Hip-hop

New Years Eve Parties 2008

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Here’s some rockin’ bottle-pops for your 2k9 hello — followed by some all night dance affairs ….

BUTTHOLE SURFERS


One of the best parts of reading Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life (Little, Brown, 2001) is learning how psychotic the Butthole Surfers actually were. Whether filling an upside-down cymbal with lighter fluid and igniting and playing it or projecting scary-ass surgery footage onto huge smoke machine-generated clouds to terrorize the audience, the Buttholes clearly intended to have everyone walk away from shows with physical or mental wounds congruent to their own self-inflicted ones. By the time Electric Larryland (Capitol, 1996) gave them access to post-Nevermind commercial radio, the Butthole Surfers had transformed into a run-of-the-mill heavy rock unit, saving their perverseness for their lyrics.

But all’s you need to do is backtrack to Locust Abortion Technician (Touch and Go, 1987) to find the group’s secret reverence for classic rock juxtaposed with a not-so-secret love of tripping balls on tracks like the genuinely disturbing "22 Going on 23" and imagine that there was a time when the Butthole Surfers toured with a naked dancer named Ta-Da the Shit Lady but managed to devote enough energy to the whole "music" side of being a band to write something as enduring as the proto-grunge of "Human Cannonball." The group’s more recent output isn’t good, and it goes without saying that the ‘Urfers will never be able to equal the antics of their past. This one is a mixed bag, but I’m guessing that, while Gibby Haynes won’t be regaling us with tales of Chinese men with worms in their urethras, he won’t pull any cutesy "you are loved" Flaming Lips bullshit, either. (Brandon Bussolini)

With Negativland. Dec. 31, 9 p.m., $55. (Also with Fuckemos, Tues/30, 8 p.m., $35). Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF. (415) 346-6000, www.livenation.com

GEORGE CLINTON AND PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC


"Bow-wow-wow-yippee-yo-yippee-yeh." That was the "Atomic Dog" mantra back in the day when I worked at a mega-music store for minimum wage: it kept us tame, it soothed our frayed nerves, and it never failed to remind all concerned that there was a little dog in me, you, and everybody. Hell, if "Atomic Dog" mastermind George Clinton stopped with just Funkadelic’s Free Your Mind … and Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain (both Westbound, 1970, 1971) many a fan boy and babe would have been satisfied to sing his praises forever more, but nooo, the musical groundbreaker and funk-rock-R&B OG of a dogfather has had more creative lives than a nuclear feline — a good and bad thing, I suppose, in terms of quality control.

Later, I would come to associate Clinton with a tale divulged by a colleague who was once allowed into the icon’s smokin’ sanctum sanctorum — namely a venue bathroom — to, ah, do an interview. This time, however, when the man brings Parliament-Funkadelic to the Warfield for New Year’s Eve, I’ll expect candidate Clinton — settling into his golden years, it appears, with the recent release of his covers album, George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love (Shanachie) — to tear the roof off with a super-stupid rendition of his prescient par-tay anthem "Paint the White House Black." (Kimberly Chun)

With the Greyboy Allstars. Dec. 31, 9 p.m., $79–$89. Warfield, 982 Market, SF. (415) 421-TIXS, www.goldenvoice.com

FANTÔMAS


For all those who don’t want to spend their New Year’s Eves puttin’ the lime in the coconut and twistin’ it all up, General Patton has got you covered. Patton and the melodicidal miscreants of avant-garde metal quartet Fantômas invade the Great American Music Hall on a mission to decimate eardrums and bring aural beasts to life. The San Francisco supergroup — which includes Buzz Osborne of the Melvins, Trevor Dunn, formerly of Mr. Bungle, and Dave Lomabardo of Slayer — formed in 1988, and is Patton’s longest-running project. The resume of the king of musical ADHD reads like an major-indie label discography, but the workaholic always finds time to confound and bludgeon with Fantômas.

The group’s beauty lies in its ravenous experimentation and intensity — and in Osborne’s Don King hair. Over the course of their four LPs, they’ve mix electronic glitches; nonsensical and horrifying utterings; Lombardo’s mind-boggling drum dexterity, which roves from blastbeats to technical jazz; and King Buzzo’s gigantic sludge riffs to create controlled chaos in its most primitive, powerful form. They’ve covered The Godfather (1972), worked with free-jazz sicko John Zorn, and, most of all, done whatever they fucking wanted to. As long as they keep doing that, we’ll keep listening. (Daniel N. Alvarez)

Fantômas’ "The Director’s Cut" with Tipsy and Zach Hill. Dec. 31, 8 p.m., $45. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Here’s a very select blast of bubbly, DJ-driven New Years Eve parties. (Check the Guardian for more as the date approaches.) All events take place Wednesday, Dec. 31 — and those marked "late" go afterhours for your party-hopping pleasure.

Afrolicious


Feel a warm, wet vibe of the new with DJ Sabo of Sol Selectas, residents Pleasuremaker and Señor Oz, live percussionists, and hundreds of gyrating lovelies.

10 p.m., $20. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF. www.elbo.com

Bootie Pirate Party


Arrrr — it’s 2k9! Swing from the mashup club’s mizzenmast with Smash-Up Derby live and DJs Adrian and Mysterious D, Party Ben, Dada, and Earworm.

9 p.m.–late, $25 advance. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.bootiesf.com

Booty Call NYE


Drag mother Juanita More, playboy Joshua J., DJ Initials P.B., performer Hoku Mama Swamp, and star photographer Brandon — look smart! — bring all the hot boys together to pop a few corks.

8:30 p.m., Check Web site for price. The Bar, 456 Castro, SF. www.juanitamore.com

Eclectic Fever Masquerade


Shake your feathers and bhangra in the new with the NonStop Bhangra dance troupe, and then get global with Sila and the Afrofunk Experience, Daronda, and DJ Felina.

9 p.m.–late, $55. Gift Center Pavilion, 888 Brannan, SF. www.eclecticfever.com

Imagine


Spundae and Mixed Elements explode with local house heroes Kaskade, Trevor Simpson, and baLi — plus, a jungle room and "shiny confetti rain."

8 p.m., $60 advance. Ruby Skye, 420 Mason, SF. www.rubyskye.com

Love Unlimited


Almost every fab disco crew — Gemini Disco, DJ Bus Station John, Honey Soundsystem, Ferrari, Beat Electric — comes together for this all-night beat blast with DJ Cosmo Vitelli.

9 p.m., $15 advance. Paradise Lounge, 308 11th St., SF. www.myspace.com/honeysoundsystem

Midnight


Dancehall, reggae, and classic hip-hop go boom with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, Amp Live of Zion I live band Native Elements, Trackademicks, and Jah Warrior Shelter.

9 p.m.–late, $25 advance. Club Six, 60 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

New Years’ Revolution


Banger, turbocrunk, and electro freaks unite under the sheer speaker-blowing awesomeness of Diplo, Jesse Rose, Ghislain Poirier, Plastician, and hundreds more.

9 p.m.–late, $55 advance. 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com

Opel: Fire and Light


Wacky, burner-flavored breaks and bass from special guest DJs Lee Coombs and Blende, plus Mephisto Odyssey, Syd Gris + Aaron Jae, Jive, and more from the Opel crew.

9 p.m.–late, $25–<\d>$55. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.opelproductions.com

Reveal


"Reveal your inner light" is the dress code at this glamorous Supperclub affair, with DJ love from Ellen Ferato, Liam Shy, and Michael Anthony — and tons of performers.

8 p.m.–late, $120. Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF. www.supperclub.com

Sea of Dreams


The immense extravaganza is back, with a full live show by Thievery Corporation, beats whiz Bassnectar, circus stars The Mutaytor, and Brazilian soulsters Boca Do Rio.

9 p.m.–late, $79 advance. Concourse, 635 Eighth St., SF. www.blasthaus.com

Second Sunday NYE


The summer favorite lights up in winter with this special blowout, featuring Chi-Town house god DJ Derrick Carter, local legend DJ Dan, Jay Tripwire, and Sen-Sei.

8 p.m., $40 advance. Mission Rock Cafe, 817 Terry Francois Blvd., SF. www.2ndsunday.com

Temple NYE


Cryogenic fog! Whirling lasers! Sonic Enlightenment! "Optix stimuli!" Oh, and a host of rockin’ techno DJs like Paul Hemming, IQ!, and Ben Tom bring the party knowledge to Temple.

9 p.m., $80. Temple, 540 Howard, SF. www.templesf.com

Storyville NYE


Poleng Lounge shoots back to its past incarnation with a jazzy house and hip-hop extravaganza. DJs Lady Alma, Mark De Clive Lowe, and Daz-I-Kue take you there.

9 p.m., $25 advance. Poleng Lounge, 1751 Fulton, SF. www.polenglounge.com

Scene: Bersa Discos hits the bueno

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Here’s an interview with new-cumbia whizzes Bersa Discos — on the eve of their party Tormenta Tropical’s first anniversary this Friday at the The Elbo Room — as published in this week’s Scene: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour magazine, on stands inside the Guardian…

“The reception to our sound has been amazing here,” says new-style cumbia pioneer DJ Oro11 — who, along with partner DJ Disco Shawn, heads the Bersa Discos label (www.myspace.com/bersadiscos) and puts on the packed Tormenta Tropical monthlies at Elbo Room. “A place like the Bay Area is a perfect spot for new cumbia sounds to take hold. People here are always looking for new music, plus there’s obviously a huge Latino population. A lot of younger Latinos who grew up hearing cumbia also listened to hip-hop and electronic music. They’re really into what we’re doing.”

Cumbia, the irresistible traditional accordion-driven dance music of Latin America (originally from Colombia), has undergone a mutation of sorts, opening up to include electronic augmentation, hip-hop beats, and even punk styles. The new iteration has taken hold in clubs like the cutting-edge Zizek, in Buenos Aires, where Oro11 was living and performing when Disco Shawn sought him out in 2006 for a taste of the electro-cumbia sound. The two returned to San Francisco, their home base, to form the Bersa Discos label as a kind of sonic nexus. “DJs and producers were selling burned CDs and swapping MP3s, but nothing was very organized at the time,” says Disco Shawn. “We just wanted to get some of these amazing tracks pressed up on vinyl and circulated a little more officially.”

