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Icy Demons

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PREVIEW There’s liberatory potential in choosing a pseudonym, but the members of Chicago-area septet Icy Demons — Blue Hawaii, Pow Pow, Il-Cativo, Smart Cousin, Yo! Hannan, Monsieur Jeri, and the Diminisher — are probably just goofballs. Icy Demons are the sort of band whose surface weirdness is accompanied by both pop smarts and something fundamentally warped. What makes this trickier: their three albums, culminating in last year’s Miami Ice (Obey Your Brain), have inched toward accessibility while also housing some of the group’s most fully realized songs. While it’s tempting to say that Icy Demons are basically a pop combo that have clawed their way out of the slightly hazy, motorik groove of 2006’s Tears of a Clone (Eastern Developments) and 2003’s Fight Back! (Cloud Recordings), why not say that the inverse is true, that they’re a basically experimental ensemble using pop structure to vehiculate some of their best ideas?

However you choose to read them, Icy Demons are part of an emerging scene with unexpected roots and strange allegiances, centered on the Obey Your Brain label: core member Pow Pow plays drums for hokey Philly alt-bros Man Man, and the Diminisher and Blue Hawaii were involved in Bablicon, the Elephant 6–affiliated improv trio. But Icy Demons have less to do with those bands’ well-established aesthetics than with a natively skewed sense of tunefulness and music that seems to disappear between reference points. Miami Ice‘s "Spywatchers" hovers in the interzone between spy movie music and spacey post-rock, and the title track sounds like Brian Eno took the Paper Rad crew to Florida for a vacation of self-discovery. As for the rest of the transcript of what Icy Demons are up to, intuition suggests they will only reveal it a peek at a time.

ICY DEMONS With Yeasayer. Sat/22, 9 p.m., $15. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365, www.bimbos365club.com

Immortal Technique

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PREVIEW Peruvian-born, Harlem-raised rapper Immortal Technique, né Felipe Coronel, long ago broke with the TRL mold of spitting about bitches and ho’s, instead looking to the roots of hip-hop with his politically minded tracks.

On his third full-length, The 3rd World (Viper), he covers such topics as the gentrification of his Harlem hood and corruption in the music industry. The opener establishes him as a renegade in the rap world where it’s common to have an intro — be it the sound of bullets blasting or a slutty skit. Instead, the "Death March" is a forceful, beat-driven anthem that introduces its characters (Immortal Technique and DJ Green Lantern), dedicates the album (to the people of Latin American nations that have been tampered with by this country), and sets the stage for what is to come next (urban/guerrilla warfare and an album about it).

"Open Your Eyes" looks at the life of immigrants who are promised a better life in the states but come to realize that "privatization and electricity" do not equate to happiness, and explores the abuse of natural resources and indigenous peoples overseas. "Lick Shots," while not the strongest track on 3rd World with its annoying repeated refrain, goes for laughs with couplets like, "Marry a Muslim girl and fuck her five times a day / Every time right before we shower and pray." "Crimes of the Heart" gets slightly personal with an honest love story of a lonely two-timer "breaking hearts on the way to enlightenment," which Immortal Technique uses as a simile for an isolated republic. A little less narrative-bound but still hard-hitting and with a more polished production than Immortal Technique’s previous recordings, 3rd World offers hope for listeners who yearn for a return to music with a message. As the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words, and Immortal Technique remains true to his tunes with this concert for Afghanistan’s Children of War in partnership with Omeid International.

IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE with Hasan Salaam, Da Circle, Ras Ceylon, and DJ GiJoe. Thurs/20, 9:30 p.m., $19–$22. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

Superfriends

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Sometimes bands come together in the same way chords are formed: distinct sounds marry and create something bigger and brighter than themselves. I sat down at a bar with a few members of the Fresh and Onlys and left feeling like they were band wizards. Headed by Tim Cohen of the late Black Fiction, the Bay Area outfit is fleshed out by Shayde Sartain, Wymond Miles, James Kim, Grace Cooper, and Heidi Alexander. Although all have played in other groups, they made it click in the unlikely company of close friends. "When we first decided to do this, the reaction from our mutual friends was like, ‘At last!’" said guitarist Miles. It’s like when Batman and Superman and all their friends finally decided to join up and start the Justice League. Only this incredible six-piece is for real.

Perhaps that’s why the Fresh and Onlys have received such positive attention in the five short months they’ve been a formal group. "Basically it’s a recipe for instant soup," Cohen said. "You just pour the powder into the bowl and add water … We’re really comfortable making music together." As Black Fiction’s songwriter, Cohen was used to guiding his songs almost single-handedly. Now with a new ensemble of players who trust each other’s abilities, he has been able to let the tunes take their course. "It’s really freeing for me, and probably really freeing for everyone else."

The Fresh and Onlys’ live performances are completely rocking and true to their recordings, suggesting that you aren’t seeing a one-time special, but something manicured before delivery. As Miles explained, "Playing live can be strange because we are all shedding inhibitions. It’s like we’re some strange creatures behind the looking glass looking at one another and trying to figure out what the fuck this person is made of."

The damaged-pop psychedelic band proudly wears its eclectic influences — a wax museum of skewed adaptations of bands from the past, with a modern coating. Think Brian Eno, Christian Death, and the Dead Boys having tea, but in a grungy, lo-fi haze. Yet there is an undercurrent in the Fresh and Onlys’ sound that doesn’t deny the sadness of life. Cohen’s lyrics complicate the otherwise sweet and dewy songs, bringing a downbeat mood to songs like "Nuclear Disaster" or "The Mind Is Happy," though Cohen claims it’s unintentional: "You can’t control what goes in your brain and what comes out of it." The overall effect is that of a group of musicians playing the role of the leader and the orchestra at the same time, building and suggesting, following and provoking each other.

Plans for an album titled The No Foot Boogie are in the works, as the Fresh and Onlys weed through the 60 songs they’ve written, and the combo plans to go light on shows until the disc is released — a novel idea for a San Francisco band. Next show, prepare to boogie with both feet.

THE FRESH AND ONLYS

With Bronze, Skeletons, and Mayyors

Thurs/13, 9 p.m., call for price

Eagle Tavern

398 12th St., SF

(415) 626-0880

sfeagle.com

Everyday people

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"Keepin’ it real" narrowly edges out "real talk" and "it is what it is" for the most abhorrent platitude in hip-hop, and Bay Area supergroup, the Mighty Underdogs, refuses to be constrained by it. The outfit — which couples local lyrical legends Lateef the Truthspeaker (Latyrx) and Gift of Gab (Blackalicious) with producer extraordinaire Headnodic (Crown City Rockers) — recently released its debut on Definitive Jux: the varied, headnod-inducing Droppin’ Science Fiction. While most supergroups fall flat because of a lack of chemistry, the two MCs’ uber-smooth, rapid-fire deliveries flow seamlessly. Their distinct styles are complemented by Headnodic’s soulful, intricate beats.

I caught up with the articulate, engaging group at their unassuming rehearsal space, nestled in a sea of factories and warehouses in East Oakland. The buoyant MCs exuded pure excitement and pride as they discussed the origins of the Underdogs.

"It was instant chemistry," remarked the laid-back, personable Gab. "We had so much fun doing it. The chemistry was just great, and the songs were just comin’ out dope. We just kinda got lost in it. Thus, the Mighty Underdogs were born."

Actually the group formed almost by mistake. Lateef was working on his upcoming solo album, Crowd Rockers, when Headnodic asked him to consider some of his beats for the project. ‘Teef got more than he bargained for, and left the producer’s North Oakland abode with about 10 beats that he had ideas for. He decided to call an old friend. "I just thought, "Lemme call Gab,’ because Gab and I had been talking about working on a project together," the benign, thoughtful lyricist explained. "I sent them [the tracks] over to Gab and, within a month, it was just on!"

From there the trio congregated in Nodic’s studio to work on the tracks that would become their first full-length. During those sessions, they created a recording that knocks all the way through while focusing on fictional storytelling, which became Gab’s favorite part of the project. "Lateef had hit me up with ‘Monster’ and ‘Ill Vacation,’" said Gab, "and they were both on some storytelling, out-there, imaginative-type stuff, and that really excited me about making the record."

