By Vanessa Carr

Jef Stott has been a producer and remixer on San Francisco's global electronica scene for over a decade. But this Saturday night (5/10) at Bollyhood in the Mission, Stott celebrates the release of his first full-length album – Saracen – on Six Degrees .

Stott fuses Arabic and Turkish rhythms with both electronic and acoustic beats and textures. What sets him apart from many of his world music peers is that – rather than merely sampling – Stott is a multi-instrumentalist who plays a wide range of instruments. On Saracen, he plays oud (Arabic lutes), saza and cumbus (Turkish lutes), the Persian santur, bass, and percussion. He also invites a number of guest musicians, including well-known Tunisian vocalist MC RAI.

Drawing early inspiration from art rockers lke Glenn Branca, Brian Eno, and Peter Gabriel, Stott got his musical start playing guitar in rock and metal bands is his hometown of Los Angeles in the 1980s. Stott went on to form the band Stellamara, whose blend of Middle Eastern and Balkan sounds and ambient rock awakened his interest in the devotional aspects of music beyond its entertainment value and led him to intensively study the oud under internationally known musicians Hamza El Din and Omar Faruk Tekbilek.

What is especially remarkable about Stott is his humility, reverence for his teachers and peers, and willingness to talk and think deeply about issues of cultural appropriation in world music.

SFBG: You have a background in heavy metal and art rock. When did you get interested in playing Middle Eastern music?

Jef Stott: [Playing in Stellamara] is when I made the big switch. That is when I picked up the oud, sold all my electric guitar equipment, and really got deeply interested in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish music. I almost abandoned everything I had done up to that point and started on a whole new path.

Continue reading "Electronic Arabic: Jef Stott gets worldly at Bollyhood" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Party with me, plus. All photos by Joshua Rotter.

By Joshua Rotter

Going out dancing can be a confidence-buster for peeps of all sizes. But the extreme shame imposed on plus-size women often outweighs their desire to hit da club. Full-figured party promoter Lady Tigress was no different. “I was never a clubber in my twenties because I didn't feel like I would be comfortable in a nightclub setting,” Tigress said. “I bought into what I saw on TV and thought everyone in bars or dance clubs looked like Beyonce or Britney.”

In a world where the Barbie doll reigns supreme, these notions are only reinforced by a media that has little love for big girls. Rarely on the covers of magazines, large women remain the laughing stock of hip-hop videos, the early eliminations on reality showmances, and stand-up fodder for late night television: think Jay Leno’s Jonah and the whale jokes about Lewinskygate. And Lady Tigress knows that clubland is no kinder.

“There are gorgeous plus-size women in all types of clubs all over the Bay,” Tigress said. “But even if they are confident, there is snickering that sometimes happens when a crew of big girls shows up at a mainstream club, or they are sometimes ignored because a lot of people don't want to admit that they are attracted to women who live outside of the super-skinny American beauty standard.”

After Tigress started going out to Bay Area BBW parties such as Big Boogie Nights, Sexy at Any Size, and Heavy Rotation in her thirties, she realized that if the event was fat-friendly, these women would come out and party. So Tigress was inspired to create an even larger night, a hip-hop party for plus-size women and their fans called Full Figure Friday, and decided to host her evening, unlike similar hotel-based events across the Bay, at the stylish San Francisco club Bambuddha Lounge.

Continue reading "Clubs: Bootyful action at Full Figure Friday" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Winnetka? Why-not-ka? Apologies to lovely Del Tha's underground East Bay, but if there's gotta be a new epicenter of nouveau-Cali alternative hip-hop (cue the searing lazer bass and sympho-poetic glitches) then you could do no better than the Outer-LA hometown of mixmaster amazo Flying Lotus, who's currently stealing hearts and heartbeats on his WARP Records tour. And yeah, he's this cute:

If you're in the mood for some woozy bottom-blasting with a high-hat twinkle, Lotus will be numbing Dr. Scholl's at dread bass mecca night Surya Dub at Club Six this Saturday night, March 22. Lotus's own releases get us where DJ Shadow hurts, and his remix of Mia Doi Todd's 2006 soulful torcher "My Room Is White" has brightened our rhythmic footfalls to work for the past month. So yeah, come get zigzagged in a headtrip melancholy way this weekend ...

