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"content": "\n\u003cp>What’s the state of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/experimental-music\">experimental music\u003c/a> today?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“California,” composer Charles Amirkhanian says, laughing. “It’s happening here. Occasionally we’ll let in someone from New York — or Norway. But we don’t have any problems finding material.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian has long mastered the art of creating a home for the avant-garde. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As the co-founder of Other Minds, a leading nonprofit and record label \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11353950/other-minds-archives-headed-for-uc-santa-cruz\">dedicated to noncommercial music\u003c/a>, and as the former music director of KPFA, he’s spent decades championing composers who push beyond conventional boundaries. He also has cultivated an audience willing to follow them there through \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds’ annual festival\u003c/a>, which brings freewheeling musicians and sound poets from around the world to San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Oct. 8–11 at the Brava Theater in the Mission District, the festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It’s also the 81-year-old Amirkhanian’s last year as executive and artistic director before he retires in January. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Musician and fellow composer Joseph Bohigian, currently Other Minds’ associate director, will take over as artistic director next year. A separate search for the organization’s next executive director is underway. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian says he’ll strive to lead the organization into a new chapter while continuing his predecessor’s ambitions. Much like his mentor, the young composer draws from a wellspring of ancient Armenian culture and the contemporary American experimental music to express something new. He’s also made it his mission to support other artists on their voyages, as Amirkhanian has done for decades. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to make sure that there’s a home for out-there music, the stuff that’s not commercially viable, but is exciting and experimental and pushes things forward,” Bohigian says. “We want to serve that small but dedicated audience.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“And the composers who make the music,” Amirkhanian adds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994061\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Two kindred spirits, born half a century apart\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On a cloudy Thursday, Amirkhanian and Bohigian sit together in Other Minds’ downtown Berkeley office, surrounded by stacks of CDs and a bust of legendary 20th-century Bay Area new music composer Henry Cowell (“the godfather,” Amirkhanian says). Through the glass windows, cars and passersby screech and blare from below, making their own kind of experimental music. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s a fitting soundtrack for an organization whose mission is, in part, to listen differently. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Despite a nearly half-century age gap, Amirkhanian and Bohigian are kindred spirits. Both of them are percussionists, steeped in a tradition that includes iconoclastic musicians like Cowell, Lou Harrison and others. And both are Armenians from Fresno, the agricultural city in California’s heartland which is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant Armenian diasporas in the U.S. Both have drawn on their heritage in their work in forward-thinking ways. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The two first met in 2011 when Bohigian was a freshman at Fresno State University. Amirkhanian was doing a guest performance at the Fresno New Music Festival, and guest-lectured in one of Bohigian’s music classes. At the festival, the students performed an octet Amirkhanian had written as part of a career-long fascination with the noisiest percussion instrument: the ratchet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“That kind of thing was really exciting,” Bohigian recalls. “This loud, asynchronous rhythm.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian, who was born in 1993, the same year as the first Other Minds festival, began as a pianist before switching to percussion, a classic path into contemporary music.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you’re a percussionist, there’s not a lot of old repertoire,” he says. “You’re performing mostly 20th- and 21st-century music.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian started composing in high school, initially writing pieces that imitated composers like Cowell, who devised a method for playing the piano from the inside, on the strings. Bohigian’s first piano piece, written for an AP music theory course, was titled “Song for Spaghetti Armed Steve.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But his work gradually developed a deeper cultural focus. A piece \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10467313/marking-the-armenian-genocide-anniversary-by-featuring-living-armenian-composers?mc_cid=3995258f14&mc_eid=e3b2e66c4b\">he composed during his senior year\u003c/a> of college to observe the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was performed in 2015 by Fresno State’s New Music Ensemble. Bohigian lived in Armenia from 2019–2020, where he conducted research, studied and taught a laptop orchestra class at the state conservatory in Yerevan. His compositions have been performed around the world. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994064\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Associate Director Joseph Bohigian holds a program for the Other Minds Festival at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Reviving the legacy of an Armenian auteur\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s latest work will premiere Thursday on the opening night of this year’s Other Minds festival. He will debut \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/scenes-from-i-am-he-whose-life-and-soul-are-torment/\">I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, an evening-length multimedia performance inspired by the life of Soviet-Armenian auteur Sergei Parajanov.