While much of the disc highlights light-hearted, bouncy storytelling, it also encompasses the introspective, honest lyricism that the MCs’ fans adore. On tracks like "Folks," "Want You Back," and "So Sad," which features the incomparable Julian and Damian Marley, the ‘Dogs do what they do best: weaving true life tales of struggle and love. "While a lot of this record is fictional storytelling, the songs that aren’t are very real," Lateef said with a laugh. "We’re talking about shit that everybody does, and everybody sees." *

THE MIGHTY UNDERDOGS

With Zion I and the Cataracs

Nov. 22, 8 p.m., $20–$22

Grand Ballroom

Regency Center, Van Ness and Sutter, SF

(415) 421-TIXS

www.goldenvoice.com

Lemonade from lemons

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With a title as whimsical as This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That, it’s only appropriate that Marnie Stern begins her second Kill Rock Stars album with the sounds of a simple clapping game. "I am vanishing into the trees," she chants while rapping her knuckles on a hard surface. "Defenders get onto your knees. This Is It is a decidedly girly affair. Its CD-booklet artwork, illustrated by Brooklyn painter Bella Foster, depicts Stern as a hiker in the mountains, surrounded by watercolor flowers and pen-line squirrels and foxes. The lyrics seem full of self-empowerment phrases such as "you rearrange your mind" ("The Package Is Wrapped") and "so I rearrange and I don’t mind the change" ("Clone Cycle"). But the electric feminist explosion that is This Is It masks deep personal anxieties, something she describes as a "combination of zen and extreme loneliness." It’s why she lyrically reaches for zen bliss. It’s the musical equivalent of making lemonade from lemons.

"It was therapeutic," Stern says by phone from her New York City home. "That first song ["Prime"] is just about feeling alone, and battling that, and just trying to get as authentic as I possibly can. With ‘Shea Stadium,’ I had been watching some baseball movies such as The Natural. There’s a real epic feeling to those kinds of movies, and how the team overcomes. So it’s in part about that, and in part about a relationship with someone.

"It’s much more difficult to try and be positive," she continues. "At least for myself, I automatically go to the negative place because it’s much easier. But nothing good would come of it. As I progress, only really good things that happen when I embrace being positive."

Much of the laudatory press for This Is It from outlets such as Pitchforkmedia.com and The New York Times tends to ignore or criticize Stern’s violently happy lyrics in favor of her shredding. With only her second album, she has established herself as an ace guitarist. In an age where everyone’s afraid to play a monster lead solo, Stern lets it rip early and often, instead of sticking to boring rhythm guitar. On "Transformer," she taps out a volley of chords on the guitar’s neck, replicating Angus Young’s hook from AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck." For "The Crippled Jazzer," she picks out a lightning-fast and furious line.

"A lot of times people say I’m a virtuosic player, and I’m not," Stern says. When asked if she’s comfortable with mantle of indie-rock guitar hero, she exclaims, "No, of course not! No, no, and no! I’m not!" Instead, she modestly calls herself a singer-songwriter.

Stern first picked up the guitar when she was 15. "I didn’t really start playing until I was 21, 22," says the 32–year-old musician. "It was really late. I didn’t take lessons." For her second album, This Is It, Stern wrote 30 numbers before settling on 12. Her goal, she says, was to make the songs coherent, with a clearer verse-chorus structure than her earlier work. Each number is made up of several unique 15-second guitar parts: she would write those first, then write a lyric for each part. "The tendency is for it to sound fragmented, because it’s just part-part-part," she says. "The joy for me in making the song is to get those parts to interlock together."

Stern self-deprecatingly refers to herself and This Is It as a poppy, accessible incarnation of noise bands she likes, such as Arab on Radar, Sheer Accident, the Flying Luttenbachers, and "that whole family of music. To me, my stuff is really straightforward." On one level, it’s a love of classic rock that sent her from the experimental noise community into the welcoming arms of pop music critics and fans. Still, it’s not her guitar playing, but her lyrics — and her conflicting emotions of karmic joy and nervy pessimism — that makes her a potential sonic revolutionary.

"Before I found music I was always pretty cynical about things," Stern says. "Then, as I found my connection with playing and writing songs, I began to feel that connectedness. It made me feel hopeful … It was the only thing that really satisfied me."

MARNIE STERN

With Gang Gang Dance

Fri/14, 9 p.m., $15

Bimbo’s 365 Club

1025 Columbus, SF

www.bimbos365club.com

Discos cumpulsivos

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> johnny@sfbg.com

I don’t know about you, but I could go for a party or 200 right about now. If anyone can cram the spirit of 200 parties into one night, it’s Pablo Díaz Reixa, the playfully energetic one-man force behind El Guincho. Díaz Reixa’s music thrives on contradictions, and a core one is that his bedroom project isn’t insular. Instead it’s ready to overtake the streets with carnivalesque fervor. To paraphrase a sample that rubs up against Esquivel’s zinging piano at the beginning of "Fata Morgana," all of the joy of young people in love is conveyed in the simple melodies of Alegranza! (Young Turks/XL).

Díaz Reixa has described Alegranza!‘s congotronic chant-oholic delirium as an update of space-age exotica — a restless journey that never stops at one spot on the globe. For some, such terms might set off cultural-exploitation alarms, particularly at a time when Anglo indie rock is rife with mannered, stiffly incorporated Afrobeat routines. But Díaz Reixa’s interplay of influences has an autobiographical basis. Though he was based in the Barcelona barrio Gracia when he began recording as El Guincho, he grew up in the Canary Islands, where his grandmother, a music teacher, schooled him in music. His reverence for her is similar to the admiration that minimal-techno trailblazer Ricardo Villalobos has for his distant Chilean relation, the folksinger Violeta Parra. Partly inspired by an old Catalonian folk song by Los Gofiones, El Guincho’s party is radical rather than apolitical: before adopting the El Guincho moniker, Díaz Reixa wrote a Catalan Socialist Party anthem. Alegranza! takes its title from an uninhabited land mass at the northeast tip of the Canary Islands whose name also connotes joy in Spanish. But one could just as surely locate Díaz Reixa’s sound in the air, flying like a rare bird — an eight-eyed parrot, perhaps — around the eight miles of ocean that separate the islands from Africa. As Jace Clayton points out in a recent Fader profile, the El Guincho persona allows its creator to tap into both the soulful and impish aspects of the term duende. He’s the manic musical corollary of the somnambulant Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra, whose movies — such as this year’s Canary Islands-set Christ tale Birdsong — reenvision the traditional conquistador as a (to borrow wordplay from Michael Arcega) conquistadork. He’s serious enough to not take himself too seriously: an admirer of Henri Michaux’s and Guillaume Apollinaire’s writing, he knows that only the committed will tap into the undercurrents of frustration and morbidity within his basket of cheers.

"Palmitos Park," the rollicking track that kicks off Alegranza!, was inspired by seeing a crocodile trapped in miserable conditions at a zoo. But the tension between freedom and entrapment in El Guincho’s music is sublingual. Many of his songs shift from gleeful excess into exhaustion — and then miraculously back into excitement again. This dynamic seems present in Díaz Reixa’s overall approach to music (in 2007, he recorded an album’s or CD-R’s worth of songs, titled Folías, during one high night) and to life (he had to cancel El Guincho’s first US tour due to fatigue). It’s apt that his favorite record shop is a place in Gran Canaria called Moebius, because his music is a hallucinatory Möbius strip. Mandy Parnell’s Young Turks/XL remastering of the original Discoteca Océano release of Alegranza! effectively accentuates this quality.

Now that this country is officially an Obamanation, El Guincho is ready to lead us in rambunctious chants over melding, melting 5/4 benga rhythms. Díaz Reixa’s demeanor in concert has been likened to Animal from the Muppets, but the beloved block of wood that he uses to generate organic snare sounds and electronic beats has a connection to his musical beginnings as a percussionist in a classical orchestra. El Guincho’s pet sounds are as inspiredly fantasmic as 1996-era Cornelius, and a hyper answer to the Portuguese idyll of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch (Paw Tracks, 2007). They’re as creative as the Present — meaning the band of that name that just released the superb World I See (Loaf). They’re the sound of victorious Spain today — what Rafael Nadal would listen to if he had any taste in music. (Díaz Reixa is a tennis maniac.) Díaz Reixa touts current Barcelona bands like Thelemáticos and Extraperia as often as older influences like Souley Katna because his love of music is unquestionable. It’s delirious. It’s higher than high. It’s right on time. *

EL GUINCHO

With Tussle, Disco Shawn, and Oro11

Nov. 21, 9 p.m., $13–$15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1422

www.theindependentsf.com

Flambuoyancy

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Phew! I just adore being a second-class citizen again, now that Proposition 8 has passed. It makes me feel so edgy, so alt, so very underground. Thank you, Pope Pius the 5000th and the Angel Macaroni! I finally get to break back out my favorite little victim pumps — you know, the star-spangled ones with exquisite ruby handcuff heels — and shove my overwhelming gayness down those tender asshole bigot throats once again. Confrontational! It seems the 1990s really are back at last, and I’m ready for some massive kiss-in action, minus the scuffed oxblood Docs and sleeveless Mervyn’s flannels this time, please.

11/4: never FGGT.

At least I still have the love of my dance floor brothers, sisters, and others — gay or straight — to help me keep my head up under the tacky 99-cent-store weave of despair. If they love me so much, why don’t they marry me? Oh, right. So here, in honor of losing my civil rights at the precise moment of gaining a black president, is a thuper-gay Thuper Ego thpectacular for you.

