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Music

To Serge, with love

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"Some people have their hang-ups about making music on a computer," opines tech house DJ and producer Serge Garcia, a.k.a. Greco Guggenheit. "Then again, some cinematographers during the silent era believed that the introduction of sound to films was fraudulent."

A relatively fresh face in the Bay Area, the 24-year-old Los Angeles native Garcia has more than a few bass monsters he’s itching to unleash. Wielding the Detroit techno scene and its forefathers as his beacon, he compounds elements from minimal house and peak-time techno into one banging track after another.

Garcia spent part of his youth in Mexico City, then Barcelona, where he played a lot of soccer (his "first love," he confesses). His introduction to electronic music began thanks to what he describes as "random CDs with the label ‘Techno/House Music’" that his older sister would mail to him. "Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Kerri Chandler, Derrick May," he incants, when asked about some of the DJs and producers who appeared on these CDs. "Basically, dance music that came out of Detroit and its surrounding areas in the 1980s and early ’90s."

In the last year, Garcia has split his time between San Francisco, Stockholm, and Berlin. He plans to make Berlin his home base later this summer, citing record label interest in and around Germany and an aversion to SF’s 2 a.m. curtain calls as motives for his move. "After visiting Berlin and experiencing places like Panorama Bar, Cookies Club, and Watergate, I remember coming home and feeling very alive and creative," he explains. "Here in the states, electronic music isn’t part of mainstream culture [the way] it is in many parts of Europe."

GRECO GUGGENHEIT

With Buttercream Gang, Magnanimous

Wed/10, 9 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

Tears of a thug

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

The first time I interviewed Shaheed Akbar, a.k.a. the Jacka — in December of 2007, during a midnight session for Tear Gas (Artist Records/SMC), due June 16 — he was rolling purple and green weeds plus two types of hash into a Sharpie-sized blunt. I felt like Paul Bowles interviewing Bob Marley. Having known him three years, I can assure you that even in the Bay’s smoky atmosphere, Jacka blazes like a forest fire.

I dwell on this because it’s one facet of the Tear Gas concept, beyond the title’s literal meaning. The perpetual cloud enveloping Jacka is as much a part of his persona as his mobbed out tales of street life, based on experience. Like many artists, the MC enlists his favorite plant in the service of music.

"Weed helps you concentrate on certain things," Jacka observes, during a follow-up interview last month. "Nothing that contains too much multitasking. But if you don’t rap, try writing one; it’s hard as fuck. Weed gets you outside your normal realm so you coming up with crazy shit."

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?


Yet, considering his consumption, Jacka barely raps about weed, or at least no more than most rappers; he has other things on his mind. When I e-mail Paul Wall, one of several big-name features on Tear Gas, to ask why he wanted to work with Jacka, he emphasizes the authenticity of his collaborator’s verses.

"He speaks from experience when he rhymes," Wall writes. "Like he’s rapping from a hustler’s perspective for other hustlers."

The experience Wall cites consists of details which, in the aggregate, might make for improbable fiction. Jacka’s rise to local notoriety at age 18 as a member of C-Bo’s Mob Figaz — whose eponymous debut (Git Paid, 1999) moved something like 140,000 units — is fairly well documented. But the story begins much earlier. Born of 14-year-old parents, young Jacka saw his mother get addicted to crack, and his father go to prison for a decade only to be murdered shortly after release. The result was an impoverished childhood in various hoods in Oakland, Richmond, and finally Pittsburg, where the Mob Figaz began.

"As a kid, everywhere I lived was in the projects," he says. "A nigga’s whole thing is to get out of there." Such ambition led Jacka to start dealing crack as early as age 11.

"Say you’re in school," Jacka continues. "Moms ain’t working. Pops ain’t around. The other kids at school have everything you don’t, as far as clothes and packing they own lunch. All that matters when you’re a kid. You go to junior high and you eating free lunch, people are like, ‘What kind of nigga is you?’ So when you’re from the hood and can hustle, that’s definitely helping your self-esteem. You pulling out wads of cash and motherfuckers who used to laugh at you ain’t got shit. That made me feel hella good."

"Things I had to do to survive is one thing," he says. "But how I feel about it now is another."

BLUNT (OR DEEP) EMOTION


Jacka’s willingness to probe psychological wounds reveals another implication of Tear Gas. Paradoxically or not, in a genre where emotions are usually limited to elation and anger, a large part of Jacka’s appeal is his emphasis on the melancholy ambivalence of street life. It’s subtle, of course, sprinkled into stories of coke-dealing and cap-busting. But contrary to his assertion on the Traxamillion-produced "Girls," an infectious thug-pop remake of the 1986 Beastie Boys classic, Jacka doesn’t just "knock hoes and live it up."

"You can only shoot the breeze so much; you gotta drop a jewel on people," says Jacka, citing 2Pac, to whom he pays homage in "Hope Is for Real." "He had to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing because he had to reach me, the niggas in the hood, but look what you learn from him. So I have to study and get wiser to even make a song."

To be sure, Tear Gas isn’t a sociological treatise; like the blues, it voices the despair of a culture rather than proposing solutions. But such articulation is exactly what makes the music of both Pac and Jacka so powerful.

"Listen to Marvin Gaye," Jacka continues. "I guarantee he’s going to grab your soul. He knows something and could put it together with the music. And what he talked about was the struggle, the pain. I try to make shit that’ll stick to your soul. Like the music my parents used to listen to."

Besides his social consciousness, Jacka’s success rests squarely on quality. Last year, his single "All Over Me" — included on Tear Gas — hit No. 7 on KMEL’s playlist and No. 15 on Billboard’s "Bubbling Under" singles chart. Yet he refused to rush his album to capitalize on this exposure. Instead, he released 11 side projects. Two of them debuted on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart: Drought Season (Bern One), a collaboration with rapper Berner, at No. 55, and The Street Album (Artist Records), a "mixtape album" with KMEL DJ Big Von, at No. 91.

"Motherfuckers like shit that make them think," Jacka says, when asked about his appeal. They also like real albums and, taken as whole, Tear Gas is among the best rap discs in recent history, major or indie. Despite its array of producers and perhaps a few too many guests, Jacka has fashioned a tight, coherent album where every track is vital — an extreme rarity in contemporary hip hop. With its minor-key, exotic flute and harp textures, the new single "Glamorous Lifestyle," also produced by Traxamillion and featuring André Nickatina, epitomizes the overall feel.

"It’s not an easy process unless you really listen to music, and follow all kinds of genres," says Jacka. "Some people just listen to rap, but other music helps you grow as an artist."

THE VOICE


Being a rapper, Jacka’s voice is ultimately his most important asset, an instantly recognizable, rounded, mellow drawl — even when he raps fast — that is never raspy, despite the steady diet of blunts. His melodic, half-sung delivery, moreover, perfectly fits his vocal texture and mournful themes.

"My style really comes from the struggle," he says. "I’m not trying to make you like what I’m saying — I’m trying to get into your soul." This spiritual goal reflects what he credits as his primary influence: chanting the Koran. Surprising or not, given his gangsta themes, smoking, and even drinking, Jacka is a devout Sunni Muslim. It’s the result of a spiritual quest he began at age 9, when he joined the Nation of Islam.

"They showed me how to be black, because I really didn’t know," he explains. "I just knew we were in America, we used to be slaves, but I didn’t know why it was so tough for us. They made me read books that taught me to be proud of who I am. They can be a little strict sometimes, but they have to be; there was so much taken away from us."

When Jacka began intensively reading the Koran, however, he began to question some of the Nation’s teachings. "I realized that what it said in the Koran is what I should do," he says. "Not that plus something else."

The development of Jacka’s faith toward more orthodox Islam accelerated circa 2000. The Mob Figaz’ momentum slowed when C-Bo went to prison and Jacka caught a robbery case that landed him in county jail for a year.

"In jail, I was reading the Koran and realized the Sunni Muslim way is for me," Jacka remembers. "It’s the way I can pray directly to God." Following his release, Jacka took his shahada, declaring his formal adherence to Islam. But as rap money dried up in the Bay during its leanest years (2000-04), he returned to crime at a whole new level, even while beginning his solo career with The Jacka (Akbr Records, 2001).

"When I started working on my album, things changed for me — I really got into the streets," Jacka says. Rap celebrity gave him connections he otherwise would have lacked. "Whatever rap niggas was talking about, we were living," he says with some pride, although he feels he’ll one day have to answer to Allah for his misdeeds. Details of his criminal past are necessarily vague, though if you consider that fellow Mob Figa Husalah was arrested for transporting "over five kilos" of cocaine, a case culminating in his 2006 sentence to 53 months in federal prison, you get the picture.

"The streets are dried up for me," says Jacka. "Once the feds knock your boy, you can’t fuck around for the rest of your life. I’m hot. So I stay with the music now."

"I didn’t take the business as seriously as I should have," he admits. "So I had to start from ground zero." Fortunately, by the time Jacka’s second "official" solo album The Jack Artist (Artist Records, 2005) was ready to drop, the Bay began to heat up again. Even in the heyday of hyphy, the conspicuously non-hyphy Jack Artist sold some 20,000 copies, or "more than all those niggas put together," in the words of the man behind it. Yet despite this success, Tear Gas sounds little like its predecessor. Instead, it reflects Jacka’s artistic growth now that he’s settled down to music full time.

"I wouldn’t trade this for those times again — never," Jacka says, when asked to weigh yesterday and today. "This is something legit we’re doing that’s real. My dream as a child was to do this."

www.myspace.com/thejackamobfigaz

Post-diva, darling

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markeb@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO "Do you consider yourself a diva?" It’s one of those ridiculously rhetorical nightlife, especially gay nightlife, questions — like "Does this pair of angel wings and neon bob wig make me look dated?" or "Is that muscle queen by the speakers dancing or frantically signaling with both hands for me to call him on his cellular?"

