"Smaller and better and more underground" is how Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival founder Jeff Ray describes the event’s 12th annual go-around. Now immersed in his MFA studies at San Francisco State University, Ray has turned to such curators as Smile’s Neil Martinson, Numbers’ Eric Landmark, Extra Action Marching Band’s Ben Furstenberg, and the Fucking Ocean’s Marcella Gries to cast MCMF’s net wider while tightening its focus to a compact five days. Expect a new Latin series and renewed commitment to local artists and Collision programming, which mixes experimental music, sound art, dance, performance, and video. Unrest assured, Ray says: "We still have a really good ear." (Kimberly Chun)
For a complete schedule go to www.mcmf.org
>>Can’t knock the Tussle
The San Francisco instrumentalists turn mad liberation into Cream Cuts
By Johnny Ray Huston
>>Get the Drift
Sonic Memory Drawings and outward instrumental rock creeps
By Michael Harkin
>>Resurrection blues
Lazarus passes around Hawk Medicine
By Kimberly Chun
>>Dye, dye, darlings
The smile-inducing shades of Bleachy Bleachy Bleach
By Michael Harkin
>>Noise to go
Nancy Garcia unleashes her sense of play
By Kimberly Chun
>>Sketches of Spain
Peter Walker communes with a new muse
By Max Goldberg
>>Feeding the fire of Mountainhood
Delicate rusticity straight outta Almaden
By Kimberly Chun
>>Cream-colored slumbers
Foxtails Brigade float beyond experimental folk
By Kat Renz
>>I’m here with lonesome
Copping the White Buffalo stance
By Kat Renz