HONEY SUNDAYS Those sticky-sweet DJ darlings of the altQ scene’s squirmy underside — Pee Play, Ken Vulsion, Kendig, Robot Hustle, and Josh Cheon, otherwise known as Honey Soundsystem — have launched a weekly for party peeps into killer tracks that raise the tired genre house roof into a glistening rainbow of wondrous WTF. Lemme tell ya, it’s been a long time coming. Expect everything from Kendig’s trademark minimal techno and classic house glides to Hustle’s rarest disco, Vulsion’s echoey rave-ups to Cheon’s proto-new wave hoof-twisters, topped off by Pee Play’s bottomless crate-digging mindfucks. All with an ahistorical, four-on-the-floor hard homo energy and some ostentatious faggotty flair, and all going down every Sunday at the gorgeously remodeled Paradise Lounge in SOMA. Sundays, 8 p.m.–2 a.m., free. Paradise Lounge, 1501 Folsom, SF. (415) 621-1911, www.honeysoundsystem.com

TIARA SENSATION There’s good drag, there’s bad drag, and then there’s drag so surreal it bends the arc of history into "holy shit!" The latter is surely the agenda at this paste-gem prom every Monday at the Stud, hosted by my all-time favorite gender clown DJ Down-E and House of Horseface’s Mica. Part DIY craft fair, part "oh no, she din’t" dance party, it’s all odd in a lovely way. With frequent appearances by the inimitable Glamamore, hands down the most creative queen in the city, and tunes from somewhere left of Pluto — still a planet in my heart — it’s a crackin’ good post-weekend jolt of incredulity. Too bad I missed the Obama, the Musical performance. Mondays, 10 p.m., free. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. (415) 863-6623, www.myspace.com/tiarasensation

MARICON This one’s not for a leetle while yet, but it’s hot enough to stuff in your pink Blackberry before the deluge of other Thanksgiving Eve throwdowns hits. If you miss DJ Bus Station John’s sadly departed Double Dutch Disco monthly or, for those with any semblance of long-term memory left, DJ Derek B. and Lady Bass’s early-aughts Off the Hook bashes, get ready to relive the freakin’ freestyle and electric boogaloo days you never really lived through to begin with, maybe. Derek B. — my long-lost sister — and the usually punk rock Trans Am crew are bangin’ the boombox with this one-off, fronting effervescent electro tunes and lavender-bandannaed performances by drag cholitas Kiddie, Glamamore, Hoku Mama, and Holly Peno, plus free churros. Get your womp on and Robocop. Nov. 26, 10 p.m., $5. The Gangway, 849 Larkin, SF. (415) 776-6828, www.myspace.com/transamtheclub

Real Deal

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Been down so long that the initial whooping, joy-drenched Obama-phoria of Nov. 4 felt — at least before learning of Proposition 8’s passing — like that moment during the flannel-flying whirl of the early ’90s, when the world finally seemed like Kim’s playground. When everywhere I looked, ultra-cool Kims like Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, and Kim Thayil seemed to signal the primacy of the K Word. Kim was the kid with perpetual Christmas morning going on. The universe seemed to smile down on us as we made art and did what we pleased, as if to say, "Whatever, dude, I mean, Kim. It’s your day."

But what did we do with our Kimdate apart from starting clothing lines, burning out like a black hole sun, and simply keeping on? The moment passed, though it was still thrilling to finally talk to one of those crucial Ks — namely Deal, on the occasion of her surprisingly revitalized, multi-hued new Breeders album, Mountain Battles (4AD) and her forthcoming two-fer at Slim’s — and to dig her breed of Midwestern rock ‘n’ roll realness. I mean, would anyone concerned with conjuring cool or projecting power really say she was bummed out and rocking the chub duds when asked about her typical day?

"I think I’m actually a little depressed," said the sometime Pixies bassist in deliberate, Kim-to-Kim tones from Dayton, Ohio. "I’ve been sleeping in really late and I don’t know why. I gained weight — maybe because I quit smoking a year ago. I’ve gained weight, and you know, I feel fat. So that’s an odd feeling for me. I’m not very confident, and I feel kinda stupid, so I dress really bad and I just wear sweats. You know, when you’re looking good and feel good, you have a spring in your step, and then when you’re heavy for some reason, you’re just like, ‘Ah, lemme just get these sweats on and do what I have to do today.’"

Chin up, Kim — at least you have the Steve Albini-recorded Mountain Battles with insinuating, melancholy songs like the doo-wop-inflected "We’re Going to Rise" and the dreamily minimalist "Night of Joy." "Can’t stop the wave of sorrow," Deal coos in the latter alongside Deal’s twin sister Kelley, Jose Medeles, and Mando Lopez. "This night of joy follows — oh, everywhere you go." That and at least Deal has vaulted past her smoker days of getting winded after running up stairs. With the help of a prescription medication that altered her brain chemistry, she managed to kick the nic fits. "I felt a bit like a sociopath taking it for three months last year," Deal said. "Now it’s worn off and I’m just fat." She chuckled. "It’s better than being a skinny sociopath! There’s far too many of those wandering the streets right now."

But back to the average Deal day. Long after all our Kim Kristmases, Deal told me that when she isn’t touring or planning, say, the Breeders-curated May 2009 All Tomorrow’s Parties in England, she continues to spend her spare hours helping her father care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s: "She’s doing pretty good. She knows who I am and stuff, but she can get on a loop and repeat some crazy shit! But it’s like, ‘OK, mom, whatever.’" So there is a morning after — full of earthy laughter straight from Planet Deal. *

BREEDERS

Fri/14–Sat/15, 9 p.m., $27
Slim’s
333 11th St., SF
www.slims-sf.com

TRYING DANIELSON

"I feel like the leader of the band, but that’s taken 12 years to acknowledge out of false humility," confesses Daniel Smith, mastermind of that fluid project dubbed Danielson. "But in terms of song and the music and where it’s coming from, I’ve always emphatically said it comes from somewhere else." It’s easy to believe that the spirit provides, listening to Danielson’s wonderful new two-CD retrospective of rarities, remixed tunes, and live material: Trying Hartz (Secretly Canadian). Years before Polyphonic Spree fused gospel-y indie rock with performance art, Smith was finding true, genuinely genius inspiration among his "Famile" and in his Rutgers University vis-art studies. These days, the new father is "just trying to enjoy the process even if there are difficulties. I feel like you can’t separate the struggle with the making. Inspiration, the creative process, the questions, marching up the hill, sweating, and putting things on your credit card — it all relates."

With Cryptacize and Bart Davenport. Fri/14, 10 p.m., $10–$12. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

TAKE IT OUTSIDE

BISHOP ALLEN


The Brooklyn combo made Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Wed/12, 8 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

ROBYN HITCHCOCK


The ex-Soft Boy tackles his brilliant I Often Dream of Trains (Midnight Music, 1984) live. Wed/12, 8 p.m., $30. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

KRS-ONE AND MISTAH FAB


The old school meets one of the Bay’s new school. Fri/14, 9 p.m., $25. Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck, Berk. www.shattuckdownlow.com

KIOSK


The Iranian fusion group parties up its Bagh e Vahsh e Jahani (Global Zoo). Fri/14, 8:30 p.m., $35–$55. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

CHUCK D


Welcome to the truth-teller’s terrordome. Sat/15, 9 p.m., $15–$20. Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. www.uptownnightclub.com

MCCOY TYNER TRIO


The jazz giant is joined by Ceramic Dog’s Marc Ribot. Tues/18–Nov. 22, 8 and 10 p.m.; Nov. 23, 2 and 7 p.m.; $5–$35. Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero W., Oakl. www.yoshis.com

Kowloon Walled City

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PREVIEW If it sounds like metal, and it looks like metal, it’s gotta be metal. Right?

Vocalist-guitarist Scott Evans of San Francisco’s Kowloon Walled City doesn’t think so. "I think it’s heavy, but it’s not metal," he said after KWC’s recent Annie’s Social Club show. "We occasionally throw in metal parts, but I stand by us not being a metal band."

Guitarist Jason Pace disagreed: "It may not be a heavy metal band, but it’s a fucking metal band. Despite Scott’s reluctance to say we’re a metal band, I think, within the metal genre, there’s about 800 subgenres, and I think we’re somewhere in there."

It doesn’t really matter how you categorize KWC’s music. What does matter is the group’s impregnable wall of sound, driven by Scott Evans’ throat-ripping, barked vocals, Jeff Fagundes’ groovy, syncopated drumming, and fuzzy, imposing riffs reminiscent of a mutant Chia Pet.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the Kowloon Walled City, a neglected tenement in British Hong Kong, grew into a squalid, dilapidated enclave of prostitution, drugs, gambling, and all around good times. Unsurprisingly, the outfit sees many parallels between that labyrinthine dystopolis and the portion the Tenderloin where they rehearse. Named for a street in that neighborhood, KWC’s new Turk Street EP (Wordclock) is an uncompromising slab of downtuned power with Fagundes and bassist Ian Miller forming a taut rhythm section and allowing the guitars to deviate from each song’s base without compromising the prodigious grooves. Still, while Turk Street rocks ass, I can’t help but think KWC are at their best onstage, feeding their fans’ faces with second and third helpings of their sludgy, hardcore-influenced … metal. There, I said it. Sorry, Scott.

