Darker My Love Profile and Review

Tragedy and Ecstasy

Darker My Love evades a sophomore slump with its new record.

By Oscar Medina

It's not easy being in a band about to release a sophomore record. The much-debated sophomore slump leaves many bands uneasy about the process, the reception, and the results of a second album. Many groups will try and evade such discussions by releasing an EP in between albums, to denote growth and dynamic talent, or will stick to the blueprint of the first record to avoid any sort of backlash from critics and fans. It's a cowardly move for musicians but one that has been on repeat since the dawn of pop music.

Peter Walker

Enter Darker My Love, a rock band whose roots run deep and involve members from both coasts along with the divergent influences that come with the territory. Back in 1998 Tim Presley (guitar/vocals) and Andy Outbreak (drums) were in the Bay Area hardcore band the Nerve Agents, a group whose abrasive live performances are now the stuff of legend (they have involved hospital visits for members of the audience and the band). Outbreak eventually joined the punk rock group the Distillers and left them in 2005 to form Darker My Love with Presley, Rob Barbato (bass/vocals), Jared Everett (guitar), and Will Canzoneri (clavinet/organ) the last to make the fold.

Darker My Love is now situated in LA. The band just released its second record, appropriately entitled 2, on the Dangerbird label. To add to the frustration of releasing and promoting its sophomore record, tragedy recently struck the group when the father of Darker My Love's lead singer Presley passed away. The band was forced to cancel part of its tour with the Dandy Warhols, including a performance at Oakland's Art and Soul Festival. "You know we are all just dealing with it day by day," Barbato reflected. "Tim is with his family right now and we are wishing him the best." The band should be picking up its tour in Minneapolis although plans are not definite yet.

The songs on 2 diverge wildly from the buried shoegaze atmospherics of Darker My Love's first self-titled album, and move more toward pop territory with the assistance of producer Dave Cooley (Silversun Pickups, J Dilla). When asked about the poppier approach to this record, Barbato said, "You know we are all fans of Big Star, the Byrds, the Kinks, we love all sorts of pop music. Melody and harmony and certain structures just move people in a certain way that abstract stuff doesn't. It's not like we don't like abstract stuff, it's just that that's not where we were when we recorded the album."

Darker My Love's sound has been lumped into the shoegaze-psych scene with the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain and Spacemen 3, and with bands like the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. It's a facile comparison that makes more sense in reference to its self-titled debut: feedback-laden guitars, snarling reverbed vocals, and lyrics that deal with existential themes (tragedy, love, ecstasy, guilt). Barbato noted the first record was really tape-saturated and was a snapshot of that time but really wasn't a well-thought-out piece. "All of us were broke. That record definitely came from a bleaker perspective."

Although 2 still is awash in reverb and feedback, it also displays a band whose sound is maturing. The reason is twofold: the members of the band are older and less interested in appealing to scene dynamics, and also had the added benefit of working in a top-notch studio with LA producer Cooley. "We wrote a ton of songs, and really took our time with it," Barbato said. "Working with Dave was fun, but you know working with any producer can crush your ego at certain times. You bring them a song you worked really hard on and you'll get a 'Why don't you think about the song this way?'"

Cooley's production, as well as the benefit of experience and more time to record, helps deliver surprising results on 2. The guitar work is fleshed out and more driving, the dronier aspect is more measured and used sparingly, while the vocal harmonies are tighter and the drums are more muscular. This is shown especially on songs like "Two Ways Out," an infectiously catchy pop nugget à la Guided by Voices, that has a definite crossover appeal to radio. Barbato and Presley's vocals snake around a circular guitar refrain that serves as the backdrop to a stately drum rhythm, and monotone vocals that eerily expresses the ennui of city life that if something looks familiar, then something is wrong. 2 is ultimately a record that values space, and when asked what he wanted to achieve with this work, Barbato quickly and without hesitation remarked, "clarity."

East Bay Express

September 10th, 2008

Lumerians Profile and Review

Retro No Retro
Oakland's Lumerians reject the old classifications of music to come out on their own terms.

By Oscar Medina

In an industry that relies on easy classification of a band's sound and image to effectively market it to its desired audience, Oakland up-and-coming band Lumerians are a hard sell. "We don't really want to be seen as a retro or a genre band," insists bass player Marc Melzer. With the advent of the blogosphere that has created new micro-genres at a dizzying pace, Lumerians' self-titled debut record, recently released on the Subterranean Elephant imprint, has many critics scratching their heads. Some bloggers have already tried to refer to them as "psych rock." But in interviews, members seem bemused at such talk. "We are not trying to re-create the '60s and '70s psych-rock sound," Melzer clarified. "We like the exploration aspect of psychedelic music, but really, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew record is more psychedelic to us than the Electric Prunes."