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s composition draws from Parajanov’s abstract 1969 film, \u003cem>The Color of Pomegranates\u003c/em>, about the 18th-century bard Sayat-Nova, who sang in Armenian, Georgian and Azeri — the languages of the region. The film was released four years before the director was jailed by the USSR for homosexuality and sentenced to hard labor. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The piece brings together Sayat-Nova’s folk music — performed by Bay Area wind instrumentalist and vocalist \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060906/meet-the-duduk-whisperer-a-bay-area-armenian-folk-musician-revives-centuries-of-soul\">Khatchadour Khatchadourian\u003c/a> — with the electronic music tradition that Bohigian is immersed in, to illustrate scenes from Parajanov’s life. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian describes the piece as theatrical, involving staged visual elements and costumes by East Bay artists Tara Baghdassarian and Caro Yaghjian in addition to the electronics and vocals.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We want to really make it immersive,” Bohigian says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some other festival weekend highlights include a live electronic performance from Philadelphia-born King Britt, delivering a set of sonic liberation compositions rooted in Black sound. And the festival will close Sunday with a performance by 79-year-old Charlemagne Palestine, who “plays only Bösendorfer pianos with extra keys on the bottom … so that the entire instrument resonates like perfume in the entire hall,” Amirkhanian says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I want people to understand that this is a rare opportunity to hear a composer who’s now probably at the end of his career and he’s coming here to do this monster hour-long performance,” he continues. “It’s going to be thrilling.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Sunday, Amirkhanian will also be performing a song he composed when he was 18: “Sonatina for Four Bass Drums, Op. 4.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I thought it’d be fun to dredge something up from the past,” he muses.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994065\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Finding the ‘other minds\u003c/strong>’\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian also grew up in Fresno, in a household steeped in classical music.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His mother and her three sisters were all classical pianists. Because Fresno sits roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, musicians traveling between the two cities would sometimes stop there, giving Amirkhanian opportunities to encounter performers and music that might otherwise have passed him by.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One day his father brought home a 78 rpm record with an Armenian rug pictured on the cover and two Armenian names: Alan Hovhaness and Maro Ajemian. Thinking it was an Armenian folk album, he bought it for the family. It turned out to be one of John Cage’s early commercial releases.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cage’s approach to sound opened another world for Amirkhanian. He remembered a piano altered with screws, erasers and other objects inserted among its strings.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“My mother told him to take it back to the shop,” Amirkhanian recalls. “But the shop would not take it back.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The record stayed, and set Amirkhanian on a lifelong path toward “all the sounds that you could incorporate into music.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cage, who died in 1992, also inspired the festival’s name, thanks to a dismissive \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> obituary of the artist that says: “His epitaph might read that he composed music in other peoples’ minds.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian and co-founder Jim Newman decided then that they \u003cem>were\u003c/em> the “other minds.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The first Other Minds festival, in 1993, was a hit, featuring composers Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Julia Wolfe.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The composers … went out and told everybody, ‘Well, they don’t pay much money, but you better accept if you get an invitation to the Other Minds festival,’” Amirkhanian recalls. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Forced to choose a highlight of his 30-year tenure, Amirkhanian recalled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4rfukf_eqI\">\u003cem>Ice Field\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a performance commissioned by Other Minds in 2001 and composed by Henry Brant. For $10,000, Brant put a jazz band on the balcony of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and surrounded the audience with a wall of cacophonous sound. The piece won a Pulitzer Prize.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994062\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian (left) and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Other Minds’ electronic futures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today, Other Minds’ Berkeley office houses an archive of roughly 4,000 audio tapes from the earliest days of KPFA. The record label releases music that might struggle to find a home elsewhere, particularly work that is too experimental or noncommercial for larger labels. The organization also has a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kalw.org/show/music-from-other-minds\">two-hour program on KALW\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Other Minds now also has a holiday in San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie last week proclaimed Oct. 2, 2026 as Other Minds Day, in recognition of its 30th anniversary and the festival’s enduring contribution to San Francisco’s cultural life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Both men are surprisingly optimistic about the future, even as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> begins to reshape the way music is made and consumed. Amirkhanian notes that we’re already “surrounded by dangers: politically, culturally — and we’re going to get through it.