KOWLOON WALLED CITY With Helms Alee. Mon/17, 7 p.m., free. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com.

Lucky Dragons

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PREVIEW Los Angeles’ Lucky Dragons make music that’s not very musical: many of the sounds Luke Fishbeck and Sara Rara use could come from faked field recordings or electronic noodling, and these ethnographic forgeries are further subjected to intense sampling that reduces the sense of space or regular pacing that usually marks sounds as music in our brains. Still, listening to the chirping, loop-happy compositions found on the pair’s recent album, Dream Island Laughing Language (Marriage), without the aid of Fishbeck’s peculiar brand of new-primitive modern dance or the duo’s stuttering, gentle videos, you only get part of the story.

Lucky Dragons don’t make music to prove that making music is foolish or to exaggerate its narcissism. Their work is radical because it encourages connections between show-goers over the standard-issue connection between a band and their creation and the audience’s emotions. Lucky Dragons’ music may convey a sense of pastoralism, but it works here as a conduit for a futuristic kind of sociability, upsetting the standard band–audience interaction by establishing fragile, temporary human networks that stand in stark contrast to obligatory social networks.

If there were a way to describe the disarming piece that YouTube calls "Make a Baby" without getting into technical details, it would go something like this: in the middle of a rock concert, you suddenly find yourself on the floor with strangers, touching their skin, creating shorts and flows that change the course of a fizzing, neon synth drone. When I saw Lucky Dragons perform at 21 Grand last year, I remember the tentative then bold ways kids’ bodies inched towards each other, this organic sculptural mass of flesh and fabric and finally, at the end, the way those bodies unstuck from one another, not unsweetly and not without some regret. You came to receive and ended up creating, came to stay in your bubble and ended up drawn into a strangely open, nascent community.

LUCKY DRAGONS With Hecuba and Pit Er Pat. Sun/16, 9 p.m., $10. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com. Also with Hecuba, Pit Er Pat, and Chen Santa Maria. Mon/17, 8 p.m., check site for price. Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell, Oakl. www.lobotgallery.com

Trackademics

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"You have different buzzes in different circles," Trackademicks says. "But when everyone’s talking, it sounds like one big noise."

Few know this better than the 27-year-old rapper and producer born Jason Valerio. In San Francisco and Berkeley, the Alameda native is known as a conscious hip-hop performer whose sound embraces electronica,’80s R&B, and new wave. In Oakland, where we’re chatting in his Cool Collar Scholar Productions studio, Trackademicks is perhaps better known for production, making beats for hood rappers like J-Stalin and Mistah FAB.

"FAB put me on," Tracks says. "I gave him a beat disc. He called back hella juiced. I started running around with him, meeting everybody out here." FAB, however, disputes this account.

"He put me on," FAB says, laughing. He used six of the beats on Son of a Pimp (Thizz, 2005). "He gave the album that twist where people will always remember it."

"He reminds me of the Neptunes," Stalin says. "He ain’t the average hip-hop producer. He produces techno."

Though he finds it imprecise, Trackademicks is used to the "techno" tag.

"I don’t do techno," he says. "But people aren’t sure what to call it. What I produce for myself I don’t give to people. I match what I do with what they do. I won’t give someone a track like, ‘Go rap on this,’ and they’ve never rapped over 160 BPM. There’s a right way to do everything."

This approach is evident on Track’s midtempo number on Stalin’s new Gas Nation (Livewire/SMC), "Millionaire Status," which highlights futuristic soundwaves atop the ’80s-style 808 drums that characterize Stalin’s music — a perfect blend of what they do. Like Tracks says on his own song "Grocery Bills," "I get mob when I make instrumentals."

Even as he’s branched out nationally, producing for Kid Sister and Phonte of Little Brother, among others, Trackademicks is primarily an artist, working solo and with his crew, the Honor Roll. While shopping for an album deal, he’s about to drop his first official solo release — a 12-inch, "Enjoy What You Do"/"Topsidin’" — on the Fool’s Gold label. With its improbable throwback chorus — from Wham’s "Wham Rap" — and an electronica/go-go-style groove, "Enjoy" is one of the most original hip-hop tunes I’ve heard lately. Its quotation of Digital Underground’s "Doowhutchalike" is apt: like DU, Tracks combines streetwise knowledge with more uplifting themes.

"My aim is to build bridges," he says. "I’m black and Filipino. I feel at home in a lot of places.

"My goal is to have every kind of people at my shows," he continues. "Not just every race — let’s go deeper. It’s about class, about culture. People say they want everybody, but how are you speaking to them? I’m taking steps to speak to different audiences." Part of his success has been avoiding preachiness in favor of celebrating the typical joys of rap — girls, cruisin’ around, looking sharp, having skills.

"Kids believe the hype," he says. "You should let them know — you need a job to live. We have a responsibility as artists to report the truth, all sides of it. The important thing is to articulate, to communicate all facets of a person as opposed to one thing."

As for his own multifaceted artistic life, Trackademicks is content. "I don’t worry anymore. Real recognize real, game recognize game — that’s how it’s going to be."

www.trackademia.blogspot.com

Jonas Reinhardt

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He doesn’t seem like someone who’d perform at an arena, but Jesse Reiner’s aural ambitions as a contemporary Krautrocker are Wembley-sized. "I would love it if we were playing in stadiums," he says of his solo synthesizer project, Jonas Reinhardt, citing no interest in celebrity but expressing a deep amazement at the apparent scale of Tangerine Dream’s gigs in the ’70s. "They were a big band! It amazes me that people had that much patience for that."

This amazement folds neatly into Reiner’s shimmery present-day endeavor, which only recently, with the advent of Norwegian space-disco and the West Coast’s various strands of tripped ambient, did he feel might draw any audience at all. It’s clearly a liberating undertaking for the Berlin School enthusiast: much of our conversation at a bar in the Mission is gladly given over to his influences, ranging from Klaus Dinger’s caveman-like "motorik" drum sound in Neu! to the heavenly, droning thrum of White Rainbow up in Portland, Ore. Many may know Reiner for his synth and guitar contributions to Ascended Master, Crime in Choir, and Citay, which he left earlier this year. While his first record for Kranky as Jonas Reinhardt is deeply influenced by German electronic sounds, the project in no way sounds like a non sequitur alongside his other bands.

It was some time ago — the mid-’90s — when Reiner was won over by analog synths as a college student, discovering such electronic/ambient innovators as Michael Garrison, Klaus Schulze, and Manuel Göttsching. He and a friend entertained the idea of making a record they could pass off as a lost recording by two imaginary Düsseldorf academics: "Wilhelm Freuder" and "Jonas Reinhardt."

The moniker has become useful again as a vaguely defined face for the launch of this new project. As Reiner describes it, Reinhardt is a "suave European guy who makes very continental, European-type electronic music and lives in Monaco." Goofy as the premise is, placing the project’s image at a remove from the actual musicians behind it has proven appropriate, as Jonas Reinhardt is a solo endeavor in the loosest sense of the word: performances have happened as a trio with Damon Palermo of Mi Ami on drums and Kenny Hopper, also of Crime in Choir, on bass. Just recently, the band took on a fourth member in guitarist Phil Manley of Trans Am and the Fucking Champs, who provided tape treatments for the project’s debut, which Reiner recorded himself.

The full-length, Reinhardt’s second release after this summer’s Modern by Nature’s Reward EP on iTunes, is a shiny, cerebral pleasure where the synths hiss and gleam through a set of tunes that often feels as improbably bubbly and vintage as Matmos’ recent all-synth undertaking, Supreme Balloon (Matador). There is grit to the Reinhardt beat, however, and its sound takes on a more danceable form live, as could be seen at its YouTube-d Big Sur appearances, the first of which was an after-party gig for Kraut legends Cluster. Basic tracks have begun for the next record, which Reiner predicts will be more beat-driven. For a fictional character, Reinhardt is quite eager to collaborate, too: Reiner hopes to record various "Jonas Reinhardt and So ‘n’ So" discs in the coming months and years.
www.jonasreinhardt.com

The Dodos

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At the beginning of 2008, San Francisco knew about the Dodos. Eleven months later, a lot more of the world does. This is largely due to Visiter (Frenchkiss), the group’s vibrant second album. Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, and a few dozen other musical arbiters have joined a chorus of praise for the 14-song collection decked out in kid-drawing sleeve art. Mention Led Zeppelin’s III (Atlantic, 1970) and Physical Graffiti (Swan Song, 1975) here, cite the influence of West African syncopation there, and you have the ingredients of a typical rave for vocalist-guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber. But the appeal and the rewards of Visiter transcend such reference points, tapping into something individually instinctive and collaboratively intuitive. It’s there in the spirit of Krober’s rhythms, a spirit which has nothing to do with the contrivances of the current indie Afrobeat vogue. It’s there in Long’s vocal melodies, which possess a rare, casually natural aplomb. It’s there in the way they work together.