Lumerians

The band's ambivalence about being pigeonholed is understandable considering that the members came from disparate music backgrounds — from playing in electro-industrial bands, to working the noise-punk circuit, to metal, to '90s indie rock. They started as a duo in 2005 with guitarist Jason Miller and sound engineer Tyler Green in a Berkeley apartment, consisting of guitars, keyboards, and a drum machine. "We soon realized the use of a drum machine was a really bad idea," Miller said, laughing. Green was then hired at Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco, the home of Asphodel Records, and this is where the band rehearsed and began to evolve.

"I had just gotten back from a two-year art residence overseas and heard these two guys playing downstairs at Asphodel and I was electrified," recalled drummer Chris Musgrave. "I said to myself, whatever is going on down there is good." Musgrave, who had already cut his teeth playing in many metal and punk bands before, was added to the group shortly thereafter. They wrote songs and rehearsed, but still felt something was amiss. The addition of Melzer on bass proved to be the missing component they had been looking for. "I had really started off as a guitar player but really I'm a much better bassist," he said. Melzer had been a member of the now-defunct Cincinnati band, Radiolaria, a four-piece that had been courted by Matador Records and earned comparisons to Stereolab.

At the bass player's Temescal home recently, the band sipped bourbon and ate pizza while debating music. "We don't really think any one take of our music is a definitive one," said Melzer. "We are always expanding on the songs, and live you can't expect note-for-note what you hear on the record." Their take on music and the industry is skewed, due to their long history within and around the scene and also their divergent talents in other areas. Most of the members are established visual artists in their own right: Musgrave has had his digital video art shown in galleries in the US and Europe, while Miller has worked on films as a screenwriter and director, and Melzer's recent video work for Obscura Digital includes working on a public art project sponsored by Google.

It's this kind of visual approach to music that is largely evident in the results of their first release. In the propulsive first track, "Corkscrew Trepanation," a Vox keyboard riff driven by tight lockjaw drums and an insistent meticulous bassline give way to surreal lyrics based on ancient trepanation surgeries. Although the record has a disjunctive approach that brings to mind William S. Burroughs' cut-and-splice method, the songs are all tightly wound and cohere around a central theme or sound. "Orgon Grinder," which may be the only track on the record with appeal to a mass audience and features the ethereal female vocals of Lovage Sharrock, doesn't sound out of place next to "Olive Alley," a track that couples Musgrave's hushed vocals with a Vietnamese jaw harp. The polymorphous nature of the record is an attempt at a fully immersive experience, and its effect is that of watching a Jodorowsky film.

At a recent show at the Uptown in Oakland, Lumerians played a set of songs culled from the record but also showed another side of the band. With newly recruited percussionist Luis Vasquez, adding an extra layer to their sound without devolving into jam-band gimmickry, and vocalist Hannah Brady, who's now working with the band on its next record, Lumerians appeared poised and confident in their delivery, with tight polyrhythmic percussion, two keyboards that played counterpoint to each other, and guitar work that made use of elaborate effects pedals. The crowd responded with approval to the new material with more vocals, added percussion, and a less self-conscious approach. The show also featured the work of local video artist Cosmic Hex, who complemented the cinematic quality of their music with deft synchronization of sound to image that recalled the Daft Punk concerts that have electrified audiences in the last few years.

What's on the horizon for the group? They have plans to release a 7-inch this year and are currently working on their next record, which they say will use a wider sonic palette by implementing new recording techniques, Vasquez, and Brady. Initial listening indicates that old fans will not be disappointed while still having something to look forward to. "We just want to make music that speaks to people," said Musgrave, "something they can really get lost in."

East Bay Express

June 11th, 2008

Live Review: Dirty Projectors at the Independent

Dirty Projectors at The Independent
By Oscar Medina
Photos by Christopher Musgrave
April 11, 2008

The Brooklyn avant-pop outfit Dirty Projectors brought their art damaged pop tomes to the Independent last night to promote their latest record “Rise Above,” an album that has confounded critics and listeners alike with it’s oblique combination of disparate strands of musical DNA, referencing everything from Congolese pop to the work of Gustav Mahler to early R n’ B and Soul.

What began for lead singer/guitarist David Longstreth as an encounter with an empty cassette case of Black Flag’s classic “Damaged” record turned into the basic building blocks of “Rise Above.”

On stage, The Dirty Projectors emanate an affable, casual simplicity that in no way resembles the music they make. Playing a set culled largely from “Rise Above” and the earlier EPs, their songs veered from operatic-tinged math rock, to afro-pop, to a wildly skewed take on indie-rock.

The Dirty Projectors, for all their musical cross-referencing that can easily come across to many as simply post-modern posturing, actually do in fact ROCK. In listening to the record one can be easily deceived into believing that their live show would be the equivalent of an soporific art school exhibit but it is quite the opposite.

