It’s Under The Stars, babe: a quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins. We shall proceed and continue…
FLOORPLAN, THE MASTERS PLAN (CLASSIC MUSIC COMPANY)
As a young person, I attended church at the behest of my Mother. Every Sunday, she would devoutly be present to catch “The Good Word” from the Bible, and all the trials and tribulations of the previous week washed away for a couple of hours. With the choir marching in, and the patrons already seated, a certain warmth, a sense of place, was established. The church looked Gothic. It lifted voices and enriched patrons’ spirits. The elder choir director, whose wig might have slid just a quarter off, would masterfully work the organ, and after the Gospel selections, leaping from his fingers onto those keys, he’d worked the music—and his wig—out. Guiding the service to its apex for the reverend, who took the service home by way of a revelatory sermon. Amen.
Disenfranchised folks often create their church—a place of worship where they feel seen. Robert Hood, one of the original members of the pioneering Detroit techno group Underground Resistance was called on to bring church directly to the dance floor with his Floorplan alias. “I think that God put me in a place where I can take a gospel message to an audience that may not necessarily get to church or open a bible, but they can see a bible through me,” he once told Ransom Note. When the ordained minister, now based in Alabama, brought on his daughter Lyric Hood in 2016, the duo became known for producing fool-proof gospel house and techno. The pair claims to operate on a divine level of blood harmony.
As an ordained minister, Hood understands that sometimes you must bring the good word to the flock and set up service wherever hearts, minds, and ears are open. Injecting religion into the club is an opportunity to catch ears and souls in the EDM space. Some find that offensive, but they do not serve the same calling as Hood.
With several releases under the moniker, it’s hard to deny the ingenuity of the group: Family brings faith to those who may need it, even if they don’t know. Isn’t that how the church works? Folks need to hear the word but are not cognizant of what moment or which passage will set off your “I need the good word” alert.
With Supernatural in 2019 and We Give Thee Honor in 2023, the father-daughter tandem has correctly identified that these troubling times do require a higher faith for some to get through. But can there be something more for Floorpan? This seems to be a recurring question.
In their fourth studio album, The Master’s Plan, the pair offers boundless and stirring momentum, uplifting hues, and plenty of healing sustenance through a house, techno, and polyrhythmic spectrum.
The goal is to have these arrangements encourage listeners: to dance and feel empowered during these challenging times. With an invocation at the top by Robert’s wife, Eunice Hood, AKA Earthtone, listeners are forewarned to “find shelter in the vibration and take refuge in the sound” before we proceed into “What You Need,” with its jacking bassline, synth build-up, strings and horn samples—even an Aretha Franklin-esque sample, “what you need,” from “Respect.” Chicago house levels inform the tempo and for the first half of the album, we get those jacking beats, a bit of a formulaic process at times, that can bend slightly simplistic and snare-heavy.
Not that it’s a bad repeat, but it’s as if the first couple of tracks plod through using a similar pattern.
Floorplan begins to get that wig turned around halfway in. “Feel It” is surrounded by Robert Hood’s percolating arrangements. Here an indoctrination of floaty techno and house atmospheres work to accent those uplifting vocals and pounding piano chords.
There is a bit of shufflefoot tempos, making a push-pull elasticity that compliments the “Can you Feel It” vocals rolling through. And it’s the first time on the release I don’t feel like I’m in church, but rather a setting where smoke, lights and communal grooving is taking over. And that the secret sauce missing in certain stretches throughout this release. Finding ways to put people at ease while spreading the word is a successful way to share certain sermons.
“Feel It’ hits like the apex of a six-hour plus Theo Parrish sweaty, vinyl skipping set, that lets you know we are all human, and we learn from our mistakes. “Give Us Your Light” features Dames Brown delivering words of upliftment, Black choir style, between blinky keyboard arrangements while continuing on the 4/4 trajectory with major, minor, and major chord changes. Next up, on “Fake & Unholy,” Honey Dijon pops in to give a monologue on authenticity, dropping a self-assured tone over Jerry Bruckheimer action-movie blockbuster beats that illuminates the hook “You don’t have to be Fake & Unholy.”
When the Hoods get directly to the message is when the spirit strikes, and those hybrids work perfectly. “The Curse Breaker” centers a sermon from a reverend preaching about the Devil “trying to steal your moment” Hood and Daughter build this well-constructed beat pattern that increases ever so slightly with each section of the sermon, you hear building snares under the preacher’s message. You can’t imagine one narrative without the other. “What A Friend” brings a human kick-snare feel to spoken snippets of “glory” repeated between repeated horn lines.
Hood is at his elite best when converting a communal dance area into a Sunday service: You imagine that’s what the genesis of Floorplan was. This ordained Minister and his daughter brought light to the sometimes darkened club life. The Master’s Plan shines a bright light and path to redemption, converting those bass bin dwellings into temporary corners for spirituality. But sometimes fun needs to be interjected into the faith message to catch more fish.
Buy it here.
QUINN DEVEAUX, LEISURE
There is an everyman quality to the music and charisma of Bay Area-based musician Quinn Deveaux—his version of R&B/blues-based soul leans in with that twang. Very authentic.
Not in some hipsterific put-upon personae either.
You get a sense this is exactly who this dude is.
Image-smoothing? Naah.
