Art

NOISE: Saturday, it’s a free-for-all of other worlds, Crumar, and Pens…

-
0

Free stuff on a Saturday — we are so there, after blowing our wads of nonexistent cash on holiday gifties.

crumar1.jpg
Don’t stare – it’s Phil Crumar. Courtesy of asphodel.com.

First off: Phil Crumar, SF beat maker and Asphodel artist, will be ho-ho-ho-ing for the man, the Virgin man, that is — when he performs Saturday, Dec. 2, 3 p.m., at the Megastore at Stockton and Market. Word has it Organer and the Court and Spark’s Mike Taylor will be playing earlier at 2 p.m. Sounds like quality, quality local rock and hop — on a chilly, sparkly weekend afternoon. Wanna meet next to the mint chocolate Citizen Cupcake cupcakes?

Later that evening — if you’re not going to see Jana Hunter in SF — head over to the free opening of “Other World,” curated by Bay Area artist Christine Shields, at Eleanor Harwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama at 25th Street, SF. It runs 7-10 p.m. The show offers “visions into the realm of spirits, shadows, forests, night creatures and those who have passed on. Worlds parallel to ours but less physical in nature sometimes seep into this world leaving curious images, sensations, or sounds. “Other World brings the work of 13 artists into one space creating a place in between this world and the Other.” Or so the press release/email blast sayeth.

Artists in the show include Lara Allen, Adam J Ansell, Julianna Bright, Alice Cohen, Georganne Deen, Veronica De Jesus, Colter Jacobsen, Jason Mecier, Donal Mosher, Kyle Ranson, Amy Rathbone, Jovi Schnell, and Shields herself. There will be a performance by Mosher and music by SteepleChase.

monicacanilaosml.jpg

While you’re in the Mission on Dec. 2, stop into Needles and Pens, 3253 16th St., SF, for the reception for “The Dispossessed,” which showcases new work by Monica Canilao. The opening runs 6-9 p.m., and Ghost Family provide the haunting sounds.

Boo! I mean, yeh! Free art!

SATURDAY

-
0

Dec. 2

Music

Norfolk and Western

Having featured paintings of Civil War soldiers and dusty old pianos on their album covers, Portland’s Norfolk and Western play rustic folk that evokes a slower epoch. Favoring a gentler, casual, front porchy orchestration organized around mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, violin, accordion, and similar less decibel-centric instruments, songwriters Adam Selzer and Rachel Blumberg and their troupe of bygone-era nostalgists beguile the listener with intimately recalled tales resembling pages from a scrapbook found in the attic. (Todd Lavoie)

With Corrina Repp and Victor Krummenacher
9 p.m.
Hotel Utah Saloon
500 Fourth St., SF
$8
(415) 546-6300
www.thehotelutahsaloon.com
www.norfolkandwestern.org

Event/Music/Visual Art/Film

“An Evening of Art, Fashion, Film, and Music”

Having trouble figuring out what gift to give the guy or girl who has everything? Look no further! Chillin’ Productions’ “An Evening of Art, Fashion, Film, and Music” will instantly lift you out of the pesky present-buying rut with inspirational ideas from innovative local talent. The incredible lineup boasts 60 fashion designers, 80 painters and photographers, 60 filmmakers, and six DJs to bring the noise, making your gift scouting more eventful. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

8 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$6
(415) 625-8880
www.mezzanine.com
www.chillinproductions.com

FRIDAY

-
0

Dec. 1

Visual Art

“American Carnival Portraits”

The definition of serendipity is when an artist like Linda Kramer walks into a place like the Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery in Alameda – just about the ideal setting for her vivid, often night-draped photographs of people who go to or work at carnivals. According to Lucky Ju Ju’s Michael Scheiss, the gallery’s colorful machines lured Kramer, who came in looking for a present for her parents and ended up booking a show. At least equal to recent work by established names such as Lauren Greenfield, SF State grad Kramer’s burgeoning series “American Carnival Portraits” is a social documentary project that’s certain to yield a great monograph. (Johnny Ray Huston)

6 p.m.-midnight reception; show continues through Jan. 2, 2007
Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Art Gallery
713 Santa Clara, Alameda
Free
(510) 205-9793
www.ujuju.com
www.lindakramerportraits.com

Visual Art

“Wrap It Up: Creative Growth Holiday Exhibition and Sale”

Judith Scott’s awe-inspiring fiber art and William Scott’s visionary paintings and sculptures have been shown at CCA Wattis and other sites. Their home base is Creative Growth in Oakland, where they’re two of many people making art about pop culture, love, the streets, and life. Reproductions can’t compare to an actual piece of art – the holiday exhibition and sale “Wrap It Up” gives you an opportunity to purchase one. (Huston)

5 p.m. reception; show continues through Jan. 4, 2007
Creative Growth Gallery
355 24th St., Oakl.
Free
(510) 836-2340
www.creativegrowth.org

THURSDAY

-
0

Nov. 30

Visual Art

“Post-Postcard 10”

There was a Postcard label: recordings by two of its best groups, Josef K and Orange Juice, just got reissued. And in Detroit there is a master postcard artist: Michael Segal, who has been making magical Magic Marker work for two decades. Here in San Francisco, the Lab’s annual “Post-Postcard” exhibition is turning 10 this week, and the nonprofit artists-run gallery has received submissions from all over the United States as well as Helsinki, Finland, and elsewhere. (Johnny Ray Huston)

6-9 p.m. reception; Fri/1, 1-8 p.m., and Sat/2-Sun/3, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Lab
2948 16th St., SF
Free
(415) 864-8855
www.thelab.org

Music

Dan the Automator

The sought-after producer, remixer, and hip-hop innovator has put his stamp on popular and underground music from cult classics like Kool Keith’s alter ego Dr. Octagon and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien’s side project Deltron 3030 to Handsome Boy Modeling School, his collaboration with Prince Paul, and the ubiquitous cartoon hitmakers Gorillaz. Known for his genre-defying sound, Dan the Automator brings mind-blowing beats home to San Francisco along with a live band. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

With Chali 2na, Casual, and A.G. of D.I.T.C
9 p.m.
Mezzanine
444 Jessie, SF
$15
(415) 625-8880
www.mezzaninesf.com
www.myspace.com/dantheautomator

