Season three of HBO’s Industry is helping us all remember that the best television sometimes happens between the seasons. You know, like after that show about a young chef from the fine dining world who returns to Chicago to blah, blah, yes chef. Or after that other show. Ya know, the prequel to the popular dragon series which felt very rich before the season this year with all the talking about fighting dragons, but fell short when a character starts tripping balls in a haunted manor. Or even after that Jakey Jakey Gyllenhaal Apple + court drama show that saw “a horrific murder upend the Chicago prosecuting attorney’s office” that was ridiculous, campy, unbelievable…and kinda perfect for summer watching until the whole thing became unhinged and ran off Amtrak’s best Acela service track. And that’s even by Jakey Jakey standards; he’s made a second career based on unhinged.
My point is this: Industry, so far, has delivered four almost-perfect episodes chronicling broken men and women, of all ages, races, and classes, who work at or are otherwise associated with Pierpoint & Co, a would-be prestigious investment bank in London. Money, drugs, sex—casino scotch? Choose your addiction, peaches. It ain’t gonna cure what ails ya.
You need a soul.
By now every platform you love or really cannot stand has said its Industry piece following the quasi-bottle episode “White Mischief” this past Sunday, which focused on the sewer-mouthed Rishi Ramdani, a trader whose habits have come to threaten—well, everything.
It’s Uncut Gems on bath salts. This sucker goes…
But my bosses here at 48hills [Hi Marke, hi Caitlin] have given me this little digital real estate to discuss music, right? So let’s pivot to this season’s soundtrack because it’s positively… drunk. Not since The Sopranos has an HBO show, or any show for that matter, built out characters’ emotions with such deft use of songs during, and most definitely after, every one of their consistently wrong choices. Show creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, who actually worked in an investment bank, are making elevated jazz of the show’s sequencing. It’s like if Thundercat organized a session that featured both Coltranes, and then Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Sharrock, Mingus, Carmen McRae, and Meshell Ndegeocello, and then conducted a score for the ages.
This past Sunday Industry fans witnessed our Rishi (best described by Paste as, “a cuck who talks like an alpha”) keep a Ponzi scheme running off the cash of co-workers, do coke—not woke coke, that’s an earlier episode—while holding his baby in a bathroom stall, while gazing at a coworker’s OnlyFans profile on his phone.
Hey, even self-destruction has to stay on schedule.
After leaving work the next day, he hits the casino tables to the strains of “Irreversible Damage” by Algiers featuring Zack de la Rocha. The song hits like a drill to the brain, serving up a point. After a reconciliation with his wife, Rishi stayed out for 24 hours straight. Ramsey Lewis’s “Les Fleur” featuring the late great Minnie Ripperton plays as he gets his balance and out of his financial hole. And just as we are about to believe he’s made good, Rishi jumps back into that hole with both feet, smiling, via a bet to the bookie he just paid off, all to Wu-Tang’s iconic “Shame on a N****”. And damn, it feels good to hear Old Dirty spit one mo gin as we fade to black. (I’ve left a ton of plot details out; you can go find them.) I recommend watching the first three episodes of this season while you glance at those show soundtracks with the italo disco of “Doctors Cat,” and ’80s gold from Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys, and Duran Duran.
As the NFL season encroaches, my attention span may wane, but damn—Industry, so far, is pitching a no-hitter.
Take that, chef.
No Bandcamp picks this week, we’ll keep them fresh for October.
And now, this:
It’s Under The Stars babe. Your weekly rundown of what is popping in The Bay and beyond. A column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins.
Fall in The Bay Area… when things get hot
Let’s go…
NU TEKNO PRESENTS CHINATOWN AFTER DARK AT THE LIONS DEN, SEPTEMBER 11
Yuka Yu was born in Taiwan and started DJing in Camden Town, London. She trained at the London Sound Academy and became a DJ out of a desire to connect people through music. She’s also the founder of the artist exchange program Nu Tekno (女樂), which has had residencies at Asiento, the Endup, Lion’s Den, and Mars Bar in San Francisco. Yuka has played with many live musicians at The Lion’s Den, including QJin on the Guzhen, drummers, trumpet players, didgeridoo players, and bassists. I’m told it will be a warm-up event in anticipation of the Moon Festival celebration on Saturday and Sunday in Chinatown.
Come down and witness something amazing!
Info on The Lion’s Den here.
SCANONE & MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO, “INTO THE SUN” (YELLOW MACHINES)
Jack Dangers built a career, reputation, and following based on never being scared. His Meat Beat Manifesto’s “Into The Sun” has all the damn IDMs (that’s intelligent dance music, for the newbies) that one rave girl, the one with the whistle and the Björk braids that didn’t turn out alright—we still love her—who is high on bottled water and life, has been waiting for all night just to blow her whistle. Equipped with NASA instructions, time loop accents, breakbeats breaking bad all over, jungle grumble, undertow basslines, and just bonkers rave tricks, even your man on the didgeridoo would run out of oxygen trying to get downright. Dangers is in his bag, nailing the WFT feeling anybody could get playing the white label side from Autechre, Plug Research, or any other experimental playa from long-ago who was in it to push it all forward.
Grab it here.
OSEES, SORCS 80 (CASTLEFACE RECORDS)
It’s like Devo became a street gang… that’s how John Dwyer has transitioned his scuzzy, never-ever-staying-in-one-place garage outfit this time. Not a guitar on the scene. I realize this is coming out after OSEES played a (I’d have to believe) smoking four-night stand at The Chapel, a treat that happens in Ess Eff every fall at the top of September. They’ll be on tour in this country and overseas for a long time, working this new lineup to the bone. If you dig Dwyer’s get down, his hip, half-ripped jeans hustle, SORCS 80 will make you so happy that maybe you’ll pawn the guitar and buy some electronics to make your punk more rhythmic and crazy good.
Grab it up here.
NOISE POP SPLASH AT THE PHOENIX HOTEL, OCTOBER 5-20
The good folks and friends over at Noise Pop have whipped up a last dash of summer splash over at the Phoenix Hotel. The four-date installation of day parties will include proper DJ talent and performances such as Coco & Breezy (October 5), Zack Fox (DJ Set October 6), DāM-FunK (October 19), and Bodysync (October 20). Plenty of time still to get wet.
More info here.