Bersa Discos is now on its fourth release, titled, appropriately, Bersa #4 and featuring Afro-Colombian-tinged tracks by Brooklyn’s Uproot Andy and deeper sounds from the Netherlands’ Sonido del Principe. And the Tormenta Tropical party has seen legends like DJ/Rupture, South Rakkas Crew, Buraka Som Sistema, Toy Selectah, and even the Zizek folks burn up the stage. Shawn says to keep a 2k9 ear out for DJ Panik’s Texan “crunk cumbia.” Meanwhile, UK “bashment” crew the Heatwave hop in Dec. 19 to enliven the party’s first anniversary.

SFBG What originally attracted you to the new cumbia style?

ORO11 I first got into cumbia in 2001 while I was in Buenos Aires — the same time that the Argentine economy was collapsing. Kids were still heading to the clubs all night, but as a whole the music was pretty unimpressive. Lots of ’80s, trance, Ramones, and Rolling Stones — seriously, whole subcultures based on those last two. But one day I caught a Sunday TV variety show called Pasion Tropical that had the group Pibes Chorros on. Those dudes were repping heavy keyboard-guitars, long hair, and skull tees. They had a different sound that grabbed me, meaner than most cumbia I had heard. So I started tracking down their mixes, chopping up their samples, and making cumbia remixes with dancehall and hip-hop thrown in. Guys like Marcelo Fabian, Villa Diamante, Sonido Martines, and Daleduro were messing with cumbia too. So we started linking up, throwing parties together. Shawn and I met not too long after and started throwing the idea of Bersa Discos around.

SFBG What are some of your most memorable Tormenta Tropical experiences?

DISCO SHAWN It’s all been amazing. But the best thing has been getting to play with artists whose music I was already a fan of. The crowd has also been great. It’s totally mixed — Latino cumbia diehards, hipsters, dancehall heads, etc. Even better, people are really into dancing. Most of the time we’re playing songs that people don’t know — most of the songs are in Spanish, so a good portion of the crowd may not even understand the language — yet everyone goes crazy on the dance floor. It’s really nice because we’re not slaves to playing any sort of “hits.”

SFBG Drop a new cumbia top five on us.

ORO11 How about these?

Petrona Martinez, “La Vida Vale la Pena (Uproot Andy Remix)”
Los Rakas, “Esa Mulata”
El Guincho, “Kalise (Frikstailers Remix)”
DJ Panik, “Gettin’ Some Head”
BananaClipz featuring MC TIDAL, “Bluetooth Riddim”

TORMENTA TROPICAL ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY
With the Heatwave and Paul Devro
Fri/19, 10 p.m., $10
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
(415) 552-7788
www.elbo.com

Purple canon

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One of the hot discs in Oakland back in 2004 was In Thugz We Trust (Rap-A-Lot/Asylum) by Thug Lordz, a duo of mob music veterans Yukmouth and C-Bo. It was dope but it underscored a problem: all the big Bay-associated artists established careers in the ’90s, before radio play and major label action dried up. During the pre-hyphy drought, it was tough to achieve any fame outside the hood.

Fast-forward to post-hyphy 2008: the canonical list of Bay Area rappers has expanded considerably. Despite receiving no local airplay through an ongoing dispute with KMEL musical director Big Von Johnson and continued hedging by Atlantic to release his album, Mistah FAB managed to dent national consciousness with his hook on Snoop’s single "Life of Da Party." The increasing clout of SF independent label SMC raised newer acts Beeda Weeda and J-Stalin to the regional stardom necessary to go further. Winner of the Guardian‘s reader choice poll for hip-hop, Beeda had one of the most successful discs of the year with Da Thizzness, while Stalin’s Gas Nation topped the rap best-seller list at Rasputin Music the week of its release, Sept. 23. Other acts like Eddi Projex have cracked the airwaves to remain hot, while the Jacka — whose career began at the tail end of the ’90s as a member of C-Bo’s Mob Figaz — had the biggest local single of the year, "All Over Me," from his highly anticipated album Tear Gas, due in March.

The older acts haven’t disappeared, however, as witnessed by new discs from San Quinn and E-40. A notable development of the past two years has been the solo career of former Delinquent G-Stack. Taking a page from Mac Dre’s book, Stack has developed new personae like Purple Mane and George W. Kush to release four purple-themed compilations, plus a solo EP, preparatory to his SMC full-length, Dr. Purp Thumb, slotted for February. Along the way, he’s begun developing newer acts like Deev Da Greed, a co-owner of Stack’s 4 the Streets Entertainment and, along with Qoolceo and Tay Peezy, a member of the HEEM Team.

"I can rap but that wasn’t my dream," Deev confesses at the Grill studio in Emeryville. "When we opened the label, I was in the lab [the studio] a bunch, so I was, like, let me do a verse." Despite these casual origins, Deev acquired serious buzz this year with his effortless flow — he just floats over any beat — and clever wordplay, co-signing Stack’s fourth comp, Abraham Reekin (4 the Streets).

The accidental rise of Deev illustrates the difference four years has made. The glacial pace of change during the pre-hyphy period has become torrential as fresh acts like Stevie Jo, Philthy Rich, and Yung Moses continue to bubble to the surface. This is partly technological — the fruit of a Pro Tools and YouTube generation — but it’s also inspirational. Unlike the first half of this decade, there’s a place to rise to. The prospect of attaining fame as a Bay Area rapper is still unreasonably difficult, but FAB and others have at least proved the prospect still exists. (Garrett Caples)

GARRETT CAPLES’ TOP 10


1. J-Stalin, Gas Nation (Livewire/Thizz/SMC)

2. Beeda Weeda, Da Thizzness (PTB/Thizz/SMC)

3. G-Stack, My Purple Chronicles (4 the Streets)

4. The Jacka, Fed-X, and AP.9, Mob Trial III (Sumo)

5. Mistah FAB, Playtime Is Over (Demolition Men)

6. Shady Nate, The Graveyard Shift (Demolition Men)

7. G-Stack and Deev Da Greed, Abraham Reekin (4 the Streets)

8. Livewire Da Gang, Pay Ya’self or Spray Ya’self (Livewire)

9. Ise Lyfe, The Prince Cometh (7even89ine)

10. San Quinn, From a Boy to a Man (Done Deal/SMC)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Tops in 2008

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TOMAS PALERMO’S TOP DANCEHALL AND REGGAE ARTISTS 2008


This year saw American pop (Rhianna, Kardinal Offishall, and Sean Kingston) broadly embracing Jamaican music. Likewise, Jamaican artists emulated, covered, and incorporated American pop and R&B motifs more than ever. The trend in JA was toward hot singles over hot albums, while dozens of new artists broke out. Women in particular had a massive resurgence in reggae (Queen Ifrica, Etana, Cherine Anderson) and dancehall (Tifa, Timberly, D’Angel, Tami Chynn). Money — having it, making it, spending it — was the most prevalent song topic. Here are six categories of reggae artists who made as big an impact on music as Jamaican athletes did on the track in Beijing.

TOP DAWGS Dancehall chart-toppers included Mavado, Vybz Kartel, Beenie Man, Elephant Man, and Busy Signal.

ROOTS REFRESHERS Taj Weekes, Dwayne Stephenson, Morgan Heritage, Pressure, and Tarrus Riley enlivened one-drop traditional reggae.

LADIES IN CHARGE Women charged the charts, including Spice, Tifa, Natalie Storm, Timberlee, Pompatay, D’Angel, Etana, and Queen Ifrica.

CATCHING FIRE Newcomers galore emerged, like Bugle, Serani, Demarco, Erup, Black Ryno, and Konshens.

SOLID AS A ROCK Veterans who didn’t let us down included Beres Hammond, Tony Rebel, Jah Cure, Mr. Vegas, and Junior Reid, as well as Damien and Steven Marley.

POP GOES REGGAE These reggae/pop/R&B combinations and remixes made us smile: Estelle/Sean Paul, Jazmine Sullivan, John Legend/Buju Banton, plus French roots-boots remixes of Mary J. Blige, Lil Wayne, Nas, and Motown.

WOODEN SHJIPS’ TOP 10 (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)


•Art Lessing, Sleeping Ghost (An Electric Eggplant)

•Der TPK (Teenage Panzerkorps), Games for Slaves (Siltbreeze)

•Endless Boogie, Focus Level (No Quarter)

•Expo 70 and Rahdunes’s split-LP (Kill Shaman)

•Fabulous Diamonds, Fabulous Diamonds (Siltbreeze)

•Los Llamarada, Take the Sky (S-S)

•Nothing People, Anonymous (S-S)

•Sic Alps, US EZ (Siltbreeze)

•Suicide, Live 1977–1978 (Blast First)

•Times New Viking, Rip It Off (Matador)

GEORGE CHEN’S DISORDERLY 10


•Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type)

•Krallice, Krallice (Profound Lore)

•Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom and Black Wooden Ceiling Opening (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

•Ecstatic Sunshine live

•Prurient live

•Bulbs, Light Ships (Freedom to Spend)

•Mincemeat or Tenspeed in a cave

•Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons (Constellation)

•Pukers cassette

BEN RICHARDSON’S "BEVY OF HEAVY" TOP 10 METAL ALBUMS


•Testament, The Formation of Damnation (Nuclear Blast)

•Gama Bomb, Citizen Brain (Earache)

•Bloodbath, The Fathomless Mastery (Peaceville)

•Cannabis Corpse, Tube of the Resinated (Forcefield/Robotic Empire)

•Hail of Bullets, …of Frost and War (Metal Blade)

•Bison B.C., Quiet Earth (Metal Blade)

•Grand Magus, Iron Will (Rise Above/Candlelight)

•Jucifer, L’Autrichienne (Relapse)

•Gojira, The Way of All Flesh (Prosthetic)

•Enslaved, Vertebrae (Indie)

DJ AMPLIVE’S TOP 10


1. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular (Sony)

2. Zion-I, "Juicy Juice" (Gold Dust)

3. Grouch, Show You the World (Legendary Music)

4. Weezer, "Pork and Beans" (Geffen)

5. Santogold, Santogold (Downtown/Atlantic)

6. The Foals, Antidotes (Sub Pop)

7. T-Pain, "Chopped ‘N Skrewed" (Jive)

8. Tapes ‘N Tapes "The Dirty Dirty (Recession Remixes)"

9. Jamie Lidell, Jim (Warp)

10. Hottub, "Man Bitch" (LeHeat)

THEO SCHELL-LAMBERT’S TOP 10 OF ’08


10. The Kills, Midnight Boom (Domino)

Hince and Mosshart’s latest was forceful and impressively consistent, which, yes, meant it was professional, and which, no, didn’t mean it was soulless. The pair spotted the rhythmic snap and hypnotism in ’60s playground sing-alongs. Working with these features instead of nostalgia or camp, they had the basis for a percussion-driven ’00s rock.