Failure, so thrive

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
“Ever heard of Wisconsin Death Trip?” Jacob Heule asks. Ettrick’s alto sax–playing half and I are in my living room discussing the rigors of life in the Midwest as they pertain to the metal-listening youth of today. Heule, a Wisconsin native, has jokingly — or maybe not so jokingly — cited Michael Lesy’s book about the disintegration of the 19th-century town Black River Falls as we make loose connections between freezing cold weather, insanity, and locales that death metal and its fans call home. He’s certain of one thing: “Black metal is the perfect stuff when you don’t feel like a human anymore. When I was a receptionist at a medical center, I got really into it because I just felt terrible about certain things. It was a dehumanizing job. Cold, bleak black metal — I could relate to it.”
Ettrick are indeed a black metal duo, and their music harbors the telltale signs: ferocious blast-beats, gargantuan expanses of pitch-black noise, and drums like a self-propelled howitzer gone berserk. They also happen to be a free-jazz pairing as well, in which Heule and partner Jay Korber, both drummers and saxophonists, rotate between the two instruments to create a grueling improvisational skronk. A well-circulated YouTube video featuring their collaboration with Weasel Walter reveals a dimly lit scene of busted drum kits with the bleating screams of Korber’s tenor sax piercing the deafening cloud of beats raining down from the stage. For all its grandiose chaos, however, the players never lose track of each other in the din. Heule credits this to time spent practicing. “It’s difficult to improvise, but it’s a skill that you can work on,” he says. “We have developed certain patterns that we call on sometimes, but we don’t really discuss things ahead of time. We realized that it sounds a lot better if we don’t.”
ART BRUTAL
Ettrick’s beginnings hark back to 2004, when Heule was looking to sublet his practice space and Korber answered his ad. Korber — a Pittsburgh native who shares his bandmate’s love of brutal music and calls Immortal’s Battles in the North “one of the best black metal albums ever made” — had coincidentally been playing sax for a few years as well. (Heule has played the instrument since age 10.) As it turned out, they were even recording Ettrick-style music independent of one another. “We both had recordings that we had made of ourselves, overdubbing all the instruments onto each other, drums and sax, but we were doing it all ourselves,” Heule explains with a laugh. “So then we found the ‘other guy.’ We could play live now!”
A year and a half later, Ettrick recorded their first self-released album, Infinite Horned Abomination, in their practice space. Though starkly minimalist (doom-laden atmospherics are largely restricted to the first track), Infinite Horned Abomination hints at the separate yet intertwined paths Heule and Korber have forged. Their second disc, Sudden Arrhythmic Death (American Grizzly, 2006), is an absolute must-have, a 15-minute live session recorded in Portland, Ore., that begins as an achingly radiant saxophone duet before it explodes into a maniacal barrage of beats that push the eardrum till white noise is the only sense the brain can make. It concludes with Ettrick’s signature: bloodcurdling screams and the sound of drum kits being destroyed.
THE SOUND OF MAYHEM
Heule muses on the carnage during their recent tour: “The last show in LA was pretty destructive. I broke my snare stand in half. I dropped my kick drum. I wasn’t really thinking about what it would break if I just picked it up and dropped it.”
Korber amassed similar injuries, breaking both heads on his snare drum. He confesses that his sax is “a piece of shit to begin with” and is sure that his other band, Sergio Iglesias and the Latin Love Machine, isn’t helping matters: “Last time [Sergio played] I rolled over it a couple times.”
The improv community in the Bay Area is a tightly intermingled mass of weeds that entangles every act in its path. Ettrick are no exception, having collaborated not only with the aforementioned Weasel Walter but also with Moe! Staiano (Moe!kestra!, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Mike Guarino of Oaxacan, and most recently, Tralphaz, a one-person pedal feedback assault.
Tralphaz embodies what Heule enjoys most about their chosen genre. “One of my favorite things seeing improvisers play is when things just start going totally wrong, and they bring it back,” says the saxophonist. “I’ve seen Tralphaz do that a couple of times.”
Ettrick follow that lead, constantly pushing their black cloud of noise into failure’s clutches. They hope to tempt even more sonic dissolution with their forthcoming album, Feeders of Ravens (Not Not Fun), which will be released on vinyl in early 2007. Korber is matter-of-fact about the strategy. “There’s always a chance that it’s going to fail,” he confesses.
Heule nods. “That’s one of the best reasons to do it.” SFBG
ETTRICK
With darph/nader and Ant Lion
Thurs/30
Luggage Store
1007 Market, SF
Call for time and price
(415) 255-9171
www.luggagestoregallery.org

Over easy

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com
Changing public consciousness is an inglorious task that seems to involve a great deal of repetition. There is an art to repetition, to saying the same thing over and over without boring or infuriating people or losing one’s patience at their benightedness and resorting to jeremiads. But observation suggests that this branch of the suasive arts is, in our drink-Bud-or-we’ll-kill-you culture, at least slightly in eclipse.
Still, despite the rather dismal state of the art and the basic human resistance to change — our preferred mode of advance is evolutionary not revolutionary, as science instructs us — change does appear, sometimes with notable swiftness. The imperilment of the world’s fish, for instance, is a matter lately ascendant in the global consciousness. (Yes, I know I have mentioned this glum subject before — artfully, I hope.) In Honolulu on Nov. 10, I picked up a copy of the local paper, the Advertiser, to find that the op-ed page carried both an editorial calling for “aggressive management” by Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources of the state’s marine life — in particular, for enhanced protection of the bottom-dwelling and vulnerable species opakapaka and onaga — and an opinion piece (by Bruce Anderson, president of the Oceanic Institute) arguing that aquaculture, if responsibly practiced, can ease human pressure on the seas as a source of food. Research and innovation are critical here.
I was pleased, though not surprised, to find major Hawaiian media paying serious attention to the plight of fisheries locally and around the world. I was also pleased — and surprised — to find that awareness of the issue has seeped to deeper levels. While on a brief visit to a friend recovering from surgery at the Towers (the continuum-of-care facility on Cathedral Hill), I glanced at a menu in one of the dining rooms and saw on offer mahimahi, ling cod, and swordfish — all line-caught, the first and last in Hawaiian waters. There are some questions with all of these fish, and I would not give the menu a perfect ecoscore, since apart from everything else, “line-caught” is ambiguous. Some lines are better than others. Still, it was evident that even in some institutional kitchens, care is now being taken that might not have been taken five years ago. There must be more than a few people in the Towers asking an artful question or two about the food they’re being served.

The final frontier

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com
Regrets? I’ve had a few. At the top of the list is that, due to circumstances beyond our control, I will never get to see Beethoven play the piano — unless we have misunderstood the time-space continuum. This seems more likely than not, given the reliable arrogance of human science, and I do retain a shred of hope.
The also-rans run well behind. I do not expect my idea for a sport-tuned, high-performance Prius — the Priapus, a Prius for men! — to make it onto a Toyota production line any time soon, alas and alack. And I am sorry I can’t remember what many areas of the city looked like a decade ago, before the Great Bulldozing. What was it like to sail down the Third Street corridor? I remember doing it at least once, in the middle 1990s, on a mission to take some moribund computer equipment to a recycling facility near the foot of 23rd Street. There was a certain ominous, video-game facelessness to the buildings, and I was glad when the errand was over.
As for restaurants: once you’d passed south of 16th Street, where 42° sat at the back of the rather dingy Esprit Center (since demolished), you were in a different world. You had passed through border control, a kind of Checkpoint Charlie of culture, and you were on your own. But … change was not far off. Soon the development tide would flow south: there would be a new baseball park, a new UCSF campus, a new Muni light-rail line. And the neighborhood’s obvious virtues — nearness to the city center and the bay, flat streets, warm weather, gorgeous old industrial buildings (many of brick), sweeping views — would begin to be noticed.
Today, Third Street is lined with new live-work and other lofty-looking buildings, and people must be living and working in them (or working nearby), because if you step into the New Spot, a new spot serving Mexican and Salvadoran food, you are likely to run into a wall of these people, at least if it’s around lunchtime on a weekday. They all look to be about 30 years old, give or take, and are dressed with that studied scruffiness I associate with the late, great dot-com boom. Are we now surfing some wave in the space-time continuum back to 1999? Certainly, the traffic and parking situations are horrendous in the area, as they were elsewhere in the city at the close of the last millennium — and the crush is all the more shocking in what I had long thought to be a kind of ghost town, a deserted neighborhood that was fun to bike through on a hot autumn Saturday.
The New Spot is to Salvadoran and Mexican cooking what Chutney (on lower Nob Hill) is to Indian and Pakistani cooking. The look is minimalist clean, prices are low, and the food is fresh and meticulously prepared. My only cavil on freshness concerns the chips, which twice seemed stale to me, though the spicy-smooth red salsa ($1.40 for a half pint, if you want or need that much) covered up much of the weariness. The guacamole ($2.25) is good too, though I would have liked bigger avocado chunks and maybe a bit less lime juice.
The Salvadoran-style dishes dominate the menu and include those old standbys, pupusas (just $1.60 each, but you have to order at least two). These are disks like small pita breads, and they can be stuffed in a variety of meaty and meatless ways. We found the queso con frijoles version — with a good packing of refried beans and oozy queso blanco — to do very nicely, especially with some pico de gallo and shredded, pickled cabbage (curtido) on the side.
Pasteles ($5.50 for a plate of three) turned out to be lightly deep-fried corn pies filled with more queso. (I’d ordered chicken but was pleased with the cheese.) Generally, I stay out of the deep-fried end of the pool, but these pasteles were of a delicate crispness that made me think of golden clouds. The menu lists chile relleno ($7.50) — a fire-roasted poblano stuffed with cheese (or choice of meat) and served with salsa, beans, and rice — as a Salvadoran specialty, and perhaps that’s because it isn’t dipped in batter and fried, as in the more typical preparation you find in Mexican restaurants around town.
The fish tacos ($3.15) are exemplary. I always try a place’s fish tacos, since the range of possible outcomes is so great. Good ones are unforgettable; bad ones are … forgettable. Bland, usually. The New Spot’s menu doesn’t say what kind of fish is used — some kind of cod or pollack, I would guess, or possibly tilapia, judging from the bits of soft, white flesh — but the grill imparts some appealing smoke, and the crispy tacos are filled out with shredded lettuce (instead of the more usual shredded cabbage), diced tomato, refrijoles, salsa, and guacamole. Like a regular taco, really, and the better for it.
The food, it must be said, doesn’t exactly fly out of the kitchen, in part because the dishes are made to order and also because the crunch-time crowds are thick. At the moment, alternatives in the neighborhood are few. But the New Spot is flanked by signs of yesterday and tomorrow; on one side is a faded old-school Chinese restaurant on its way out, while on the other is a café, Sundance Coffee, that could easily be associated with a museum of modern art. The times, they are a-changin’. SFBG
NEW SPOT
Mon.–Fri., 6 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sat., 7 a.m.–5 p.m.
632 20th St., SF
(415) 558-0556
No alcohol
AE/MC/V
Noisy if busy
Wheelchair accessible

