Mochipet: Local favorite electro/glitch artist? Break-tastic beat master? Hip-hop producer? Some geek behind a laptop? Big purple dinosaur? This time he’s a general, leading an army of vocalists including Dubphonics, Jahcoozi, Hustle Heads, and members of the Hieroglyphics and Living Legends crews on a victorious, genre-defying march in his new album Microphonepet. If you’re familiar with the San Francisco club/party scene, you’ve probably already heard all about this album and the buzz surrounding it. If not, I would recommend getting your hands on it immediately.

It’s always been difficult to pigeonhole Mochipet (David Wang) into one particular style or genre, but he really covered all his bases on this one. Songs range from supersonic glitchy whirlwinds, groovy house tracks, funky hip-hop numbers, fat bass-heavy club beats, seductive duets, and even lyric-centered raps about life on the streets, each heavily influenced by the guest MCs. What’s most surprising about the versatility of this album is that none of Wang’s explorations are artificial or emulative. While each track is certainly unique, his remarkable creativity and refusal to adhere to any sort of conventional rhythm scream out a sound that is undeniably his own.

Wang also maintains a much stronger sense of cohesion in each of the songs on Microphonepet than some of his other more intense mashup and breakcore material. There’s still all sorts of twists and turns throughout the beats, but the solid sound structures make the music much more listenable.

There’s an energy to this album that makes it immediately infectious. This energy combined with Wang’s creativity make it a perfect party mix for diverse tastes, but also throws plenty of surprises to make it interesting if you’re just listening by yourself. Keep this in your CD player and see how long it takes you to get sick of this album, I dare you.

Battlehooch’s debut EP OOF OWF has already garnered much-deserved respect within the Bay Area and beyond. It is a self-made wonder-work of psychedelic rock, funk, and unabashed nonsense. All four of the disc’s creations are heavily orchestrated movements featuring all manner of percussion, guitars, and driving bass, with some classy Zappa-inspired horns popping up whenever necessary. Vocals are present but one gets the feeling that the listener is less expected to sing along than they are to dance.

By Dasha Bulatov

Despite hailing from a suburban outlier, Walnut Creek-based Mister Loveless possesses a sound that is casually and darkly urban. Initially established by morose and reluctantly melodic guitars, the vibe is heightened by guitarist/singer Rob Miller’s Interpol-ish vocals and the sharp outfits that the band often wears onstage. Yes, the undeniable Interpol resemblance had to be mentioned immediately. Just listen, you’ll hear it. More derivative in earlier recordings, their sound has since grown and expanded its range. The tracks on Mister Loveless’ debut full-length album, My Share of Losing, are catchy and dynamic, exhibiting a maturity that previous releases seemed to lack.

Either way, it is heartless to dismiss Mister Loveless on the principle of imitation. Like all bands, even those who vehemently deny it, Mister Loveless falls into a number of closely related genres: post-punk, new wave, indie, and plain old rock ‘n’ roll. If you’re into those styles, or just willing to give them a chance, there is a high probability that Mister Loveless will become a regular on your playlists.

In September of 2006, after the first album had been recorded, principle songwriters Rob and Charlie Koliha (bass) announced a separation from their drummer, which resulted in a nine-month hiatus. During this time, two new members — Sean Gaffney on guitar and Rachael Travers on drums — were added. Work on a second full-length was planned to follow the band’s last show of 2007 on October 27th. However, singer Rob suffered a serious head injury after leaping off the stage and hitting a pipe. Despite postponing the album, the incident seemed to revitalize the band and unify its fans. Now the band is back, playing gigs all over the Bay. And, if they continue to exhibit the same energy (in a safe way, we hope), then the shows are definitely worth attending.

MORE REASONS TO LOVE MISTER LOVELESS:
-Consistently cool and mellow indie rock. You really can’t go wrong with that.
-Members don equally rad threads that seem to pay homage to the mod era (a refreshing break from American Apparel).
-They were so kind as to release the tracklist for their upcoming EP to us: 1) “Hardly Young;” 2) “Good Story;” 3) “Just Thoughts;” and 4) “It’s Missing.”
-Hear them on the radio! Mister Loveless performed live on 90.1 KZSU and has appeared as a guest DJ on Live 105.

Reviews originally published in the East Bay Express on 2/27/08.

