Are you feeling it today? Wade into two deep ambient works—one by Chuck Johnson, the other by M.Cadoo & P.Stephan
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— White Crate
YEARNING FOR CATHARSIS
“I hope you enjoy, in your own way, our slices of dark catharsis.” — Mike Cadoo
Are you feeling it today? The painful weight of existence. Heartbreak, regret, fear, loneliness, or perhaps just the looming knowledge of death—we all know well the feeling of being ill at ease. But we also would do well to remember we’re never truly alone in our pain, and here is 52 minutes to prove it: Pang of Being is a gorgeous, crushing collaborative industrial drone album by Mike Cadoo (primarily performing synthesizers and “audio smear”) and Paul Stephan (guitar and “audio elasticity”).
“A False Sense” opens the work slowly, blooming out of silence into a tense multi-threaded thrum. Later, “Tension in Quincunx” begins with vast metallic reverberations, building ultimately to a final minute of entrancing beats. Buried within “Trina’s Calling” are what sound like foghorns, eventually overshadowed by menacing, pulsing laser synths. It is just the thing for a heart in darkness, yearning for catharsis.
There are four copies of 20 limited edition cassettes still available on Bandcamp.
— Ronny Kerr
TEXTURES TO THE HORIZON
Oakland-based Chuck Johnson’s Sun Glories shepherds you on a deep listening journey. Out now via Western Vinyl, the new album features Johnson’s signature pedal steel blended with electronic and organic textures forming landscapes that stretch to the horizon. A graduate of Mills and student of Pauline Oliveros, Johnson builds on Mills’ rich history of experimental music by patiently overlapping worlds of synths, woodwinds, strings, ambience, and instances of straightforward rock instrumentation.
There is a moment in “Hovering,” when staticky drums build underneath an ambient bedrock, that feels like two unrelated things slotting together perfectly. Like the sensation of hearing different radio stations playing out of separate rooms or walking down the hall of a busy practice space, these carefully crafted “found” moments fill up Sun Glories. In Johnson’s hands, meaning is built not by following a formula or a single lyrical messenger, but by uniting elements into a great unexpected collage.
— Ainsley Wagoner
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[rock] Fake Your Own Death (EP release), The Towns, Strange Cities — August 22 at Kilowatt
[punk] Juicebumps, The Wameki, Gumby's Junk, Surplus 1980 — August 23 at Eli’s Mile High Club
[rock] Chime School (record release), Hits, The Telephone Numbers — August 23 at Makeout Room
[club] AMOR DIGITAL x NO BIAS ft. BAEXPLOITATION, bastiengoat, TRAVIEZA, Discnogirl B2B Lonald J. Bandz, DJ JUANNY — August 23 at F8
[club] STUD FUNDRAISER ft. Derrick Carter, Michael Serafini, Shaun J. Wright, BEYA, Mouthfeel, Elaine & Robin — August 24 at Public Works
[fest] STERN GROVE BIG PICNIC WEEKEND Chaka Khan, Steel Pulse, Sylvan Esso, Poolside — August 24-25 at Stern Grove
[rock] Hits, Hectorine, Cupii — August 24 at the Richmond/Senator Milton Marks Branch Library, SF
[rock] Test Patterns, James Wavey, In-Sides — August 24 at Santo Recording
[punk] San Francisco 2.0, Class of 77, Lost Puppy Forever — August 25 at Kilowatt
[electronic] T o u c h, Tricky FM, Nowandformerly — August 28 at Kilowatt
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