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Music Features

Independence day

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Labels come and go. Not long ago, Moedoe and Frisco Street Show were among the most important outlets for Bay Area rap. Now both manufacture energy drinks instead: Hyphy Juice and Hunid Racks, respectively. Rap frequently favors money over artistry, but eliminating the art entirely is a bit much. To pose the Jacka’s musical question, "What happened to comin’ the dopest?"

The answer may be found at 21st and Mission streets, home of SMC Recordings.

"Rap’s a hustle because of where it’s from," 26-year-old co-owner and A&R head Will Bronson says. "I understand that, but in the end it’s still about making good music."

A shocking philosophy in today’s industry, but SMC makes it work. Not only has the company released some of the biggest recent Bay rap discs — including 2007’s Da Baydestrian by Mistah FAB and Da Bidnes by PSD, Keak, and Messy Marv — but it’s also building a national roster. Atlanta acquisitions like Pastor Troy and Killer Mike, whose current I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind 2 received critical acclaim, hitting No. 16 on Billboard’s rap chart, have raised the label’s nationwide profile.

"It’s going well," Killer Mike reports. "Major labels spend money on you, but never listen. SMC entertains every idea." This includes everything from letting Mike executive-produce his disc to approving his risky lead single, "Bang," attacking what he sees as the present lameness of Atlanta hip-hop.

"In rap it’s OK to be yourself," Bronson says. "No matter what level they’re on, the artists we sign are loved by their fans. Our records sell longer due to their quality."

SMC’s success wasn’t overnight: it evolved from late ’90s imprint UTR, whose founders included SMC co-owner Ralph Tashjian. The industry veteran long dreamed of starting a label here in his hometown. When his partners bailed, Tashjian brought in former UTR intern Bronson to continue as the Navarre-distributed Sumday Entertainment, whose successes included Keak’s Copium (2003), co-released with Moedoe, and Messy Marv’s Disobayish (2004). Switching distributors in 2005, when Bronson became a full partner, prompted another name change.

"Independent distribution is the future," Tashjian says. "Independent distributors are all successful while the majors are dying. As that began, Universal launched its own independent distribution, Fontana. We were one of their first labels. We had no obligation to Navarre, but for appearances we changed the name to SMC: Sumday Music Corp."

Such powerful distribution and an artist-friendly environment — artists own their masters, for example, which the label licenses — have helped SMC score bigger acts. It’s even invaded New York City, signing Capone-N-Noreaga for their third album. In a late-breaking development, SMC has now entered into a joint venture with the legendary Rakim, though details have yet to be announced.

Such moves, unprecedented for an independent Frisco hip-hop label, come at an interesting juncture in the Bay’s post-hyphy moment. There are cross-regional promotional opportunities; Mess, for example, is on Killer Mike’s disc, which includes an ad directing listeners to Mess’ upcoming project. Most important, as it goes national, SMC has reaffirmed its local role, partnering with Thizz Entertainment to launch two series, Town Thizzness for Oakland acts and Thizz City for SF, at the consumer-friendly price of $9.99. Town Thizzness has already released the two hands-down best local discs this year, Beeda Weeda’s Da Thizzness and J-Stalin’s Gas Nation. And the Bay isn’t confined to these series, as the upcoming San Quinn album, From a Boy to a Man, due Nov. 25, attests.

These series, Bronson says, "testify to our commitment to the Bay. We’re in SF so we need a marquee Bay Area artist. We need to develop the new Quinns, new Messy Marvs, in some way." It’s about time someone made that commitment.

You can’t kill them

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They’re on the fringe, and they don’t plan to leave it. Though mostly overlooked in their home country of New Zealand during the last two decades, the free-rockers in the Dead C will be the first to tell you that they’re not terribly bothered.

"We are not seen as plausible cultural ambassadors," stated guitarist Bruce Russell by e-mail from his home Down Under, citing the failure of the "laughable New Zealand media" to cover what’s artistically adventurous as one of the reasons his three-piece rarely can make it abroad to play shows. One would hope that Russell, Michael Morley, and Robbie Yeats would be more seriously considered for Kiwi government arts grants: indie rockers of yesteryear and the narcoleptic noisemongers of today repeatedly cite the Dead C as an influence on what they do. Just look who’s opening for them on their upcoming US gigs: Thurston Moore (who hosted them at All Tomorrow’s Parties’ "Nightmare Before Christmas" in England two years ago), Blues Control, Wolf Eyes, Six Organs of Admittance — all serious contenders on the experimental circuit, and all projects that garnered something, aesthetic or emotional, from the Dead C’s history of desperate clatter.

The Dead C got its start in Dunedin — members are located in Port Chalmers and Lyttelton today, about 225 miles apart — when the self-designated "AMM of Punk Rock" released its 1988 full-length debut, DR503, on Flying Nun, the infamous home to pop bands like the Clean, the Chills, Tall Dwarfs, and the Verlaines, for whom Yeats once drummed. A pop group the Dead C are not, but for an ensemble so ardently free-form and unmarketable, they’ve done nicely.

"The irony is, we’ve done very well in commercial terms by being ‘uncommercial,’" Russell explained. "I don’t know many of our contemporaries in New Zealand who are in better career positions than us. We make money. We can make any kind of record we like."

Much of their international clout was forged in their ’90s relationship with the Siltbreeze label, run and recently revived by Tom Lax of Philadelphia, with whom they released some of their most acclaimed discs, including 1992’s Harsh ’70s Reality, 1995’s White House, and 1997’s Tusk. This period saw them create what many consider to be their most vital material, flirting with darkly catchy riffs while always doggedly blazing space for noisy, alien buzz and scrape. Secret Earth is their brand new release, shortly following last year’s Future Artists (both Ba Da Bing) and recorded over two days, six months apart. Morley’s eerie exhale oversees a stupor-inducing slow grind that renders track titles a useless roadmap for proceedings: after a few minutes with the Dead C, one won’t notice such trifling details as the stops, starts, and riffs anymore. They are, after all, masters of mood. Morley and Russell’s guitars-at-odds and Yeats’ distantly mic’d drums consistently scare up an unsettling, deconstructed blues-groove that makes clear the precedent for Sebadoh’s stoned angst cassettes.

Regardless of influence, the upcoming US dates mark only their third outing to the States since getting together — damn! What do they do on the rare occasion they’re on a stage? "We approach live shows quietly, without undue fuss, so we can take ’em by surprise and wring their necks before they can fight back," Russell wrote, pointing out that there’s nothing static about a Dead C track — other than that staticky sound.

Any fan with the whoops and feedback screeches of "Driver U.F.O." committed to memory will hear something that sounds rather otherwise if that song shows up in the set. "We are ‘fully improvised,’ though every now and then we’ll attempt an item from our back catalog," Russell continued. "But we never, ever practice them."

This back catalog is becoming more available thanks to Ba Da Bing, their US label for the past few years, which will be reissuing DR503 and 1989’s Eusa Kills (Flying Nun) on vinyl. The band is, according to Russell, also hoping to reissue its pre-1990 work next year (working title: Complete ’80s Reality). Immediately available, however, is the tour-only 12-inch, which includes recent live recordings, and gives an added incentive to check ’em out this week.

Why not? It’s hard not to be charmed by their passive-aggressive, cavalier mode of operation. "We just do what we do and dare people to ignore it," Russell offered. "Which they duly do, and we could not care less."

THE DEAD C

With Six Organs of Admittance

Thurs/16, 8 p.m., $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

Stereolab

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PREVIEW Eighteen years, nine studio albums, and dozens of singles and EPs along, Stereolab just might have been misnamed. Are the Europa-spanning pop-history-conscious groove alchemists better dubbed Stereogame? After all, founder-guitarist-keyboardist-songwriter Tim Gane describes the band’s music-making process as more akin to intelligent child’s play than anything strictly scientific. "I tend to look at it like a puzzle," he said by the phone during a tour stop in Detroit. "I’m the opposite of a classic songwriter — someone who contrives to write songs to convey something. To me, it’s the opposite thing. I have nothing to say, but I want to find out …"

Stereolab’s latest full-length, Chemical Chords (4AD), teems with archetypal melodicism along with a certain age-old genre restriction: more often than not, the songs unfold their brilliant petals, blossom seductively, then recede around the three-minute mark. Longer tracks like "Nous Vous Demandons Pardon" play friskily bright snare, plonky vibes, and bell-like keys off a familiar Motown bounce. The music of Hitsville USA as well as the Brill Building provided a kind of rulebook for Stereolab’s fun and games this time around. To add an element of uncertainty, he worked out the chords to the songs on guitar, then applied them randomly over four rhythms the band had already recorded with drum loops. As a result, he said, "you seem to listen to it for the first time."

