Tag: San Francisco

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over course of its history, you may recall coming across several posts on Brooklyn-based quintet Super Hi-Fi, who were something of a mainstay act on this site back in 2012. The core members of the band led by Ezra Gale (bass) features Rick Parker (trombone). Jon Lipscomb (guitar) and Madhu Siddappa (drums) can actually trace their origins to a rather unlikely start. Gale, who was a founding member of the acclaimed San Francisco-based Afrobeat act, Aphrodesia had relocated to Brooklyn and was collaborating with Quoc Pham in Sound Liberation Front when Gale was asked to get a band together for Pham and Gale’s then-monthly Afro-Dub Sessions parties in Williamsburg. The parties would pair the live band with several top-name dub producers and DJs including Victor Rice, Prince Polo, Subatomic Sound System, the Beverley Road All-Stars and others.

With the release of their critically applauded debut effort, Dub to the Bone released through Electric Cowbell Records in 2012, the Brooklyn-based quintet won quite a bit of attention locally and nationally as they’ve played renowned local venues such as the Mercury Lounge, the now-closed Zebulon and Brooklyn Bowl and have opened for nationally known acts including Rubblebucket, Beats Antique and John Brown’s Body. Over the past couple of years, Super Hi-Fi have recorded and released two 45s on Electric Cowbell, a split 7 inch with Ithaca, NY-based act Big Mean Sound Machine through Peace and Rhythm Records and  Yule Analog, Vol 1.,  a dub-inspired take on Christmas standards.

Super Hi-Fi’s soon-to-be released new album Yule Analog, Vol. 2 picks up on where Yule Analog, Vol 1. left off  — with dub-inspired takes on another batch of holiday classics and a holiday-inspired original dub composition. Featuring contributions from renowned trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, best known for his work with The Lounge Lizards, Bill Frisell and Charlie Hunter; Mitch Marus, best known for his work with Donovan, The Dean Ween Group, and Aphrodesia; as well as Adrian Harley and Alex Castle, who collaborate with Gale in the old school groove project, The Get It. And much like their previously recorded effort, Prince Polo took up production duties, recording the material on analog tape and mixed the album using vintage reverb and tape delay units — in the fashion of legendary dub masters King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Yule Analog Vol. 2′s latest single, which I have the unique privilege of premiering here is a trippy, dub rendition of an old time Christmas classic “O Come All Ye Faithful” which features the trombone-led compositions that won the attention of the blogosphere — the trombone gives the song a regal, old-timey feel while the reverb and bass heavy dub pushes the song towards a funky shoegazer territory. It’s a sunny and playful rendition of an extremely familiar song that puts a completely different spin on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lady Low’s Stunning and Passionate, New Love Ballad “Burning Like A Fever”

Over the past few months, the Los Angeles-based quintet Lady Low have become something of a JOVM mainstay, as I’ve written about the band a handful of times over the past few months. Of course, […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Geographer’s Dreamy Lullaby-like Cover of Felix Da Housecat’s “Ready 2 Wear”

Renowned Chicago-based DJ, producer, electronic music artist and label exec Felix Da Housecat has a long-held reputation for producing and working on an eclectic mix of sounds and sub-genres within the larger umbrella of electronic […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Born and reared in the Springfield, IL area and currently splitting her time between San Francisco, CA and Big Sur, CA singer/songwriter. guitarist and producer Jenny Gillespie can trace her musical career to her childhood — during drives to and from town, a young Gillespie spent quite a bit of time harmonizing in the backseat with her sister, who is a gifted pianist. When Gillespie was 13, she picked up her mother’s Martin guitar and began putting the poems she had started writing to music. A local record clerk changed the young singer/songwriter’s life by giving her albums from three of the 90s’ most renowned singer/songwriters — Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and Shawn Colvin.

After stints living in Virginia, Paris and Texas, Gillespie relocated to Chicago, where she self-produced and then released the folk and alt-country influenced sophomore effort Light Year to a fair amount of critical praise across the blogosphere. As a result of Light Year‘s exposure, Gillespie met Darwin Smith, an Austin, TX-based multi-instrumentalist, with whom she wrote her third full-length effort, Kindred, a sparse, experimental, electronica-based effort recorded in an old house in Wilmette, IL with contributions from Steve Moore, who has worked with Tift Merritt and Laura Veirs and Dony Wynn, who has worked with Robert Plant.

Inspired by a volunteer trip to Kenya that led her to an African fingerpicking class at the Old Town School of Folk Music and studying for an MFA in Poetry at North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College, Gillespie found her sound and songwriting approach expanding and becoming more refined. And by the fall of 2011, she traveled to NYC to record the EP Belita with Shazard Ismaily, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with Lou Reed, Bonnie Prince Billy, and St. Vincent. Interestingly, that effort possesses elements of pop, folk music, African and Asian rhythms and tones.