TUESDAY

-
0

Nov. 28

Music

Zodiac Death Valley

Concentrating on the lure of the Western desert – as well as the rovers who are drawn to such merciless terrain – the aptly named Zodiac Death Valley have achieved a gothic blues version of Gram Parsons’s Flying Burrito Brothers. Singer Niccolo Abodeely and his bandmates toss in a few moments of cactus flower romanticism among the rattlesnakes and cattle skulls, and the result is equal parts enticement and capture. (Todd Lavoie)

With the Moanin’ Dove, Matthew Hansen, and Jake Mattison
8:30 p.m.
Hotel Utah Saloon
500 Fourth St., SF
$6
(415) 546-6300
www.thehotelutahsaloon.com

Visual Art

“Capp Street Project: Michael Stevenson”
“How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later”
“Radical Software: Art, Technology, and the Bay Area Underground”

The latest chapter in CCA Wattis’s ongoing “Capp Street Project” comes from Michael Stevenson, who will allow his painstaking recreation of a MONIAC – a bygone hydraulic contraption known as the Monetary National Income Automatic Computer – to gradually fall into ruin. “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” has roots in ’70s-era Cali ideas about the future. The same might be said of another group show: “Radical Software” ventures into different passages of the seemingly limitless Stewart Brand-related Bay Area underground hacker mazes explored in Lutz Dammbeck’s doc The Net. (Johnny Ray Huston)

7:30-9 p.m. opening reception (through Feb. 24, 2007)
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Logan Galleries
1111 Eighth St., SF
Free
(415) 551-9210
www.wattis.org

MONDAY

-
0

Nov. 27

Event

Daniel Levitin

What happens within the human body to account for these differences? Daniel Levitin’s new book, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of an Obsession, tackles some of the great mysteries of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. A record producer turned neuroscientist, Levitin draws from both backgrounds to explain the physiological processes that play a role in how we form our musical tastes. (Todd Lavoie)

7:30 p.m.
Black Oak Books
1491 Shattuck, Berk.
Free
(510) 486-0698
www.blackoakbooks.com

Visual Art

“Initials”

Artists’ Television Access has been on the forefront of releasing experimental film and video since 1984. Today I bear witness to a new kind of video art: the vlog. On the screen of the TV in the ATA’s window is the filmmaker, staring into the viewer’s eyes and explaining the nuances of this new media. For “Initials,” Matthew Hughes Boyko has fused YouTube videos with original footage. The exhibit is part documentary, part instruction, and entirely in sync with the continuing fascination with new media. (K. Tighe)

Through Nov. 30
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
Free
(415) 824-3890
www.atasite.org
www.matthewhughesboyko.com

The harsh truth – and lies – of the camera eye: A talk with Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins

-
0

Today in London, Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins held a press conference in which people who’ve appeared on TV discussed their experiences — specifically, how their lives were damaged or altered by their participation in “reality” shows. British newspapers and television are already reporting on the conference, part of the second installment in Collins’s country-hopping series The Return of the Real, and one aspect of his entry in the Tate Britain exhibition.

phil-photo.jpg
Phil Collins

Last week, I talked on the phone with Collins, allegedly one of the ten most important artists in the world, according to Flash Art. I know I count him as a current personal favorite, partly due to his Baghdad Screentests (2002), a rare example of Andy Warhol-influenced, attracted but not embedded contemporary reportage. It sets silent video portraits of young men and women to some of Collins’s favorite pop songs, with the pensive men sometimes inspiring swoons ranging from “Well I Wonder” to “I Feel Love.” The relationship between image and sound is a basic and yet rich one: the songs can resonate as personal expression by Collins, as commentary on the oncoming Bush-sanctioned bombing and occupation, and (only perhaps, and if so, only occasionally) as an imagined first-person voicing of the the subjects’ unspoken thoughts. This type of meta-commentary on mediated image dates back to at least 1999 in Collins’s art. That year’s How to Make a Refugee steps into and back from a photo shoot depicting a family from Kosovo.

Replacing the profound stillness of Baghdad Screentests with hired (and increasingly tired) movement, Collins’s answer video to a relevant ’60s film, They Shoot Horses (2004), stages a dance marathon in Ramallah, Palestine; his video triptych from the same year, The Louder You Scream, the Faster We Go, tweaks the music video form by taking artistic license with songs by unsigned acts, turning them into soundtracks for visions of elderly ladies’ dance classes and a hand job update of Warhol’s Blow Job.

phil-dunya1.jpg
Still from dunya dunlemiyor, a video installation by Phil Collins

