Our monthly Bay Area music playlist is here + Bay Beats reopens for submissions
Raven debuts his characteristic hypnotic bliss on New York label Incienso; revisiting a psychedelic Sandy Bull performance in 1960s SF; plus our weekly show recs
A few things:
Thank you for joining our Noise Pop happy hour! Last night we curated a showcase of country-adjacent artists Sadie Alan, Credit Electric, and Jacob Aranda at Bender’s Bar & Grill—and it was just beautiful. We’re grateful to the artists and each and every one of you who showed up.
Bay Beats is opening up for new submissions! The San Francisco Public Library’s free streaming music platform will be accepting new submitted recordings starting this Saturday, March 1. Selected artists receive $250. Deadline to submit is May 31, 2025. Learn more →
Listen to our latest In the Crate playlist! In the Crate is our monthly playlist featuring songs by local artists that we just can’t stop listening to. Check it out on Buy Music Club and Spotify.
As always, we’re grateful for your support. Love what we do? Send us a one-time donation on Venmo or become a monthly contributor on Patreon. We appreciate you!
— White Crate
BLISSFUL HYPNOSIS
New York label Incienso is calling this the debut album by SF producer Raven, but we know better. Since our first review in 2022 of Raven’s self-released works on their own imprint Vaguetracks, we’ve been captivated by the artist’s melding of seemingly disparate genres—classical solo piano, hissing lofi vaporwave, polished pumping techno—into blissful, hypnotic works.
Raven’s new ambient techno album Gnosis is, however, the first to land on vinyl thanks to Incienso. And what an arrival. The musical melding continues: Reminiscent of classical composers’ tradition of playing with motifs and variations, Raven begins the album with hazy solo piano on “Gnosis Theme” and reintroduces the chord progression throughout the rest of the work. Where it is driven by a slinky, gritty programmed bassline on “Endless Edition” (sans percussion), it becomes the basis for a thumping low key dance party on “Unlimited Edition.” Listening to the album in total, one might hear Wolfgang Voigt, Richard D. James, or Suzanne Ciani, but most of all one will hear Raven because this is is what it’s like to hear the artist live. Familiar but unexpected, patient yet evolving, minimal yet captivating.
— Ronny Kerr
1960s ACOUSTIC MANTRAS
Just another night in late 1960s SF…
Decades before Spacemen 3 put their druggy, time-bending guitar visions to tape, an artist named Sandy Bull recorded similarly rich mantras of string and reverb. Not satisfied with just playing guitar like many of his peers, the artist is pictured on the cover of his 1968 album “Inventions” lovingly embracing a whole family of stringed instruments, including bass and oud.
Bringing those pieces to a live setting, Sandy Bull played an hourlong set on February 14, 1969 at the Matrix in San Francisco—a recorded performance available as Still Valentine’s Day 1969. While the Latin jazz standard “Manha da Carnival” and rock & roll favorite “Memphis TN” sound less impactful here than they do on the studio album (mostly due to the weakly-pumping backing tracks), Bull’s playing is quality as ever. The highlights are where we find him solo: In the brief Bach “Bouree” he opens with, the electric reflections, and the oud improvisations. He sounds otherwordly, melding classical guitar, jazzy blues, and non-Western traditional sounds into a freeform sonic consciousness.
— Ronny Kerr
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[r&B] Dani Offline — Feb 27 at SFJAZZ
[alternative] Loco Tranquilo, Badvril, Same Girls — Feb 28 at Bender’s Bar & Grill
[americana] Aux Meadows (album release), Luke Schneider, Indianna Hale — Feb 28 at the Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room
[fog pop] Seablite, Aluminum, Milk For The Angry, Arts and Crafts — Feb 28 at Kilowatt
[electronic] Sharpie Smile, Deon Brown, Gem 777 — Feb 28 at Bottom of the Hill
[club] GARAGE ACCESS x YERBAFM ft. Special Request, LB aka LABAT, Nightware b2b Prehistoric Reptiles, Jensen Interceptor, Femmelectric, Eichef — Feb 28 at Public Works
[house] SQUISH x GOLDENVOICE ft. 1tbsp, DJ Python, suade, Clearcast, nonsuit + likeholywine — Feb 28 at the Great Northern
[techno] DIRECT TO EARTH ft. Rødhåd, Adra (live), Max Gardner — Feb 28 at secret SF location (DM organizers)
[punk] Tricky FM, Christina's Trip, Pocket Full of Crumbs, Softie — Mar 1 at Bender’s Bar & Grill
[r&b] August Lee Stevens — Mar 1 at SFJAZZ
[punk] Period BOMB, Gumby's Junk, Chorus Pedal, Body Double — Mar 1 at Kilowatt
[metal] Vastum, Vile Rites, Field of Fear, Form Decay — Mar 1 at Neck of the Woods
[funk] The Grease Traps, Fat Produce — Mar 1 at Boom Boom Room
[techno] BEAT FREAKS ft. BAE BAE, Gbenga, Kimosabe, Girls on Deck, Queenie, SAMMI, Lil Zé, Ghostridetheclit, felipe d, RITCHRD — Mar 1 at F8
[jazz] Heavy Arts Ensemble — Mar 2 at SFMOMA
[jazz] MeloDious — Mar 2 at SFJAZZ
[rock] Cari Cari & Sugar Candy Mountain, Grooblen — Mar 5 at the Chapel
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