shifting spectacle, even if Vault Fire II broke out in the next room.
One-man UK opener Drums of Death made me consider suicide, but Peaches made up for it with a bout of crowd-surfing, a romp at the outer edge of the balcony, a slew of impressive costume changes (she poked fun at herself by coming out onstage in a robe at one point), and plenty of brain-teasing visuals, including a video-projected duet with Shunda K of Yo Majesty for "Billionaire" and a dance with super-shaggy Cousin-Its to the tune of "Talk to Me."
The next night, June 6, saw Stockholm's Axel Willner, otherwise known as the Field, hunkered down behind the decks at Mezzanine, opening for the Juan Maclean. Love the dreamy new long-player, though the show drew more from a minimalist techno vein, with assists from Dan Enqvist and Andreas Soderstrom. Still, it was mesmerizing - especially accompanied by video art that spliced images of shipping containers stacks with book piles. I stayed for just a dab of the Juan Maclean, who rocked the Human League-y robotic-pop vibe with mucho energy. Kudos to those who can pull off a nice, big Romulan shoulder pad - I'm scouring the thrift stores for mine soon. The kids were dancing as I departed amid complaints of pop monotony from companion Prof. Fluffy.
Hey bay-bay, besides the wall-bouncing antics of DJ Stacey Pullen and The Martinez Brothers that I mentioned in this week's Super Ego clubs column, here's another party glamour to get your feet up off the floor. Also, for all you hip queer kids -- it's second Saturday, and that means another Cockblock vs. Cockfight showdown! As always, I recommend hitting up both. Because I care. Because I can.
Wallpaper at Blow Up
I can't get the stylishly jazzy electro-rap-lounge Oakland trio's latest treatment of Das Racist's "Combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut" out of my freakin' noggin -- even though it makes my stomach a tad queasy -- but it's the lovely afrobeat-y remix of Passion Pit's "the Reeling" on their MySpace that really follows me around. They'll be at the ever-bonkers Blow Up at Rickshaw Stop on Friday, hopefully with live drums in tow .... be there, and if you're over 30 try not to try too hard to look cool, k?
Blow Up w/ Wallpaper
Fri/12, 10 p.m., $10,
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF. www.blowupsf.com
PS -- oh god, Perez Hilton posted about Wallpaper on the same day as me? Really? ugh.
Color my world grey – you still yearn to romp and play, San Fran-frisky. So get outta the dog park and into the clubs and buy me a drink, hot pocket. Here are a few notable shimmy-shams where you might find me skulking.
Constantines and Crystal Antlers
The Toronto indie rockers venture out to “Islands in the Stream” and stretch their bones in a post-rock, minimalist mode. Meanwhile the LA psych-soul bros carouse in honor of their new Tentacles (Touch and Go). Thurs/11, 7:30 p.m., $14. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.
Headboggle
One-man low-end grumble from the bowels of SF, presented as part of the gallery’s New Music Series. With Commode Minstrels in Bullface, Midmight, and Amphibious Gestures. Thurs/11, 8 p.m., $6. Luggage Store, 1007 Market, SF.
You may be worn out by indie dance acts that have "glass" in their name -- as well as those with "crystal," "soundsystem," and any kind of cute furry animal -- but the UK's The Glass have just released a summer anthem, about dancing outside in summer, that deserves to be as big as I hope it will be. The video is bananas good as well.
The Glass, "Wanna Be Dancin'"
Could that buried "It Takes Two" sample in the chorus be any more delicious? There's a killer mix of this track by one of my favorite, unfortunately overlooked, bands of 2k8, Clubfeet -- available at Beatport. I recommend downloading it and blissing out in the park, toute suite
Not lost: More from Jason Lytle, uncovered in Montana
By Kimberly Chun
Modesto, your Jason Lytle is truly a pleasure to chat with. Here’s more of an interview with the disarmingly honest, down-to-earth ex-Grandaddy songwriter, now touring with his first solo album, Yours Truly, the Commuter (for the rest of the talk, see this week’s Sonic Reducer). Lytle headlines at Café du Nord June 8 and opens for Neko Case at the Warfield June 9.
SFBG: So right now you’re multitasking, printing out flight info for your tour. Is flying an issue for you? I’m just looking at the crashed plane in the artwork for Yours Truly, the Commuter.
Jason Lytle: Ummm, I’m actually OK with flying – I’m a lot better with flying than a lot of people I know. I guess if you’re looking at the artwork - I do have a problem with airplanes landing in my front yard.
Axel Willner of the Field borrows with the insightful and transformative intent of a master curator. On the title track finale of the Field's almost unanimously acclaimed From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt, 2007), that means tapping into the Flamingos' 1959 "I Only Have Eyes for You." Kenneth Anger exploited that recording's deeply unsettling quality in the 1972 version of his Rabbit's Moon, paving the way for a dozen or more David Lynch imitations of such a tactic. Willner's trick was to distill the spectral eeriness of the recording into pure essence.
The Field, "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime"
On the new Yesterday and Today (ANTI-/Kompakt), Willner's something-borrowed gambit is a cover of the Korgis' glacial 1980 ballad "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime." On the surface level of trend, this is almost a stale move: Justice recently incorporated the Korgis' original into a mix, and Beck also has recorded a version. But Willner's interpretation is far superior. It is both minimalist and majestic. Here the sublime resides in what Willner leaves out: the chorus. In place of words, he piles layer upon layer of his trademark ghostly hums and drones so that a sonic cave becomes a cathedral. It's gorgeous.
Marke B chimes in: And check out this abso-brill recent collab between my favorite band of 2008, Foals, and Mr. Field-good. Rumor is more to come with the release of Foals' second album this year ...
The Field, "Foals Xiii (Foals Remix)"
The Field
opening for The Juan Maclean
Sat/6, 9 p.m., $20
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
(415) 625-8880
www.mezzaninesf.com
Sonic Reducer Overage: BFD, Wale, Handsome Furs, Holy Fuck, and more
The grey can stay – it is, after all, summer in fog city – but you know you gotta get out. Leave home and get an earful of inspiration at, hey, maybe these worthwhile shows.
Parson Red Heads
The cute-as-a-button LA combo polishes up Cali folk rock for every parson, be it the preacher or Gram. With Cotton Jones. Tues/2, 8 p.m., $10. Cafe Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
Rosewood Thieves
Going their way? The New York indie rockers are California dreaming and in love with the sun. With Mississippi Man and Lemon Sun. Wed/3, 9 p.m., $7. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
Writing about electronic music in this Age Of Everything Always Available seems to be more and more an exercise in nostalgia. Artists are caught up mousing over the pull-down menu of the past, widgeting it into today's latest technology -- especially in the case of video mashups. (A similar-type thing happened with the debut of the CD, when the past was rummaged through for reissue-mania, and, as the Guardian's Johnny Ray Huston has pointed out, reissues still hold dollar-sway and carry much label cred in the record industry). Earlier this year, I attempted to fathom how Israeli YouTube mashup genius Kutiman was working the nostalgia tip -- not in the literally referential, crate-digging manner of DJ Shadow, but in a melancholic, sampladelic way all his own.
Now -- joy of joys, for real -- we have the latest video mashup by one of Kutiman's indisputable forebears, Fagottron. This, you cannot deny the literal nostalgia of. Not just because he's tapping directly into the mid-90s heyday of electronica -- but because he's freaking sampling the Disney movies of yesteryear. "The track is composed of a sine wave bass, custom drum sequences, and sounds recorded from the Disney film Mary Poppins," the YouTube more info box relays, deliciously. Funny, that was going to be my epitaph.
Fagottron, "Expialidocious"
And Fagy's not just unleashing his dizzying Avid skills on the super-famous flicks (although I'd love to see his version of Ariel) -- here's a couple he did two years ago that took me back to those misty "movie afternoons" in the grade-school gymansia of my youthfulness, albeit in slightly freakier form:
Sonic Reducer Overage: TV on the Radio, Bun B, Fischerspooner, Webbie, Floating Goat, Passion Pit, and more
Memorial Day weekend - the wind is down, and the moment has come to break out the hibachi, dust off those sassy hot pants, and kick back for at least a day or three. And of course, there's more worthy music to fit in there, in between the sunbathing, cookie-baking, and electroclashing.
Fischerspooner
Does the GE halo give me a double chin? And does it electroclash with the rubber tubing? The jaw-dropping live act whips out a dour, synthpop Entertainment, as well as a new stage show. Fri/22, 9 p.m., $29.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) (415) 421-8497.
TV on the Radio and Dirty Projectors
The praise-rattled TVs were peppy as all get out at Treasure Island fest last year - and here they come again with the better-than-ever Dirty Projs, which blew everyone away at SXSW this spring. Fri/22, 8 p.m., $30. Fox Theatre, 1807 Telegraph, Oakl. (415) 421-8497.
Everybody panic. Don't worry, electronic-symphonica mastermind Mason Bates, who I rave about in this week's issue, isn't gonna freak peeps out. But seriously, do not miss the premier of his orchestral suite for full orchestra and laptop, The B-Sides, which he'll be performing for three nights with the ever-game SF Symphony, Wed/20, Fri/22, Sat/23. After Friday night's performance (free with ticket!) you'll get ushered into a really cool secret space by Davies Symphony Hall for an afterparty, featuring Mason's Mercury Soul project, which kicks ambient-like trip-hop ass and will feature himself behind the decks, as well as some live, avant-garde surprises (and hottie conductor Benjamin Shwartz, *swoon*). If you haven't been to the symphony, or if you're in the mood for something spectacular oracular, this is the time to go.
Here's two views of Mason, aka DJ Masonic, at Carnegie Hall with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra in April, debuting the "Wharehouse Medicine" portion of The B-Sides.
The balcony view, complete with trippy visuals:
and here's from right down in the fray (I'm dying to know what the tiny grand piano behind his is for! Hello, Carl Stalling?) Note the dramatic use of drum pad:
I would be totally, regrettably remiss if I didn't also pump Bates' co-performer on the program, the heartbreakingly talented and just all around fierce Yuja Wang, who'll be performing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto #2, which at around the seven-minute-mark will honestly start to kill you with beauty. Girl's got skills.
Here's her performing at Carnegie Hall. Um, hi hotness.
Also featured: the majestically haunting, almost-4AD-foretelling Fourth Symphony by Sibelius, who's all the rage among young turk composers these days.
Mason Bates, Yuja Wang, and the SF Symphony
Wed/20, Fri/22, Sat/23
8 p.m., $35–$130
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness
(415) 552-8000 www.sfsymphony.org
By Marke B., who thinks very highly of his ears, if not his latest dance moves. But he'll keep trying. View the previous Nite Trax here.
There are currently three Jamie Joneses in the music world. Two of them are kind of cute -- but I'd never ever listen to them again. As fate would usually have it, the REALLY cute one is the one who's turning me out lately, and has just produced what may well be the summer 09 jam, if I was lame enough to predict such things. Ladies and gentlemen and ladies, the only Jamie Jones that counts:
But I'm really only interested in his music.
The song is "You!" -- an eight-plus minute slice of loveliness, what I would perhaps call subtle tech-soul, that blends a couple grin-worthy retro effects with some serious mixing-board control (loving the dribble-dabs of tinkling percussion). Everything falls into the right place and climbs above genre-tiredness into a burnished place all its own.
The U.S. expat Mr. Jones sews up album of the year honors by track one, after jogging barefoot through hell to conclude "Stains are my nationality." As kickoffs go, it's as dramatic as the The Queen is Dead's title track — apt, since he name-checks Morrissey. From there, Chatterton traverses Cure-like goth, Marley Marl-ready rap, contemporary Euro techno ... and Fleetwood Mac? "The Cockpit" is a Cabaret Voltaire-meets-Giorgio Moroder minimal epic from the perspective of a plane crash's ungrateful sole survivor. The final lines of "Pompadour" are genius.
Super Ego: Mophono, wet jocks, tiny spoons, lazers
By Marke B.