Flying Lotus, "Tea Leaf Dancers"

Flying Lotus
at Surya Dub
Sat/22, 10pm-4am, $10
Club Six
60 Sixth St, SF
www.suryadub.com
www.clubsix1.com

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Posted by Marke B. at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Michael Harkin

The South American sound of cumbia has its very own hour-of-power in San Francisco: Tormenta Tropical, whose fourth incarnation rolled up to the Mezzanine last Saturday after prior appearances at Rickshaw Stop and the Dark Room at Club Six. Tormenta is a new monthly party thrown by Bersa Discos, an Oakland record label showcasing the experimental cumbia/electro/dancehall underground of Argentina.

Bersa especially digs into what's up around Buenos Aires, where the label's two founders, Disco Shawn and Oro 11 (say that 11 as "once"/OHN-say), moved separately from the Bay Area and met up amid the woolly, melodica-filled excitement to be had at club nights like Zizek.

It was, in fact, several regulars from Zizek that started off the night as Zizek Urban Beats Club, including sets by El Remolón, Frikstailers, and other fixtures from the Buenos Aires night that so inspired Bersa's founders as well as such hip jocks as DJ/Rupture and Diplo of Hollertronix and Mad Decent. The crew are touring to SXSW this week, also making appearances in New York and Chicago later this month.

Continue reading "Clubs: Cumbia/electro underground surfaces at Tormenta Tropical" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 02:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I've made no secret of my audiolust for Brooklyn grime-pop chanteuse (and former punk band Stiffed frontwoman) Santogold, but the new vid for her "LES Artistes," directed by Nima Nourizadeh, is blowing me away:

Santogold's heavily related to the stripper-loving Spank Rock scene, sharing some producers, remixers, track appearances, and party bills, although on a much higher intel tip (everyone kind of over "bitches and ho's" DJ Assault circa 2002 ripoffs say "He-eyyy!") -- and look for many, many tired comparisons to MIA to follow in the wake of the release of her self-titled album Santogold (Downtown), which drops on April 22, and her performance at Coachella this year -- because, you know, freaky women artists of color sure are similar. Still, her already-legendary bass-heavy ragga crawler club jam "Creator" has swept people onto the same global-hop dancehall dancefloors as Ms. MIA, and the more like that (and the above) the merrier, say I ...

And this quote from a recent NYT article on her is priceless: “You get these images of women in sexy clothes, walking around in, like, panties,” she said. “Even Beyoncé — that’s what it is to be a woman and make music. But now there are all these other women doing cool, interesting things, wearing styles they came up with, and it’s not about being naked.”

Santogold, "Creator" (live at Fader 51 party)

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Posted by Marke B. at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Too too much going on this Saturday March 8, kids, and these are just the above-ground parties! I don’t know how I’m gonna make ‘em all, but we just finished work on the next issue of Scene, our nightlife mag which drops next wednesday in the guardian (look for it!) and I'm ready to party my pumps off. Good thing I always carry an extra pair of bedazzled flats in my Safeway paper bag purse …

Leslie and the Lys, spaz-hop queens straight outta Iowa (via Boston) who recorded the immortal line “Wearing gold spandex pants/ I made a hip-hop album” will be rocking their goddam GEM SWEATERS at an early set (9pm) at the lezbo-rock heavenly Cockblock at Rickshaw Stop for only 10 stinkin’ bucks, which lets you stay the whole evening to hear the adorable DJ Nuxx and friends throw down.

Then it’s off to Kafana Balkan at 12 Galaxies (more info here), the city’s premier Romany dance party, with awesome, way-deeper-than-Balkan-Beatbox DJ Zejlko and friends. If it’s anything like the last one (with crazy pics we featured in the last Scene nightlife magazine) then we may not be able to tear ourselves away ….

Brass Menazerie at Kafana Balkan

to hit up one of the best-sounding parties at Mezzanine in, like, a week – Zizek featuring DJ/Rupture and Tormenta Tropical.

Continue reading "Clubs: Gem sweaters, buenos Zizeks, grimy Rupture, divas" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Which is the real Coachella?