That strategy of recontextualizing somewhat worn rock ‘n’ roll touchstones evokes filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964) soundtrack, which Gane references. And what is the wildest use for Stereolab’s pop? "It was," Gane said, "used for a toilet advert in Italy."

STEREOLAB With Richards Swift. Tue/21, 8 p.m., $27.50. Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com>.

Heavy Heavy Low Low

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PREVIEW Things could have been so easy for the Bay Area’s best young group. After building a buzz with their uncompromising, spastic EP, Courtside Seats (self-released, 2005), San Jose’s Heavy Heavy Low Low signed to Ferret Music, the metalcore equivalent to mid-1990s Death Row Records. Ferret brought new exposure and high expectations, which the lads lived up to on their stunning 2006 debut, Everything’s Watched, Everyone’s Watching. EWEW was the sound of a band breaking out of the metalcore scene they grew up in by building a battering ram of noisy fuzz. Though they shunned many of the genre’s hackneyed clichés (screamed verse/sung chorus, asymmetrical haircuts that double as eye patches), they embraced their roots with punishing breakdowns, abrasive guitar gashes, and vocalist Robert Smith’s brutal, distinctive ramblings.

Though EWEW was a critical and commercial success, the guys had no intention of rehashing it when they went into Oakland’s Panda Studios to record what would become their new LP, Turtle Nipple and the Toxic Shock (Ferret/New Weatherman). According to Smith, "We didn’t really have any goals or anything like that. We just wanted to make a weird album that wasn’t as affiliated with, I guess, metal or how Heavy used to be." While most hardcore/metal bands shun their heavy roots for crossover appeal under the guise of experimentation, Turtle Nipple is actually less accessible than their previous recordings. While this has turned off the average lazy scenester, the astute fan will rejoice in the disc’s depth and variation: this time jazz, surf rock, and psychedelia are juxtaposed with the brutal breakdowns and blast beats.

HEAVY HEAVY LOW LOW With Fear Before. Fri/17, 7 p.m., $12. 418 Project, 418 Front, Santa Cruz. (831) 466-9770, www.the418.org

Songs in silver

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Meara O’Reilly has brought a book to our meeting at a café near her Mission District apartment. The author is Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, a visionary musician-inventor who worked toward synthesizing light and sound in the 1920s. It’s a special kind of musician who feels compelled to devise her own instrument, and O’Reilly takes obvious pleasure in having discovered a predecessor.

Her own tonal invention, which provides the cornerstone for her music as Avocet, is an elegant metal hanger on which a half-dozen silver forks dangle in front of contact microphones, suspended by threads of horsehair. "Michael Hurley calls it the belladonna," she notes with a laugh. O’Reilly’s instrument still doesn’t have a fixed name, although there is something of an origin story: "I had these amazing pieces of silver my godmother had given me. I would drop them, and they would ring out for 10 seconds or so. It was so beautiful."

The Sebastopol native devised her resonating instrument while living on a dairy farm in Vermont. "I played a show with it when it was really in prototype form, and I was actually using my own hair," she recounts. "My hair wasn’t thick enough, so it kept breaking. It actually sounds really good, though, better than the horse hair." Avocet’s hear-a-pin-drop live sets make for a bracing contrast with O’Reilly’s previous gig with Feathers, a New England psych-folk collective that released a single album before parting company. The instrument-swapping group afforded her the social comfort of a band, but it was only one part of a private musical development encompassing everything from noise rock to gamelan.

O’Reilly periodically switches to guitar in her sets, though her unconventional fascination with sound still shines through on the more familiar instrument. She sings songs from Greece and Mongolia and professes a deep interest in the distinct tonal possibilities of different tongues. The drifting sustain of her performances is generally blue, with notes and melodies in free-flight, perilously close to oblivion. In spite of the obvious volume differential, Avocet might fairly be compared with any number of sculptural drone bands. She is, after all, a student of metal. "I’ve been trying to learn about different eras of silver because there are different putf8gs and compositions of the metal," O’Reilly says. "So other than just looking at the shape and figuring out the physics of what note [a fork] would be, there’s also the composition of it." Then she finishes the thought, "I’d like to know more." 2

AVOCET

With Brightblack Morning Light and Iasos

Tues/14 and Oct. 15, 9:30 p.m., $15

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

Also with Brightblack Morning Light

Oct. 16, 9:30 p.m., $10

Starry Plough

3101 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 841-2082

www.starryploughpub.com

All is well in the land of Pigeon Funk

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"This is the most we could come up with our small minds over a long period of time," says Joshua Kit Clayton, who often stops the phone conversation to ask what this author is wearing and whether he’s having a good day. Pigeon Funk’s second album, The Largest Bird in the History of the Planet … Ever! (Musique Risquée), took four years to make. For much of that time, Clayton was largely absent from the city’s techno scene after having once been one of its dominant figures. He finally reappeared this year with two 12-inches: "Grey Amber" and "I Left My Heart My Heart in San Francisco," the latter a double-A single with Sutekh.

"I don’t go to a lot of dance parties anymore, although I saw Seth [Horvitz, né Sutekh] at a rave the other night," Clayton muses. "I couldn’t even tell what kind of drugs people were on. But other than that, I haven’t been out to a dance music night in a very long time…. I have no idea what other people are doing today. I am sheltered."

"I almost feel like a strange outsider at this point," adds Sutekh, who says the aforementioned so-called rave gig was a rare occurrence. Musically, though, he’s stayed active, most recently dropping the "Influenza B" single earlier this spring.

When Pigeon Funk issued its self-titled EP in 2001, the group fit right in with the glitch/IDM/experimental wave cresting throughout the techno world. Years later it’s still about glitch, except house and hip-hop producers like Glitch Mob and Daedelus hijacked it. Meanwhile, the techno scene has moved on to minimal and — surprisingly — trance.

With few current trends to categorize it with, The Largest Bird sounds happily out of step. Abandoning the computer programming that has been a hallmark of their careers, Sutekh and Clayton turned to analog keyboard equipment, random vocally-generated noises, and disparate acoustic equipment. The eclectic beats range from wacky exotica lounge ("Alma Hueco" with vocalist Anna Machado) to funky bangers ("Bacchanal").

Touting The Largest Bird’s therapeutic qualities, Clayton says, "I think it would be really dope if people used this inside their yoga classes, their exercise classes, meditation classes, workforce training classes, any type of self-growth, whether it be erotic, financial, religious, or fitness. I think this album is something that would lift them up."

New lost blues

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I began noticing the signs soon after moving to the Bay Area: Arthur Magazine, revivals of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s movies, and print dresses and feathers all pointed to a vogue for the psychedelic aesthetic extending beyond the tie-dyed Haight. Psychedelic rock is the 800-pound gorilla of San Francisco music, though subsequent punk scenes clustering around Mabuhay Gardens and 924 Gilman defined themselves in direct opposition to its flower-power. I was surprised, even a little put off, by what seemed like a fundamentally conservative revival.

That was before I saw Comets on Fire. The group reclaimed the mad, exploratory spirit of ’60s psychedelia precisely by not being overly dogmatic in their interpretation of the original sound. Just as vintage outfits like Quicksilver Messenger Service and Blue Cheer — to name two local bands often championed by the current crop — deconstructed bluegrass and R&B, so too do the artists following in Comets on Fire’s wake reconstitute old school psychedelia into freshly disorienting supernovas. In the case of Comets, the game-changer lay with showing how you could collapse the distance between the Grateful Dead and the Stooges. The set I saw at the Hemlock Tavern was as much a piece of music criticism as it was an explosive performance. They made psych-rock seem a realm of possibility instead of the tattered rump of a dancing bear.

Five of 10 ensembles playing the first Frisco Freakout are based in the Bay Area, with all but Mythical Beast hailing from within the Golden State’s borders. Each band dials in subtly different equations of texture and influences, though Sleepy Sun’s MySpace message probably speaks for all involved parties: "Let’s get weird." Inspired by the legendary bills at the Fillmore and Matrix in the ’60s, Relix contributing editor Richard Simon and Wooden Shjips shredder Ripley Johnson collaborated on organizing the all-day showcase.