And yet, here I am in the Castro, asking that very question of potential diva-in-training Caroline Lund (www.myspace.com/carolinelund). Lund certainly has all the particulars in place. Freshly released, circuit-friendly remix album of her debut single "Move Your Body"? Snap. A longtime dance presence on San Francisco’s shirtless gay afterhours scene, coordinating riser-writhers at Club Universe in the ’90s and now Wunderland? Snap, snap. Slick video featuring Lund in an array of revealing outfits, gyrating among backup pec-flexers? Of course. And heavy rotation play on Energy, 92.7 FM? Well, not until the Bay’s biggest progressive-pop dance station actually starts playing more local stuff. But soon.

Originally from Ghana, raised in Stockton, and now living in the Haight, the naturally gorgeous Lund even has a beauty pageant past, snagging a Miss San Joaquin sash when she was fresh out of high school ("I scored a few crowns and moved on," she laughs). But despite possessing all the slightly played-out signifiers of divadom, she offers a refreshing departure from the usual hyped-up circuit siren. First, she’s not a wailer. "Move Your Body" is an intensely catchy if unthreatening tune: Lund coos her way through the slinky "Ray of Light"-like slice of 2 a.m. loveliness with understated bravado.

Caroline Lund, “Move Your Body” (teaser)

She’s also disarmingly self-aware. "Look, I’m a track act," she tells me, "and I’ve seen a lot of track acts perform. It’s important not to interrupt the flow of the music with announcements, to flesh it out organically with dancing and costumes that don’t throw off the vibe." I’ll probably choke on an empty poppers bottle before I’ll ever again hear a track act describe herself as a track act. And underneath all the artifice, a real drama queen’s heart beats. The teenage Lund used to sneak out of her parent’s house to attend theater rehearsals, and has an impressive acting resume. "With the new release, I just always loved this type of music — it’s a time in my life to really go for something," she says, her eyes sparkling with resolve.

The bone of contention, of course, has always been divas. My cuticles are still raw from clawing my eyes out in the ’90s, trying to explain to my intransigent friends that house is more than just some lady yowling like a stuck pig to "be yourself" while a hurricane of gym clones twitches and disrobes on the dance floor around you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that scene, but it makes me kind of sneezy, kind of stabby. One could even hear much of the past decade’s underground dance music as a reaction to flagrant vocal house — from electro-clash’s snide, clipped raps, to electro’s Uffie "fuck me" mumbles and dubstep and future bass’s virtual obliteration of the feminine.

Maybe all that was necessary. But now that a diva can be "anyone with a midriff and an attitude" — in the words of DJ Bus Station John, who pretty much reintroduced the sound of women singing to SF’s dance underground with his bathhouse disco revival movement — and Lady Gaga has dominated global charts merely by raiding Grace Jones’ Goodwill bin, can we finally bury the overblown personality-machine and get back to the feeling?

"I’d be honored if anyone called me a diva," Lund says, demurely. "But really, I just want to be part of the energy, not to own it."

———–

STACEY PULLEN

In the early ’90s, along with seminal Detroit legends like Alton Miller, Kenny Larkin, and Carl Craig, ever-cool innovator Stacey Pullen explored and expanded a strain of the early techno sound, implicit in Derrick May’s first releases, that conjured up complex jazz-fusion-like chord shifts and African drum patterns. The results — oh, I’ll just say it — blew out some serious crania. They also helped establish techno as a distinctly black idiom at a time when its definition was being stretched so far it included sampling the Sesame Street theme song. In the late ’90s, when everyone was trying to make money, Stacey ventured into harder, more Euro-friendly mixes — with mixed results, at least to this Motor City queen’s ear. The man behind Silent Phase and Kosmik Messenger is back in his semi-abstract yet supremely danceable comfort zone, though, and should be worth braving the Temple weekend crowd for. Pack your anti-bachelorette spray and prepare to be seriously moved.

Fri/12, 10 p.m., $20. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

———-

THE MARTINEZ BROTHERS

Are Steve and Chris Martinez the great Bronx hope of house? The press hook about the dashing, actual brothers is that they’re incredibly tender: now 20 and 17 respectively, they’ve been tearing up global parties for the past couple years. (Don’t ask how they got past the door guys, nosy.) But the real news is that "house" in their case refers to deeply researched, deeply felt mixes that may be ravenous in scope — Kerri Chandler, Pat Methany, and Slum Village all find their way onto TMB’s decks — but are reviving that endangered species: dancefloor soul. This is not to say they’re fuddy-duddies in training, or that there’s cobwebs on the needles. The energetic duo may not yet be, as many have posited, the new Masters at Work (I’ll need to hear a few more releases from them before I’m willing to join that chorus), but when they give the electro-stutter treatment to Roland Clark’s political a capella "Resist" over DJ Spen’s string-driven throwdown "Gabryelle", the old-school spirits come down. House is alive and finding new children to speak through.

Sat/13, 10 p.m., $10 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, www.mighty119.com

The Lemonheads

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REVIEW For a brief time in the early 1990s, Evan Dando was an It boy. He wore great jeans and hid behind his hair — the shaggy pop songs didn’t hurt either. His band, the Lemonheads, coasted to success with an easy cover of "Mrs. Robinson," and then Atlantic took a bath on Come On Feel the Lemonheads (Atlantic, 1993), an album that’s likely still haunting remainder bins. These are the facts, but the melodies that snag your adolescence are destined to boggle any attempt at objectivity.

I still remember picking It’s a Shame About the Ray (Atlantic, 1992) off the rack after spotting it in an older friend’s collection — I must have been 11 or 12. Soon, I went the extra mile for a couple of bootleg cassettes I then listened to in ritualistic isolation. In Dando, I heard the sympathetic reticence of a dropout. I beached my shyness on his languid refrains; he was good company. I wouldn’t say I wanted to trade places (Ben Lee took up this mantle on "I Wish I Was Him"), but the Lemonheads furnished my imagination with yearning and ennui — sensing those things without knowing them was sublime. I loved the band for coming from Boston; their stoned melodies padded the lonely stretches of Memorial Drive and sandy dunes of Cape Cod where I moved into my feelings. Nearly all Lemonheads songs are letters, and I imagined I too would come to know a "you."

Trying to sort out how memory imprints my continued weakness for these melodies would require a novel rather than a capsule review, but I like to think the Lemonheads albums still hold up because I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I don’t put them on very often, but I can easily lose a whole afternoon when I do.

THE LEMONHEADS With Kim Vermillion. Wed/10, 8 p.m., $21. Slim’s, 333 11th St, SF (415) 255-0333. www.slims-sf.com

DJ Quik

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PREVIEW Matthew Africa jumpstarts his new mixtape The Best of DJ Quik with a young Quik’s ambitious plans to be "America’s Most Complete Artist." What follows is an expertly mixed collage of rapid-fire blunted rhythms and gangsta blues that captures the zeitgeist of Los Angeles’ illustrious G-Funk era. Channeling the slap bass bounce of the Ohio Players and the dance grooves of Zapp & Roger, Quik conducts his singular, Compton-articulated swagger over percussion that still knocks.

Quik’s diverse catalog certainly provides fodder to grant him status as the best hybrid producer and lyricist in the game. No seasoned emcee touches his pimp strut flow graced with jazzy finesse. No daring beat conductor successfully ventures into his textured boogie-pop compositions and sounds just as cohesive, raw, and frenetic. But Quik’s ultimate edge is the charisma in his braggadocio style and the consistent humor in his street-refined vulgarity.

On this month’s BlaQKout (Mad Science), Quik teams up with Dogg Pound luminary Kurupt to reinvest some gutter spirit into today’s changing rapscape. A buzz is already building around "9 Times Outta 10," where Kurupt spits hypnotic, stop motion bars over a starkly dissonant drum clap and mushroom-induced atmospherics. My anonymous sources (Internet leaks) tell me we’ve got some ferocious beats and rhymes coming our way.

DJ QUIK AND KURUPT With Quik’s live band, Trackademicks, the Kev Choice Ensemble. Thurs/9, 8 p.m., $20. Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF. (415) 693-0777, www.rubyskye.com

Into the wild

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER O, Commuter — wherefore art thou, Commuter? Grandaddy mastermind Jason Lytle is familiar enough with the concept of the long haul: he’s known plenty of people who’ve made the trek from his Modesto hometown to Silicon Valley and the Bay. But this time out, on Lytle’s first solo album, an exquisite clutch of songs titled Yours Truly, the Commuter (ANTI-), the typical definition of harried, driven, and road-raging working-stiff doesn’t quite apply. Or so he explains from his home on the edge of Montana backcountry, over a hot printer jetting out flight info concerning his imminent European tour.

"In this instance, I’m referring to the place I gotta go to make good art, get good results, be creative, and then making the trip back to reality, which is just taking care of business and taking care of my life and making sure that the car still works and, uh, there aren’t too many stains on the carpet," he rambles softly, as if speaking to himself, an old friend, or, as the Yours Truly song title goes, the "Ghost of My Old Dog." "It’s not always an easy transition, and I’ve found that the longer I do this, the harder it gets to push yourself to that level of making good art, and then having to come back and be responsible and sift through the wreckage."

Lytle turned 40 on March 26, while fulfilling his target of becoming the "healthiest" he’s ever been. ("Whew, it was a real chore!" he wisecracks wryly, recalling the performance and party gauntlet at South by Southwest a few days previous.) He has more goals where that one came from.