Featuring contributions from Emmett Kelly (Bonnie Prince Billy) on guitar and Joe Adamik (Califone, Iron and Wine) on drums, her last full-length effort Chamma was released to critical praise, including landing on Billboard Magazine‘s Top 25 Albums of 2014 List. Naturally, that has seen Gillespie’s profile grow nationally — and continuing on that buzz, the singer/songwriter is set to release Chamma‘s follow-up, Cure for Dreaming early next year through Narooma Records. Recorded over the past couple of months and featuring contributions from Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), drummer Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand), guitarist Chris Bruce (Meshell Ndgeocello), guitarist Gerry Leonard (David Bowie), and pedal steel player Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Bon Iver), the album  reportedly possesses elements of folk, progressive jazz, and 60s and 70s AM pop.

“No Stone” Cure for Dreaming‘s first single pairs Gillespie’s husky and unhurried vocals with a spacious yet warm and subtly jazz-like arrangement of keys, guitar, bass, gently buzzing electronics and hushed drumming in a song that feels as intimate as a lover whispering sweet nothings in your ear. And at its core, is conversational lyricism that possesses a novelist’s attention to detail, as you can picture the woman who hides her face by the ocean, the cherry blossom trees in bloom, someone peering through a keyhole to see a depressed woman struggling to just starting her day — and a novelist’s attention to psychological detail. The song’s narrator feels like a fully-fleshed out person, desperately struggling to push on. Interestingly, each time I’ve played the song I’ve been reminded of how Gillespie sounds so much like Joni Mitchell — it’s incredibly uncanny.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Noir-ish Murder-Filled, New Video for Painted Palms’ “Refractor”

Comprised of cousins Reese Donahue and Christopher Prudhomme, the electro pop duo of Painted Palms have almost always used the Internet to collaborate on songwriting — initially out of necessity, as the project started with Donahue based in San […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

San Francisco-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter, producer and composer Abby Diamond initially caught the attention of several blogs with her collaboration with Yugen on “Single Cell,” an icily, minimalist, slow-burning track that featured Diamond’s sultry crooning over gently strummed guitar, and off-kilter syncopated beats, which gave the song a glitchy, stuttering feel.

Diamond saw increasingly attention with a subtle yet brilliant reworking of Froyo Ma‘s “I Live All Alone” that rearranges a sample of Bill Murray’s character from Lost in Translation by having it appear within the song twice, and although Diamond’s reworking retains the original’s hypnotic and forcefully propulsive nature, her soulful vocals drifting over the mix gave the song a sinuous and sensual feel. The New Orleans-based pop artist quickly followed that up with the first single off Down, Down, Deep, “I Love To Watch You Leave,” a song that Diamond wrote when she was 19. Initially produced by her then-boyfriend Luke Todd, the track featured her coquettish vocals over a minimalist production. Producers Liam Shy and Alex Cowan assisted Diamond on a rework that managed to give the breezy original a bit of heft, as the song was given a funky, 80s-inspired R&B groove — the sort of groove that bears an uncanny resemblance to the sample on Biggie’s “Juicy” and the radio version of “One More Chance.”

Diamond’s full-length debut, FEMINISTA, which will be co-proudced by Dimaond and Blue Hawaii features collaborations with artists and producers Kyross, weirdinside and others. As Diamond told me via email, the 10 song album will be released in several parts over the course of the next 8 months or so with films, feminist zines to bring about a larger discussion about what feminism means to variety of artists across different media. According to Diamond, “Each music video that I release along with FEMINISTA will be available for download (along with other b-roll film) as well so film makers can make their own films using our footage. The album itself will be free for download online and CDs will be sold inside feminist art zines, which are being created by myself, other female musicians and artists as well as artistic fans who submit work to us. These zines will be reminiscent of Riot Grrrl and other female punk rock zines that helped spread feminist concepts like wildfire in the late 80s and early 90s. The idea is to resurrect this movement within a new context and culture—bringing feminist zines into the pop/electronic scene as a vehicle for all different women who share a similar taste in music to express what it’s like to be a third wave feminist today.” Clearly, the project aims to be bold, brash and enormous. And as Diamond told me, “I see this project as a unique opportunity to look at art through the lens of all different types of feminists.”