Some smooth and mellow Mophono pho' ya
Oh, the transient grunts and groans of the dance floor: Just got word yesterday that the eagerly awaited appearance of disco progenitor Nicky Siano at Paradise Lounge has been cancelled -- my deep throat tells me there were sound and venue concerns (although I love the 'Dise!). In any case, there's plenty of other things to hold your ear-nterest and get you bangin' this weekend. Besides my rundown in this week's Super Ego column, below are some more earth shakers and affairs.
-----------
He loves me, he loves me not
Wanna spoon?
I had absolutely no idea that those little plastics coffee spoons from McDonald's were banned because of illicit uses (or perceived one, anyway.) You'd think after all this time, plastic + noses = OK. But no. In any case, snort in luxurious style with the unveiling of a perfect publicity stunt: renowned hip mens' clothiers and artists Ju$t Another Rich Kid, Nice Collective, Terence Koh, and more have designed cute, exclusive, and most likely expensive little Bolivian helpers (watch that terrorism funding!). They'll be giving the dish at Harput's from 6pm-9pm tonight (expect beautiful people), and then there'll be a kiki afterparty at Triple Crown. Don't try to force your way into the stalls. It's all called "He loves me, he loves me not" which brings to mind a kinky game somehow.
Local future blap fave raves Lazer Sword are back from their whirlwind Euro tour with an uptempo live set to get you moving, supported by Bay man of intrinsic deep dance knowledge, Mophono at, yes, the Paradise. Put 'em up and get down, child -- and let's see if those speakers still work.
Why, yes, I DO host a wet jock strap contest. Come down to Bus Station John's retro bathhouse disco monthly, The Rod, at Deco this Friday around midnight and see me and Hunky Beau scare up a willing and wet bevy of gorgeous, unclad alternaqueer boys -- and see who'll win $100. (No muscle queens need apply, thanks.) Then stay and dance until 3am to the best disco you've only ever heard sampled in other songs before. It's fun and a little scary: frisson alert!
Fri/8, 10pm-3am, $7. Deco, 510 Larkin, SF. www.decosf.com
In addition to making music, Christopher Willits is a guiding force behind the art and experimental music site Overlap (www.overlap.org). In conjunction with Overlap's next event, I caught up with him by e-mail.
SFBGWhat was it like to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Ocean Fire (12k, 2008)?
Christopher Willits It was surreal. We fell into an oceanic trance, and a bunch of music suddenly emerged. Then a Godzilla-like sea monster morphed out of his piano and he vaporized it with his max patch.
SFBGYou've also worked with Brad Laner of Medicine. Are you an admirer of that (ahead-of-its-time) band?
CW Medicine [had] a mind-splittingly original sound — it was a soundtrack to many high school adventures. Now it's an absolute joy to be friends with Mr. Laner. Together we are the varsity band members (guitar I and II) of the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra. We're aiming for nationals next year.
SFBG What do you like about the Bay Area's close proximity to the ocean?
CW The smell of fresh wind, and dreams of flying great white sharks.
SFBGI saw a fave list of yours once that had Magma, the Carpenters' "Close to You" and Sun Ra's Lanquidity on it. Who is inspiring or obsessing you at present?
CW That is a timeless list — can I say them again? Let's add Morton Subotnick, Wild Bull (www.merlindarts.com), all Eliane Radigue, all Elvin Jones, John Coltrane, and that band that plays at El Rio on Sunday night.
SFBGYou recently toured in China, including a performance with images on ice. What did you discover?
CW I discovered a resilient community of artists and experimental musicians pushing against the grain (and firewall) of this mammoth country or force. They understand my history and what I'm doing — another win for Chinese bootlegs? I also found some of the best food ever: huajiao (flower pepper) with asparagus! But hold the boiled big brains. Those I'm definitely not into.
LISTEN/VISION 06 With Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, and Classical Revolution. Sun/10, 8 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016. www.overlap.org.
What can I say? I'm cute and often clueless -- and as attested below I'm perpetually on Spring Break. In the print edition of my Super Ego column in this week's Guardian I mistakenly put the DirtyBird Pajama Jam down for Saturday, when in fact it's Friday at Mezzanine. Full and correct preview below. Somebody spank me!
Wig out to J. Phlip on Friday night, download her 2008 !@#$%^& mix (which I'm still wrapping my head around) here.
DIRTYBIRD PAJAMA JAM
Ha ha ha, I feel so spring break. Famed local techno label Dirty Bird matches its goofy sensibility with a no-slumber party, bunny slippers and all. DJs Claude VonStroke, Worthy, Justin and Christian Martin, and up-and-comer J. Phlip bring the post-minimal hijinks, you bring the stripy drawers and stuffed E.T. dolls.
Wherein Marke B. does go on about dance music past and present. View the previous Nite Trax here.
In the current issue of the Guardian, I have a little devilish fun with white labels and tell a few possibly apocryphal tales of foundational electronic music label Warp Records' genesis. Before I multimedially augment that article a bit, here's a spectral white label that really calls up the toe-tingling ghost of the unknown in my third ear:
Reese, "Power Bass"
The 1990 white label rumbler above, whose B-side apparently played inside out, was produced by Detroit techno god Kevin "Master Reese" Saunderson -- he later released it under his E-Dancer guise. (When I hung with Kevin at last year's Detroit Electronic Music Festival, I believe he was drinking Black Label, however.)
My own former prize possession white label turned out to be "The Green Man" by Shut Up and Dance that I snagged from Detroit's amazing Buy Rite Records in 'round 1991-- somehow an unlabelled test press had found it's way from London and into my bin. Below is a vid of a promo copy version. Warning: Never, ever, let go of your records. I could retire a bit if I had this slice of vinyl on me now ....
Shut Up and Dance, "The Green Man"
Thank you, magic of youtube. OK, then ... Warp Records. It's their 20th this year, and in a typically nifty yet slightly desperation-whiffy marketing gimmick, you can vote online for your favorite Warp tracks to be included in their forthcoming anniversary comp.
"The music on this CD is fully 100 percent Analog — NO COMPUTER BULLSHIT PROGRAMS." With this liner note proclamation, Detroit's Omar S makes a strong case that, here in the 21st century, analog is the new acoustic when it comes to authenticity. His contribution to the Fabric mix series is all-original, just like Ricardo Villalobos'. Would it be sacrilege to say that, save for a wack vocal two, it smokes the Villalobos? Motor City techno still rolls.
The Norway-to-our-Bay connection is strong in this group, which bridges Bergen and San Francisco. No cosmic disco, though: Simone Rubi plays chanteuse over pop arrangements. The result never reaches the Cardigans' sublimity, but it matches the warmth of Lois and Marine Girls.
Throbbing Gristle blur the lines at the Regency Ballroom, 4/23. Photos by Morlock E.
It’s a veritable rogue’s gallery at the Regency Ballroom on April 23, every single statesperson of the Bay Area underground having emerged from their respective lairs for Throbbing Gristle, the first, the foremost industrial noise band come back to destroy the universe, one eardrum at a time. The last time I saw such a profusion of familiar faces was, well, last week at Leonard Cohen. And just like at Leonard Cohen, the faces around me bear expressions that are expectant, electric, slightly starstruck. Unlike Leonard Cohen though, the band launches first into a sweet little ditty penned in tribute to the Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, “Very Friendly”.
Genesis P-Orridge, hand out
“Could you imagine what might have happened if Myra Hindley and Ian Brady had met me and Cosey back than?” quips Genesis P-orridge, who wears the role of flamboyant frontperson like a comfortable pair of bright pink polka-dotted stockings. An array of “greatest hits” follows: “Persuasion”, “Something Came Over Me”, the infinitely creepy “Hamburger Lady”. The set may verge on this side of predictable, but honestly, these are the songs we all want to hear.
The venue lights stay on, loud; the sound system cranked, loud; Genesis P-orridge channeling Marianne Faithfull in a bright orange Stevie Nicks tunic, loud. More “disciplined” than dangerous, the evenly rhythmic computer-generated beats smack just as much of Coil as chaos unleashed. Still, at certain points in the evening, the relentless throb threatens to dislodge both my intestines and my equilibrium. “If I stand with my legs apart I get an erection,” I hear someone mutter. And ultimately, that’s the crux of this whole experience, this sonic onslaught. Industrial at its hard core is precisely the music of solitary erections, the music of intestinal distress, the music of bondage games, vertigo, and boots of shiny leather (just like Cosey’s). That said, all those iMacs onstage? Neither sexy nor disturbed. The blue-screened sea of iPhone photogs below me? Ditto. The price of progress, I suppose, disturbance demystified.
I've been living with SF dub stalwart Kush Arora's new release Dread Bass Chronicles in my headphones for a week now -- partly out of addiction to its golden production and throbbing bass (this shit will truly bang the dancefloor), but also because it's given me a lot to think about. Kush is part of the Surya Dub collective, which has become a Bay classic by melding bhangra raveups with dupstep wigouts at its monthly parties at Club Six. A couple years ago, Surya started throwing around the phrase "dread bass" to describe its direction -- more aggressive, more dancehall-oriented, less electronically psychedelic than other "worldly dubstep" nights -- and here we have the most definitive statement of dread bass to date. (OK, OK, dread bass was also a miniature jungle movement in the early '90s, but nevermind that.)
Suitably, that statement comes from Surya's most audio-aggressive member, who claims death metal and punk among his early influences, and who told the Guardian's Tomas Palermo last year that he believes his family's roots in the often-volatile Punjab region between India and Pakistan breathe through his music. "That's why I like bhangra. It has an element of aggression and sadness," he said.
In this, Kush's seventh release, however, most bhangra references are almost completely subsumed into ornate background decorations to the 11 tracks' insistently energetic thudding and boasting. Yes, there are some bubbling tablas and burbling, looped flutes -- but it's Kush's other Bay nightlife association, with Sunday night dub and dancehall mainstay Dub Mission, that's more telling here.
Now two years old, I Put A Record On (Monika Enterprise, 2007) is a record worth lingering over. In addition to being the first solo release from Berlin-based musical gadabout Gudrun Gut, it's remarkable for how unhurried Gut was in getting around to it: she's been appearing on recordings and taking part in bands, including a very early incarnation of industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, for more than 25 years. Her intervening projects give her the aura of a post-punk Zelig: the all-female punk band Malaria! formed in 1981, toured with the Birthday Party, put out records on Belgian boutique label Les Disques du Crepuscule, and performed with Nina Hagen at Studio 54. That the group's "Kaltes Klares Wasser" would later be covered by Chicks on Speed was a foregone conclusion.
The synthy Matador followed Malaria!'s collapse, but Gut's ear eventually led her, like any good punk, to techno. With typical great timing too: Berlin had just undergone a techno surge, spearheaded by local duo and label Basic Channel. Abandoning the constraints of playing in a rock-derived idiom in favor of more uncharted territory, Gut also had the good fortune to run across Thomas Fehlmann, a producer with post-punk roots who had recently collaborated with Alex Paterson's downtempo pace-setters the Orb. The two founded Ocean Club, producing a weekly genre-stomping radio show as well as parties that paired up the likes of experimental techno producer Thomas Brinkmann and splay-shirted southern gothic aficionado Nick Cave.
Gudrun Gut, "Move Me"
None of this is new information, yet all of it is useful in figuring out how something like I Put A Record On came to be. It's beguiling, though free of big emotions — a left-field album that functions as an homage to the hypnotic state that arrives when you're sucked into your favorite records. The best indication of its intentions is provided by the sole cover, of Smog's "Rock Bottom Riser." Gut's multitracked delivery, over a pistoning and downtrodden bass drum, is affectless enough to make Bill Callahan's stoic delivery on the original seem fraught. But by the end, she's wracked by giggles, as flecks of color appear like dried spittle around the monochrome production's edges. Gut is not an innovator: both she and Callahan are committed to the old, inexhaustible pleasure of listening, regardless of genre. And this is exactly what allows them to give back to their respective genres, if we care to name them, some missing essence.