"There’s all this stuff I want to do before I get old," the ex-semi-pro skateboarder says, when I joke that the grandpa years are approaching despite the demise of his old band Grandaddy. "I want to start painting, and I wouldn’t mind playing golf, and I want to get a dog again. I still fucking skateboard on a regular basis! If your body allows you to do it, why quit?"

It’s just as hard to imagine Lytle turning his back on music, in spite of his seeming hiatus since the release of Grandaddy’s Just Like the Fambly Cat (V2, 2006) and his move to Montana three years ago. He busied himself setting up his studio, working on songs for M. Ward, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s forthcoming project, and commercials, until a snowed-in winter spent at the grand piano and peering out the window triggered these tunes. Majestic space balladry ("I Am Lost [And the Moment Cannot Last]"), echo chamber rock ("It’s the Weekend"), Kraut meditations ("Fürget It"), bittersweet summons to the temple of Neil Young ("Here for Good"), and stately Brian Wilson-levitating-on-Air elegies ("Flying Thru Canyons") flowed forth. "I love the idea of putting together a little body of work," Lytle says, "whether it be a mix tape for my friends or just a collection of Christmas songs that I’ve recorded for relatives — or in this case, a group of songs that I thought were strong enough to call an album."

When Lytle comes through town with a group including ex-Grandaddy drummer Aaron Burtch and Rusty Miller of SF’s Jackpot, he’ll be fielding another question: When is the musical commuter coming home? "I would have loved to have stayed in California," drawls Lytle. "But the types of places that I want to live don’t really exist in California anymore. They’re too expensive — or they’re overrun with meth labs." *

JASON LYTLE

Mon/8, 9:30 p.m., $16

Café du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

Also opening for Neko Case

Tues/9, 8 p.m., $30–<\d>$33

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.goldenvoice.com

————

SNAP! OBSCURA NOT MISERABLE

Don’t you dare call Camera Obscura nostalgists. Vocalist Tracyanne Campbell, she of the heart-torching girlish brogue, fumes at the very thought, despite a "post-dinner slump" following her vegetarian Thai green curry. "No, I don’t think we’re a bunch of miserable, nostalgia-hungry losers," she protests from Glasgow. "We don’t long for the past. The past is very much a part of me, but I think it’s good to try and live in the moment. I think we’re misunderstood."

Still, the combo’s delicious new My Maudlin Career (4AD) is steeped in girl-group charm and Motown shimmy — though Camera Obscura had forged its sound eons before those genres’ current revival. There’s little contrivance to Camera Obscura’s lush music, Campbell explains, especially when it comes to recording: the group tends to track live with few overdubs. "I think a lot of times it’s the happy accident, to be honest," she says. "I don’t want to be too persnickety. I want to be brave enough to try and capture that moment on its own, without looking back with regret."

CAMERA OBSCURA

With Agent Ribbons

Mon/8, 9 p.m., $21.50

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

Bull feathers

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superego@sfbg.com

SUPEREGO I recently found myself in Navajo Nation, munching on frybread at Kate’s diner in Tuba City with Hunky Beau after rocking out to, I shit you not, tech-navajo on the local FM station in the rental. I looked fantastic. We’d just witnessed a fierce two-spirit working the sandwich counter at the Bashas’ supermarket down the street. She/he looked fantastic. Back here in the city, on the nightlife scene, things weren’t so fantastic — another big underground party got busted, Pink Saturday ran into permit snafus, and neighborhood complaints mooted even more regular shindigs. And has anyone else noticed the skyrocketing price of a drink in this town? I’m not saying you need a buzz to bust out (alcohol sales are banned on the rez, so I’m grateful for the option), but dropping a Hamilton for a weak well screwdriver certainly has me rethinking my hollow leg. Still, as immortal shamans ABBA sang, "I can fly like an eagle, I can learn to spread my wings". Spread ’em, children, toss your hair, and let’s keep flying high.

ROLLER DISCO!

The only party in the city where I’m never alone falling on my luscious ass returns — skate rental provided, balance and expertise optional. I can’t lie, I have a total blast at this gig, even if the tunes are fun-yet-familiar and there’s always that one amazingly cute girl whose backspins and pirouettes make me bite my knuckles and wish I were a lot gayer. Like, Brian Boitano gayer.

Thu/4, 9 p.m., $5. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

"25 YEARS OF HOUSE MUSIC"

Dates and times, dates and times — why quibble? Most approaches to the evolution of house are more organic than any "x" on a calendar. But if a quarter-century celebration, complete with art exhibition, of the underground global movement that foretold the Internet’s interconnectivity is a big enough excuse to get Chicago genius Jesse Saunders behind the decks at Club Six, I’m way down.

Fri/5, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., $15. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

ZOMBIE BEACH PARTY

"Guaranteed to put the laughter in slaughter" is a tagline that’ll get me every time. And so will any appearance by the Living Dead Girlz, those jaw-dropping undead dancer with a taste for semi-clothed flesh. They’ll be waving, not drowning, from the stage at this tongueless-in-cheek beach blanket bingo bacchanal, along with Sparkly Devil, Honey Lawless, and a mass grave of others. Plus: an undead beachwear costume contest. Paging Annette Funicello …

Fri/5, 9 p.m.– late, $10 street clothes/$7 surfer zombies. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.dnalounge.com

BIG IDEA: RITUAL AND REDEMPTION

Oh, crap. Is it really Pride month again? Time to haul that sequined rainbow thong from out the mothballs and try to get married or whatever. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is going homo-humongous for its latest, starlet-studded Big Idea party — rounding up the city’s fiercest alternaqueers with its golden lasso, including fab drag disasters Anna Conda and Monistat, DJ Dirty Knees, Pansy Division, Honey Soundsystem, Ex-Boyfriends, and the ever-present, never-sleeping Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Fellini-inspired spectacle also promises free tattoos, after-hours dancing, a taco truck, and "Project Nunway," heh. Best of all, the whole shebang is free — and not sponsored by Miller Lite, Altoids, 2Xist, Olivia Cruises, or Tylenol PM.

Sat/6, 9 p.m.–3 a.m., free. YBCA, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org

WIGHNOMY BROTHERS

Monthly throwdown Kontrol at EndUp breeds absolutely bonkers dancefloor results that are far less fussy than its minimal techno focus, meticulous taste in talent, and somewhat daunting prevalence of miniscule eyewear would suggest. For the party’s fourth anniversary, it’s bringing in Germany’s superstar Wighnomy Brothers, two proudly unkempt vodka-swillers whose Seth Rogen-like public image belies a sizzling bromance with the more lovable, devil-may-care side of dance. The tipsy pair of teddy bears with a penchant for unpronounceable titles (recent release: Metawuffmischfelge) refused to visit the U.S. during that whole Bush thing. Laudable, but we could have used their balls-to-the-wall wig-outs to help us through such foulest ick. Good thing we’ve still got problems!

Sat/6, 10 p.m.–6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.kontrolsf.com

Do the ‘bot

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

It’s a flagship band on America’s taste-makingest dance music label, but the Juan Maclean’s second full-length of peerless pop disco, The Future Will Come (DFA) is a low-stakes affair. In contrast to the orbit of expectations around the Field’s recently released Yesterday and Today (ANTI-/Kompakt), there isn’t the sense that it should — or can — be read as a measure of the group’s artistic viability.

Which is not to say that Future hasn’t undergone intense scrutiny. Last year’s monster of a teaser single, the 12-minute "Happy House," weathered pages of heated message board discussion among sample spotters, who pointed out that the group lifted the track’s driving two-chord piano vamp from Dubtribe Sound System’s decade-old "Do It Now."

"It was pretty funny," John (a.k.a. Juan) MacLean says by phone, as he and his bandmates drive through Georgia. "Someone was accusing me of ripping someone off in a style of music that has been almost entirely sample-dependent."

Although it has taken on a massive life outside of Future, "Happy House" shows what TJM is capable of: namely, superb pop that uses dance music’s production techniques and structures. This elusive combination was hinted at on its debut, 2005’s Less Than Human (Astralwerks). Now vocals have a more prominent role. Songs such as "One Day" feature a back-and-forth between MacLean and LCD Soundsystem member Nancy Whang that recalls Dare-era Human League.

"We paid a lot more attention to how we were doing [vocals], stylistically," says MacLean, "On the first album it was more like we laid vocals on top of instrumental songs." With Future, the studio effects that masked MacLean’s voice are removed to reveal even colder circuitry. Like Brian Eno or Gary Numan, his tone is both affected and affectless. At times, it’s also goofy unto distraction. Then again, a line like "I’ll be here after midnight, wearing my beleaguered frown" isn’t angling for verisimilitude.

Future also pares down some of the trickier production flourishes that made Less Than Human feel a little insular, if satisfying in its complexity. MacLean describes the process as "nowhere near as difficult" as it was on Human. "This one has so much live playing on it that it’s been a pretty straightforward transition," he says.

The conciliatory quality at the base of Future‘s sound is cleanly framed and well-articulated in a manner that rebuts the tongue-in-cheek prohibition of TJM’s early single "You Can’t Have It Both Ways." The sequencing, for example, places the longer club tracks ("The Simple Life," "Tonight," and "Happy House") squarely at the beginning, middle, and end, spaced out by pop-length songs. MacLean has a history with structure and discipline as aesthetic strategies — from his earliest releases with Six Finger Satellite, he’s consistently taken cues from Kraftwerk over, say, Creedence.