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian says AI has long been used by composers and musicians, predating the current discussions of rogue agents and other hazards. In grad school, he experimented with machine learning, training basic models to recognize certain sounds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We can find ways to use this, like any other new technology, to our advantage to make something new that we couldn’t have made without it,” Bohigian says.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Taking over the artistic future of Other Minds will require him to keep grappling with these questions. But the principles will be the same: give unusual music a place to exist, give its composers an audience and listen closely to discover what comes next.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Because of the internet, you’re finding out about new people all the time. Every week I’m hearing about some composer that was not at all on my radar, making really interesting work,” Bohigian continues. “I can sometimes get a little bit in my head about what’s out there. And then I hear something new that’s exciting and I think, ‘Oh, we have a bright future.’”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds Festival\u003c/a> takes place Oct. 8–11 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“California,” composer Charles Amirkhanian says, laughing. “It’s happening here. Occasionally we’ll let in someone from New York — or Norway. But we don’t have any problems finding material.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As the co-founder of Other Minds, a leading nonprofit and record label \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11353950/other-minds-archives-headed-for-uc-santa-cruz\">dedicated to noncommercial music\u003c/a>, and as the former music director of KPFA, he’s spent decades championing composers who push beyond conventional boundaries. He also has cultivated an audience willing to follow them there through \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds’ annual festival\u003c/a>, which brings freewheeling musicians and sound poets from around the world to San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>As the co-founder of Other Minds, a leading nonprofit and record label \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11353950/other-minds-archives-headed-for-uc-santa-cruz\">dedicated to noncommercial music\u003c/a>, and as the former music director of KPFA, he’s spent decades championing composers who push beyond conventional boundaries. He also has cultivated an audience willing to follow them there through \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds’ annual festival\u003c/a>, which brings freewheeling musicians and sound poets from around the world to San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On Oct. 8–11 at the Brava Theater in the Mission District, the festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It’s also the 81-year-old Amirkhanian’s last year as executive and artistic director before he retires in January. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On Oct. 8–11 at the Brava Theater in the Mission District, the festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It’s also the 81-year-old Amirkhanian’s last year as executive and artistic director before he retires in January. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Musician and fellow composer Joseph Bohigian, currently Other Minds’ associate director, will take over as artistic director next year. A separate search for the organization’s next executive director is underway. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Musician and fellow composer Joseph Bohigian, currently Other Minds’ associate director, will take over as artistic director next year. A separate search for the organization’s next executive director is underway. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian says he’ll strive to lead the organization into a new chapter while continuing his predecessor’s ambitions. Much like his mentor, the young composer draws from a wellspring of ancient Armenian culture and the contemporary American experimental music to express something new. He’s also made it his mission to support other artists on their voyages, as Amirkhanian has done for decades. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Bohigian says he’ll strive to lead the organization into a new chapter while continuing his predecessor’s ambitions. Much like his mentor, the young composer draws from a wellspring of ancient Armenian culture and the contemporary American experimental music to express something new. He’s also made it his mission to support other artists on their voyages, as Amirkhanian has done for decades. \u003c/p>\n"
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"\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to make sure that there’s a home for out-there music, the stuff that’s not commercially viable, but is exciting and experimental and pushes things forward,” Bohigian says. “We want to serve that small but dedicated audience.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“And the composers who make the music,” Amirkhanian adds. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On a cloudy Thursday, Amirkhanian and Bohigian sit together in Other Minds’ downtown Berkeley office, surrounded by stacks of CDs and a bust of legendary 20th-century Bay Area new music composer Henry Cowell (“the godfather,” Amirkhanian says). Through the glass windows, cars and passersby screech and blare from below, making their own kind of experimental music. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On a cloudy Thursday, Amirkhanian and Bohigian sit together in Other Minds’ downtown Berkeley office, surrounded by stacks of CDs and a bust of legendary 20th-century Bay Area new music composer Henry Cowell (“the godfather,” Amirkhanian says). Through the glass windows, cars and passersby screech and blare from below, making their own kind of experimental music. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Despite a nearly half-century age gap, Amirkhanian and Bohigian are kindred spirits. Both of them are percussionists, steeped in a tradition that includes iconoclastic musicians like Cowell, Lou Harrison and others. And both are Armenians from Fresno, the agricultural city in California’s heartland which is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant Armenian diasporas in the U.S. Both have drawn on their heritage in their work in forward-thinking ways. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Despite a nearly half-century age gap, Amirkhanian and Bohigian are kindred spirits. Both of them are percussionists, steeped in a tradition that includes iconoclastic musicians like Cowell, Lou Harrison and others. And both are Armenians from Fresno, the agricultural city in California’s heartland which is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant Armenian diasporas in the U.S. Both have drawn on their heritage in their work in forward-thinking ways. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The two first met in 2011 when Bohigian was a freshman at Fresno State University. Amirkhanian was doing a guest performance at the Fresno New Music Festival, and guest-lectured in one of Bohigian’s music classes. At the festival, the students performed an octet Amirkhanian had written as part of a career-long fascination with the noisiest percussion instrument: the ratchet. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The two first met in 2011 when Bohigian was a freshman at Fresno State University. Amirkhanian was doing a guest performance at the Fresno New Music Festival, and guest-lectured in one of Bohigian’s music classes. At the festival, the students performed an octet Amirkhanian had written as part of a career-long fascination with the noisiest percussion instrument: the ratchet. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian, who was born in 1993, the same year as the first Other Minds festival, began as a pianist before switching to percussion, a classic path into contemporary music.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian started composing in high school, initially writing pieces that imitated composers like Cowell, who devised a method for playing the piano from the inside, on the strings. Bohigian’s first piano piece, written for an AP music theory course, was titled “Song for Spaghetti Armed Steve.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Bohigian started composing in high school, initially writing pieces that imitated composers like Cowell, who devised a method for playing the piano from the inside, on the strings. Bohigian’s first piano piece, written for an AP music theory course, was titled “Song for Spaghetti Armed Steve.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But his work gradually developed a deeper cultural focus. A piece \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10467313/marking-the-armenian-genocide-anniversary-by-featuring-living-armenian-composers?mc_cid=3995258f14&mc_eid=e3b2e66c4b\">he composed during his senior year\u003c/a> of college to observe the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was performed in 2015 by Fresno State’s New Music Ensemble. Bohigian lived in Armenia from 2019–2020, where he conducted research, studied and taught a laptop orchestra class at the state conservatory in Yerevan. His compositions have been performed around the world. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But his work gradually developed a deeper cultural focus. A piece \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10467313/marking-the-armenian-genocide-anniversary-by-featuring-living-armenian-composers?mc_cid=3995258f14&mc_eid=e3b2e66c4b\">he composed during his senior year\u003c/a> of college to observe the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was performed in 2015 by Fresno State’s New Music Ensemble. Bohigian lived in Armenia from 2019–2020, where he conducted research, studied and taught a laptop orchestra class at the state conservatory in Yerevan. His compositions have been performed around the world. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994064\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Associate Director Joseph Bohigian holds a program for the Other Minds Festival at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s latest work will premiere Thursday on the opening night of this year’s Other Minds festival. He will debut \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/scenes-from-i-am-he-whose-life-and-soul-are-torment/\">I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, an evening-length multimedia performance inspired by the life of Soviet-Armenian auteur Sergei Parajanov.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s composition draws from Parajanov’s abstract 1969 film, \u003cem>The Color of Pomegranates\u003c/em>, about the 18th-century bard Sayat-Nova, who sang in Armenian, Georgian and Azeri — the languages of the region. The film was released four years before the director was jailed by the USSR for homosexuality and sentenced to hard labor. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The piece brings together Sayat-Nova’s folk music — performed by Bay Area wind instrumentalist and vocalist \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060906/meet-the-duduk-whisperer-a-bay-area-armenian-folk-musician-revives-centuries-of-soul\">Khatchadour Khatchadourian\u003c/a> — with the electronic music tradition that Bohigian is immersed in, to illustrate scenes from Parajanov’s life. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We want to really make it immersive,” Bohigian says. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some other festival weekend highlights include a live electronic performance from Philadelphia-born King Britt, delivering a set of sonic liberation compositions rooted in Black sound. And the festival will close Sunday with a performance by 79-year-old Charlemagne Palestine, who “plays only Bösendorfer pianos with extra keys on the bottom … so that the entire instrument resonates like perfume in the entire hall,” Amirkhanian says. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“I want people to understand that this is a rare opportunity to hear a composer who’s now probably at the end of his career and he’s coming here to do this monster hour-long performance,” he continues. “It’s going to be thrilling.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On Sunday, Amirkhanian will also be performing a song he composed when he was 18: “Sonatina for Four Bass Drums, Op. 4.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994065\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian also grew up in Fresno, in a household steeped in classical music.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>His mother and her three sisters were all classical pianists. Because Fresno sits roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, musicians traveling between the two cities would sometimes stop there, giving Amirkhanian opportunities to encounter performers and music that might otherwise have passed him by.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One day his father brought home a 78 rpm record with an Armenian rug pictured on the cover and two Armenian names: Alan Hovhaness and Maro Ajemian. Thinking it was an Armenian folk album, he bought it for the family. It turned out to be one of John Cage’s early commercial releases.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>One day his father brought home a 78 rpm record with an Armenian rug pictured on the cover and two Armenian names: Alan Hovhaness and Maro Ajemian. Thinking it was an Armenian folk album, he bought it for the family. It turned out to be one of John Cage’s early commercial releases.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Cage’s approach to sound opened another world for Amirkhanian. He remembered a piano altered with screws, erasers and other objects inserted among its strings.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“My mother told him to take it back to the shop,” Amirkhanian recalls. “But the shop would not take it back.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Cage, who died in 1992, also inspired the festival’s name, thanks to a dismissive \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> obituary of the artist that says: “His epitaph might read that he composed music in other peoples’ minds.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Cage, who died in 1992, also inspired the festival’s name, thanks to a dismissive \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> obituary of the artist that says: “His epitaph might read that he composed music in other peoples’ minds.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian and co-founder Jim Newman decided then that they \u003cem>were\u003c/em> the “other minds.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The first Other Minds festival, in 1993, was a hit, featuring composers Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Julia Wolfe.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The composers … went out and told everybody, ‘Well, they don’t pay much money, but you better accept if you get an invitation to the Other Minds festival,’” Amirkhanian recalls. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Forced to choose a highlight of his 30-year tenure, Amirkhanian recalled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4rfukf_eqI\">\u003cem>Ice Field\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a performance commissioned by Other Minds in 2001 and composed by Henry Brant. For $10,000, Brant put a jazz band on the balcony of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and surrounded the audience with a wall of cacophonous sound. The piece won a Pulitzer Prize.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Forced to choose a highlight of his 30-year tenure, Amirkhanian recalled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4rfukf_eqI\">\u003cem>Ice Field\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a performance commissioned by Other Minds in 2001 and composed by Henry Brant. For $10,000, Brant put a jazz band on the balcony of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and surrounded the audience with a wall of cacophonous sound. The piece won a Pulitzer Prize.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994062\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian (left) and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Today, Other Minds’ Berkeley office houses an archive of roughly 4,000 audio tapes from the earliest days of KPFA. The record label releases music that might struggle to find a home elsewhere, particularly work that is too experimental or noncommercial for larger labels. The organization also has a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kalw.org/show/music-from-other-minds\">two-hour program on KALW\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Other Minds now also has a holiday in San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie last week proclaimed Oct. 2, 2026 as Other Minds Day, in recognition of its 30th anniversary and the festival’s enduring contribution to San Francisco’s cultural life.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bohigian says AI has long been used by composers and musicians, predating the current discussions of rogue agents and other hazards. In grad school, he experimented with machine learning, training basic models to recognize certain sounds. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We can find ways to use this, like any other new technology, to our advantage to make something new that we couldn’t have made without it,” Bohigian says.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Taking over the artistic future of Other Minds will require him to keep grappling with these questions. But the principles will be the same: give unusual music a place to exist, give its composers an audience and listen closely to discover what comes next.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Because of the internet, you’re finding out about new people all the time. Every week I’m hearing about some composer that was not at all on my radar, making really interesting work,” Bohigian continues. “I can sometimes get a little bit in my head about what’s out there. And then I hear something new that’s exciting and I think, ‘Oh, we have a bright future.’”