"It’s a really slow process," Long says when asked about the sing-your-life quality of his tenor vocals. "Something has to sit with me for a really long time. I’ll happen on a rhythm or melody and take it with me wherever I go. It’s a practice."

Sequestered in his bedroom for much of the last month because of mono, Long has been writing new tunes in between the occasional trip to the corner store or walk around the block. "I have this [unfinished] song stuck in my head — it’s worked its way in and I don’t like it," he says. "But I’ll probably love it eventually and it’ll become my favorite song." While many critics might think that Robert and Jimmy or John and Paul are the songwriters Long aspires to match when he croons to a girl ("Jodi," "Ashley") or renders masculine foibles ("Men," "Beards," "Fools"), that isn’t necessarily the case. He’s just as likely to strive for the effect of a less canonical duo: Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. "I’ll know something is good because it reminds me of OMD," he enthuses. "It sounds like home."

The Dodos have recorded both their albums — Visiter and 2006’s self-released Beware of the Maniacs — in Portland, Ore., with John Askew. That producer’s past studio experience with the Northwest’s plethora of indie and punk duos informs the surprising scope and dynamics of his work with the Dodos. While labels like K and Kill Rock Stars and groups such as Beat Happening and the Spinanes have revealed the merits of a two-piece approach, the Dodos build upon that exploration, concocting a sound that verges on epic without ever becoming muddled. Long views the group’s initial formation as a matter of economic practicality as much as aesthetic tactics and, indeed, a third member, Joe Haener, has recently joined the group.

For much of this year, Long and Kroeber have been touring. "It gets to the point where you’re playing and performing and it’s all about muscle memory," Long says. The repetition of life on the road, of playing the same songs over and over, has something to do with that feeling. But Long and Kroeber’s music is physical — it gets down into the veins and bones and heart. It’s simple, really. The Dodos move you. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The Dodos play with Kelley Stoltz Thurs/6, 8 p.m., at Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. (415) 474-0365.

www.bimbos365club.com

www.dodosmusic.net

Citay

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"There’s lots of ways to be a Guitar Hero. I just think it would be cooler if people tried to be real guitar heroes. I want people to find their inner guitar hero."

Amen, Ezra Feinberg. The Citay songwriter freely admits he’s never played the game, but we know exactly what he means: why add the competitive veneer of a sporting match to something as inherently pleasurable as playing guitar? Feinberg needed no prod when he started practicing. "I was really nerdy," he recalls of his hermetic early music-making sessions. "I wanted to learn my instrument really well, and I was really into guitar technique, and I used to sit in my bedroom and learn complicated guitar parts like Van Halen."

Then one day he realized, "Wait a minute, it’s much more fun and interesting and cool to work on songs and work on playing with different people and in different styles rather than sit in my room."

Metal, classic rock, jazz, fusion, punk, indie, and "weirder" sounds all left an impression, but after putting in time with the Piano Magic collective and the "stonery" Feast, Feinberg seems to have finally found his voice amid Citay’s fragrant blend of psychedelia, folk, synth-rock, and AOR. Taking its name from a Feinberg mixtape of songs utilizing that only-in-rock pronunciation ("The Journey song is included, but there’s also ‘Living for the City’ by Stevie Wonder and ‘Fool for the City’ by Foghat"), the onetime home recording project assumed a life of its own after Feinberg’s move in 2004 from Brooklyn to San Francisco, in collaboration with Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, who had previously recorded Feast.

Seemingly bursting full-blown from the brow of a rock ‘n’ roll Zeus, Citay’s startlingly excellent 2006 self-titled debut found a home on Important Records, inspiring Feinberg to tell people "we were their Partridge Family, next to all the found sound shit, Merzbow, Axolotl."

Naturally, Feinberg adds, "The next challenge was to see if these songs could be pulled off live because it was a studio-centric project." But no worries, he managed wonderfully, with the help of, at various times, Green and members of Tussle, Ascended Master, and Skygreen Leopards. The latest additions — following the amicable departure of Jesse Reiner of Jonas Reinhardt and Crime in Choir, and Adria Otte of the Dry Spells (Feinberg also drums with that band of kindred Bard graduates) — are Sean Smith and Josh Pollock of Daevid Allen’s University of Errors. And how does he rope in such talented players? "I’m pretty gregarious," drawls Feinberg, sounding like those nerdy homebound practice sessions are far behind him.

Still, judging from the sublimely interwoven acoustic and electric guitars and lushly appointed folk-rock streaked with sweeping synthesizer found on Citay’s most recent long-player, Little Kingdom (Dead Oceans), perhaps the onetime bedroom-rocker’s guitar hero — and musical visionary — days are here to stay.

Citay perform at the Goldies party, Tues/11, 9 p.m., free. 111 Minna Gallery, SF. (415) 974-1719

www.111minnagallery.com

www.citay.net

Alice Russell

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PREVIEW When I see the name Alice Russell, I think first of Alice Coltrane and Arthur Russell before I think of this Brighton, UK, blue-eyed soul revivalist. And I’m aware that this may unfairly predispose me to her music, which is not without its charms.

The two other major UK soul vocalists to make an impact stateside, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, arrived as self-generating publicity machines whose public images matched their respective styles. In contrast, Russell’s music is up without being overtly rebellious. The posturing’s explicitly enthusiastic, without the attack of Winehouse or the reggae-pop concision of Allen, on Russell’s fourth LP, and first bid for a wider audience, Pot of Gold (Six Degrees/Little Poppet), which are at their best and most unique on songs like "Let Us Be Loving," which stitches together a dubby, tumbling rhythm and gives Russell some space disco ethereality.

But the album also has moments of superfluity. I don’t get the sense that Russell felt compelled to cover Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" because she could coax some radical reading of it. Instead, it’s plunked down in the disc’s otherwise-decent closing stretch, as if another anchor wouldn’t do a better job of giving listeners a sense of how Russell stands apart from the nu-soul pack. In this light, it’s hard not to see nu-soul as a rockist backlash against the perceived inauthenticity of nu-rave, which ultimately isn’t inauthentic enough to bother anyone.

ALICE RUSSELL Mon/10, 9 p.m., $15. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. (415) 771-1421, www.theindependentsf.com

Dungen

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PREVIEW Calling all Invisibl Skratch Picklz: one of your most unlikely acolytes is dying to meet you — and perhaps someday even be like you: Gustav Ejstes of Dungen, Sweden’s premier psych-rock band. "I’m a huuuge fan!" exclaims Ejstes by phone from the offices of his label, Kemado. "They’re definitely not underrated. I realized this when I went to a record store in New York. I was looking for scratch records, and this girl said, ‘No one listens to that anymore,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t care!’ This is the shit. I love it."

Scratching his hip-hop itch was the shaggy-haired band leader’s sole comfort after an intense bout of touring following the US release of Dungen’s much-praised Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds/Kemado, 2004). "I went to this house and practiced scratching for a year and only did that!" he marvels. Only later did he get a piano from his grandmother and started playing during breaks from his scratching exercises. He started writing songs and soon realized, "’OK, here’s another album. Now I feel like I really enjoy this again.’"

The end result was 4 (Kemado): a passionate and, yes, piano-based recording brimming with eloquent, stretched-out jams and jazzy coloration, spattered by guitarist Reine Fisk’s touches of shred and aching, airborne lines of flute and strings, both played by multi-instrumentalist Ejstes. A new approach to songwriting and recording might have contributed to the disc’s loose and spacious bright sound. Instead of impatiently recording each tune the same day he wrote it, much as he had in the past, Ejstes let the songs breathe and mutate before bringing them to the rest of the group. These days he’s far from precious about the process — or many other things, for that matter. Asked about the bare-bones 4 title — for Dungen’s fifth album — Ejstes stammers, "I just felt like this was the fourth, the fourth piece of shit," before howling with laughter. "I have to write that down."

DUNGEN With Women and Social Studies. Mon/10, 9 p.m., $14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Bonjour joie

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Zut alors, where is the joie, mademoiselles? Judging from the current pop charts, rage is all the rage: girls just want to "start a fight" is the message from Pink, Brit, and Katy Perry, even as pop’s queen Beyoncé, a.k.a., Sasha Fierce, chooses the somber rather than ferocious path with "If I Were a Boy."