The Juan MacLean makes music that’s uncomplicatedly likeable, even as the group emphasizes robot drama, traditionally not an easy sell with American audiences. "It’s easier to be crazy and out-there and experimental," MacLean says. "The pop music world is more difficult to navigate." Future puts that difficulty across to the listener with "Human Disaster," which sounds like a piano ballad with every other chord taken out. If I could get past just how bummed out MacLean sounds, I might hear it as a rebuke to listeners looking for recognizable emotion.

The album’s title track, on the other hand, plays as straight-up satire, and comes close to calling trust-funders out by name. It’s hard to tell brilliant and clumsy apart as Maclean pronounces "Your life in the city is a paid vacation /Your suicide note was a part of your thesis" over a hopped-up conga loop. "In New York, you find yourself surrounded by people who just talk a lot about doing things without ever getting them done — types that don’t have to live all that desperately," MacLean explains.

This is an assuringly human sentiment. On Future, class antagonism and Teutonic robots might be shunted aside by listeners in favor of values like emotional immediacy, personal agency, and dubiously coded ideals of authenticity and originality. Ultimately the Juan MacLean’s latest serves to emphasize that DFA is a label based on fandom committed to communicating the pleasure of listening. It gives us a glimpse of its maker’s canon, and a host of new thrills.

THE JUAN MACLEAN

With the Field

Sat/6, 9 p.m., $20

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Musical, political, alchemical

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Quick, name a magus of the female persuasion, a black sorceress who wields sound like a talisman. The first image we have of Erykah Badu is her calmly walking on stage during the summer of 1997, lighting a series of candles to begin the ceremony. She would summon ghosts: Billie Holliday, the Nation of the Gods and the Earths, scruffy B-boys on a street corner. Her band — on her debut Baduizm (Kedar/Universal Motown, 1997), it is often neo-soul locus the Roots — played balletic grooves at a languid pace. She was a strangely beautiful apparition, a high priestess of soul.

Ever since, Badu has embraced and chafed at her mystical reputation. In 1998 she appeared in the mediocre coming-of-age flick The Cider House Rules as — guess what? — a voodun priestess. Meanwhile her romances with Andre 3000, Common, and, lately, Texas rap prospect Jay Electronica (with whom she recently had a child) have occasionally made her a target of the hip-hop paparazzi. She’s bragged in interviews of her prowess as a mackstress; other times, she’s refused to comment on her private life.

On last year’s Universal/Motown release New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), Badu finally seems at peace with her eccentricities. Past albums exhausted her former glories for fresh inspiration: 2003’s Worldwide Underground (Motown) included "Danger," which opens with a refrain from Baduizm‘s second single, "Otherside of the Game." Its intro track "World Keeps Turnin’" returns to the "on and on" lullaby of "On & On," Baduizm‘s Five Percenter-quoting breakout single ("And on and on and on, my cipher keeps moving like a rolling stone"). New Amerykah doesn’t look backward. Its starkly illustrated theme — a woman standing strong amid a world roiling in war and chaos — uneasily imagines the future present.

"This year I turn 36," Badu sings on the elegiac "Me." "Damn it seems it came so quick, my ass and legs have gotten thick. It’s all me." Thankfully Badu hasn’t settled into an adult contemporary middle-age, singing baby-making ballads for grown-ups. Few of her 1990s peers kept pace: last year, Spin magazine noted that D’Angelo, Maxwell, Lauryn Hill, and others from the neo-soul generation have mostly disappeared from view. But while Maxwell is drawing SRO audiences as he tours the country in preparation for BLACKsummers’night‘s July 7 release, and D’Angelo plans a similar comeback in the fall, it’s doubtful either will match Badu’s fiercely creative restlessness.

For New Amerykah, she turns to her artistic sons and daughters, musicians who used her blazing example to reinvigorate underground soul. The L.A. music collective Sa-Ra Creative Partners helm several tracks and 9th Wonder produces "Honey," a luscious love song that closes New Amerykah on an optimistic note. Wiggy soul-jazz aesthete Georgia Anne Muldrow appears on "Master Teacher," a heartbreaking yearning for positive influences in the black community. "A beautiful world is hard to find," sings Muldrow. "What if there was no niggas, only master teachers? I’d stay woke."

"Master Teacher" has been viewed as a tribute to Dr. Malachi Z. York, an esoteric philosopher whose mix of Egyptology, Islam and other pan-African ideas influenced Badu and other hip hop and R&B artists in the 1990s. (He was arrested and convicted for child molestation in 2004, and is currently serving a life sentence.) But without blunting the song’s original intent — many of "Master Teacher" York’s supporters believe he’s the target of a government conspiracy — it seems clear that Badu is the master teacher. Throughout her career, Badu has demonstrated a knack for communicating hardcore black ideologies in universal terms, educating and subverting her mainstream audience. She has always worked in alchemical ways. But with the arrival of New Amerykah, she finally turned the focus away from herself.

"Humdililah, Allah, Jehovah, Yaweh, Dios, Maat, Jah, Ras Tafari, fire, dance sex music, hip hop," Badu sings on "The Healer." "It’s bigger than religion, hip hop. This one is for Dilla."

ERYKAH BADU

Sat/6 9 p.m., $60

Warfield Theatre

982 Market, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.ticketmaster.com

Garrett Pierce

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PREVIEW There’s a bald-faced beauty lurking at the dark heart of San Francisco singer-songwriter Garrett Pierce’s All Masks (Crossbill). The album, Pierce’s second, glimmers quietly, gorgeously from a luminous remove: the performer wrote many of its numbers after traveling for months in Italy and Greece, visiting the power centers and ritual spaces devoted to the gods that pull the strings in Pierce’s beloved myths. After passing through the hands of Pierce and his collaborators — Jake Mann, Jen Grady and Carey Lamprecht (Emily Jane White Band), and Tim Wright (Wilderness) — the tracks on All Masks ended up revolving around the what Pierce calls a "self-exploration" of his dark side. "Some are brutally honest about shortcomings," the 28-year-old explains by phone from Davis, where he’s visiting his girlfriend and partaking in kombucha and wine. "As a songwriter, I err on the therapeutic side. I love all kinds of music, and I’ve played music that has had nothing personal involved. But for me, songwriting kind of gets me through without having to pay for therapy. If there’s a thread between these songs, it’s the exploration of the more upsetting images in my head."

Of course, mythic creatures slither to the fore, as they do on "Adam" in the form of the Garden of Eden’s snake. "I had this idea that Adam and him were friends and kicking it for a while, then the snake got axed and had this spiritual awakening on his death bed," Pierce says. "Every song has its own little life that way — I give them happier endings or a spiritual conclusion of sorts." Why? "That’s what I’m hoping for in my own life and hoping for in my songs."

GARRETT PIERCE With Conspiracy of Venus and Devotionals. Wed/3, 8 p.m., $10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com

Mayhem

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PREVIEW Since 1984, Oslo’s favorite sons Mayhem have had a reasonable claim to the title of most fucked-up band on the planet, the eagerly repeated stories of the lurid spectacle that is their live show representing only some of the milder aspects of their mythos. Colorful history aside, the men of Mayhem have established themselves as architects of the modern black metal sound, taking the nasty musicianship and overt occultism of Venom and early Bathory and using them as the foundation for a terrifying new kind of metal that mixes breakneck drums, guttural riffs, and croaking vocals with eerie, understated melody. Often imitated, the 25-year veterans’ unique style is seldom matched in terms of sheer, unhinged intensity.

Co-headliners Marduk, one of countless bands to follow in Mayhem’s footsteps, spent the better part of its career becoming even more gruesome and unpalatable to mainstream audiences with each successive album, until it was not inconceivable to mention the satanic Swedes in the same breath as their more established tour mates. By the late 1990s, Marduk began branching out instrumentally, refining its musicianship while remaining true to the genre it helped pioneer.

The two black metal greats are supported by a diverse collection of bands taken from all corners of the extreme metal scene. Progressive, black metal-inspired Withered makes a logical opener, and the presence of dizzying grindcore virtuosos Cephalic Carnage is strange but welcome. Rounding out the bill is the brutal Cattle Decapitation, a consistent favorite among fans of uncompromising, technical death metal. Fans of life-affirming music would do well to avoid this show.

MAYHEM Wed/3, 6 p.m., $25–$30, all ages. DNA Lounge 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409. www.dnalounge.com

It takes two

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Whether one thinks of them as a dreamy drone duo who happen to be married or a married couple who happens to make dreamy drone music, Windy & Carl endure. Their first release, the Instrumentals EP (Burnt Hair), dates back to 1994; while most American guitars were tuned down for grunge’s payday, Windy & Carl waxed celestial.

Spacey drones are now in fashion, but Windy & Carl’s influence remains relatively unsung, in spite of their being one of the Kranky label’s flagship acts. Perhaps it’s the duo’s Michigan roots, since ambient music fans are often swayed by Eurocentric cravings. Whatever the case, their prodigious oeuvre now swells with several earthily-titled monolithic albums (1995’s Portal on Ba Da Bing; 1997’s Antarctica on Darla; 1998’s Depths and 2001’s Consciousness on Kranky) and enough compilation appearances and singles to supply a triple-CD set (2002’s Introspection on Blue Flea).

I first plunged in with Depths, though it took me the better part of a year to make it through its viscous 70 minutes in one sitting. Windy & Carl’s music is like a mood ring: its timbre is responsive to emotional currents, some of them hidden. More often than not, dark thoughts surface after 30 or 40 minutes. This makes me suspect that many of those critics who fling adjectives like "blissful" and "glittering" at their records have only dipped their toes in the maelstrom. At the very least, these seem overly simplistic adjectives for music that tilts towards tumult as it limns stillness.

