Johnny Ray Huston

“Open Endless”

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REVIEW Not every art show allows you a chance to swim in the Pacific Ocean on a Sunday afternoon and experience the bracing cold of the water and the pull of the tide. But David Wilson’s "Open Endless" isn’t your average show, even if it is characteristic of Wilson’s community explorations of art and landscape under the Ribbons Publications rubric. Last year, he instigated a sleep-over happening at Angel Island that included live music. This month, as an extension of a show of drawings, he organized a casually beautiful mapped day and night of art in the Headlands.

No two people had the same experience. Besides a dip in the Pacific, mine included a trek up the paved trails of the North Cliff to a white diamond hung on the cliff’s face by Battery Townsley, where the duo Pale Horse sang songs in a tunnel, and then a walk back down to the beach where the duo known as Coconut played music in a little cove as two, three, four, five, six surfers took on the waves during sunset. I don’t have much to say about that latter experience beyond that it was the kind of moment that makes me completely glad to be alive. I left sated and went home and slept and dreamt deeply. Those who stayed ambled on through Rodeo Canyon to another Battery, where Canyon Cinema shared some cave cinema.

Wilson’s drawings, on display at Tartine, are a shifting sequence of meditations on the landscape and coastlines of the Headlands. His deployment of color and line is understated. The brashest aspect of the show is its use of material: the largest piece, a 22-foot watercolor of the ocean and shore, uses the blank-but-aged paper of record sleeves and the cardboard insides of albums covers as a backdrop. It’s a great tactic. Earlier this year at the de Young Museum, Ajit Chauhan performed a different but similarly large-scale trick with album covers, painting over their exteriors so that only eyes peeked from the original artwork. Wilson’s use of vintage music matter hints at the merging of art and that which is codified "nature" at the core of his events. I’m already looking forward to his next one.

OPEN ENDLESS Through May 28. Mon., 8 a.m.–7 p.m. Tues.–Wed., 7:30 a.m.–7 p.m.; Thurs.–Fri., 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sat., 8 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.-–8 p.m. (415) 487-2600. Tartine, 600 Guerrero, SF. www.ribbonspublications.blogpost.com

Shades of time: Q&A with Matt Keegan

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Barack Obama boarding an Air Force One plane for the first time. Gay calendars from the 1960s. A New York Times article on the death of a major urban newspaper. Sundays at the Alemany Flea Market. These are some of the temporal markers at play in Matt Keegan‘s exhibition “Postcards & Calendars.” The show (reviewed in the current Guardian) could be Keegan’s postcard to New York about time spent in San Francisco. It’s also an exploration of the ways in which calendars and other time keepers can be used subversively to convey forms of experience or forge communities. Keegan is no stranger to the such endeavors: his 2008 book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, $35) gathers interviews, old People magazines, memorabilia connected to the “Hands Across America” project, artifacts from his small-scale update of that endeavor, and unorthodox archival material into a journal that doubles as a portrait of the Reagan era. The artist and I recently sat at a petite lemon yellow table with pretty lemon yellow flowers in Altman Siegel Gallery to discuss his current exhibition.

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View of Matt Keegan’s “Postcards & Calendars.” All images from “Postcards & Calendars” courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

SFBG Many shows repeat the same execution of a single theme, over and over. In contrast, “Postcards & Calendars” has many forms and facets.
Matt Keegan The thematic of this show is definitely influenced by my time in in San Francisco, but not relegated to being here. Lots of things at play are continuations of my preexisting engagement with photography.
In terms of local influences, the calendars from the GLBT Historical Society had a tremendous impact on this show. Before I met with Rebekah Kim, the Historical Society’s archivist, I was trying to figure out how to map the ways time is not only recorded but visually structured — to think about such rudimentary things as a planner, or a calendar, or a newspaper, in terms of how days and months can be iterated.
When I saw their collection of calendars, part of the power of those objects comes from the way they integrate a social history into an innocuous form. Also, some of the calendars that have a clear porn element, also have a social element. For example, Fizeek from the mid-‘60s — the back of that calendar has notations about who shot which photo and where the photographers are based, which provides it with this added level of social exchange.

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Matt Keegan

SFBG In the past year I’ve amassed a stack of the 1970s SF gay magazine Vector, so it was serendipity to come across a calendar from Vector on the wall in your show. More than with microfiche of local newspapers, I get a sense of what was going on in San Francisco at the time from a publication such as that magazine, simply through the addresses in advertisements.
MK Material that might be considered insubstantial or peripheral in terms of formal archiving and recording has a historical implication. Close to the time when I met with Rebekah, I met with Gerard Koskovich, one of the founding members of the GLBT Historical Society. He told this amazing anecdote about Bois Burke placing an ad in The Hobby Directory that is significant in helping to understand a 1940s and ’50s queer history of correspondence. Within this guide, people would reach out about hobbies such as nude sunbathing and physique photography. I am very interested in the various ways that such print-based and distributed publications were activated to serve unintended purposes. And, I love the way that the calendars, specifically, embed such a social history so that it becomes part of daily and monthly activities.

Barack Obama, 31 shades of white, newspapers as endangered species, the archivist’s life, the art of interviewing, and more, after the jump

Time passages

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johnny@sfbg.com

The past is vanishing, more than ever before. Or so it seems, as so many temporal placeholders — including the newspaper you might be holding in your hands right now — give way to digital facsimiles. This quandary is a morphing source of inspiration for "Postcards & Calendars," a solo show by the New York artist and temporary San Francisco resident Matt Keegan, who is about to complete a teaching stint at California College of the Arts.

While Keegan engages a consistently time-based theme throughout "Postcards and Calendars," he does so via refreshingly varied forms and motifs. He’s dedicatedly studious enough to turn a trip to the GLBT Historical Society into an semi-installation, yet easygoing enough to use sexually-charged archival pieces as material, spontaneous enough to try out something different with each piece in his overall show, subversive (or formally perverse) enough to digitally photograph newspapers, and irreverent enough to break his own rules regarding what constitutes a record of daily life.

Keegan first stung my eyes and queer spirit with a piece from the Altman Siegel Gallery’s inaugural group show. It visually manifested the infinite recess of a ex-romantic relationship in a manner that interspersed teasing hints of still-extant attraction with a palpable sense of emotional loss. All of these aspects brought the "memory drawings" of San Francisco artists Colter Jacobsen to mind, so it’s only fitting that Jacobsen contributes a booklet to "Postcards & Calendars" that plays off of Keegan’s theme. In fact, one can draw further connections between Keegan, Jacobsen, and the NYC filmmaker Matt Wolf — three artists of roughly the same generation who share similar queer historical imperatives while allowing humor, traces of casual lust or longing and even some lovelorn aspects into their art. Keegan’s book AMERICAMERICA (Printed Matter, 140 pages, 2008), an exploration of national identity through the Reagan era’s "Hands Across America" phenomenon, possesses enjoyable parallels to Wolf’s films about the late David Wojnarowicz and Arthur Russell, and Jacobsen’s arrangements of trinkets and trash into expressions that find meaning or power in degradeability.