Les, lady, les

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Viva les wild children, woodsmen, and Francophones and the ’philes that love them — wherever they may quaff cheap Beaujolais, don camembert-scented berets, and talk terroir ’n’ Bataille. Zut alors! The clichés, the pretensions, the sauces — and the only thing red-blooded freedom fries–gobbling Americans have consistently felt way superior about has been le rock. Thank your “Rockin’ in the Free World” and shake that deep-fried turkey butt on over here.
Nouveau chanson cuties like Benjamin Biolay, sis Coralie Clement, and ex Keren Ann have done their part to make a mark, but apart from late éminence grise Serge Gainsbourg and more recently Air, has French rock ever caught much respect? Can heart-throbber Phoenix get a break — never mind the fact that vocalist Thomas Mars has knocked up Sofia Coppola? Is this even an issue, one wonders, cocking an ennui-stricken ear to the latest from Snoop Dogg, the Game, Yusef (a.k.a. Cat Stevens in so-soft-it’s-nearly-subliminal mode), and Tom Waits?
The recent steady stream of très quirky French and French-language releases makes a case for tripping over Frédéric Chopin’s and Jim Morrison’s headstones at Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery in search of l’espirit de Gallicore, especially when stateside pop generally seems to be suffering from a bad-news hangover — with Britney’s breakup and Whitney’s move out. And they’re unabashedly wild enfants terribles all — in the not-so-mute mode of the 19th-century Wild Boy of Aveyron — beginning with Serge’s spawn Charlotte Gainsbourg, whom most recall entering the musical arena by way of a notorious duet with dad, his 1984 song “Lemon Incest” (the vid had the 12-year-old Charlotte passionately clutching pops’s pants legs). Now after becoming an indie cinema heroine of sorts in Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep, she has released a Nigel Godrich–produced debut, 5:55 (WEA International), which finds her warbling wistfully alongside Air (whose Jean-Benoit Dunckel has his own new solo CD under the name Darkel) and Jarvis Cocker. The deliriously weaving strings and haunting melody of her single, “Songs That We Sing,” directly probes the sensuous, nostalgic vibe of her père’s mind-scorching masterpiece Histoire de Melody Nelson (Fontana).
Still, 5:55 is aeons away in its shy, coltish sleekness from other recent oddities — including those of the Lille, France, threesome DAT Politics, who stopped in San Francisco earlier this month with a minialbum of electronic-pastiche pop punnily titled Are Oui Phony?? (Tigerbeat6). The joke plunges into the long-standing US-France tension between rockiste authenticity and cultural colonialism. DAT Politics’ bold, gawky, yet carefree rubbery squeaks, bleats, and breakbeats sidestep and then frenetically bob alongside the entire issue.
Another disarming and ungainly recent disc owns its vulnerability like a bared breast: Le Volume Courbe’s I Killed My Best Friend (Honest Jons) is a gently dissonant, whispery, and eclectic set of songs that seem to circle the emotional nakedness of folk with some of the honest, strange imprint of classic post-punk and experimental electronic musak. Backed by My Bloody Valentine’s Colm O’Ciosoig and Kevin Shields and Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and David Roback, London–by–way–of–Pays de la Loire, France, songwriter Charlotte Marionneau blends intimate, homespun-sounding and occasionally instrumental originals with the odd cover, like Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No … I Got Life.” Her album financed by Alan McGee for his Poptones imprint when her first single for the Creation Records pooh-bah’s label sold out its 1,000-copy pressing in a week, Marionneau sounds like a bleary-eyed Feist hooked on Mum and Smog.
And speaking of that Canadian-French darling, it turns out there are other Francophone wonders up north. Montreal’s pop-punk and ye ye combo Les Breastfeeders underwire-support their fine, fine moniker with a forthcoming full-length, Les Matins de Grands Soirs (Blow the Fuse), due in February. And then there’s the city’s Les Georges Leningrad, who come to town this week with their third disc, Sangue Puro (Tomlab). Could these irreducibly primitive beats, burly synth drones, and menacing electronic textures really be the sound, the timbre of … too much timber?
Apparently Les Georges Leningrad have rustic roots that no one suspected, in complete contradiction to their press release, according to guitarist and ML-RCC synth tweaker Mingo L’Indien, speaking from Houston and hung over from partying with Quintron the previous night in New Orleans. “Me and Bobo [Boutin], the drummer — we were working in the woods. A timberjack kind of thing, working in the woods for a paper company, and we just notice this girl named Poney [P, vocalist and synth player] who was a secretary there, so one day we do a staff party for big company.”
“This is a very basic story,” he continues charmingly in wood-chipped English. “There’s not too much to say about it. It’s not like the other bands. We are very simple people, just cutting trees and bringing it to the company, and we start a band, and now we are in Houston tonight, and we still working there sometimes.”
Cutting down trees?
“No, we are just in Montreal working on our art, but we do a lot of art about woods and bats and raccoons and bears and mammals because we were in the woods for so long time that we can’t quit this feeling to be a savage, you know.”
“Eli Eli Lamma Sabbacthani” does ride on a kind of tribal chant, though more of Sangue Puro, such as the dark, threatening “Ennio Morricone,” sounds more like toxic aural terror or the “petrochemical rock” their PR touts. Nonetheless, Mingo insists Les Georges Leningrad are simple if art-damaged folk.
“I don’t know how to describe it — this is too new for us,” he demurs. “It is like we eat a big steak and we need to take a walk a little bit to digest it. If you ask me this question in two years, I will be able to answer you, but for us it is like a dream that is not finished.”<\!s>SFBG
LES GEORGES LENINGRAD
Sat/25, 10 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455

MONDAY

-
0

Nov. 20

Music

These Arms Are Snakes

Since their first EP, This Is Meant to Hurt You (Jade Tree), dropped in 2003, it was clear that this band was on some next-level shit. The ante was upped with 2005’s Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home (Jade Tree), with lyrics like this one from “Your Pearly Whites”: “You could have been fine, you could have made it. You could’ve licked the lips of God, but you chose the pavement.” This is like Black Sabbath meets Brainiac. “Crazy Woman Dirty Train” closes out Easter amid malfunctioning computer voices, keyboard shrieks, and the nuthouse screams of an emotional breakdown: hardcore was never meant to be this creative. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

With French Toast, Mouth of the Architect, and Everlovely Lightningheart
7:30 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$10
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

Film

Casino Royale

The latest actor to embody Ian Fleming’s superagent is also maybe the most controversial: Daniel Craig is blond, beefy, and a relative youngster at 38. The blond part is negligible, but the other factors are imperative to GoldenEye director Martin Campbell’s fresh-you-up approach to the Bond template. Craig’s Bond is newly licensed to kill; he’s not quite the suave cat we’ve come to expect, and there are story beats missing (no Q, relatively few wacky gadgets, no Moneypenny). The film actually plays a bit like The Bourne Identity, with some spectacular chase scenes, including one featuring the nimble Sébastien Foucan, cocreator of the building-scaling art of Parkour. (Cheryl Eddy)

In Bay Area theaters

FRIDAY

-
0

Nov. 17

Film

“The Good Old Naughty Days”

Back in the early 1900s people really knew how to film other people having sex. “The Good Old Naughty Days” is a collection of 12 silent black-and-white hardcore porno movies that have been painstakingly restored by the National Cinematheque in France. Don’t let the high art credentials fool you: these are real porn movies; they were originally played in French brothels while customers waited their turns. (Aaron Sankin)

7:15 and 9:15 p.m. through Mon/20 (also Sat/18-Sun/19, 2 and 4 p.m.)
Red Vic Movie House
1727 Haight, SF
$8
(415) 668-3994
www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Music

The Meters

You would be hard-pressed to find a band funkier than the Meters. They even changed their name to the Funky Meters for a while – that’s how funky they are. The Meters took the chaotic, urban funk of James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone and filtered it through the down-home earthy goodness of their hometown, New Orleans. The result is laid-back, groovy music that’s fun without being urgent. These guys have been around for more than 30 years and in that time have left an indelible imprint on everyone from hip-hoppers to jam-banders. (Aaron Sankin)

9 p.m. (also Sat/18)
Fillmore
1805 Geary, SF
$55
(415) 346-6000
www.livenation.com
www.funkymeters.com

Mod couple

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
One of the hottest hip-hop albums of the year comes from the unlikely combination of a six-foot-seven Canadian producer and a New Orleans mother of two. Voice’s Gumbo (Groove Attack) is a testament to the modern modes of production, with the protagonists only recording in the same room twice but nonetheless able to marry beats and rhymes into a vehicle for a rapper who is not only talking loud but saying something.
Toronto’s too-tall Kevin “Moonstarr” Moon has long been known to heads who like their hip-hop with a side of jazz and a chaser of broken beats through his productions for his own Public Transit Recordings as well as remixes for the likes of Recloose and Jazzanova. In spring 2001 he was introduced to Erin “Voice” Tourey through mutual friend Rosina Kazi of LAL (also on Public Transit), with whom Tourey was staying. “I met with her on a Friday, and we just connected. She came by the studio, and I gave her a beat CD. The next day we got together, Saturday afternoon, and she had already written two complete songs to my beats,” Moon remembered with awe over the phone from Toronto. One of those songs ended up on the Scattered Snares compilation released on Twisted Funk, a label run by Marc Mac of 4 Hero, and the other went on Moonstarr’s own Dupont (Public Transit). The pair have been collaborating ever since.
TOTAL FREEDOM
“She’s so versatile — she’ll flip from a rhyme to poetry and back to a rhyme again, so it’s total freedom with her in terms of what you can get away with,” Moon enthused when pressed to explain why he enjoys producing Tourey. “It’s really cool to work with her because you’re not constricted by, like, a straight-up hip-hop snare on every second [beat].” Witness “Guerilla Hustlin’,” in which Moon swings from three kick-drum beats that lurch into the fourth over to snare drums that threaten and stutter with Brazilian flare beneath a trilling flute as Tourey spits, “Wanna know my name, wanna know why I’m on the streets selling beats instead of chasing fame/ Well I’ve always done my own thing, figure people’ll come around on their own term, used to try and push it but I had to live and learn, now I pick and chose when I be concerned.”
“Guerilla Hustlin’” is a rock-solid tune — and it inadvertently captures one of the few ways in which Tourey and Moon view the world differently, as the rhymes tell of struggling to get paid while the production hints at an affection for Baden Powell and isn’t exactly Clear Channel–friendly. When I spoke with Tourey, who patiently answered my questions from her home in New Orleans while her three-year-old and five-month-old played not so patiently in the background, I mentioned that Moon had described his status as an underground producer as “comfortable.” “Obviously, we’re in a situation where we have to sell records, but we’re independent,” Moon said. “We can get away with a hell of a lot more than an artist that’s stuck in a position where their art has to generate revenue for them. We’re in this really comfortable position where we can get away with whatever.”
So does Tourey treasure the same silver lining to not selling too many records that Moon does? “Mmm, no,” Tourey said succinctly. “I love Kevin, but, well, he doesn’t have kids yet. When he starts reproducing, he might feel the burn a little more, like I do. Underground is great in terms of creative control and street credibility and loyal fan bases, but at some point I gotta pay bills. I’m trying to find a middle ground.”
ALL SYSTEMS FLOW
That’s not to say that Tourey has any interest in focusing on cash flow at the expense of mic flow. As a survivor of the cattle calls and series pilots that litter the past of child actors (her father renewed her agent’s contract every year from when she was 5 to 16 — when she shaved her head bald and started winning poetry slams), Tourey shows a marked animosity toward any kind of Hollywood success in her Gumbo rhymes. The rapper — whose recent listening runs from Bilal to Björk — may want to feed her kids, but her rhymes reflect a keen awareness that one day they’ll want more than just the next meal. To quote Tourey in “Total Eclipse,” the most recently written song on the album, “They said I should dumb it down, appeal to my audience, apparently we like our rap with no substance, but then I’m looking out into the crowd, and I’m seeing me, a sea full of honeys quietly thanking me, ’cause we support, and I’m just tryin’ to find a healthy balance, intellect toes the line, introduces a new challenge.”
Despite the distance between their locales, Moon and Tourey come together on Gumbo to serve up an album full of adventurous production and rhymes for the mind, no matter how far that consciousness has to travel. Moon said, “At the end of the day, good food tastes good — wherever you go in the world.” SFBG
VOICE AND MOONSTARR AT SICK AND LOADED
Sat/18, 8 p.m.
Space Gallery
1141 Polk, SF
$10
(415) 377-3325