9. Steinski, What Does It All Mean? 1983–2006 Retrospective (Illegal Art)

Steve Stein’s influential ’80s tracks were extreme hip-hop: not only any song, but any sound that society had made could be sampled and woven into his boom-box fabrics. Of course, this made for legal nightmares. In 2008, we got the gift of a straightforward packaging.

8. Benga, Diary of an Afro Warrior (Tempa)

The Croydon dubstep man shoved the movement forward with Warrior, but he played it as a nudge. An eclectic, graceful, and terrifically undogmatic outing, it seemed to stroll along the Thames, picking up a new rhythm in each neighborhood. Through that, it remained fierce.

7. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar)

When you head off to the cabin in the woods to record your masterpiece, it doesn’t tend to work out well. You realize the woods are cold and boring, and that you are missing some helpful equipment. Justin Vernon’s excursion into the Wisconsin snow should inspire a new crop of such failures, because it polishes the myth. In its austerity and bone-cooling effect, Emma recalls a more focused Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

6. The Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch)

In 2008, soaking an indie album in Jesus and Mary Chain noise was about as original as what Bon Iver did (see above). Yet it too worked. Critically, Stephin Merritt never let his latest become a disc about texture: he knew that the key to noise pop is the pop. And Distortion delights in the girl-group drums and pert melodies while dramatically cringing at the feedback it pretends is just part of every record. "Drive on, Driver" is more indebted to Fleetwood Mac than anyone else.

5. Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (Lost Highway)

We extend the same sort of charity to Lucinda Williams as we do Chan Marshall — we just really want those gals to be in a happy place. For the first time in a while, Lucinda cut a studio set with optimistic poetry, and Honey not only warmed anyone who got close to Essence or West (both Lost Highway; 2001, 2007), it even matched the elegance of those discs — and with a way juicier palette.

4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL)

The culture-jamming ("Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa") wasn’t as deeply meaningful as some held, but the light touch with which it arrived made the record a bit of a marvel. It was sweet, it was for parties, and it had nothing to do with Paul Simon. And the lyrics cribbed from freshman classes at Columbia were remarkably workable and unsophomoric.

3. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Cash Money)

Wayne has a monopoly on ink. What doesn’t make it onto his neck goes into his paeans. Both outlets — the tats, the praise — can seem excessive, but the latter just keeps on being reasonable. Wayne is the rapper as post-rapper, deliciously self-aware. Rapping is a funny thing to do, and rap albums are increasingly funny things to make. He’s getting inside it: looking with awe at that thing he just said, then riffing off it, then riffing off that, wheezing and grunting until his syllables morph, and enjoying himself.

2. Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

The Baltimore pair found a sound on their debut. On their second record, they improved it and grew into it. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally seemed to be operating in some last outpost of melody, where tart country-pop hooks could be heard in a final, furry form before they collapsed. That made Devotion both comforting and lonely.

1. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West)

For starters, DBT are shaping up as their generation’s premier bards of booze. When not singing mid-bender, they’re suffering through the aftermath or plotting the next go-round. What that really means is that their songs teeter powerfully between the concomitant bitterness and shame. The 19-song Creation was built to have room for all the less proud emotions.

Honorable mentions: Lykke Li, Youth Novels (LL); White Hinterland, Phylactery Factory (Dead Oceans); Kathleen Edwards, Asking for Flowers (Rounder); James Pants, Welcome (Stones Throw); Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

THE FUCKING CHAMPS’ TIM SOETE’S TOP 10 2008 RELEASES


1. Various artists, Obsession (Bully)

2. Kurt Vile, Constant Hitmaker (Gulcher)

3. Jonas Reinhardt, Jonas Reinhardt (Kranky)

4. Ariel Pink, Oddities Sodomies Vol. 1 (Vinyl International)

5. Lindstrom, Where You Go, I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound)

6. Bum Kon, Drunken Sex Sucks (Smooch/Maximum Rocknroll)

7. La Dusseldorf, Viva (Water)

8. John Maus, Love Is Real (Upset the Rhythm)

9. RTX, JJ Got Live RaTX (Drag City)

10. Sic Alps, US EZ (Siltbreeze)

CHRIS SABBATH’S TOP 10


1. Godwaffle Noise Pancakes

A cluster of floor-crouching noiseniks + a heaping helping of syrupy waffles hot off the griddle = a great way to kill two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

2. Beth from Times New Viking tells me outside the Great American Music Hall that she likes my cat sweatshirt: And according to her, she only gives out one sweatshirt compliment per year — oh, snap!

3. Spire Live, Fundamentalis (Autofact/Touch)

Dynamite double LP compilation of live recordings dubbed in various European cathedrals from the likes of Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz, BJNilsen, and more.

4. Eat Skull, Sick to Death (Siltbreeze)

Hurrah to the Philadelphia noise imprint for releasing this gem of a debut.

5. Kevin Drumm, Imperial Distortion (Hospital)

The Chicago native once again falls head over heels for the drone.

6. Wavves, Wavves (Woodsist)

I love this kid! Bedroom-spun beach punk in the vain of Beat Happening and the Embarrassment.

7. Common Eider, King Eider, Figs, Wasps, and Monotremes (Root Strata)

If I could fork a Goldie over to Rob Fisk for every time this album made its way through my stereo speakers, he would have a lot of Goldies.

8. Excepter, Debt Dept (Paw Tracks)

The Brooklyn electronic performance troupe sings about burgers, sunrises, and killing people on its new disc.

9. Blank Dogs, On Two Sides (Troubleman Unlimited)

New-wave synths soiled in grime, decayed vocals, and tape hiss galore from this prolific newbie.

10. John Wiese at the Lipo Lounge

Sounded like chunks of metal swelling to the size of balloons and then bursting into my chest for 10 awesome minutes.

PETER NICHOLSON’S TOP 10 TUNES TO DANCE AWAY THE HEARTACHE


1. Yellowtail featuring Alison Crockett, "You Feel Me" (Bagpak)

2. Dave Aju, "Crazy Place" (Circus Company)

3. Jazzanova featuring Randolph, "Let Me Show Ya (Henrik Schwarz Remix)" (Sonar Kollektiv)

4. Grace Jones, "La Vie en Rose (Casinoboy Version)" (Trackybottoms)

5. Mike Monday, "The 11 11" (Om)

6. Recloose, "Catch a Leaf" (Loop Sounds)

7. La Vida Buena, "Humanidad" (Amalgama)

8. Sebo K, "Too Hot" (Mobilee)

9. Art Bleek, "Modern Spaces" (Connaisseur)

10. Jimpster, "Dangly Panther" (Freerange)

IRWIN SWIRNOFF’S FAVORITE RECORDS AND MUSICAL MOMENTS OF 2008


•John Maus, Love Is Real (Upset the Rhythm)

•Hercules and Love Affair (DFA) and at Mezzanine

•Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt.1: 4th World War (Motown)

•Magnetic Fields, Distortion (Nonesuch)

•Stereolab, Chemical Chords (4AD)

•White Magic, New Egypt (Latitudes)

•Cluster at Aquarius Records and the Boredoms at the Fillmore

•My Bloody Valentine at the Concourse

•Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp)

•Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (Type)

I can’t not mention: Sparks, Exotic Creatures of the Deep (Lil Beethoven); Beach House, Devotion (Carpark); Cut Copy, In Ghost Colors (Modular Interscope); Nagisa Ni Te, Yosuga (Jagjaguwar); the Alps, III (Type); Paavoharju, Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal); Antony and the Johnsons, Another World (Secretly Canadian).

ERIK MORSE’S TOP RECORDS OF 2008


•Gas, Nah und Fern (Kompakt)

•Fennesz, Black Sea (Touch)

•Mavis Staple, Live: Hope at the Hideout (Anti-)

•Various artists, Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records’ Story (Big Beat)

•Abdel Hadi Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers, Abdel Hadi Halo and the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers (Honest Jon’s)

•Skyphone, Avellaneda (Rune Grammofon)

•Autechre, Quaristice (Warp)

•Susanna, Flowers of Evil (Rune Grammofon)

•Raymond Scott Quintette, Ectoplasm (Basta)

•The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement (Domino)

•Tape, Luminarium (Hapna)

•Al Green, Lay It Down (Blue Note)

•Beach House, Devotion (Carpark)

TWO GALLANTS’ TOP 10 OF 2008


•Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)

•Various artists, Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days (Dust to Digital)

•Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue: The Authorized Biography by Robert Scotto (Process, 2007)

•Barack Obama

•Blitzen Trapper, Furr (Sub Pop)

•What It Is: What It Is by Paul G. Maziar and Matt Maust (Write Bloody)

•Various artists, Eccentric Soul: Trager and Note Labels (Numero)

•Immortal Technique, The 3rd World (Viper)

•Grayceon, The Grand Show (Vendlus)

Two Gallants perform Dec. 26, 8 p.m., at the Fillmore. www.twogallants.com

DEERHOOF’S ED RODRIGUEZ’S TOP 10 THINGS OF A MUSICAL NATURE 2008


• I Got the Feelin’, James Brown in the ’60s DVD (Shout! Factory)

It will remind you why you decided to play music in the first place. If you don’t play music then it will make you want to start.

• Silentist, Silentist (Celestial Gang)

Mark Burden always keeps me interested. Nancarrow or Reich with blast beats.

• Over the course of more than two months of touring I saw and got to know several bands that were new to me. Coconut, Experimental Dental School, Parenthetical Girls, Flying, and so many more. I can’t remember ever getting to see so much inspiring music made by so many creative, energetic, and completely fun people.

• Weasel Walter, solo, duos, trios, and on and on

No matter what the setting, he pushes the situation further with his drive, talent, and humor (all of which are refreshing and needed in the improvised music scene).

