Listen to the first edition of "In the Crate," our monthly Bay Area music playlist
REVIEWS: On "Waiting Room" Kathryn Mohr strips grunge to its ambient bleak core, on "Exponential Decay" Blood Rave unleashes a delicious EBM palisade
Today we’re offering up the first edition of “In the Crate”, a monthly playlist featuring songs by local artists that we just can’t stop listening to.
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 for unsuspecting listeners.
Now we’re bringing back that vibe with this playlist series. Each month we’ll share a new playlist of 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 out the list and listen on Spotify.
— White Crate
DISSONANT DISCOMFORT
“Music takes me out of my body, immerses me in another world the way a film does. I begin and end in very different emotional states, doors open where there were no doors before.” — Kathryn Mohr
A DIY, grunge-stripped-to-the-bones work written and self-recorded in remote eastern Iceland, Waiting Room is the third studio album by Kathryn Mohr. Honing her characteristic style last seen on 2022’s Holly, Mohr sings discomfort through dissonance, electric guitar strings strummed in flickering confidence while vocal exhalations and aural disintegrations fleck the sonic canvas. There are moments of real prettiness all over the album (see singles “Driven” and “Elevator”) because the longing in Mohr’s voice is always arresting. Equally, there is brooding eeriness, as on “Cornered,” a collage welding together the sounds of pen scrawling against paper, automated voice answering machines, crummy plumbing, and bellowing ambient overtones.
In what place or frame of mind could someone make this music? As it turns out, Mohr fashioned the album over the course of many hours spent at a disused fish factory in Iceland, “in a windowless concrete room lit with a string of multicolored light bulbs” (which are featured on the album cover). Makes sense.
Well worth the wait, Waiting Room is out now on SF label The Flenser.
— Ronny Kerr
DARK RAVE PALISADE
Do you feel the same profoundly torturous experience of existence shared by your neighborhood metalhead… but also want to rave like you’re an ecstasy-hopped up festival kid? Fans of EBM—from the internationally beloved big guns in Boy Harsher to local artists like Richard Haig—will find much to love in Exponential Decay, the newest album by Blood Rave.
Based in the North Bay, the dark electronic project by James Rogers offers a pulsing, seductively monolithic palisade of beats, guided along by a voice dripping with dread, disappointment, disgust. As dark as it gets, the productions are delicious on either a big soundsystem or good pair of headphones. Try not to dance.
— Ronny Kerr
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[house] Club Cicada ft. Mario Pasquesi, DJ Juanny — Jan 30 at Underground SF
[club] LU, Only Now (live), Mars Kasei, Farsight b2b EK, Natural Selection — Jan 31 at Edinburgh Castle Pub
[club] Black Rave Culture, bastiengoat, jmo corleone, Lonald J. Bandz — Jan 31 at the Midway
[club] Honeydrip, BAD JUUJU, Cherub420, MILANA — Jan 31 at DM organizers
[electronic] Jerod S. Rivera (album release), Elias FS, Cat Lauigan — Feb 1 at Cone Shape Top
[jazz] MACHETE RECORDS 40TH ANNIVERSARY ft. The John Santos Sextet & Friends — Feb 1 at Freight & Salvage
[punk] Diesel Dudes, Jeweled Snakes, Chaki — Feb 1 at Eli’s Mile High Club
[hip hop] Lyrics Born, D Sharp — Feb 1 at the Independent
[club] NO BIAS ft. Bored Lord, bastiengoat, DJ JUANNY Soeneido, Tom Marsi, DJs Who Kiss, Taraneh, ray reck, rental vhs, FINISHHER, Zero Idea, Soulox, Lonald J. Bandz, Mars Kasei & more — Feb 1 at F8
[gospel] 10TH ANNUAL BLACK HISTORY MONTH CELEBRATION ft. The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir — Feb 2 at Freight & Salvage
[alternative] Buddy Junior, Figure Eight, Demora, Slugfeast — Feb 5 at Kilowatt
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