In the Crate: Cole Pulice, Slake, Dani Offline, Vague Lanes, and more great local artists featured in our monthly playlist
Plus new reviews of the morose doom quartet Amber Asylum and goth dance shadowplay from C.L.A.W.S. via Squirrels on Film + weekly show recs
It’s here! The third edition of “In the Crate,” our monthly playlist of Bay Area music:
What's with the crate anyway?
We named this project White Crate because we each keep a crate next to the turntable filled with our recently played favorite records. The crates, of course, just so happen to be white. For years, we’d lug our white crates to neighborhood bars, clubs, and parties to play our favorite tracks across musical styles and eras.
Now we’re bringing back that vibe with this playlist series. Each month’s playlist features songs culled from our recent reviews, exciting single releases, and our own musical discovery from past to present. “In the Crate”—your soundtrack to the Bay.
Check it out on Buy Music Club and Spotify.
— White Crate
MOROSE DOOM QUARTET
“In times of trouble, women have often had to bear an even heavier burden throughout history.”
Troubled music for troubled times, Ruby Red is the tenth full-length album by Amber Asylum, an all-female quartet founded in SF in 1990 by composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Kris Force.
Neoclassical dark ambient moroseness from cover to cover, the album opens with an instrumental overture before the album’s first voice emerges in the dirge-like title track, “Ruby Red.” Evoking blood and hellfire across its imagery, lyrics, and tone, the songs’ sawing strings and pining vocals are undergirded almost always by a cavernous rumbling bass, borrowing a tonality adored by doom metal fans. Adding to this melange, the group also lightly incorporates modular synthesis, most cunningly on “Azure,” an amorphous piece that rises, ambles, and then spasms into dissonant registers before collapsing.
Amber Asylum has collaborated throughout the decades with members of Swans, Neurosis, Weakling, Hammers of Misfortune, and Vastum, and—on Ruby Red—their experience shows.
— Ronny Kerr
INDUSTRIAL FUNK COCKTAIL
“Dark after-hours to high desert romance, Mission District alley cats searching for sunlight.”
The shadowplay of goth punk tones melds with club music on Splat City II by C.L.A.W.S., the newest EP from SF label Squirrels on Film. In our last review of music from the label, we noted their sound as a love letter to classic early techno, and we’d say the same holds true here.
Whether it’s the lockstep rhythm and synth lines of EP opener “Route 505” or the tom-tom mantra of “One Tear” providing a backdrop for reverberating Western twang, the tracks here present an arresting, altered view of the dancefloor. On the final track “Wild Slugs United,” the Knockout’s resident mutant disco denizen Paul Costuros wails on the bass clarinet over staccato pulsing basslines, an industrial cocktail of funk and cacophony.
— Ronny Kerr
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[alternative] Vague Lanes (record release), Darkswoon, Steilacoom — March 27 at DNA Lounge
[rock] Pure Hex (record release), Ridgeway, Chain, Welcome Strawberry — March 28 at Rickshaw Stop
[club] FAKE and GAY 7 Year Anniversary — March 28 at 1015 Folsom
[hardcore] GENERAIDERZ ft. Nahshi, CEL GENESIS, LAG SWITCH, DAEMON, Technopagan — March 28 at F8
[hip hop] Family Not A Group, Casey Cope, Oddity — March 29 at the Independent
[alternative] Eggcorn (record release), Mayya, Fieldress — March 29 at Little Hill Lounge
[electronic] Chroma Sea, SpaceyY, Serotonin!, Umamifunk — March 29 at Neck of the Woods
[house] RITCHRD, DJ Juanny — March 29 at Bar Part Time
[techno] 1-YEAR BOOFIVERSARY ft. Cali Rose, DJ WIFI, Just Another Bitch, DYLUSION — March 29 at TBA location (DM organizers)
[club] NEW WORLD DYSORDER 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY ft. Jasmine Infiniti, Erica Mar (live set), Cali Rose, DE ALMA B2B Del, Mama Yha Yha, FINISHHER, Faited, Bored Lord — March 29 at F8
[experimental] Zachary James Watkins, Li(sa E.) Harris, Jamael Smith — March 30 at the Lab
[alternative] Christina's Trip, Nights Templar, Sucker, Beatcuntz — March 30 at Kilowatt
[techno] SYMBOLIC LINK ft. Mike Servito, Josh Cheon, Rodney — April 2 at F8
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