• Bronze

Nominated for the best act of commitment that didn’t involve self-mutilation. All in unison, shaving their heads onstage and then revealing perfect Marine dress uniforms under their smocks. They looked so good it inadvertently might have been the best recruiting campaign since Kid Rock and NASCAR teamed up to con kids across the US.

• Death Sentence: Panda! and …

• Burmese

I went to every show of both these bands over the year whenever I was in town. Without fail I would be deaf, destroyed, and smiling, or dancing, laughing, and smiling. Check them out to match those descriptions to the correct band!

• Earth, Wind and Fire: In Concert DVD (Geneon, 2000)

I work at Lost Weekend Video, so I watch more new music DVDs more often than I get new CDs. But maybe you’ll do the same after watching this bass player do high kicks for an hour and not miss a note.

• Touring with old friends KIT and Hawnay Troof. Watching Vice Cooler get a bunch of crossed-armed kids dancing, cause bartenders to leave their posts to run to the stage and move, and VC almost break his neck jumping off monitors all in single-digit minutes. With KIT, add in the insane attack of Steve, the bouncing energy of Kristy, and the apologetic guitar soloing of George Chen, and try not to beam.

• Joining Deerhoof! Getting to spend so much time of 2008 with John, Greg, and Satomi has made this year feel like no other.

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

Youthquake

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Wooo! Wooooo! No, I’m not a giant faggotty owl. I’m the ghost of recent San Francisco underground dance floors past — equally faggotty — and I controool you. Or at least I did, until that brazen neon bitch from American Apparel showed up on the 2k8 guest list, with his matte lamé leggings, Adderall diet, Marvel comics mask, baile funk BFF, and Ableton plug-ins.

Gurl, I got caught with my ZOMGs down, and it was total fap fap fap.

For more than a decade, I fierce ruled the insular world of club tunes, dividing them up into techno, house, and hip-hop, with some occasional ’80s nostalgia on the side. I froze all dance genres in the booty-phat ’90s with my snap-hand, casting off up-and-comers with a haughty high-hat spray of laughs. Breakbeats? Electroclash? IDM? Nu-rave? Trance? Specter, please. Passing fancies, they all got swallowed up with ghostly ease. Despite my aging denizens — no more backflips at the breakdowns, no more weekend trips to Body and Soul in NYC, a lazy wash of Rihanna remixes and Mary J. mash-ups — I held all the club cards, and it felt mighty real.

I just never thought the children would use my own tools to destroy me.

Sure, I peeped those Misshapen mid-aughts electro youngsters at the fringes, flashing their disabled glasses and pajama-like outerwear on Lastnightsparty, snapping up Justice remixes on BIGSTEREO, laughing along with Hipster Runoff. And, yeah, I knew that high-school crunkers fetishized "da club"; that feisty programmers refreshed techno; that global styles stewed together in dubstep; that iDJs resurrected ancient categories like grunge and hair metal, irony slowly melting into earnestness.

But all that was old news, relying on even older genres — I mean, electro’s like from what, 1972? — and most of those darned kids, I figured, would end up directly beamed into MySpace, never setting a single fluorescent Nike onto me. The few who found their way to the "real" underground — my underground, with my same five goddamned DJs — would still have to bow down before me.

Oh, how wrong I was. I never opened up to any of the newer energies — I was afraid, I got petrified — despite their thrilling old-school affinity, preferring to keep my exhausted thralls lockstep in an endless search for purity, the enslaving chimera of "authenticity."

"Fuck that," said the children, and exploded. This year, especially, the local scene saw an infusion of youth like it hasn’t seen since rave. And like rave, there’s just no stopping the march of the Smurfs — with more to come, if the wide-eyed, underage flood at LoveFest was any indication. Everything’s escaping my control! Lazer bass! Bloody Beetroots remixes! Banger freaks! Electro-cumbia! Disco perversion!

I’d blame the hipsters, except I helped create them, d’oh. And even if, in this onslaught of danceable enthusiasm, some of that old underground feeling seems to be lost — the yearning for an inverted hierarchy to escape the real world, the notion of a special dance floor family — it’s still kind of thrilling. Maybe I, the ghostess with the mostest, should float down from my high horse and show the new gen how to dance properly.

MARKE B.’S TOP 10 EARWORMS OF 2008

Frankmusik, "3 Little Words" (Island Music)

Ane Brun, "Headphone Silence (Henrik Schwarz Remix — Dixon Edit)" (Objektivity)

Clubfeet, "Die Yuppie Scum" and Gold on Gold (both Plant Music)

Mark E., "Slave 1" (Running Back)

Foals, "Olympic Airways," Antidotes (Sub Pop)

SIS, "Nesrib" (Cecille)

Buraka Som Sistema, "Sound of Kuduro" (Modular)

The Golden Filter, "Hide Me" (Dummy)

The Very Best, "Sister Betina," Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are the Very Best mixtape

The Notwist, "Boneless," The Devil, You + Me (Domino)

>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

A better tomorrow

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In the real world, the New York Stock Exchange did the butterfly flop all year, and the global economy sank along with it. But in the fantasy world of hip-hop, stock options on prime talent just went up and up. If it wasn’t XXLmag.com proclaiming its Freshman Class of ’09 — led by Blu, Kid Cudi, and Wale — then it was top blogs Nahright.com and 2dopeboyz.com posting hundreds of videos, MP3s, photo galleries, and other ephemera per week. Web sites like Okayplayer.com lavished attention on its favorites — "real hip-hop" artists like the Roots and Common — with audio/video items and high review scores, doling out 92 of 100 for Q-Tip’s The Renaissance (Universal Motown).

Of course, MTV and its poorer cousins, MTV Jams and BET, still showed plenty of Young Jeezy and Rick Ross videos, mean-mugging thugs and "dimepiece" models looking soulfully in the camera, eager to show their souls and shake their asses. On the Billboard charts, dependable superstars such as Kanye West and T.I. dominated with subpar albums and MOR malaise.

Meanwhile, like a cheery prospectus, the new hip-hop media teemed with blogs and Web sites promising a better tomorrow of future stars. Seasoned music journalists found the hype difficult to ignore: this year’s CMJ Music Marathon included a panel asking, "The Hip-Hop Renaissance: A Cultural Rebirth?" Meanwhile XXL magazine, the bastion of conservatism that seemingly puts 50 Cent on the cover every month — the Freshman Class list was a rare lapse — wondered, "What the hell happened to good ol’ gangster rap?" Apparently, the new breed of MCs’ penchant for appropriating nerdy icons (Charles Hamilton’s Sonic the Hamilton), paying homage to old-school classics (Pacific Division’s "F.A.T. Boys"), issuing 10-minute linguistic exercises (Mickey Factz’s "The Inspiration"), and rhyming over dance beats (Wale’s cover of Justice’s "D.A.N.C.E.") present a major threat to rap’s G’s-up-hos-down kingdom.

It needn’t have worried. The new Internet landscape flourished on buzz, not actual achievement. Indie-rockers were doing it for years — witness the rise of mediocre talents Vampire Weekend and Lykke Li — before the Cool Kids learned how to blow up with nothing more than a few demo songs and a flashy MySpace page. By the time the Cool Kids finally put out The Bake Sale EP (Chocolate Industries), an ode to limited-edition sneakers and sugar cereal, the Chicago duo had already spent several months basking in magazine covers and sold-out national tours. The Bake Sale may have been good, but its release felt anticlimactic. And let’s not even mention Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (Cash Money), and his "100 best Lil Wayne songs you’ve never heard." That’s so 2007.

The Cool Kids may be the best example of how to manipulate the new hip-hop stock market — ply the blogs with YouTube videos (popular topics: Top 10 R&B chicks worth a "smash"), and distribute mixtapes via Zshare.net (popular topics: Barack Obama and freestyles over Lil Wayne’s "A Milli" and old J Dilla beats). Original material such as Kidz in the Hall’s The In Crowd (Duck Down) and Black Milk’s Tronic (Fat Beats) drew positive reviews from magazines and traditional Web sites. But once the free MP3 downloads and shaky-camera videos dried up, the new hip-hop media didn’t seem to care about actual albums one could buy in stores — or, sadly, just download for free. It thrived on fresh content, not critical analysis.

Some actual hits emerged amid the deluge. Kid Cudi’s "Day N Nite," Asher Roth’s "Roth Boys," Q-Tip’s "Gettin’ Up," Kidz in the Hall’s "Drivin’ down the Block," B.O.B.’s "Haterz," and Jay Electronica’s "Exhibit A (Transformations)" drew universal props. Mountaintop pronouncements from Jay-Z ("Jockin’ Jay-Z," "Brooklyn Go Hard"), Eminem ("Number One"), and Nas ("Be a Nigger Too," "Hero") were heeded by all, though these utterances paled in comparison to past glories.

Mostly, though, there was a lot of crap to sift through. If critics and fans couldn’t agree on whether Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III was a certified classic or just an above-average hit album, it was because we were too busy downloading music, surfing blogs, and watching videos to think about it. Perhaps we’ll figure out what 2008 means many years from now, long after that tomorrow finally arrives — for better or worse.

MOSI REEVES’ BEST INDIE HIP-HOP ALBUMS OF ’08


1. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles (Warp)

2. Daedelus, Love to Make Music to (Ninja Tune)

3. Black Milk, Tronic (Fat Beats)

4. The Cool Kids, The Bake Sale EP (Chocolate Industries)

5. Kidz in the Hall, The In Crowd (Duck Down)

6. Blue Sky Black Cinema, Late Night Cinema (Babygrande)

7. Invincible, ShapeShifters (Emergence)

8. Black Spade, To Serve with Love (Om)

9. Common Market, Tobacco Road (Hyena)

10. Lyrics Born, Everywhere at Once (Epitaph)


>>MORE YEAR IN MUSIC 2008

The Year in Music 2008

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What is this crazy little thing called canon creation in ’08, and what are the new classics and essential listens? SF vs. NYC, drone, pop, the state of hip-hop in the Bay and away — all are up for grabs in 2008 as our writers chime in with their musical must-hears.

Make a list and check it twice: do you have a top 10? Send it to Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com by Dec. 26 — we’ll run the most intriguing lists in an upcoming issue of the Guardian.