"Postcards & Calendars" is a direct array of works, often candid, and at times (in the case of the gay calendars from the ‘1970s) full-frontal. But the show’s lingering strength comes from more elliptical gestures, such as a wall of personal imagery that Keegan has rendered more enigmatic and evocative through an unconventional series of drawing and photo processes. In fact, to tap into the depth of what Keegan does here, you need to look closely at the walls themselves, where you might discover 31 passages of time.


MATT KEEGAN: POSTCARDS & CALENDARS

Through May 23

Altman Siegel Gallery

49 Geary, fourth floor, SF

(415) 576-9300

www.altmansiegel.com

Listen/Vision 06

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PREVIEW In addition to making music, Christopher Willits is a guiding force behind the art and experimental music site Overlap (www.overlap.org). In conjunction with Overlap’s next event, I caught up with him by e-mail.

SFBG What was it like to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto on Ocean Fire (12k, 2008)?

Christopher Willits It was surreal. We fell into an oceanic trance, and a bunch of music suddenly emerged. Then a Godzilla-like sea monster morphed out of his piano and he vaporized it with his max patch.

SFBG You’ve also worked with Brad Laner of Medicine. Are you an admirer of that (ahead-of-its-time) band?

CW Medicine [had] a mind-splittingly original sound — it was a soundtrack to many high school adventures. Now it’s an absolute joy to be friends with Mr. Laner. Together we are the varsity band members (guitar I and II) of the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra. We’re aiming for nationals next year.

SFBG What do you like about the Bay Area’s close proximity to the ocean?

CW The smell of fresh wind, and dreams of flying great white sharks.

SFBG I saw a fave list of yours once that had Magma, the Carpenters’ "Close to You" and Sun Ra’s Lanquidity on it. Who is inspiring or obsessing you at present?

CW That is a timeless list — can I say them again? Let’s add Morton Subotnick, Wild Bull (www.merlindarts.com), all Eliane Radigue, all Elvin Jones, John Coltrane, and that band that plays at El Rio on Sunday night.

SFBG You recently toured in China, including a performance with images on ice. What did you discover?

CW I discovered a resilient community of artists and experimental musicians pushing against the grain (and firewall) of this mammoth country or force. They understand my history and what I’m doing — another win for Chinese bootlegs? I also found some of the best food ever: huajiao (flower pepper) with asparagus! But hold the boiled big brains. Those I’m definitely not into.

LISTEN/VISION 06 With Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, and Classical Revolution. Sun/10, 8 p.m., $10. Café Du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. (415) 861-5016. www.overlap.org.

“Desiree Holman: Reborn”

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REVIEW It’s time to dance — to sashay from the video installation within Nick Cave’s "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the video aspect of Desirée Holman’s part of the SECA exhibition, now in its last days at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. To hustle between the two is revealing. Not only do Cave and Holman share an irreverent interest in choreography and the unity or community that can spring from mutual movement, they also devote considerable creative energy to costuming. Most compelling of all, these strange kin tap into and surrealistically subvert (in Holman’s case) or explode (in Cave’s instance) conventions regarding race relations in the early Obama era. Think about it. Dance to this.

Closer to the Tenderloin at Jessica Silverman Gallery, Holman turns her attention to the feminine and maternal in "Reborn," a solo show that, much like her SFMOMA contribution, mixes drawings, mask-making (or more precisely here, doll-making), and video involving choreography. Holman’s drawings for the exhibition are as sickly they are lovely — a woman’s split ends take on a windswept weeping willow quality. In the alluring yet disgusting series of images, milk spills from mothers’ mouths as they nurse unsettlingly complacent babies. The video Reborn, nestled perversely in the cement block back room — or should I say back womb? — of Silverman Gallery, mines comedy and the type of incipient frustration that can grow into rage. It does so via games of duck-duck-goose, hummed lullabies, and the occasional bedazzled burka.

DESIRÉE HOLMAN: REBORN

Through May 30. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Silverman Gallery, 804 Sutter, SF. (415) 255-9508. www.silverman-gallery.com

Obama meets Mantis in Lace!

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The blogosphere and cable television got more heated than fried cheese in Paula Dean’s kitchen about President Obama’s and Vice-President Biden’s recent trip to Ray’s Hell Burger.

Peeping the footage at a corner store, I didn’t give a damn about the story’s culinary focus. I was thrilled to see the most famous man in the world sharing the frame with a huge poster for Mantis in Lace! Now this is the kind of juxtaposition that makes life worth living. In fact, I think I’ll call it a day as soon as I finish posting this item.

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Look over your shoulder, Biden. Mantis in Lace‘s Lila has a cleaver for you.

Psychotronic maniacs will tell you that Mantis in Lace is the tale of Lila, a loner stripper chick who doses herself with copious LSD as she seduces men back to her beatnik lair and kills them. It has a theme song, lots of mod wackiness, and one of the best movie titles ever. It’s also a favorite of the artist and zine inventor G.B. Jones.

It’s great to see our leader eating next to this archival treasure from Times Square’s heyday. But I won’t be fully satisfied until we see Obama eating a vegetarian meal next to a lobby card for Deadly Spawn.

Labelmania: Slumberland and Omni Recording

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This week’s Guardian features a trio of stories devoted to the state and meaning of music labels today. In compiling my piece, I contacted a number of labels who put out music I love, and asked them five questions. Below, find answers and jokes from Mike Schulman, head of the Bay Area indie pop mainstay Slumberland Records, and David Thrussell of Omni Recording Corporation, a reissue endeavor that sports a handsome pic of silver fox incarnate Lorne Greene on its homepage. I’ve long loved the trend-defying Slumberland and am happy to see it riding high thanks to acclaimed albums by Crystal Stilts and Pains of Being Pure at Heart (whose “Young Adult Friction” is in the running for my favorite song of 2009). As for Omni, it has brought the underrated electronic pioneer Bruce Haack to new generations of listeners, put out a drop dead gorgeous Anita Carter collection, and recently released the compellingly dodgy compilation Plantation Gold.

