Drift in an experimental sea of sound, stirred by Berkeley producer Halcyon on "The will to nurture"
Industrial Hi-NRG from Bézier on "Valencia"; new hip hop singles by Dregs One, Rayven Justice, 22nd Jim, Guapdad 4000; entrancing psych rock by Night Collectors
“Healing is a battleground.”
Alongside global funk DJ Passionfruit and British jazz maestro Kamaal Williams, Oakland artist Stoney Creation kicked off Noise Pop festivities last night at the California Academy of Sciences. Draped in mesh and velvet, the artist smiled and sparkled across the stage, leading a top-notch trio of keyboard, drum, and bass instrumentalists through vivacious, soul-affirming pieces. It was moving, magical, and full of grace. Check out Stoney Creation on Bandcamp, listen to her feature on “Do Ya Thang” by Stanley Ipkuss, and follow her on Instagram.
Peace,
ronny
THAT NEW NEW
“The will to extend one's self for the the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” Inspired by this definition of love written by bell hooks, The will to nurture is the newest full-length from Berkeley producer HALCYON. Buoyed somewhere between experimental and downtempo electronic music—with an awareness of club music most obviously manifested on the final track “Back to me”—the album is awash with the sound of the shoreline. From the watery first moments to the end, this liquidity binds together the continuously morphing music, as it journeys through ambient soundscapes and synth-laden mazes. To be treasured as an album for people who still listen to complete albums.
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“What started as a project to investigate the love of the sound and scenery while living in San Francisco quickly developed into a passionate search for interlocking melodies and driving rhythms.”
While Robert Yang is now based in Berlin, we would be negligent not to write about Valencia, a new six-track EP released under their Bézier alias. For one, Yang has been connected to SF for years, most notably with the party crew Honey Soundsystem. Second, the album is intentionally named after both the street in San Francisco and the city in Spain—each with ties to new wave, punk rock, space disco, and Hi-NRG. Third, the dark music within explores “themes of submission and catharsis with nods to SF’s gay leather bars of the 70s and 80s.” Fourth, the retro geometric grid pattern on the artwork is designed to evoke the city’s street maps. Fifth, the album was released by one of the best record labels in the city, Dark Entries. And last, but not least, it’s the music. For all its references and nostalgia, the music here is massively progressive, straddling the line between club music and headphone trips. A treat for the ears.
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Bay Area artists Thao and Deerhoof join a dozen others—including David Byrne, Japanese Breakfast, and the Flaming Lips—on Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono, a new compilation curated by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. Thao performs a haunting, minimalist rendition of “Yellow Girl (Stand by for Life)” from Ono’s fourth album Feeling the Space while Deerhoof takes their chaotic noise pop to “No, No, No” from the 1981 album Season of Glass. A portion of proceeds from the album will benefit WhyHunger, a New York nonprofit working against hunger and poverty.
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Instead of picking and choosing, here’s a playlist of the week’s best new hip hop singles from the Bay, featuring Dregs One, Rayven Justice, 22nd Jim (fka Offset Jim), Guapdad 4000, and more. Chill, hyphy, up, down, and everything in between.
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Asian Man Records, the DIY record label in San Jose that released Alkaline Trio’s debut album back in 1998, is still at it. (More on that in a bit.) So what are they up to a quarter of a century later? Much of the same, and so much more. “Tired of Being Tired” is their latest release, a fun pop punk single by the Moore Family Band.
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Almost two years ago, I came across a delightful and meaningful compilation entitled A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean, featuring 10 electronic tracks by 10 artists dedicated to the songs and lives of 10 endangered birds. One was “Momoto Carenado” by Nicaraguan artist NAOBA (aka Tamara Montenegro), and, as a Nicoya myself, I was hooked. The artist’s latest mix, recorded in Marin in celebration of Imbolc (the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox), is a fitting celebration of the turning seasons. In NAOBA’s unique way, the mix is slow to build, reverential, groovy, and free to grow. If springtime is an entire hemisphere joining in sun salutation, then this is that salute translated into sound—with gratitude and joy.
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“Their dead-level street gospel is disseminated at peaked volumes amid stroboscopic light washes for a hypno-narcosis, all in one painless pill.” Out now on Seattle’s Debacle Records, “One Thousand Years” b/w “Transmissions” is a pair of meditative psych rock monsters by SF quartet, Night Collectors. As a long-time Spacemen 3 and early Oh Sees addict, I made sure to order the 7” the second I heard about it.
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Recorded earlier this month, already cassette-ready, and nearly sold out, UNFILTERED PM II - MIX SERIES 2022 is the newest mix by Vallejo producer SELA. As usual, it’s a prismatic mix of genres, this time the focus on ambient-tinged vaporwave and deep, pleasing ghetto house. Can they do wrong?
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Speaking of East Bay producers and DJs on a roll, SOENEIDO returns for the third month in a row with a new mix for the jungle heads. Doubling as a promo as well as an “homage to the DJs back in the day who got their name around by selling tapes at raves and parties,” DRUM N BASS 2000 is an all-vinyl mix of late 1990s drum & bass. Book them!
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It’s so good it’s got KQED’s social media manager tweeting “BIIIIIIIIIIIIAAATCH”—at least until someone with a higher salary took notice and made them delete the post. The latest Tiny Desk (Home) Concert features Oakland legend Too $hort backed by a full band running through an 18-minute set of tracks new and old, from “The Ghetto” to “Big Subwoofer.”
MAYBE MISSED
“This is about unity. True unity. There’s enough space and room and food for all of us.”
If you follow Vallejo MC, songwriter, label owner, entrepreneur, and all-around innovator LaRussell, you know what they’re about: working nonstop to build a community of love and shared wealth. Released this past October, the artist’s second album Cook Together, Eat Together (in collaboration with producer Tope) directly embodies that vision, delivering 10 easy-flowing, soulful, groovy tracks—plus a couple collaborations with local rap royalty E-40 (on an inventive revision of “Sprinkle Me) and fellow Vallejo rapper Nef the Pharaoh. So we’ll just call ourselves out and say this definitely should’ve made our list of the best hip hop from the Bay Area in 2021.
CLASSICS
“I used to set my alarm clock when I was a bike messenger to 6 o’clock in the morning, and when the alarm clock would go off, the first word out of my mouth was always ‘Goddamnit!’” — Matt Skiba
Is this a classic? I can’t say. Alkaline Trio released Goddamnit! in 1998, the year in which I would blissfully acquire Backstreet’s Back and the Godzilla soundtrack on cassette. Max Martin, Jimmy Page, and Puff Daddy were my heroes then, not this emo stuff. But anyone growing up (or not) around the turn of the millennium would have a hard time denying the influence of these pop punk rockers on sad, angsty kids all across America. On “San Francisco”, Skiba sings his own version of what it’s like to leave their heart in the city by the Bay, only to have to return to a grueling bike messenger grind back in Chicago.
Coincidentally, Goddamnit! was the first of two albums released by Alkaline Trio on Asian Man Records, a small record label still active in San Jose.
SHUFFLE ON
Listen to a megamix of the best music from the Bay Area in 2021.