Maybe it’s too much to ask for a recession-wracked America to find a battered vein of real happiness. And perhaps that’s why I’m looking for bliss overseas. You have to be a crusty old croissant to not succumb to the wholesomely sexy, gallic-girls-just-want-to-have-fun charm of Yelle, née Julie Budet. In a year when every pop thang coming out of Francophone music-makers seems to exude a freshness that escapes rage-aholic American pop, along comes Yelle with the cutest bob this side of Rihanna and those prep-cool dancing boys in "A Cause Des Garçons." Not for nothing does Budet’s acronym nom de plume stand for "You Enjoy Life." Could this be the new yé-yé?

Resembling a sprightly Feist onstage, the jeune fille also coughed up the catchiest bit of whistle(-along) bait since Peter Bjorn and John’s "Young Folks": "Ce Jeu." Yelle’s palpable ’80s-throwback aesthetic crossed with the twirly-girly, smiley-faced nouveau-rave dancefloor vibe in the "Je Veux Te Voir" video — squeaky-cute aerobics, girl-gang dance moves, and a crayon-bright pop aesthetic, oo-la-la — evokes the seemingly last microsecond of dance-pop innocence when Her Madgesty, Salt-N-Pepa, and J.J. Fad ruled the school canteen. Who needs to speak the language when confronted with the inexorable, happy-sad-but-mostly-happy sizzle of "Tristesse/Joie," given a Reebok commercial makeover this past summer?

So why France and why now? According to Budet, "maybe because France is well-located between English pop, German electro, and American production! It’s geography!"

Mais oui, Budet enjoys life — and exclamation points! Though our trans-Atlantic phone tête-à-tête didn’t materialize, I managed to connect via e-mail with the Bretagne-born vocalist, who’s more comfortable answering questions in writing when she isn’t slinking around onstage like a T-shirted electro-pop whippet. Of course, she isn’t quite as wholesome as she might appear: her first MySpace hit — "Short Dick Cuizi," a poke at Cuizinier of French hip-hop group TTC and an early incarnation of "Je Veux Te Voir," famously samples the bassline of "Short Dick Man." "The songs are about our lives and our productions," she writes. "I think about everything in Pop Up [her new debut on Source Etc/Caroline/EMI]: dildos, but death, too."

Some fans might be taken aback by Budet’s live appearances, which are low on the diva-esque antics and high on the every-girl bounce. "We naturally worked hard on our show," she writes, predicting ghosts onstage for her Halloween appearance. "It’s normal for us to give a real show, not only the songs like on the album. Drums bring a lot of energy, and we build our live set like a DJ set, mixing the songs together, adding production. We have a compromise that seems to work: we rock the dancers and we dance the rockers!" So get your fill of Yelle because 2009 will be "the year of the break," Budet suspects. "We have to take time at home or people are gonna hate us, ahah!"

YELLE

With Passion Pit and Funeral Party

Fri/31, 9 p.m. doors, $20–$25

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS

Forget Uncle Sam: the post-punk superstar among us, Blixa Bargeld, needs you. The Einsturzende Neubauten frontperson, onetime Bad Seed, and current San Francisco resident has a new project — this after his wonderfully wry, dry-humored Rede/Speech performance here in 2006: The Execution of Precious Memories. Bargeld composes a new libretto for each performance, using memories gathered from questionnaires filled out by anonymous denizens of the performance site. To create this piece in its tenth iteration — and for the first time since 2001 — Bargeld plans to collaborate with the musicians of Nanos Operetta and the dancers of Kunst-Stoff. "It’s a poetical process," says Bargeld by phone. "There’s something fictitious about memories. The moment you give away a memory and fix it in a form and have it seen by someone else it becomes a piece of fiction. It’s not connected to yourself any longer." So let go and risk seeing intimate memories transformed: Bay Area residents are invited to go to www.blixa-bargeld.com/VKESF to fill out the 50-question survey — give it at least 30 minutes, cautions Bargeld — before the Nov. 1 deadline.

NO REST

THE SPINTO BAND


The revered indie rockers definitely weren’t sprinting when it came to getting out Moonwink (Park the Van/Fierce Panda). Sat/1, 10 p.m., and Sun/2, 9 p.m., $12–$14. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. www.bottomofthehill.com

DIPLO, ABE VIGODA, TELEPATHE, AND BOY 8 BIT


Eclecticism? OK! The "Mad Decent" tour mixes the DJ-producer with NorCal’s art-punks, Brooklyn art-dreamers, and a London minimalist beatmaker. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $16. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

SECRET MACHINES AND THE DEARS


How do you turn a backlash around? Give a listen to the ambitious new space-psych Secret Machines (TSM). And the Dears continue to endear with Missiles (Dangerbird). Mon/3, 8 p.m., $22. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.independentsf.com

HUBERT SUMLIN


The blues guitar legend made a lasting impact on rock thanks to his work with Howlin’ Wolf. With Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, Buddy Guy, and others. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $45–$79.50. Masonic Center, 1111 California, SF. www.ticketmaster.com

Future present

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

"I remember in the beginning I used to fuck around and not care about anything at all," says Steven Ellison, who records under the guise Flying Lotus. "But now it’s, like, Thom Yorke likes my music, dog. Now I think, oh shit, will Thom like this beat?"

It must be a happy conundrum to wonder if one of the world’s biggest rock stars will like your new song. Tinkering around his studio in Winnetka, a sleepy suburb in the San Fernando Valley, Flying Lotus works on a long-distance project with Burial. When he’s done, he’ll send the track over to the United Kingdom for the junglist producer to tweak. News of Flying Lotus collaborating with Burial, two of electronic music’s freshest new stars, will probably make some fans smile with pleasure. From Radiohead’s Yorke and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow — who recently noted in an interview with Remix that Flying Lotus makes "pure, mad music" — to the beat heads who ravenously scoop up any new Lotus material, everyone seems to love FlyLo.

So how did Flying Lotus become the so-called Chosen One? Los Angeles teems with a renaissance of kindred spirits. Carlos Niño (whose range includes Gaby Hernandez’s progressive folk valentine When Love [Armed Orphan] and Lil Sci’s rap treatise What’s the Science? [Shaman Work]), Daedelus (who blends early 1990s zoo rave with film soundtrack compositions) and Nobody (whose Nobody Presents Blank Blue: Western Water Music Vol. II [Ubiquity] eyes ’60s-ish psychedelic pop) all use electronic music as a starting point for forays into various genres.

Andrew Meza, who hosts BTS Radio on CSU-Fullerton and was an early champion of Flying Lotus, compares the scene to the vaunted "New Hollywood" wave of American directors in the early ’70s. "It’s a really small group of people doing really cool things," he says. In his opinion, Flying Lotus stands out in part because of his studio techniques. Although the artist records in a bedroom, his music sounds as polished as a major label product.

"People used to say this about Dilla — and I’m in no way comparing him to Dilla — that [when he finished beats] it sounded like everything was already EQ’ed and mastered," Meza says. "With [Lotus], his shit seems so much louder and bass-y."

Now, as a leader of the flourishing beat movement, Flying Lotus has launched a digital label, Brainfeeder, to issue projects from like-minded friends such as Samiyam and Ras G. To promote the label, he’s throwing a Brainfeeder Festival Nov. 8 at 103 Harriet St.

The best music often sounds like everything and nothing before it. Flying Lotus’ work evokes comparisons to J Dilla and Madlib and fits neatly into flavor-of-the-moment trends like 8-bit and dubstep, yet it is also excitingly unique. He utilizes standard bedroom production equipment, including a MacBook Pro and a Novation 25 MIDI controller, to make hauntingly fluid and improvisatory sounds. "My whole setup is probably less than a couple of Gs, man," he says by phone from Winnetka.

He samples other people’s work, then renders the sounds so unrecognizable he often can’t remember what they originally were. On Los Angeles (Warp), Flying Lotus pays homage to his late aunt, the great jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane, by appropriating material from her 1968 debut, A Monastic Trio (Impulse!), for "Auntie’s Harp." "I tried my best to transform all the harp stuff so it didn’t sound like the original, but still had the essence," Flying Lotus says. "SexSlaveShip" builds on a more obscure source: ambient/acoustic folk artist Matthew David’s Spills (Plug Research). Another track, "GNG BNG," draws inspiration from DJ Shadow’s breakbeat experiments of the late ’90s.

As a result, Los Angeles, released in June, is part modern-day homage to California’s holistic vibes and progressive utopianism, and part science-fiction film, making for an arresting future present. "It’s the classic hero’s journey kind of thing, basically a story like a film," Flying Lotus says, adding that the movie that initially inspired him was Ridley Scott’s classic 1982 dystopia Blade Runner. "It’s the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist."

The recording’s mood ranges from the deeply reflective vibes of "Golden Diva" to the steel drum-speckled techno funk of "Parisian Goldfish." There are a few vocal pieces on Los Angeles, particularly the lushly sensuous "RobertaFlack" with Turkish artist Ahu "Dolly" Keleslogu, whom Flying Lotus met online. For the most part, however, its liquid hip-hop instrumentals sing louder than words. As FlyLo puts it, "I wanted to make music that didn’t need a voice."