>>Loose canon
A new set of touchstones for rocky times
By Kimberly Chun

>>Ask a musician
How to cope with musical canon formation in an ever-morphing, anti-matter era
By Johnny Ray Huston


>>Purple canon
Bay hip-hop received an infusion of new blood and fresh inspiration
By Garrett Caples

>>Tops in 2008
Writers and musicians give up their faves and beyond from 2k8
Lists, lists, lists

>>Youthquake
There’s just no stopping the march of the SF nightlife Smurfs
By Marke B.

>>Hungry for Lee Hazlewood
You didn’t have to dig deep to find the canonical figure this year
By Todd Lavoie

>>Hater aid
I Hate New Music, but does new music suck?
By Will York

>>Barf manifesto
Pop ate and re-ate itself, then regressed and regurgitated
By Billy Jam

>>You heard it here first
New York steals San Francisco’s thunder — but who cares?
By Josh Wilson

>>Daughters of a drone
Celebrating a different kind of singer-songwriter
By Max Goldberg

>>Moving forward
Smaller meant better in 2008, in myriad little ways
By Brandon Bussolini

>>A better tomorrow
Hip-hop pins its hopes on the future, despite the buzz
By Mosi Reeves

Hustle in hard times

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U Don’t Hustle U Don’t Eat, the appropriate title of the March 2009 album by up-and-coming Menlo Park-East Palo Alto rapper A.G. Cubano, pretty much sums up the state of the once vibrantly lucrative local rap music economy. Profit-wise, it has steadily slid and deteriorated during the past decade amid an extremely tough and competitive environment, forcing artists into creative ways of generating cash.

"It’s ugly out there," said Walter Zelnick of City Hall Records in San Rafael, which has distributed independent local hip-hop since its beginnings in the 1980s. "Numbers are down all around. The numbers of stores out there are down. I don’t think kids even buy CDs anymore." San Francisco’s Open Mind Music, which closed on Halloween, and Streetlight Records in Noe Valley, which closes Jan. 31, are just two of latest retail victims.

"Just getting in the stores is hard as fuck nowadays. I didn’t realize it had gotten so bad," said Dave Paul, whose prolific long-time local indie label just released the Bay Area artists-filled Bomb Hip-Hop Compilation, Vol. 2, a sequel to the 1994 premier volume, which sold way more than the "maybe 600 or 700 CDs" he expects to move of the new disc.

Zelnick also fondly recalls the golden 1990s when local rap compilations like D-Shot’s Boss Ballin’ (Shot, 1995) and Master P’s West Coast Bad Boyz: Anotha Level of the Game (No Limit, 1995) would sell in numbers that now often qualify as No. 1 on Billboard‘s national pop albums chart. "When [E-40’s group] the Click first came out, they were selling over a 100,000. But then sales for artists went down to 50,000 or 40,000," Zelnick said. Now "average CD sales are more like 2,000. And many people are lucky to sell that."

"It’s not as nearly as easy as it once was out here when we could fuck around and sell 50-, 60-, 70,000 copies independently," said longtime Fillmore rapper San Quinn who just released From a Boy to a Man (SMC) and will soon follow up with the collaborative Welcome to Scokland (Ehust1.com) with Keak da Sneak. "I literally grew up in this Bay Area independent rap scene."

Known for his affiliation with JT the Bigga Figga’s Get Low Playaz and more recently for his ongoing feud with his cousin rapper Messy Marv, the 30-year-old rapper is a well-established artist. But even a high-profile performer like Quinn accepts that he will be lucky if he sells the 22,000 that his last solo CD, The Rock: Pressure Makes Diamonds (SMC) tracked on SoundScan. That was in 2006, two long digital years ago. As with many veteran rappers, downloaded music has hurt San Quinn. "The majority of my fans are white boys and Latinos and Asians that have that shit mastered," he said. "And it’s even harder for someone like me who is based out of the capitol of technology here in the Bay Area, home of Silicon Valley."

"Since the selling of CDs in stores has gone down, way down, everyone has had to step up their game," Cubano said. Two months before the release of U Don’t Hustle U Don’t Eat, the shrewd rapper will pave the way with the Feet to the Street mixtape in collaboration with Oakland’s Demolition Men, the accurately self-described "Bay Area mixtape kings," whose trusted brand has helped further fuel the careers of such local rap faves as J-Stalin, the Jacka, and Shady Nate. San Quinn and the Jacka, as well as C-BO and Matt Blaque, are among the names the ever-resourceful Cubano has enlisted for his upcoming releases.

"But then there are so many different ways to make money nowadays," Cubano added. "You can get money out of ringtones. You can sell your songs one at a time for $1 a piece on iTunes or from your MySpace even now. I love MySpace. It is great in so many ways, like connecting with artists straight away and not beat around the bush, waiting for a phone call, or waiting for a nightclub to see someone."

MySpace is also San Quinn’s lifeline where, the rapper said, his music’s daily plays are in the thousands. San Quinn generates money beyond CD and digital music sales. "I do ringtones. I do shows. I have a San Quinn skateboard that I put out through FTC," the rapper said. "On our first pressing we just had, I sold a thousand skateboards at $50 a piece and I get $25 off every skateboard."

He also makes a tidy income doing guest appearances or "features" on other artists releases ("They pay me for a verse"). "I’ve done over 3,000 features," he said of the feat that earned him an inclusion in Guinness World Records for the most collaborations with other artists. Landing on television or video game soundtracks can be highly profitable but also highly competitive.

But for an up-and-coming Bay Area hip-hop artist, it is even more challenging to make a buck. On one recent evening on the Pittsburg/Bay Point-to-San Francisco BART train, Macsen Apollo of Oakland’s V.E.R.A. Clique was putting a new spin on the "dirt hustlin’" sales approach pioneered in the 1990s by Hobo Junction and Mystik Journeymen by walking from car to car hawking copies of his hip-hop group’s CD, keeping a watchful eye out for BART police, in an effort to make some money from his music.

Meanwhile back at the City Hall Records offices and warehouse, where Zelnick works on orders for new releases from local rap cats Balance and Thizz artist Duna, things have changed a lot in a decade. "We’re really at a turning point here," he said. "We’re still here and someone is buying music, but I don’t know how much longer." Last week in the UK, with just a few weeks till Christmas, Britain’s key indie label distribution company Pinnacle Entertainment declared bankruptcy, leaving 400 imprints with no way to get their music into the diminishing number of music retail stores.

"Next year I ‘m going to put out Return of the DJ, Vol. 6 and that will be the final physical release I will ever do," said Bomb’s Paul, who believes the only way for rap artists to make money is to be increasingly innovative and to constantly tour and sell merchandise, including music, along the way. "In the very near future I think the only place left to buy a CD is to go a show. Artists have to come up with new ways to generate cash. I heard of some artists who will sell backstage passes for $300 — or whatever they can get."

Cubano concurs. "If you’re sitting around waiting for that call, it ain’t gonna come," he quipped. "You have to get out there. You gotta be in traffic. People have to expand their hustle. Otherwise you don’t eat."

Mochipet

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PREVIEW In his recent profile of Steven Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, The New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones goes out of his way to avoid dropping the "lazer bass" bomb. Which makes sense: it’s a term he jokingly and publicly coined on his blog to describe a geographically dispersed "affinity group" whose music seems to have both everything and nothing to do with hip-hop circa 2008, and he’s gotten some shit for it. Here’s where we rely on Daly City’s Mochipet — David Y. Wang, if you’re feeling friendly — to clarify things. Whether looking back over his six-year discography or just dealing with the songs on his MySpace profile, it’s easy to imagine traces of any major electronic production style of the last decade — from ADD-afflicted IDM to Baltimore’s stuttering club thump or early-aughts mash-ups — but there isn’t much settled or comfortably historical about the MIDI controller-ized way the genres and references are seamlessly slurred together and stretched taut over heavy syncopation.

As that joke genre passes from lark to an articulated set of formal rules, it may turn out that Mochipet is not part of the clique that includes folks like Ellison, Hudson Mohawke, and SF’s future blappers Lazer Sword. In songs like "Sharp Drest" from this year’s Microphonepet (Daly City), however, Mochipet is indisputably one in intention with these artists, producing tracks that bang so hard they cause involuntary dancing, and bass blurps that seem to filter through your sternum before reaching your eardrums. Pretty tuff stuff for a guy named after squishy stuff, especially since he so often performs in an infantilizing purple dinosaur suit.
MOCHIPET With Return to Mono, the Flying Skulls, and Anon Day. Wed/10, 8 p..m., $5–$8. Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk, SF. (415) 921-1695, www.reddevillounge.com

Heaven-sent hip-hop?

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Everyone loves a young artist on the verge. When a new, talented voice emerges from nowhere, we all buzz and titter. As a result, John "Blu" Barnes isn’t talking to the press at the moment. According to the Los Angeles rapper’s manager, Jonathan Kim, Blu is "trying to clear his head before he starts working on his next album," which will probably be made for a to-be-confirmed major label. "Clearing his head" means tuning out the noise of the blogs, magazines, fanboys, and hip-hop critics that lavished attention on him.

It may be the first time Blu’s been silent by choice. He has stoked fans with sharp-tongued linguistics all year, issuing two albums — Johnson&Jonson, with producer Mainframe, and as C.R.A.C. (Collect Respect Anna Check) with producer/rapper Ta’raach, The Piece Talks (both Tres) — and scores of guest appearances on others’ rap tracks. The avalanche of material brought his smack-talking, pussy-hunting abilities to the fore — with increasing acclaim.

But in the high-stakes, winner-take-all world of hip-hop, one false move will not only get your ass dropped from a label roster like a kidney stone, it’ll get your album shelved indefinitely. In its December issue, XXL magazine inducted Blu into the "Freshman Class of ’09." It also included a brief "Graduation" story on last year’s picks, nearly all of whom have fallen victim to stalled careers, waning audiences, or artistic malaise.

Years ago, when Blu was a hungry teenage striver in Southern California, he referred to this dangerous world of superstars, prodigies and has-beens as heaven. Below the Heavens: In Hell Happy with Your New Imaginary Friend (Sound in Color, 2007), his collaboration with producer Alec "Exile" Manfredi, "was a concept I came up with in high school," he told me back in January. "I thought all the people I was associated with were so-called below the heavens because we all want to get to heaven, and heaven was the mainstream, like, commercial success. And we were below the heavens."