For the unabashed mess that many may call their music, their live show is an exhilarating exercise of balance and proportion, pathos and energy. Songs careen forward and sideways, tease out subtle movements between the vocal counterpoint of Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, and the latticed guitar work of Longstreth. Longstreth resembles a young wiry David Byrne, clad in a black hoodie and dark jeans, his left hand would spasmodically work up and down the neck of his guitar, emanating modal guitar squalls that intersected with Brian McComber’s frantic drum rhythms.

The crowd responded well to the Projectors’ sudden and wild explorations into the less structured side of their songs. Why ? Well, for all their forays into post-punk avant garde jam suites they would return to form with plaintive pop harmonies and structured melodic hooks.

The impressive part of their process is that the music remains staunchly inventive, their curiosity is palpable as evinced by the fact that you can never really predict where the songs will go. What may start off as pleasant gossamer indie-pop, will suddenly move into clanging industrial no-wave yelps, all within the same song and done in a way that sounded as if mixing these things were the most natural thing in the world. Usually bands that play the genre-bending card either compromise the original sources, or fall into the trap of xeroxing their influences so that it prevents any form of original musical expression. The Dirty Projectors have found a way to eschew both traps by simply not caring; but by simply allowing the songs to breathe naturally and take themselves where they need to be taken.

Live Review: Autolux with Wooden Shjips at the Independent

By Oscar Medina

Autolux, a rock trio from Los Angeles whose meteoric rise in the music community has been an oddly puzzling one, played to a sold out crowd at The Independent on Thursday. Autolux started as a couple friends who holed up in their rehearsal space, record an EP of fuzzy shoegaze pop that harkens back to ’90’s’ bands like Ride and Sonic Youth, get notice from famous producer T- Bone Burnett and record an album to critical acclaim. It’s been over three years since Autolux released Future Perfect, an album that in spite of its overtly retro underpinnings and not immediately noticeable qualities, compel everyone from NIN to The White Stripes to ask them on tour. The sold out show at The Independent implied that many in attendance on Thursday were anticipating new material, and on this Autolux delivered last night. Diminishing returns ? Maybe.

Autolux came out on stage, and delivered a set that was largely taken from their Future Perfect record with five new songs from their next record slated for this year. The one thing that you cannot pass over in talking about Autolux live is female drummer Carla Azar. First off, she is one very hot lady who can wear a low slung silver dress, sing and simultaneously out play any of your favorite rock drummers. Her presence is an obvious asset to the band, not just because she is a girl who can play drums, but because she plays the drums with the graceful precision of a veteran.

The interplay of vocal harmonies between the different members added a nice touch to a band that is very much focused on the instrumental qualities of their sound. The fuzzy rumbling bass lines of Eugene Goreshter and the feedback drone of Greg Edwards combined, are much louder than one would think from a three piece. They played many crowd favorites, including “Here Comes Everybody”, “Turnstile Blues” and “Sub- Zero Fun” but it was the new tracks that everyone was excited to hear. They played five new songs that to my ears sounded much like their old material, but was more vocal driven and relied less on the more experimental aspects of their work. It was a competent set that rocked in all the right places, but there was no encore, which did make you leave feeling something was amiss.

Local psych rockers Wooden Shjips who have received some recent notice over their self titled record and some obscure 7’s flying around the record sphere, treated the crowd to an infectious kraut- psych assault that threatened to knock out eardrums. The band’s set up was a basic one; bass/drums/keys/guitars, but there was nothing basic about how they used their instruments. Drummer Omar Ahsanuddin and bassist Dusty Jermier would lock into a motorik groove that teetered on the edges while guitarist Ripley Johnson and organist Nash Whalen added splashes of paint onto the sonic palette. The band looked the part of the music; long shaggy hair, beards, old boots and ’60’s’ attire that made them look like they walked out of a desert after a vision quest. Much of their set was instrumental and jam-oriented, this can play itself both ways in two different types of people. Speaking with local band The Cemetery Party one of the members called out their set as “too jammy” while the other member in the band said ” I really like what they are doing with the long form groove”. The Wooden Shjips live are trying to recreate to a certain degree the experimental sets of The Velvet Underground and they succeeded much of the time. However, their set did have some missteps, especially at the beginning and at the end of their set, where there was a certain lull on the part of the players and it felt like they were playing by numbers.

Overall, in spite of both bands competent to even above average sets, they could not convince the crowd to move very much. Rock shows are not operas but from the crowd’s response I might as well have been watching Don Giovanni. Which goes to show that music alone does not make for a compelling performance.

SF Weekly

February 4th, 2008

Live Review: Corneluis at Fillmore SF

By Oscar Medina

Photos by Christopher Musgrave

Think of Daft Punk’s live visual and auditory performance and you have an inkling of what you missed in not seeing Cornelius at The Fillmore this weekend. Cornelius, aka Keigo Oyamada, is an avant-garde/electro rock band from Japan that has been making experimental, lush, exploratory rock for more than a decade. They have been a stalwart centerpiece of the thriving Japanese avant-rock scene, and Friday’s night’s mind-blowing audiovisual performance proved why a genre as misunderstood and maligned by the masses can convert even those with the most populist taste in music.