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SFBG What meaning do you think a label has today?
MIKE SCHULMAN, SLUMBERLAND RECORDS Well, it depends on the sector of music. For mainstream music, it’s clear that labels are struggling as artists seek alternate revenue streams, and as sales of music itself continue to dwindle. For non-mainstream music, though, I think labels are as important as ever. With the increasing fragmentation and atomization of genres/scenes/markets, consumers rely on labels as a curatorial enterprise, a shorthand signifier for what they’re into and a useful tool to help sort through the mountain of new music.
DAVID THRUSSELL, OMNI RECORDING Please forgive me, I’m not trying to be contrary, but I just don’t care that much about record labels. They (ourselves included!) are just a means to an end. The end being the music.
At Omni, we are a bit nutty about fine but dramatically under-appreciated music. There is so much great music buried and/or hidden in the past, why bother with the present? It’s more fun to lift forgotten old rocks and see what slithers and slides underneath than bother with this week’s parade of the latest empty-headed posers.The cult of “new” always being best is a dangerous fallacy.

Cover of debut album by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, on Slumberland Records
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Cover of The Electric Lucifer by Bruce Haack, reissued by Omni Recording Corporation
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SFBG What are your favorite labels for newer artists, and your favorites for reissues?
SLUMBERLAND For new stuff: Mojuba, Siltbreeze, Perlon, Hyperdub, Sound Signature, In The Red. For reissues: Honest Jons, Soundway, Soul Jazz, Pressure Sounds.
OMNI I’ve pretty much given up on contemporary music. I generally find it shallow and uninteresting (with the odd exception). Am I sounding grumpy today? Sorry.
I do have a lot of enthusiasm for quite a few re-issue labels. They include: Digitmovies, an Italian label releasing top-shelf Italian film scores from the 1960s-1970s — generally “exploitation” soundtracks, which as everybody knows, are the best; Avanz, a Japanese label filling a similar niche; Pet Records, which released the essential Soft Sounds For Gentle People series; Trunk Records, purveyor of strange artifacts from the back of Auntie’s closet — that’s how we like it.

Kuchar alert! Zombies of Zanzibar

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‘Tis the season — San Francisco is alive with movie brilliance. To what do I refer? George Kuchar’s latest class production at San Francisco Art Institute. If you don’t have a job right now, or if you don’t have to work on International Worker’s Day, go to SFAI to see Zombies of Zanzibar.

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Spring cinema in the Bay Area hits a peak with a free screening of a movie made by Kuchar and his film production class. Billing them as the Studio 8 Players, the characteristically alliterative Zombies promises a zany array of “ACTION!…ROMANCE…TERROR…AND SPECTACLE.” Did I say it was free?

ZOMBIES OF ZANZIBAR
Fri/1, noon, free
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut, SF
(415) 771-7020
www.sfai.edu/

To get you in the mood, some Kuchar on YouTube after the jump:

The Locust on Jerry Springer!

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In the mid-late 1990s there was a mini-movement in Northwest punk and indie rock of bands keeping it together by seeing therapists. The trend reached Cali crossover status or lameness — depending on your perspective — when Metallica made a whole movie about the value of their shrink. Now SoCal noise vets the Locust have brought some new life to the idea by a consulting a novel counselor: Jerry Springer.

I’d tell you more about these Jerry Springer Show clips if my work computer was capable of showing them at something other than Ben Hur epic length. For now, I’ll have to go with second-hand info from my friend NB, who told my other half that the theme is gay-or-bi-on-tour shenanigans. Prank, truth, or prank with some grains of truth? Depends on who you ask. The Locust: giving new meaning to the term San Diego Zoo!

The Locust on Jerry Springer, part 1

The Locust on Jerry Springer, part 2

The name game

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johnny@sfbg.com

LABELS Look for the label: that shopper’s instruction has carried a wealth of meanings over the years in the music industry. Stax and Motown have soul. Jazz has Verve. Kudu has that bluesy voodoo. If you want a symbol of vindictive business dealings, look up Savoy. If you’re obsessed with the history of post-punk and indie rock, see Factory, Rough Trade, and Creation. Yet what does a label mean in 2009? Do labels still matter in an ever more ephemeral music industry? In fact, does matter itself matter anymore in a world where the C in CD might as well stand for coffin-bound? God save EMI?

I put the first question to a number of label owners and representatives recently, hoping their answers might provide an entry into a discussion of the role of labels and the potential of music today. Their answers did not disappoint. "Anyone saying [labels] are dead and gone is not factoring in the talented, but brainless, American Idol contestant," quipped Ken Shipley, founder of the vaunted reissue and archival label Numero Group. "They’re backed by liquor companies and weapons manufacturers, and as long as the Army needs music for commercials at movie theaters, they’ll be in business. The labels that are about to be useless are the large indies — crippled by an infrastructure and overhead built for the ’90s CD bonanza — and the micro-indies, [that are] doing what any band’s manager can already do."

Such a perspective suggests that reissue labels have the truest vital stake in the future of commercially produced music, and this passionate music lover has to admit that it sometimes feels this way: over the last few years, archival entities such as Numero Group, Omni Recording, Trunk, Light in the Attic, and the local Water label have played as major a role in my listening experience as any indie dedicated to new groups and artists.

Yet even as iTunes demands that everyone stand under its umbrella, the meaning and importance of a small label can persist in very simple and profound ways. "I pay attention to records coming out on good labels that I know I can trust," says Filippo Salvadori of Runt Distribution, the Oakland home to reissue labels including Water and 4 Men with Beards. "A record label is an important hub for art and idea exchanges between music lovers and musicians," Bettina Richards of Thrill Jockey likewise declares, her directness and use of the word record born of past and recent experience.

"I think labels are as important as ever," maintains Mike Schulman of the Bay Area indie pop shrine Slumberland, which is currently experiencing a new burst of recognition thanks to bands such as Crystal Stilts and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. "With the increasing fragmentation and atomization of genres and scenes and markets, customers rely on labels as a curatorial enterprise, a shorthand signifier for what they’re into, and a useful tool to help sort through the mountain of new music."

The curatorial corollary, or an editorial variant, comes up more than once among small label owners. "In an sense, we serve as editors, but to do more than edit," says Andres Santo Domingo of Kemado Records. "We actively promote the artists on our roster and help make their life easier so they can dedicate themselves to being musicians [at a time when making] music is less financially viable than it was in the past."

Joakim Hoagland of the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound has a more idealistic view of the label owner’s enterprise. "In my opinion, running a label is an artform," he writes, still passionate in the wake of a recent public debate with Peter Sunde of the Pirate Bay, a staunch opponent of music labels and other aspects of copyright culture. "I am in general a label fan and have read most books available on labels like Elektra, Impulse, Creation, Rough Trade, Factory, and so on. I love labels, and sometimes am more interested in a label than an artist."