Music journalists use the word psychedelic to describe everything from Beach House’s gauzy organ trip to My Bloody Valentine’s overripe swan-dives — not to mention the adjacent freak-folk scene — so it’s probably worth specifying that most of the Frisco Freakout groups are close to the original psych-rock article, as defined by the hard, face-melting electricity of the early Dead and their cohorts. Whether listening to the endless spirals of Earthless, the prog-laced kick of Crystal Antlers, or the smooth drip of Sleepy Sun, one is repeatedly tempted to describe the sounds in terms of metallurgy.

"These bands are going to play hard and fuck with your head," Simon bluntly jokes by phone in SF. "I’ve been interested in trying to shunt some of these bands into Relix, to reconnect branches in this family tree that originates here."

Correctives to the jam-band theory of psychedelic rock are always welcome, though one perhaps worries about flying the freak flag too high. "You’re reluctant to identify a scene because once something is a scene it gets co-opted and commercialized," Simon confesses, but I’m in full agreement that it’s better to take a proactive, artists-first approach rather than waiting to be uncomfortably grouped as Pitchfork’s flavor-of-the-week.

Given the friendly demeanor of the event — it’s being billed as a "psychedelic dance party" and, more important, it benefits visual art nonprofit Creativity Explored — the Frisco Freakout goes a long way toward clearing up the discomfiting idea that a lot of neo-psychedelia is strictly for collectors. This isn’t to question the passion of any of the musicians involved, but simply to wonder aloud when the willfully obscurant approach to band names and releases translates to outright fetishism. In a year in which a black man is running for president, a limited-edition, colored vinyl doesn’t pass as a freakout.

Then again, these performers are compelling because of their attention to aesthetic detail and creative sense of rock historiography. It’s unavoidable that musicians weaned on punk would approach psych-rock differently from those only a decade or two on the Dead’s coattails, but one is struck again and again by their experimental impulse. Certain key reference points are a given: besides the aforementioned ’60s groups, there are usually traces of Neil Young, Spaceman 3, and the Velvet Underground. But so too do most of the groups venture further afield to add dabs of Terry Riley, Can, Morton Feldman, or Skip Spence to their spectroscopic sounds. Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound’s improbable mix of raga, Canned Heat, sci-fi sounds, and Black Flag is batty enough to warrant a Greil Marcus study.

Psychedelic rock exists, like almost any music genre in the Internet age, beyond regional boundaries, but it still makes a special fit with California’s earth-tugging landscape. At the same time that the Western mythos of the frontier crumbled in Vietnam’s shadow, the original Frisco freakouts pushed past the real wilderness for a psychic one. These newer bands thrust us even more precipitously into this "lost" mental space, seeking to refurnish psych-rock with its dangerous luster. 2

FRISCO FREAKOUT

Sat/11, 2 p.m., $15

Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

www.friscofreakout.com

Hawnay Troof

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PREVIEW When I think of Hawnay Troof after listening to approximately one-half of his first full-length, Islands of Ayle (Southern/Retard Disco), the cover of the Geto Boys’ We Can’t Be Stopped (Rap-A-Lot, 1991) comes to mind. I might have found out about the image — Bushwick Bill just forced his girlfriend to shoot him, and he’s in a gurney that the other dudes in the group are pushing down a hospital corridor — from Vice magazine. Does that mean it’s not a legit memory? I struggle with this sometimes, but listening to Islands of Ayle renders it moot. It’s bursting with a sort of straight-ahead energy that only has room for the present moment.

The man behind Hawnay Troof is Oaklander Vice Cooler. He was in this band called XBXRX, which was notorious for a lot of reasons, including originally being from Mobile, Ala., and being initially mostly high-school age. If you’ve followed the group’s career, you’re probably not surprised that Hawnay Troof makes the kind of confessional, but not self-pitying, music he does. The backdrop to Cooler’s stream-of-feeling flows is a suitably hyperactive strain of Casio-crunk, punctuated with brief, looping interludes that sound something like Nurse with Wound producing for Peaches.

The positivity that makes me happy when I hear Hawnay Troof seems to acknowledge shitty stuff — maybe not shot-in-the-eye bad, but pretty demolishing personally — yet manifests an even stronger will to improve, a reaching out. This seems to proceed directly from Cooler’s experiences: on the southwest leg of his current tour, for example, Cooler and his roadie were pulled over in their Enterprise rental car by Arizona police en route to a show. The vehicle was searched without a warrant, and when the cop discovered the roadie’s license was suspended, he impounded the car, leaving Cooler to finish his dates by U-Haul. Apparently there’s no stopping the performer, though as one of the harder-working men in show business, I’m sure Cooler would appreciate a few more open ears at this show, his last stateside before he heads to the United Kingdom.

HAWNAY TROOF With High Places and Ponytail. Wed/8, 9 p.m., $10. Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. (415) 621-4455, www.bottomofthehill.com

Nachtmystium

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PREVIEW Nachtmystium, Chicago’s premier experimental black metallers, are on their fourth album with Assassins: Black Meddle, Part 1 (Century Media). Beyond the surface punning and musical nods to Pink Floyd — "One of These Nights" is the black mirror reflection of "One of These Days" from Meddle (Capitol, 1971) — the Chicago foursome seem to be out to offend the sensibilities of black metal traditionalists with spacious production, electronic scribbles, bluesy solos, and a deeply epic scope. It might be an attempt to escape the pall that their indirect association with NSBM — that’s "national Socialist black metal" or "Nazi metal" to you — temporarily cast on their rising cachet with hipsters (Black Meddle got a Best New Music nod from Pitchfork at the time of its release).

Blake Judd, Jeff Wilson, John Necromancer, and Zack Simmons have gone out of their way to dissociate themselves with politically motivated music, but it’s still tricky territory. In the search for more extreme, more dubiously authentic sounds, where can one find the line in the sand? It’s like seeing a Burzum patch on the Gossip guitarist’s hoodie: that’s not simple irony, accepting something to express a deeper rejection, right? In the case of a band like Nachtmystium, there’s the question of whether its aesthetic is inherently bound up with black metal’s anti-Semitic history, or whether the path it’s pursuing — cutting across classic rock and even classical tropes — messes with the smooth functioning of this equivalence mechanism.

Nachtmystium shares a bill with Wolves in the Throne Room — a band of cooperative-farm-dwelling radical ecologists whose relationship to black metal’s aesthetic/political orientations is more obviously strained, but is equally provocative. Don’t worry — there’s still time to bury your going-out clothes in the earth and arrive at the show smelling like decay.

NACHTMYSTIUM With Wolves in the Throne Room, Saros, and Embers. Sun/12, 8 p.m., $12. Oakland Metro Operahouse, 630 Third St., Oakl. www.oaklandmetro.org

High Places

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New York — you never cease to surprise me. For all these years, I’ve been completely convinced that Brooklyn was a continuous swath of pavement, brownstones, and ironic T-shirts. Apparently there’s an altogether different, little-known ecosystem hiding in Hipster’s Paradise. Tucked in the darkest pocket of the borough sits a teeming rainforest, a sea of green in which rainbow-bedazzled birds shake their hot pink plumage while chattering monkeys swing through the lush canopy.

Or so Brooklyn electro-primitives High Places would have us believe. The duo — vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Mary Pearson and percussionist Rob Barber — embrace the notion of geography as a driving force in music, but it’s not their New York surroundings that inspire. Rather, they get their spark from environments far removed from the urban landscape — namely, jungles, of both the terrestrial and the mental variety. As the name would suggest, the pair concern themselves with elevated states — not only do they wish to take us climbing to the top of the tallest trees, but the journey also involves clearing one’s head with a luxuriant tangle of interwoven rhythms.

Vocals are drenched in reverb, guitars buzz as reconfigured insectoid samples, and keyboard melodies whir in unexpected patterns — yet it all feels wondrously organic. High Places have their antecedents — look to Brian Eno’s ambient "fourth world" explorations and the rainforest-dub of The Slits’ Return of the Giant Slits (CBS/Sony International, 1981) for touchstones — but ultimately, they arrive sounding like emissaries from a world yet to be surveyed.