Blu’s path to heaven began with the help of Exile, whose career courses from underground to mainstream circles, from Emanon (his longtime indie-rap group with singer-rapper Aloe Blacc) to thug pioneers Mobb Deep. At the time, Blu was a self-described freestyler, the type of dude who battled other prospective rappers in huddled "cipher" circles outside LA nightclubs. Exile pushed him to write lyrics that were more than just invectives and put-downs.

"I was always pushing for a more personal record from him," Exile said. "He definitely resented me for that a little bit because he wanted to get his raw MC-type shit out. I helped him polish his style."

Blu still manages to talk a gang of shit on Below the Heavens. On the first track, "My World Is," he brags, "Back when I was a young spitter bitches used to ask me to kick a flow to them. Next thing you know I’m strokin’ ’em." But he’s also disarmingly sensitive and poetic. On "Simply Amazin’<0x2009>" he describes rapping "until I buckle and become winded / And all the air from out my lungs slips into the sky like weed smoke." On "The Narrow Path," he admits, "I need a pen, I need a pad, I need a place to go, to get this shit lifted off of my soul." Through deft linguistics, Blu yearns for better days, rapping to not only save his life, but improve it.

Back in January, Blu told me: "As I started formuutf8g the album, it seemed to be like a collection of my life on earth, which is striving to make it to heaven. I felt since that was what the record was turning out to be about, I felt the title fit in both ways." When Blu said "both ways," he referred to heaven on earth as well as the spiritual afterlife. "I definitely wanted the respect from [Below the Heavens]," he continued. "I just wanted people to hear me, and cats wonder who I am. And it did that plus more. Now I’m looking to step it up for the people."

In the year that followed, Blu fully indulged his "raw MC-type shit" with The Piece Talks and Johnson&Jonson. If neither album approaches Below the Heavens‘ spiky brilliance, they at least confirmed that Blu’s lyrical talent was undeniable. Now he’s on the cusp of entering the heaven of mainstream rap world — and an uncertain future.

BLU

With U-N-I, Richie Cunning, and Fashawn

Tues/9, 9 p.m., $12–<\d>$14

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1422

www.theindependentsf.com

Let the rhythm hit ’em

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REVIEW The exuberance bouncing off the walls of the Palace of Fine Arts at the Nov. 22 opening of the 10th annual San Francisco Hip Hop DanceFest probably kept the audience in a buoyant mood well beyond the theater. These young dancers — and hip-hop is still primarily a young person’s art — presented a show that was sassy, skilled, and a hoot to boot.

Artistic director Micaya has developed a dual approach to programming, and it works. She showcases local hip-hop schools that are worthy of exposure and that bring in audiences, and features them with professionals who, increasingly, may come from abroad. This year, in its infinite wisdom, the US Department of Homeland Security denied visas to dancers from Russia and the Netherlands.

Still, the DanceFest carried on. By their very nature, the school performances are ensemble-oriented. To watch these dancers is to be drawn into the sheer joy of what they are doing. Split-second timing and constantly shifting relationships within the group compensate for the relative simplicity of the individual steps. The whole, with its sense of interlocking gears, is held together by a sometimes almost militaristic discipline. Yet the format is flexible enough to showcase individual talent.

The DanceFest also gauges hip-hop’s ongoing evolution. Having started in the ’70s as a popular expression — urban folk dancing rooted in African and African American practices — hip-hop has been moving from the streets to the theater, from the community center to the concert hall. Whether that means that hip-hop will lose its grounding in pop culture remains to be seen. It probably has already. But there are gains.

Returning to this year’s festival with their mesmerizing HipHop/Beebop was the first-rate MopTop Music and Movement from Philadelphia. Two years ago they took on the founding fathers. Last year it was The Wizard of Oz. This time they brought a fabulously slinky vision of a hot night on the town. With Buddha Stretch and Mr. Valentine in zoot suits and rakishly tilted hats, and Uko Snowbunny and B-girl Bounce in flouncing minis, they were a marvel of strutting control, flashing showmanship, and barely contained heat. Flawless’ Manipulation was indeed flawless in the way its two ingenious dancers — dressed in metallic hats and jackets under black lights — sent currents of energy into each other’s bodies, both to support and to control. It’s no surprise that they were the UK’s World Hip Hop Dance Champions in 2006. Another champion was one-man wonder, veteran hip-hopper Popin Pete from Electric Boogaloos. With appropriate wigs on hand, he unfolded popping’s history in one smooth take — from a vibrating ’70s style, to raucous ’80s moves, to today’s elegant, dinner-jacket-clad incarnation.

Breaksk8 Dance Crew from Indiana, on rollerblades, disappointed. While somewhat impressive for their technical skills, they performed This Is How We Roll with a studied nonchalance that was off-putting. Also new to the festival was the all-male Formality group from San Diego. Their well-performed Players Club had the energy of a traffic jam and stood out in its fresh use of arm gestures. SoulSector turned out to be the only company interested in exploring hip-hop’s capacity to delve into deep issues: their Reinvention: Headhunters was a tough examination of militarism and war.

There was much to enjoy in the studio-based ensembles — the clean and swift U.F.O. Movement among them. Sunset’s smartly staged and hilarious Toonz dressed its dancers as Looney Tunes characters. Its smallest elementary-school-age dancers, of course, got the biggest applause. If this year’s DanceFest proves one thing, it’s that the artists have barely begun to scratch the surface of the genre’s potential for entertaining and thought-provoking dance. Now if we can just get Homeland Security off their backs …

Shaken, stirred

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Everyone has a tale to spin as part of the AC/DC piecemeal mythology/collective unconscious: the moment when the band’s music scored the cementing of a lifelong friendship, triggered a scarring bar brawl, or set off a particularly torrid tussle in the otherwise-antiseptic CD aisle of Wal-Mart. Mine occurred in Barstow, during a particularly soused night kicking off a college-ending road trip down Route 66, falling for my long-lashed, ringleted, metal guitar player boyfriend, tossing back Jack and Cokes, and dancing in cutoff hot pants in an almost-empty cow bar to "You Shook Me All Night Long." It’s basically impossible to mess up on the dance floor when it comes to that song: all you need to do is wiggle your pinky back and forth to the can’t-miss-it-with-a-sledgehammer beat — good times. American thighs and all.

But that was a lifetime ago: how relevant is AC/DC today — apart from providing the fodder for godawful cover versions of "You Shook Me All Night Long" by Celine Dion and Shania Twain? We won’t even go into Shakira’s wretched "Back in Black." When near-anonymous, rarely grandstanding band members emerge from the silence between albums, they purvey the image of a hard-working, headbanging, rigorously hard-rock constant in a world in the throes of change, an audience-friendly reliable in an unsettled music industry that gives the fans what they want, free of undermining irony and unfamiliar moves. The rock-solid conservative choice for rattled times.

True to its components’ working-class roots, the group is the blue-collar rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of Joe the Plumber: rockers who are pro-rock, hence the innumerable tunes with "rock" in the title and the banishment of power-ballad softness. Get thy Guns N’ Roses operatic self-indulgence away from these manly men, churning out the hard stuff as if from a devilishly well-oiled engine à la their current "Rock ‘n’ Roll Train" stage set. In AC/DC’s hands, all is reduced, or elevated, to rock and its all-too-evident properties: solidity, earthiness (hence those free-floating big balls and bombastic babes), and physicality (thus the band’s refusal to allow its songs to be sold as MP3s). On the new Black Ice, the juggernaut only slightly slows for the ironclad blues-rock figure of "Decibel." Rockism is almost beside the point — what isn’t rock, can’t be rocked, won’t be rocked doesn’t exist in the AC/DC universe. Post-modernist pastiche? Hip-hop? Electro? Psychedelia? Neu-rave? Huh?

That’s not to say that AC/DC is rocking in a void, a timeless Platonic plane completely divorced from encroaching reality. The group that appealed to punkers with its disciplined songcraft and streamlined riffs — and nodded to skinheads with the "oi!"s that decorate "T.N.T." — has at various times embraced a palpable sense of danger (witness Angus Young impaled bloodily on a guitar in the video for "If You Want Blood [You’ve Got It]") while also allowing its music to be licensed to the US Military for use in recruitment ads. Yet Black Ice‘s "War Machine" offers other ways to parse lyrics like, "Make a stand, show your hand / Call in the high command / Don’t think, just obey / I’m like a bird of prey / So better get your name, come on in / Gimme that thing and feed your war," apart from simply "Go Army."

This crack in the armor of certainty — from a combo that hails from ye olde days of rock-as-rebellion monoculture, when big, bad guitars were the only option for revolt in town — reads like a cap tug toward increasingly murky times. And the marketplace concession of giving Wal-Mart exclusive rights to sell the Black Ice CD — even in Wal-Mart-free towns like San Francisco — complicates matters because independent merchants like Amoeba Music are forced to purchase new copies from the big-box retailer, relinquishing their mark-up, in order to provide the disc as a service to their customers (the vinyl Black Ice is not exclusive to Wal-Mart). "It’s a slap in the face for indie record stores and AC/DC fans, especially for a band like AC/DC that has always had a reputation of delivering what the fans want," comments Amoeba Music product manager Tony Green. Note to AC/DC: Wal-Mart does not equal working class — or a passion for music. Give these dogs their bone.

‘Nerdcore Rising’: MC Frontalot spills the geek

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mc frontalot sml.jpg

By Louis Peitzman

Don’t let the name fool you: MC Frontalot is serious about rapping. He just does it a bit differently than most other hip-hop artists.

Frontalot (real name: Damian Hess) has been called “the godfather of nerdcore” for his role in establishing a genre where it’s cool to be uncool. He raps about everything from Internet porn to Magic: the Gathering – exposing nerds to hip-hop culture, and vice versa. Along with his band, he’s the subject of the documentary Nerdcore Rising, currently screening in select theaters. In a phone interview, I chatted with Hess about the film and the direction nerdcore is taking. He performs at the Uptown Night Club tonight.

SFBG: My first question is about the name – is it ironic, or do you feel as though you actually front?

