It’s Under The Stars, babe, and we’ve got lots of music news and new music on tap. Spend some time with us…..
FACTA & K-LONE, “RED FLAGS (FACTA EDIT)” FROM “TINASHE EDITS” (WISDOM TEETH)
Sometimes it takes a few weeks for a new year to settle in because the previous one is not done with its business, independent of whatever the calendar says. Facta, co-founder of Wisdom Teeth Records out of London, does the big, luxurious, soulful drum and bass take with Tinashe serenading. His edit of the pop/R&B stalwart’s “Red Flags” dropped properly, on December 20, at the end of last year, for genuine reflection.
This is a dancefloor treatment fueled by just the right match of sparse arrangement, allowing the melody lead the way. Nothing dark or grumbly here, just that incremental whimsy aided with proper two-step production. Facta, who made a legit reputation with a series of releases on the Tempa imprint, reminds us all, when drum and bass intersects with the proper vocalist, the genre remains limitless.
Pick it up here.
CINDY, SWAN LAKE (TOUGH LOVE RECORDINGS)
Living in The Mish in the early ’90s, sharing a cold water three-bedroom flat with at least five, sometimes seven, housemates (depending on who got fired from their job that month) in the very ungentrified South Van Ness corridor, just down the street from our beloved Whiz Burger, was quite the time.
I shared a bedroom with one or two other cats, but my main man, Seth, had a ritual of putting on a Velvet Underground CD to fall asleep to. While these days I use any number of podcasts about football, films, or brown noise, the Velvet Underground, slipping into my dreamscape from the other side of the room, was a wind-down treat.
Reflecting upon those days, I had to return to Swan Lake with the local SF band Cindy.
We mentioned them late last year while they were out on tour, but I had to return to it because that Velvet Underground thing, especially on “Consolation’s Test,” came back to my head. It is a hauntingly slight Mazzy Star SF slowed down jangle-fied thing; the old 415 seems to be doing their damnedest to own it, and rightfully so. Karina Gill, Cindy’s songwriter, claims mental blankness when searching for influences, as stated in the band’s Bandcamp liner notes:
“People have told me that they can’t quite identify my influences. Me neither. The foundational layers of music of the past and my past have been metabolized like breakfast and turned into more me, sorry to say. But I experience the music of people I’m connected with and it impacts me in the moment. There’s the music I’m around–April Magazine, Sad Eyed Beatniks, Violent Change, Katsy Pline, collaborating with Mike on Flowertown—that I can feel a direct line from. Then there’s music that is being made far away but feels close, like Lewsberg, specifically, for this EP. “
Paste Magazine, in their round-up of the best EPs for 2024 nails it, I think: Swan Lake is, simply put, a catchy triumph with almost no percussion (save for some snare drum scrapes in “All Weekend,” or an orphaned tambourine and shaker someplace) and a whole lot of euphoric guitar strums. Swan Lake is jangly and slick, a collection of lullabies imbued with the kind of six-string notes you might hear on a Chantels track, or some girl-group demo lost with the passing of time and trends.”
Or a distant memory of being young, broke, living with numerous other dreamers, with nothing but the future and your South Van Ness hopes in front of you. Go back and give Swan Lake a listen; you’ll be pleased.
STARDUSTER RELEASE PARTY FEATURING CASUAL (OF HIEROGLYPHICS), PSALM ONE, AND FATBOI SHARIF, JANUARY 16 AT CRYBABY IN OAKLAND
True hip-hop, that old boom-bap, enjoyed a prodigious 2024. Between the horn sample symphony from the Pete Rock-Common collab album to that new LL joint produced by Q-Tip. Ooowee.
It goes like this: The more real the world we attempt to exist in gets, let’s say cutty, the clearer those things we identify as truth ring with fullness in our ears.
Oakland legend Casual (of Hieroglyphics) made a lionhearted boom-banging return with STARDUSTER late last year, produced entirely by Albert Jenkins.
Illuminating the Bay Area’s DIY indie ethos, some call it an East Bay meets South Bay statement, I’d opt for a return to that Bay grit and hustle that’ll keep your neck bobbing.
Full of beats that splatter all types of color patterns for your third eye, keeping it wide open, while Casual not only spits the truest bars but also bookends those proverbs with the trademark nasal tone and elevated wordplay.