High Places’ just-released self-titled Thrill Jockey debut — not counting the label’s summer-issued singles compilation 03/07–09/07 — feels tailor-made for swooping among the tippy-tops of the Amazon jungle, having meshed Pearson’s carefree, birdlike melodies with curious rhythmic tics, tribal polyrhythms, and the cicada-buzz of treated electronics. Many of the disc’s primeval shuffles, bumps, and thumps come from a full shelf of wood blocks, mixing bowls, and rattles. "The Tree with the Lights in It," for example, fashions an alluring rhythmic undercurrent from what sounds like sandpaper scratches and water sloshing in a bowl.

Elsewhere, the ricocheting electro pings and the clip-clop twitch of "A Field Guide" offers a sun-soaked tropical counterpart to Burial’s haunted dubstep, while "The Storm" tosses disembodied banjo into a slithery gamelan groove punctuated by echo-steeped synth chirps. Far away from her Brooklyn home, Pearson’s winsome flutter beckons from the tallest trees, where she makes the sweetest of observations: "Now my clothes are stained with pitch … it was worth it." Who could say no to such great heights?

HIGH PLACES

Oct. 8, 9 p.m.

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

Free for all — and freewheelin’

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Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has never been about full-tilt traditionalism and musical purity, though real-deal legends like Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs, plus true believers such as the Del McCoury Band and the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, have always graced its stages. Here are a few new, yet somehow familiar, and irreverent faces to the Golden Gate Park bash. (Kimberly Chun)

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY


Don’t get Will Oldham started on these whippersnapper actors today. When the subject of promising thespians came up during our recent interview, I suggested Shia LaBeouf. "I heard going into [Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull] that he was good, but it was awful and he was awful," said the Matewan child star, who saw it in Corte Madera during his recent Headlands Center for the Arts residency. "It was awful in the same way the first new Star Wars was awful — it seemed like it was designed to create the video games that were accompanying it."

Sun/5, 1 p.m., Rooster Stage

LOS CENZONTLES WITH SANTIAGO JIMENEZ


The Chicano band’s moniker may translate as the Mockingbirds, but there’s no mocking these activists’ grasp of Mexican roots sounds, including Tejano and Son Jarocho. Traditional folk instruments like the uke-like jarana will mingle with Jimenez’s Tex-Mex squeezebox stylings.

Sat/4, 11 a.m., Arrow Stage

HEAVY TRASH


Tube amps burst, echo machines eke out, and rockabilly kittens swoon when groovy-hate-fuck cats Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray bend those badass notes.

Sun/5, 5:45 p.m., Star Stage

THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS


Three prizes at last year’s International Bluegrass Music Association Awards went to the combo.

Sun/5, 2:10 p.m., Arrow Stage

IRON AND WINE


A long-tressed Sam Beam and his Wine-ers broke onto Letterman with The Shepherd’s Dog (Sub Pop, 2007). So what’s next?

Sun/5, 3:25 p.m., Rooster Stage.

MARK OLSON AND GARY LOURIS


Two forces in the criminally unrecognized Jayhawks reunite — long after vocalist Mark Olson moved to the Joshua Tree area to be with now-ex Victoria Williams. Coming on the heels of Louris’ Vagabonds (Rykodisc) is their new Chris Robinson–produced collabo, Ready for the Flood (Hacktone).

Sat/4, 1:30 p.m., Rooster Stage

ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS


The warmth and intimacy of this simpatico musical coupling was enough to ward off the chill at this summer’s foggy show at the Greek Theatre as the lion-maned duo tamed the Zep-happy mob with hushed versions of "Black Dog" and "The Battle of Evermore."

Fri/3, 5:15 p.m., Banjo Stage

WACO BROTHERS


OK, these yobs are far from unknown: Jon Langford and Steve Goulding can be sighted among the many Mekons, and Alan Doughty survived Jesus Jones. Good-timers like "Drinkin’ Cheatin’ Death" show why this band drives its hometown Chicago crowds nutty.

Sat/4, 12:05 p.m., Star Stage

PEGI YOUNG


Neil Young spotters will hope he’ll sit in, but give the woman who masterminded the Bridge Benefit her due. Pegi’s self-titled debut (Warner Bros., 2007) found her stirring from the support role, wrapping sugar-dusted, languorous tones around slow-dances à la "When the Wildlife Betrays Me."

Sun/5, 4:30 p.m., Arrow Stage

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8 runs from Fri/3-Sun/5, in Speedway Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF. Free. www.strictlybluegrass.com.

Please, Hammer, don’t hurt my bluegrass

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It’s a combination that raised more than a few eyebrows: MC Hammer performing at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8. We have it in our hearts to get country, but is this show for real? As it turns out, the connection is a fairly straightforward one. "I thought it was a very good idea since I’ve always been a very positive artist and always embraced the kids," Hammer, born Stanley Burrell, explained when I spoke to him by phone recently.

Hammer became involved with Hardly Strictly when a mutual acquaintance introduced him to festival benefactor Warren Hellman. He performs Oct. 3 during an educational program for children that is part of Daniel Pearl World Music Days. Founded in 2002 by the Daniel Pearl Foundation, Hammer is enthusiastic about his involvement in celebrating the memory of Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter killed in 2002 in Pakistan. "It is an honor to participate in anything that uplifts [Pearl’s] sacrifice and his commitment," he said. Add Hammer’s interest in community programs for children — he has sponsored Little League teams for more than a decade — and his appearance at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass becomes too legit for him to quit.

Just in case you think this is the extent of Hammer’s forays into the entertainment industry, think again. While the rest of us were building pages on Geocities.com, the artist formerly seen with resplendently large trousers was amassing an arsenal of tech knowledge. "Very quietly I got involved with tech all the way back in 1994," he said. "I was trying to figure out how to get my videos on the Internet." He visited firms like Silicon Graphics and Apple Computer, keeping an eye on QuickTime and similar applications, and now feels that video is finally ready to take center stage, describing it as "the main component of Web 2.0."

Thus the man who tried to teach Arsenio Hall to do the Chinese Typewriter is no longer simply a hip-hop artist: he has fashioned himself into an entrepreneur in high demand. Hammer has delivered a keynote speech at an Intel CEO summit, appeared on one expert panel at the TechCrunch20 Conference and yet another at the AlwaysOn and STVP conference at Stanford University — this one in the company of Chamillionaire and Mistah FAB. His connection to TechCrunch is notable, since its founder, Michael Arrington, has invested in Hammer’s company, DanceJam, an online community based around all types of dance. Users can upload videos of themselves to participate in battles, learn new dances using tutorials, or browse performances uploaded by users. "The ideas that I’ve had the chance to crystallize, and come up with content for and build communities around, those are the things that people are looking to do today," Hammer opined.

Considering Hammer’s deep immersion in the possibilities of contemporary pop culture and modern music, you might think the hip-hop artist’s appearance at a bluegrass festival would faze him. He laughed. "That’s why it’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass," he said. "I’ve got a song called ‘Help the Children.’ This is not new territory for me."

MC Hammer performs Fri/3, 11:30 a.m., for local students and the public on the Star Stage.

Magical madness

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He’s bald, his house beats bounce like no others, and he’s blue — at least in the cartoons. British underground producer Mike Monday is taking aim at something more than niche success with his recent signing to San Francisco label Om, but his new album, Songs Without Words, is hardly mainstream house fare. From titles that reference Spongebob Squarepants to track styles that veer from dubstep to 2-step to banging house and back again, Monday keeps listeners off-balance in the best way.

Monday — born Michael Mukhopadhyay — did time at Oxford studying music before heading into the nightlife wilds, as well as playing sax in 1990s live electronic outfit Beat Foundation (his partner Andy Cato went on to form Groove Armada). But Monday is best known for his work on 12-inch singles and songs like "Bhaloboshi," which M.A.N.D.Y. included on its Fabric mix, and "I Dream of Ducks," from his first album, Smorgasboard, released two years ago on the producer’s Playtime imprint. His thick slabs of synths, sparkling production, and springy beats have found homes in both minimal and electro camps with DJs like Claude Von Stroke and Tiefschwarz championing his tunes.

Songs Without Words, however, is not about tools for Technics, even if Monday admits his DJ background influenced not only the song order but the songs themselves. Over the phone from his London home studio — built in a garage in his garden — Monday confides that he tweaked tracks so they worked together, even changing the key to achieve the proper fit. "You can call it an album and have all different sorts of music," he says. "What matters is the pacing and the flow and how it listens from beginning to end. I almost spent as much time wrestling with the [song] order as I did with the music itself."