Damian Hess: I mean, I picked it out originally because I thought there’d be no other rapper who would want to steal that from me. Because rappers generally eschew fronting and, you know, try to convince everyone that they’re not fronting at all.

‘Fight’ songs

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On the night of Nov. 4, while President-elect Barack Obama was giving his victory speech in Chicago, Flobots were performing at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

"We ended up performing just after McCain gave his concession speech, and then we stopped when Obama gave his acceptance speech," remembers Jonny 5, the rap band’s lead vocalist, on the road to New Haven, Conn. He calls the moment "full of euphoric disbelief." Outside the club "there were people everywhere in the streets, giving each other hugs, and impromptu parades."

It wasn’t the first time Flobots’ career path had intertwined with that of the president-elect. In September, when the Democratic Party held its convention in the group’s hometown of Denver, they participated in several ancillary events, including a concert with Rage Against the Machine. "The entire event was planned to support the Iraq Veterans Against the War, who had a march immediately after the event," says Jonny 5. "So we used the stage to rally people."

Flobots’ rise from regional upstarts to modern-rock radio stalwarts mirrors Rage’s emergence more than 15 years ago. Just as Zack de la Rocha and company did with their fuzzy emo-punk, Jonny 5 — along with rapper Brer Rabbit — adds rhymes to an exotic mix of jazz horns, funky breaks, and hard-rock guitar. And the six-member crew are equally consumed with progressive politics. Each song on Fight with Tools (Universal Republic/Flobots Music, 2007), the outfit’s second album, overflows with righteous anger and activist fervor.

Flobots, “Handlebars”

"We want money for health care and public welfare! Free Mumia and Leonard Peltier!" Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit offer on "Same Thing." "We say, ‘Yes,’ to grassroots organization, ‘No,’ to neoliberal organization! Bring the troops back to the USA and shut down Guantanamo Bay!"

"Handlebars," of course, was Flobots’ breakout moment. Much of Fight with Tools, which Flobots released independently last year, before Universal Republic signed them and reissued the album this spring, feels overwhelmed by earnest slogans. But on "Handlebars," Jonny 5 weaves a stream-of-consciousness allegory about American exceptionalism while the rest of the band build, like an orchestra, to a cacophonous conclusion.

Jonny 5 says his influences range from hip-hop collectives such as Project Blowed to organic music ensembles like Ozomatli. The unusual chart success of "Handlebars," which soared into the Billboard Top 40 last summer, helped Flobots sell more records than any of their inspirations.

"Personally, I had this obsession or insecurity about whether we were really hip-hop, and whether we were representing the hip-hop community correctly. I don’t know … I was hung up on it," Jonny 5 explains. "[Influential indie rapper] 2Mex was with us for four or five dates on the West Coast, and the minute we would mention any criticism we’d get, he’d say, ‘Fuck that, man. Keep expanding. That’s what hip-hop is.’<0x2009>"

FLOBOTS

Sun/23, 8 p.m., $27.50–<\d>$30

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.goldenvoice.com

Holiday Guide 2008

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Think global, shop local

Funny how quickly this holiday season has snuck up on us, isn’t it? That election sure was distracting. Here’s hoping our ultimate holiday gift guide can help you navigate these next few months while you’re busy celebrating President Obama and protesting Prop. 8. Speaking of politics, the Guardian has joined a national effort to support local businesses this year as a way to boost our economy. Read Tim Redmond’s explanation. May this be a holiday season of change!

Molly Freedenberg

Holiday Guide editor

All illustrations by Justin Renteria

>>Think global, shop local
Saving SF’s economy one gift at a time
By Tim Redmond

>>Guilt-free gifts
A guide to supporting good causes
By Katie Baker

>>Head Bangin’
Too much metal for one gift
Photo by Arlene Romana, styling by Ben Hopfer

>>Graphic gifts
Epic comics for your twisted loved ones
By Justin Hall

>>The game room
Fantastic new releases for computers and consoles
By Daniel N. Alvarez

>>Burner bourgeois
Leather and feathers trump fun fur and faux fabrics
Photo by Arlene Romana, styling by Ben Hopfer

>>Seasonal sounds
Sifting through the year’s albums and shows for melodic gifting
By Brandon Bussolini

>>Bike-ster
Retro, velo-inspired ideas for hipster gifts
Photo by Arlene Romana, styling by Ben Hopfer

>>Giving on a shoestring
Cheap and DIY ideas for the financially-challenged
By Molly Freedenberg

>>Not your pilgrim’s pie
Modern pumpkin desserts for the historically-minded
By Meghan McCloskey

>>So fresh, so clean
Hip-hop duds for your homies
Photo by Arlene Romana, styling by Ben Hopfer

>>A holiday from the holidays
Spa ideas for the weary shopper or lucky gift-getter
By Chloe Schildhause

Holiday Guide 2008: Hip-hop gifts

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For those whose music and style leans more Lil’ Wayne than Wayne Coyne, try some of the goodies on our homeboy (or girl) hotlist.

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1. Shadow plaid jacket ($325). HUF, 812 Sutter, SF. (415) 674-3744, www.hufsf.com; 2. SF Hat ($38). True Men’s, 1415 Haight (415) 626-2882, www.trueclothing.net; 3. 5-panel cap ($34). HUF, 812 Sutter, SF. (415) 674-3744, www.hufsf.com; 4. Jeepney Akira jacket ($96). True Women’s,1427 Haight, SF. (415) 626-2331, www.trueclothing.net; 5. Hellzbellz shirt ($38). True Women’s,1427 Haight, SF. (415) 626-2331, www.trueclothing.net; 6. Hellzbellz jeans ($98). True Women’s,1427 Haight, SF. (415) 626-2331, www.trueclothing.net; 7. Onitsuka Ultimate 81 ($72). Shoe Biz 2,1553 Haight, SF. (415) 861-3933, www.shoebizsf.com; 8. Buddah Apparel ($32). True Men’s, 1415 Haight (415) 626-2882, www.trueclothing.net; 9. Revolver necklace ($28); Starry Eyed brass knuckles ($22). Hello Drama jewelry, www.hellodrama.net; 10. Supra Skytop ($130). Shoe Biz II, 1553 Haight, SF. (415) 861-3933, www.shoebizsf.com; 11. LRG Jeans ($74). True Men’s, 1415 Haight (415) 626-2882, www.trueclothing.net; 12. Gold Coin "king coin" T-shirt ($37). D-Structure, 520 Haight, SF. (415) 252.8601, www.d-structure.com; 13. FTC Skatedeck ($36.95). FTC, 1632 Haight, SF. (415) 626-0663, www.ftcsf.com

More Holiday Guide 2008.

Immortal Technique

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

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

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

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

Holiday Guide 2008: Seasonal sounds

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Thanks to the continued explosion of musically-oriented Web sites and blogs, you’ll probably be even more inundated than usual this year with "best of 2008" lists come January 2009 — far too late for your tuneful shopping needs. So we’re cranking one out early, organized by affinity groups — some slightly imaginary, some more concrete — in an attempt to cut through the loud hype and scattered bombast while amping up your gift-giving options. At the end is a suggested list of delectable upcoming live shows, if you’re more ticket-oriented.

FOR THE RETRO-FUTURIST DISCO HEAD


Electronic music is a good example of how griping about the state of a scene can sometimes release unexpected creativity. Syclops, nominally a Finnish fusion trio, is the latest we’ve heard from Maurice Fulton since his quasi-breakthrough electro-spazz project Mu. I’ve Got My Eye on You is the longest in a line of pretty epic wins for the label DFA and for electronic music generally: radiating out from "Where’s Jason’s K," the 10 tracks that make up the album tear ass from pharma’d-out Detroit techno to dreamy, lush deep space jazz.

Also: Shed‘s Shedding the Past (Ostgut Tonträger) if your giftee’s the type who longs for the halcyon days of high minimal glitch; Nôze, Songs on the Rocks (Get Physical) if his or her affection for tech house precision is matched only by a love of closing-time sing-alongs and Waitsian growls.

FOR LONG-LIMBED INDIE SCRAPPERS


It would be hard to write enough about "Black Rice," the best song on Canadian indie quartet Women‘s self-titled debut on Jagjaguwar. Starting from an absurdly unambitious guitar line, the song blossoms into something wildly and fiercely beautiful. It could be the impossible falsetto of the chorus, or the way the rhythm section comes unglued from the vocals and guitar, but the song condenses what makes the rest of the album — noisy, lo-fi interludes and all — so engaging. Everything seems held together provisionally on a song like the heartrending "Shaking Hand," but the chorus snaps into place with rubber-banded eagerness.

Also: Abe Vigoda‘s Skeleton (PPM) for its irrepressible youthful longing and controlled thrash; Benoît Pioulard‘s Temper (Kranky) for twining the threads of noise and surprisingly pretty, almost adult-contemporary songwriting into a neither/nor album that’s perfect for gray days.

WEIRDOS ONLY


Although more structured than anything they’ve done before, Saint Dymphna (Social Registry), the newest long player from New York’s mystical vibe crew Gang Gang Dance, still arrives packed with the otherworldliness that characterized its excellent predecessor, God’s Money (Social Registry, 2005). Three years in the making, the album itself is nothing if not well paced: the transitions between songs and the gradual build of rhythmic energy make it less kin to trad rock albums than to DJ mixes. When the swells crest, as on "First Communion" and "House Jam," electronic gurgles and processed sounds that might otherwise sound like trying too hard are transformed into pure pith: they’re as inviting and faceted as a just-split pomegranate.

Also: Paavoharju‘s Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal), since these Finnish folksters cover the dance floor with silt on "Kevätrumpu," bust some desperate torch techno on "Uskallan," and spend a number of other tracks sounding stuck between pagan classical radio and deteriorating field recordings; Rings is a trio of new primitives formerly known as First Nation — on Black Habit (Paw Tracks), the outfit sounds like it’s gotten into the Slits’ basements and started making music dictated from beyond.