FIRST PERSON MAGAZINE BENEFIT PARTY FEATURING GUDRUN GUT with Thomas Fehlmann, Grecco Guggenheit, and Nate Boyce. Fri/24, 10 p.m., $10-$15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880. www.firstpersonmag.com/events.htm
Sonic Reducer Overage: Vivian Girls, Ghost, Spinal Tap, How to Destroy the Universe, and more
Take the wheel: Vivian Girls' "Tell the World."
How to destroy a weekend - or, for that matter, a weeknight? Sticky, sweaty, and sill up for fun - SF knows how it's done. Telling ya, there's so much more to see and hear than we could fit into print.
Dry Spells
Folk rock gets another angelic kick upstairs when the Bay Area band gets onstage. With Pillow Queens and Vultures. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
The Pets
The Oaktown garage-rock threesome preps for its European journey. With International Espionage and Master Volume. Wed/22, 9 p.m., $5. Kimo's, 1351 Polk, SF. (415) 885-4535.
I first saw Dan Deacon perform at Oberlin College's venue the ’Sco, a den of nascent creativity that eventually brought me to a city sometimes referred to by the same three-letter abbreviation. Deacon was there, balding and bearded, his glasses taped to his head, his muffin-top iced by a bright pink T. He set up his mad scientist's table of electronics in the audience's usual domain. Different colored cords sprang out in every direction and there were multiple mics for his one-man show. Lit by a neon green skull, Deacon began stretching, then implored the audience to stretch. They did.
Not only did we all stretch with Deacon, we danced with Deacon. For a generation that has been taught that to move is to be judged — or whatever excuse keeps scenesters so static — such an act is similar to the miracle of the Virgin Mary getting pregos. Deacon's inhibition-less philosophy was infectious: not only were the undergrads dancing, they were willing to participate in a high-five conga line and compete in a dance-off.
Dan Deacon, "Crystal Cat"
Although the complexities of Deacon's music become clearer when heard on an iPod, the experience verges on seizure-inducing. Live, the same music becomes hypnotic. Like his earlier work, Deacon's newest album Bromst (Carpark) is as much a singular composition as a collection of tracks, which should make it exhilarating to encounter. In concert, he has arranged for it to be played by a 15-piece ensemble. Now that he's decidedly bigger — in band, popularity, and girth — it's hard to predict how the intimacy and audience participation aspects of his performance will be affected. But it is sure to be a blast. And a bromst. (Deacon said he made up the word for his album title because it doesn't have a meaning and he likes the way it sounds.)
DAN DEACON With Future Islands and Teeth Mountain. Thurs/23, 9 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall. 859 O'Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com
I've already freaked out to the atmospheric dubstep track "Maybes" by Mount Kimbie, and now comes along this just as lovely underground hit by London's Pangaea, "Memories" -- as remixed by Aaron Jerome, via Shook:
Sampling Gladys Knight, of course, is one of the easier ways for an earworm to burrow into my frozen heart.
Alas, though it's on every respecting dubstep DJs playlist, "Memories" probably won't be released singularly -- groove to it, and his too brief mix for Mary Anne Hobbs' Experimental Showcase at his MySpace.
I think that along with "Tea Leaf Dancers" by Flying Lotus -- was anyone else at his amazing show at Mighty last weekend? I told you FlyLo was the smilingest DJ ever -- well, we've got the beginnings of a lovely ambient dubstep mixtape on our hands ....
That unflappably chipper "progressive kuduro" Portuguese foursome, Buraka Som Sistema -- who I write about in my latest Super Ego clubs column -- may have been joking when they said they based their truly wonderful smash "Kalemba (Wegue-Wegue)" track on a misheard lyric from an old house mix of More Kante's late 1987 classic "Yeke Yeke." Just for fun, here's "Kalemba," then the Afro Acid mix of "Yeke Yeke" (whose stock has risen enormously since techno god Richie Hawtin has claimed it as a signature tune to close out his sets), and afterwards some genuine Angolan kuduro from rapper Puto Lilas.
You can see in the Puto Lilas that the original kuduro form recounts sprawling tales of street life, something Buraka truncates to focus on a more danceable takeaway. (Incidentally, Buraka's name comes from a misspelling of Buraca -- a suburb, or frequesia, of Lisbon. And "som sistema" is also a mishearing, a bastardization, this time of "soundsystem." Buraka's global-minded dance floor antics really are subtexted by a kind of "map of mishearing.")
PS: If you dig the Afro Acid, the man behind it, basically the originator of acid house, DJ Pierre, will be at Vessel on Thu/23 with his Acid Afro project, 22 years after the "Yeke Yeke" mix came out, yikey yikes!
Sonic Reducer Overage: Silversun Pickups, Bloc Party, Atmosphere, Kylesa, free shows, and so much more
Manic panic: Silversun Pickups' "Panic Switch."
Lucky you, you aren't broiling in the desert at Coachella - you're keeping your cool in SF, and boy, you've got a lot to keep your bad self outta trouble. So partake in the Coachella spillover - and then some...
Intelligence
"Icky Baby" is in the eye of the beholder - and the mind of the Intelligence, those hard-driving, gristly lo-fi smarty-pants. With Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $8. Annie's Social Club, 917 Folsom, SF. (415) 974-1585.
Loop!Station
Loops, vocals, and cello are Robin Coomer's and Sam Bass' tools, arriving now with a new CD.
Fri/17, 8 and 10 p.m., $10. Yoshi's, 1330 Fillmore, SF. (415) 655-5600.
Handsome Furs find a chilled passion amid airports, hotel rooms in 'Face Control'
HANDSOME FURS
Face Control
(Sub Pop)
By Kimberly Chun
Suicide-al synths haunt Handsome Furs’ Face Control like a spectral presence, humming almost inaudibly in the background of empty airport lounges, digital fingerprints barely visible in the tour snaps of cigarette burn holes and morning-afters. That sound is one way to map the sleek surfaces of this recording by Dan Boeckner, who also runs with the Wolf Parade pack, and wife Alexei Perry -- the inevitable sophomore disc derived from band-related travels judging from song titles like “Passport Kontrol” and “Legal Tender.”
Is the New Order-inspired “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything” about Handsome Furs’ rider? Does an album about touring indicate a bankruptsy of ideas? Perhaps, but Handsome Furs make the best of it, like smart gypsies rolling with each throw of the dice. Swiftly forged and just as quickly dissembled alliances, jet-lagged confusion, overly chilled rooms and relations, and that ever-motoring-forth motorik beat are the duo’s currency here. Cynicism and paranoia -- and the idea of face control among certain strangers amid possible danger, as well as the different faces one presents onstage, on blog, on Facebook -- pervade the not-so-light-hearted Bo Diddley bop of “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” Matters veer toward the Kills’ side of the torrid-twosome equation on, for instance, the muddily electric “Evangeline.”
Late of the Pier is catchy while still retaining an essential core of flighty, fidgety weirdness. With its askew harmonics, squelchy synths, and wildly off-key vocals, Fantasy Black Channel (Parlophone, 2008) marks the big label debut of a band bent on peddling an oddball sound to the masses, to say nothing of a kitschy aesthetic. The album's cover presents a haphazard assortment of drums, kits, cords, and keyboards scattered atop outcroppings of granite — an apt visual for the band's chaotic approach. Some tracks suggest a recorder switched to on-mode at the site of a train wreck, while others rescue some order from the mayhem. Discerning musical adherents will peg the group as contemporaries of outfits like Metronomy, Hot Chip, and Klaxons. This quartet is inventive and almost extreme in how far they're willing to take their sprawling multipart sagas, instrumental transitions and elaborate glam guitar breakdowns. Plain-jane indie rock outfits have nothing on them.
Two quick takes on Junior Boys, who perform tomorrow with Max Tundra at Bimbo's (Thu/16, 7 p.m., $18. Bimbo's 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. www.bimbos365club.com)
Junior Boys
Begone Dull Care
(Domino)
Johnny Ray Huston:
The knives are out at least a little for the critics' darling duo, and to be fair, this third full-length falters a bit in following the breakthrough of 2007's So This is Goodbye. But "Work" might be Junior Boys' best composition, and "Sneak a Picture" is simply sweet. A reward for those who care enough to dig: the title and lyrics braid through the life and work of Canadian animator Norman McLaren.
Johan Agebjörn
featuring Lisa Barra Mossebo
(Lotuspike)
Paging Vangelis: the songwriter and studio whiz behind Sally Shapiro (and official Glass Candy remixer) goes new age, replete with the requisite peaceful, tranquil blurry cover art. I'm not as enthused about this as I am about the news that a new Shapiro album is due out this year. Loaded with music, Agebjörn's site also links to the site for Diskokaine, a label which put out some early Shapiro songs. I say this because DIskokaine's site has a great Atari- or Commodore-era look -- and is annoying as hell.
Johan Agebjörn featuring Lisa Barra, "Unitas vitae" (Live in Linköping)
Stereo Somewhere in the Night
(Minimal Wave 2008/ Carrere 1982)
"She's gotta be there, as you walk in the dark
Number four, at your door, number four
You're ost in the heaze, she's gotta be there...
Somewhere in the night"
1980s duo Stereo's criss-cross sunglasses put Kanye's Venetian shades to shame. Minimal Wave delivers once again with this synth jam gem. I'm on the lookout for another recent Minimal Wave release, a vinyl-only collection by Linear Movement. But Stereo -- not to be confused with Kompakt figurehead Wolfgang Voigt's early recording project of the same name -- has surprising songwriting chops. My fave track might be "Nowhere in the Island," which uses the echo vocal effect so beloved by circa-1983 new romantic acts to great effect. It includes saxophone and yet still has a potent air of melancholy. I wonder if these two French guys every rubbed pointy shoulders with Bernard Fevre of Black Devil Disco Club.
Get ready, kids -- this Saturday night's all about the new-bass (and I go in deep on it in this week's Super Ego clubs column). Do like I said and hit up both mindblowing parties featuring this amazing nightlife sound of now.
Ghislain Poirier, helloooo
In one corner is Montreal's "King of Bounce" Ghislain Poirier, whose Bounce Le Gros monthly in the MTL not only helped launch the careers of such wiggy Canadian future bass purveyors as Megasoid and the tres-tres atmospheric Sixtoo, but also put Quebec on the world dance music map. Ghislain will storm the Tormenta Tropical monthly's electro-cumbia castle at Elbo Room.
Below are two video examples of how Poirier wonderfully "plays it both ways" as it were -- super-danceable and brainily abstract -- with the dancehall boinger "Blazin'" and the headphone freaker "Hit & Red." The third vid, "Don't Smile, It's Postmodern" is his awesome kinda middle ground (although the visuals are waaaay goofy.)
Ghislain Poirier, "Blazin'" featuring Face-T
Ghislain Poirier, "Hit & Red"
Ghislain Poirier, "Don't Smile"
AND in this other corner, righteous kings of woofer-blowing abstractitude Flying Lotus, Kode9, and the Bug hit Mighty for a jam called "The Future." I'll let the videos after the jump give you an idea of each of their genius individual styles, but DO NOT MISS THIS PARTY.
In the future when vids are vinyl, and vinyl is -- what? La Chanson de Roland, maybe -- people might claim that Kutiman, the Israeli Vegas Pro genius who collages up backwater YouTube vids into breathtaking electronic atmospheric joyrides (see the complete work at http://thru-you.com), was the DJ Shadow of the '00s.
Kutiman, "I M New"
I think those people would be wrong (and there are already a number of them). Searching through the all the minor dreck of YouTube to fish out suitable usable samples and build them into destabilized microsymphonies can surely be compared to Shadow's impeccable crate-diving technique. And the dense sound both derive from their purely sample-driven compositions elicits a similar melancholy (why is that?). But Shadow traded in rarity nostalgia -- who the hell else had that 78, man? -- whereas Kutiman's brilliant corners are purely of the moment and completely accessible to all. Except for one of them, now set to "private," ha.
Kutiman is also way more international in musical scope than Shadow -- something perhaps more necessary in our globalized age, that Shadow could only hint towards in his Endtroducing... '90s heyday -- which brings Kutiman more in line with the likes of that other frequent Bay boy Amon Tobin, another sample-based innovator who opened the West's ears to a different native music contextuality and who eschewed nostalgia in favor of up-to-the-minute headtrip breaks.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Snoop Dogg, Eugene Mirman, Jeremy Jay, Skin Horse, and so much more
San Francisco just can't, just won't stop. More musical - and comedic - worthies than one can jam into print.
