Under the Stars: For Cahl Sel, electronic experimentation is a family affair

Well hello, lovers of music and culture. We are Under the Stars, a quasi-weekly column that stays on message with strong-ass opinions, 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! Such a wonderful moment for electronic music.

CAHL SEL, TRACES (REFLECTIVE RECORDS)

Reflective Records serves as a reminder of when San Francisco had the potential and the runway to do much better, by leaps and bounds. Jonah Sharp, also known as Spacetime Continuum, arrived in San Francisco from the UK in the early ’90s. He had regularly performed in London alongside acts such as Orbital and Mixmaster Morris. After breathing in that succulent Northern California air, a bouquet filled with crisp sea fog, salty ocean air, bay mud, algae, and eucalyptus, he became hooked—just like the rest of us—and made SF his home.

He started a family with his wife Billee, and together they built an internationally respected label. In a casual conversation from a very random meet-up years ago, I asked Sharp about Peggy Gou using his 1993 track “Fluorescence” to open her 2019 DJ Kicks mix. He assured me that she was very respectful when she reached out to him.

I’ve often said—and I’ll say it again for those in the cheap seats—the Reflective catalog is like a secret, soulful handshake, an encoded dap, IYKYK, a third language speaking to a unique state of being for those residing in the 415.

Those records were soundtracking an evolution in real-time: Outdoor raves and indoor chill-out rooms, contributing to the mystique that was shaping culture, dance music, and a burgeoning version of Cloud City that would make it a travel destination for anyone curious about modern music.

Reflective Records? Not to be taken lightly.

Don’t trust me? Go run and test your deepest search. You’ll find reviews of Sharp’s 1993 Flurescence EP describing it as cosmic, filled with bleeps, bloops, squelches, and swooshes. These are atmospheric qualities, interpretations of an environment from an uplifted perspective. The label captured a moment in this city when technology felt safe, exploratory, and forward-looking. At the time, tech was a form of self-expression rather than a tool or qualifier for financial dominance. Music has always been at the forefront of capturing the vibes around us—in our case, the fog—and transforming those rhythms into sounds that can energize dance spaces, whether on a beach at 6am as the sun comes up or in a tiny, sweaty club on Haight Street well past 3am when the DJ has just broken through.

Vibes, man. Vibes.

For those reasons, London, Detroit, LA, New York, Berlin, and other electronic music hubs looked towards San Francisco for its distinctive sound. This is all previous to drum and bass becoming an SF signature; you can hear those origins and follow those seeds in this early collection of hardware hymns.

There’s no time for nepotistic behavior when charting the stars and logging their fading glimmers across the heavens using “all hardware recordings.” It’s a matter of ability—either you can do it, or you cannot.

Sharp’s son, Cahl Sel, clarified that the revival of Reflective in the 21st century was not the repurposing of a gift passed on to him. He, too, has had his senses heightened by that succulent Northern California air. Just listen to and look at his 2022 single “Every Moment.” That exploratory aesthetic, pulling something from nature into these “all hardware recordings,” signaled that a new generation was ready to meld classic experimentation with that which was upward-looking in electronic music.

“Routine”, from that same EP, is a low-slung dedication to anyone who grew up listening to Detroit minimal techno—clearly, Cahl Sel did. This generation in the Sharp family business knows how to shuffle their feet, get hearts palpitating, and create that joyful noise, even when he isn’t thinking about the nebula and how it connects to the human condition. That track works in multiple neighborhoods and, of course, from Dolores Park, amidst Bullet Proof Boat Parties and all the way to Belden, in the outdoors.

Traces, Cahl Sel’s debut album, is another “all hardware recording.” It ups the ante, casts our ears and hearts into wiry-wavey synth patterns and flickering tempos that never get pushed to cut-and-paste banality. Sel moves about in a similar experimental pathway put down by his father 30 years ago. But Sel, equipped with his own rhythmspeak, does so without nostalgia. Rather, he cracks open a door on modernism that blows a cool and lively breeze into the room.

Washing out the redundant, computer-driven, you know where it’s gonna land, beats, out the way, making space for a design of ideas that seek unknown destinations. Openness. Wherever that is. I’m getting ahead of myself with the release samples for the upcoming project, but there’s a track here titled “Halflife” that, oooh. It balances chunk-thunk beats with celestial communication, opens with an ambient, contemplative psychedelic wallpaper of a spirit. (Yeah, that’s a mouthful) featuring squelches and ticks that exude creativity. Then, that stabby bass line grabs your neck and refuses to let go. Proving extraterrestrial beings seek Bootsy Collins or Jon Bap as interpreters. But seriously, these combinations don’t make it in most quote fingers inserted here “electronic music”.

Leave it to a Sharp to upend the definition of that phrase again.

Pre-order here.

AKIKO YANO, 7 O’CLOCK IN TOKYO (WEWANTSOUNDS)

Live albums were the podcast or Netflix miniseries of previous decades. Some refer to the ’70s as the golden age for this kind of long-player, because every band or singer-songwriter had at least one notable concert recording in their discography. It was an essential component of the catalog, similar to the way mixtapes were for DJs and hip-hop artists at one time.