Despite initial doubts about signing his album to a more commercial label — and a Yankee one at that — Monday overcame his hesitations due to his affection for the people behind Om and his respect for their attempts to release electronic music in more than one genre, an openness that seemed to mirror Songs Without Words‘ breadth. And having more resources behind him has allowed for amusing excursions — such as animated cartoons showcasing flying key-tars, pink cats, and a blue Mike Monday. Produced by Drunk Park, the cartoons are as weird and wacky as Monday’s music. "I really like the idea of not using dour, cool artwork for electronic music," he explains. "Because to be honest, that’s not the type of person I am." (Peter Nicholson)

MIKE MONDAY

Sat/4, 10 p.m., $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

Spread it

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› superego@sfbg.com

Who’s ready to get tingly with 85,000 freakazoids of affection? Multi-tentacled outdoor rave-a-thon LoveFest quickly approaches, a candy-colored octopus of sonic yummers. Oh, yes, there will be floats — as the parade twirls up Market Street and lands in the throbbing bass vortex of Civic Center Plaza. And in this, its fourth year, the LoveFest takes on a crucial mission: "We do not dance in the streets to escape the reality of our times. We dance to face them as a community, pointing the direction to a better way, set to beats and the full color of our expression," organizers say.

Can’t beat that with a bat. True to its kaleidoscopic intent, there’ll be scads of pre- and after-parties accompanying the 300 DJ–driven event. Below are a few keepers — you can find a ton more at the LoveFest Web site.

QOÖL LOVEFEST KICKOFF The longest-running weekly dance joint in San Francisco, Qoöl, starts the whole shebang with a strong evening dose of the classic San Francisco techno sound — deep but not too deep, clean but humorous, just right for "doing your thing." With DJs Alain Octavo, Syd Gris, Messiah, and Spesh. Wed/1, 5 p.m., $5. 111 Minna, SF. (415) 974-1719, www.qoolsf.com

PENDANA One of the "social action" parts of LoveFest — and a damn good-looking party to boot — benefiting NextAid.org, which helps African kids in need. With DJs Jeno, Lance DeSardi, Alland Byallo, the Staple Crew, and more. Thurs/2, 9:30 p.m., $10 with RSVP to events@nextaid.org. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. (415) 348-0900, www.supperclub.com

DIRTYBIRD LOVEFEST PRE-PARTY Let your freak feathers fly early with SF’s current reigning dance label kings, minimal-goofy Dirty Bird Records, including Claude Von Stroke, Justin Martin, Worthy, and the aptly named Hookerz and Blow. Fri/3, 10 p.m., $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com

GET WEIRD The title says it all for this annual LoveFest event, as DJs Lee Burridge, Tim McCormack, and Mike Khoury get wiggy on the tables for a plethora of costumed weirdos — proud and loud, baby. Fri/3, 10 p.m., $20 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. (415) 626-7001, www.getweirder.com, www.groovetickets.com

INFUSE — LOVE RULES! Underground burner beats behemoth Opel presents an uplifting after-LoveFest must for bouncy tech-funk and breakbeat heads, plus folks who like their bass floor-shattering. Prediction: fire twirlers and stilts, or at least what’s left of them at the end of the day. The UK’s elusive Elite Force make a special appearance. Sat/4, 10 p.m., $15 advance. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com, www.groovetickets.com

THE MORNING AFTER THE LOVE Hangover, wha? No time for that — chill out on your fancy feet at the EndUp for a whole day of beats and no-end-in-sight freaks, with expansivist techno DJs Nikola Baytalo (one of our best right now), Three, Nikita, and about 50 others. Rave on! Sun/5, 6 a.m., $20 advance, EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. (415) 896-1095, www.theendup.com, www.groovetickets.com

Fourth Annual LoveFest begins Sat/4, noon, at Civic Center Plaza, SF. Donation requested. www.sflovefest.org

Electric gospel

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PREVIEW As I find myself in another part of the world, I ask myself, "How did I get here?" Then I realize everything’s same as it ever was, and that I need to get this piece in at some sort of reasonable hour.

But seriously, Talking Heads’ "Once in a Lifetime" was synthesizer rock glory. On NPR’s "All Things Considered," the band recalled becoming "human samplers" while making "Once in a Lifetime," back when hip-hop was in its genesis and sampling wasn’t even a method. Rather than write their songs first and play later, singer-songwriter David Byrne, composer-producer Brian Eno, and the band would improvise, manually repeat the layers they liked, then stack those layers on top of each other until they got the finished result.

Byrne and Eno would repeat this approach on their own collaboration in 1981, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Nonesuch). Percussion-heavy and Afrobeat-oriented, Ghosts provided a vivid look into combinations of international rhythms and sampled vocals, inspiring producers like Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy and Moby.

The pair reconnected during the 25th anniversary rerelease of Ghosts, and surmised that the world could handle another collaborative effort; Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Todo Mundo, 2008) is the result.

Even "as the days go by," Byrne and Eno demonstrate that their musical bond resonates, even if they are sending their snippets and works-in-progress via e-mail. For the most part, Eno opts for straightforward rock riffs with some traditional folk chord structures and a trademark smattering of electronic, atmospheric effects. Byrne follows Eno through these uplifting melodies and, in typical fashion, lends vocal harmony, depth, and variation, raising the cadence, complementing and augmenting Eno’s production. If this is "electronic gospel," as both proclaim, here’s to preaching to the choir.

DAVID BYRNE Mon/6, 8 p.m., $59.50–$89.50. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. (415) 621-6600, www.davidbyrne.com

David Banner

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PREVIEW There has never been a more fitting musical stage name than the one chosen by Lavell Crump. Crump’s pseudonym of choice, David Banner, perfectly sums up his style and his struggle: he, like the protagonist of The Incredible Hulk, is a man of stark contrasts.

The MC and musician is unafraid to voice his progressive social beliefs, and is a dedicated humanitarian who raised more than $500,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief in Louisiana and his home state of Mississippi. He weaves engrossing tales about the struggle and strife that surrounded him growing up in a destitute section of a racially divided Jackson. All his albums contain touching tales of Americans fighting to survive in one of the most maligned and ignored areas in the country. On his latest, The Greatest Story Ever Told (Universal), Banner respectfully acknowledges his state’s blessings and problems on the swirling salute to the past, "Cadillac on 22’s Part II": "Mississippi is the place where your boy came from / But so many people are still afraid to come / But, I’m gon’ tell the truth / It’s just real good food / And real strong people / Who still refuse to move."

Of course, like the fictional scientist Dr. David Banner, the performer has an alter ego. Though all Banner’s recordings include sobering, powerful tracks, they all also contain formulaic "booty jams" like his biggest hit — and possibly worst song — 2005’s "Play." They tend to come off as scurrilous and awkward instead of titilutf8g. Myopic critics often focus on these missteps, and Banner gets the unfair reputation of being another derivative, chauvinistic rapper. Story is a perfect example of the duality that both gives Banner life and holds him back. The disc’s versatility keeps it interesting, as he coolly shifts from pensive, engrossing numbers ("Hold On") to real heaters that showcase the rapper’s signature flow ("So Long"). But he falls into the same pitfalls of his earlier albums with the sleazy "A Girl." Expect all sides of Banner to be in full force when he performs live, backed by the Rhythm Roots All-Stars.

DAVID BANNER With Talib Kweli and Little Brother. Thurs/2, 7 p.m., $32. The Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center, 1300 Van Ness, SF. (415) 673-5716, www.goldenvoice.com

They made me realise

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› johnny@sfbg.com

This is an "I remember" groupie story about My Bloody Valentine. But I’ll try to tap into Joe Brainard’s conciseness and make certain my nostalgia has a point.

Two decades ago, when Om was a London three-piece named Loop, and Dave Segal, Michael Segal, and I were writing, typing, photocopying, and stapling a music zine called You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, the Segals and I drove from Detroit to Toronto to join an audience of 20 or 30 Canadians at MBV’s first-ever North American show. We wanted to hear the instrumental bridge of "You Made Me Realise" — the precise recorded moment when MBV rose above C86, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., thanks to a guitar sound that levitated, compressed, and then shattered.

That night, that portion of that song was something different: a literally dizzying five-minute hurricane of noise.

