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.
chokecherry, RIPE FRUIT ROTS AND FALLS (FEARLESS RECORDS)
I finally caught SF’s buzziest band, chokecherry, live and in person back in June, while taking in those rich, velvety atmospheric moments from their previous release, the Messy Star EP. Great name, BTW. Immediately, I got it. Sped-up goth, ’90s counterculture grunge with alt-rock fuzz?
Rad. Bet.
Now, the notorious outfit of Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson, who met on a dating app, is back with their first album, Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls. This single, “Porcelain Warrior,” is a vibey wave of big-sounding production. Chris Coady, known for his work with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio, is one of the producers here, balancing, quite well, I may add, the shoegaze melodies.
This SF band of the moment maintains its “inherently punk rock and gritty” aesthetic, but the production glow-up makes their sound a major player. Big things are coming for chokecherry, people. Trust. Just imagine if more local bands started with their members meeting on the dating app Hinge. Pick up the release here.
K-LONE, SORRY I THOUGHT YOU WERE SOMEONE ELSE (INCIENSO)
Those who toil and create in the mines of the music world know that once you establish some kind of solid bedrock rhythmic foundation, it is then, you can really start building. Sculpting those worlds that reside above.
For my money, K-Lone, the UK producer and Wisdom Teeth label co-founder, has been carving seriously over the past half-decade, with specific intent. He tweaks those synths to radiance, and gets those drum sounds honed in and serrated. If we’re going to slap labels on things, I guess he makes house music that could have cousins in the good form of dubstep, and siblings in clean and clinical swinging drum and bass if he wanted to.
But a radiant, glowering, almost atmospheric house is his base-camp church where he takes collections every Sunday for the building fund, cause that’s what he does. Build.
On his most recent release, sorry i thought you were someone else, he’s constructed dem things for 4am movement on the slick and sleek constructs “silk” and “sslip”, proving you can make dance music that isn’t brainless but can still get the job done with some integrity to go along with that bump.
We get caught up in that dubby thump melancholy chamber, with meditative pause and heft, on the standout “fair enough 2 be fair,” which plinks and plunks with the best of them till closing time.
Most of this release, crafted after the passing of his father, is far from melancholic; these tracks are aimed at a night out, at least sipping something, at a bar with a decent sound system, where the ear can register all these sound production nuances in the proper environment.
I mean, sure, pop on someone else at home, on the couch, or in the backyard, where all the radiant tones match up nicely with the stars that twinkle in the sky, too. Wherever you get to hear the joy and wonder of this type, the right kind, electronic music that feels warm, human, is the proper place to be.
Pick it up in your local record store’s electronic music section or check back here.
LA LUZ, “EXTRA! EXTRA!” (SUB POP RECORDS)
Portland garage rockers La Luz released the “Extra! Extra!” EP exclusively for Record Store Day Black Friday last month. Building on the success and ideas from their 2024 album News of the Universe, the five-song EP offers new takes and versions of the previous release, this time crafted with producer and now full-time band member Maryam Qudus.”After running around the globe, playing these songs every night, we thought it would be fun to deconstruct and reinvent them together” said band member Shana Cleveland.
So they returned to Tiny Telephone studio in Oakland for a few sessions and completed the task. La Luz played a two-night performance at The Chapel here in SF in early November. Grab the vinyl-only EP here
MOMOKO GILL, MOMOKO (STRUT RECORDS)
We received the trailer with Clay, the collaborative project from Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill, this past summer. Drummer-vocalist Gill brought abstract, yet subtle, drum ideas sampled in modern patterns to a Herbert-style party. Clay was that inventive, calm, soulful house album suited for our hectic times, and boy howdy, it sounds better with every spin.
Now Momoko Gill has announced her debut, titled Momoko, scheduled for release in February next year.
What do we know? Gill has long been one of the UK electronic and jazz scene’s best-kept secrets. A self-taught drummer, producer, songwriter, and vocalist, she has brought her unique touch to collaborations with Alabaster DePlume, Matthew Herbert, Coby Sey, Tirzah, and many others.
But with her self-produced debut project, recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre, the epicenter of the UK jazz movement over the past decade, this debut brings this artist’s talents full circle. From the groove-centered, very chill jam “No Others” to the evocative chord progression of “2close2farr,” where we get up close with those sparse yet direct vocals from this artist, Momoko is throwing all the signals. This is an impressive release to mark on your calendar in the new year.
Pre-order here.
DAVIA SCHENDEL, CRASHED YOUR PARTY
San Francisco vocalist, songwriter, and producer has released a single ahead of the upcoming sci-fi drama Arden. Davia Schendel’s single, “Crashed Your Party,” from the soundtrack of Anna Mader’s short film, is inspired by the movie’s exploration of relationships and how AI may impact them in the future.
Schendel, who describes the psychedelic, ’90s dream pop style of the arrangement as “sad indie rock for the future,” sounds quite compelling, haunting, and hazy, amidst her own track production of guitars, percussion, synthesizers, and additional drum programming.
Pick it up here.
JIMMY CLIFF, RIP
Before… Like way before, Bob Marley’s Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers could celebrate its 40th anniversary, selling over 25 million copies, ranking it among the top 20 best-selling albums of all time.
Before all of that could even happen…….
James Chambers aka Jimmy Cliff, would star in a low-budget independently produced Jamaican film, which still to this day it is unclear how much it cost to make, The Harder They Come.
His raw depiction of Jamaican life in the early ’70s, didn’t just bring “jamrock” to the world and provide a soundtrack for American counterculture to fully embrace in that decade, it made Cliff an international star, one with Black skin (let’s keep it 100 people) and provided a successful entryway for future Jamaican recording artists to also become global icons by way of American record stores.
On November 24, the Jamaican singer and global reggae ambassador passed away at the age of 81.
The Harder They Come was the first feature film made in Jamaica by Jamaicans, and Cliff starred in it as a musician and gangster hero. The movie was released in 1973 to respectable reviews but virtually no box office success. Then Chuck Zlatkin, manager of the Elgin Theater on the corner of 19th Street and Eighth Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, threw it on a Sunday one-day showing, and, according to Zlatkin, in Ben Davis’ book Repertory Movie Theaters of New York City, “the thing went through the roof. And that’s when we turned it into a midnight show that ran forever.”
Playing continuously from October 1974 till March 1977, when the theater closed, it was the longest-running midnight movie in the theater’s history. Describing the film’s appeal, Zlatkin said, “It has reggae music. It makes a political statement, and it gives a realistic look into another culture. It’s not the Jamaica you see in travel brochures. And it’s basically done like an old James Cagney film.”
See, future American reggae fans had to see what it looked like before they could hear it.
Listen. Bob Marley and The Wailers opened for The Commodores at Madison Square Garden in September of 1980, and Lionel Ritchie has publicly said on record that Bob Marley smoked him out so hard that Ritchie spent the rest of the night trying to remember who he was and doesn’t recall much about his own performance with the Commodores.
It’s also noted that Bob Marley and The Wailers blew the Commodores off the stage for both nights of performances. It’s funny and true. WBLS, the biggest and most influential Black radio station in the country at that time, played the hell out of “Could You Be Loved,” basically embracing this star and group from such a small island, before all of that had to happen.
But it was Jimmy Cliff, earlier in the ’70s, who was the conduit through which all this music did flow. Cliff wasn’t just a singer, entertainer, and performer; he was a cultural influence, hero, and idol who connected Jamaica with America forever. That film and its ensuing soundtrack, which featured Cliff along with Toots and The Maytals, Desmond Dekker & The Aces, and others, shaped pop music forever.
Cliff and his influence on music, film, and the arts are immeasurable.