BRAINFEEDER FESTIVAL
With Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer, Kode 9, Hudson Mohawke, Ras G, Samiyam, Kutmah, and Martyn
Nov. 8, 9 p.m., $15 advance
103 Harriet, SF
www.blasthaus.com

Welcome to my dreamscape

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Here’s the curse of deep sleepers: they never remembers their dreams. As someone who snaps out of bed in the morning without one recollection of what happened behind shut eyes, I’ve always been envious of folks who can recount the vivid details of their dreams. Instead, I’ve taken to filling my awake time with art that sends my neurons firing in similarly seemingly random configurations. If I can’t do it myself, I might as well find people who can help do it for me.

This is where local singer-songwriter Michael Zapruder comes in. As a champion of blurring the lines between the banal and bizarre, of sticking the unexpected into the most familiar settings, the smooth-baritoned storyteller has more than a few dreams to spare for the rest of us. His most recent disc, the appropriately wobbly-monikered Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope (SideCho), thrives on spinning long-lingering images — spiders on ice cream cones, lovers transformed into pieces of hay — into songs that remain rather confessional in tone. At their core, these could be considered folk numbers, but Zapruder adorns them with not only with psychedelic wordplay, but with glowing electronics and an indie-rock-spirited willingness for experimentation. It’s a balancing act of tremendous agility, reutf8g tales at once earthy and strangely disorienting.

"My goal is to write songs that work as extended hypnotic vignettes. That’s my realm," Zapruder explains over the phone from Mojave, en route to the next stop of his cross-country tour. After completing the much-publicized "52 Songs" project at the end of 1999 — he wrote, recorded, and posted online one tune per week for an entire year — the vocalist realized that these dream-state compositions were among his most successful. Several projects have followed, but Horoscope could be his finest expression of erasing the lines between sleep and wakefulness.

Opener "New Year," with its twinkling atmospherics and rolling brushed-drum rhythm, joined by Zapruder’s intimate hushes at the mic, feels like some of the more recent output from art-popper David Sylvian. The song has all the hallmarks of a late-night confessional, but a closer listen reveals a fever-rush of paper dragons, broken beds, and cowboys. "Ads for Feelings" carefully, steadily mesmerizes with a light pulsating tempo, soft-spoken keyboard sighs, and a recited vocal melody — only to shake the listener from the trance with delirious twirls of flute. Zapruder hardly sounds like he’s among the ranks of the awake, yet he insists, "I couldn’t sleep, I was watching the night / It was throwing little pebbles at the back of my head."

The album’s focal point is the nine-minute "Black Wine," a spellbinding torrent of interwoven images of family gatherings and ugly mayhem, coolly and methodically delivered over a slow blues. Here, otherwise-benign references to bread and wine commingle with blood and bones while a pair of wraithlike female voices warn of impending doom. The dreamlike whimsies of elsewhere have instead been replaced with something considerably more nightmarish in spirit. Asked about the origins of the song, Zapruder lets out a hearty laugh: "I just wanted to juxtapose the idea of a normal holiday meal with a monster story. So I stepped into that world and looked around for a while."

MICHAEL ZAPRUDER
With 1090 Club and the R&B Freejazz Gospel Supreme 80
Nov. 5, 9 p.m., $8
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

Exuberance with bite

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They once were distant from the excitement, 40 blocks beyond 82nd Street — a dividing line that Erik Gage dramatically refers to as the "Berlin Wall of culture" in Portland, Ore. He and his bandmates in White Fang grew up in the PDX ‘burbs round 122nd Street, starting a CD-R — or, rather, "CD-Gnar" — label in high school. As popular as they were round the cafeteria — they’d hop up on the tables and sing — the attention they’ve lately received is even more impressive: MTVnews.com, XLR8R, and Billboard have all knocked at Gage’s phone line, over which he gladly engaged with the Guardian shortly before the launch of the band’s national fall tour.

Of all the coverage, the write-up that Gage, now 19, seems most proud of is the review they got in The Oregonian, which gave their new Marriage Records debut, Pure Evil, an A-. "My girlfriend’s mom read it," he exclaims. His enthusiasm speaks to White Fang’s whole deal: if they can excite those right around them, whether the numerous friends’ bands Gage mentions or his lady friend’s mum, they’re happy. This earnest eagerness was particularly striking at their summer gig at the Lobot Gallery in Oakland, where a crowd of less than 10 got utterly whomped with a two-drummer, extra-intimidating lineup including second kit-man Chuck Hoffand. White Fang’s core membership — guitarist Kyle Wolfgang, drummer Jim Leslie, and Gage, who sings — have had several members pass through their ranks, lately counting six members for their touring group. Only one drummer this time out, but Gage promises it’ll be great.

"It still gets pretty damn crazy every show," Gage says, citing a gutter-punk fistfight at a recent house show as a particularly frenzied example of this. Fang used to be more mild-mannered, he explains, playing "twee-ish, K Records-type stuff," before they picked up electric guitars to channel their "African tribal drum music" influence for "Pterodactyl," a contribution to the guilty pleasures-themed Grown Zone comp on States Rights last year. "Twee-ish" has since given way to Pure Evil, with a freewheeling energy that takes mere moments to adore: "Breakfast" hobbles from Black Flag riffing into an exuberant, infectious three-chord collapse.

After the tour, they’ll record an LP titled Cheerful Poetry of the Cosmos for States Rights, and alongside Gage’s Gnar Tapes and Shit label, Fang will initiate a new imprint under Marriage’s wing: Chips, which will be dedicated to releasing split singles. Evil? More like pure genius.

WHITE FANG

With Mount Eerie, Thanksgiving, and Common Eider King Eider

Sat/1, 8 p.m., $8

Million Fishes Art Gallery

2501 Bryant, SF

www.clubsandwichbayarea.com

Sisters from another planet

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

A few weekends back, I rose at the crack of dawn to see Allen Toussaint perform at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan for the venue’s 10th anniversary celebrations. Although it was Sunday morning and the show was free, nary any Negroes on site for the New Orleans master. However shameful this lack, the show was well worth it, especially for Toussaint’s mesmerizing extended version of "Southern Nights," replete with rich anecdotes about midcentury black life in Louisiana’s parishes. Right before this transcendent trip, a middle-aged lady fan down front cried out for him to perform the Labelle hit he produced, "Lady Marmalade." Toussaint obliged with a few lines before jokingly gesturing into the air before him, "Take it, Patti!"

Upon listening to the just-released Back to Now (Verve), I’m reminded of the trickster-ish spirit Toussaint reanimated around that song, as well as the reaffirmation of the quality of talent that’s always been summoned to work with the three titanesses of Labelle: Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti LaBelle. In the 30-plus years since the era’s premier woman rock trio disbanded, there has been a short list of female, or female-fronted, acts that could bring something sonically strong to the arena Labelle dominated in the early 1970s, but none could top them. Right now the only promising heiresses really worth discussing are Me’Shell NdegeOcello, Leela James, Nikka Costa, the Noisettes’ Shingai Shoniwa, Janelle Monáe, and Fantasia, but most of these have suffered the indifference of the public to a degree and, worse, been thwarted repeatedly by the industry. The merciful window of sonic vitality and relative aesthetic freedom Labelle once enjoyed during my childhood now seems like a chimera. Almost as if their hallowed career operates on a silver ship far out in parallel space — we can thus glean stardust of Labelle’s body of work, though their vessel is too many light years away to tilt this planet back on its rightful axis.

Talkin’ ’bout bold as love: the all-girl band’s new Back to Now — don’t call it a comeback, but a reconstruction — will hopefully serve as a beacon to light the way along the hard path young female artists are forced to tread. Kicking off with Hendryx in fine songwriting form on "Candlelight" — a twang ballad spurred to the brink of disco-country and ably handled from Lenny Kravitz’s production chair — this new disc contains no filler save the debut single. To these ears, Wyclef Jean’s "Roll Out" is the weak link — don’t want any Akon-sounding mess in my grown-woman funk, but I understand the biniss need to kowtow to Ringtone Nation. I am positively certain that when Gentleman Toussaint cut my favorite single, "What Can I Do for You," with Labelle in 1974, he never envisioned such a pass.

Fortunately, "Superlover" comes next to cleanse the palate, contemplative in its easing of the group’s patented sound in the direction of hallowed love testaments like "Isn’t It a Shame." Kravitz has finally met his match and found his métier while manning the knobs for this project. When I first learned of his presence the year before last, it seemed fitting that he should be summoned alongside Gamble and Huff, not merely because his best work owes a debt to classic Philly and Chi-Town soul, but because one figures correctly that his respect for icons of Labelle’s caliber would bring the best out of him. The sublime, delicately bouncy funk of Hendryx’s next superb shot, "System," could be the key to his ultimate discovery of his voice.