The album’s first single “There’s a Light in My Room” is a subtly layered production comprised of wobbling low end, skittering and stuttering beats, ominously swirling electronics, brief bursts of twinkling keys, handclaps and finger snaps that’s spacious enough to allow Diamond’s sultrily soulful vocals to gently drift over the mix. Lyrically, the song reveals a fully-fleshed out and vulnerable narrator, who longs for someone with an urgent, desperate need, and through the length of the song, the narrator walks a tightrope between asserting herself and self-doubt; the sort of self-doubt that comes up whenever anyone puts their heart on the line for another, with the hopes that their affection and desires are reciprocated — while knowing that most of the time, love doesn’t make much sense, and will often be unreciprocated.

With Diamond’s vocals bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Mariah Carey, the song subtly seems to mesh 90s R&B, soul and pop with incredibly contemporary production in a song that sonically speaking is a marvel, as the song reveals subtle nuance on repeated listens.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although they’ve had a number of lineup changes over the years, the Athens, GA-based quartet Maserati, currently comprised of Coley Dennis (guitar), Matt Cherry (guitar). Chris McNeal (bass) and Mike Albanese (drums), have developed a reputation for a sound that draws heavily from post-rock, psych rock and prog rock since their formation back in 2000. Over the last few years, the band has increasingly been pursuing a sound that meshes elements of space rock, krautrock and psych rock with a retro-futuristic leaning.

The band’s forthcoming album Rehumanizer slated for an October 30 release through Brooklyn-based label Temporary Residence, Ltd. marks the first album that the band completely self-produced, as well as an effort in which the band openly employed technology as a songwriting tool.

As a result, Rehumanizer’s first single “End of Man” meshes a trippy motorik groove comprised of cascades of buzzing and shimmering synths, forcefully propulsive drumming and angular guitar chords played through layers of reverb and delay pedals paired with vocals fed through vocoder to craft a song that sounds inspired by Kraftwerk, Hawkwind and The Sword simultaneously. The album’s second single “Rehumanizer II” meshes propulsive and undulating synths, angular guitar chords reminiscent of A Flock of Seagulls‘ “I Ran ” and U2‘s “Wire,” and four-on-the-floor drumming to craft a furious and tense composition that clearly draws equally from 80s synth pop as it does from krautrock, complete with a chugging motorik groove. Both tracks are taut yet incredibly cinematic, as though they should be part of the soundtrack of a post apocalyptic, sci-fi thriller.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of Eric Krasno (guitar), Adam Smirnoff (guitar), Neal Evans (keyboards, Hammond B-3 organ, piano), Adam Deitch (drums), Erick Coomes (bass), Ryan Zoidis (saxophone) and Eric Bloom (trumpet) and Rashawn Ross (trumpet), the acclaimed funk/jam-band octet Lettuce can trace their origins back to 1992 when several members of the band met and bonded over a mutual love of Herbie Hancock‘s jazz fusion work in the 1970s, Earth, Wind & Fire and Tower of Power, while attending a summer program as teenagers at Berklee College of Music. And as you can imagine they jammed together over the course of the summer and then went off on their separate ways at the conclusion of the program.

By the fall of 1994, the members of the band had reconvened as undergraduate students at Berklee, and during that time, they attempted to pick up gigs with local musicians and at local clubs. Ironically, the band’s name is derived from this period, when the band would walk into a club and would ask a club owner or a band leader if they would “let us play.” Mainly through word-of-mouth, the band developed rather fervent followings in Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Chicago and Tokyo, and their profile grew even larger as the band released their debut effort, Outta Here (2001), followed by Live in Tokyo recorded at the Blue Note Jazz Club’s Tokyo location. Over the past seven or eight years, the members of Lettuce have been balancing a number of different projects with busy touring schedules. Krasno along with Evans and Evans’ brother Alan play together in Soulive, a jazz fusion/jam-band act, perhaps best known these days for their annual Brooklyn Bowl residency. But lately, Krasno has been exceptionally busy as he’s picked up roles as a producer, songwriter, released a solo album, and has played on a couple Grammy Award-winning albums by Tedeschi Trucks Band. Smirnoff has been a member of Lady Gaga‘s touring band and has had a stint as a touring member of Robert Randolph and The Family Band. Zoidis is a member of Rustic Overtones but he also joins Soulive during live shows as a member of The Shady Horns. Coomes has been a session player for Britney Spears, The Game, and has contributed to Dr. Dre‘s Compton. Deitch drums for and has produced a number of artists including Pretty Lights, Talib Kweli and has collaborated with John Scofield and Wyclef Jean. And Ross has been a full-time member of Dave Matthews Band since 2010. Of course, as a result Lettuce has had gaps between their recorded output with their sophomore studio effort, Rage! released in 2009, and Fly released in 2012.