I grew up listening to live albums intently: Donny Hathaway, Carmen McRae, Roberta Flack, Bob Marley and The Wailers were my earliest experiences with live music on vinyl. The idea of passing time by engaging with a performance that unfolds slowly wasn’t foreign at all in a decade with just three network TV channels and no internet. In real time, the artist delivered something original while the audience made calculations, sipped strong cocktails, smoked ciggies, finished dinner, chatted amongst their table company, gradually becoming more receptive to an arc of song construction that often lasted about an hour. Through clever song architecture that might resemble psychedelic ear wallpaper—remember, it was the ’70s—these artists bared it all in hopes that their performance wouldn’t be deemed a nothing burger.

Akiko Yano rose to popularity in Japan during the 70s (in her late 20s, mind you) merging all these ideas, containing melodies that cascaded through quirky versions of pop, funk, and jazz with her malleable voice as the compass.

She’s been touted as a favorite of Mac DeMarco, Clairo, and Jessy Lanza, which speaks to their having taste that’s most definitely not vanilla.

This rare live album 7 O’Clock in Tokyo, recorded live in September 1978, is now available outside Japan for the first time. It fits well within the canon of live albums from that era of musical experimentation–with one exception: Yano is backed by Yellow Magic Orchestra—yes, that supergroup—so the character, quality, and depth of creativity here lean toward Japanese fusion ideas, blending computer geek and nerd-funk elements. Also, proto-disco moments with free-flowing arrangements create a full-on jam, culminating in the epic closer “Walk On The Way Of Life”—playful, groove-heavy, with some colorful guitar noodling to make you smile.

Pre-order here.

CRUSHED, NO SCOPE (GHOSTLY)

Blending rock with electronic music is a difficult task. Dip and dodge between the two. Make some kind of coordinated, great-sounding project that stretches beyond experimental interest.

You want something incalculable… that just goes.

So, one day I was reading about Crushed, an LA duo consisting of Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan (I guess the latter has Bay Area roots.) I saw a couple of folks compare this project to Portishead—I don’t hear it, but I get the reference. Crushed draws from that trip-hop, Britpop, electronica era, classic ’90s alt radio canon, still a rich pastiche, ever so worthy of a second look, Holmes….

But these musicians offer modern arrangements on what came before. I dig it—the breakbeats lay the foundation for the dream-pop vibe—samples and chopped-up snare hits give wings, flight, and space to these catchy arrangements. The famous Amen break makes a guest appearance in the cohesive, fleshed-out track “licorice,” while Morell’s voice stretches out in a relaxed Chrissie Hynde direction. But it’s the first track “exo” that, for my pop-accessible digital coin, has all the feels, delivers what you expect and want: beats, bliss, and a hummable tune that points past-present in such an earworm fashion. Add to it, they are on Ghostly, so that’s a bit of a hat tip in the right direction too.

Check ’em out here.

HARVEY SUTHERLAND TOP FIVE HOUSE RECORDS

When Harvey Sutherland arrives at the Phoenix Hotel on Sat/11 for the two-day Mustache Bash, it will be one day after the release of his new album Debt. Similar to his 2022 debut album Boy, Sutherland (also known as Mike Katz, the Australian DJ and electronic music producer) has chosen to dive directly into the funk.

It’s a slight step away from the “lounge-room disco burners” he started with circa 2013. Those boutique 12-inches sounded very, how do you say, Mancuso-esque and caught my ear immediately.

But 10 or so years later, he’s dancing, moving, winking at the funk, with an updated rhythm jacket that’s fertile, for sure. Woozy, sped-up bliss—funked-up house, and some two-step adjacent burners decorate the new project with features including Julian Hamilton, Vickey Farewell, and Gulf Coast hip-hop duo They Hate Change.

But we wanted to go deeper. So Sutherland took the time to share with us at 48hills his top five house records, so let’s enjoy:

GLENN UNDERGROUND, SOUND STRUCK (PEACEFROG)

GU is a personal hero, and this tune (from his ’96 Atmosfear LP) is a quintessential deep house record, the perfect blend of organics and machine music. I try to only play it on systems that can handle the fidelity of that amazing bass line.

STEREOFUSE, BLACK JACK (SALO)

This got a nice reissue through Phonica a while back, and really never left the bag. Great and thumpy minimal with a good amount of funk to it.

GERIDEAU, “TAKE A STAND” (SMACK RAIN VIBE MIX) (MUSIC STATION)

Very memorable party in Cardiff with Hunee, maybe 10 years ago now, where he played this in the pouring rain. Went and found a copy of it a couple of weeks later, incredible New Jersey house record.

PATRICK HOLLAND, YOUR LIFE (VERDICCHIO MUSIC PUBLISHING)

Sparkling Canadian House Music. PH has been on an unbelievable run for a while now, but this one really kicked things into another gear.

JUSTUS KÖHNCKE, ADVANCE (KOMPAKT)

Anyone who’s vaguely followed my musical journey over the last couple of years would understand this record is kinda the crossover point between where I’ve been and where I’m headed…