POST-HIP-HOP BASS SEMANTICS


A DJ mix that stands alone as an album is a rare thing, but leave it to Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ/rupture, to make one, as he has with Uproot (Agriculture). Deeply, er, rooted in the bass plate tectonics of dubstep and cut with the finest in eclectic samples, ranging from experimentalist Ekkehard Ehlers to lazer bass don Ghislain Poirier, Uproot rolls deep with dubbed-out ambience, but DJ/rupture is just as happy to turn things upside down, as when he plunks down Ehlers’ gorgeous string loop, "Plays John Cassavetes, Pt. 2," around the mix’s halfway point. And if bangers of the future don’t sound like "Gave You All My Love (Matt Shadetek’s I Gave You All My Dub Remix)," which subs out dub’s organic space for Fisher-Price primary-color contrasts that split the brain evenly in two, I’m not sure it’s a future worth living in.

Also: for the more historically minded, Ragga Twins have released Step Out! (Soul Jazz), a retrospective that collects the work of a duo widely considered to be the inventors of that dubstep ancestor, jungle; Tank Thong Mixtape (Weaponshouse) by Megasoid happens to be free, so spend some money on a nice CD-R, decorate it with glitter, and watch exasperation turn to glee when your loved one blows out his or her speakers with this beast.

HEAVY STUFF


One of the year’s most life-affirming releases comes from a band called Fucked Up; its Chemistry of Common Life (Matador) is grounded in hardcore, and has hardness to spare, but makes its biggest impact when it lets a flute solo emerge from the tempest. With his basso profundo growl, singer Pink Eyes can sound like he’s gargling hot dogs, and harnessed to a song like "Black Albino Bones," with its cooing melody — the closest thing to pop the seven-year-old band has attempted — it makes for an unexpectedly moving juxtaposition. But the group’s real skill comes from mining the void left after the tribal affiliations of high school fall away; "Twice Born"<0x2009>‘s refrain, "Hands up if you think you’re the only one," could be the year’s Miranda July–esque rallying cry.

Also: if you’re wondering what Mick Barr’s been up to post-Ocrilim, the short answer, witnessed on Krallice‘s Krallice (Profound Lore) is black metal; Peasant (Level Plane), an all-encompassing slab of darkness by Baton Rouge–based Thou, is closer to trad sludge than to the transcendent drone of Sunn 0))), but no less impressively bleak.

SHOWS


The holiday season is not always a great time for shows (other than several Nutcracker incarnations), but for folks who want to gift live music this year there are plenty of sonic distractions. On the heels of Everybody (Thrill Jockey), its latest bout of sophisticated jazz rock, the eternally springlike Sea and Cake will make an appearance at Great American Music Hall just in time to counteract your seasonal affective disorder (Dec. 2, 8 p.m., $20). Sebastien Tellier rolls with the Daft Punk posse, so it’s no surprise that his music marries spot-on genre mimicry and a native sense of melody; check out the video for "Divine," in which the Beach Boys–meet–Lio jam turns into a global karaoke marathon of Tellier doppelgängers (Mezzanine, Dec. 4, 9 p.m., $15). There’s no rest for local workhorses Tussle and Jonas Reinhardt — they’ll be bringing their peculiar hot-cold takes on krauty electronics to the Hemlock Tavern (Dec. 6, 9:30 p.m., $7). And even if her music is not your cup of tea, Aimee Mann’s 3rd Annual Christmas Show should be a nice shot of seasonality in a city that tends to avoid big displays of Christmas spirit; consider it a good sign that Patton Oswalt, the stand-up comedian most deserving of your attention, will take part (Bimbo’s, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $40). His looks call to mind a peripheral character from The Catcher in the Rye, and his preternaturally gentle music is specially designed not to hurt babies’ ears, but the earnest beauty of Jonathan Richman‘s songs might pierce your heart (Great American Music Hall, Dec. 7, 8 p.m., $15). Bearing a post-hardcore pedigree like whoa, San Francisco’s own Crime in Choir moves gracefully beyond its members’ backgrounds — At the Drive-In, the Fucking Champs — into (surprise!) instrumental prog territory (Hemlock Tavern, Dec. 13, 9:30 p.m., $6). *

Click here for more Holiday Guide 2008.

Everyday people

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MIGHTY UNDERDOGS

With Zion I and the Cataracs

Nov. 22, 8 p.m., $20–$22

Grand Ballroom

Regency Center, Van Ness and Sutter, SF

(415) 421-TIXS

www.goldenvoice.com

Rap-erations

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REVIEW Even if the rest of the "change" he’s been promising remains elusive, Barack Obama’s resounding electoral win is already change — and of a profound kind — given its undeniable impact on racial consciousness among African Americans, Americans at large, and no doubt people around the globe. Of course, nobody thinks racism disappeared overnight Nov. 4. If anything, the day marks an opportunity for a reinvigorated dialogue on the complexities of race and racism in the 21st-century United States. Dan Wolf’s vigorous and inviting stage adaptation of Bay Area author Adam Mansbach’s 2005 novel, Angry Black White Boy, might seem like an ideal instance, but in fact, although very entertaining, it rehearses a fairly familiar angle without moving much beyond it.

Mansbach’s satirical but searching story concerns a white Jewish suburban hip-hop enthusiast, Macon Detornay (played appealingly by Wolf), whose guilt-tinged identification with African American culture and corresponding aversion to the white mainstream has him uneasily straddling two worlds, eventually bringing them into comically dramatic collision. Macon’s guilt stems partly from a great-grandfather who, as a professional baseball coach, tormented the only black athlete who dared to hold his own on an all-white team.

Macon’s familial history is also, along with hip-hop, his bridge to dorm-mate and fellow Columbia University freshman Andre (played with laidback poise by Myers Clark), whom Macon arranges to live with after learning that Andre is the great-grandson of the same ballplayer his own ancestor victimized. Andre is bemused but generous in the face of Macon’s attempt to make amends. More skeptical is Andre’s friend Nique (a potent Tommy Shepherd, also supplying the fine original music and soundscape). But Macon, a part-time cab driver, earns street cred when he begins robbing his fares (white dudes played by fourth ensemble member Keith Pinto) at the first sign of idle middle-class racism, becoming a notorious outlaw his victims improbably recall as black. The three new friends form the Race Traitor Project to capitalize on Macon’s ironic celebrity, organizing a "day of apology" wherein white America confronts its racist demons. Naturally, things don’t go as planned, and the pressure brings latent tensions surrounding Macon’s fraught identity to a boil.

While wisely concentrating on the ample humor in a story that’s a bit contrived even for satire, director Sean San Jose and cast (all but Clark are members of hip-hop group Felonious) propel the action through a fluid, combustible mixture of music and movement, with sharp choreography from Pinto. But as staged, the themes are less than provocative, in part because the other characters remain subordinated to Macon’s limited perspective, itself almost too "black and white." Nevertheless, the cohesive, versatile ensemble and Wolf’s sympathetic approach translates, under San Jose’s attentive direction, into an engaging theatrical hybrid, whose punctuations and rhythms carry their own share of emotional content and cultural meaning.

ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY

Through Nov. 23

Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m., $15–$25

Intersection for the Arts

446 Valencia, SF

www.theintersection.org

Trackademics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

www.trackademia.blogspot.com

Kamau Patton

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At the cacophonous intersection of Sun Ra’s wheeling jazz cosmology, P-Funk’s psycho-disco logorrhea, Clarence 13X’s alpha-beta-culto Five-Percent Nation, the early ’90s vainglorious hip-hop of X-Clan, Isis, and Blackwatch, and The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly (1950-64), that sprawling, tinfoil-bedazzled outsider masterpiece by Washington, DC, handyman James Hampton, lies a crazy-ass aesthetic of African American visual and performance culture — the culture of flash. 36-year-old Kamau Amu Patton taps directly into this interstellar shine-on-shine look and feel, jettisoning — or maybe out-transcending — the quasi-theological messages in order to dazzle the mind’s eye blackwards.

Consider Patton’s Talk Show (2007). Two archetypal afrocentric public-access cable hosts, both played by Patton, decked out in on-point dashikis and shells before a pixel projection of Hampton’s Throne, dissemble circuitous phrases. "Knowledge is the foundation of all that is existence … You must respect the thing you observe as being real!" one declaims, while the other sighs loudly and eggs him on: "Ah, damn — that’s the truth." A little silver prayer bell is rung and a 1-800 number flashes across the screen. Telephone message: "Behold, the light has come! Speak on!"

Talk Show‘s blank parody should dead-end in hilarity for anyone familiar with these types of folks. But the dreamlike accumulation of gaudy signifiers, as well as the sense that this is a completely unexplored cultural trope, rockets the video into more thoughtful realms. "I wanted to point up the tautologies of that kind of discourse, to capture the exact aesthetic while highlighting the circular rhythms of delivery, the language of persuasion," Patton says. "But at the same time I felt a responsibility to perfectly perform these characters, the kind of people I grew up with in Brooklyn, who were on my street corner preaching like that. I really freaked out over getting the sunglasses exactly right."

That will to performance perfection, evidenced in several of his other live works, is grounded in Patton’s educational background. He holds a sociology degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed field coursework at the London School of Economics. "I grew disillusioned with sociology because it seemed the opposite of what I felt I was interested in," says Patton, who educates Bay Area kids on the artistic legacies of their particular communities. "I wanted to start with something tangible, or several things, and use them as a jumping-off point to continuous abstract revelations. It’s a generative aesthetic kind of thing. To keep going down a certain illuminated hallway in my work. At the same time, I’m a black man in America, so I have a certain perception or set of experiences that I can draw on as well. I’m definitely drawn to the shamanistic and the kingly — especially African American representations of the kingly. I can go off on what Eric B. and Rakim were wearing on their first album cover for hours."

Other Patton confluences of the statistical and the flashy: his performances as part of the hip-hop and fashion collective Official Tourist; this year’s gorgeous self-published book Edge Theory of Dematerialized Consciousness, a wiggy, chthonic numerical-poetic tract punctuated by eerie nature photographs; and an unnamed retro-digital-video assemblage, viewable at www.kamau.org, in which Patton, as a voodooistic priest, writhes around a hissing explosion, whose glitchy "digital dropouts" and color-balance freakouts are meant to be Cézanne-like portals into other dimensions. Currently, the Emeryville-based Patton is artist-in-residence at Southern Exposure. He’s represented there by a retina-searing collaboration with photographer Suzy Poling called "Glasshouse," which uses e-wasted CRT screens to bend light into hallucination. Behold the warp of truth, infinite.

www.kamau.org

Dungen

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

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

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

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

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