The Get Up Kids
These lesser-known monsters of emo, progenitors of punk-pop, are back. With Approach. Thurs/2, 8 p.m., $26-$29. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750.
Taken from SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour -- on stands in the Guardian now. Interview by Marke B. Photo by Pat Mazzera. Art Direction by Mirissa Neff. Mens room courtesy of Matador.
Ultraviolet, Kozee, Roommate, Rob Cannon, and Blackheart
To say that the woofer-rumbling, ragga-ripping dubstep sound has exploded on the club scene in the past few years is an understatement almost as low as the genre's freakiest frequencies. Dubstep seems perfect for our hyper-multicultural, urban-nomadic age, blending street rhythms with the most intricate laptop sonic technology available. It's especially perfect for the Bay, with its shimmering blend of moody menace and artistic bombast, and has duly been embraced by a number of DJs here, many with roots that stretch back to the early days of 2-step, drum 'n bass, and even rave.
DJ Ultraviolet (pictured in red, at left), heads up the fab two-year-old RedLine dubstep collective, and has been bringing her immaculate technique and overflowing energy to the decks in San Francisco since 1997. She was a seminal player in the drum 'n bass and breakbeat scene, as part of the Sleeveless collective with the Femmes Fatales, and was associated with the legendarily raucous Sister DJ crew. As a true vinyl fetishist, she was being booked at the tender age of 19 to play jungle at underground '90s raves and played a part in the Future Breaks FM (miss you!) juggernaut of the early aughts.
Now, along with the wonderfully gifted DJ Kozee, her "second in command," Ultraviolet reps the burgeoning female dubstep explosion, producing tracks and bringing a touch of grimy glamour to the scene with the MakeOut Sessions, RedLine's regular blowout at Matador. The upcoming installment of MakeOut features Matty G of Santa Cruz (www.myspace.com/mattygbeatz) pumping tracks from his new album, Take You Back.
ULTRAVIOLET Kozee and I, who do a lot of the event planning and are working on a big project together; Babylon System (www.myspace.com/thebabylonsystem), a.k.a Roomate and No Thing, is one of the top production crews in dubstep, currently on tour in Europe; the three DJs of Blackheart (www.myspace.com/lordsofblackheart) from Oakland are our newest addition; DJ Rob Cannon (www.myspace.com/djrobcannon), our youngest member; our L.A. residents Emu and Pawn, who are also a part of the SMOG crew down there, and on our business end, Cyn, Bruxxy, and Dymphna.
SFBG Do you think the dubstep sound is reaching a critical mass? Is the scene in danger of getting stale?
SXSW: Petering out with PJ Harvey, AIDS Wolf, Moriarty, Sons of Albion, and more
By the light of the moon: PJ Harvey and John Parrish at Stubb's.
South by Southwest peters out with... Peter, Bjorn and John. Actually, not really - I dig those Scandinavian whistle-bait popsters and they were playing multiple shows - but there were other less familiar artists and rare diversions to seek out on Saturday, March 21, in Austin, Texas.
The sweet 'n' sunny Saturday morn started with slowly with some quality, low-price thrifting at Texas Thrift Store (Joanna Newsom and folk-psych gals would have appreciated the dusty rose, homemade patchwork vest and nautilus-shell purse) and a visit to western wear superstore Shepler's, both off I-35. Then off to the Convention Center - which, by the end of the week during each SXSW, starts to seem a little like home (that is, if home was strewn with fat bundles of The Austin Chronicle and free bottles of Fuze green tea). There, Neil Young's famed manager Elliott Roberts and his documentarian Larry Johnson talked up Young's forthcoming series of box sets, starting with Neil Young Archives Volume 1 (1963-1972), on BluRay, DVD, and CD. Pretty amazing stuff - the BluRay edition will offer interactive components that will allow Young and company to offer up new photos, music, and film when they become available (one example, Robert said, are the Mynah Birds recordings made by Young and Rick James, which aren't the now-locked box set - they just managed to license the tracks from Motown so when they're available the BluRay owners will be notified and can likely download them directly).
SXSW: Quick fixes with Flower Travellin' Band, Fleet Foxes' J. Tillman, Garotas Suecas, and more
Funky love: Brazil's Garotas Suecas seduces at Emo's.
SXSW memories - fading now, but hey, it's only Friday. Among the highlights yesterday, March 18: Brazil's Garotas Suecas - the bright-eyed, fun 'n' funky heirs to Booker T. or at least Sharon Jones. My Portuguese is a bit nonexistent, but we got the picture loud and clear, thanks to the ensemble's hyper-expressive vocalist.
Even more mind-blowing: Flower Travellin' Band at Smokin' Music. The band sometimes best known for its nekkid, motorcycle-riding album shot finally made it to the states for the last of five shows on its first U.S. tour. Previous sojourns have been scuttled for various reasons, but wow! Deeply eccentric power-centered psych-stoner rock - Hideki Ishima's huge sitarla is only part of the story, generating resonant, almost boomingly bass-like sounds. Have to see more of them if/when they get to SF.
Massive massive: Hideki Ishima wields his mighty sitarla.
SXSW: Q queue, Devo, Dirty Projectors, Girls, and more
Chapel of the chiming guitar: SF's Girls fill the Central Presbyterian Church March 19.
Impressions - watercolor, guyliner-streaked, skinny jeans-clad impressions - of SXSW. Here are a few from the frontlines on what turned out to be a stellar Thursday, March 19: I may have missed the Jane's Addition reunion with Eric Avery at the Rock the Bunny after-hours bash at an old Safeway, but who needs the LA grunge-era implants when there's so much happening elsewhere?
Rumor has it that Kanye West will be headlining the last Fader Fort show Saturday - a sweltering mecca of lines and bees drawn by the spilled fruity cocktails, out on the other side of I-35 - and that Neil Young is in town. Otherwise the vague official word round the Austin Convention Center is that attendance is down about 10 percent, though artist attendance is up. "Not bad, considering" - the new buzz words?
Charm (in)offensive: Quincy Jones gives the SXSW keynote.
More Mochi: 215 the Freshest Kids hurl some words at Daly City Records' Pre-SXSW/St. Patrick's Day Party at Beso Cantina March 17. All photos by Kimberly Chun.
Or is a whimper more accurate. Yes, the signs are in the air and in the program, as we scan the pages of the official guide and the unofficial day party lists. Welcome to South by Southwest on the downlow, rocked by the turbulent winds blowing off a global economic meltdown.
The big conference keynote names like Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Robert Plant, and Lou Reed? This year we get the uber-talented and esteemed but nonetheless much less sexy - sorry, Quince - Quincy Jones. Instead of the Stooges and Morrissey, we will have onstage interviews with Carlene Carter and the Hold Steady. The corporate banners are still here, but with a not-quite-as-splashy, diminished presence - just where is that MySpace South By Party Bus? The major labels and glossy publications are quieter than usual - whither the Vice party? Is there a Vice party?
Instead Rachael Ray - wholesome indie rock fan incarnate - is serving up the New York Dolls and the aforementioned Hold Steady at her showcase. Hey, after all, we're all eating in these days - we can use some new recipes. This is SXSW on the cheap, forced onto a low-budg diet by a still-suffering music biz. Yes, music continues unabated, but can its makers afford to make it out here this year? The underground bashes around SXSW appear to slowing down or maybe they just aren't on the public radar - in any case I still want to make Todd P's Ms. Bea free all-ages shows and the French Legation outdoor bills - now Arthur-free (R.I.P.). We'll see if there's anything as fun as Dan Deacon and Fucked Up's guerrilla throwdowns shaking up the university campus and the bridge, after hours.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Farflung, MSTRKRFT, Eleni Mandell, the Homosexuals, and mo'
Men at work: MSTRKRFT's "Work on You."
Yes, San Francisco, you're unstoppable. As usual, the city by the Bay bays - nay - howls at the moon. More worthy sounds that didn't make it to print.
Judgement Day
The Bay Area band is using the tools of Bach and Beethoven for... devil horn-throwin' eve-ill! Wed/18, 8 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
Eleni Mandell and Victor Krummenacher
The LA singer-songwriter strikes an arch, jazzy note with her praised **Artificial Fire** (Zedtone) and the ex-**Guardian** art director digs deep with **Patriarch’s Blues** (MagneticMotorworks, 2008). Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $12-$15. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
Last Days climbs "North" into shimmering electronic shoegaze
By Todd Lavoie
LAST DAYS
The Safety Of The North
(n5MD)
Keep your best headphones handy -- you're going to want them for spins of The Safety Of The North, the third and most recent full-length release from Edinburgh, Scotland-based Graham Richardson and his ambient/electro-folk Last Days project. As ominous as the artist's AKA might be, the disc is nowhere near as fearful or nightmarish as one might expect. Rather, the music found here is intimate and ruminative, frequently glowing from ripples of electronics and shoegaze-y guitar textures. Delicate acoustic finger-picking and understated piano meditations add further flair to these largely-instrumental womblike pieces, and the occasional insertion of the human voice into the mix helps immensely in making this a thoughtful, emotional listen.
And while the proceedings sometimes veer towards melancholia, it's a strangely comforting, sit-around-and-ponder-on-a-grey-day stripe of melancholia we're talking about here -- a little maudlin and wistful, yes, but ultimately cathartic in the end. Even the cold chills which bluster forth from the disc's lower register from time to time offer their own curiously cocooning sensations to the listener -- especially with the help of a good pair of headphones. The Safety Of the North is something worthy of surrender -- of succumbing to its many hums and whirrs and whipping auroras of shimmering light.
There's a back story to the album, though it isn't required knowledge for appreciating its many charms: Richardson composed these 15 songs around the themes of of change, struggle, and hope. Specifically, it concerns a young girl, Alice, and her family. Disenchanted with city living, they decide to “move north” (the Arctic Circle, judging from a couple of contextual clues provided along the way) to find a simpler, quieter day-to-day life. Such major upheavals usually don't come about without their share of challenges, however. Thus Richardson has constructed a story-arc which from sadness to hope to struggle to sadness to hope once again. More or less so, anyway. Again, since this is mostly an instrumental recording, the itinerary on this emotional journey is up to the listener, I suppose. Still, the prevailing themes of The Safety Of The North -- change, struggle, hope -- remain palpable, even without too much assistance from lyrics. Forgive me for trotting out the “cinematic” tag (I know that the label gets used quite regularly for any sort of wordless music which manages to create vivid, stirring images) but it honestly does apply to Richardson's music. Even if concrete images fail to come to mind, the creation of particular moods is tough to miss.
"A DJ mix that stands alone as an album is a rare thing, but leave it to Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ/rupture, to make one, as he has with Uproot (Agriculture)," wrote the Guardian's Brandon Bussolini last year. "Deeply, er, rooted in the bass plate tectonics of dubstep and cut with the finest in eclectic samples, ranging from experimentalist Ekkehard Ehlers to lazer bass don Ghislain Poirier, Uproot rolls deep with dubbed-out ambience, but DJ/rupture is just as happy to turn things upside down, as when he plunks down Ehlers' gorgeous string loop, "Plays John Cassavetes, Pt. 2," around the mix's halfway point. And if bangers of the future don't sound like "Gave You All My Love (Matt Shadetek's I Gave You All My Dub Remix)," which subs out dub's organic space for Fisher-Price primary-color contrasts that split the brain evenly in two, I'm not sure it's a future worth living in."
I'd have to agree with all of that, but also emphasize DJ/rupture's extremely thrilling versatility when it comes to global musical styles with regards to both his recordings and live sets. That's why I'm tickled hot pink that he's putting together a special cumbia set for this Saturday's Tormenta Tropical with the Bersa Discos boys, who've consistently stirred some of the world's best DJs into their electro-cumbia-hop stew. Tormenta Tropical was bangin' last month, and this one should be a real ruptured doozy.