Touch My Rash, Doomed from the Start, Pissed-off frustration can be therapeutic, and San Jose’s Touch My Rash delivers the goods with a subtle sense of humor. Lead singer Colin Kutch affects a snarl that’s just punk enough, while the music is reliably simple, fast, and catchy. What healthier way to spend 28 minutes? (Bittersick Records)

Fluorescent Grey, Gaseous Opal Orbs. Though GOO’s shapeless, heavily experimental electronic tableaus are pretty far out-there, Robbie Martin’s sophomore disc as Fluorescent Grey contains his most accessible compositions yet — which goes to show that perception is everything. (Record Label Records)

Gemini Soul, The Nefertiti Experience. Jazz doesn’t get much funkier, or perhaps it’s the other way around. Gemini Soul’s smooth, groovy fusion (they call it “cyber jazz”) rests on the poppin’ fingers of bandleader and bass-master Andre Ajamu Akinyele. (Pearl Jazz Recording Label)

Killian Garnet MacGeraghty, Celebration Songs. Gun & Doll Show frontman MacGeraghty recorded imaginative, quasi-pop theme songs for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and more, then threw them alongside a few non-holiday numbers. Even when repeated in five languages, his version of “Happy Birthday” doesn’t get old. (Mad Chatter Records)

Reviews originally published in the East Bay Express on 12/12/07.

Marquis Melody, Straight from the Heart (Skank So). Across 78 minutes (at least twenty too many), Marquis Melody’s warbling vocals waver in effectiveness, though the underpinning roots reggae never loses its groove. Recorded at Tuff Gong in Kingston, Jamaica.

Gyan Riley, Melismantra (Agyanamus Music). The virtuosic music of Berkeley-based, internationally recognized guitarist Gyan Riley flows between flamenco, jazz, raga, classical, and Satriani-esque shredding without so much as a hiccup.

Scene of Action, Scene of Action EP (Pop Smear). Straight outta Cal, Scene of Action’s angsty, Muse-ish sound needs time to lighten up and develop beyond its influences. Still, not bad for a debut EP.

Caren Armstrong, Everything (Wildplum Recordings). These sincere, middle-of-the-road country-tinged tunes from singer-songwriter Armstrong (and friends) neither offend nor particularly impress, but could be just the thing for the right time and place.

Stevedood, Source Domain (Hella Baked Tapes). A song- and beat-based sound collage sourced from original material (local musicians on upright bass, drums, violin, and electric guitar, plus Stevedood on djembe, synth, and a jar of mayonnaise) that remains listenable throughout.

]]> http://www.nascentmag.com/2007/12/local-licks-121207.html/feed/ 0 http://www.nascentmag.com/2007/07/live-review-smashing-pumpkins-at.html http://www.nascentmag.com/2007/07/live-review-smashing-pumpkins-at.html#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:43:04 +0000 admin http://localhost/nascentmag/?p=90 Billy Corgan asked the question with the straightest face he could muster: “Are you ready to die for rock and roll?” It was the Smashing Pumpkins’ first Bay Area concert in seven years, featuring a reconfigured lineup around the core of Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Two months before, tickets for the band’s historic eleven-night stand at the Fillmore — from July 15 through August 1 — had sold out online in less than twenty minutes. Some fans without passes had waited since 5:30 that morning to get in. Yet not until the show’s second hour, during a ten-minute medley of late-period material “Rock On” and “Heavy Metal Machine,” did we grasp Corgan’s meaning.

These big, dumb rock songs — almost parodies of the self-aware glam and goth Corgan grew up on — put such a grin on his face that we knew he was dead serious: about himself, about the Smashing Pumpkins, and about dying for rock and roll. But we weren’t fifteen anymore. When the group finally wrapped up its three-hour show just past 1 a.m., we knew we had to be at work in the morning.

In fairness, Corgan has changed, too. Despite the dark mood of the Pumpkins’ comeback album Zeitgeist, released July 10, he’s not as angry or depressed as he once was. Singing Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage without a hint of a snarl both castrated the lyric and suggested Corgan has moved on to a happier place. Other things haven’t changed a bit. As ever, Corgan was flanked on his right by a cute female bassist picking simple lines on a Fender P-Bass, and on his left by a stoic, slight-of-frame rhythm guitarist. That’s too creepy to be a coincidence.

