Drone metal trio Harjo explores pandemic anxiety through tone on "Nocturnus: Dreaming"
Bored Lord drops six tracks of fire breaks on "Dimension"; Dregs One and Ill Sugi team up on boom bapper "It's All Game"; 3kelves returns with disco house love
“Sylvester’s musical story frames a wild, liberating, eventually tragic but ultimately inspiring period in gay history; one which unfolded on San Francisco’s dancefloors, amid the ecstatic jangle of tambourines and the whoosh and clack of hand-painted fans. It changed the course of electronic dance music — then was wiped out by a deluge of death.” — Marke Bieschke for DJ Mag
Sylvester died in 1988, the year I was born. I often wonder: How would the world have been different if SF’s most legendary disco star hadn’t fallen to the AIDS pandemic? Not just him, but all those other creative, inspiring, transcendent, and queer individuals who died too young. What if the wider social and political powers had taken the pandemic more seriously? (Sounds familiar.) And what if they had lived? Maybe art, music, fashion, sex, gender, community, family, everything would have evolved faster, differently, for the better. Maybe, but we can never know.
While it’s no comparison to the heartbreak suffered by survivors who lost their loved ones, younger generations like mine begin to share a shred of this pain simply by becoming curious, accumulating knowledge, meeting people, and learning more and more about this critical slice of history—for both the LGBT and dance communities. So with gratitude to those who have kept the music and art and energy from this period alive, I strongly recommend reading this DJ Mag piece by SF writer Marke Bieschke: It takes a village, people: preserving San Francisco's gay disco history.
Peace,
ronny
THAT NEW NEW
“Experimental electric guitar trio Harjo make heavy slabs of blown-out sound that aim to capture the buzz of present-day anxieties.” Formed in New York in 2010, SF-based drone metal band Harjo was featured on Bandcamp’s New & Notable for their new album Nocturnus: Dreaming—and it’s definitely the Bay Area’s album of the week. Clearly inspired by drone masters Sunn O))) but also citing classical experimenters John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and Arvo Part as well as sludge rockers Melvins as influences, the band uses a thinner, less crushing production style than your standard doom, but makes up for it through intriguing, always transforming tones.
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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.” Named after the street in San Francisco and the city in Spain—both with ties to new wave, punk rock, space disco, and Hi-NRG—Valencia is the upcoming album by Robert Yang’s Bézier on Dark Entries Records. Though Valencia is now seen as the Mission’s epicenter of gentrification, Yang mines its deeper connections to Bay Area music history and the wider world. The album comes out next month but the title track is already here, pitting deep pulsing bass sounds against astral stabbing synths.
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“its all been there since the beginning.” Declared one of the 21 Top Breakthrough DJs of 2021 by Mixmag, Oakland DJ and producer Bored Lord and others in her circle seem to be the only artists in the Bay as relentlessly prolific as the hip hop community. But instead of beats, hooks, and verses, this is dance for the underground. Arriving four months after The Last Illusion dropped on Eris Drew and Octo Octa’s label T4T LUV NRG, Dimension is her newest six-track EP of incredible, banging breaks. Of course, it’s all the more reason to see her live. On January 29, unless yet another event gets rescheduled or canceled, Bored Lord and Bastiengoat will be going B2B opening up for J.Phlip & Kevin Knapp at Public Works.
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“It’s All Game” is another great hip hop single from SF rapper Dregs One, who’s been on fire for at least the last year—which is as long as I’ve been paying attention. Thanks to production work from Japanese beatmaker Ill Sugi, the new single is less hyphy than his last couple big ones—“Fog Mode” and “Slight Work”—and more laidback, dressed with jazz piano, crisp drums, and a hook to have you nodding up and down the block.
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“The San Francisco Bay has a history steeped in heavy metal and NITE carries that torch with pride.” So NITE announces themselves in the lead up to their second album Voices of the Kronian Moon, set to be released this March. The album's first two tracks—“Acheron” and “Kronian Moon”—are available now, exhibiting epic chords and a growling voice that almost sounds like a whisper, if ghouls could whisper.
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“FEELING” is a new collaboration between Berkeley rapper Rexx Life Raj and clear eyes, the solo project of Jeremy Lloyd from Philadelphia duo Marian Hill. As in his other group, Lloyd provides production duties while Rexx sings and raps an introspective ode to “these feelings I’m feeling / just trying to hold on.”
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Opening up with rapid-fire shots of SF and a sideshow, “Out Here” is a new rap single and video from the Bay’s Ronski and ALLBLACK plus Sacramento’s Rocca Varnado. Liquor bottles, hot girls, luxury, spinning cars, and a banging beat—it’s all here.
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TUGBOYZ is the latest experiment from Oakland artist IDHAZ. The self-titled three-track EP sounds like a hardcore emo record squished through a witch house drum machine like a meat grinder. IDHAZ, who contributed to LIGHT BEINGS #3 from SMARTBOMB, also recently collaborated with rose cherami on pieces indigo.
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Set to be released on Brooklyn’s Fire Talk Records this March, Drifter will be the first album from SF alt rockers Young Prisms in a decade. Following “Yourside”, “Honeydew” is the album’s second single, a steady march of dreamy noise pop with an emphasize on the pop. It’s a sign that the upcoming album won’t be a left turn from the band’s established style, which is a good thing for fans of classic shoegaze.
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“I Really” b/w “Think of You Only…” is a new pair of disco house singles from SF producer 3kelves in collaboration with Dan Be and We Are Neurotic. The first is a heart-gushing, high-tempo affair nodding to 2000s French house vibes, while the second is a bit closer to 120 BPM, melancholy and drenched in longing.
MAYBE MISSED
Boops, bleeps, and living room techno reveries.
Much love to the CST Mid Autumn Newsletter for introducing me to this album from 2019, Lose Your Composer by Oakland-based electronic artist Jonathan James Carr. A dazzling, kaleidoscopic suite of modular synthesizer music, the album balances music as “intricately composed” as a classical score with the organic process, error, and spontaneity of a live recorded performance.
Pick up a cassette copy from Cone Shape Top in Oakland.
CLASSICS
Here’s a treasure for fans of 90s era Green Day. Recorded at BBC Studios in London across three sessions (1994, 1996, and 1998), BBC Sessions is a new anthology featuring unique, intimate versions of some of the band’s best work across several of their albums—from the chart-topping Dookie to Insomniac, Nimrod, and their folk pop turn on Warning. Taken together in under an hour, more than two decades after the recordings took place, it’s easy (and perhaps enjoyable) to forget all the times that fans and critics have been upset about the band switching up its musical style. Here they just sound like a great pop punk band experimenting, exploring, and having fun.
SHUFFLE ON
Listen to a megamix of the best music from the Bay Area in 2021.