Yep, queeroids, it's one of those rare and muy delicioso head-to-heads that a nightlife writer lives for: This Saturday night, one of SF's biggest hot dyke parties, Cockblock, squares off against the highly anticipated launch of a giant new alternative fag party, Cockfight. That's right:
VS.
Could it get any better? Only if you trade your GluStik for paint thinner.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Trail of Dead, Asobi Seksu, Gunslingers, and more
Wake and bake: ...And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Dead's "Another Morning Stoner."
It all sounds so ethereal this week: dream-pop, shoegaze, and even, well, ...And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Dead. Here, you'll know us by these breadcrumbs - and perhaps you'll find a few intriguing musical diversions to check out on a chilly night.
Azeda Booth
Enter the echo chamber with the Calgary, Canada, threesome, then look for its music for the Bay's Absolutely Kosher imprint. Wed/11, 10 p,m., $6. Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. (415) 550-6994.
Elvis Perkins in Dearland
The Hudson Valley likes it sweet and low: this blues-folk combo likes to riddle their indie with Nawlins second-line lyrical soul. Wed/11, 9:30 p.m., $13-$15. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
I just came upon this 2k7 vid of the best-club-ever-after-Paradise-Garage Body and Soul tour in Tokyo. And I don't know if it's the beauty of DJ Joe Clausell's knob-tweaking, the pain of the recent Depression, the gay-soul-gorgeousness of Dan Hartman and Loleatta Holloway's barnstormer duet, or the sight of hundreds of off-their-nut Japanese boppers singing "Relight My Fire" -- but I'm bursting into tears.
Body & Soul Live in Tokyo Open Air 2007
Those kids are so amped up that by the time of the breakdown ("I'm strong enough to walk on through the night") they can't shout any louder. Srsly, it's time for a house comeback. There's already a couple of underground roving house revivals going down in NYC, and Body & Soul itself will rock Webster Hall there this Sunday. Let's pick it up SF!
We could do worse that pack Vessel on Thursday night for a very rare appearance by way-more-than-legendary Body & Soulmate Francois K.
Hip bone to knee bone: Fujiya and Miyagi to bust out contagious blip-rock at the Independent
By Danica Li
On first listen, you wouldn't think Fujiya and Miyagi were composed of a couple of mild-mannered British blokes. The name says Japanese, the influences say krautrock, but the music, defying all attempts at ethnic pidgeon-holing, just sounds weird.
Formed in 2000 after David Best (he's Fujiya) and Steve Lewis (and he's Miyagi) met warming benches at the local Sunday league football kick-around, the duo released their debut in 2002 before dropping abruptly off the screen for about half a decade. Then came Transparent Things in 2006, and, following that, effusive praise concerning the band's craft by Pitchfork and Mojo.
For a minute there I became enraged at the thought I was missing out on the latest drink sensation. Everyone had these shiny cartons in their hands as my mind raced, fantasizing about all the possibilities. What could that be? Oddly, my head had me convinced it was some sort of coconut concoction. No, wait, what’s that trendy fruit right now? Acai berry! That had to be it.
After all, wine in a box had long since become passe. My jealousy abated only when I realized it was merely a carton of Plant it Water. Those things were everywhere. Still, the evening wasn’t about sponsorship. No, this festival was about the music. Now just a blur of a memory, bars, clubs, and venues alike opened their doors last week to welcome musicians (and music types who like to live vicariously through them) for Noise Pop’s 17th showcase in weirdo San Francisco and beyond. Here’s my personal account:
Sonic Reducer Overage: Ghostly, M. Ward, Har Mar Superstar, and so much more
Woof! Har Mar Superstar's "DUI."
You're stormy, San Francisco - yet you still partay like no other city. Here's even more worthy music - more than we could squeeze into print.
Har Mar Superstar
Sean Tillmann, Sean Na Na - hey whatever your name is: we know you got the stuff to write songs for the Cheetah Girls. With the New Trust and the Limousines. Wed/5, 8 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.
M. Ward
She and Him? No, him! The former South Bay teacher has made a pretty swell name for himself - though I'd love from him to break out of his Hold Time (Merge) shell.
Wed/5, 8 p.m., $29.50. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. (415) 563-6504.
Color me evocative: Christopher Willits' "Colors Shifting."
Ghostly International Live
Michna, Tycho, Christopher Willits, and other phantoms party like it’s the label’s 10-year anniversary. With the Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko, Deru, and Eliot L. Fri/6, 10 p.m. doors, $15-$20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.
Are you Loney Dear? The Swedish band takes a ride into the darkness
LONEY DEAR
Dear John
(Polyvinyl)
By Todd Lavoie
Can a simple punctuation change make such a big difference? Serious business for the wordsmiths and grammarians of the world, but I'd reckon maybe also for Emil Svanängen, the sweet falsetto behind the Loney Dear moniker. Up until recently, the Swedish vocalist had been known for two things in particular: sunshine-kissed happy-pop and a clunky ol' comma dropped thud-like in the middle of his alias.
Alas, Loney, Dear is no more - having bid b-bye to that pesky punctuation mark, he also seems to have reined in the giddiness quite a bit, as documented on his latest, Dear John. Intended as “the final piece in a five-album puzzle,” the disc offers considerably more melancholia than before, along with a cleaner, more intimate production.
News from Recombinant Media Labs, over the transom yesterday:
"As some of you may or may not know, the Recombinant Media Labs facility located south of Market on Brannan Street in San Francisco closed its doors last spring. No formal announcements were made at that time due to legal complexities surrounding the closing. No further remarks will be made on this matter, but I think we can all agree that the RML Soma facility will be greatly missed. For those who are curious about what the future hold for Recombinant Media Labs please be on notice: RML is back in view.
"After Asphodel, Ltd. gave birth and support to the worldwide Recombinant Festivals of the '90s, and then to the artist residency lab from 2005 through 2007 the RML nomadic initiative re-emerged after traveling in '08 between Europe and North America, seeking new nodes of operation for performance, installation and exhibition. RML has moved on with fresh partnerships and independent alliances to resurface in a number of international configurations, which will be announced in the seasons to come.
'Clear': Falling in with Juan Atkins, Dam Funk, and HOTTUB at Paradise Lounge
By Andre Torrez
I entered SoMa’s Paradise Lounge for the first time this past Valentine’s Day, startled by an unexpected fashion show - it was scheduled, I just didn’t know about it - oddly set to the music of the Jackson 5. And it wasn’t your typical “ABC," or “I Want You Back." No, that wouldn’t have fit the atmosphere at all. It was one of their less obvious '70s grooves, something a little grittier and less innocent, so props to the DJ who demonstrated the intuition to foreshadow an evening of freaks on the floor.
The brief parade of design provided a blur of a background as we settled into the club. With drinks in tow, my friends and I made our way upstairs to get a better view above the stage. Before we knew it, HOTTUB, Oakland’s answer to queercore, was shakin’ its shit all over the place. If memory serves me right, the group has referred to a few of its tracks as real “pussy bangers." Perhaps that’s a suggestion for what to do while listening to their music. I’m not really sure.
Wait a minute, it's February? Sheesh. In the spirit, perhaps, of our recently bipolar weather systems and my on-again off-again memory banks, I've been raving in my cubicle to two disparate tracks all week -- one a tingly, moody laptop dubstep (lapstep?) zonker by Mount Kimbie:
Mount Kimbie, "Maybes"
And the other some good ol-fashioned achingly lovely wronged-woman house by Teddy Douglas of the Basement Boys, with his frequent collaborator, the immaculately voiced Margaret Grace. I've never really been a fan of Teddy's basic-seeming beats, but this one really comes together around the three-minute mark, and grows and flows like a classic track by Quentin Harris (who actually cribbed quite a bit off the old Teddy, melody-wise):
Neither of which will probably be played at any of the choice upcoming parties below, but hey -- a miracle mashup in my wobbly head can be dreamed and deemed righteous, no? Check these out, and also more in my latest Super Ego clubs column. Do whatcha like!
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ROLLER DISCO PARTY
In absence of a nearby rink, rollerskating parties have found a new home in nightclubs and galleries. Just watch out for those warped floors! Do the bump, indeed. SF Indie Fest is throwing a Big Lebowski-themed shindig on wheels at CellSpace, with tunes by the Black Rock Roller Disco camp. Rentals provided - snowball and bromance optional. Fri/13, 9 p.m., $10, $5 with costume. CellSpace, 2050 Bryant, SF. www.cellspace.org
Lush 'n' loopy: Juana Molina to blow out her sound with a full band in SF
By Todd Lavoie
Prepare to be riveted - loop-and-layer-loving Argentine experimentalist Juana Molina will be bringing her bewilderingly intricate electronic/acoustic hybrids to the stage of the Great American Music Hall Friday, Feb. 13.
If you've wondered how the impossibly layered constructions of her recordings could ever translate to the live setting - here's your chance. Having caught her solo Swedish Hall performance from a couple of years ago, I can attest to her ability to mesmerize. Armed with an acoustic guitar and a battery of electronics and effects pedals, she didn't merely perform her songs - instead, she built them from the ground up, laying down basic components at the beginning of each song and gradually adding them together one by one.
Does Coachella or Bonnaroo have the better lineup?
By Danica Li
It's about time that the lineups for the two biggest of the bigwig music festivals on the continent, Coachella and Bonnaroo, leaked online, precipitated by a now traditional annual flurry of bizarre Internet rumors, faux photo-manipped posters, and jittery, cross-fingered posts on Stereogum. Naturally there's plenty of cross-pollination between the two, and no stunners, except that Phish hasn't played Bonnaroo ever before, where most of the bands on both lineups are religious frequenters of music festivals as well-established as South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and as far-flung as the Roskilde Festival in Denmark and Punkkelpop in Belgium.
The big names aren't so dimunitive, but then Coachella has a long and storied history of luring in bomb marquee reunions that it's struggled to live up to since the legendary Pixies jammed together onstage in 2004. Paul McCartney headlines on Friday, the Killers on Saturday, and the Cure on Sunday. My Bloody Valentine's playing on Sunday, too, while Leonard Cohen, Superchunk, Okkervil River, Morrissey, MSTRKRFT, Franz Ferdinand, Girl Talk, Crystal Castles, TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Throbbing Gristle, and Lykke Li are all scheduled to play during the fest's three days of music, California sunshine, and wacky art installations.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Social Distortion, SF Bluegrass Festival, Eagles of Death Metal, Chinese NY dance party, and more
Wanna see my 'stache: Eagles of Death Metal's "Solid Gold."
Confucius may not have approved of 1015's big ole Chinese NY beat-down - but, hey, he never really knew how to par-tay. Here's more fun schtuff that shoulda, coulda, but didn't make it to print.
Delta Spirit
Northern soul and indie rock - just the combo for the San Diego unit. With Other Lives and Dawes. Wed/4, 8:30 p.m. doors, $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.
Origami Ghosts
Raul Sanchez hosts the contemplative Seattle indie-rockers at his monthly semi-acoustic Penny Arcade showcase. With Eyes, Il Gato, and Floating Robot Familiar. Wed/4, 8 p.m., $7. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-2888.
Valerie's live end: Love's Baby Soft breezes of imagined youth
By Juliette Tang
Listening to College and Anoraak, two talented DJs involved with the French collective Valerie, is like driving back to the balmy summer of 1981 in a white Camaro convertible with the top down, a cold Tab in your hand, and a tiny silver disco ball hanging from your rearview mirror. Valerie, a group of musicians from Nantes whose dramatis personae includes acts like Russ Chimes, Minitel Rose, and The Outrunners, among others, uses retrofuturistic synthpop to evoke the magical '80s teenage years they were too young to experience.
Valerie has a very specific fantasy of the '80s, informed vaguely by John Hughes movies and V. C. Andrews novels, by images of roller rinks, drive-thru diners, Orange Juliuses, and Love's Baby Soft perfume. But rest assured that their sound isn't trying to enshrine those bygone days. Rather, by traveling back in time to the '80s [Ed Note: Or rather, back to '80s nostalgia for '70s nostalgia for the '50s], Valerie reinvents a future that was dreamed back then but which never happened, a past-modern interpretation of utopia that creates an alternative to the present -- with dancing.