One knows Kravitz must have salivated over the unearthed 1970 track "Miss Otis Regrets," which includes the late Stones associate Nicky Hopkins on piano and Who drummer Keith Moon. It’s a magnificent album closer, but its back-to-the-future feedback loop in conversation with Hendryx’s own compositions only underscores the fact that she remains the great enigma of late 20th century vanguard pop and Afrofuturist rock, one of an elite few of the most undersung song-catchers way past overdue to be seriously studied by music and culture scholars. Should Labelle’s ever-loving vodun fail in the marketplace, Back to Now has more than justified their redrawing of their circle.

The booness

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› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Happy Slutoween, librul terrorists. Now that the Castro Street celebration has been officially buried, there’ll be more terrific parties than tired Sarah Palin costumes haunting Halloween night. Below are 13 batshit surefires, all taking place Oct. 31, night of the living-undead pro-life governor of Alaska. Trick or trick!

ALL HALLOW’S EVE


Goth equals deathly perfect — insert exhausted "every day is Halloween" joke here — as 18-plus clubs Death Guild and Meat team up to paint it black with DJs Decay and Melting Girl and "techno opera singer" Diva Marisa.

9 p.m., $13. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. (415) 626-1409, www.dnalounge.com

BITTEN


A French bordello Halloween masquerade ball seems right up any horny black cat’s alley — especially with an acrobatic performance by the ever-sexy Vau de Vire Society and lofty tunes by DJ Ean Golden.

10 p.m., free with costume. Harlot, 46 Minna, SF. (415) 777-1077, www.harlotsf.com

BLOOD PACT


An 18-and-up, gayish underground "dark places" extravaganza with vampiric DJ vamps Honey Soundsystem, Rchrd Oh?!, and Lord Kook, and promoters Homochic and Tantra, plus a slashing guest spot by Los Angeles’ A Club Called Rhonda.

10 p.m., $15. SomArts, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 552-2131, www.homochic.com

BLOW UP HALLOWEEN


Those gorgeous 18-plus electro hipsters will never settle for anything less than horrifyingly bangin’ style — with terrific, terrifying rap trio HOTTUB, and evil genius DJs Richie Panic and Jeffrey Paradise.

10 p.m., $15. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.myspace.com/blow_up_415

CHARLIE HORSE HALLOWEEN THING


Two whole hours of the trashiest drag performances the nether regions of Polk Street have to offer? Sounds heart-stopping, but hostess Anna Conda will pump you back up with the cheapest drinks — and "outfits" — in town.

10 p.m., free. The Cinch, 1723 Polk, SF. (415) 776-4162, www.myspace.com/charliehorsecinch

COOKIE’S HAUNTED HALLOWEEN


Ecstatically kooky drag princess Cookie Dough hosts a night of haunted whores, with ghoulish electro-goth duo Ejector live, DJ MC2, alarming numbers by Landa Lakes, Glitterella, and more.

8 p.m., $8. Octavia Lounge, 1772 Market, SF. (415) 863-3516, www.cookievision.com

HALLOWEEN: A PARTY


This one’ll be pure crazyboots, as Heklina of Trannyshack literally rises from the dead to join Midnight Mass’ Peaches Christ in hosting a dark diva drag extravaganza, with bloody insanity from Kiddie, Fauxnique, Renttecca, Raya Light …

9 p.m., $20. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. (415) 703-8965, www.peacheschrist.com

HAUNTED TEMPLE


Unholy deeds will abound in cavernous club Temple’s sacred spaces, with insane décor on two levels, howlin’ DJs Paul Hemming, IQ!, and Jaswho?, plus a $500 costume contest.

10 p.m., $20. 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

MONSTER HALLOWEEN


Ghoul’s night lip-sync battle-a-thon! DJ Scottish Andy and glamazon hostess Juanita More exhaust the hipsteratti queens and friends on the mic at the manly Truck bar for exotic "prizes" (i.e., drunk sex).

9 p.m., $5. Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF. (415) 252-0306, www.juanitamore.com

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BASS


Burner faves Opel get with Evil Breaks for an endless night of sheer funky drum ‘n’ bass madness, with a little techno freak-out on the side. With DJs Meat Katie, the Rogue Element, and Kid Blue.

10 p.m., $20. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.mighty119.com

RE:CREATION


A hip-hop, old-school electro, and freak beats spectacular, as ArtNowSF and Euphoric Conceptions present a platter’s worth of head trip performers like Mochipet, the New Deal, Pleasure Maker, and Sleepyhead. 9 p.m., $20. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. (415) 531-6953, www.clubsix1.com

STILETTO: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE


No San Francisco club is sharper fashionista-wise than theme-driven Stiletto. Gasp as too-cool zombies arise from the depths of loveliness with DJs Mario Muse, Eric Sharp, and runway madness from Flock, plus photo booth!

10pm, $8, AsiaSF, 201 Ninth St., (415) 255-4752, www.myspace.com/stilettosf

Z-TRIP


The inexhaustible mix-master must have some sort of magic potion in his vinyl cauldron, because the mash-up and intel hip-hop kids still flock to his politically oriented, mind-blowing shows after several centuries. Scary!

9 p.m., $22.50. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, www.blasthaus.com

Devin the Dude

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PREVIEW: When the Mayan apocalypse hits in 2012, Devin the Dude will have been at this rap stuff for two decades. Although the new Landing Gear (Razor and Tie) is the fifth solo album he’s released since 1998, it’s the first since 2007’s Waitin’ to Inhale (Rap-a-Lot) upgraded his status from "underground rapper" to "underground rapper people know about." With hip-hop shrinking proportionally to the idea of a mainstream, it’s the right time for a rapper like the Dude to emerge: he’s from Houston, and the tracks have less syrupy roll than crate-digger haze, less of UGK’s hard-assed shit-talk and more chuckling self-deprecation.

Like its predecessors, Landing Gear isn’t "conscious" hip-hop. Devin’s priorities on the recording are, in order, getting high, getting over heartbreak, and getting laid. That said, musically, a corner of the disc is dipped in the same juice that Erykah Badu’s year-making New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War (Motown) stews in: check the subtle earbud phase and Garageband multitrack cooing on the sleazeball come-on "Let Me Know It’s Real." If there’s a difference between Landing Gear and Waitin’ to Inhale, it’s the latter’s willingness to go places the former doesn’t. Revenge fantasy "Just Because," off Waitin’, is as funny as it is disturbing. And the fact that Devin doesn’t exempt himself of responsibility for his fantasies makes it compelling. Landing Gear isn’t any less vivid in approaching similar feelings, though alongside "I Don’t Chase Em" an obligatory bid for airplay the stakes feel smaller. But that’s just fine. Devin still has a couple releases before the apocalypse.

DEVIN THE DUDE Wed/29, 9 p.m., $18. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. (415) 255-0333, www.slims-sf.com

Parts and Labor

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PREVIEW The hiss and garble of a psychedelic seeker mid-acid trip, the righteous fury of a dad scolding a litterbug, and the sodden sadness of paranoiac who suspects secret agents are tailing him. All these sounds unexpectedly, remarkably crop up on Parks and Labor’s new Receivers (Jagjaguwar).

When I last caught the band, clobbering all in earshot with a propulsive, post-punk power-skronk, at South by Southwest a few years ago, I never imagined the Brooklyn-Union, N.J.-Milwaukee, Wis., combo would be going into interstellar overdrive and taking a page from the starlog of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (Capitol, 1973). In creating Receiver‘s prog-orchestral sound, Parts and Labor referenced not only the exploratory courage of Wire’s Chairs Missing (Harvest, 1978), but Dark Side‘s use of samples. Its overarching inspiration: the general glut of digital information, which spurred the group to invited listeners to submit samples for Receivers via its MySpace page. The combo used all 650 or so, of them — altering, pitch-shifting, and morphing the contributions along the way — vocalist-bassist BJ Warshaw assures me by phone from Indiana.

"We always got friends to appear on recordings, so Dan [Friel, vocals and electronics] and I thought, why limit this?" he recalls. "Why not ask the world and see what comes of it?" It led to an "intense but fun" mixing job. The satellite noise, say, at the onset of Receivers was created by playing every sample simultaneously. Still, one’s enjoyment of the album doesn’t depend at all on one’s appreciation of the band’s technical and conceptual machinations, which climax with the hurtling "Solemn Show World." And the world can continue to experience the disc’s sampling project on the road: "We’ve got a toll-free phone number [1-888-317-5596] that people can call, and we’ve been improvising, working the calls into the live show, which has been really fun," Warshaw says. "We’ve got 20 sounds so far, and it’s only the second day of the tour."

PARTS AND LABOR With Gowns and Curse of the Birthmark. Sat/1, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $6. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com
 

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