A massive curtain shrouded the band’s presence as Cornelius hit the stage and playfully began a set that drew hollers from the crowd and an unveiling of a light and video stage that looked like something from Pink Floyd’s The Wall Tour. A gigantic video projector, chimes, bells, so many electronic synths and gadgets that someone must’ve run up a large tab on their Guitar Center account, and light beams emanated from the back of the stage.

Light and video shows have been done in rock ‘n’ roll since someone first took a hit of LSD and listened to his favorite band. The difference in Cornelius’ case is that the videos themselves work as a necessary counterpoint to the performance. The video content consisted of everything from migratory birds flying over a city, stop-motion animation graphics, walking fingers that look like humans, and mash-ups of every imaginable pop culture reference from Sesame Street to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s no wonder Cornelius mentioned that his inspiration on this tour was to create a rock performance of Disney’s Fantasia.

The band members were all dressed in dark pants, white button-ups, and skinny ties that made them look like Japanese exports at a 1970s Downtown NYC art show. We were treated to a 90 minute set that drew largely from his latest record, Sensuous. For being tagged as experimental rock, Cornelius definitely has a pop sensibility that has gained new fans while still retaining the atonal dissonance that keeps hardcore devotees around.

After what had obviously been an amazing performance, the band’s encore brought the house with a classic from their early discography, “Point-Counter-Point”, a chugging indie-Kraut hybrid. As we walked into the crisp SF night, the satisfaction palpable in the air, and the knowing glances from other attendees just confirmed what had obviously been a special night.

Live Review : Liar's at Slim's

By Oscar Medina

Photos by Christopher Musgrave

NYC experimental rockers The Liars sold out show at Slim’s on Friday night proved why their brand of abrasive atonal rock can still command an audience on a rainy night in San Francisco. The Liars are a band that has received equal parts wrath and acclaim for their willfully insular approach to rock (see Rolling Stones famous scathing review that gave one of their records 1 star). But the times have changed, and now The Liars are riding the heels of two critically acclaimed records– Drum’s Not Dead, an experimental masterpiece recorded in Berlin, and a self titled record that brought them back to the roots, eschewing high art concepts for grinding truck rock with smatterings of shoegaze drone.

Walking up to Slim’s on a cold rainy night and seeing a line that extended to the corner for a niche avant garde rock band was just one of the many surprises that occurred on Friday night. Hipsters abounded in droves, skinny pants, American Apparel hoodies, girls in cowboy boots, leather jackets and all the rest of street couture came out in full force to see what the Liars had in store.

The openers No Age; a two-piece from the Smell Scene in LA whose Weirdo Rippers record last year combined DIY punk aesthetics with the melodic sensibilities of 90’s indie rock came onto the stage and puzzled many. A two piece (bass/guitar) has the dangers of being a complete snoozefest and many in the audience reacted as such at first, but that slowly changed over the rest of their set. After a few missteps No Age pulled it off by the sheer psychotic energy displayed in their performance. The drummer/vocalist flailed his arms, swung around in his seat and played his ass off, switching from a 4/4 traditional punk beat to stutter step jazz as if there was no skill involved.The guitarist would add effects through his pedals eliciting white noise that would abruptly halt and then launch into grinding riffs that made the crowd of no-fun hipsters forget their self consciousness for a few moments. They ended their set with one of the more melodic pieces off their last record that combined intricate guitar picking, a punk riff from the Dischord catalog, and a tribal drum beat which closed off their set on a high note.

When the Liars got onto the stage and played the fist notes it was obvious these guys are in full command of their powers. Ridiculously tall lead singer Angus came on with a limp holding his back, and was forced had to remain seated for much of the night due to a recent back injury, but this did not detract in anyway from the performance. They played liberally from their discography, switching from high art- industrial machine rock, to shoegazy pop, to tribal drones that threatened to break amps with ease.

Angus cuts an odd figure on stage, a gangly tall Aussie who brushes away his mussy hair every few minutes, sits next to the drummer and gives off the vibe that he doesn’t want to be there but will switch over to being an intensely aware performer with an almost catatonic focus on his performance. He would walk around as if he’s never seen a stage before and as if no one else was in the room. He would investigate his surroundings with a childlike wide eyed naievete and then suddenly groan to himself with the world weariness of an old man. In certain parts of the songs, more notably the tracks off Drum’s Not Dead, he would mimic the sound the guitars would make by making fluttering bird gestures with his hands as if he was controlling the guitars himself. For an all ages show, and many in the audience were under 21, Angus came off as a lunatic/genius whose wild eyed antics did not obscure the fact that he is an undeniably captivating performer.