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds Festival\u003c/a> takes place Oct. 8–11 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Charles Amirkhanian reflects on his legacy in avant-garde music — and his festival and record label’s next era. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>What’s the state of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/experimental-music\">experimental music\u003c/a> today?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“California,” composer Charles Amirkhanian says, laughing. “It’s happening here. Occasionally we’ll let in someone from New York — or Norway. But we don’t have any problems finding material.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian has long mastered the art of creating a home for the avant-garde. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As the co-founder of Other Minds, a leading nonprofit and record label \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/11353950/other-minds-archives-headed-for-uc-santa-cruz\">dedicated to noncommercial music\u003c/a>, and as the former music director of KPFA, he’s spent decades championing composers who push beyond conventional boundaries. He also has cultivated an audience willing to follow them there through \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds’ annual festival\u003c/a>, which brings freewheeling musicians and sound poets from around the world to San Francisco. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Oct. 8–11 at the Brava Theater in the Mission District, the festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It’s also the 81-year-old Amirkhanian’s last year as executive and artistic director before he retires in January. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Musician and fellow composer Joseph Bohigian, currently Other Minds’ associate director, will take over as artistic director next year. A separate search for the organization’s next executive director is underway. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian says he’ll strive to lead the organization into a new chapter while continuing his predecessor’s ambitions. Much like his mentor, the young composer draws from a wellspring of ancient Armenian culture and the contemporary American experimental music to express something new. He’s also made it his mission to support other artists on their voyages, as Amirkhanian has done for decades. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We’re trying to make sure that there’s a home for out-there music, the stuff that’s not commercially viable, but is exciting and experimental and pushes things forward,” Bohigian says. “We want to serve that small but dedicated audience.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“And the composers who make the music,” Amirkhanian adds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994061\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-01-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Two kindred spirits, born half a century apart\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On a cloudy Thursday, Amirkhanian and Bohigian sit together in Other Minds’ downtown Berkeley office, surrounded by stacks of CDs and a bust of legendary 20th-century Bay Area new music composer Henry Cowell (“the godfather,” Amirkhanian says). Through the glass windows, cars and passersby screech and blare from below, making their own kind of experimental music. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s a fitting soundtrack for an organization whose mission is, in part, to listen differently. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Despite a nearly half-century age gap, Amirkhanian and Bohigian are kindred spirits. Both of them are percussionists, steeped in a tradition that includes iconoclastic musicians like Cowell, Lou Harrison and others. And both are Armenians from Fresno, the agricultural city in California’s heartland which is home to one of the oldest and most vibrant Armenian diasporas in the U.S. Both have drawn on their heritage in their work in forward-thinking ways. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The two first met in 2011 when Bohigian was a freshman at Fresno State University. Amirkhanian was doing a guest performance at the Fresno New Music Festival, and guest-lectured in one of Bohigian’s music classes. At the festival, the students performed an octet Amirkhanian had written as part of a career-long fascination with the noisiest percussion instrument: the ratchet. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“That kind of thing was really exciting,” Bohigian recalls. “This loud, asynchronous rhythm.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian, who was born in 1993, the same year as the first Other Minds festival, began as a pianist before switching to percussion, a classic path into contemporary music.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you’re a percussionist, there’s not a lot of old repertoire,” he says. “You’re performing mostly 20th- and 21st-century music.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian started composing in high school, initially writing pieces that imitated composers like Cowell, who devised a method for playing the piano from the inside, on the strings. Bohigian’s first piano piece, written for an AP music theory course, was titled “Song for Spaghetti Armed Steve.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But his work gradually developed a deeper cultural focus. A piece \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10467313/marking-the-armenian-genocide-anniversary-by-featuring-living-armenian-composers?mc_cid=3995258f14&mc_eid=e3b2e66c4b\">he composed during his senior year\u003c/a> of college to observe the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was performed in 2015 by Fresno State’s New Music Ensemble. Bohigian lived in Armenia from 2019–2020, where he conducted research, studied and taught a laptop orchestra class at the state conservatory in Yerevan. His compositions have been performed around the world. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994064\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-05-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Associate Director Joseph Bohigian holds a program for the Other Minds Festival at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Reviving the legacy of an Armenian auteur\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s latest work will premiere Thursday on the opening night of this year’s Other Minds festival. He will debut \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/scenes-from-i-am-he-whose-life-and-soul-are-torment/\">I Am He Whose Life and Soul Are Torment\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, an evening-length multimedia performance inspired by the life of Soviet-Armenian auteur Sergei Parajanov.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian’s composition draws from Parajanov’s abstract 1969 film, \u003cem>The Color of Pomegranates\u003c/em>, about the 18th-century bard Sayat-Nova, who sang in Armenian, Georgian and Azeri — the languages of the region. The film was released four years before the director was jailed by the USSR for homosexuality and sentenced to hard labor. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The piece brings together Sayat-Nova’s folk music — performed by Bay Area wind instrumentalist and vocalist \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060906/meet-the-duduk-whisperer-a-bay-area-armenian-folk-musician-revives-centuries-of-soul\">Khatchadour Khatchadourian\u003c/a> — with the electronic music tradition that Bohigian is immersed in, to illustrate scenes from Parajanov’s life. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian describes the piece as theatrical, involving staged visual elements and costumes by East Bay artists Tara Baghdassarian and Caro Yaghjian in addition to the electronics and vocals.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We want to really make it immersive,” Bohigian says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some other festival weekend highlights include a live electronic performance from Philadelphia-born King Britt, delivering a set of sonic liberation compositions rooted in Black sound. And the festival will close Sunday with a performance by 79-year-old Charlemagne Palestine, who “plays only Bösendorfer pianos with extra keys on the bottom … so that the entire instrument resonates like perfume in the entire hall,” Amirkhanian says. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I want people to understand that this is a rare opportunity to hear a composer who’s now probably at the end of his career and he’s coming here to do this monster hour-long performance,” he continues. “It’s going to be thrilling.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Sunday, Amirkhanian will also be performing a song he composed when he was 18: “Sonatina for Four Bass Drums, Op. 4.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I thought it’d be fun to dredge something up from the past,” he muses.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994065\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-08-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian at the organization’s offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Finding the ‘other minds\u003c/strong>’\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian also grew up in Fresno, in a household steeped in classical music.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>His mother and her three sisters were all classical pianists. Because Fresno sits roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, musicians traveling between the two cities would sometimes stop there, giving Amirkhanian opportunities to encounter performers and music that might otherwise have passed him by.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One day his father brought home a 78 rpm record with an Armenian rug pictured on the cover and two Armenian names: Alan Hovhaness and Maro Ajemian. Thinking it was an Armenian folk album, he bought it for the family. It turned out to be one of John Cage’s early commercial releases.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cage’s approach to sound opened another world for Amirkhanian. He remembered a piano altered with screws, erasers and other objects inserted among its strings.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“My mother told him to take it back to the shop,” Amirkhanian recalls. “But the shop would not take it back.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The record stayed, and set Amirkhanian on a lifelong path toward “all the sounds that you could incorporate into music.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cage, who died in 1992, also inspired the festival’s name, thanks to a dismissive \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> obituary of the artist that says: “His epitaph might read that he composed music in other peoples’ minds.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Amirkhanian and co-founder Jim Newman decided then that they \u003cem>were\u003c/em> the “other minds.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The first Other Minds festival, in 1993, was a hit, featuring composers Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Julia Wolfe.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The composers … went out and told everybody, ‘Well, they don’t pay much money, but you better accept if you get an invitation to the Other Minds festival,’” Amirkhanian recalls. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Forced to choose a highlight of his 30-year tenure, Amirkhanian recalled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4rfukf_eqI\">\u003cem>Ice Field\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a performance commissioned by Other Minds in 2001 and composed by Henry Brant. For $10,000, Brant put a jazz band on the balcony of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and surrounded the audience with a wall of cacophonous sound. The piece won a Pulitzer Prize.