When MBV played Detroit a week later, we hung out with Kevin Shields, Bilinda J. Butcher, Deb Googe, and Colm Ó Cíosóig upstairs by a piano at Saint Andrew’s Hall and interviewed them about the Lazy days of 1987’s Ecstasy and Strawberry Wine and the studio sleep deprivation that led to the breakthrough of You Made Me Realise (Creation, 1988) and Isn’t Anything (Warner Bros./Sire, 1988). Loveless (Creation, 1991) was still just an idea. Back then, Simon Reynolds, whom I interviewed for the same zine, was the group’s vanguard critical champion. In Melody Maker, he’d cite the French feminist theory of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva, replacing academic jargon with playful alliteration when discussing the soft-focus gender-blur of MBV’s music and the way it even reshaped the phallic sound of the guitar. In imitation of Reynolds and in thrall to MBV, I’d write about the "noisebliss nosebleeds" they could generate, and compare their sound (on Isn’t Anything‘s "All I Need") to a giant heartbeat during a nuclear blast.

Some scoundrel has nicked my copy of Reynolds’s 1990 book Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, but I don’t need him, Cixous, Irigaray, or Kristeva to point out why MBV were ahead of their time in 1988 and perhaps still are. Strip away their awesome sound and you’ll discover that MBV matter-of-factly brought gender equity to rock. This achievement seemed beside the point because the sound that bloomed from their masculine-feminine dynamic was so absolutely, identity-meltingly innovative. Sonic Youth and the Pixies included women playing bass, but MBV had guitarist-vocalist Butcher quietly facing down a life-threateningly abusive relationship in Isn’t Anything‘s mammothly funereal "No More Sorry," and the strapping Googe bringing a more muscular, dyke-in-a-white-T-shirt brand of bass to your face from start to finish of every song. No other band had MBV’s pleasure principle.

The last times I saw MBV were in 1991 and 1992. I went to a concert in wintry Chicago where Babes in Toyland opened, a billing that attested to the onset of riot grrrl and the fact that the United States was about to reach Nirvana — two "revolutions" that in some ways were regressions from MBV. Then I moved by Greyhound from Detroit to San Francisco, where I saw them twice — the more memorable concert taking place at the Kennel Club, now the Independent. There, the instrumental passage of "You Made Me Realise" expanded to hallucinatory dimensions, stretching for five, then 10, then 15, then 20-plus minutes. The shuddering layers of distortion piled one on top of another. A guy next to me went berserk in the maelstrom, screaming himself hoarse until his frayed vocal cords were just another part of the apocalyptic, self-annihiutf8g sound. It was an SF acid freak-out, hold the tab, no drugs necessary (not that I hadn’t done more than my share). The spirit of Comets on Fire probably emerged from that conflagration.

Now My Bloody Valentine has been revived. In fact, the slasher movie from which the group took its name has even been remade, in 3-D, for a February 2009 release. All tomorrow’s parties are composed of yesterday’s influences. I don’t even know if I’m going to see MBV this week. If I don’t, I suspect I’ll still hear their noise, or feel it, from across town. If I can touch that instrumental passage of "You Made Me Realise," I’ll grab on to a point within it. That point will be my nostalgia. It’ll levitate, compress, and then shatter.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Tues/30, 8 p.m., $47.50

Concourse

620 Seventh St., SF

www.livenation.com

Formed, but not reformed?

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The long-awaited reunion of My Bloody Valentine may herald another exercise in nostalgia-fueled repetition. The past few years have seen countless underground rock legends re-form for fun and profit. This usually involves an album that approximates the band’s trademarks with none of its original freshness (check Mission of Burma’s overrated Matador albums), followed by a cash-raking international tour (or, in the case of Pixies, several of them). Thankfully, the re-emergence of Portishead and the Breeders upends this hoary tradition. Both their new efforts — particularly Portishead’s Third (Mercury) — radically challenge their respective legacies with brackish, difficult interpretations. It’s difficult to hear Portishead’s metallic "Machine Gun" and think of their sweetly melancholic classic "Sour Times."

So which My Bloody Valentine will reappear this fall when Kevin Shields and company tour the states for the first time since 1992? The feedback scientists who briefly earned the title of "Loudest Band Ever," or the shaggy shoegazers who fans, including myself, know and adore?

My Bloody Valentine’s third album, 1991’s Loveless (Sire), was the apotheosis of years of guitar-noise experiments by Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Spacemen 3, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and countless other bands. In retrospect it sounds like the end of an era, arriving just before Nirvana’s Nevermind (DGC, 1991) heralded the corporatization of alternative rock. In an August 2008 story for Spin, Simon Reynolds cites dozens of promising, newish bands influenced by Loveless, including Deerhunter, No Age, Silversun Pickups, and a Place to Bury Strangers. He overstates his case: these groups aren’t just acolytes of Kevin Shields, but it’s Loveless‘ reputation as a perfect album — from the wispy, dazed vocals of Shields and Bilinda Butcher to Shields’ droning guitars that shift ever-so-slightly, yielding one heartbreaking melodic tone after another — that makes it a touchstone for a now-bygone time that continues to fascinate us.

When great bands reunite, they usually choose to exploit their legacies for all they’re worth or ignore them entirely. Shields’ artistic meanderings — and his fruitless struggle to craft a follow-up to one of the best rock albums of the past two decades — have become the stuff of legend. Even now, with a curatorial assignment for the high-minded music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties NYC, followed by seven North American concert dates, My Bloody Valentine has only hinted at a fourth album. If this current tour is a run at the golden oldies — fuck, the band even has an official MySpace page — then it’s a tormented one.

Perhaps the inability of Shields to deal with My Bloody Valentine’s legacy neatly dovetails with the reunion trend. It’s easier to break up and disappear than stick together and, like Sonic Youth, weather the peaks and valleys of artistic creation. Similarly, it’s tougher to leave the past behind — thank god that drummer-turned-chef Greg Norton has kept Hüsker Dü from mounting a full-scale reunion — than hit the concert circuit and sing the oldies. Maybe the likes of Portishead and the Breeders point to a third way for My Bloody Valentine — though the tracks posted on its MySpace page suggest this will be unlikely. No matter which path they choose, the future is a mist.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE

Tues/30, 8 p.m., $47.50

Concourse

620 Seventh St., SF

www.livenation.com

Industrial strength

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Filmed during their 2004 US tour, Laibach’s Divided States of America DVD (Mute) gives a good idea of the freak show that comes out of the woodwork to see the group’s rare performances.

The DVD focuses on the tense political climate and general ugliness of America during the weeks following George W. Bush’s reelection, and there’s enough sardonic anti-American sentiment in it to satisfy anyone who contemplated moving to Canada on Nov. 3, 2004. Much of the documentary involves interviews with Laibach concertgoers: a motley assortment that includes a self-proclaimed Church of Satan representative, a man who identifies himself as a fascist (Laibach’s "political orientation," he confesses, "is perhaps different than mine"), and an ordinary-looking father with his two young daughters in tow.

"The beat was totally infectious," recounts another interviewee. "My body couldn’t help but move."

Few bands inspire as many different reactions as the Slovenian collective, who are touring the States for the first time since 2004 and have been around since 1980, when Slovenia was, of course, still part of Yugoslavia. Are they fascist sympathizers? Is Laibach communist? Or is it all just a big joke? At one point during the DVD, an interviewer asks the outfit about the apparent Nazi-esque garb in one of their tour posters (a Laibach member replies that it’s actually American dress the person is wearing). Another journalist asks them why they promote Jesus and Christianity (one of their albums is titled Jesus Christ Superstars [Mute, 1996]). And as the fan quoted above proves, some people just like those "infectious" beats.

I imagine Laibach enjoy seeing the confusion they create, although there have been times when it’s caused legitimate problems for them — including a ban against playing in their hometown of Ljubljana in the early 1980s and several bomb threats at concerts during the ’90s.

Just what are Laibach trying to say, though? I don’t think there’s a clear-cut answer, but all you have to do is spend a little time with their back catalog to notice recurring themes: religion, fascism, war, patriotism and nationalism, and pop music itself. They’ve spent their career mocking these institutions and -isms, largely by turning them inward on themselves, exploiting and sullying them at the same time — after all, what could be more totalitarian than those nonstop techno beats? Yet they mock in such a straight-faced manner that many people seem to miss the wit. In the largely humorless landscape of industrial music, that sensibility is perhaps Laibach’s biggest saving grace.