In conjunction with making me want to dance like a teenager, College and Anoraak made me want to drink Malibu and pineapple like a teenager, which was the only lamentable incident that occurred last Friday at Mezzanine, where Valerie ended their US tour. The show itself was exactly what I thought it would be: lively but controlled, suffused with an easy, dance-y energy that never quite reached the point of unbridled release.
College played a wonderfully non-trancey, entirely instrumental synth set that left me wishing I was Sarah Jessica Parker in Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
Super Ego: Alien techno chickens go bang, with hacksaws
By Marke B.
It's time for you weekend nightlife forecast, but first this update from that horribly "hip" new Domino's BBQ chicken pizza campaign:
Viral! Compare that, of course, with SF's very own dirty techno birdie, Claude VonStroke -- and is anyone else 100 blog centuries old like me, and remembers that whole Burger King "subservient chicken" viral campaign where you could tell the guy in the chicken suit what to do? From like 2k3? OH MY GOD IT'S STILL HAPPENING!!!
I'll never understand why we always make cute what we want to eat. Except puppies. Even kitties are cheezburger on the Internetz.
But let's put away childish things, shall we, and dig into some of this weekend's better affairs:
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TONITE! THU/22
THE NOISE
New local promotion juggernaut Hacksaw Entertainment launches with a grab-yr-cha-chas blast at 103 Harriet -- featuring, of course, my laptop life-love Lazer Sword bringing the future bass soundz, plus the very talented Ana Sia who'll bring some of her techno-burner pedigree to the tables, and SF mashup psyphy duo Hookerz and Blow, who blow the hooker-roof off live .... High-tail it to the H&B MySpace page and check out "Blow the Whistler" and it's Too $hort meets Claude VonStroke (again with him!) for some pure traffic jam genius.
Beloved DJ Andrew Phelan and the rest of the chunky beats Prismatic crew -- the promos behind the hyperinventive Tonal color-coordinated loft parties -- bring in the big names for their AlphaBeats party, subtitled A is for Alien (I eagerly await B is for BetaMax). I would scoff a little at the umpteenth appearance of 90s god Doc Martin, but his set at LoveFest this summer was out of hand with its perfect blend of old school house numbers and new school choons. Doc's never really been known for his subtlety on the tables (it's all about bangin' hard into the cosmos), but he's definitely evolved stylistically as a major dance artist. BONUS: Sunshine Jones, of fave raves Dubtribe Sound System, will be on hand to spread it. DOUBLE BONUS: dress as an alien and get a free mix .... do it now!
I knew it. I knew it! This weekend is the first holiday weekend I'm gonna be in town for the past year -- and I'm totally gonna blow my wad early and end up watching old episodes of Mad Men in bed, dutifully stoned. Why? Because Thursday night sees the launch of Daly City Records and ArtNowSF's ' new monthly Bass Camp at 111 Minna. And their bringing in all the big Montreal names in lazer bass, damn. I'm so lazer there.
All that, PLUS Robot Koch and Bass Science -- with way-too-cute residents Mochipet, Epcot, Quitter, Salva, and MC Buddy LeRoy. It'll be the blaps, y'all ...
July Skies evokes lazy days, 'fractured memories of the 1970s'
JULY SKIES
The Weather Clock
(Make Mine Music)
By Todd Lavoie
Oh, 2008 - you've been too kind! Well, musically speaking, anyhow - the year left a bit to be desired in some other regards, I suppose, but it certainly did its best to compensate by unleashing a wild torrent of CD releases ready to scratch away at all of our musical itches.
Now that we're pinning up the new calendar and reflecting on the past year, I thought this might be the perfect moment to throw some superlatives behind one 2008 release in particular, which, sadly, remained largely off the collective radar of the American listening public: July Skies' sumptuously iridescent ambient-pop stunner The Weather Clock.
Released this past summer in Britain, the disc never received a thorough distribution stateside. It might require a little work to track this one down, but such efforts will be greatly rewarded. Wistfully melancholic and dreamy, it's tailor-made for a cup of tea, a ruminating mood, and your best pair of headphones.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Magic Bullets, LoCura, White Cloud, Chuchito Valdes, and more
Mind that One Track Mind: Egyptian Lover's "Freak-A-Holic."
San Francisco stirs itself, shakes its shaggy head, and leaves home. Here are a few more reasons.
Leopold and His Fiction
The many moods of the SF indie-folk-rock combo turn toward...celebration with the unveiling of their new full-length Ain't No Surprise. Electric! With the Healing Curse and Candy Apple. Fri/9, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.
LoCura
Living la vida LoCura? That means an eye-opening blend of flamenco, rumba, reggae, and hip-hop complete with bellydane and plenty of Animas. Fri/9, 9 p.m., $15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750.
Zomes, Liquid Liquid, Silver Apples: Mi Ami picks the rest of the best of 2008
Another in a series of year-end picks from Bay Area musicians, writers, scene-makers, and music lovers. Here's the rest of Mi Ami's best of 2008; for more of their selections, go here.
MORE 2008 PICKS FROM MI AMI'S DANIEL MARTIN-MCCORMICK AND DAMON PALERMO
- Omar-S, "Psychotic Photosynthesis" (both the original and beatless versions) (FXHE)
- Rhythm Based Lovers, "Boogie Vision"/"Snow Drift" 7-inch (Future Times)
- Group Inerane, Guitars from Agadez (Sublime Frequencies)
- Zomes, Zomes (Holy Mountain)
- Kyle Hall, Worx of Art EP 1 (Wild Oats)
- Liquid Liquid, Liquid Liquid (Grand Royal)
- Theo Parrish, Sound Sculptures Volume 1 (Sound Signature)
- Silver Apples, Selections from the Early Sessions (ChickenCoop Recordings)
- Droids, Star Peace (Barclay)
- La Düsseldorf, Viva (Water)
- Methusalem, Journey into the Unknown (Ariola)
Guns N' 'Hits' N' the free market: Yellow Swans' Gabriel Mindel gives up last year's 'Kill Yr Idols' moments
Caffeine-d: Sonic Youth's Hits Are for Squares (Starbucks Entertainment)
Another in a series of year-end picks from Bay Area musicians, writers, scene-makers, and music lovers.
YELLOW SWANS' GABRIEL MINDEL'S TOP TEN KILL-YR-IDOLS MOMENTS OF 2008
1. Sonic Youth's "Hits Are for Starbucks"
Crap, you guys — really?
2. Obama's cabinet
Ah, hope and change, I hardly knew you ...
3. Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy (Interscope)
What about this isn't beating a dead horse?
4. Scarlett Johansson, Anywhere I Lay My Head (Atco)
I think my crush has worn off.
5. Ian Curtis' gravestone gets stolen
6. The "free market"
Too late, capitalism.
7. Heath Ledger.
8. MIA "retires"
I hope she's better at this than Jay-Z.
9. Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, US)
10. The USAISAMONSTER announce their breakup
This is probably only a big deal to about 50 people, but it really does bum me out.
'Girlfriend,' Special Disco, Danzig: Michael Harkin's tops for 2008
Doing it better: Chromatics.
Another in a series of year-end picks from Bay Area musicians, writers, scene-makers, and music lovers.
MICHAEL HARKIN'S TOP 10
- Nobunny, "I Am a Girlfriend"
If the original Ramones replaced Tommy with a drum machine, it might've sounded as amazing as this track from Love Visions (1-2-3-4 Go!).
- Danzig at the Warfield
"Mother"... kicking a pizza box out of a roadie's grasp ... Glenn still rules.
- Nodzzz, Nodzzz mini-LP (What's Your Rupture?)
Fantastic, distortion-free guitar pop.
- Special Disco Version at Mighty
God bless James Murphy and Pat Mahoney for their brilliant edits and many mirrorballs.
Between Oakland soul and the 'Black Sea': A top 10 from Jeff Ray of Mission Creek Music Festival
Itchy and scratchy: Tomutonttu's Ultra Eczema art.
'Tis the season - here's another in a series of top 10s from Bay Area musicians, writers, and scenesters.
JEFF RAY'S TOP 10
- Favorite album: Fennesz, Black Sea (Touch)
Should be renamed Endless Winter. So incredibly lush and can warm up any long Ukrainian winter night.
- Favorite band: MGMT
Fun, danceable, catchy but not stupid.
- Favorite music series, “Relay” at the Lab, Oct. 22–Nov. 15
Great experimental music series hosted by the Lab. Folks from Finland and Fonal Records, Tomutonttu, Thuja, and Loren Chasse all performed, along with others. The sonic works were inspiring to listen to and watch. The Lab is awesome: www.thelab.org.
I'm a-freezing my hanukkah latkes off in Detroit right now (-10 wind chill), so maybe it's appropriate, among the blizzard of end-of-year lists, that I pop in my hot mix of the year. All 45 Ghostworld conga-line minutes of Detroit wizard Jeff Mills' triple-table symphonic techno tour de force, "The Exhibitionist."
Before the techno purists claw my ears out, yes this mix came out in late 2k7 -- but I'm on drag time. What really got me about this mind-blowing performance (the sleeve clean at 17:20 made me burst into tears) was how Mills tweaked the massive global rhythms that have always existed subconsciously below fine techno's surface to come up with the kind of polyrhythmy that dubstep can only achieve at its best. Not that it's a competition -- and I was addicted to more dubstep mixes this year than I can count -- but I'm a technoist at heart, and this mix really said something I've been trying to say for years: that machine music possesses a global soul.
I will eternally worship the person who transcribes this for the New York Philharmonic. Or whips out the entire set at Carnaval.
Here's an interview with new-cumbia whizzes Bersa Discos -- on the eve of their party Tormenta Tropical's first anniversary this Friday at the The Elbo Room -- as published in this week's Scene: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour magazine, on stands inside the Guardian...
DJ oro11 and Disco Shawn. Photo by Conor Collins.
"The reception to our sound has been amazing here," says new-style cumbia pioneer DJ Oro11 — who, along with partner DJ Disco Shawn, heads the Bersa Discos label (www.myspace.com/bersadiscos) and puts on the packed Tormenta Tropical monthlies at Elbo Room. "A place like the Bay Area is a perfect spot for new cumbia sounds to take hold. People here are always looking for new music, plus there's obviously a huge Latino population. A lot of younger Latinos who grew up hearing cumbia also listened to hip-hop and electronic music. They're really into what we're doing."
Cumbia, the irresistible traditional accordion-driven dance music of Argentina, has undergone a mutation of sorts, opening up to include electronic augmentation, hip-hop beats, and even punk styles. The new iteration has taken hold in clubs like the cutting-edge Zizek, in Buenos Aires, where Oro11 was living and performing when Disco Shawn sought him out in 2006 for a taste of the electro-cumbia sound. The two returned to San Francisco, their home base, to form the Bersa Discos label as a kind of sonic nexus. "DJs and producers were selling burned CDs and swapping MP3s, but nothing was very organized at the time," says Disco Shawn. "We just wanted to get some of these amazing tracks pressed up on vinyl and circulated a little more officially."
Bersa Discos is now on its fourth release, titled, appropriately, Bersa #4 and featuring Afro-Colombian-tinged tracks by Brooklyn's Uproot Andy and deeper sounds from the Netherlands' Sonido del Principe. And the Tormenta Tropical party has seen legends like DJ/Rupture, South Rakkas Crew, Buraka Som Sistema, Toy Selectah, and even the Zizek folks burn up the stage. Shawn says to keep a 2k9 ear out for DJ Panik's Texan "crunk cumbia." Meanwhile, UK "bashment" crew the Heatwave hop in Dec. 19 to enliven the party's first anniversary.
SFBG What originally attracted you to the new cumbia style?
Sonic Reducer Overage: Mudhoney, Too $hort, Not So Silent Night, the Bug, and more
Jump in: Too $hort's "I'm a Player."
Party-hopping, penny-pinching, craft-making and cookie-baking, and singing for your supper - the holiday activities never let up - and the city responds in kind...with more, more, more shows. Here's what you might be missing...