While Hoagland makes a case for the label identity that is forged as a labor of love for new music, Shipley of Numero Group feels that reissue labels have a "brand identity" that most labels devoted to contemporary music currently lack. Indeed, this might be the case, thanks to the manner in which iTunes seems to have swallowed the experience of listening to recorded music. "Although millions of labels sell their music through iTunes, the only brand name that is really involved and talked about through the process is iTunes, which isn’t even a label," notes Jonny Trunk of the U.K. reissue treasure trove Trunk. "You cannot search on iTunes by label. Which is rubbish, really."

Matt Sullivan of the Seattle-based label Light in the Attic fuses Hoagland’s appreciation of past labels with Shipley’s and Trunk’s devotion to discovering old "lost" music. "There was something so beautiful about labels like Stax, early Sub Pop, Creation, or even Reprise/Elektra/Warner when Stan Cornyn was at the helm in that golden age of the late 1960s and early 1970s," he observes. "No one’s done it better since."

For Sullivan and Light in the Attic, a label functions as a way to right past industry wrongs, and find or create new audiences for abused and neglected artists. "Most managers, labels, publicists, booking agents, etc. are crooks and cheats, better suited for a position at Enron or Madoff Investment Securities," he notes. "After all, though, this is the entertainment business and it feeds on low-lifes." He contrasts this bleakly funny outlook with the dedication required in reissuing a choice recording from long ago: "Folks have no idea the amount of time that goes into a reissue. On the other hand, I have no idea the time that’s invested in making a tube of toothpaste." This dedication results in a recorded object with artwork in the case of Light in the Attic, or Trunk, whose namesake is an expert on music library treasures, and the author of a deluxe book of artwork (with a CD) related to the subject, The Music Library (Fuel Publishing).

As CDs pile up in landfills, vinyl is returning from the dead with ever-increasing commercial vitality, even if on a smaller scale. "From a personal level, I wish the CD would die," says Chris Manak, a.k.a. Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records. "I don’t have an effective way of storing mine without losing them all the time. I wish everybody who liked music would buy a damn turntable or two, like me." Richards of Thrill Jockey sees growing vinyl activity, if not that level of popularity. "A great example of the trickle-up effect is the surge in LP sales," she says. "It is a great adventure to be a part of, and be on the hunt for new sounds without limitation to form."

But what does it all mean for the musician? "There may be some brave new world wherein the artists can do all the work themselves, but I think that notion, at least from the current perspective, is a pipe dream," says Joel Leoshke of Kranky, home of groups such as Deerhunter. "Can you name three artists that work without a label at the moment? I think not."

"Labels needs bands, not vice-versa," counters the acerbic Shipley. "The sooner every band in the world realizes that, the better off they’re going to be. Labels are for the lazy, the incompetent, and the cash-poor. Sadly, this represents 99 percent of all musicians. Good luck." Asked about the future role of labels within the industry, he makes a comparison. "The label’s role is a business version of child support: Wednesdays and every other weekend until your artists hit their teens and hate you."

Other label owners imagine even more dystopian scenarios. "As J.G. Ballard predicted, you will soon see musicians taking cruise ships and airliners hostage to hold private and compulsory listening parties," half-jokes David Thrussell of Omni Recording, which has uncovered vanguard audio explorers such as Bruce Haack. "Naturally, record labels will support artists to the maximum of their ability in these brave new marketing ventures." Slightly more seriously — only slightly — he lists his and Omni’s future goals as at attempt to "pry as many strange or under appreciated records out of musty vaults and attics as we can until the Earth explodes in a cloud of tepid dust (not that far off)."

Some label reps see labels taking on an even more encompassing role in relation to musicians. "I think some of the larger labels will be demanding much more from their artists — these 360-type deals where the labels want to own the artist, their recordings, their publishing, their gig rights, the merchandise, the outfits, all online activity, everything, everywhere," says Trunk. Hoagland of Smalltown Suerosund envisions a similar scenario in kinder, gentler, smaller terms. "My opinion is that labels should do more booking and publishing as well as releasing music. I think it is better for artists if you have one team or label work for you rather than three or four working against each other. I am not sure if 360-type deals work well with the majors, but the indie could make them into something cool."

"I know I’m a bit of a music geek about labels," admits Schulman, who once was more cynical about the industry machinations he’s moved through. "But I think that as the group of people who actually buy music continues to shrink down to a core of those who really care about it, they’ll continue to coalesce around the labels whose taste they trust."

“Dean Smith: thought forms 2003-2009” and “Dean Byington”

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REVIEW Call it the tumbling dice effect: dice keep appearing within Bay Area art this spring. First there was the gigantic 16-sided polygon by Brian Wasson at Ping Pong Gallery — a prediction device freed from its Magic Eight ball. Now viewers can roll with enigmas of a dice-centered video installation that is the most intriguing facet of Kent and Kevin Young’s "Jury Breaks DNA Deadlock" exhibition at Steven Wolf Gallery. They can also stare deep into a large-scale C-print of a many-sided die that doubles as a calendar in Matt Keegan’s show at Altman-Siegel Gallery, "Postcards & Calendars." Yet the best invocation of chance and rolling dice takes place just out of sight — or does it? — in a knockout piece within Dean Smith’s "thought forms 2003-2009" at Gallery Paule Anglim. Smith’s 2005 colored-pencil drawing thought form #11, from 2005, was generated by repeatedly rolling a tetrahedron. Smith’s process renders an object — a meta-die — that is both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and that ultimately collapses or blooms free from dimensionality. The piece’s shades of blue make this state of play a flirtation with the sublime.

The dice games mentioned above are something different from the clichéd forest animals and color-theory rainbows that invaded Bay Area art during stretches of the last decade, or the skulls that took over Artforum in the wake of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007) and Don Ed Hardy’s mass-production of tattoo imagery — they aren’t trendy gestures so much as chance manifestations. Smith’s thought form #11 is one expression within a multiyear project that yields ever-changing graphite on paper works and video. The pieces at Paule Anglim span from 2003 to 2008 and evoke everything from space ships or outer space community outposts to totems and medieval devices, while never remaining stuck in specificity. They’re well-paired with a one-room, four-piece show by Dean Byington, whose oil-on-linen extensions of collage are a Beatrix Potter-meets-Brueghel-in-paradise hallucinatory delight. "Oh my god, this is all diamonds!" a young girl exclaimed upon looking closely at one of Byington’s works, which seem like minimalist experiments with color from a distance. Step in closer and you’ll discover endless mountains, forests, and quarries; caves with cute yet unsettlingly prison-like windows carved into their sides; stacks of stalagmites; and greenhouses that resemble giant Cartier eggs. Oh, and the occasional strange half-fox half-rodent. Be sure to say hi.

