Queer, South Asian electronic artist Beast Nest manifests a psychic ambient sanctuary on "Sicko"
"Can't Stay Perched" with Brycon and Equipto; tragic, heady dembow from JUANNY DEPP on "GIOVANNI"; impeccable drum & bass from SOENEIDO via NO BIAS
Good morning :)
Just a little reminder that White Crate hosts a monthly show on Lower Grand Radio, mixing up the best music from Oakland, SF, and the rest of the Bay every first Thursday at 8 PM PT. The next episode (Feb 3) will be extra special as it will be our first time (not the last!) hosting a live performance by local artists. Professa Gabel and Brycon—an MC and producer duo both highly prolific and talented—will be joining to perform songs from their upcoming project, Corner Booth.
Thank you for tuning in, and be well.
Peace,
ronny
THAT NEW NEW
“All my music is dedicated to Beni and the Queer and Trans freaks that make my life so fun and wholesome and nerdy and joyful and cool and weird. I want safety and empowerment for us all. I want us to make stuff when we want to and consume stuff when we want to. I want us to have shelter and whatever we need to feel the least shitty on our shitty days and super happy on our happy days.”
So writes Sharmi Basu aka Beast Nest for the release of Sicko, their new experimental ambient full-length on Ratskin Records. Deeply embedded in the queer and trans BIPOC communities in the Bay, not to mention various DIY and music-focused organizations, Beast Nest’s latest album is a psychedelic sanctuary assembled of cosmic noise and tone. Sampled bird calls, twitchy synths, and low-key beats come together in a soulful tapestry suitable for the morning, day, or night—in other words, it’s for living.
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“A modern re-imagining of the classic Bay Area underground tape tradition, perfected in the late 90s by revered groups such as Hieroglyphics, Living Legends and Bored Stiff.” SF producer Brycon had a busy 2021, releasing two full-length albums, a few beat tapes, and several singles. And none of it can possibly be called filler. The smoothed out, jazzy boom bap productions were a big part of the reason Don’t Forget You’re Welcome by the Watershed was one of our favorite hip hop albums of the year.
Brycon’s newest project, Can't Stay Perched All the Time, is a collaboration with storied SF rapper Equipto, joining forces to deliver a wavy ode to spliffs, washed out soul pop, and track after track of laidback truth-telling. Collaborators on the album include Monk HTS, Phesto Dee (of Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics), and Professa Gabel. (As noted above, Brycon and Professa Gabel will be performing songs from their upcoming project Corner Booth on White Crate’s upcoming Lower Grand Radio show. Details here.)
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“This is what roots music sounds like when it sprouts from forsaken ground.” Named after the geographic midpoint between the duo’s chief collaborators Avi Vinocur (SF) and Patrick Dyer Wolf (Chapel Hill, NC), Goodnight, Texas made Bandcamp’s list of the Best Country Music on Bandcamp: January 2022 with their new album How Long Will It Take Them to Die. Though just a five-piece, the band has recorded an album of big band country, with members singing and switching off between mandolin, guitar, banjo, pedal steel, piano, bass (both electric and upright), and drums—plus backing vocals from a few featured guests. If you’re into making plans, the band will be opening for Fruition at the Independent on August 26.
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Like Brycon above, Ian Kelly also made our list of the best hip hop from the Bay Area in 2021. On Long Way From Home, the artist’s new collaboration with Bronx producer HitMakerDot (plus a couple tracks featuring JANE HANDCOCK), Kelly continues channeling the hip hop pantheon both directly (on “Dead Presidents”) and subtly through his characteristic cool and easy delivery.
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Inspired by James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room—“particularly the intense beauty and tragic, violent flaws” of the title character—GIOVANNI is comprised of four new dembow-adjacent tracks by JUANNY DEPP. As the title and inspiration suggest, this is a bit more heady than the artist’s previous releases, exploring ambient techno (on the opener) and minimal house (on the title track) as well as their more clubby uptempo sound (on “AVIANCA”).
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“Visions of geothermal vents, psychotropic volcanic tourism, and widescreen stratosphere coasting abound.” Following Indian Unclassical Vol. 1, which made our list of the best ambient music from the Bay Area in 2021, Berkeley artist Kush Arora (aka Only Now) joins Orogen (Lucas Patzek) on Magma Pulse, a tectonic, dub techno record released by Bristol label Limbo Tapes.
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“I thought that we had built / capacity / To work through these things / Was that wishful thinking?” Rob I. Miller of Oakland indie pop group Blues Lawyer is releasing a new song on Bandcamp for 24 hours only every Friday. Released on Vacant Stare Records, “Wishful Thinking” is today’s second installment, a simple, catchy piece featuring heartfelt, guarded vocals and acoustic guitar plus minimal overdub.
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“We've toured much of the world together, dodged a brain-eating bacteria, played crusty clubs and big stages, drank a lot of wine... and now we've made a song together.” Poolside and Brijean teamed up on “Better When We're Close”, a downtempo (but, on brand, still poolside-perfect) song meditating on the melancholy feeling of isolation when too far from your best friend.
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Inspired by old Life and National Geographic magazines and long walks through SF, Claudia's Ethereal Weaver is the sixth album by K Linn’s Sad Eyed Beatniks, released by Madrid’s Meritorio Records. But last year was the first time Linn performed the music from this project live, and this could be their best album yet. It’s raw and sometimes seemingly aimless, but delightful and lovely in its hazy way, signaling once again how rife SF is right now with the world’s best indie pop.
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Only a month following their supremely excellent Strugglist EP, hardcore junglist SOENEIDO returns with four new fire drum & bass tracks on DEADLY VENOM WEAPON, the latest release from NO BIAS. (Also new today from a previous NO BIAS entrant, check out “LOVIN YOU” by rental vhs.)
MAYBE MISSED
“I’d like to evoke other senses with only sound. Something akin to synaesthesia, so you can ‘hear’ the swing and sway of trees, for instance, or visualize colors. Most of all, I hope that Echos – like my favorite records do for me – creates emotional impressions for listeners, a resonance that stays with them.”
Spanning spacious, labyrinthine explorations and free, spontaneous explosions, Echos by Dahveed Behroozi (Sunnyside Records) is one of many great jazz albums included in the East Bay Times’ best albums of 2021. Born and raised in San Jose, Behroozi relocated to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music in the early 2000s but has since returned to the Bay. He now teaches at Gavilan College in Gilroy, and even named a song on Echos after the garlic capital. With Thomas Morgan on bass and Billy Mintz on drums—two professional jazz musicians with an impressive list of credits—the new album sparks the senses and leaves one mysteriously echoing, just as Behroozi intended.
CLASSICS
It’s not every day you discover that one of your favorite all-time musical pieces has ties to your backyard. But I guess I should have known that this minimal music innovator attended Mills College. Steve Reich not only studied at Mills but also exchanged ideas with other avant-garde pioneers like Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the mid-60s.
Released in 1970, “Four Organs” is a 16-minute piece for four electronic organs and maracas that is emblematic of the composer’s famous exploration of repetition and slow rhythm changes. It’s a monstrous, sublime piece, challenging one’s perceptions of music and sound. Some audiences loved it, others went insane. A similar exploration on the B-side, “Phase Patterns” was recorded at the Berkeley Art Museum. Plus, this gets extra Bay credit: The album was reissued in 2016 by SF label Superior Viaduct, which also runs Stranded Records with brick-and-mortar locations in SF, Oakland, and New York.
SHUFFLE ON
Listen to a megamix of the best music from the Bay Area in 2021.