By Erik Morse

Last Monday’s announcement from Mexico City of the lineup for the upcoming Coachella Festival in Indio had more than a few prospective ticket buyers flummoxed. Where were all the celebrity headliners Goldenvoice had so skillfully assembled in years past? Where were the electro hipsters and indie-rock stalwarts whose appearances had succeeded in making Coachella the American Glastonbury?

After all the behind-the-scenes campaigning and Internet rumor-mongering that promised everyone from the Smiths to Gang of Four to Aphex Twin to Leonard Cohen, the unveiling was an extraordinary exercise in bathos. Thank goodness for Portishead. The biggest omission was the newly reunited My Bloody Valentine, who performs for the first time in over 15 years beginning this summer in the UK. After the major coup that brought the Jesus and Mary Chain to Indio last year, hopes were high that a second miracle might find Kevin Shields and co. headlining over the likes of Jack Johnson or Roger Waters.

My, my: My Bloody Valentine.

Continue reading "Coachella lite: where are the Valentines?" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Todd Lavoie

Let's get lost, shall we? Lately, whenever I'm in the mood to disorient myself in some head-scratching sonic geography, I reach for my copy of Untrue (Hyperdub/Cargo), the November-released sophomore-stunner from the let-the-music-speak-for-itself dubstep savant Burial.

While the willfully anonymous English electro-experimentalist's self-titled debut was certainly an impressive introduction to his - and here we are guessing it's a "he," based on what little I've seen in the way of public statements from whoever's lurking behind the evocative moniker - dead-city tour-guiding, Untrue feels like a bold leap forward.

More inventive, more cohesive, and definitely more affecting, the disc isn't reflective of a change in aesthetic, but rather a fully confident refinement of those artistic ideals. I could stay in these headspaces for days, but honestly I'd be a bit afraid for myself when it came time to emerge back out of 'em. The culture shock might be too great.

Continue reading "Cover me: Embracing Burial's noirish dubstep" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of my favorite parties of the year, Bibi, is having an encore this Saturday -- a sultry, kitschy, haremesque masquerade! Bibi is a raucous party for gay Southwest Asian and North Africans (SWANAs) -- not just those of Arabian persuasion, of course -- and their friends (my Jewish bf had a blast -- unity on the dance floor!). The last one was out of control -- the promoters only expected a few people, and yet hundreds crammed their beautiful, hipshaking female, male, and other asses into Club Eight for a pre-Pride Arab hoedown. Alalalalalalala-y!

DJs BaBa Q., Bahman, and Emancipacion take you to funky motherland with a fusion of Middle-Eastern North African & International Beats, and, yes, there'll be wild bellydancing sendups by drag queens SooozhyQ & Freyja. Nazli Hanem & Femme Fuego host, and Rostam and J. Maximillian put it all together. Plus it's a masquerade -- so wear something extra fab. I'm telling you it'll be hot -- and not just cuz I'm a naughty Lebanese homo. Here's a little taste of the tunes:

Bibi
Sat, Oct. 20, 9pm - 2am, $15
Club Eight
1151 Folsom, SF.
www.myspace.com/bibisf

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Posted by Marke B. at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Molly Freedenberg

Remember way back when a group of disillusioned Burners decided to challenge the status quo by forming their own version of the Burning Man Organization (BORG)? They called it BORG2, and they planned to unseat BORG 1 – or at least inspire a change in its art funding policies – through their “anything you can do, I can do better” approach. Thing is, BORG 2 just couldn’t quite get its act together, and the project unceremoniously fell apart.

Well, it seems the reggae world is now hosting its own version of the BORG2 madness, where fun-fur-wearing desert rats are replaced by dreadlocked dubsteppers. On the left? Reggae on the River, the penultimate reggae festival of longtime repute that seems to be almost as much a mecca for the steel drum crowd as burning man is for DJ Lorin lovers. On the right? Reggae Rising, the BORG2 of this particular conflict, led by former Reggae on the River contributors. The issue? Both want to throw a reggae festival. At the same place. On the same day.

Continue reading "Reggae on the River: “We tried”" »

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Posted by SFBG at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)