DEAN SMITH: THOUGHT FORMS 2003-09 and DEAN BYINGTON Through Sat/2. Wed-Fri, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Gallery Paule Anglim, 14 Geary, SF. (415) 433-2710. www.gallerypauleanglim.com

SFIFF: Shots in the dark

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THURS/23


La Mission (Peter Bratt, USA, 2009) A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, 46-year-old Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place, and the affectionate location shooting makes this an ideal SFIFF opening-nighter. (Dennis Harvey) 7 p.m., Castro.

FRI/24


It’s Not Me, I Swear! (Philippe Falardeau, Canada, 2008) Ten-year-old Leon Dore (Antoine L’Écuyer) is a Harold without a Maude, forever staging near-fatal "deadly accidents" that by now no one blinks twice at — whether they’re expressions of warped humor, cries for attention, or actual (yet invariably failed) suicide attempts). Mom and dad are forever at each others’ throats, while their older son pines for a domestic normalcy that ain’t happening anytime soon. One day mom simply announces she’s splitting for Greece to "start a new life," pointedly without husband and children. This event rachets Leon’s misbehaviors — which also encompass theft and vandalism — up a few notches. Set in kitschily-realized late 1960s Quebec suburbia, director Philippe Falardeau’s adaptation of two linked novels by Bruno Hebert is a very deft mix of family dysfunction, preadolescent maladjustment (or maybe budding sociopathy), and anarchic comedy. (Harvey) 5:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also Sat/25, 2:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; Tues/28, 1 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

SAT/25


Adoration (Atom Egoyan, Canada/France, 2008) When orphaned teenager Simon (Devon Bostick) writes a paper for French class in which he imagines himself as the son of real-life terrorists, his teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) tacitly encourages its being taken for fact. The resulting firestorm (largely taking place on the Web) raises questions about the boy’s actual parents, free speech, religio-political martyrdom, and so forth. This is the first Atom Egoyan feature based on his own original story — as opposed to literary sources or historical incidents — in 15 interim years. While his fame has certainly risen in the interim, some of us haven’t liked anything so well since that last one, 1994’s Exotica. Adoration recalls such early efforts in the cool intellectual gamesmanship with which characters and technologies are manipulated toward a hidden truth. Yet provocative as it is, there’s something overly elaborate and ultimately dissatisfying about his gambits that makes Adoration less than the sum of its parts. (Harvey) 6:15 p.m, Sundance Kabuki. Also Mon/27, 6:30 p.m., PFA.

Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan/Switzerland/Germany/Russia/Poland, 2008) Possible new genre alert: the docu-comedy. Documenatarian Dvortsevoy turns his camera on his native Kazakhstan, and nothing depicted suggests anything Borat might’ve broadcast. The country’s stark, southern steppes form the backdrop for a family of nomads, including married-with-children Samal and Ondas, and Samal’s brother Asa, who returns from his Russian naval service longing for his own flock of sheep. Alas, he can’t get a flock until he lands a wife — and the only local prospect, Tulpan, rejects him on the basis of his "big ears" (and the small fact that she would like to move out of the sticks, into the city, and maybe even attend college). Traditional ways bump up against more ambitious ones (as when Asa dreams of a satellite dish), just as comedic moments trade screen time with grittier scenarios (including actual footage of a sheep giving birth). The end result is an intimate and somehow totally relatable look at a fascinatingly foreign world. (Cheryl Eddy) 6:15 p.m., PFA. Also Mon/27, 9:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; April 30, 4:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

TUES/28


In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, England, 2009) A typically fumbling remark by U.K. Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) ignites a media firestorm, as it seems to suggest war is imminent even as both Brit and U.S. governments are downplaying the likelihood of the Iraq invasion they’re simultaneously preparing for. Suddenly cast as an important arbiter of global affairs — a role he’s perhaps less suited for than playing the Easter Bunny — Simon becomes one chess-piece in a cutthroat game whose participants on both sides of the Atlantic include his own subordinates, the prime minister’s rageaholic communications chief, major Pentagon and State Department honchos, crazy constituents, and more. This frenetic comedy of behind-the-scenes backstabbing and its direct influence on the highest-level diplomatic and military policies is scabrously funny in the best tradition of English television, which is (naturally) just where its creators hei from. (Harvey) 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 2, 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

APRIL 30


California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, USA, 2008) This land isn’t your land, or my land, and it wasn’t made for you and me — such is the insightful and incite-full impression one gets from California Company Town. Schmitt’s beautifully photographed, concisely narrated, and ominously structured look at the Golden State and the state of capitalism is labor of love, shot between 2003 and 2008; it’s a provocative piece of American history. On a semi-buried level, it’s also an extraordinary act of personal filmmaking that subverts various stereotypes of first-person storytelling by women while simultaneously learning from and breaking away from some esteemed directors of the essay film. (Johnny Ray Huston) 8:35 p.m., PFA. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 4, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Rudo y Cursi (Carlos Cuarón, Mexico, 2008) A who’s-who of Mexican cinema giants have their cleats in soccer yarn Rudo y Cursi: stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and producers Alfonso Cuarón (whose brother, Carlos, wrote and directed), Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. But while Rudo is entertaining, it’s surprisingly lightweight considering the talent involved. Bernal and Luna play Tato and Beto, rural half-brothers discovered by a jovially crooked soccer scout (Guillermo Francella) who gets them gigs playing on Mexico City teams. But athletic achievement seems barely a concern. Of far more importance are Tato’s crooning dreams and high-profile romance with a vapid TV star, and Beto’s left-behind wife and kids — not to mention his raging gambling addiction. Though the drama boils down to one final game (of course), Rudo is really about the bonds and brawls between brothers, not sports teams. Goal? (Eddy) 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 1, 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 1


D Tour (Jim Granato, USA, 2008) There’s been many a band-on-the-brink doc about groups torn apart by substance abuse, or creative differences, or just plain nuttiness (see: 2004’s DiG! and Some Kind of Monster, and any number of Behind the Music eps). In D Tour, local indie popsters Rogue Wave face, and are drawn together by, an entirely different brand of crisis: drummer Pat Spurgeon’s urgent need for a kidney transplant. Director Granato is given full access to subjects who are very open about their feelings (and, in Spurgeon’s case, unpleasant medical procedures). The result is a music- and emotion-filled journey that’ll no doubt inspire many to check off the "organ donor" box on their driver’s licenses. A sadly ironic, late-act twist involving a different band member will come as no surprise to Rogue Wave followers, but D Tour incorporates the tragedy into its storyline without ever exploiting it. (Eddy) 9 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 4, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 7, 5:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 2