Fits and housing starts

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
REVIEW There’s a new multistory condo complex rising on a sliver of SoMa between the freeway and the Caltrain tracks. It’s on one of those heretofore undesirable plots that stood vacant for decades, holding their own as a weedy buffer zone between transportation and industry. I wonder if the contractors are using a new high-tech glass that, in the space of a faux bay window, will neutralize the din of traffic. Who’d want to live there?
San Francisco is an urban area, don’t you know. But the way space here is quickly filling in with homes is reflective of a broader condition of (until recently) a healthy real estate market and the resulting sprawl. It’s something I experience when visiting family in unapologetically suburban Southern California. Just outside my old neighborhood, with streets named to invoke the American Revolution — Freedom Drive, Liberty Bell Road — were oak-shaded dry creek beds where I headed for adolescent escapes. Those once-wooded areas have been shaped into fields of roomy new houses in an unspecific Mediterranean stucco style. The arteries there are named after trees — Spruce Drive, Cedar Lane — that I don’t recall being indigenous. Is it progress or loss?
California denizens cannot avoid the quandaries of safe, “affordable” homes and the problematic environmental effects of building auto-centric communities far from any sort of civic center. The state then makes a fitting geographical framing device for a small but notable exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art. “Suburban Escape: The Art of California Sprawl” brings together a couple dozen artists who picture a half century of development in photographs, painting, video, and sculpture, revealing the allure and shortcomings of suburbia.
While compact and high density rather than sprawling and homogenous, “Suburban Escape” manages to address numerous social and cultural concerns, the first of which is the literal, almost sculptural creation of suburbs. At the start curator Ann Wolfe shows us distant views of cookie-cutter homes. The first piece is William Garnett’s grid of six black-and-white aerial photographs documenting the 1950 construction of the Lakewood, a Southern California community that from above looks like fields of housing starts that sprouted into a grid of cubelike buildings. They’re a perfect complement to Robert Isaacs’s 1968 photograph Ticky Tacky Houses in Daly City, an equally geometric composition that inspires waves of comfort and revulsion. The uniformity looks appealingly orderly from a distance, but the idea of living in houses so similar and close together is another concern altogether, something fraught with unsustainable foundations, not to mention nosy neighbors.
RUDE VIBRATIONS
Suburbia is rife with ambivalent vibes, and they are noted throughout the show. Bill Owens’s photo of a Fourth of July block party expresses a cul-de-sac comfort zone and clean, new neighborliness. And yet, the picture also conveys the psychic isolation of spacious lots. Just one photo from Owens’s 1970s-era Suburbia series isn’t enough to convey his vision, although this picture speaks volumes.
Mimicking the physical structure of housing tracts, a number of the artists work in series. Freshly Painted Houses, a grid of small 1991 color photos by Jeff Brouws, shows the Daly City neighborhood where the artist grew up during the 1960s. The cheerful exterior schemes reflect the influx of Asian American immigrants who, the artist states in the exhibition catalog (which includes an expanded, more convincing range of works than the museum presentation), painted their houses in more vibrant colors than did most of “middle class mainstream America.” The piece adds a welcome layer of social context to architecturally insignificant structures.
DECONSTRUCTION ZONES
John Divola’s provocative series Los Angeles International Airport Noise Abatement Zone, House Removal Grid, Present (1975, 2005) is one of those frighteningly irresistible before-and-after projects. It shows a collection of doomed dwellings that were in the sonic path of LAX and the empty lots after the buildings were razed. Shot in a relatively short time span in the 1970s and printed only recently, the pairings suggest the aftermath of a smart bomb that vaporizes only stucco-faced structures. All that remains are a flat landscape, stoic palm and cypress trees, and the occasional pathway to a nonexistent front door. Next to these, Free House (2003), an acrylic work by Deborah Oropallo, addresses the surprising disposability of suburban buildings with images of boarded-up toy houses — literal model homes — inspired by Berkeley structures that were worth less than the land they were erected on.
That same cheap, serial construction of houses is noted in Mark Campbell’s sculpture Maximum Density (2000), a low platform covered with hundreds of tiny honey-hued rubber homes. At once seemingly organically formed and a highly constructed board game, Campbell’s project is difficult not to touch yet equally difficult to reconcile. Similarly, Destroyed Houses (1999–2004), a series of 30 collage paintings by Jeff Gillette, is a gleeful deconstruction of real estate advertisements set against bucolic landscapes. Like a willful child pulling wings off flies, the artist here has devious fun destroying unaffordable homes — and the pervasive dream of owning one.SFBG
SUBURBAN ESCAPE: THE ART OF CALIFORNIA SPRAWL
Through March 4, 2007
San Jose Museum of Art
110 S. Market, San Jose
Tues.–Sun., 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
$5–$8
(408) 294-2787
www.sjmusart.org