The rest of the band was more subdued, but still played in a workman like fashion, with a drummer that might as well have been a machine and not a human, pounding out tribal, precise drum beats that would make John Bonham proud. The guitarist was equally talented in his delivery going from slashing noise riffs, adding pedal effects quickly and then would deftly move to the more melodic side of things adding nuance and depth to a band whose intensity can blindly pass over the more complex side of things.The bass player would move from his bass to playing keyboard and then on certain tracks would accompany the drummer with two toms and a cowbell.

The sheer ferocity of the performance cannot be underestimated and this was quickly confirmed to me as I saw what I thought was, yes, moshing. Moshing at a noise/avant/ rock show? What? Well, when you have pounding drum rhythms that sounds like you’re inside a dank Berlin warehouse, and cutting guitar riffs that rattle the inside of your skull, and a lead singer on stage that acts and performs like schizophrenic that’s been possessed by a demon, the kids can tend to act a little crazy. For the encore they played two songs, “Clear Island” being the obvious winner, a dissonant anthem that elicited yelling and screaming from the crowd, and with that Angus bowed out by limply walking away from the stage, but not before he grabbed a drum stick and wildly fired it into the crowd. As the crowd shuffled out it was obvious that bucking up and going out on a rainy night was the right call.

SF Weekly

January 30th, 2008

Live Review : Devendra Banhart at SF MOMA

By Oscar Medina

Modern folk luminary Devendra Banhart descended on the SF Moma last night with a musical performance to celebrate the opening of his joint art exhibit with Paul Klee. Devendra’s rise to fame is an unusual one; a young SF art student lives off of pennies, the sympathetic couches of friends and local odd jobs to later be discovered by Michael Gira of the Swans. Gira releases Devendra’s first record on his own Young God imprint, and within months he receives critical acclaim for his wiry, psychedelic, brand of folk-pop. His presence cuts an odd figure which just furthers his fame; a son of Venezuelan parents with a unique vibrato voice and the tendencies of a musical gypsy who writes 60’s styled folk songs that somehow turn the music landscape on it’s head, inspires droves of imitators, a style which the critics brand “freak- folk”, and a movement is born.

Last night’s sold out show at the MOMA marked a triumphant return for Devendra Banhart whose obscure beginnings as a street-folk artist who used to roam the streets of San Francisco has now become the stuff of legend.

Clad in a slim velvet suit, red bow-tie and cowboy boots, Devendra graced the stage with a 5 piece backing band (drums, guitar, bass, keys, congas) that started off the set with a Brazilian styled piece that laid the groundwork for the rest of the night. A performance that lasted over 90 minutes and culled many tracks over his latest release Smokey Rolls Over Thunder Canyon, Devendra ran the gamut from introspective love songs, to full on carnivalesque Brazilian psych, to flashes of Flamenco inspired Spanish folk.

In between songs Devendra was affable and self-deprecating, keeping the audience engaged through banter and jokes, and at one point invited anyone who wanted to play a song to come on stage. Silence ensued. Within seconds a young man was met by the encouragement of the crowd, to come on stage and deliver a surprisingly excellent rendition of a folk rock song that sounded like a cover of early Neil Young.

Many of the more subdued and flamenco-Brazilian flavored songs he played last night benefited from the stellar acoustics in the auditorium. You could hear a pin drop in that place, and when the more complex guitar passages became prevalent, which where played beautifully by Noah Georgeson and Andy Cabic, you were grateful that the sound engineer had brought his top shelf game.

Some highlights of the show included his performance of “Quedate Luna, Freely, Samba Vexillographica and his inspiring jaw-dropping rendition of “Bad Girl”, a disconsolate paean to the perils of love lost taken straight from the George Harrison sketchbook of classic songwriting. The encore was a two song session that was received with effusiveness as people got out of their seats and danced to “Carmensita”; a full on Latin-rock jam that wouldn’t be out of place on Santana’s Abraxas, and then closed the show with a plaintive folk number that gracefully ended the night and proved that Devendra is here to stay.

SF Weekly

January 18th, 2008

Live Review : Rza at the Independent

By Oscar Medina

An embattled RZA celebrated the release of the new Wu Tang 8 Diagrams record with a sold-out performance last night at the Independent that proved to some that RZA has gone straight crazy while to others that he is and and will remain an innovative force in hip-hop. With the recent scathing remarks by fellow hustler Raekwon calling RZA “a hip-hop hippie” and Ghostface’s equally disgruntled “he’s fumbling the ball”, you could tell after last night’s performance that the RZA is no longer holding back, for better or for worse.

Walking into the Independent last night you’d think you just walked into the Cannabis Cup because the clouds of smoke emitting from that place was enough to give anyone permabake. Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist was dropping classic hip-hop jointz, getting people riled up for RZA’s imminent appearance. What he had in store for them was not what many had expected.