The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (David Russo, USA, 2009) Animator Russo’s first feature is a (mostly) live-action whimsy about rudderless Dory (Marshall Allman from Prison Break) who gets fired from his white-collar job and lands in the much scruffier employ of Spiffy Jiffy Janitorial Services. Its punky artist-type staff clean a high-rise’s offices, including one for a test-marketing trying out "self-warming cookies." When our protagonists develop an addictive liking for these treats, strange things begin to occur — like hallucinations and, eventually, male pregnancies of mystery critters. Depending on mood, this arch quirkfest with an ’80s feel (think of all the similar, mildly surreal indie comedies that rode 1984 release Repo Man‘s coattails) may strike you as delightful or just plain irritating. (Harvey) 11 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 6, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Tyson (James Toback, USA, 2008) Director Toback is picking up this year’s Kanbar Award for "excellence in screenwriting," but his latest film is a doc scripted largely in the mind of its subject. To call Mike Tyson a polarizing figure is an understatement (and raises the question: Does anyone really like him except Toback, whom he’s known for two decades?). This film — narrated by Tyson, the sole interviewee — won’t endear him to a public that’s seen him besmirch his glorious boxing-ring talents with an array of bad behavior, from a rape charge (here, Tyson calls his accuser a "wretched swine of a woman") to the chomping of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Though he chokes up on occasion and admits at one point that he starting taking fights just for the money, he’s still about as unsympathetic as humanly possible. Fun fact: a friend convinced him to go tribal with the face tattoo. Tyson himself wanted hearts. (Eddy) 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 3


Moon (Duncan Jones, England, 2008) The Bay Area’s own Sam Rockwell has quietly racked up a slew of memorable performances in variable films — including 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and 2008’s Choke — so the fact that he’s pretty much the whole show in this British sci-fi tale is reason enough to see it. A one-man space saga à la Silent Running (1972), it has him as Sam Bell, the lone non-mechanical worker (Kevin Spacey voices his principal robot assistant) on a lunar mining station in the not-too-distant future. He’s just about to finish his long, lonely contracted three-year stint and return home to a desperately missed family when strange things begin to occur. First there are hallucinations, then physical disabilities, then finally the impossible — there’s company aboard the station. Debuting feature director Duncan Jones orchestrates atmosphere and intrigue, though despite one major game-changing twist his original story seems a little thin in the long run. Nevertheless, Rockwell commands attention throughout as a character whose exhaustion, disorientation, and eventual panic feel alarmingly vivid. (Harvey) 9 p.m., Castro.

The Reckoning (Pamela Yates, USA/Uganda/Congo/Colombia/Netherlands, 2008) Yates’ latest documentary chronicles the long-delayed launch and bumpy first years of the International Criminal Court, a Hague-based body founded to prosecute (primarily) war crimes that member nations were unwilling or unable to do so themselves. Its authority is not yet recognized by several nations — including the Big Three of U.S.A., Russia, and China — while prosecutions of various military or political leaders who ordered crimes against civilians are often hampered by political minefields. Nonetheless, the still-struggling court is a beacon of hope for peace and justice around the globe. Yates lays out its work so far as an engrossing series of detective stories investigating instances of mass murder, rape, plunder, etc. in Uganda, the Congo, Darfur, and Colombia. (Harvey) 5:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6 p.m., PFA; May 6, 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2008) It’s no joy for Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) to bring his wife and stepson up from Tokyo on an annual visit to his elderly parents. The occasion is to commemorate the passing of an older brother who’s been dead for decades but is still held up as the yardstick by which Ryo will always fall short. Mom (Kiki Kirin) is well intentioned enough, if often insensitively blunt-spoken. But retired dad (Yoshio Harada) is an imperious grump who resents Ryo’s not following him into medical practice, disapproves of his marrying a widow, spurns her son from that prior union as less than a "real" grandchild, and is generally kind of a dick. This latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda (2004’s Nobody Knows, 1998’s After Life) is a quiet seriocomedy with lots of discomfiting moments. Yet it’s suffused with enough humor, warmth and surprising joy to easily qualify as one of SFIFF’s best 2009 picks. (Harvey)

8:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Dot dash — Norman McLaren and Junior Boys

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By Johnny Ray Huston

In this week’s Guardian I make reference to the influence of animator Norman McLaren on Junior Boys’ new album Begone Dull Care (Domino). The song collection takes its name from a 1949 film by McLaren, but his influence saturates the album, from its lyrical references to “Parallel Lines” to more overt aspects such as the simply handsome color chart qualities of the CD’s booklet, on through to a song titled “The Animator.” “I could draw a line without it falling off the page,” singer-lyricist Jeremy Greenspan intones wishfully there, before glowing instrumental elements build up to a swoon. Canadian pride and gay affinity live within singer-songwriter Greenspan’s tribute to the late McLaren, who drew directly onto film to create many of his best works. But could the Junior Boys’ version of Begone Dull Care use a little of McLaren’s splashy energy and humor? Though he also dipped into jazz, the music for many of his shorts has a Perrey and Kingsley quality. Here’s a sample to enjoy:

Norman McLaren, Dots

Norman McLaren, Begone Dull Care

After the jump — more McLaren films:

Here, my Dearie: Jacqui Naylor knows Blossom Dearie

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By Johnny Ray Huston

When Blossom Dearie passed at the age of 84 this February, the world of jazz and cabaret lost perhaps its lightest, sweetest, and wittiest voice, not to mention a pianist of subtle grace. But Dearie’s contributions to recorded music, the American songbook, and even children’s television remain for people to discover and veteran fans to celebrate. The singer and songwriter Jacqui Naylor is paying tribute to Dearie in concert this week at Yoshi’s SF. We recently discussed the singular charms of Dearie, and her influence, via email.

Jacqui Naylor
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SFBG When was the first time you saw Blossom live on stage? What impressions or favorite memories do you have from her performances?
Jacqui Naylor I first saw Blossom with my vocal teacher, Faith Winthrop, in 1997 in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall. I fell in love with her unmistakably sweet voice, quirky delivery and unmatched style.
Blossom’s voice was small and large at the same time and she used her nice range to tell the story of a song with sincerity, rather than over singing it, sometimes with a little sweet vibrato at the top and sometimes with an almost speaking quality in her middle and lower register. I appreciated that she made the most of every lyric, especially with such a diverse repertoire, everything from lovingly sung ballads to wit-filled swing tunes and songs that she wrote. I was also struck by the fact that she was selling her CDs herself and taking the time to sign them for people. I have a few that I cherish from that evening. She is the only artist from whom I’ve felt compelled to get a signature.