Eau joy

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Massive wood phalli. Steaming pits of gooey geothermal activity paired with shameful cages of sulky, muttonchopped Japanese monkeys. (No wonder their bottoms are red.) Fingers going pleasantly numb after noshing on fugu innards sashimi. That’s the salty floating world of old-school onsen (hot springs) life in Japan — as experienced by yours truly earlier this month.
The GOP got a well-deserved scrubbing while I was gently simmering in soupy milk-blue water at Myoban Onsen in the hills above Beppu, down south on hard-drinking Kyushu island in Japan. My kindred lady bathers sneak discreet glances at each other’s invariably saggy, soggy, well-brined flesh — appearances by the blinged-out, booted fashion-damaged dolls more common to Gwen Stefani vids and Tokyo and Osaka streets are almost nil at these OG public soakathons, though you do get the occasional yakuza, singing soulfully postbath. “Drunk!” okasan, a.k.a. my mother, hisses with disapproval. Signs of those bad boys’ continuing patronage abound: even our Osaka Hyatt’s fitness center and spa boasts a sign forbidding the excessively drunk or abundantly tattooed. We tell the attendant that we probably won’t be making the cut.
The art of onsen bathing goes a little like this: Scuttle out of the changing room starkers — locker key secured with a rubber bracelet around the wrist. Hustle to a free station — equipped with stool, wash tub, faucet, and handheld showerhead — to soap and rinse off offending personal filth. Then waddle over to the big, boiling communal tub — either mineral salted au naturel, Jacuzzi driven, or hotter than hell, as it was at the Meiji-era Takegawara Onsen in Beppu. Sink down to your neck. Sigh deeply. Sweat. Cook until just past al dente so that your muscles begin to resemble the hot noodles you suck down at the standing-room-only ramen stands on most train station platforms. Chase with a cold Sapporo.
Few Kansai and Kyushu wanderers are searching for pop culture kicks in Beppu — there’s a dank air of slightly seedy sadness lapping round the edges of the onsen town’s arcades of shuttered shops and windowless hostess bars. We suck down eggs, coffee, and custards cooked in or with the mineral water at the unbathable geothermal hot spots, otherwise known as jigokus, or hells. These tourist traps have been given a halfhearted theme-park treatment: bright red demonic statues overlook belching pits of steam, crocodiles pile in too-crowded concrete pens, and a miserable-looking crane parades psychotically in a barely big enough cage. It’s best to head into the bamboo thickets and green wilderness, toward smaller towns like Usuki, a few train stops away. The small town is graced by 10th-century stone Buddha images, delectable bird tempura at Kokoro Club, and Furen Limestone Cave, a less-traveled national monument fanged with gorgeous, eerie massive white stalactites that shame those in The Descent.
The clubs in Fukuoka are said to be just as surreally scary — eating live critters (odorigui, or “dancing-eating”) is apparently quite the height of nightlife derring-do. But instead, I ended up at the promenades of Hiroshima, near the extremely moving Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. Teenagers in spiky mullets, trailing goth getups, and trendy ethno-hippie rags commune for grub like superspicy eggplant, enoki mushroom, and sausage curry. If it gets overwhelming, duck into a virtual escape hatch like Media Center Popeye, where you can rent a cubicle and gorge on games, DVDs, Web surfing, manga, and junk food till the morning. Those nostalgic for Tower Records can stop into one of the chain’s Japanese holdouts — on the top floor of the Parco department store next to an ass-kicking musical instrument emporium. Your one-stop shop for starting your own mind-blowing Japanese band?
I’d find my inspiration in OOIOO, Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-we’s all-XX-chromosomal foursome. The Osaka-area faux-turned-real group’s latest Thrill Jockey full-length, Taiga, is a stunner, a major flutter forward from last year’s Gold and Green (no surprise, since the latter was actually recorded in, oh my, ’00). Bookended by the primal drum chants of “UMA” and “UMO,” Taiga (Japanese for “big river”) mixes the pervasive percussion of Ai and guests Yo2ro Tatekawa and Thiam Misato — so reminiscent of the taiko beat of Japanese folk festivals — with P-we’s animal yowls and womanly harmonies. Out folkies might take note of the stinging guitar lines of Kayan, the steel-pan dementia of guest Tonchi, and the skillfully applied electronic gloss and mechanistic punctuation — at times miming the blistering peal coming from pachinko parlors, at others rhyming with the drone of train bells. Like a swift current, the mix powers past poppier releases like Feather Float (Birdman, 2001) and creates a specific aural space just as so many J-psych combos do, according to Paul Collett in Japanese Independent Music (Sonore). Theirs is a streaming, sexy binary realm that’s both drastically organic and wholly synthetic. You’re soaking in it. SFBG
IRASSHAI! OTHER RECENT JAPANESE RELEASES
ENVY, INSOMNIAC DOZE (TEMPORARY RESIDENCE)
An early ’90s hardcore act goes the moody, slow-boil route of Mogwai and Isis, with vague invocations of Jade Tree combos — and screaming vocals in Nipponese.
SOLAR ANUS, SKULL ALCOHOLIC: THE COMPLETE SOLAR (TUMULT)
One of the best band names — no buts about it. Released by Aquarius Records’ Andee Connor, this twofer retrospective clobbers with slabs of metallic Mudhoney-raving-on-rat-poison groovitude.
SUISHOU NO FUNE, WHERE THE SPIRITS ARE (HOLY MOUNTAIN)
If you missed the Tokyo group’s Oct. 19 Bottom of the Hill date, you can catch this recording by femme guitarist Pirako Kurenai and masculine ax-swinger Kageo, which had us wracked by Keiji Haino flashbacks.
SUNN O))) AND BORIS, ALTAR (SOUTHERN LORD)
Tokyo’s heavies bump throbbing uglies with Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, along with the Melvins’ Joe Preston and other guests, and slow things way, way, way down.

Dogmeat, Nazi Hillbillies from Paraguay, and The End of Time: The Vice Guide to Travel Makes Rick Steves Look Like a Big Pussy

-
0

Provocative intern Justin Juul weighs in with a seethingly envious assessment of the latest creation belched forth from the land of Vice:

viceguide2.jpg

I wish I had more hands — and the ability to lie through my teeth — so I could give this travel DVD from Vice magazine four thumbs down. These jerk-offs are just too much, man. First they took a crappy Canadian ‘zine and turned it into a pop-culture phenomenon, and then, instead of selling out to the highest bidder, they reinvested their money into other creative outlets. They now have a monopoly on “cool,” with a record label, clothing line, and flawlessly designed website constantly reminding the rest of us how uncool we are in comparison. As if all this weren’t enough, the founders of the Vice empire have recently decided to change their image completely. Their publication, once easily ridiculed as a tragically hip fashion catalog masquerading as a subversive youth culture magazine, has suddenly morphed into a monthly ethnographic study of obscure subcultures with art, music, and fashion coverage thrown in as an afterthought. Those Vice fuckers are always one step ahead of the rest of us — and for that they suck — but put your jealousy aside and check out their newest venture.

“When it comes to herb, you gotta set some standards in your life.”

-
0

stoners1.gif

Tomorrow night at the Parkway Theater — local writer-director Kevin Hahn premieres his new film Stoner’s Run. Judging by the cover art (below), I assumed it was gonna be in the grand tradition of Up in Smoke or Half-Baked, which is to say, a pot comedy all the way. I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler to tell you that the giant joint never actually makes an appearance.

stonerbox.jpg

Daring Darin Klein – and that Thing

-
0

Before I ever met Darin Klein I used to see him: this cute-hot, friendly-looking, tall skinny guy with eyeliner and tattoos who’d show up and have fun at Q-Tip (Queers Together in Punkness) events back when the Epicenter by 16th and Valencia still existed. Then, as years went by, I’d hear about him: one friend would talk about something Darin had made for her, another about an event Darin put together. Sometime around 2000, Darin threw a one-night show of book arts at New College, and that’s when I knew for sure he did awesome things. Others definitely agree, because some people who took part in that largely buck-for-a-book party have gone on to sell works for hundreds or thousands of dollars (or sell thousands of works).

penisart1.tif
(Friendly Skies by Young Chung, from Darin Klein’s book/box compilation Exes Editions: Relationships I’ve been in usually ended with a break-up).

Now that I’ve had a few chances to hang out with him, I can say for sure that I admire the damn funny, unpretentious, and whip smart Darin Klein. No one has better stories about mistaking Gwen Stefani for a drag queen or attempting to give Kenneth Anger customer service. He lives in LA now, so I recently emailed him about some of his video curating and book projects, including his most recent compilation, the staple-bound penis art collection Thing.