Donning a khaki suit with Japanese designs and a white tennis headband, the RZA came full force with a band that consisted of a live drummer, bass, guitar, percussion, and a DJ who held it down for the rest of the night. Launching into a set that began with sound effects from an Ennio Morricone score, the RZA’s group played a medley of tracks from his Bobby Digital alter ego to classic Wu Tang material.

What impressed and shocked many was his liberal use of guitar in the performance, at times sounding like a funky mix of Hendrix and Maggot Brain-era P- Funk. Local promoter Damon Johnson called it “a betrayal of everything hip-hop stands for” and said that the RZA has “gone white,” while drummer Terence Howard said “that’s the reason I’ve always respected RZA, because he always reinvents himself.” Whatever your view may be of RZA’s new-found love for rock and psychedelia, this is not the first time a prominent hip-hop artist has flirted with a rock band set up, Mos has done it, and Run-DMC practically laid the groundwork for this template.

By the middle of the set, it was obvious that some didn’t feel the whole rock/jamming element of RZA’s band and slowly filed out of what for them was a disappointing show. As I talked with a few of those early casualties, they all echoed the same sentiment, basically that they expected a traditional DJ and mic setup and a hope that a few Wu members would show up for an impromptu appearance; instead what they got was a full-on arsenal of blues-funk-rock-tinged versions of RZA’s discography.

To those haters, I have to ask: What else do you expect from a man who mastered the whole soul-funk-samples-with-gritty-breaks paradigm a decade ago? You’d have to be crazy to believe that someone who has successfully composed film scores, was a mastermind behind some of the most lauded solo hip-hop records ( Liquid Swords, Only Built for Cuban Linx, Tical) not to mention the Wu’s output, makes haphazard artistic decisions. No, everything with this man is calculated down to the last detail, and last night was no different.

For those in the other camp, the show was exactly the reason that they will continue to support RZA’s vision, namely because it breaks with hip-hop purism and envisions something broader. The crowd who stuck around was treated to an unhinged RZA as he marauded across the stage, singing and rapping. At one point he busted open a bottle of champagne and sprayed the people around him while later pouring whiskey from his bottle into some of the audience’s cups. As the set closed with “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta Fuck Wit” the mood was bittersweet, as you just knew the record released yesterday is the last we will get to hear of the WU.

SF Weekly

December 12, 2007.

Live Review: Prefuse 73 Glitches Out

By Oscar Medina

Prefuse 73 just can’t seem to please anyone these days. Remeber back in 2001 when Scott Herren dropped Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives? Soon to be followed by the now classic One Word Extinguisher? Ink gushed for this wonderkid from Atlanta with an MPC 2000. Here was a guy who singlehandedly put experimental hip hop on the map with just two records; his schizophrenic mix of skitterish, stutter-step drum editing, samples from obscure psych and found sounds, not to mention the drum programming skills of a mad scientist appealed to indie rockers, hip hop headz, noise avatarz, and yes, the critics. A few years passed, a few albums were made that criticized Prefuse for either moving too far away from his roots or working with too many guests as evinced by the problematic release “em>Surrounded by Silence, and just like that the smug naysayers seemed to have been right.

Well, it’s 2007 and Prefuse 73 is touring on the heels of his new release Preparations, and prepared is what you need to be because the man showed us Saturday night that he is in top form.

Comrade DJ Nobody’s Blank Blue project opened of beats, shoegazy atmospherics and introspective guitar work. Elvin aka Nobody worked the synthesizers, vintage gear, guitar and drum programming while singer Nikki Randa crooned like a lost extra from a Mazzy Star rehearsal. Nobody kept his face shielded from the audience a la Jim Morrison, while the singer stationed herself like an English royal guard, with the drummer providing most of the spectacle. The music was excellent and set the mood for the rest of the night, but the performance — mehh.

Well, I would’ve taken great music/lackluster performance any day of the week over what the next group School of Seven Bells subjected me to. A group that consisted of synthesizers, guitar/singer, and two female vocalists, their set was by far the worst I’ve seen in a long time. A sound that equal was parts, electro, rock, and hippie jam band noise nonsense, the whole set was a walking clique, with bad maraca playing to some laughable rock posturing on the part of the singer. The predictability of their songs was by far their most defining trait, every song started off with a preset drum loop, added noise by the guy on synthesizer that didn’t add texture to the song, it just added, well, more noise, and then two female singers with zero harmonizing skills. These songs may have worked in Britain in the late ’90’s, but in 2007 they just sounded like a clusterfuck sub par version of Primal Scream, Massive Attack and Portishead, without even licking the bootstraps of any of these bands.