There is a common misconception that ambient music is intrinsically passive or inert: this, in fact, is only true of bad ambient music, of which there is plenty (unsurprisingly, it often accompanies tactless interior design). Windy & Carl, like the kosmische innovators before them, realign one’s sense of space rather than simply flattering it. This process occurs at the periphery of consciousness — trying to put it to words tests the limits of music writing. It’s clear, however, that much of the Michigan duo’s mastery comes down to a well-honed understanding of texture and scale. In a typical jam, the gigantic crest of a thousand distortion pedals curls around the intimate pluck of a lonely guitar in an arresting, Rothko-like frieze. Time is adjourned; foreground and background drift by one another in the fog.

The durational aspect of Windy & Carl’s music has two aspects: lost in the length of any one given piece, we also feel ourselves afloat on the broader body of work, a 16-year drone. This superimposed condition, with every conversation dissolving into all other conversations, should be familiar to anyone who has been inside a long-term relationship. Ambient music implies a porous self, and thus has interesting applications for a couple. Watching A Woman Under the Influence (1974) a few weeks ago, I was struck by the way John Cassavetes draws us into Nick (Peter Falk) and Mabel Longhetti’s (Gena Rowlands) nonverbal communication: the nonsense utterances, whispers, and cries. Something similar happens in Windy & Carl’s echo chamber of tone, feedback and voice.

For all the songs about love, how many actually document its dormant time and space? John and Yoko, Nelson Angelo and Joyce, and Mimi and Richard Fariña’s works spring to mind. Windy & Carl’s latest, Songs for the Broken Hearted (Kranky, 2008), belongs in any such pantheon. Their albums have always been "home recordings," but Dedications to Flea (Brainwashed Recordings, 2005), the duo’s disc-long contemplation of their dog’s death, marked a new degree of intimacy. Field recordings of Flea on a walk and Windy’s explanatory linear notes thickened the mise-en-scène of private loss, making for an album occupying the unknown zone between home movie and séance.

The last few years seem to have been a dark time for the couple (under her full name Windy Weber, Windy released a solo album for Blue Flea last year called, no joke, I Hate People). But one doesn’t require the details of estrangement to immerse into its recesses of fear and forgiveness. There’s more of Windy’s Nico-ish purr than before, and the lyrics are newly decipherable ("You already know so much of what I keep /From the rest of the world /But you did not shy away from me"). The album’s sequencing is distinct too, fluttering between vast passages of oblivion and brief statements of bare, shorn beauty. Whether the broken-hearted of the album’s title refers to Windy & Carl themselves or an imagined listener, Songs for finds fierce beauty in the hide-and-seek of cohabitation.

WINDY & CARL

With Jonas Reinhardt and Nudge

Wed/27, 8 p.m., $10

The Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF
(415)861-2011
www.rickshawstop.com

Glittering prize

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johnny@sfbg.com

One shorthand description of Ramona Gonzalez’s recording project Nite Jewel is that it’s disco on quaaludes. I don’t know if I like Nite Jewel quite as much as Glass Candy’s underrated B/E/A/T/B/O/X (Italians Do It Better, 2007) — c’mon, they’re funnier than they are given credit for, and they made "Computer Love" melancholic, what’s not to love? — or if I love it more.

Throughout Good Evening (Gloriette, 2008) and Nite Jewel (Human Ear, 2008) Gonzalez’s singing is both high-pitched and kinda dazed. On "Weak 4 Me," she reminds me of Mr. Bill, which can never be a bad thing. "What Did He Say" is the best Nite Jewel song so far. It sounds like a radio playing "I Can’t Wait" by Nu Shooz slowly sinking to the bottom of a pool. I recently caught up with Gonzalez on the phone.

SFBG I hadn’t realized you’re from the Bay Area. How was Berkeley High? What did you like about the Bay Area and not like about it?

Ramona Gonzalez Berkeley High when I went there was transitioning between being out of hand and horrible and pretty much a normal school. Now it’s nice. Back when I went, it was not like that. There were 23 arson attempts when I was a sophomore.

Certain teachers I had there were some of the best ones I’ve ever had. As for the school itself — fuck, it’s hard for a kid to get along in a 2300 person student body. Lots of aggro annoying kids, popularity contests and danger, everyday. But overall it was rewarding.

SFBG How were your experiences in the Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir and the Berkeley Jazz School Music Ensemble?

RG Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir was pretty awesome. My friend Emily introduced me to it, because her dad was singing in the adult choir. The songs are incredible and really difficult — the girls in that choir were unbelievably talented. I wasn’t as good as them. Singing soprano in a chest voice — that’s crazy.

I did that for 2 years and then joined the Berkeley Jazz school, just taking piano. I ran into one of the girls from the Youth Choir there.

SFBG You’ve said Kevin Shields would be a dream artists to work with.

RG I got into my shoegaze period in college and started listening to Lilys whenever possible. Me and my friend Shane tried to start a fan club.

One of my favorite bands is Woo. Their It’s Cozy Inside (Independent Record Publishing, 1989) and Whichever Way You’re Going, You’re Going Wrong (no info available) might be the two albums I’ve listened to the most in my entire life. They’re these two brothers who are Hare Krishna who live in the UK. I recently found out where they are, and they wrote me back and we’re totally going to hang out when I go to England.

SFBG We have to talk Bruce Haack. What do you love about him?

RG Bruce Haack to me is psychedelic electronic music. It also has a playfulness, because he’s making music for kids. His music has this relaxing quality and aggressive quality at the same time. There’s a simplicity I like. I like his fervor and bitterness towards the music industry, especially on Haackula (Omni Recording, 2008). But the one I listen to most is Electric Luficer (Omni Recording, 2007). His music doesn’t have a direct correlation with Nite Jewel in terms of textures and sounds, but more in terms of what it means to be a punk electronic musician.

NITE JEWEL

With Telepathe, Hawnay Troof

June 12, 10 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

133 17th St, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

Crack “Relapse”

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Symptoms: until last year there were few signs of life from Eminem, the hip-hop artist. Last sighted taking a bow on the cover of his last, toned-down, more PC, and ultimately underwhelming studio 2004 album, Encore, the rapper disappeared from the scene, as rumors festered about retirement and later, after he dropped out of the 2005 Anger Management Tour, substance abuse. Out of rehab and back to music-making — with hip-hop once again his favorite high, as he put it in a recent interview, Shady’s Relapse (Aftermath/Goliath/Interscope/Shady/Web) is now in our hands.

Diagnosis: listening to Em lead with his anger a decade after the release of The Slim Shady LP (Aftermath/Interscope), we’re back to the kind of music and lyrics the man was born to make and sling — impossible to ignore when blasting, and incapable of being reduced to wallpaper. Relapse isn’t perfect. The weakest track is the first single, "We Made You," with its easy, adolescent, cartoonish video and relatively violence-free lyrics. One too many numbers obsessively retreads similar women-hating, gore-mongering themes on this 22-tracker, which includes the hidden Dre collabos "Old Time’s Sake" and "Crack a Bottle" with 50 Cent. But even at its most repetitive (i.e., the skits devoted to nay-saying music biz types), Relapse writhes with life and smarts, conceptually of one piece from its narrative-like programming to its pill-mosaic cover portrait and medicine bottle top-like "Push, Down & Turn" packaging.

Em’s faux Jamaican/Scottish toaster patois may irk, much like his habit of subbing rap’s omnipresent "bitch" for "lesbian," but it’s tough to deny the vitality — and vitriol — rushing off Relapse‘s first three songs, as the rapper frontloads the disc with his strongest material. Tracks like the opener "3 a.m." and its serial-killer imagery (check the steal of Silence of the Lamb‘s imminently swipe-able "It puts the lotion in the basket" monologue and then the YouTube remixes) make it clear from the start that nasty alter ego Slim Shady has lapsed back into view. As he faces a 3 a.m. darkest hour of the soul stocked with a Fangoria-style rogue’s crew of references to Jason, Freddy, Dahmer, et al., rage continues to feed his rap.

Such gruesome reveries make Marshall Mathers’ acknowledged sleeping pill addiction totally understandable — whatever quiets the mind, dude. And though I usually suggest meditation and yoga as alternatives to self-medication, I’m loath to wreck such chaotic, thrill-kill fantasies as "Hello" and "Medicine Ball." "Bagpipes from Baghdad" and the more insinuating, handclap-riddled "Same Song and Dance" call out the perceived sins of rumored exes Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Mariah Carey — a trash-culture harem that makes one suspect that Shady’s rehab stays involved a lot of tabloid browsing for dates. Attraction is always linked to repulsion, hinted at in the openly weary title of the latter.

Blame the mother — Eminem does, while fully aware that the world is familiar with that corrosive, at times litigious relationship, judging from the beginning of second track, "My Mom": "My mom, my mom, I know you’re probably tired about hearing ’bout my mom." His still-heated fury at her legacy of bad parenting and Valium addiction streams through his flow, this time specifically linked to his own pill predilection. "Wait a minute this isn’t dinner this is paint thinner /’You ate it yesterday I ain’t hear no complaints did I? Now here’s a plate full of pain killers,’" he spits, before ending with, "Alright ma you win, I don’t feel like arguin’ /I’ll do it, pop it gobble it and start wobblin’ /stumble hobble tumble slip trip till I fall in bed with a bottle of meds and a Heath Ledger bobblehead." Ledger’s damaged Joker would appreciate those last, tongue-tying, onomatopoetic lines, pointing to Em’s revived brilliance even amid the Shadiest, sketched-out turmoil.