Goldies Music winner Traxamillion

sfbgarchive
-
0
Goldies Music winner Traxamillion

When I met Traxamillion, the young producer-rapper was in the lab with Balance, recording a faithful cover of EPMD’s “You’re a Customer” for a Mind Motion mixtape. Naturally, I would have preferred seeing Trax record an original, but watching him vibe to a classic was perhaps more revelatory. Where many producers insist on their isolation from outside influences, Trax is an unapologetic lover of music.
“Everybody’s a fan,” the musician, born in East Orange, NJ, and raised in San Jose, points out. “Somebody inspired somebody to make a beat, to rap. That’s how I go about my beats. I listen to shit. I get inspired. I appreciate it and harness and learn from it. I’ve always tried to mimic what’s going on, on the radio.”
Despite this unpretentious attitude toward his art, Traxamillion has developed a highly original sound of his own — bright, downright cheerful noises animate his eminently danceable grooves — and he’s already earned a place in Bay Area rap history. In June 2005 he topped the local rap charts as producer of Keak Da Sneak’s infectious independent single “Super Hyphy” (Rah), proving the Yay could hang in the mix with big-label megastars while opening up the airwaves to a long-suppressed flood of local talent.
“The beat was inspired by the youngstas,” Traxamillion says. “My little cousins came through drunk, wildin’ out on a birthday, and started dancin’. I was paying attention to their movements, thinking, ‘I gotta make some music for these cats,’ because the youngstas are really the hyphy movement. When I was making the beat, I was replaying their dancin’ in my head, and ‘Super Hyphy’ came out an hour and a half later.”
Knowing he had a hit on his hands, Trax shot the beat at Keak, who reportedly wrote the song in one session during a drive home from Tahoe. Within a few weeks “Super Hyphy” was all over the radio.
“It took two months to get to number one [on KMEL’s list of most requested tracks in June 2005],” Trax recalls. “But it was fresh, and Keak’s so abstract when he comes with something — people are fiendin’ for it. People loved it, and it still slaps to this day. It’s a big club anthem in the Bay.”
“It was weird because it was my first time on the radio, period, as a producer,” Trax says. “I was, like, ‘Man, this is crazy — all these people are going crazy to my song. This is my shit I made in my mother’s bedroom.’ I be at the club, watching everybody at the peak of the song when they would run it back like three or four times, going, ‘God-damn!’ Nobody knew it was me.”
If Traxamillion’s name wasn’t ringing bells, “Super Hyphy” was, and in short order he was working with the Team, whose “Just Go” earned the producer further spins. But when he returned to the local number one slot on KMEL’s most requested tracks in December 2005, producing “Getz Ya Grown Man On” for East Palo Alto’s then-unknown Dem Hoodstarz, Trax proved his success with Keak was no fluke. The remix — with guests Mistah FAB, San Quinn, Clyde Carson, and Turf Talk — has even picked up national airplay and features prominently on Dem Hoodstarz’s Band-Aide and Scoot (SMC) as well as Trax’s own The Slapp Addict (Slapp Addict). “The Slapp Addict is the soundtrack to the hyphy movement,” Trax says of the album. Its single-producer, multirapper format has earned it a reputation as a Bay Area Chronic. “It’s basically a Who’s Who of the Bay, produced by me. After ‘Grown Man,’ I was superhot. People were, like, ‘I want to work with you.’ In turn, everybody did songs for me, ’cause game recognize game. Damn near a year’s worth of creativity went into that album.”
In addition to spawning singles like “The Sideshow” (Too Short and FAB) and “Wakin’ ’Em Up” (Turf Talk and Hoodstarz), Slapp Addict has spun off another huge hit collaboration with Keak. “On Citas” demonstrates the producer’s special rapport with the Bay’s hottest rapper.
“When me and Keak get together, we make hits,” Trax says. “When I first met Keak, he told me, ‘Man, your beats and my voice — it’s a marriage.’ Ain’t nothin’ I’m doin’ or nothin’ he doin’ — it’s just his shit plus my shit equals hits.” (Garrett Caples)

Goldies Visual Art winner Chris Duncan

-
0

Artist Chris Duncan came to Northern California for the Tahoe powder — and to get away from his routine in Delaware and his native New Jersey of catching hardcore shows every weekend and doing absolutely nothing else with his life. Duncan recalls he and a friend “snowboarded for a season, and it was rad and it was horrible at the same time. Every night it was the same party with the same 40 guys and three girls, so I started to stay in and draw.”
Since then, that need to draw a line between the fun but perhaps meaningless life of nightly parties and his own creative urges has led Duncan to San Francisco, where he moved in 1996 and spent the next years working, skateboarding, and attending California College of the Arts, where he began to find direction, to chart his own personal map to the color theory of Mark Rothko and Josef Albers, and to dip into sacred geometry, string theory, Eastern philosophies, and increasingly, simple nonfigurative forms. In his current work temporal strings converge, intersect, and radiate above needle-nose pyramids, shooting off across ceilings and traversing rooms. Flat works are stitched with ragged stars or painted with dark rays that explode above kaleidoscopic ziggurats.
“For me, it’s about dealing with being fully overwhelmed by humans, to be perfectly honest,” confesses Duncan, 32, kicking back in his tidy wood box of an Oakland studio, off the downtown-area railroad tracks. Dressed head to toe in black, tattoos crawling up his neck and down his arms to hands that jerk to punctuate a point, the artist is far from slick, but he exudes an amiable earnestness raving about his young daughter, Aya-mea Mourning. “I’m also completely amazed by people. People are fantastic and can do such great things. Look how far we’ve come — and the mirror image of that is look at what we’ve done.”
What has Duncan done? Perhaps he’s captured the zeitgeist, one that’s both physical and ethereal, give or take a planet. His SF gallerist Gregory Lind says, “Chris Duncan’s laboriously rendered works on paper and his intricate string sculptures seek to combine the spiritual with the scientific, which is compelling to me in this kind of dark period we find ourselves in today.”
Whether the artist’s pieces trace strings of energy or ecstatic explosions in some acid-laced map room, he’s found a way to tap some sort of fuel source for his numerous projects, including his striking grab bag of an art zine, Hot and Cold, in which he and Griffin McPartland showcase artists like Matt O’Brien, Chris Pew, and Jen Smith. They took a page from their own periodical to produce a catalog for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ 2005 exhibit “The Zine UnBound: Kults, Werewolves and Sarcastic Hippies.” Duncan has also curated exhibits as part of Keepsake Society, a site he maintains with ex-girlfriend Aki Raymer, and he is editing an anthology of “my first punk show” stories for AK Press.
“When I got older and found art making, I found a spot to do the things I saw happening as a teenager, with what all my friends were doing,” he says. “I began making zines and started curating, and in terms of how active and how DIY everything was in that [East Coast hardcore] scene, I found a place to put that to use when I got a little older. And this is the perfect city for that — there are so many examples of people doing it. It’s a nice blanket to be under.”
And speaking of blankets: Duncan will be stitching together a cosmic ray–embellished quilt of sorts in memory of his recently deceased 99-year-old great-grandmother for his forthcoming show at Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York City. Much like a handmade, toy- and goodie-bundled, affordable and accessible limited-edition art zine, the project embodies an aesthetic Duncan embraces. “We just totally outdo the last thing we did and totally overwhelm people. Things don’t exist like that anymore,” explains the artist. “Everything’s so not made by hand and so not giving in a way. I think with a little energy you can give a lot, and I think that’s really important.” (Kimberly Chun)