Last year’s Volk (Mute) resurrects many of these themes. The disc consists of electro-symphonic renderings of various national anthems, topped off by Milan Fras’s inimitable spoken-word vocals. (Anyone who thinks it’s a celebration of cultural diversity or patriotism need only refer to the liner notes, where they quote a repugnant passage from a US foreign policy memo titled "In Praise of Cultural Imperialism.") They’ve taken on the Beatles and the Stones before (1988’s Let It Be and 1990’s Sympathy for the Devil, both on Mute), but the sly message here is that these national anthems are our ultimate pop songs. Or something like that.

As usual with Laibach, much of the interest lies in Fras’s ominous-sounding, often darkly funny vocals and lyrics. But the arrangements here are among the most stirring ones they’ve come up with since Opus Dei (Mute, 1987), although admittedly, some of their intervening work suffered from gaudy production and instantly dated electronic sounds. Best of all is "Rossiya (Russia)," with its children’s choir, wiggly synthesizers, and gently sweeping strings. They’ve called themselves wolves in sheep’s clothing, and their ability to cloak their sociopolitical commentaries in such convincing garb is part of the reason they’re so provocative and so hard to figure out. I give up.

LAIBACH

Thurs/25, 9 p.m., $30

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.theindependentsf.com

Another pass

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Distinguished bassist and bandleader Dave Holland plays as much as he wants, which tends to be a lot. Still, he’s catching his breath after an extensive tour with old friend Herbie Hancock following the success of Hancock’s Grammy-winning tribute to Joni Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters (Verve, 2007). Tour dates multiplied exponentially after the disc was surprisingly named Album of the Year by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Now after a short break, Holland hits the road again, this time leading a new band of his own. He comes to the Bay Area to perform at both Yoshi’s venues with a new full-length, Pass It On (Emarcy).

Holland’s sextet includes three horns: alto saxophonist Antonio Hart, trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, and trombonist Robin Eubanks. Pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Eric Harland make up the rest of the group on record, two musicians Holland specifically wanted to record with. "One of the reasons we put the project together was for me to have a chance to play with Mulgrew Miller," Holland said over the phone from his upstate New York home. "We had done a few things together, but not nearly enough to satisfy me."

Miller won’t be on the tour, though. Longtime Holland colleague and vibraphonist Steve Nelson joins the ensemble instead. Both the record and the band highlight Eubanks, who joined the SFJAZZ Collective last year. "He’s a great asset to have in the band, not only as a trombonist and musician, but also as a composer and arranger," Holland said. Eubanks contributed two originals to Pass It On.

The bandleader reorchestrates several compositions from earlier records, including "Lazy Snake," "Rivers Run," and the haunting ballad "Equality." "The piece originally was written as a musical setting for a wonderful poem by Maya Angelou with Cassandra Wilson singing the words," Holland said. "When I was thinking of music for this band, I thought it would be a nice vehicle for Antonio, and he really plays it with great feeling."

The musicians played Pass It On‘s music live before going into the studio, which Holland thinks might explain the album’s consistently dynamic pulse. "We’re trying," he said, "to record projects that are actually happening."

DAVID HOLLAND SEXTET

Wed/24–Thurs/25, 8 and 10 p.m., $20

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

Also Fri/26–Sat/27, 8 and 10 p.m.; Sun/28, 2 and 7 p.m., $5–$22

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl.

www.yoshis.com

San Francisco Blues Festival

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PREVIEW Oh baby, baby, baby, have you got them blues? I did, big time, a couple weeks ago after ODing on the metal and all its scenesterness. I nearly wrote off going to shows entirely. This silly sentiment lasted one hot minute, sure, but the blues remained. The blues remained. The blues remained. Which is the point: get rid of any genre-defining accoutrements — country’s twangs, metal’s sweeping arpeggios, jazz’s swanky chords — and you’re left with the 1-4-5 progression made so familiar and beautifully basic by early 20th-century blues masters.

So if you’re feeling especially bummed, love the blues, or are a music junkie in general, this weekend’s 36th annual San Francisco Blues Festival is mandatory. Holding the title of the oldest blues festival in the world, its lineup of legends attests to its status as an institution unto itself. Performers include electric slide virtuoso Johnny Winter, now in his fifth decade of performing, and David Honeyboy Edwards, who at 93 is one of the last Mississippi bluesmen of the Robert Johnson era. Maybe he’ll bring the devil and you can bargain your soul for six-stringed genius at the evil-brewing crossroads of Buchanan Street and Marina Boulevard.

Besides dancin’ and groovin’ to more than two dozen artists, you’ll get to hang outside for three days (weather.com forecasts sun, for whatever it’s worth), which also tends to assuage the blues — although instead of a background of railroad trains and Delta mudflats, we get the Golden Gate Bridge and a scintilutf8g Bay. Throw some horns for Robert Johnson’s legacy.

SAN FRANCISCO BLUES FESTIVAL Tribute to John Lee Hooker. Fri/26, noon–1:30 p.m., free. Justin Herman Plaza, 1 Market, SF. Sat/27 with Hot Tuna, the Delta Groove All-Star Blues Revue, Barbara Lynn, Michael Burks, Ruthie Foster, Elmore James Jr., and Delta Wires Big Band. Sun/28 with Johnny Winter, Buckwheat Zydeco, Curtis Salgado Big Band, David Honeyboy Edwards, Rick Estrin, and Gospel Hummingbirds. 11 a.m.– 6 p.m., $40 per day. Great Meadow at Fort Mason, Marina at Buchanan, SF. (415) 979-5588, www.sfblues.com

Kim Gordon

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PREVIEW Say it loud, say it proud: aeons after the year punk broke and Sonic Youth introduced their budding little-bro band Nirvana to their label, DGC, I’m still girl-crushed-out on SY’s Kim Gordon! Especially after finding out we’ve been reading the same book at just about the same time: Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation (Atria), a possible inspiration for Gordon’s "Phantom Orchard" performance with avant harpist Zeena Parkins, DNA’s no-wave diva Ikue Mori, Boredoms drummer Yoshimi, and ex–Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn.

"Everyone said, ‘Ooh, it’s got to be really trashy,’" says Gordon from Northampton, Mass., where she, Thurston Moore, and their 14-year-old daughter, Coco, reside. "I started reading it and thought, you know, this is actually a pretty good, interesting, sociological overview of these women during that time in the early ’60s. So, I don’t know, maybe a theme might come out of that … I always wondered when [Sonic Youth] was on tour with Neil Young, what’s it like for someone like Joni Mitchell? I got a sense of the boys’ club." She emits a soft, low, self-deprecating chuckle, a recurring bass note in a conversation with Gordon, who often sounds more like a grave, thoughtful teenage girl than an underground rock icon.

A certain Kimly kismet is going down, for sure, and one hopes a similar synthesis will emerge from this week’s improvisations by Gordon, Parkins, Mori, Dunn, and Yoshimi. The latter most recently played on the raw ‘n’ lyrical Inherit (Ecstatic Peace), by the resuscitated Free Kitten, Gordon’s project with ex–Pussy Galore-ist Julie Cafritz. Everyone knows girls rock, but what continues to draw this archetypal post-punk woman, who has seen so many sides of rock’s boyzone, to work with other ladies? "Women communicate differently," she muses. "And, um, women communicate!"

For more of an interview with Kim Gordon, see Noise blog at www.sfbg.com.

KIM GORDON MEETS PHANTOM ORCHARD Fri/26, 8 p.m., $15–<\d>$55. Montalvo Arts Center, Carriage House Theatre, 15400 Montalvo, Saratoga. (408) 961-5858, www.ticketmaster.com

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Tunde Adebimpe sounds like he’s in good spirits. Four years ago, when the lead vocalist of TV on the Radio was in his first brush with fame, he would snap at false critical judgments — from comparisons of his voice to "Games Without Frontiers"-era Peter Gabriel to race-oriented articles focused on the group’s unusual makeup of Adebimpe, guitarist Kyp Malone, and keyboardist/producer David Sitek — two black men and a white man.

Today, though, as he walks out of his apartment into the streets of Brooklyn, Adebimpe speckles his conversation with chuckles. He jokes about the Gabriel comparisons, noting, "He has a better tailor than I do." And he shrugs off TV on the Radio’s galvanizing success. "It’s encouraging, because we don’t make the most conventional stuff," he says. "We’re not rich off making records."

