It’s Under The Stars, babe: a quasi-weekly column that presents new music releases, upcoming shows, opinions, and other adjacent items. We keep moving with the changes and thinking outside the margins.
Where we wonder how live music survived before placing all of it in Golden Gate Park, hmmm…
Let’s get into it.
TALES OF A KITCHEN PORTER (DANDY BOY RECORDS)
Who do you summon to record a 15-track tribute in honor of DIY troubadour Martin Newell and the everlasting and prolific group Cleaners From Venus? Some of the most respected underground bedroom pop artists of the modern era. That’d be Nic Hessler, Whitney’s Playland, Flowertown, Yea-Ming, Smashing Times, Mister Baby, Julian Never, The Dates, Sob Stories, Smile Too Much, Owen Adair Kelley, Rhymies, Inflatable Men, Sleepworld, and Chime School. Oakland-based imprint Dandy Boy Records has assembled a sonic big tent committee of feels and styles under that lo-fi jingle jangle umbrella, making Tales of a Kitchen Porter a glorious assemblage of home-recorded Cleaners covers honoring “the Greatest Living Englishman.”
Do yourself a solid, especially if you’re following this revival through such a characteristically tasteful Bay Area lens, and pick up this special comp here.
TANUKICHAN, CIRCLES EP (CARPARK RECORDS)
Tanukichan, the musical project of Hannah van Loon from Oakland, rides the bumpy, fussy, messy shoegaze rails with accompanying menacing beats, hard-hitting drums, and magnetic guitars on the Circles EP, which might have dropped outta peak Seattle times from that city’s alt-’90s explosion. Choosing to sing-hum over the squealing/howling axe frequencies, venting ideas and emotions through hushed lyrics, Circles EP rocks and smashes in a high-flown 13 minutes, making you want to rewind the cassette tape, that it also gets to be distributed on.
Grab it here.
DAVE GUY, RUBY (BIG CROWN RECORDS)
Word on the street is that Dave Guy, trumpeter, who currently performs with The Roots live and on The Tonight Show, had some downtime during the writers’ strike of 2023. So in that free moment, actually within days, he started recording his debut album Ruby at NYC’s fabled Diamond Mine Studio.
Years upon years of experience from playing with… dude has an impressive list… Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band, The Sugarman 3, and lending his horn and informed tone to records from the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson, Pharrell, Lee Fields, Al Green, and many others helped shape this mood fugue and groove dreamscape of a record. I feel like sometimes marketing folks, no disrespect, throw the title of jazz on anything that shows a musician with an actual instrument.
Ruby fits in that hole of a sometimes soundtrack, a New York City-specific soundtrack.
Like that original Shaft film and soundtrack—the one with the dearly departed Mr. Richard Roundtree—had a certain attitude to it. Ruby is filled with numerous moments of plot exposition, for a film that doesn’t even exist. That’s always an indication that showcases an artist cooking extra hot and focused.
Guy is flossin’ his best Donald Byrd style of playing, blending with these knockout rhythm sections that place listeners in an early ’70s speakeasy. Round 5am, if you get my drift.
Ruby bangs hard but on some sophisticated mahogany-type shine. Hopefully, Dave Guy doesn’t wait until another strike to record again because these charts, those ideas, and arrangements feel so human-like; Observations of somebody, more specifically a Black man, walking through a hot and cold city, watching and feeling it all.
God bless ya, Mr. Guy.
Buy Ruby here.
TERRY GROSS, HUGE IMPROVEMENT (THRILL JOCKEY)
A silly, taking-a-piss-at-it type of playfulness runs through all the assorted titles, names, photos, and artwork for the new Terry Gross (see what I mean) psychedelic-doom trip release—starting with the IYKYK photo/cover artwork of the gone but most definitely not forgotten Sheepskin City business that greeted Mission heads on Cesar Chavez, between Bryant and Florida, or anybody in that beloved part of the city for decades.
Bassist Donny Newenhouse, drummer Phil Becker, and Trans Am guitarist Phil Manley own the Bay Area recording studio known simply as El Studio, which, resides in that same neighborhood, and doubles as their improv music session and communal gathering place—you can feel all the jam vibes on the instrumental stoner dirge “Full Disclosure”—that cruises and crushes—for almost 12 minutes but never lags.
Shit’s epic.
From the comedic play on The Police cover art from one of my fave albums ever, Zenyatta Mondatta, to their album titles—Huge Improvement now and Soft Opening previously—they muck around with everything but the tunes and the solemnity of how cherished things do change, as in the fate of our beloved Sheepskin City business that, of course, in a self-driving car city, is freaking gone. But don’t get it confused, boppers; the fact that they are signed to the famed Thrill Jockey imprint outta Chicago means the music is where these SF artist lifers remain most serious.
Please pick up Huge Improvement here.
dBRIDGE, VIOLENCE OF POSITIVITY (CANDY MOUNTAIN)
London-based producer Darren White, whose recording alias dBridge has been rocking drum and bass dancefloors and freaking out headphone addicts since the early ’90s, has carved out a rep for keeping productions far left from whatever in bloody hell is tracking on those new-fangled Vanilla bass music Reddit boards. Homeboy has always kept it code; dark, grumbly, and somewhat science fiction vibey, employing old-school techniques, equipment, and production style. Sometimes he swings so hard that even longtime fans are like, “Wha… I need a minute to catch up.” S’cool, Mang. For real, that means you messin’ with it, trying to approach it differently. I’ve always been a fan of the atmospheric side of D&B, but I still believe for tracks to be proper, that shit better get grumpy, even if it’s just for a second.
Violence of Positivity is a dBridge mixed bag of a release, full of shuttery two-step grumblers that you want to hear real loud. “It Takes Time” is so mean, so cold, so right—that I’d still stick my hand in. “The Battle of The Locust” fills in the science fiction critter category with three-note bass lines, asteroid synths flashing by, and wondery background ephemera filling out the 5k visual. “In A Box” frames a John Cameron-Tony Scott; Alien Romulus meet cute of terror; with plinking key changes on the fringes, and the closer, EP title track, “Violence of Positivity” operates as a betweener—techno by way of breakbeat characteristics, that’s just a bit outside my reach. But it’s dBridge, so that effort, is anticipated
Respect.
Pick it up here.
