NASCENT

MySpace (listen to “Daydream,” “Get at Me”)
Official site
Hometown: San Jose
Next local show: None planned
Recent release: The M Album, 2008

By Stamati Horiates

Born and raised in the South Bay, Montage is a rising young artist you’d better get to know soon. Currently in the midst of recording his second album, The O Album, Montage has performed in clubs throughout the Bay Area as well as at the ESPN Summer X-Games, and has made an appearance on The World Famous Wake up Show with Sway and Tech. He’s also in the process of shooting a music video for the song “Get at Me.” There’s no question this rapper’s journey has taken flight. But how has he come this far? If you ask him, he will tell you straight up: “Persistence.”

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By Tyler Corelitz

I reached the Great American Music Hall after riding my bike from the Marina, and was pleased that I did not get lost, as has been habit since moving to the city a month ago. I had not been planning on going to the show that night, but was excited, as the last time I was in the venue was to see Black Lips play a sold-out concert. Suffice it to say I wanted to re-live some of that night’s majesty.

Triclops!
crushes
Emeryville
earlier
this
year.

By Tyler Corelitz

As this democracy unravels to the sound of a thousand welcome groans, from the mouths of a thousand angry rogues, the bristle of a violent electricity can be felt amongst the standing hairs on our collective neck. Some change is about to happen, some change is necessary, and the passive about to become active wait and watch for a sign from the great machine. Will it destroy itself rather then adapt? Is the status quo, heavy with years of negative karma, incapable of apology, never ready for forgiveness? And we few peasants, toeing the line between huddled mass and bourgeois fan club, look to our artists for guidance, and far too often there is none.

By Tyler Corelitz

Imperfect i is a project by Oakland-based singer/songwriter Gery Tinkelenberg. His new CD, titled Groopoloops, is a collection of songs performed spontaneously and based around guitar looping, with some sparse atmospheric percussion mixed in. The guitar playing is good, if not a little “new age,” and the recording quality is excellent. In fact, all of the production on the CD comes across very well. The album’s ten songs are more or less Gery jamming with himself over loops, and as free, improvised songs they actually work quite well. With no set structure, however, their length lends them to being more of an ambient soundtrack to a nice long drive in a big expensive car then out and out songs. The opening lines are usually lost in a wash of layers lapping up against one another, stirring the musical pot.