All righty: Cold War Kids' "Something Is Not Right with Me."
VAMPIRE WEEKEND AND COLD WAR KIDS
"Golden Gate Jumpers" alert. The combos warm up Not So Silent Night with this toasty pre-show. Wed/10, 8 p.m., $25. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880.
Look, I love all kinds of nightlife -- even zillion-selling sellout nightlife on occasion (yes, I've been to Ibiza) -- and I've championed a lot of dumb music just because it's fun. Ain't nothing wrong with a little fun, and I'm comfortable with being accused of being gushy about absolutely silly things at times.
But I've also spent most of my life trying to convince people that electronic dance music is so much more than lazy, repetitive drivel made for a million blank-minded lockstep androids -- that it can have true soul and experimental meaning, inducing both chills and progress in a subcultural community -- only for many of my arguments to come undone by this horrid bombast:
I would seriously follow local turbocrunk duo Lazer Sword to the ends of the earth -- and I just might have to, once they embark on their European Tour in February (come back, come back ...). One of the last times to see them rock the little electronic boxes live will be this Thursday at the fun-filled monthly Work party at UndergroundSF, hosted by the Unicrons crew.
I've had a few small reservations about the Work parties -- they've been popular, and I dig all the local music-making talent they've brought in. Particularly, I'm partial lately to Unicrons members Futuristic Prince, whose jam "Amok Time" has lodged itself in my ears. But the party seemed to follow a kind of tired banger party template, and the promotion has at times seemed a tad desperate. Once they even claimed to be celebrating the release of the new G4 iPhone and The Dark Knight Returns! I hope that was in jest, and I certainly understand that you gotta do what you gotta do to build a party. Twenty Myspace bulletins an hour, though, usually only serves to turn me off. (Can we make that a rule for all club promoters at this late point in the MySpace thingie?)
Clubwise, this is an absoschmutely luverly weekend to catch up on your real house music education. Representing the actual, incredible old school is the Godfather of House (and the sqwonky inventor of acid) himself, Marshall Jefferson, moving your body at the steamy B.O.D.Y.H.E.A.T. party at Elbo Room on Friday, Dec. 5. Marshall recently brought it into the new a little with his smash Mushrooms, remixed by SF's own goofy-minimal darling Justin Martin -- which was nice after what seemed too many years of silence from the master.
But he didn't bring it exactly up to the minute, into the realms of underground German microhouse -- for that, I gaily urge you to hit up one of my most favorite minimal techno clubs, Kontrol at the Endup, to catch perennially poignant Perlon records' Cassy at work this Saturday, Dec. 6.
Cassy, oh! Photo by Marietta Kesting
I still don't know if I believe in microhouse -- which to my fuzzy, broken ears often just sounds like minimal techno with a very few softer sounds and soul samples thrown in. But I get that it's the proud polar opposite of the usual overproduced house bombast, even if it can sometimes lean dangerously close to trance at times, albeit barebones, non-carnival trance. Not that there's anything wrong with trance, but there kind of is.
In any case, Berlin native Cassy's on it with some fierce sets of deep-cutting suavity, and Kontrol's booth will see some much-appreciated female power. Its dance floor, however, will be as dark and fantastic as always. The Berlin invasion continues!
Cassy at Hamburg's Camp 77 party
Cassy at the 2008 Detroit Electronic Music Festival
A very-last-minute dispatch from the deletist, "deleting elitists since 2003":
San Francisco's Fourth Annual Global Headphone Festival
Sat/6, 4 p.m.- 4 a.m., free and all ages and BYOH (bring your own headphones) and 1/4-inch headphone adapters will be available for a small returnable deposit
5lowershop
992 Peralta, SF
(415) 762-3616
More info and live stream at www.deletist.info/plug4.html
Performances by
MICHAEL MANTRA [dronecore]
STRANGELET [noise/improv/buffonery]
MOSB [square recovery]
SONDERKOMMANDO [glitchy industrial noise]
ROGER MILLS [trumpet drones : streaming from AUSTRALIA]
FILTHMILK [cavernous electronics]
SABRETEETH [tesla death ray]
CORVETTE SUMMER [antidoom]
MNEMOTH [deconstructivism]
SKULLCASTER [blackened folk]
MR. CLUCK [circuit bent toys]
SHARKIFACE [hex breaker]
CATSYNTH [ambient]
RUIDOBELLO [processed field recordings]
VSLS [antisonique]
CONFIGURATION AND FUNDAMENTAL GROWTH [experimental]
OZMADAWN [noise and drones]
DANCIN BABY [soundtrack from hell]
MIXILE [ambient/field recordings : streaming from IRELAND]
MOISTURE [electronics]
DESPICABLE ALIEN [electroacoustic duo]
DUBTAIL [electronics]
WELTSCHMERZ [cellos of doom]
JOHN M. BENNETT [sound poetry : streaming from FRANCE]
FOREST ZOMBIE [textured computer noise]
PEREID [electro carnage]
NICOLAS CARRAS [sound art/concret music : streaming from FRANCE]
DELETIST [cover songs gone wrong]
CEREBRAL ROIL [industrial grindcore]
DARPH/NADER [villainy]
A FASHIONABLE DISEASE [noise ass jazz glitch fuck metal]
MOISTURE FARMER [sitar fx]
HORAFLORA [psychoacoustics]
DJ CRACKHOUSE [noisehop]
HEARTWORM [mechanically separated]
Sonic Reducer Overage: Mixmaster Mike, Los Amigos Invisibles, Wu-Tang Clan, Morning Benders, and more
Say hello to my little invisible friend: Los Amigos Invisibles' "Cuchi Cuchi."
Ask and the city provides - good times and solid sounds for all. Here's the good schtuff that didn't make it to print.
WU-TANG CLAN
The Wu is with you - though RZA and Ghostface Killah were MIA when the group last played Ess Ef. Wed/3, 8 p.m., $45. Grand Ballroom at Regency Center, Van Ness and Sutter, SF. (415) 421-8497.
LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES
This year the Venezuela group impressed at Outside Lands and threw out its first live DVD - and a new studio album is said to be in post-production. With Funky-C and DJ Felina. Thurs/4, 9 p.m., $22. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Lyrics Born, M83, Herbaliser, and more
Change Nation: Lyrics Born's "I Changed My Mind."
You're gonna be stuffed, you're going to be stressed, you're going to be tired of watching football... Then, you'll want to go out - and be among kindred spirits fleeing family and taking refuge in solid sounds.
LYRICS BORN
You like him, you love him. The Bay MC ushers in the holidaze. With Raashan Ahmad and Mavrik. Wed/26, 9 p.m., $25. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1422.
SISTERS OF MERCY
The band that launched a jillion black dye jobs hasn't released new material since 1993. Wed/26, 8 p.m., $35. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-8497.
Put up your ukes: Tune-yards. All photos by Jen Snyder.
By Jen Snyder
The only thing I really knew about music from Vermont before Saturday was Phish, which naturally threw a big, damp drug rug over my entire interest in seeking out and discovering new jams from the state. But about a month ago, I found out that Citay (the Guardian’s triumphant Goldie winner) was going to be playing at Amnesia with a band called Tune-yards, hailing from Vermont. A Citay band member promised, “No joke at all - this is the best music I've heard and seen in years and years. I shit you not.”
I was somewhat conflicted at first, but a post-election, Obama-esque change-is–possible wave swept over me and I decided to not judge a state I had never been to, and to check it out.
Tune-yards, which had never previously played in San Francisco, did not disappoint. The project, which consists solely of Merril Garbus and her excellent digital voice recorder, was consistently intriguing. Garbus is very self-sufficient: she loops her own vocals, drums, and chanting over what looked like a cross between a children’s fake guitar and a ukulele.
All the rage, all onstage: Girl Talk at the Fillmore. All photos by Lisa Weiss.
By Michelle Broder Van Dyke
We met up with Girl Talk, ne Gregg Gillis, before his second sold-out performance at the Fillmore on Oct. 28. We’d later witness him rising into the audience as he abandoned his Saran-wrapped laptop, plunged off the stage, and crowd surfed above sweaty bouncy bodies. He was followed by an entourage of party-throwers dressed in shirts adorned with glow sticks. If you must speak only one truth about Girl Talk, you must say that he breaks the mold of arms-crossed hipster shows and gets people pumped and partying. He also recommends throwing parties with babies.
SFBG: What did you do differently in preparing the Night Ripper vs. Feed the Animals?
Girl Talk: I think on the new one I had a lot more music prepared beforehand, and I had played a lot more shows. After Night Ripper’s release, I started playing a ton of shows, and the way I try out material is in the live setting. If I don’t have shows for a month, I might relax and not work that hard. But over the two years between [the albums] I played close to 100 shows, which is kinda like constantly working on stuff. I think even approaching Feed the Animals I had a lot more ideas set, so I could pick and pull. So I didn’t have to use everything.
Dance, dance, dance with Lykke Li - and mixed emotions
By Michelle Broder Van Dyke
Watching Lykke Li bounce her nimble, lithe body, holding her hand to her head, as she warms up before screaming into a megaphone in the “Breaking It Up (Alternate Take)” video reminds me of a simple fact: sex sells. Better yet, cute Swedish girls who exude sexuality sell.
A standard formula we all know, but these days it has got a twist: GAWS majors and hipster boys wearing their sister’s pants reflect a shift in the standard norms of sex stars from the typical Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera wannabes, and the spectrum has been widened to less conventional icons like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Swedish pop sensation Lykke Li.
Lykke Li dances with a lot of hopping and arm flinging, which makes her resemble a sexier, less crazed, but still spastic Ian Curtis. She stares into the camera as if she’s looking at you, drops her eyes, and even though she’s breaking up with you, you’re already addicted by the time the catchy hook comes.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Hot Halloweenie roast and other scary delights
What to wear - and who to scare?
Starting early, I'd sample "Tingel Tangel Club: Sex Magic and the Occult" - Penny Arcade, Kitten on the Keys, and others take a sexy occult spin on Samhain. Come with? Wed/29, 9 p.m., $16-$22. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016.
Then I'd land, splat, at Thrillpeddlers' blood-spattered Grand Guignol, Shocktoberfest!! 2008: Elemental Horror. Cannibalism, unspeakable magnetism, decapitated heads, and the spookiest finale yet - where do I sign up? Fri/31, 8 p.m. (though Nov. 22), $15-$69. Hypnodrome, 575 10th St., SF. (800) 838-3006.
Lots of stuff in store for the SF group Lemonade - this just in from their PR peoples:
"Lemonade marries big beats with heavy psychedelic noises, while touching on elements of North African rai, dub, breakbeat, and samba and much more in their self-titled debut. The SF trio (soon to be NYC trio) is composed of childhood friends Callan Clendenin (vocals), Alex Pasternak (percussion) and Ben Steidel (bass), and they did not have grand expectations for the project outside of exploring their shared vision of a place that they have never been: a fantasy landscape that is at once gritty and pristine, tropical and foreboding. Their trippy, pulsing self-titled debut is out now, Oct 21, on True Panther.
"Hot on the heels of this much anticipated release, Lemonade is announcing the REMIXTAPE album this November as companion to their debut. The REMIXTAPE features contributions from Delorean, Lazer Sword, Ghosts On Tape, C.L.A.W.S, among others."
If the name James Lavelle rings familiar, think back: this is the guy behind UK label Mo’ Wax, which in its heyday endtroduced DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and Tommy Guerrero. He’s also the mastermind behind UNKLE, the collaboration-prone production team that paired him with Shadow for their five-years-in-the-making debut, Psyence Fiction (Mo’ Wax, 1998).
More talked about than actually heard — the first album included contributions from Thom Yorke, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, and Mike D, among others — UNKLE went on to replace Shadow with Richard File for 2003’s less compelling Never Never Land (Mo’ Wax) and 2007’s virtually ignored War Stories (TBC).
But focusing on Lavelle’s lofty ambitions as a music maker doesn’t give credit to his considerable contributions to hip-hop and house music in the UK; with his boutique label and club nights — That’s How It Is, with Gilles Peterson, lasted a decade — Lavelle helped midwife trip-hop by establishing hip-hop as a living tradition, one whose boundaries weren’t strictly musical.