It’s about the songs Mang, those claggy New Orleans funkers: the high-spiritedness of “You Got Soul” that speaks plain and direct to who he is.
There is a masterful mood in the track, “Evil Woman,” which features DeVeaux doing this Leo Nocentelli thang and it gives off a Bill Withers “imma do what I wanna do” musical spirit that seems to be missing in certain circles of R&B music.
Leisure is a damn pleasure, pick it up here.
And show up for this one-of-a-kind artist’s release party on August 29 at Rickshaw Stop.
Grab those tickets here.
TANUKICHAN, “CITY BUS”
Tanukichan, the musical project of Hannah van Loon from Oakland, CA, balances menacing beats and hard-hitting drums with magnetic guitars squealing and howling on the transportive hazy burner of a disposition “City Bus.”
As mentioned in the press notes, these lyrics are voiced by Van Loon in a cool murmur, reflecting on childhood bus rides in San Francisco. It’s a definite and purposeful move away from previous chillwave efforts that works tellingly.
The bus in the video is much cleaner than the popular and congested 14 Mission, which is considered the epitome of a city bus by many residents.
Just saying.
Van Loon says of the track:
“This song is meant to be a little disjointed, stream of consciousness, made from memories and also the present. Dealing with ideas of identity and my place in the world and society. When I heard the initial demo Franco (producer Franco Reid) sent to me and started writing over it, I was brought back to my childhood in SF, riding the bus everywhere through the city. Feeling the constant start and stop motion making me sway and keep my balance while watching the city go by, surrounded by all the different looking people, sounds, and smells in SF.”
Tanukichan plays The Independent in late October and is set to release the Circles EP on September 20th. Pre-order here.
TERENCE BLANCHARD’S 13 CONCERT PICKS FOR SF JAZZ, SEPTEMBER 2024-MAY 2025
Listen to those who know the ins and outs of not just jazz but music in general.
Terence Blanchard, the new executive artistic director of SFJAZZ, has provided his list of upcoming highlights for the 2024-2025 season, and it is outstanding. Giving those personal tips, an even more informative special kick-off, is exactly the type of moxie and inside baseball outsiders want in on.
This shimmering venue has been able to seamlessly blend and combine traditional and avant-garde tastes, as well as inter-generational and young emerging artists who challenge conventional jazz norms.
Remarkably, they have managed to encompass and showcase all of these ideas under one roof, making jazz—past, present, and future—the central focus.
A branding so strong that when Emma Jean Thackeray played at Cafe du Nord in 2022, with her 85-minute vibe merchant presence, laying on those thick 4/4 ecstatic bump of house music meets ’70s fusion cache, all I could think of all night was how this remarkable show, a sold-out one on the heels of Outside Lands and Thackeray’s SF debut from the UK, should have been in the Joe Henderson Lab at SF Jazz.
They built that room for these non-traditional jazz performers.
So here we go:
SEP 5-8 Stanley Clarke w/ Hiromi, Marcus Miller, & N 4 Ever
SEP 13 Kurt Elling & Joey Calderazzo
SEP 21 Keyon Harrold
SEP 26-27 Don Was & The Pan-Detroit Ensemble
OCT 10 John Beasley MONK’estra
NOV 2-3 Vijay Iyer Trio
NOV 9 Double Bill: Jon Cowherd Trio w/ Brian Blade & John Pattitucci • Ingrid Jensen Quartet
DEC 7 Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
DEC 8 Gregory Porter
DEC 28-29 Take 6
DEC 31 Dirty Dozen Brass Band
JAN 17-19 Meshell Ndegeocello
MAR 6-9 Brandee Younger w/ New Century Chamber Orchestra
Grab tickets here.
AZAR LAWRENCE, PEOPLE MOVING (REAL GONE MUSIC)
In some respects, Azar Lawrence’s career could indicate where John Coltrane might have gone if he hadn’t passed before fusion started to bleed into jazz during the ’70s.
On tenor saxophone, Lawrence’s style and spiritual approach had so much in common with Coltrane that, while the styles of the ensuing era started to swerve into more accessible pools of influence—even Miles went electric and didn’t just play at rock stadiums, he too was playing rock—Lawrence, similar to Pharoah Sanders, found a way to bring that mysticism, a certain touch, into the new decade while adapting to the new delivery systems but still keeping that spiritual map Coltrane outlined a decade before.
“Theme For A New Day” carries that duality of past and present, with this swirling wisdom working its way around the track with melodic resonance, but not too formulaic. Lawrence found that balance between the two. Listen, it doesn’t hurt to have Lee Ritenour, Patrice Rushen, Harvey Mason, and Mtume—yes “Juicy Fruit” James Mtume—backing you up.
But those layers, those sheets, those hidden rooms, that blend of spirituality, religion, and extension of self just floating throughout “Theme For A New Day” is major stuff, built within a certain type of loose pop formula.
Which serves a purpose as well. The title track “People Moving” was recently sampled by Common on “Dreamin’” from his new record Auditorium Vol. 1 and Lawrence reflects on this in the press notes:
“My ’70s musical works are standing the test of time and finding relevance in 2024. Rappers continue to find my People Moving record an excellent platform to sample and deliver their positive messages, and we are better off for it.”
I believe it’s that spirit of People Moving that shall keep on speaking throughout time.
Order it here.