As evidenced by a line on “Belly (Remix)” that lets you know time is fleeting and nobody here is feeding your ears or brain some junk. Process the jewel: “You cannot imagine the colors in my kaleidoscope, the effervescent essence provided by my exotic folk…” and then come through for the release party on January 16 at Crybaby, located on Telegraph Avenue, across from the historic Fox Theater.
BEYONCÉ BOWL(NETFLIX)
Beyoncé performed a stunning set of “Cowboy Carter” songs on Christmas. According to The Insider newsletter, Netflix successfully streamed its Christmas Day NFL double-header without major glitches or buffering issues. Game #1—in which the Chiefs beat the Steelers 29-10—now ranks as Netflix’s second most-streamed live sporting event in history, behind only the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight. According to media reports, Netflix paid around $150 million for the rights to stream the Christmas Day double-header; it’s part of a three-year overall deal with the NFL for Christmas games.
Beyoncé performed during halftime of Game #2, between the Baltimore Ravens and her hometown Houston Texans; the “Beyoncé Bowl” is now a standalone VOD title on Netflix.
By the response of the crowd in attendance and non-Beyhive watchers, whoever is planning to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show better scrap their original plans and up the ante way high, because Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” performance, with cute Blue Ivy too, now resides rent-free in 27 million US viewers’ minds, according to Netflix. Anything less than perfection on Sunday, February 9, 2025, at the New Orleans Caesars Superdome will be, well, imperfection.
EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY, “BLACK HOLE” (FEAT. REGGIE WATTS) (BROWNSWOOD MUSIC)
Did anybody have this combo on their bingo card?
Kicking off the track with a car engine firing up, Emma-Jean continues to delve deeper into herself and the many phases she possesses with the Herbie Hancock late ’70s funk-spun (“I need to make money”) phase type of funk.
This is delicious, lyrical, and just “burning,” as a publicist friend of mine would say.
With a song describing the pits and musically involving everything that can pull you out, Tharckray calls over Reggie Watts (who will be appearing at Noise Pop 2025) for vocal accompaniment.
“Black Hole” is built around a double bass line that could be a Brother Johnson outtake… just another factoid in the bucket that should ensure anyone: If Emma-Jean releases something, just buy it.
She doesn’t miss.
“Sometimes life feels like an inescapable black hole and you think you’re never gonna get out of there, that you’ll be floating in the abyss forever. During those moments, for me, there’s only music that can pull me out. In dark times when even puppies can’t make you break a smile, you gotta start up the spaceship and make a weird-ass p-funk-inspired tune. Cut some filthy drums, get out the space echo, and let the silliness of a wah-pedal lift your mood and remind you that when music is your purpose, you always have a light to walk towards.”
Ok EJT. Word. We will try it here.
SLY LIVES! (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS) ON HULU, FEBRUARY 13
So many questions. So much anticipation. Questlove’s original documentary about the Bay Area funk pioneer Sly Stone seems to be a jam-packed affair. And how could you do a documentary on Sly Stone without consulting André 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rogers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, George Clinton, Ruth Copeland, and Clive Davis?
It seems proper, and quite overdue that this musical polymath, the guy Miles Davis feared would put him out of business if he ever learned jazz, who changed how we see and hear rock and roll/funk bands forever, finally gets a documentary fully focused on him.
But there is a David Letterman interview from 1983; this is NBC Letterman for those keeping score—a grittier, 12:30am eastern time, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants version of the show, which I watched in real time because it was so bizarre and, in many cases, exemplary of the Sly Stone mystique. This moment in the late hours of the night shall never leave me, no matter how good Questlove’s documentary will be.
After introducing him, Letterman asks Sly why he retired, and without missing a nanosecond, he responds, “Well, I got tired, so I retired,” and we are off to such a weird, honest, and bizarre exchange between the two. No aggression, just Sly layin on those “we are gonna do this” eyes on David and whoever else was up. At one point during the interview, Sly asks if he can give out a phone number, on national television, of a band he’s currently working with in Chicago called The One Eyed Jacks.
People, please understand. I’m not running this down to poke fun at one of my musical heroes. It’s just that his fading in and out of the public spotlight has been… consistent since the late ’70s. This, on Letterman, was a resurfacing. A rough and tumble around the edges one, but authentic. It was so real. Artists today do not allow themselves to be so vulnerable.
As he goes to play a couple of his selections with Paul Schaffer, who is arranging the heck out of Sly’s international earworms, Stone eventually takes back control of the performance as he approaches the studio audience, who is just as surprised and thoroughly entertained once understanding his musical faculties are spot on. This type of TV just doesn’t happen anymore.
