“Unconstrained and unrestricted by genre.” Baalti muses on Bay Area dance and nightlife
Come see Baalti and Bored Lord—a pair of internationally renowned and locally loved DJ/producers—tomorrow night playing for White Crate's party at Mothership
Baalti, made up of Mihir Chauhan and Jaiveer Singh, is the Bay’s most internationally beloved producer-DJ duo. Alongside global favorites like BAMBII, Introspekt, and DJ HEARTSTRING, Baalti made Mixmag’s list of The Top 25 Breakthrough DJs of the Year 2023, top-tier recognition of the fact that the duo has up-leveled their production skills while also branching out tourwise, playing shows in club music meccas across New York, London, Berlin, and Amsterdam in addition to their regular stops at home in SF and India.
Crafting a deliciously electronic concoction they call “masala,” Baalti lovingly taps into Bollywood and South Asian sounds to produce a uniquely addictive blend of forward-thinking deep house, breaks, and electro.
We’re proud to say that, with plenty of new music and tours planned for the year, Baalti will be co-headlining a hometown show alongside Bored Lord for White Crate’s next party at Mothership tomorrow night, Saturday, February 17.
Read the interview, and hear Baalti’s thoughts on the Bay Area underground.
— White Crate
INSTANT CLASSIC CHAMBER POP
“Cuz we’re all just getting older
And the city feels so small
Watch your dreams become an echo down the hall”
All aboard the streetcar to another instant chamber pop classic from the Bay. Fairweather Friend by The Umbrellas criss-crosses the familiar with the new in the way that only a maturing indie band can do. Steeped with knowledge and nostalgia of indie classics over the decades, yet confidently sounding like today, the SF jangle quartet plays with stop and go rhythms, varied lead singers and harmonies, light-hearted strumming, brief heavy jams, and fog-lifting morning musings into a pastel collage pleasing from the start. Lyrics above from album highlight “Echoes.”
The band will be touring the UK and and a couple other European cities over the next month, so we look forward to the opportunity to see them play once they’re back home.
Order a CD or LP of the new record from Slumberland Records →
— Ronny Kerr
HALLMARK SUBURBAN INDIE
When I saw Please Do Not Fight on White Crate’s list of music to review, my eyes literally, inadvertently, widened. Please Do Not Fight? The South Bay band we last heard from in, what, 2013? The very first band to invite me to review their show back when I was a brand-new journalist at the local weekly in TWO THOUSAND AND NINE?
Yep, it’s them. Though all members have moved on both figuratively and literally since parting ways in 2011, bandleader Zen Zenith, like a lot of people, took some pandemic downtime to start experimenting with new music again, resulting in pastpresentfuture : part 2.
Calling this a “new” EP feels weird, because it doesn’t sound new at all. It picks up where PDNF left off – and that’s not a bad thing. It sounds exactly like the South Bay scene in the early 2010s, which I realize is a statement that’s only going to make sense to a few people, but to give you an idea: yelping vocals, abrupt verse-chorus transitions, and soaring guitar solos (all hallmarks of a certain splinter of suburban indie rock around that time). A few seconds in and I felt like I was being scooped up through a wormhole back to the earliest part of my twenties, back to Homestead Lanes, the Art Boutiki, or whatever random word-of-mouth spot the bands on a bill had turned into a venue for the night. It’s a welcome blast of nostalgia from a band that provided the bedrock to a fleeting, but meaningful, music scene that still lingers in the heart of so many Bay Area music fans.
— Jody Amable
SHOW RECS
Our top show recommendations for the coming week:
[rock] Sucker (record release), Nothing Natural, Cage World, Shuv, DJ Loosie — Feb 16 at Beauty Supply Arts
[experimental] Miya Masaoka with Hans Tammen — Feb 16 at the Lab
[club] Tony Humphries, Hannah Lee, Kayleigh Nicole — Feb 16 at Monarch
[hip hop] Frak, Oflo, Grand-O, Pass, Kaly Jay, Xanubis — Feb 17 at El Rio
[hip hop] Stunnaman02, Erica Ambrin, Damion Square — Feb 17 at HopMonk Tavern Sebastopol
[club] SQUISH ft. Verraco, Miley Serious, Farsight, Skiis, Amor Digital, likeholywine, nonsuit — Feb 17 at F8
[club] Bored Lord, Baalti, ronny ronny ronny — Feb 17 at Mothership
[indie] Telephone Numbers, Latitude, RE Seraphin, Sarah Bethe Nelson — Feb 18 at Thee Stork Club
[club] WERD ft. Chrissy, Aaron Davis, Ms. Ed, Jimmy B, Zoz, Smokes, Eichef — Feb 18 at Monarch
[new age] André 3000, Carlos Niño, Nate Mercereau, Surya Botofasina, Deantoni Parks — Feb 19 at Cornerstone Berkeley
[club] Bodysync, jarradcleofé, discnogirl — Feb 22 at California Academy of Sciences
[electronic] Protect Me, Vio, Blaq Hammer, Poundpuppies — Feb 22 at Edinburgh Castle Pub
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