We are still Under The Stars, a quasi-weekly SF music column, still staying 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 a while now… Thanks for spending some time with us…
DJ AMIR PRESENTS STRATA RECORDS—THE SOUND OF DETROIT VOL. 2 (180 PROOF RECORDS)
Music historian, sample excavator, and globally renowned DJ Amir Abdullah is at heart a crate-digger who is adamant about preserving the history of Black American music. From 1996-2016 he was one half of the legendary mixtape and DJ duo Kon & Amir while also concurrently holding high-ranking positions at Wax Poetics and Fat Beats magazines. He started his 180 Proof Record label in 2011 as a way to put the back catalog and unreleased sessions from Strata Records out into the world. Founded by the late Blue Note Artist Kenny Cox, this Detroit imprint not only cut jazz records during the early to mid-1970s, it also distributed food to the community, provided educational services for children in the neighborhood, held live events in a small café called Strata Gallery.
DJ Amir embarks on another deep excavation to curate a 2nd volume in his Strata Records–The Sound of Detroit compilations. According to Amir, or just believe your own ears, this compilation slides along the label’s “groovier, funkier edges whilst still celebrating its bold, avant-garde spirit.” For those who DJ dance-floor jazz parties or just like having that environment, that spirit, in your home collection, this is a must-have. Released by BBE Music in collaboration with 180 Proof Records as a triple vinyl LP and hi-res digital download, the release “exemplifies the importance of Strata Records in the history of innovative Black music as well as its place in the cultural landscape of Detroit as a powerhouse city for art and music.”
Pick it up here.
SLOPE 114, “WE’LL FIND OUR WAY” (SUBLEVEL)
Slope114 is a San Francisco-based live house music duo composed of Elise Gargalikis and Dmitri SFC. They create warm, human dance music, and their arrangements never feel rushed, artificial, or simply cut and pasted. Their grooves cook, simmer, and build to a fever pitch at their own pace.
Both members are veterans in the Bay Area dance music scene. Gargalikis has been singing competitively around California since she was six years old, coming from a long line of singers. She gained recognition for her house music performances at underground venues in the Bay Area during the early 2000s. Dmitri, known nationwide for his role as the disco ball holder in the movie Groove began DJing in SF clubs using someone else’s ID before he was legally old enough to enter. In a certain way, he carries that renegade spirit of SF dance music with him, that connectivity to the street. A streak of WTF if you will that gives a certain type of music its freedom to swing wide and large.
Together, they set a standard for what San Francisco dance music should embody: deep grooves, striking vocals, and an irresistible vibe that makes you never want to leave the dance floor.vTheir most recent release, out on Doc Martin’s imprint Sublevel takes that “foot innit” drive and crafts an arrangement that has the stuff to carry on deep into the night. The song “We’ll Find Our Way,” with several remixes and a special dub version by Dmitri, presents above-par quality dance music, that doesn’t feel constricted. Grab it here.
BRIAN AUGER’S OBLIVION EXPRESS, OBLIVION EXPRESS (STRUT RECORDS)
I first started listening to the acid-fried prog rock of the UK’s virtuosic organ-playing fiend Brian Auger on late-night terrestrial radio when I was about 10 years old. This weird jazz station would blow in on Sunday nights, and this new and different type of organ-driven jazz would just flip and fly from the speakers that I knew was not Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, or Dr. Lonnie Smith. My parents had a deep jazz collection that just seeped its way into my ears and imagination. Auger’s arrangements came across as vivid 5K, while other musicians, after the fact, seemed to be playing in black and white, if you get my gist. There was something dangerous and free, that duality between rock ideas and jazz grooves, and a grand space in between where Auger would just play this new electrified hybrid music that was difficult to unhear once Auger got your imagination revived from these fever dreams.
1971’s Oblivion Express is the beginning of this new type of arranging involving jazz, prog, fusion, electronic, rock, and whatever else was tripping around inside Auger’s photogenic brain. In retrospect, his playing gave me the foundation to comprehend the brilliance of the Bay Area’s own Broun Fellinis, the Medeski Martin and Wood trio that rose into prominence in the early 90’s, and even the recent past releases from the staggering polymath of a musician Emma Jean-Thackray. Madlib, too, was wise enough to repurpose “The Sword” through his 2014 tracks “Yeti Movie” and “Parodies.” All of these artists’ lodestars shine 100 percent bright through the inception of blending those riff-heavy cinematic ideas with a jazz attitude. Oblivion Express is a must-have for all types of adventurous music lovers.
Grab the re-release here.
SESSA AT RICKSHAW STOP MARCH 21
São Paulo’s Sessa is obviously an artist, you just sit with. Absorb. Let him talk to you.
His third album here, Pequena Vertigem de Amor, which translates to “li’l love vertigo,” is a head-exploding, mind-altering moment inspired by the music of Sly Stone and Shuggy Otis.
Funk and strings, people. Leisurely, moody acoustic guitars playing in the breeze, with flute arrangements swingin’, hangin’ out in the background. I’m told by experts that música popular brasileira (MPB) and Afro-Brazilian percussion, blended into this aerospace of romantic chill, is where Sessa lives artistically. But I’m a rookie in these orbits… And those stars remain winking, on and off, like a code far and away up.
Now that you know what Sessa is reheating, try, if you can, to lock in on the many tiny details that expand out into such vivid colors, we’re talking deep-shag carpet feels. This Bossa Nova in the now moment, as explained in the comments section on YouTube (fans keep it real there, always), lines up rich atmospherics with just gobsmacking idyllic charts that go beyond what you would expect from a trad, tropicalia album.
Fans call his music neo-Tropicália? And it lingers beautifully in some 70s lush folky-soul way, infusing bits of mid-’70s Joni Mitchell atmospherics. They slowly develop like an old Polaroid Instamatic picture.
Sessa is playing at Rickshaw, you should attend. Put some bossa nova in your life for an evening. Grab tickets here.
THE REDS, PINKS, AND PURPLES, ACKNOWLEDGE KINDNESS (FIRE RECORDS)
With what sounds like a bigger record, Glenn Donaldson, the self-proclaimed “enveloping ennui” behind this glorious San Francisco sadcore indie rock project, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, is by no means just a local secret handshake shared among regional janglefied musicians. No. Donaldson is the elder in the room, spinning his tuneful tales about those who didn’t make it, to this mashup of The Smiths meet The Cure in some back alley, bitterly melancholy gathering of the damned who create some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful music this side of low-fi wit and storytelling charm. Having penned over 200 songs and released eight albums in the last six years, Donaldsons’ shy, low-key orbit has fueled the recent SF indie-rock resurgence.
Acknowledge Kindness drops in April; pre-order it here.