By the time their set ended Slim’s was completely packed to the gills with people. Let’s face it, an avant experimental hip hop artist like Prefuse 73 doesn’t exactly get the girls to come out in droves and last night was no different as the crowd consisted mainly of dudes with beards, hip hop nerdz in American Apparel hoodies, suave record collectors in Fedora’s, and even a few older cougars who were chatting it up with the bartenders. When Prefuse got on stage he wanted you to know it as he began with a noise prelude that threatened to bust out the audience’s eardrums. From there on out, Prefuse 73 clad in a black Members Only jacket, snakeskin shoes, and Run DMC frames rocked the night with a best of medley that liberally played tracks from his deep discography. There was the wonderkid from Atlanta. The. MPC 2000. The arsenal of synthesizers, plus a drummer, and an extra member to help out with the beats. The crowd nodded back and forth in the blend of ADD editing and avant noise experimentation.

Watching electronic musicians is usually a snoozefest but Prefuse has always been an exception to this rule. Watching him work the MPC, guitar, electronic gadgets and live drum programming is like watching Bobby Fischer playing speed chess.The man programs beats at a moments notice, adds textures and layers spontaneously, fucks with echo and delay, flanges voices and guitar while going back to the MPC to add more breaks, makes signals to the drummer who adds a solid foundation to what an unversed listener would call a total mess. Needless to say the performance was a whirlwind and nothing short of awe inspiring. Towards the end of the set the visibly intoxicated crowd bobbed and weaved, clamoring for more when Prefuse played the classic “Busy Signal”, a track that is glitch funk at it’s best, and has been a crowd favorite ever since it’s release on Extinguisher. The encore consisted of a loose jam session that gracefully came to a close, and as everyone filed out it was obvious that Scott Herren aka Prefuse 73 is far from over.

SF Weekly

December 9, 2007

Album Review : Atomic Bomb Audition “Eleven Theatres”

By Oscar Medina

Oakland’s Atomic Bomb Audition makes the kind of mind-numbingly loud, classically informed music that shakes the inside of your skin, and makes you check your pulse and your receiver to prevent either of these from blowing out. Formed in 2004 by Oakland Mills students Alee Karim and Brian Gleeson, their entitled “Eleven Theatres” debut on Seattle’s independent label Hector Stentor toes the line between math-rock, proggy metal, Italian soundtracks, surf, waltz, and pop. But don’t let the genre bending deter you; their approach to rock although owes part of its sound to the avant-rock leanings of NorCal bands like Mr. Bungle and Fantomas, this is a decided attempt to make avant-rock with a pop structure sensibility. The band is currently working on their second album and are set to rock you at 21 Grand in Oakland on Saturday, November 17th .

“The first time I heard their demo, I knew I wanted to produce it because after all the free jazz stuff I’ve had to listen to at Mill’s, it was refreshing to hear something with an emphasis on melody and actual songwriting,” says producer Norman Teale now a permanent member of the band who adds live signal processing via electronics.

Seated at a taqueria in Oakland with all four members of the band, they explain to me the genesis of the name. “Brian was messing around with the kind of cut and paste techniques that was advocated by William Burroughs where you just shuffled words around and see what you could come up with and the name Atomic Bomb Audition stuck.” “When we started the band there was this sense of the Apocalypse with everything going on in the world at the time juxtaposed with living in the Bay Area which tends to be an optimistic place that kind of represents the emotional dialectic of the band”. Apocalyptic optimism, hmmm.

One thing is for certain, the first moments on “Eleven Theatres” are sure to snap anyone out of their seat who has listened to bands attempt to mix disparate genres before. The “Creationist” starts out with a death metal riff that Cannibal Corpse would be proud of, and then subtly morphs into an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack that then decides to put you onto a merry go-round-carousel suite. After all this local fair goodness, the rhythm section then breaks downs into a psych-rock waltz chock full of funky organ while finally landing somewhere between space-metal and slow-core for an obscure Hungarian film that never existed.

Fusion, fusion, is what most critics will scream after reading this description, but this is where they are unequivocally wrong. “We are not a riff band, or a fusion band’ says Alee, “ Shit, I’d rather be in a Smiths cover band, than in a fusion band”. We make rock music with a cinematic edge, but always with a structure in mind”. According to the band, it discards any presumptions from listeners who want to put them in the “music for art school camp” “I met Brian while we were both working the box-office at Yoshi’s, (the premier venue for jazz in the Bay) and the kind of self indulgent noodling that I endured over the time there was just atrocious”, so I’m sensitive to that stuff, says Alee. “It was one night, that Brian got on a guitar and started playing a Melvin’s riff that I said, Hey, we should do something together”.