Or blame the stepfather. Was Eminem raped by his stepfather as a child? And if so, have pop listeners ever been informed of sexual abuse this graphically via song? "Insane" might be the most horrifically explicit, yet — a credit to Eminem’s powers as a bold entertainer — bleakly humorous and compulsively listenable tune about child molestation to date. Here, as with so many of his lyrics, the victim becomes conflated with the victimizer, as the rapper hints at the generational transfer of abuse: "I want you to feel me like my stepfather felt me /Fuck a little puppy kick the puppy while he’s yelping /Shady what the fuck you saying I don’t know help me," he rages, flipping between characters before settling on a primal scene too painful to be relegated to fiction, speaking as a boy to a step-Pater Monstrous. "I only get naked when the babysitter tells me /She showed me a movie like Nightmare on Elm Street / but it was X and they called it ‘Pubic Hair on Chelsea’/’Well this one’s called ‘Ass Rape’ and we’re shooting the jail scene.’" Don’t go there? Impossible. If rehab released fresh, brave streams of anger and pain in Eminem, no wonder Relapse 2 is hot on this horror flick of an album’s heels.

Sila and the Afrofunk Experience

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PREVIEW First come the horns, then the bass, an emphatic high hat and a sparkle of percussion, a trill of electric guitar, more brass, and it’s on. Thanks to "Shelter," Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s second album Black President (Visila Records, 2009) has a funky kickoff. With inspired grooves that recall the jazzy Afrobeat of standard-bearers both old (Fela Kuti) and new (Lagbaja) and layered with a tireless P-funk aesthetic, the group goes on to represent the best of all possible worlds in World Music terms: uptempo, polyrhythmic, socially conscious (but not pedantic), strikingly melodic, and eminently danceable.

While Sila and the Afrofunk Experience’s first album The Funkiest Man in Africa (Visila Records, 2006) explored the musical and social legacies of Fela Kuti, Black President brings it all back home — literally to our door step (or our turntable) — with a track cautiously celebrating the election of America’s first black president ("Mr. President … the people are hungry for change"). Africa never strays far from the rotation, though. "Shelter" is an examination of the ongoing AIDS epidemic, "I’m So Tired" speaks to the diaspora experience, and "Africa" is sheer Afrobeat magic. The official release party for Black President — which is already available online — kicks off a busy summer of touring for SF’s favorite adopted son Victor Sila and his tightly-knit ensemble. It’ll be a challenge to get enough of a Sila fix in a single night to last until the group returns from its travels, but I’m game to try.

SILA AND THE AFROFUNK EXPERIENCE With Fool’s Gold, Diego’s Umbrella. Sat/30, 9 p.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF.(415) 625-8880. www.mezzaninesf.com

Big Business

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PREVIEW Here’s a page right out of any rabid metalhead’s book of wildest, mind-blowingest dreams: What if the Norse gods Thor, Odin, and Tyr descended from the stormy heavens and formed a power trio? What would it sound like? What earthly buildings would crumble to the ground? What souls would be raised from their shadowy graves? What chaos would ensue?

To answer that first question: what if? What’s more metal than thunder, lightning, magic, and Valhalla? Those dudes invented it. They started their band approximately 1,300 years ago, before you or guitars existed. Second, they would sound like Los Angeles bone-crushers Big Business, whose giant leaden riffs, primordial Cro-Magnon rhythms, and thunderous hollow vocals pretty much sound like a band Thor might have dreamt up after an all-nighter spent smiting Viking tribes with lightning bolts and joyriding in his goat-drawn chariot with a ravishing blonde goddess.

The guys in Big Business, cut from the same pitch-black cloth as any fearsome Nordic god, are fast approaching their own place in the pantheon of mortal metal royalty. Their sludgy, doom-soaked sound is forged by ex-Murder City Devils drummer Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren, formerly of Karp. And if their musical resumes weren’t already steeped in metal street cred, Willis and Warren joined the Melvins to record (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac, 2006) and Nude with Boots (Ipecac, 2008). The Biz added guitarist Toshi Kasai to its lineup in 2007, just after its sophomore album Here Come the Waterworks (Hydra Head) won it a hailstorm of critical success and a spot touring with Tool.

Now Big Business’s third album has arrived. While retaining the group’s visceral low-end attack, Mind the Drift (Hydra Head) adds more of Kasai’s quick-fire guitar work to the murk — it gives the album an atmospheric discord that swings like a wrecking ball. The Biz gets almost prog-metal when it adds vocal harmonies (wait, now they sing, too?!) and an organ solo to the dirge of "Ayes Have It." Bottom of the Hill, look out. Will King Buzzo join them on stage? Whatever happens, Big Business won’t be taking prisoners.

BIG BUSINESS With Tweak Bird. Wed/27, 10 p.m., $12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St, SF (415) 621-4455

Uptown Thursday night

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AFRO-SURREAL PREVIEW Fuck all that. Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night (Profile, 1997) is one of the most slept-on albums in the history of hip-hop. Period. Innovative well beyond its years, Uptown Saturday Night introduces the Camp Lo aesthetic — a combination of exquisite wordplay, foppish elegance, and Bronx-style bravado mixed in with a fearsome frivolity. They redefined "gangsta," using the oft-quoted Posdnous lyric "Fuck being hard /Posdnous is complicated" as a motto. Because Uptown Saturday Night IS complicated, which makes it hard. It’s also pornographic and violent to an extreme and probably bears the uncomfortable distinction of being the first, if not only, hip-hop album to portray coprophilia in nearly positive light.

The album is a complete immersion into a certain brand of street slang that bears a lineage with Iceberg Slim, De La Soul, Digable Planets, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah. Definitely otnay orfay ofeys, the Lo’s first outing is the most utterly inaccessible and damn-near indescribable crossover album of the era.

Camp Lo created such a lyrical Gordian knot that even the most versed connoisseur of microphone wizardry could be left looking baffled with a handful of either jewels or cubic zirconia — only an accurate hip-to-square conversion chart could tell which. "In another millenia /Blow the dust off these jewels," says Geechi Suede, and to this day, Googling the lyrics of their one and only "hit," "Luchini," brings page after page of misquoted and half-heard snippets exposing Herbs. An example: "Keep your ears out for our years"? How about keep your ears out for Roy Ayers? He’s a jazz musician. "Levitating in da’ shiggys"? How about dashikis? They’re a kind of shirt, from Africa.

All Afro-Surreal elements are present: a layered rococo style steeped in international travel; a dandy’s obsession with "vines" from Paris and Milan; a literary approach with references ranging from Donald Goines to Fragonard; and a frivolous manner that belies a serious intent. After Uptown Saturday Night, hip-hop changed, and not necessarily for the better. Go see Camp Lo. Give these men their due.

CAMP LO With DJ Apollo and Sake 1. Thurs/21, 10 p.m., $10. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 762-0151. www.mighty119.com

Rock, B.C.

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PREVIEW I have yet to touch down upon the streets of Vancouver, B.C., but was advised recently by Jexxe Taylarr of Twin Crystals that if I ever do make the pilgrimage, I should stop by the Emergency Room — a hole-in-the-wall performance space where in addition to Taylarr’s band, the likes of Shearing Pinx, Sex Negatives, White Lung, and Gang Violence tear shit up on a regular basis.

"The music scene is unbelievable," Taylarr says via e-mail. "There was a lack of places to play, so a bunch of our friends opened this DIY warehouse space and it instantly seemed to take off," he continues. "Never have we seen shows with so many rad bands."

Count Twin Crystals as one such band. With synthist Jeremiah Heywood and drummer Jordan Alexander in tow, Taylarr and company wreak serious havoc. "Punk Heart" is a tried-and-true anthem that nods back to the blown-out alt of the Screamers and Wipers. Brimming with harsh, electric current and buzzsaw electronics, the song has a J. Mascis-like lead that’ll wrap around your face and scorch you. "Witness" is one helluva of an afterburner: as Taylarr unloads into the mic with unchecked rabidity, its raw primitive roots and sludgy demeanor rattle the speaker cones.

A few years after inception, Twin Crystals has stocked its vault with a collection of self-made vinyl, cassette, and CD-R releases on banners like Needs More Ram and SLU. The trio plans to issue more classics on the Gilgongo and Split Tapes imprints in the coming months. Taylarr credits the group’s bulky catalog in part to his trusty record lathe. "I have a bunch of black 10-inch acetates from 1940 that we release little jams and ideas on," he explains. "The digital format will die and all these great jams we have will be lost forever, so we just make these lathe-cut records to preserve the audio. It’s a great art project."

TWIN CRYSTALS With Long Legged Woman, Modern Creatures. Thurs/21, 9 p.m. $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923. www.hemlocktavern.com

Black man in the cosmos

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

AFRO-SURREAL "The Black Man in the Cosmos" wasn’t among the course offerings when I attended the University of California-Berkeley. The class was taught once, in 1971, by musician/composer Sun Ra (1914-93), whose lectures might include topics like the outer space origins of ancient Egypt, conceptualized as a black African culture. This cosmic tradition has a long history, particularly in Chicago, where Ra lived from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, and where Elijah Muhammad used it as the founding mythos of the Nation of Islam. Ra claimed to have influenced the NOI, though he rejected its conclusions, much as he would later criticize the Black Power movement he helped foster as too materialist.

Ra’s "Black Man" lectures — one of which recently surfaced on The Creator of the Universe (Transparency, 2007) — epitomize why he wasn’t taken seriously for so long. Critics who appreciated the severity of Ornette Coleman or the ferocity of Albert Ayler couldn’t accommodate the mischievous mysticism of a man who claimed to come from Saturn. Instead of playing the role of brooding artiste, Ra favored extravagant showmanship, cloaking ultimately stern spiritual messages in language as absurd as the science-fictional garb worn by his Arkestra. His strategies included Joycean deformations of words based on false etymologies and sound play. "Arkestra" itself characteristically mixes the spiritual (Ark of the Covenant) with the quotidian. According to John Szwed’s definitive 1998 biography, Space is the Place, this was how "orchestra" was pronounced in Ra’s native Birmingham, Ala.

