It’s a very fertile time for music festivals in the Bay Area. BUT, we are still Under the Stars, a quasi-weekly column presenting new music releases, upcoming shows, and other adjacent items. We keep it moving, hustling with the changes, thinking outside the margins. We’ve been doing this for five years… Spend some time with us…
REVIEW: DERYA YILDIRIM & GRUP ŞIMŞEK AT THE CHAPEL, AUGUST 6
I had the date circled in my mind for months. After listening to Yarın Yoksa, their Big Crown Records release from this past spring, produced by the versatile Leon Michels—the millennial answer to Rick Rubin—I knew I had to see them live. As soon as I heard they would be at The Chapel, I made sure to be there. Word on the street is that about 10 years ago, while participating in a community theater project, Derya Yıldırım met French musicians Graham Mushnik (keyboards) and Antonin Voyant (guitar and bass) from Catapulte Records and formed the band Grup Şimşek with Helen Wells, a drummer from Cape Town, joining in 2021.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, to Turkish parents, Yıldırım grew up influenced by her family’s Anatolian background and the myriad of cultures in the city, and learned to play the bağlama—a seven-stringed Turkish lute. Yıldırım, who sings in her parents’ native Turkish, contorts a vocal instrument of vulnerability, so that anybody not familiar with the language can sense that nuance and tenderness.
The band—and rightfully so—identify their sound as “outernational”; accessible to many, regardless of whether you understand the lyrics or not.
All that ’70s Turkish funk, acid rock-leaning synths, soul-psychedelia, and analog representation not only sold out The Chapel last Wednesday, it also gave me faith that SF still has serious record heads. Understand this: The Dead & Co. cash-grab experience had blown through town with its 180,000-plus attendees the previous weekend, and Cloud City was gearing up for “let’s drain Golden Gate Park for all the money she got” Outside Lands, the three-day music festival that does showcase up-and-comers but simultaneously gives off such “shit show” energy that many SF residents book their cabin in Tahoe for those dates.
But the heads who were still in town, not falling for the big-budget box version of live music, showed unreserved love for their outernational friends, riding the groovy railway of vibes when they kicked into the hit “Cool Hand”, with Derya Yıldırım playing the bağlama like a champion returning home. Patrons showed that they were not just trend-hopping Spotify ghost-people by identifying the dramatic live version of the opening half-time banger “Çiçek Açıyor” and giving their full energy to the funk-psyche roll of “Direne Direne,” which translates to “we will resist” and rolled out as the grooviest protest song to date, live or recorded.
Yıldırım spoke very humbly between songs in English and a sparkly shirt about how these songs were transposed folk songs that her people used to sing while working in the fields.
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That hit me in the gut.
As I looked around at the crowd, yelp, and cheer in unison with Yıldırım, I knew their understanding of that statement was much different than mine.
Can’t wait for this act to come back to the States, and especially this oh-so-savvy tech capital, to give more lessons to those who need to hear and understand what they’re singing about.
HORSEGIRL WITH GOLDCASTER & CINDY AT GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL, SAT/16
Shooting out of the persistently active and competitive Chicago garage noise scene in 2021, Horsegirl, a trio consisting of Penelope Lowenstein, Nora Cheng, and Gigi Reece—mere teenagers—stood out even then. Their brand was built up by gigging at museums, all-ages venues, open mics, and house parties—all the places you would expect to hear jangly arrangements leading to squirrelly power. With 2025’s Phonetics On and On, produced by Cate Le Bon, the grown-up trio proves that getting what they want (a deal on the coveted Matador imprint) didn’t impair their talent.
If anything, it allowed growth, for the trio to blossom, fashioning new arrangements closer to Flying Nun twee and Stereolab full cutesy bijou. Horsegirl got moves, Jack. Ticket availability is low for this show, but it’s essential if you like seeing young bands search for something beyond their initial success.
Grab tix here.
Z-TRIP, YACHT ROCKIN BEATS MIXTAPE
Rest assured, there will be no swagger-jacking, spa-core, coffee-shop trip-hop or headass moment in this cool-and-breezy hour-or-so. Z-TRIP has decided to take the whole yacht rock thang, build a kit around it, with some bass-centric low-end ear candy to digest these soft-cheese specialties into some golden hour soundtrack for summer-eve chillaxing.
The San Diego group, Ron Burgundy voice snippets and all, is not trying to make anybody overthink anything. Just get in your obnoxious short sleeves, maybe add a captain’s hat for shits and giggles, and let a remixed version of Summerbreeze take your brain away from all the noise. The mixtape is here for a pay-what-you-want price, now that’s easygoing…
Get it here.
KARMACODA, “PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE’ FEAT MEGAN SLANKARD (SOLO MUSA MUSIC)
San Franciscan duo Karmacoda, composed of Brett Crockett, also known as B. (producer), and Japanese American multi-instrumentalist Eric Matsuno (bass and unique elements), has created a tight blend of electronica, chill, trip-hop, rock, and dream pop over their two-decade career. But on their new single, featuring vocals by Megan Slankard—with her trademark clarity and enunciation (no, I’m serious, just listen)—this fresh collaboration has slipped into the conversational R&B chat, for sure.
“I wanted to write a modern R&B, soul, electronica-tinged song with an old school vibe” states Crockett in a press release. “We reached out to our friend vocalist and musician Megan Slankard, who loved the music. Megan wrote the lyrics and sang the vocal lead, and did a fantastic emotional job. The song is about, as the title implies, someone in a troublesome relationship and states that she is ‘practically impossible to please.’”
Taking a trip-hop approach to soul and R&B, “Practically Impossible to Please” works chillness around Lankard’s emotion and color, like opening credit music to a lost “Ally McBeal” episode, or the closing roll of names and titles to one of those Clooney Ocean films.
New ground is covered here by all parties.
Grab it here.