Coincidentally during that time Lettuce developed a reputation for being one of the country’s best live acts — and as a result they’ve played at some of the country’s biggest festivals. Interestingly, the band’s forthcoming Crush is reportedly inspired and came to life during the band’s most recent stints on the road together — with a great deal of the material being road-tested. “Phyllis,” the first single off the new album continues the band’s reputation for jazz fusion and hip-hop inspired, psychedelic leaning funk — but with a subtly futuristic sheen as the song is comprised of spidery guitar lines that twist and turn paired with atmospheric and swirling electronics, hip-hop inspired beats and horn blasts. There’s a sense that the trippy composition comes from a basic idea and expanded upon during an expansive jam session, as the band builds up a tight, motorik-like groove — and in some way, the song is a subtle revision of the sound that has garnered the octet such attention.

The band is currently on a rather lengthy tour, which will include two NYC area shows. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates

10/14 at Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH
10/15 at Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee, WI
10/16 at The Pageant in St. Louis, MO
10/17 at Hillberry 2: Harvest Moon Festival in Eureka Springs, AR
10/18 at The Blue Note in Columbia, MO
10/20 at Slowdown in Omaha, NE
10/21 at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, KS
10/23 at Art Outside in Rockdale, TX
10/24 at Hangtown Halloween Ball in Placerville, CA
10/27 at Intersection in Grand Rapids, MI
10/28 at The Vogue Theatre in Indianapolis, IN
10/29 at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville, KY
10/30 at WorkPlay Theatre in Birmingham, AL
10/31 at Voodoo Music and Arts Experience in New Orleans, LA
11/1 at Suwannee Hulaween in Live Oak, FL
11/3 at The Chop Shop in Charlotte, NC
11/4 at Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh, NC
11/5 at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC
11/6 at Buckhead in Atlanta, GA
11/7 at War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, TN
11/8 at Track 29 in Chattanooga, TN
11/10 ay Rex Theater in Pittsburgh, PA
11/11 at Tralf Music Hall in Buffalo, NY
11/12 at State Theatre in State College, PA
11/13 at PlayStation Theater in New York, NY
11/14 at PlayStation Theater in New York, NY
12/3-12/6 at Dominican Holidaze in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
12/31 at Riviera Theatre in Chicago, IL
1/6-1/10 at Jam Cruise 14
2/12-2/14 at Gem and Jam Festival in Tucson, AZ

Indie Electro Pop by William Ruben Helms

Interview: A Q&A with Painted Palms’ Chris Prudhomme

If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past year to about 18 months or so, you likely came across a post or two on the cousin duo of Reese Donahue and Chris Prudhomme, best known […]

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Stunningly Gorgeous Visuals for Lunar Twin’s “Champagne (Grand Cru Edit)”

Comprised of Bryce Boudreau (vocals) and Chris Murphy (multi-instrumentalist, producer), the electro pop duo Lunar Twin derive their name from a scientific theory that says that Earth may have had a twin moon that was destroyed in […]

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Dark and Creepy Sounds and Visuals for Yassou’s “Fall Again”

Compared of Lilie Bytheway Hoy (lead vocals, bass), James Jackson (guitar, drums, vocals), A.J. Krumholz (guitar, keys, vocals),  Patrick Aguirre (drums) and Theo Quimby (drums, piano, vocals), the quintet Yassou originally formed in upstate New York and are currently […]

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Hazy, Neon Colored, New Video for Dirty Ghosts’ “Cataract”

If you’ve been following JOVM over the last couple of years, you may be familiar with Dirty Ghosts, the solo recording project of its Toronto-born, San Francisco-based singer/songwriter/guitarist and creative mastermind, Allyson Baker. Baker has […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Painted Palms, New, 80s Synth Pop and New Wave-Inspired Sound on “Refractor”

If you’ve been following JOVM over the past couple of years, you’d likely recall coming across a number of posts on Painted Palms. Comprised of the cousin duo of Reese Donahue and Christopher Prudhomme, the duo have […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Youthful, Rebellious Rock ‘N’ Roll Sound of Hot Flash Heat Wave’s “Homecoming”

San Francisco-based quartet Hot Flash Heat Wave is comprised of four high school friends — Ted, Adam, Nathaniel and Nick — who all met while playing in a variety of bands in the Bay Area’s […]

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Swooning Romanticism of Lady Low’s Hello Sweet Goodbye

Comprised of founding member Jimmy Sweet (guitar, vocals), who was a member of the San Francisco, CA-based punk band Richmond Sluts and a touring member of Hot Hot Heat; Rachel Maxann (vocals, synth, bass), Eden Lee (vocals, drums), Kaitlin […]