Though it’s not necessarily an Obama-size achievement, Greg Tate from the Black Rock Coalition probably didn’t imagine a mostly black rock band would become the darlings of the gentrified indie-rock establishment a mere 20 years after he protested racism in rock in the 1980s. But after two albums — 2004’s breakthrough Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (Touch and Go) and 2006’s follow-up, Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope/4AD) — of brilliant, brashly intellectual and brazenly avant-garde music (three if you count its 2002 self-released debut, OK Calculator), TV on the Radio’s artistic achievement has eclipsed "black rocker" stereotypes.

By now, TV on the Radio’s amalgamations are well-cataloged: a little bit of doo-wop, a lot of Fugazi, and sprinkled with gospel-like choral rhapsodies. Despite or because of its alchemical properties — Adebimpe claims, "We’ve never written an original note in our lives" — a TV on the Radio album sounds wholly different from anything else. Sitek’s heavy-mental production techniques isolate Jaleel Bunton’s drums and Gerard Smith’s bass into echoing timbres. Adebimpe and Malone’s wavering voices tremble as if they were trying to find rays of hope amid the mud and asphalt of everyday troubles. A TV on the Radio recording is full of hardy optimism; it sounds like a triumphant battle for the human soul.

"I think that there has to be something outside of our reality. I genuinely hope and find that it is, because if it’s not … " says Adebimpe, his voice trailing off. Then he adds, "Our reality is pretty good. It’s got its perks. But hopefully there’s more to it. Whether that’s inside of a person or outside of a person, I have no idea. But there’s got to be something that’s less flawed, and sometimes boring and sometimes repetitive, than just us."

Set for release Sept. 23, TV on the Radio’s third full-length, Dear Science (Interscope/4AD), radiates with newfound confidence. Songs like "Red Dress" and "Golden Age," the latter on which Malone sings "Clap your hands / If you think your soul is free," positively bop with funk. Then, on the slightly kooky "Dancing Science," Adebimpe raps in a stutter-step pace about the information age overload. The effect isn’t as laughable as you’d think.

Dear Science‘s playful observations sound like a miracle after the earthwork obduracy of Cookie Mountain (which sold 188,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan). Universally hailed as a watermark on its release, Cookie Mountain refines Desperate Youth‘s ambient guitar lines and protean libido into granite walls of distortion, drums, and lust. On Desperate Youth‘s "Staring at the Sun," Adebimpe sings, "You’re staring at the sun / You’re standing in the sea / Your body’s over me," squeezing his lover in a viselike grip as if to protect the paramour from a world teetering on collapse. Compare that song with Cookie Mountain‘s "Wolf Like Me," where he doesn’t want to smother you, but devour you. The band attacks with ferocity as Adebimpe seduces his Little Red Riding Hood: "You’ll never know / Unless we go / So let me show you."

For all its enigmatic power, Cookie Mountain quavers with tension. Shocked at its success — "I feel like, after Desperate Youth, we were definitely astonished we were allowed to make another record," Adebimpe says— TV on the Radio initially struggled to devise a follow-up. "We were suddenly questioning ourselves about others’ opinion, which is always death," he observes. "But you always get to a point where you shrug it off and you say, I have no idea what anyone else is going to think. I can only do what I’m going to do…. The last record was intense periods of absolutely no fun followed by two months of the best time recording."

If Cookie Mountain closed a chapter for TV on the Radio’s alabaster soul, then Dear Science signifies a new direction. Adebimpe calls it "brighter and cleaner," shorn of the dense layers of distortion of the past. The music is wide open. The future is wide open.

TV on the Radio play at 7:25 p.m., Sat/20, on the Bridge Stage at Treasure Island Music Festival.


>>More Treasure Island Music Fest

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We drool over these Treasure Island jewels

CSS


Woman, oh, woman. We’re so not tired of these fiery São Paulo popettes’ brand of sexy. CSS rarely disappoint live — Spandex bodysuits, pop hooks courtesy of their latest album, Donkey (Sub Pop), and all. (Kimberly Chun)

8:25 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

DR. DOG


Dusting the crust off Southern rock grooves and biting into the apple of the tenderest harmonies, these unsung sons of the Liberty Bell, the Band, and ELO might be considered the Yankee brethren to My Morning Jacket. (Chun)

6:40 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

DODOS


Is anyone doing anything quite like what spunky San Francisco indie duo Dodos do? (Chun)

5:15 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

FLEET FOXES


Back in the ’90s, we used to be able to tell the indie rock from the rock proper by the singing: untrained, off-key, and adenoidal. This Seattle quintet are leading the charge to make the voice the center of indie rock-dom. On their self-titled debut and its forerunner, the Sun Giant EP (both Sub Pop), the band brings serious pipes and gorgeous multi-part harmonies like they were trying out for spots in CSNY or "Black Water"–era Doobie Brothers. (Brandon Bussolini)

3:50 p.m. Sun/21, Tunnel Stage

FOALS


The brainy Oxford quintet has been tagged with both the "math rock" and "Afrobeat appropriationist" labels — both true, and gloriously so. Add in a heap o’ (not tired) post-punk reference and some boppy Cure-like atmospherics, and Foals bring dancefloor introspection to new heights. They’ve also gained a rep for missing festivals, so dedicated fans have their horseteeth on edge. (Marke B.)

3:45 p.m. Sat/20 Tunnel Stage

LOQUAT


Comforting and disquieting in equal measure, the Bay Area group’s knowing, ambivalent electro-pop will sound even better if the weather is gloomy and if you are in a ’90s mood. Playing music together for more than a decade and only on the cusp of releasing their second album, Loquat selects subject matter that rarely strays from post-collegiate romantic malaise. The combo’s tasteful, restrained playing and vocalist Kylee Swenson’s honeyed tone signals a perfectionism that sometimes gets the best of them: a song’s meticulousness can turn suffocating without warning, then just as suddenly return to a melody that almost justifies the occasional preciousness. (Bussolini)

12:45 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

NORTEC COLLECTIVE: BOSTICH & FUSSIBLE


As anyone who has spent a little time in his or her local Guitar Center knows, "fusion" is a deeply tainted word. The bastard genre — typically evoked when a performer sounds like other fusion artists — has untapped potential to refer to music outside the wanky Weather Report–aping scene. If you are not the type to go in for seven-string fretless bass guitars and deeply contrived chords, this Tijuana quartet’s music might help you imagine a future for the term. Synthesizing traditional norteño music with techno might sound like a dicey proposition, but the group’s crisp, tuneful productions make for an easily graspable mellow. (Bussolini)

3:50 p.m. Sat/20 Tunnel Stage

PORT O’BRIEN


In taking a wisp of personal narrative — songwriter Van Pierzalowski spends his summers helping his dad, a commercial fisherman, on Alaska’s Kodiak Island — as their starting point and main inspiration, this Oakland fivepiece compares with this year’s other rustic isolationist, Bon Iver. Sonically, the outfit’s blood runs a little hotter: they are at their best when confident enough to let their rickety songs — like their gold standard, the loose-limbed "I Woke Up Today" — get away from them. (Bussolini)

1:25 p.m. Sun/21 Tunnel Stage

RACONTEURS


Steady, as they go. The rock ‘n’ roll tricksters tried to dodge critical bullets — and blossoms — when they released Consolers of the Lonely (Warner Bros.). Whatever for, one wonders? The combo’s increasingly massive sound successfully invokes the Who and Britannia’s other ’60s and ’70s rock powerhouses, with an intentional whiff of the good times long gone. (Chun)

9:05 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

MIKE RELM


This guy makes A/V geeks look good. With Reservoir Dogs–like skinny-tie suavitude and fleet fingers on his editing gear, the SF mix-maestro mashes up songs and sights with the smarts of a pop-cultie compulsive. Can we expect more of the same Clown Alley–style burger-‘n’-vino fun with Spectacle, his studio debut on his own Radio Fryer label? (Chun)

6:45 p.m. Sat/20, Tunnel Stage

SPIRITUALIZED


Beware: Jason Spaceman is more than capable of moving an audience to tears with his live, full-tilt psych-gospel orchestrations. (Chun)

4:30 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

TEGAN AND SARA


Twins do it better, if by better you mean attract insatiable hordes of fabulous haircuts with wistful tunes that lodge firmly in your earworm. Plus, they’re Canadian — something we all may wish we were soon. Yet the fabulous Quin sisters aren’t just standard keyboard-and-guitar hum-along-tos. They’ve got some curious curveball chops, as last year’s The Con (Sire) showed. (Marke B.)

7:25 p.m. Sun/21, Bridge Stage

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