Yet the strangeness of Ra’s music may have been the biggest stumbling block. His prodigious output is extremely diverse, continually vioutf8g unquestioned dichotomies. A product of the 1930s big band scene, when he led an orchestra under his terrestrial name Herman "Sonny" Blount, Ra was at the forefront of free jazz, yet he shocked fans and foes alike when, at its height, he began incorporating tight arrangements of swing classics by Fletcher Henderson, Ellington, and others into his sound.

Ra’s lifelong interest in synthesizers — there’s a photo of him with a primitive one in 1941(!) — developed into a command of pure sound. He adapted his style to the nuances of a particular keyboard. The 1970 recording Night of the Purple Moon (Atavistic, 2007), for instance, is a quartet disc on which he plays baroque runs on the Rocksichord, a 1960s electric harpsichord. The 1978 recording Disco 3000 (Art Yard, 2008), a live quartet performance, features Ra’s organ-like drones on the obscure, loop-enabled Crumar Mainman. Unlike some synth wizards, Ra was a virtuoso pianist, with a lightning-fast right hand and a left hand that seemingly bounced around of its own volition. While unafraid to mash the keys with his forearm, Ra’s ambidextrous precision and unorthodox chord voicings — he was unafraid to mash the keys with his forearm — place him among the top players of his time. If he’d worn a suit and stuck to piano, he’d be ranked with the likes of Art Tatum, as is evident from his previously-unreleased recital Solo Piano: Teatro la Fenice Venizia (Golden Years, 2003), possibly the best such recording.

Big bands remained Ra’s ideal, though they were giving way to smaller bop combos by the time he formed the Arkestra in the mid-’50s. Yet his insularity resulted in some of his most original works, discs that defy generic categories, like 1963’s reverb-drenched, proto-psychedelic Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (Evidence, 1992), 1965’s percussive, minimalist Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, v. 1 (Esp, 2006), or 1967’s Strange Strings (Atavistic, 2007), on which the Arkestra, with no prior experience, plays various non-Western stringed instruments, accompanied by bells, tympani, sheet-metal lightning.

While the atonal Strings may be Ra’s least typical album, it embodies two of his main concerns. On the one hand, he was a tone colorist in the Romantic tradition, seeking unusual instrumentation to produce unique shades. But as that album’s untutored string section suggests, he was a highly conceptual composer — garnering attention from John Cage and others — known for arranging and conducting collective improvisation. Traditional/avant-garde, inside/outside: such oppositions didn’t exist for Ra, who even explored a "low" genre like disco on 1980’s tongue-in-cheek On Jupiter (Art Yard, 2008).

The bewildering amount of Sun Ra reissues stems from his habit of self-recording, which also dates from the 1940s. Had he not done so, albums like Strings and Cosmic Tones wouldn’t have been recorded. Nor would they have been released without his forming El Saturn Records, among the earliest artist-run labels. Given that his technological futurism seemed to stem from his preoccupation with outer space, Ra’s artistic achievements are perhaps inextricably bound to his cosmic consciousness. As with Prince, artistic activity was driven by extramusical concerns, which, if they result in an occasional lapse in "good taste," nonetheless are the ingredients that elevate Ra from artistic excellence to genius. This genius may not have given him more than a subsistence living, but it has made him immortal. Unless, of course, as an inhabitant of Saturn, he already was.

Ding dong, Wicked Witch is alive

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AFRO-SURREAL What was black music like before hip-hop took over? On Chaos: 1978-86 (EM), a compilation of private press recordings by the obscure machine funk guitarist Wicked Witch, it resembles squelching synthesizers riffed like rock guitars and deep, rumbling bass stomps. Unevenly tuned fretboard licks mash with splashing, polyphonic drum patterns as a mysterious leading man uncomfortably murmurs lyrics like "I just can’t hang out, too much time is lost."

As a young guitarist hooked on Cream, Sun Ra, and Weather Report who mostly played for family and friends in southeast Washington, D.C., Wicked Witch’s Richard Simms didn’t achieve local fame, much less a national audience. But his subterranean woodshedding reverberates with tremors from an industry in upheaval. Musicians adopted electronic equipment en masse, supplanting the flowery string arrangements of 1970s disco with keyboards and drum programming. It wasn’t just black musicians transitioning to the computer age: early-1980s rock offers contrasts between lush new romanticism (Human League, Duran Duran) and crass arena sounds (Foreigner, REO Speedwagon). While the latter is celebrated via redundant VH-1 retrospectives and football stadium soundtracks, early-1980s black music and its heroes (the System, Imagination) remain unexplored.

Nelson George describes the period in 1988’s authoritative history The Death of Rhythm & Blues. "Synthesizers of every description, drum machines, and plain old electric keyboards began making MFSB and other human rhythm sections nonessential to the recording process," he writes, somewhat overstating his case. "There were so many … with all the personality and warmth of a microwave."

George’s "microwave music" condemnation still resonates, and this crucial period of black music — just before the hip-hop, R&B and quiet storm era — has largely escaped serious critical attention, save for disco aficionados who cherry-pick proto-house music stars like D-Train and Larry Levan. Meanwhile, Wicked Witch’s unintended documentation of the black new wave — meshing machine gun funk with spacey keyboard ambience on "Fancy Dancer," giving a shambolic twist to Mahavishnu Orchestra-style jazz fusion on "Vera’s Back" — has reemerged on the collector’s market. Simms’ private press singles, which include two 7-inches and a 12-inch long player, have been bootlegged. Original copies trade for $100. This probably led EM, a Japanese specialty label, to contact Simms and assemble Chaos.

"It wasn’t commercial," Simms said during a recent phone conversation. Forced Exposure, the Boston distributor handling Chaos, had passed on his information, but it took more than two weeks to finally reach him. Though pleasantly surprised by the novelty of an interview, he’s somewhat suspicious of the affair. When asked how many copies he pressed up, he shoots back, "Why are you inquiring about that?" as if this writer, armed with a copy of Goldmine magazine, wants to corner the market on Wicked Witch collectibles. And how did Simms come up with the name Wicked Witch anyway? "I’m stumped on that one," he says. "I think I wanted something dramatic, like theater."

Simms remembers forming his first band, Paradiagm with teenage friends "on an original-type kick" from around the area. The group recorded the track "Vera’s Back" before going their separate ways. "We were trying to do an original act, but people didn’t really accept it," he says. Chuck Brown’s ingenious go-go style, an amalgamation of James Brown’s call-and-response breaks and N’awlins marching band jazz, reigned as D.C.’s unofficial soundtrack. And since Paradiagm wasn’t a go-go band and didn’t play covers of radio hits, they couldn’t get bookings: "It was too hard to break new material." Simms managed to reach the manager of Return to Forever, Chick Corea’s jazz fusion superstar collective. But he says, mysteriously, "We did vocals, and they weren’t doing no vocals."

After that came Wicked Witch, which Simms describes as a "studio thing" where he worked out his musical ideas and recorded them. Yet even that was relatively short-lived. "My background is jazz fusion," Simms says. For Wicked Witch, he tried to merge fusion and funk, resulting in tracks with cryptic time signatures and spaced-out melodies. "If it was more funky, I think it would have been it. But it wasn’t funky enough. But I still dig it."

By the mid-1980s, the leather-clad hero of "Fancy Dancer" disappeared in the Chocolate City, just as the hip-hop era had begun. "Kids, a job, other things you gotta do … all of the above got put on top of the music. And then the music became close to nothing," Simms says. Before that happened, however, he pressed up those now-collectible records for himself. "Nobody was doing it for me, so I might as well do something on my own, right?"

For your earholes

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johnny@sfbg.com

AFRO-SURREAL

Afro-Surreal is a crackling transmission from the tightest tunnels and recesses of inner space, and the furthest, darkest outposts of outer space. Afro-Surreal is androgynous — butch and femme on a whim. Afro-Surreal is a sonic realm that can morph any millisecond. It is a single body with many voices. Afro-Surreal might sound like gospel, but it ain’t, or if it is, it’s Goth gospel. Afro-Surreal is a Puya-like bloom from the root of a manifesto named "Black Sabrina." Afro-Surreal is a flawed masterstroke from the most unjustly under-known "popular music" recording artist of the 21st century. Afro-Surreal is the sound of Chelonis R. Jones.

Right now, the sound of Chelonis R. Jones is Chatterton (Systematic), his second solo album after the equally deep and fantastic Dislocated Genius (Get Physical, 2005). It’s named after a poet, and it’s a place where Giorgio Moroder-meets-Donna Summer to soundtrack an eight-minute minimalist epic sung from the perspective of the ungrateful sole survivor of a plane crash. It’s a place where rehab is a "recreant blur," and Fleetwood Mac’s "Dreams" are buried beneath threatening street wisdom from an ex-.

"’WELL SHUT MY MOUTH WIDE OPEN!’is an old surrealist term of expression that Afro-Americans created when they were emancipated, due to the fact that emancipation wasn’t a reality, but a much dreamed of condition that they hoped would become a reality." So writes Ted Joans — as tedjoans — in the liner notes for the recently-reissued 1974 album King of Kings (Pyramid/Ikef) by the Pyramids, Bay Area artist and musician Idris Ackamoor’s revelatory group. Joans was referring to the free jazz sounds of the time, but he could just as well have been referring to Death’s definition of rock ‘n’ roll, as demonstrated on …For All the World to See (Drag City), a previously unreleased true treasure of black Detroit rock that also dates from 1974. Brothers David and Bobby Hackney don’t just invent punk — "Freakin Out" is like the Buzzcocks if they were muscular — they create agit-punk on the epic "Politicians in My Eyes."