Blossom Dearie sings “Surrey With the Fringe on Top”

SFBG Did you know Blossom?
JN I saw Blossom on a number of occasions in New York and met her through my distributor, John Nustvold, from Ryko/Warner. He is also a big fan of her work and was hopeful to get her music out to more people. We dreamed that maybe there were even some unreleased tracks that we could help bring to market.
I should say here that Blossom not only inspired me musically but also in her business savvy, since she was one of the first artists to own her own label, Daffodil Records. It was great to meet her and tell her how much she had affected me, inspiring my own Ruby Star Records and my determination to find a sound that was uniquely mine. It is because of her that I stopped worrying about whether I sounded like a traditional jazz singer and instead focused on telling the stories of the songs I chose to sing in a ways that felt true to me. Because of her, I also began to imagine bringing humor to my music and shows by reinterpreting the idea of modern cabaret songs, and by writing songs that might inspire people. Many of the songs Blossom chose to sing touted words of spring, birds, love, flight, and yes, blossoms. And even when she sang the most cruel and humorous cabaret song, she did so with a sense of compassion, humility and good fun. Famous for refusing to sing unless her audience was quiet, Blossom did so politely and without malice. A true talent with a lot of grace and charm.

After the jump: Schoolhouse Rock, grape-peeling appeal, great live clips, “Blossom’s Blues” and Dearie’s musicianship,

What depression? New movie by David Enos

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As local fave Papercuts puts out You Can Have What You Want, sometime contributor to the project David Enos shares a new movie about going without:

Lit: Erik Drooker takes aim with Slingshot

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By Ben Terrall

I met Eric Drooker when we were both callow teens experiencing the joys of a coed Quaker socialist hippie camp in Vermont. We skinny-dipped, which was part of the camp’s official policy, and smoked pot, which wasn’t. Drooker has lived in the Bay Area since the mid-1990s, but his art is closely associated with New York City. A lanky, laconic man in his late 40s, he was born and raised in Manhattan, and the city still dominates his imagery. This is true of his wordless graphic novel Flood: A Novel in Pictures (Dark Horse), which won an American Book Award in 1993. It also applies to the haunting silent ballad Blood Song (Harvest Books), published in 2002.

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Eric Drooker

Yet Drooker is perhaps best known for oil paintings that grace covers of The New Yorker — in early September last year, his 15th cover for the magazine appeared on newsstands. Some of these paintings are also included in 2006’s Illuminated Poems (Running Press), which pairs his art with writing by the late Allen Ginsberg. Most recently Drooker published a book of postcards titled Slingshot (PM Press, 68 pages, $14.05). It consists of 32 images created with razor blade on scratchboard.

slingshot.jpg

A Q&A with Nick Cave

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By Johnny Ray Huston

Nick Cave and I probably crossed paths in Heaven one night. Heaven was a club on Woodward Avenue in Detroit where you could go, after 2 a.m., to dance and sweat and lose yourself to the sounds of DJ Ken Collier. Cave’s time in Heaven has made it possible for him to create “Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,” his show at Yerba Buena Center of the Arts. Time spent in that kind of cathartic, uninhibited place is necessary for someone — someone like Cave — to bring people to the Earth’s core and allow them to begin reimagining from the center of existence. When Cave and I talked on the phone recently, the morning of a full-page profile of him appeared in the Sunday New York Times, our discussion started near Heaven, and ended in Barack Obama’s Chicago.

SFBG How has your studio changed over the years, in terms of location, layout, and contents?
Nick Cave My studio has changed according to the way my career has changed. I’ve expanded in space due to demand. I’ve had to bring on more studio assistants. It’s evolved and grown, but without expanding beyond my means. I look at it the same way I did when I had a clothing store. I try to make smart moves.

SFBG Do those things influence your process, or do many of your ideas originate outside of the studio space?
NC I think it does occur outside the studio space. The studio is where the ideas are manifested. The ideas come from being out there in the world — just being open. Though sometimes a revelation may happen in the studio, based on an experience I’m developing. It happens when it happens.

SFBG We’ve both spent formative time in Detroit and the Detroit area. I went to Wayne State [University], while you went to Cranbrook Academy of Art]. I’d love to know more about your experience there with [fiber artist and teacher] Gerhardt Knodel. I wondered also whether you had ties to the club scenes in Detroit or Chicago at any time.
NC Oh, hell yeah [laughs].
Cranbrook was probably the most extraordinary place for me. I could have gone straight to New York [City], or to other schools, but I knew I needed an environment that was somewhat isolated, because of my desires to be distracted by other creative endeavors. Cranbrook provided this amazing intensive rigor and isolation from the world. Yet I had Detroit, which really allowed that gritty balance. It was the best of both worlds. When I needed to get the hell out of Cranbrook, believe me, I did.

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Photo by James Prinz

Snap Sounds: From A to Z

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By Johnny Ray Huston

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Actress Hazyville (Werk) Werk label head Daniel J. Cunningham charts a triangular electronic space beyond singular genres yet quite familiar. Dark loveliness gives way to boring repetition then returns, while focal points and sources remain just out of reach.

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Anita Carter Songbird (Omni) This is singing. The daughter of Maybelle and sister of June (whose husband pitches in on one track) is faultless from the Joe Meek-like future scenario "2001" to the pop of "Hang a Little Sign" on through to the sublimely sad and gorgeous "Sweet Memories."

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Various artists The Birth of Bossa (Él/Cherry Red) Weirdly, there are no Tom Jobim recordings here, but the influential "Chega da suade" gets two versions, including one by samba singer Elizeta Cardoso, whose down tempo emotionalism is showcased. Another odd gem from Él and Cherry Red.

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Ella Washington He Called Me Baby (Soulscape) A name that evokes two legendary divas couldn’t have helped this Florida woman carve out her own rep. A shame, because she can sing her ass off — tearing it up in the verse, building momentum in the bridge, and ripping the roof off in the chorus. One highlight: "Sit Down and Cry," which even Irma Thomas might envy.

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Wavves Wavves (Fat Possum) Wavves wishes they all could be California goths, on the beach, riding the surf, in the summer. The distortion is delicious, as are the guitar solos, the nyah-nyah lead vox and the falsetto harmonies that teeter between blissed out and freaked out.

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Wicked Witch Chaos, 1978-86 (Em) The Em label outdoes itself by uncovering this slab of kinky gothic urban funk by one enigmatic leather-and-spike-clad Richard Simms. The 12-minute "Vera’s Back" is a contender for jam of the year.