OK, I took a lot of shit for my recent velvet-gloved smackdown of French electro duo Justice and their cavalier ways, despite my total support of the local banger scene -- but, really, with their new movie A Cross the Universe about to hit Blu-Rays near you-rays, I must say I completely stand by my assertion that hardcore electro is the new hair metal.
Paraphrasing that indespensible Chroniblog Of Our Times, Hipster Runoff: "will public chick b00b ratio to meaningful tour driving road scenes = 1?"
BONUS: EDGY! Total mindfuck mid-90s-like gay-grabbing ploy for cred/attention! C'est francais!
BONUS BONUS: Everyone's doing it! (And yet I lurf it.)
Sonic Reducer Overage: Patti Smith, Kings of Leon, M.A.N.D.Y., Hubba Hubba Revue
Jesus: Patti Smith in The Black Generation in 1979.
So much to do, so many to see. Here are the notables that didn't make print.
HUBBA HUBBA REVUE
Every third Friday, the frocks come off and the old- 'n' new-school burlesque is ahn. Loved Lady Satan's recent toy-gun-humping Sarah Parlin striptease - she's here at this Oktoberfest edition, along with Trixxie Carr, Sparkly Devil, Alotta Boutte, and Calamity Lulu. Lee Press-On and the Nails provide the live tunes. Check the show out every Monday eve at Uptown Nightclub, too. Fri/17, 9 p.m., $10-$15. DNA Lounge, 375 Eleventh St., SF. (415) 626-1409.
Pop Montreal part three: Ratatat, Beach House, Wire, and more
Rah-rah: Ratatat.
By Laura Mojonnier
A snapshot of the Pop Montreal festival, Oct. 3, 4, and 5.
Day 3
Ratatat and Panther at Club Soda, 10:30 p.m.
I began Friday night, Oct. 3, with the second most-hyped show of the festival: Ratatat. (First place goes to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who played Metropolis on Thursday night - not even my press pass could get me in.) It was sold out weeks before Pop began, but somehow Club Soda managed to not feel like the inside of a wet diaper in mid-July. So props to whoever was in charge of air circulation.
I saw opening act Panther over the summer with maybe 30 people in the room at an Oakland gallery smaller than my apartment, so naturally I assumed that seeing them six rows deep in a huge downtown venue was bound to disappoint. But the Portland, Ore., art-rock duo, composed of multi-instrumentalist Charlie Salas-Humara and drummer Joe Kelly, actually managed to pull it off, oozing enough delirious energy to fill the 800-person room.
The night started off with a bike ride up north into Montreal's Mile End area to catch Irma Thomas and a full backing band play the Ukrainian Federation.
I'd only been to this venue once before, to see Patti Smith play a secret show at last year's festival, and the place certainly seems made for that kind of gig. The venue feels like a cross between a middle school auditorium and a Protestant church, rows of 40-year-old theater seating on the first floor and a pewed balcony for the choir. In conclusion, Ukranian Federation is not great for rocking out, but it's just perfect when watching Thomas belt torch songs for middle-aged Quebecers.
And ... we're back! In honor of a fresh new crop of limpwristed video-drones (and the inclusion of my Gayest. Music. Ever. essay -- toot! toot! **own horn** -- in the just-released Best Music Writing 2008 book) I'm compelled to resurrect back our much lauded Gayest. Videos. Ever. feature. Possibly for the last time! And yet October releases are simply brimming with digigay overload. Here's a few that are getting my loafers lighter ....
Frankmusik, "Three Little Words" (will this vid finally make the Bar on Castro electro? The backups are 80s trannies who do robot plus giant rainbow keyboard equals I would have bought the 12" in 1985 on import)
Ssion, "Credit in the Straight World" (soooo FGGT/cruising/warjola, young marble giant!)
Pop Montreal, part one: Hot Chip heats up, Sic Alps smashes, Woodhands sweats
Great Northern: Mixylodian.
By Laura Mojonnier
Montreal is the kind of city you only appreciate once you leave for an extended period of time, as I did when I relocated to the Bay Area for a few months this past summer. Living here spoils you - it makes you think that all cities have vibrant art and music communities and cheap rent, that all cities serve poutine (fries, gravy, and cheese curds) at every 24-hour corner food joint for your drunken feasting.
Sure, there are drawbacks: the five-month winters, the unchallenged hegemony of skinny jeans, the fact that the gravely pit in front of my stairwell probably won't return to its former state as a sidewalk until early 2009. But, at its core, this city has a fiercely independent nature that makes festivals like Pop Montreal possible.
What began in 2002 as a series of shows all booked in the same weekend has exploded into a five-day extravaganza that takes over every venue in the city every year in early October. The core of the festival remains the music, but now there's Film Pop, Art Pop, Puces Pop (a craft fair/exhibition), Pop Symposium (panels, discussions, lectures), and Kids Pop. And though a small corporate presence has arisen - rumor has it that all staffers received a fresh pair of Converse this year - Pop is still run mostly by hip 20-somethings and a hoard of volunteers jockeying for five-day wristbands. As a result, the festival has a refreshingly laid-back, organic vibe, even if the published set times are occasionally unreliable.
Sonic Reducer Overage: Pendulum, Killdozer, Kowloon Walled City, and more
Taken for granted? Pendulum's "Granite."
Whoa, again, San Fran coughs up the fun stuff to do this week - and as usual, it's far more than we can handle in one mere newspaper. Here's what didn't make it into print, but may be worth leaving the house for.
SKYGREEN LEOPARDS AND EYES
SF’s feline psychedelicists stir, alongside Eyes’ proggy dreamers. With the Mantles. Thurs/9, 9 p.m., $8. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455.
GLITCH MOB
The LA glitch-hoppers unleash the Equal Opportunity Enjoyer on an unsuspecting public. With Megasoid, Rustie, Eprom, and Anasia. Fri/10, 9 p.m. doors, $20 advance. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880.
Imagine Zeus and Ares, up on Mount Olympus sipping cocktails when suddenly they start arguing about Ares’ old-news fling with Aphrodite. What ensues is more then expected, with lightning bolts flying into trees, morphing them into vertical charcoal, and spears being sent high into the sky as vultures descend upon the slain. The members of Genghis Tron brought a little of that mythical drama when they took the stage at Bottom of the Hill on Oct. 6. The band churns out cacophonous metal that waxes and wanes between caliginous grindcore and mellow yet still moody electronica.
Openers Religious Girls from the East Bay stepped in for Yip-Yip, which couldn’t perform due to a member's illness. The group mirrors the point in which Zeus and Ares are still just sipping cocktails: it’s a good moment because you’re drinking, but it’s not unusual enough to order anything less original then a gin and tonic. They played with passion, pounding beats ferociously on multiple drums, with war chants and shrieks that sounded somewhere along the lines of Animal Collective’s “Native Belle” and “The Purple Bottle.” Not to say that I don’t love Animal Collective, but Religious Girls' sound didn’t come off as entirely original.
Clipd Beaks, the onetime Oakland combo, was the lull while you’re trying to get the attention of the bartender to order another drink - hopefully the one that’ll push you from tipsy to drunk. Their sound was simple and synthy. Nic Barbein vocals were filtered with noise as he sang undecipherable lyrics into two mics, once even sticking one into his mouth. Overall, it was like being ignored by the bartender for more than 15 minutes because that more aggressive patron distracts him or her and takes all the attention.
The latest mission? Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom
By Brandon Bussolini
When the Guardian checked in with Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom two years ago, the quasi-annual, daylong music festival, organized by UC Davis student-run radio station KDVS, was in its fourth incarnation and ready to present one of the most ambitious lineups of its short existence.
Seventeen bands, ranging from Kid 606 to Michael Hurley, were slated to play, but just as 606 and hip-hop crew Third Sight were setting up - the bands with the biggest guarantees - Yolo County’s finest shut the proceedings down. “Some nearby residents complained about the noise level to the police,” writes Elisa Hough, co-organizer of this year’s O:RMF and a KDVS DJ, in an e-mail. “Everyone - even people who weren't involved in the organizing - looked and felt so defeated.”
Plainfield Station, a Woodland country bar that has hosted O:RMF since its inception, is an unlikely place for this to happen: plunked down amid flat, tawny farmland, the nearest house is probably at least a mile away. But regardless of the small irony that crops up between its name and that incident, O:RMF is a provocative title in more ways than one. According to Rick Ele, a longtime KDVS DJ and veteran booking agent in Sacramento’s underground music scene, the name comes from a brainstorming session with former KDVS Events Manager Brendan Boyle and former DJ Joe Finkel.
Pics: LoveFest whirls and twirls (and sometimes hurls)
Photos and text by Ariel Soto
Love was in the air this Saturday as thousands of scanty and colorfully clad party people made their way down Market Street, accompanied by beats so loud it even made the side line spectators shake a few moves. As the floats went by, ranging from outer space tanks to pink elephants, the passengers threw water, confetti and even pink panties at eager voyeurs below. I swear there must not a single pair of fishnets to buy anywhere in the city since every person in the parade seemed to be wearing one or two pairs. [Ed Note -- Word!] San Franciscans can't seem to pass up an any opportunity to dress up and wear a pair of fairy wings. Remember, all we really need is love!
Sonic Reducer Overage: Deerhoof, Mos Def, Noah and the Whale
Perfecto: Deerhoof's "Perfect Me."
Are we having a ball yet? Now is your chance... an artists ball and more shows than we can shake a stick at. Best to catch them before they fade away.
Free ways: Mos Def freestyling.
ARTISTS BALL SEVEN
SF socialites just might swoon to the tunes of Mos Def, Hercules and Love Affair, and Rogue Wave at this annual benefit fete for YBCA's New Works Fund. Fri/3, 9 p.m., $125-$150. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. (415) 978-2787.
Lord, we love ourselves some krautrock here in the Bay, don't we? Well, expect diehards to be out in force tonight, Sept. 29, at the Knockout for the titled-like-ya-see-it Two Hours of Krautrock II screening, presented by Aquarius Records and "Klaus to the Edge" (WAR 93.7 FM). Ja, ja, we're talking videos pulled from German TV, circa 1971 to 1979, of Can, Klaus Schulze, Tiger B Smith, Kraan, Tritonius, Epitaph, Kraftwerk (with Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother), Tangerine Dream, Holderlin, and THE SCORPIONS. Geez, do they qualify?
Anyhoo, after the screening, NY krautrock-esque psychedelicists White Hills perform. "Klaus to the Edge" DJs AC and Allan fill out the evening of free popcorn and Germanic drink specials.
TWO HOURS OF KRAUTROCK II AND WHITE HILLS
Mon/29, screening 10 p.m. and White Hills go on at midnight, $5 Knockout
3223 Mission, SF
(415) 550-6994
ATP NY Day Two: Les Savy Fav, Shellac, Fuck Buttons, Harmonia, Om, and - what? - more
Prickly, angular goodness: Shellac at ATP NY. All photos by Jessica Reeves.
By Todd Lavoie
Ah, the weekend was in need of a good easing-in period - nothing too strenuous, see, considering the epic scale of the Saturday night to come. So, on Sept. 20, we settled into our day by catching a couple of films at the Criterion Screening Room: Albert and David Maysles’ Gimme Shelter and David Markey’s 1991: The Year Punk Broke. The former - a chronicle of how it all went wrong at the infamous 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway, was absolutely riveting - while the latter was a bit more hit-or-miss, thanks to a nerve-grating focus on Thurston Moore as the documentary’s free-styling, wisecracking prankster. Having thoroughly relished the considerably mellower, less chatty Moore of the night before, I couldn’t cotton to the younger, ever-vibrating version I was witnessing onscreen. Still, the Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Dinosaur Jr. performances in the film made it all worthwhile.
Next it was rush, rush, rush to the main stage: Fuck Buttons were about to bring the noise! We arrived just in time, and the Bristol, England, duo had just finished sound-check. Focusing largely on their March-released slab
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