The arrival of Death couldn’t be better timed to match the black rock signs of life within the surreal electronic solar system of Jones’ Chatterton. Jones’ braiding of word and sound is subliminal, like when Pornography (as in a song that sounds like that particular era of the Cure) arrives in the wake of a track called "Tornogrpahy." In the audio "Che-ography" he has created with dozens of studio collaborators (charted on his MySpace), a cat-lady character from a 12" single (2007’s "Helen Cornell") can cameo in a song by another recording endeavor about a girl who suffers when "the pimps and crack dealers hit her…where the good lord split her."

All the lonely people, framed by "Pompadour," Chatterton‘s penultimate track that pays homage to an idol by stampeding to finality like "Speedway" on Morrissey’s Vauxhall and I (Sire, 1994). "’Twas said, ’twas said: Black singers are … well, so very very … uh … cliché," Jones, well, sings — and sings from a bottomless well. "And still, and still you know you’ll screw for them … you’ll screw in private anyway!"

MORE AT WWW.SFBG.COM

Afro-Surreal-List and writing by Chelonis R. Jones

Madcap laughs

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "I told you so" are the sweetest, shortest words in the lexicon of raving visionaries and maligned prophets, but Sir Richard Bishop is far too gentlemanly to resort to such snack-sized snarkery. Still, I’m thinking the world’s attentions and the brothers Bishop and their many projects might finally be harmonically, magically converging as I park myself on a thrift-store coach beside the charming Bishop in the airy, uncannily tidy West Oakland flat he shares with Mark Gergis (Porest, Neung Phak, Mono Pause).

After the 2007 death of Sun City Girl Charles Gocher, attentive underground music fans — who’ve revered the band for its determinedly DIY, cassette-culture cussedness — collectively blinked, rubbed their eyes, and wondered why they hadn’t paid closer attention to the endlessly productive Girls (even now issuing rarities via the new Napoleon and Josephine: Singles Volume 2 [Abduction]). Attention from figures like Bonnie "Prince" Billy (who told me that the Bishop Brothers’ Brothers Unconnected show at Slim’s was the best he saw last year) and labels such as Sub Pop, which talked to the Bishops about doing a best-of, soon followed.

Likewise Sublime Frequencies — the label Richard and Alan Bishop toiled on for years amid accusations that they were ripping off artists, failing to follow academic protocol, and simply not applying enough polish to their rough aesthetic — began to get its due as a groundbreaking disseminator of obscure sonic gems from such far-flung, seldom documented sites as Burma, Laos, and Western Sahara. Richard, who is less involved with the imprint these days, says they’ve become adept at tracking down and paying the performers. Today, the label gets the kind of praise it richly deserves, including a hefty feature by onetime naysayer Clive Bell in Wire. Sublime Frequencies is also producing the first European, non-Mideast tour by breathtaking Syrian folk-pop legend Omar Souleyman, whose Highway to Hassake (Sublime Frequencies, 2006) positively shreds with phase-shifted Arabic keyboard lines and frenetic beats.

Meanwhile Sir Richard is concentrating on his new Oakland life, bathed in the soft light and BART train roar streaming in from the ‘hood. "It seems like it’s alive here — whereas in Seattle it’s kind of dying and not just musically," he says happily. "This is not the best neighborhood, but when I go out the door, I’m alive, and I’m totally aware of what’s going on, and there’s just some cool creative energy to grasp onto."

Guitars and instruments are neatly clustered in an alcove across from a massive TV rigged to catch Mideast channels — perfectly tuned into Bishop’s current obsession with and studies into the music the half-Lebanese musician first heard his grandfather play on old cassettes. Here in Oakland — aided and abetted by the half-Iraqi Gergis and his collection of Middle Eastern MP3s, cassettes, VCDs, and vinyl — he’s been digging deeply into the music of Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, a homecoming of sorts since Bishop started out studying Egyptology around the time of Sun City Girls’ early ’80s inception.

When Bishop started tracking his fine, even sublime new The Freak of Araby (Drag City) in Seattle, the switch from making a poppy electric-guitar album to one centered on Middle Eastern-related originals and covers was a natural one — a tribute to his latest fave, Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid. Bishop scrambled to learn new songs in six days, but he’s pleased with the result, which he’ll fill out live with tour mate Oaxacan as his backing combo. The disc "was very rushed, and I didn’t have time to hash out a lot of the ideas," he says. "There are people who are not going to like it, but that’s okay, it never bothered me before!" And with that, the jolly Sir Richard laughs. *

SIR RICHARD BISHOP AND HIS FREAK OF ARABY ENSEMBLE

Fri/22, 9:30 p.m., $10

Stork Club

2330 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.storkcluboakland.com

FITS AND WIGGLES

OBITS


Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes are in the Brooklyn post-punkers’ past, now gathering steam with Sub Pop singles and SXSW blather lather. Wed/20, 9 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com.

BLK JKS


Don’t fear the guitar solo, all ye Johannesburg black-rockers. Fri/22, 9 p.m., $12. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

NOMO


Out now with Invisible Cities (Ubiquity), the polyrhythmic Midwestern mind-blowers destroyed all reservations at their last BOH show. Fri/22, 10 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com.

LADY SOVEREIGN


The pint-sized electro-grime poobabe finds a Cure with "So Human." Sun/24, 9 p.m., $18. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. rickshawstop.com

House of Horrors

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Thrills and chills and disco ball spills — that’s what the Horrors are made of? After Shih Tzu-banged frontman Faris Badwan brattily ripped the mirror ball off the ceiling of 330 Ritch a scant two years ago, who knew the U.K. band would show its true, formative, and fundamentally curious colors? The hues and cries streaming off the Horrors’ second album, Primary Colours (XL) read as a limpid, moonlit pop-sonnet to true-school proto-goth-rockers and morbidly fixated post-punk upsetters like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Killing Joke.

Just don’t flash that dance-floor orb in front of Badwan again. "Mmm, Faris never really liked mirror balls," mumbles guitarist Joshua Third, né Hayward. It’s frozen in Boston, where the group is performing that night, and the chill that drops momentarily over the conversation is brief yet bracing. "Luckily we haven’t played anywhere with a mirror ball for ages."

Despite the menace — or maybe because of it — the goth-punk movement has always seemed fundamentally conservative. But the Horrors don’t peddle the shockabilly moves so common among goth-identified SoCalis. In contrast to the easy-sleazy comic-book corn of today’s prominent goth-punk purveyors — pass the Horrorpops and just keep walking — the group now draws from exploratory originators Joy Division and ornery rabble-rousers the Birthday Party. Primary Colours boasts driving tunes carved from silvery synth textures ("Three Decades") and Jesus and Mary Chain-like buzz-saw pop that thumps with creative negativity ("Who Can Say").

The group capers on the same frosty darkling plain as Interpol, judging from tunes like the Velvet-y, string-strewn "I Only Think of You," which may turn off those with a low tolerance for pop pomposity. Still, the opening track, "Mirror’s Image," sets the tone for pleasing surprise with its initial lush, plangent soundscape — more akin to Lindstrøm than Sisters of Mercy — before gently plunging into spiraling reverb, effects-gristled guitar, and a nodding keyboard fragment that will have some recalling Echo and the Bunnymen and others Kraftwerk.

Third says Primary Colours was "the first chance we had as a band to shut ourselves away and work on the record on our own. We’d retreat into a rehearsal space and get completely lost in it. Yeah, I think that really comes through."

The Horrors titled the first song they ever wrote "Sheena is a Parasite," so yes, this is throwback rock, It gazes directly into the eyes of the more serious Anglo art-rock makers of the ’80s with self-conscious affection, especially on haunted, haunting songs such as "Do You Remember." And what’s wrong with that?

"We actually made a record that’s a complete trip, from start to finish — it takes you through different moods," Third explains. "Also, you can listen to it on repeat, because the last track plays into the first track. I’ve always been quite into the idea because I like to sit down and listen to things over and over again." It’s a quality he misses in many new albums. "Yeah, partly the Internet’s to blame. Partly labels are to blame. Partly bands are to blame — because they don’t seem to care anymore," he says, capping the remark with a small grim chuckle.

In the Horrors’ hands — the ensemble coproduced along with longtime collaborator Craig Silvey, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and video artist Chris Cunningham — Primary Colours sounds astonishingly unmusty, stirring with tangible signs of life. The group has managed to find a pulse — while maturing into, yikes, artists. "We were all 19 when we wrote the first record — now we’re in our early twenties!" Third exclaims. "I think it’s the typical growing-up … malarkey." *

THE HORRORS

With the Kills

Tues/19, 8 p.m., $22.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

————

MORE LIVE:

COMEDIANS OF ROCK II

Musical funny folk Tara Jepsen of Lesbians, Chris Portfolio of Hank IV, and Matt Hartman of Sic Alps pit wits and carve out snarfs at this comedy two-fer. Wed/13, 9 p.m., free. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS

And what a long, sweet name it is: the Austin, Texas, soul-stirrers cook up hot ones from Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! (Lost Highway). Sat/16, 9 p.m. $17. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

JOHN VANDERSLICE

The Tiny Telephone operator’s new Romanian Names (Dead Oceans) rolls out Moog moods and Byzantine yarns. Mon/18, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com. Tues/19, 7:30 p.m., $16. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

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