Playlistism on YouTube after the jump:

A guide to artists with famous namesakes

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Read the growing number of enthusiastic articles about Soundsuit creator Nick Cave and you’ll soon notice most of them have something in common — at one point or another, the journalist or author has to interject that this Nick Cave isn’t the Australian gothic blues dirge icon. Cave the dancer-turned-sculptor/designer likely faces his musical namesake at every turn, but he is just one contemporary visual artist with a well-known moniker. To clarify matters, behold this illustrated breakdown.

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NAME Nick Cave
FORTE Murder ballads
SIDE GIGS Writing, acting, and leading Sinnerman
CURRENT PROJECTS Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Mute, 2008); a screenplay with the Leonard Cohen-ish title Death of a Ladies’ Man
QUOTE “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth / And anyway I told the truth / And I’m not afraid to die.”

caveartist.jpg
NAME Nick Cave
FORTE Sculpture, video, and artistic fashion with untamed imagination
SIDE GIGS Dance and choreography
CURRENT PROJECTS “Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; a 90 Soundsuit dance performance in 2012 at Chicago’s Millennium Park
QUOTE “The arts are our salvation — the only thing that allows us to heal and also helps us dream about what will make the world a better place.”

collinssinger.jpg
NAME Phil Collins
FORTE Blue-eyed soul, romantic movie themes, turning prog into pop, drumming, Alamo artifact collecting, and becoming an icon of male pattern baldness
SIDE GIGS Duets with Billy Ocean, replacing Peter Gabriel in Genesis
CURRENT PROJECTS Fatherhood, greatest hits collections
QUOTE “She’s an easy lover / Before you know it you’ll be on your knees.”; “I feel so good if I just say the word / Su-su-sussudio.”

Gui Boratto comes back to the Bay

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Gui Boratto‘s Chromophobia (Kompakt, 2007) was the sound of minimal techno going pop, its array of sonic colors gorgeous enough to cure the titular malady. With the new Take My Breath Away (Kompakt), Boratto ventures further into pop’s immediacy and epic aspects. Though the eco-pun cover image might be the worst art for any Kompakt release, I love more than enough of it, especially the portentously named "Opus 217" and his latest collaboration with wife Luciana Villanova, "No Turning Back." The Brazilian Boratto has SF ties, another reason why a visit by him should be a party to remember.

Fri/10, 10 p.m.-4 a.m., $13

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom, SF

(415) 252-5017

www.paradisesf.com

Mirah in SF tonight — arcane yet accessible

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By Danica Li

We guess it’s typical that Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn would write a batch of songs, group the songs into an album, and then name the album something pretty much incomprehensible. (a)spera (K), her first release in a near half-decade — wasn’t it just yesterday that Mirah arrived on the scene, a bright-eyed, scampering young up-and-comer? — is the Latin stand-in for hope or adversity, depending on how you interpret the handy parenthetical tacked onto the beginning of the word. With her restrained instrumentation, acoustic pop smarts, and whimsical inspirations, Mirah’s records are as oddly accessible as they are born of arcane esoterica: 19th-century French naturalist writings inspired her multimedia endeavor Share This Place: Stories and Observations (K, 2007), a concept album about the lives of insects.

Small town heroine or not, Mirah’s discreetly built something of a national following. Back before she’d even released an album, she used to play gigs with a full band at weddings and bar mitzvahs for extra monies, but that fledgling project fell to the wayside when she decided to do her own thing. That involved a bit of lo-fi futzing around, a couple of forays into riot grrrl bristling, and a lot of sparely beautiful acoustic sessions with just her guitar — Liz Phair knock-off dismissals be damned.

Mirah was MIA for the better part of the mid-2000s, in terms of solo recordings. She spent the time tinkering with an impressive number of side projects, including collaborations with the Microphones’ Phil Elverum and Black Cat Orchestra, plus the provision of an entire soundtrack for the documentary Young, Jewish, and Left. She also used to tour with the Microphones, but now she’s split off to do her own thing again. No insect noises this time, but the release of (a)spera lands her at Bimbo’s 365 tonight.

MIRAH
With Tender Forever and Leyna Noel
Tues/7, 8 p.m. (door: 7 p.m.), $16
Bimbo’s 365 Club
1025 Columbus, S.F.
(415) 474-0365
www.bimbos365club.com

“Changing Channels” tonight!

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Creative Growth is one of the best places — if not the best — to make art in the Bay Area, and is host to some of the Bay’s most imaginative artists, including Tara Tucker, Aurie Ramirez, and William Scott (whose visions of a better San Francisco are on view at a current White Columns solo show in New York).

Michael Hall originated the site’s Video Production workshop, which has already put together some entertaining animation-filled DVDs. Hall produced the latest Creative Growth video and animation project, “Changing Channels,” which includes CG’s first-ever exhibition devoted to those forms. Tonight there’s a free screening event with popcorn. Pow!

Fri/3, 7:30 p.m.
Creative Growth
355 24th St., Oakl.
(510) 836-2340 ext.15
www.creativegrowth.org

Snap Sounds: Great Lake Swimmers — Lost Channels

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GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS
Lost Channels
(Nettwerk)

Great Lake Swimmers walks a fine line. When the group succeeds, it does do so by satisfyingly convincing me — as long as I’m in the mood — that its slow-paced and shy songs, which often pair thick reverb and a finger-picked guitar line, are cozy instead of cheesy. On GSW’s latest release, mastermind Tony Dekker records songs in the castles, churches, and community centers of the Thousand Islands of Lake Ontario. This site-specific approach could describe earlier recordings as well, if you replace church with silo, and make one other adjustment: Lost Channels is less stark, at least throughout the first half, and aims for a feeling of exhilaration. It succeeds some of the time.

Like Ongiara (Nettwerk, 2007), Lost Channels opens buoyantly: “Palmistry” is an upbeat jangle-pop number that showcases Dekker’s hearty voice even as a full band nudges through the subtler spaces. “The Chorus in the Underground” is a cheery country sing-along with a background choir. The album’s two halves are divided by “Singer Castle Bells,” an interlude recorded at St. Brendan’s Church that is followed by the goose bump-inducing “Stealing Tomorrow.” On “River’s Edge,” pastoral poetics take over. “Now the wind picks up swiftly and suddenly and it is breathing as if from a mouth and the edges are lungs that are heaving,” Dekker sings, searching for spirituality in nature.

One can sense that the perimeters of the buildings where Great Lake Swimmers record have changed. Subsequently, the group’s sound has changed as well. Even though the experimentation on Lost Channels isn’t always successful, the band — and its promise — continues to evolve. (Michelle Broder Van Dyke)

GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS
with Kate Maki
Fri/3, 9 p.m., $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St, SF
(415) 621-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com
www.greatlakeswimmers.com/

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