The meat of the evening played like a Smashing Pumpkins jukebox. Devoted fans were rewarded with blazing renditions of fuzzed-out album cuts like “Starla” and “Hummer,” while the rest were ecstatic just to hear the opening notes of “Today.” The performance wavered between thrilling and listless, as Top-40 singles mingled with ultra-rarities and previously unheard demos. Surprisingly, the set pulled lightly from Zeitgeist, with the band emerging to the political centerpiece “United States,” plowing through metal singles “Tarantula” and “Doomsday Clock,” and all but butchering pop standout “That’s the Way (My Love Is).”

From the very beginning, the night was designed for serious fans. Cheap tickets and ultra-strict ticketing schematics attest to that. “It’s a little tedious,” said Live Nation San Francisco chairman Lee Smith of safeguards like eliminating in-and-out privileges and requiring customers to claim their tickets in person the night of the show. These practices were put in place for all eleven nights to prohibit scalping and ensure fan access. Indeed, a follower from the early days couldn’t have been happier to watch Corgan from a few feet away and to sing along to so many songs for only $25. Others less inclined to cherish the frontman’s every move may have considered the concert a sprawling mess.

But you gotta hand it to Corgan. Despite dissing his group early in the set (“Welcome to our band practice”), and passive-aggressively suggesting that only seven people had bought the new album, he did his best to make it a memorable night. Mostly he let his music do the talking. Throughout three hours he never left the stage, except for a brief break before the Pumpkins’ baffling, unrecognizable half-hour encore. When his band departed mid-set for a rest, Corgan stayed behind to do four acoustic songs. Later, after he was finally warmed up, he issued some severe screams and slick solos that recalled his brilliant apex as an alt-rock icon.

The Smashing Pumpkins are back, but stuck banking on the past to propel them into the future. If Corgan is to achieve relevance beyond his hardcore fanbase, he still must win over a skeptical public. On Sunday, there was no escaping that these are different times. Not a faded old Zero T-shirt was in sight.

(Originally published in the East Bay Express 7/25/07.)

“Like an open-mouthed kiss from God” is how a friend once described the experience of seeing From Monument to Masses live. Not having ever made out with God, it’s hard for us corroborate that statement. But it’s even harder to dismiss it; From Monument to Masses are unequivocally incredibly fucking awesome.

The backbone of FMTM’s musical style is a compromise between the tranquil beauty of instrumental post-rock and the rhythmic energy of post-punk. This underpinning sound is composed of layered guitar lines (sometimes as many as five at once), relentlessly shifting drums, and warm, lively bass. Branching from here are excursions into dub, hardcore, world, and electronic. The variety never exists for variety’s sake, but rather to serve the purpose of the song. At the beginning of “Sparpshooter,” for example (the first song on the band’s breakthrough, and to date only, full-length, The Impossible Leap in 100 Simple Steps), the trio downshifts from brash, chugging post-hardcore to intricate, hypnotic instrumental rock in order to represent the shock and solemnity of the events of 9/11.

This leads to the other primary element of From Monument to Masses: political and social awareness. All three members — Matthew Solberg (guitar), Sergio Robledo-Maderazo (bass, synth, samples), and Francis Chuong (drums, synth, programming) — are passionate about and actively involved in political activism and social change on various fronts. The band’s name reveals its central philosophy, which played as much of a role as music in bringing the members together in the first place: a conviction that power must be transfered away from figureheads and toward the people. It’s a revolutionary message that, despite the band’s success, Matt, Sergio, and Francis refuse to back away from.

This also explains the motivation behind the band’s decision to weave sound bytes of a political and social nature — culled from a wide variety of sources including news broadcasts, the movie Dr. Strangelove, and speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., George Bush, and Noam Chomsky — into almost every one of its songs. The samples are not scattershot, but grouped and ordered thematically within and between songs. This approach cements the relationship between From Monument to Masses’ progressive politics and progressive music.

But the real test, the real proof of this band’s success, is that it makes some of the most beautiful and powerful music you will ever hear.

AND WE’RE NOT KIDDING ABOUT THAT
-The group came together in 2001 in Oakland, signing with Los Angeles’ Dim Mak Records shortly thereafter — right around the time it played its first official gig.
-FMTM’s debut release came in 2002, a five-track album on Dim Mak that’s now out of print.
-Its third and latest release was called Schools of Thought Contend, a collaboration in which the band invited other artists to remix a number of its songs. Participants include Thunderbirds Are Now!, Loquat, and Amundsen. The 15-track CD also features two new FMTM songs.
-In October of 2006, drummer Francis Chuong moved to New York City, but the band avowed to continue working as a bicoastal project. A new record and extensive touring are promised in late 2007.