This attempt to make avant rock with a pop structure sensibility is what yields the best results on “Eleven Theatres”. The formula is patently apparent on “Wave of Babies”, a monster riff taken out of the math-rock cookbook which leads into a reverb drenched chorus so catchy it will make you go back to your At the Drive In and early Mars Volta records and realize why Spartan punk rock ideals mixed with the cerebral thrust of King Crimson makes sense. And also, why Mars Volta lost their way when they forgot that proggy tendencies are only good when tempered by rigor, structure, and yes, melody. Which is what makes “Eleven Theatres’ a different record from the usual genre bending mash up outfits that try to mix genres without revealing the integrity of each genre as such. “We never go into recording with this set code in mind of we are going to mix bluegrass into metal, and then into jazz, go Sinatra lounge and then add a Big Lebowski sample, the stuff we do all comes out organically, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

So what are they like live? The operative word here is: LOUD. “Yeah we turn up the amps and Norman records our signal frequencies and then runs them back through the speakers adding layers and sonic textures, it gets pretty loud, not shrill like glass, but LOUD like the Apocalypse.”

SF Weekly

November 14, 2007

Live Review: The Coup at Mezzanine SF

By Oscar Medina

Oakland hip-hop veterans The Coup played an exclusive engagement last night at the Mezzanine in celebration of the SF Weekly’s and GoGame’s scavenger hunt extravaganza.

The Coup, one of the more controversial Bay Area hip hop acts due to their overt communist leanings, delivered a massive set of old classics along with material from their latest record, “ Pick A Bigger Weapon”.

The Coup is known for its politically aggressive stance, but in spite of the serious tone of the group’s content, it was obvious from the moment Boots bolted on stage with his three piece band (bass/drums/guitar), that he was here to jump start a party and not a political rally. Clad in his signature 70’s afro; Boots didn’t waste any time in getting the crowd going by launching right into, “We are the Ones”, an anthemic track that reminds us of some of the best work by Cody Chestnutt. The crowd included everyone from hip-hop backpackers, scavenger hunt nerds and even dancing Burning Man casualties. In spite of the heterogeneity of the crowd, most everyone knew the lyrics to many of the songs and pumped their fists in the air while Boots ran around the stage, dancing and amping up the crowd by letting the musicians let loose; especially the drummer who was straight up bad ass.

Boots deft lyrical delivery ran the gamut from political satire, humor, sexual innuendo to straight up party lyrics. Although Pam the Funkstress was absent from the usual Coup lineup, that did not detract from her fill in, Silk- E, a female dancer/ singer that sung one of her own songs that drew laughter from the crowd because of the lyrics, “BabyLet’sHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethin’Crazy”.

Throughout the night, the live band leaned towards a more rock/funk/hip hop approach, a combination that has not always worked well for hip hop artists, one has only to remember the disastrous results of such an experiment with rock that has produced the worst from Mos Def and Saul Williams. The Coup however, did make it work and this was in large part due to a more decidedly funk approach to an otherwise rock formatted group. One onlooker called it “Jimi Hendrix hip- hop “. Although the show was about 150 people deep, (relatively small for the Mezzanine), this just added to the solidarity of the small crowd who at the end of their set clamored to what is obvious: The Coup is one of the most consistent, innovative and relevant hip hop acts the Bay Area has to offer.

SF Weekly

November 12, 2007

Live Review : Dead Meadow at Cafe Du Nord

By Oscar Medina

Washington, DC’s neo-psych rockers Dead Meadow sold out the Cafe Du Nord on Saturday as part of Noise Pop’s 2007 weeklong music festival in San Francisco. Dead Meadow unabashedly displayed its anti-indie-rock ethic by hooking up smoke machines, neon flashing lights, and swirling designs as accompaniment to its set of heavy stoner psych. Lead singer Jason Simon remained firmly in front of the mic throughout most of the set, delivering blistering guitar solos which relied heavily on his use of his reverb, delay, and wah-wah pedals. His vocals were unfortunately severely muffled by either the sheer volume eliciting from the band’s monster vintage amps or the sound engineer’s ineptitude, but either way it didn’t matter. No one came to hear the singer moan about dark forests with emerald secrets; the audience was here to see a trio which has been playing together for ten years deliver volume, technical skill, and rhythmic proficiency through instrumental psych-rock abandon.

What were the openers like? Well, Bay Area’s Spindrift played an interesting set that involved an eight-piece comprising three guitarists, a bassist, drummer, percussionist, and lead singer. They were all dressed in full cowboy/vintage garb and played songs consisting of mainly slow stoner rock with an emphasis on the tandem syncopation of the rhythm section. The highlight of their set was a superb track that involved the band chanting like Native Americans to an Ennio Morricone “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” desert rhythm, while the rest of the band looked as if they were about to initiate us into a peyote ritual. Sounds weird? Well it was, but hey, this is San Francisco.

The Starlite Desperation was a trio of bass/guitar/drums that played with the fury of meth addicts desperate to find their first fix of the week. The lead singer opened the set with a scream that went on for like two minutes, only to be followed by a second scream by the drummer that matched the first one in intensity, if not length. The band then quickly launched into a set of songs that sounded like the Hives on a mission to get back to the top of the charts. Remember them?

East Bay Express

March 3, 2007