Goldies Visual Art winner Yoon Lee

-
0

A good photograph captures an instant of life within a fraction of city space. The oft-awesome paintings of Yoon Lee — on display earlier this year in a solo show at the Luggage Store — condense seconds, days, and weeks of urban life into images of striking movement and color. Blurs from passing cars; a person glimpsed from the corner of one’s eye; the liquid shifts of Vampire Princess Miyu anime dreamscapes on a TV screen — these are a few of the everyday materials within Lee’s alchemy. Glimpsed as scaled-down versions on a computer screen, her pieces seem purely digital or neo-geo, but in person there is no doubt that her paintings are the result of a lengthy, meditative, and labor-intensive process.
“I know some artists who take a whole year to produce one piece, and I’m not up to that point,” Lee says over hot drinks at Farley’s on Potrero Hill. Her comic strip T-shirt and black leather motorcycle jacket reflect the mix of commercial color and rougher, real-life currents within her paintings. “My 8-feet-by-20-feet scale works usually take about six months. I start gathering images in my head and take photos. I make little sketches. I take things from comic books, newspapers, anything — I’m just an image scavenger.”
From there, Lee uses Illustrator or Photoshop to play with images and forms. “I use it as a mixing board to bring everything together and then edit, real fast,” she says, adding with a laugh, “in the old days you had to use canary paper and transparencies, then mess up and start all over again.” Actually, Lee’s “real fast” edits can last a month or two, but they are indeed quick in comparison to her painting process, a complex, kinetic, and at times astonishingly layered use of Golden acrylics. It’s there that she transmutes her gadget-fiend tendencies and love of shiny plastics into work that swirls with fierce ambivalence about those aspects of modern life and more.
For Lee, the frustration that comes from trying to translate computer compositions into flesh-and-blood paintings isn’t just worthwhile — it’s exactly what she’s seeking. “Sometimes I have to really invent a new process,” she says. “Every time I do a piece there’s something completely different I have to introduce or change so I can produce an effect that’s similar to the original sketch.” That kind of challenge has led Lee through many areas of study (philosophy and computer science, to name two) and fields of employment (she’s sold cars), though all the while she’s never lost focus on painting.
Someday a writer might explore and explain why op art has played such a major role in San Francisco art at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Though Lee is part of an upcoming exhibition of San Francisco artists in Leipzig, Germany, curated by “Pierogi” Joe Amrhein, it’s debatable whether she is even influenced by the legacy of Sol LeWitt — or has a kinship with the LeWitt-loving Mission School artists who favor certain rainbow gradations. If her work shares some of their color schemes, its scale and sense of movement explode into a realm apart from the smaller cubic formations and prisms associated with recent Bay Area art. A casual viewer might note as much action as in a Jackson Pollock painting, a kid on the street might recognize an accidental kinship with graffiti. The artist herself names Julie Mehretu and Benjamin Edwards as partial guides.
Lee’s art is slick — but only in a literal sense. To put it another, more paradoxical way, her paintings are deceptively slick on the surface. Beneath the attractive gloss, that shininess that she enjoys and wants to share, are layers that you can get lost in — that is, when you aren’t arrested by the intensity of her observation. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Goldies Visual Art winner Tim Sullivan

-
0

In his most recent San Francisco exhibition, at the cozy Little Tree Gallery in the Mission, Tim Sullivan managed to reanimate the late blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield. Mind you, he did it with a low-tech visual effect — a full-color glossy of the actress attached to a flat-screen monitor, a shifting blue sky visible through little almond-shaped slits in the eyes of the photograph. But the mixture of sublime pop (the elaborate media construct of Mansfield) with an almost metaphysical art reference is a key movement in Sullivan’s appealing photography, video, and sculpture. His work is an enticing combination of funky but effective tricks, sophisticated references, and an appreciation of comedic white-trash aesthetics.
Sullivan’s work often contains gracious nods to other artists. He’s made a hilariously perverse video-sculpture homage to Bruce Nauman’s mid-1960s Self-Portrait as a Fountain and devoted an entire exhibition at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery to the influential Dutch-born conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who toyed with a sad-sack persona and disappeared mysteriously while attempting to cross the Atlantic alone in a 13-foot boat. Sullivan, a striking figure with pale blond hair and dark horn-rim glasses, often appears in his own work, using self-portraiture to tangentially channel his artistic forebears. While there may be something postmodern about this strategy, you don’t have to know about contemporary art history to be captivated by his visual magic. For instance, you need only know about the 1960s-style power of Herb Alpert to appreciate Sullivan’s remake of the classic Whipped Cream and Other Delights album cover. Sullivan plays the babe, slathered in foam.
He’s also made a life-size horizontal photograph of himself seemingly levitating just above the floor against a backdrop of fabulously chintzy flecked wallpaper. It’s in lush color — the artist wears a crimson T-shirt, a color he favors, perhaps for its theatricality. The image appears at a key spot in an opening gallery in the California Biennial, a timely survey of 31 West Coast artists organized by the Orange County Museum of Art (through Dec. 31), and it’s had the effect of giving Sullivan, a San Francisco Art Institute grad, wider recognition — he reports that he sold out an edition of the photograph, and he doesn’t even have gallery representation. He was singled out in the Los Angeles Times’ review of the show, which dubbed him a purveyor of high-spirited “do-it-yourself special effects art.”
The OC show also includes a hilarious video called Magic Carpet Ride, a piece made at a Fisherman’s Wharf souvenir stand. In it Sullivan and his former teacher, the filmmaker (and Goldie Lifetime Achievement winner) George Kuchar, cavort on a roller coaster gondola. The pair exude goofball charm as they whiz over the Golden Gate Bridge past friendly drag queens. Kuchar is an instructive reference, as Sullivan also seems to dream in Technicolor. They also collaborated on a theatricalized reenactment of Chris Burden’s Shoot, the politicized 1971 gallery performance in which the Southern California conceptualist artist was shot in the arm with a pistol. The Sullivan-Kuchar version is set against an amber-hued commercial photomural of a tropical sunset. As a child of the Midwest, Sullivan expresses a continuing appreciation for and bemusement with the California dream. In another recent piece, he’s made fluorescent matchbooks emblazoned with regionally significant incendiary song titles, “California Dreaming” and “Running with the Devil” among them. This guy’s on fire. (Glen Helfand)

Goldies Theatre winner Last Planet Theatre

-
0

Offensive. Repugnant. Sick. Few theater directors enjoy hearing these words from patrons, especially as they’re bolting up the aisle ahead of the first-act curtain. Then again, for some there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing you’re still on track.
“The audiences are getting bigger,” notes Last Planet Theatre’s artistic director, John R. Wilkins. “Sometimes they hate it and walk out. They aren’t walking out, out of boredom. They’re walking out because it’s too much.”
That’s all right with him, provided what offends is delivered with artistic skill, vision, and honesty. “It’s not a lie that a 14-year-old rape victim, a retarded girl, should fall in love with a 45-year-old man who rapes her in diarrhea sex,” he muses. “I mean, it takes a lot to portray, but it doesn’t take a lot to imagine [the humanity of these characters]. You can say Seth [the 45-year-old in Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Farmyard] is corrupt. And he is — he’s wrong. But he’s going for it. Like the woman in [Howard Brenton’s] Sore Throats. To me, that’s just exactly perfect. Go and burn all the money, go out and destroy yourself — either live or destroy yourself. In the realm of art, that’s great.”
Not every production from Last Planet merits a walkout. But without fail every Last Planet production is an attempt to take the audience beyond the expected, the usual, the safe, and the prepackaged.
To that extent, Last Planet has been proudly offending audiences since 1998 — the year husband and wife John and Kimball Wilkins shelved their new Berkeley PhDs in English to pursue what they privately concede was a madcap dream of founding a theater company. The company has been in its own 80-seat theater since 2004 and comprises a small group of committed collaborators — including longtime associates Paul Rasmussen and Andrew Jones, the core of the company’s outstanding production team. Its productions of highly literary and brazenly theatrical work by the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Matthew Maguire, Michael McClure, Wallace Shawn, Howard Barker, and Ronald Ribman have less to do with a narrow sense of authenticity or realism than a commitment to exploring all you might be capable of feeling and thinking inside a theater. Along the way Last Planet presents an invariably bold and imaginative theatrical vision that’s in a refreshingly distinct orbit of its own.
“It has to be beautiful and confrontational,” John says, explaining the qualities that attract the company to a given work. “Those are some of the things we look for: sheer beauty and sheer brutality at the same time.”
Kimball pinpoints another crucial theme: “The logic or vision of the play has to believe more deeply in experience — the mystery of experience and the possibility of experience — than a particular idea, let alone an ideology. There’s something about the strength of experience in the plays that’s always an attraction.”
“We just see so many plays which are like copycats of television or copycats of movies,” John says. “They aren’t theatrical. They don’t have any theatrical models. Or if they do, they’re horribly content. You don’t get the type of nuts like Howard Barker or Howard Brenton and [Anthony] Neilson and Kroetz, who are just nutty to destroy the form that they love.”
“It’s a creative destruction,” Kimball says.
“Yeah, a creative destructive force,” John agrees. “So you’re sitting there thinking, can we match it? Pulling tricks on [the audience] — theatrical tricks are fine, but go right at them and try to grab them, shake them up and not let them loose and not let it be easy.”
“That’s not to say that it shouldn’t be enjoyable,” he adds with a laugh. “We don’t want to be avant-garde nuts. It should be an absolutely enjoyable experience. But given that, [it] should destroy people.” (Robert Avila)

1...196197198...206Page 197 of 206

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org