Golden Birds are still the best Bay Area indie rock band no one’s heard of. And the group’s 2005 LP Carrier is one of the best local CDs we’ve heard in years. You can quote us on that. Although the band has kept a low profile through infrequent shows and limited recordings, especially over the past year or so, what it has produced is pure gold — rhythmic, melodic, entrancing gold. The core of the group — singer/guitarist Webster McBride and bassist Karl Tupper — actually formed as Carrier in 2003, changing to Golden Birds upon discovering another indie rock group of the same name in Colorado.

McBride did something last summer that earned the band its biggest bit of press. He completed a road trip across the country where he played an acoustic set on the capitol building grounds of all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., in 51 days. That means one show a day, for 51 straight days, with all the driving miles in between. He even flew to Juneau, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii, while a friend drove his minivan to the next state on the route. And he did it all without once paying for lodging. Absolutely crazy, if you ask us, but he pulled it off swimmingly.

The band is currently working on a new EP (possibly called Softwar) with producer (and ex-band member) Hrishikesh Hirway, who now plays as The One AM Radio. McBride and Karl Tupper are joined here by Leyna Noel, Matt Brown, and Will Holtz. This lineup is scattered across the Bay Area and the state, but — and this is not a knock at Tupper’s excellent contributions on bass — its heart resides at Fort Oregon, McBride’s house in Berkeley (if you live around here, try driving by it sometime…).

FLY LIKE AN EAGLE:
-In April 2006, Golden Birds flew to Chicago to play the inaugural Mission Creek Music Festival Midwest (an offshoot of the highly successful Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, which was founded ten years ago in San Francisco). This coming March 30, the band will travel to Iowa City, Iowa, to play year two.
-New Golden Birds member Leyna Noel is a longtime friend of the band. The 25-year-old released her first solo album in 2004 and has a new one coming soon called From the Mouth of the Jar.
-Drummer Matt Brown also plays in the LA-based band Foot Foot, for which his brother Josh sings and plays guitar.

San Francisco quartet the Dont’s are on the verge of releasing the biggest album of their young career. Must be an exciting feeling. The band is barely four years old, and Inner El Camino, due January 30, is a big step forward from its 2005 debut Misc Radio Leakage. Both have been self-released, but this one streamlines and elaborates upon the experimentalism of the first while proving that the Dont’s ability to distill quirky, old-school indie rock was no fluke.

Inner El Camino is indeed an indie rock fun house. Taking stalwarts like Modest Mouse, the Fall, Can, Tortoise, and Sonic Youth, and boiling them down to their most quintissential and palatable elements, the record is simultaneously off-kilter and embracing — a weird record that’s not hard to listen to. That alone is an accomplishment, but a few moments across the album elevate it to a higher level: wild vocal melodies, sublime guitar parts, jagged rhythms, and unique bass lines that bounce through uneasy indie rock tunes like tumbleweed of pure gold.

A few tracks can be overly derivative, especially the way-too-Fall-to-be-an-accident kick-off number “Blah Blah Blah.” That doesn’t stop it from being one of the record’s high points. And lead singer Jonny Dont’s voice, whether by accident or not, sounds at time a LOT like that of Electric Six frontman Dick Valentine (what a name!). The key to this record is appreciating it for what it is and shutting down the indier-than-thou part of your brain, if you have it. If you don’t, you’re in the clear, for the Dont’s execution is flawless. Songs like “AKA Sob” and sax-laced closer “Motherfather” are all Dont’s, assuring the skeptical listener that this is not a gang of ripoff artists, but four musicians with eight great ears. They know quality music when they hear it, and they sure know how to make some of their own.

THE PLEASE DO’S
-In addition to singer Jonny Don’t, the group includes Joey Don’t on guitars, JJ Don’t on bass, and Ken Don’t on drums. Something tells us they’re not actually brothers.
-Inner El Camino was recorded on analog tape at the Tiny Telephone and SF Soundworks studios in San Francisco.
-The band has retained hundreds of hours of experimental recordings since forming in 2003. This does a lot to explain the band’s more precarious moments — they probably come from improv rather than deliberate songwriting sessions.