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994062\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/260917-OtherMinds-03-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other Minds Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian (left) and Associate Director Joseph Bohigian chat at their offices in the David Brower Center in Berkeley on Sept. 17, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Other Minds’ electronic futures\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Today, Other Minds’ Berkeley office houses an archive of roughly 4,000 audio tapes from the earliest days of KPFA. The record label releases music that might struggle to find a home elsewhere, particularly work that is too experimental or noncommercial for larger labels. The organization also has a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kalw.org/show/music-from-other-minds\">two-hour program on KALW\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Other Minds now also has a holiday in San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie last week proclaimed Oct. 2, 2026 as Other Minds Day, in recognition of its 30th anniversary and the festival’s enduring contribution to San Francisco’s cultural life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Both men are surprisingly optimistic about the future, even as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">artificial intelligence\u003c/a> begins to reshape the way music is made and consumed. Amirkhanian notes that we’re already “surrounded by dangers: politically, culturally — and we’re going to get through it.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bohigian says AI has long been used by composers and musicians, predating the current discussions of rogue agents and other hazards. In grad school, he experimented with machine learning, training basic models to recognize certain sounds. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We can find ways to use this, like any other new technology, to our advantage to make something new that we couldn’t have made without it,” Bohigian says.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Taking over the artistic future of Other Minds will require him to keep grappling with these questions. But the principles will be the same: give unusual music a place to exist, give its composers an audience and listen closely to discover what comes next.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Because of the internet, you’re finding out about new people all the time. Every week I’m hearing about some composer that was not at all on my radar, making really interesting work,” Bohigian continues. “I can sometimes get a little bit in my head about what’s out there. And then I hear something new that’s exciting and I think, ‘Oh, we have a bright future.’”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/other-minds-festival-30/\">Other Minds Festival\u003c/a> takes place Oct. 8–11 at Brava Theater in San Francisco. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "At the Internet Archive, Negativland Reminds the World Why They Matter",
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"headTitle": "At the Internet Archive, Negativland Reminds the World Why They Matter | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>The American music industry has a long history of exploitation, but Negativland really got fleeced. With their long, expensive legal fight over fair use, the Contra Costa County collective changed the trajectory of art, culture and mass media in America. Now, the very principles Negativland defended have been commandeered by full-speed-ahead AI companies to invade, steal and poorly regurgitate the world’s body of knowledge and information.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or, as they put it during their sold-out show Wednesday night at the San Francisco headquarters of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/internet-archive\">Internet Archive\u003c/a>, “The AI people are using the Negativland model to justify their business model. Fuck them.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994041\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle introduces Negativland on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Internet Archive and Negativland make a perfect pair. The Internet Archive is dedicated to preserving knowledge and culture, no matter how mundane or fleeting. Since 1979, Negativland has resurfaced and remixed the world’s culture into entirely new works of art. (In fact, while driving to the show, I stumbled upon an accidental opening act by tuning in to 89.9 KDFC, where a Schumann symphony clashed with broadcast static and snippets of news announcers’ voices — “glass bottles” … “West Marin” … “a Russian envoy” — from a competing radio station.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Before the set, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle held up a copy of the group’s best-known release, \u003cem>U2\u003c/em>, and said that, a decade ago, the Internet Archive began hosting more than 4,000 hours of the Negativland radio show \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://kpfa.org/program/over-the-edge/\">Over the Edge\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. “I can’t tell you how meaningful it was to us,” Kahle said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Negativland fans are a lovable bunch. Inside the Internet Archive’s giant hall — a former church, with wooden pews and hymn numbers sharing space with giant servers — strangers struck up conversations that I did not understand. (“We’re big fans of the MX204 and 2100 switch,” for one.) People took photos of the band’s onstage pile of electronic gear. Someone near me reeked of stale weed. Few attendees appeared under the age of 40. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The crowd before Negativland’s performance at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then, with members Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker at a long table covered in mixing boards, cables, wires, homemade electronic units and hand-scrawled notes, the show began. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“The point is this … we’re getting a little off-course.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So repeated an NPR-style voice over new-age synths and oscillations hard-panned across the room’s speakers. For over an hour, gurgling sounds, or the sound of raindrops, or strange tympani, bells or drones programmed by Hosler shared space with Leidecker’s vocal samples: \u003cem>“Is the universe just one big brain?” “Please just tell me what is illegal, and I’ll stop doing it.” “Is this real, and do we care?”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This being Negativland, plenty of subversive humor ran through the set. The audience laughed at the more absurd moments, like a man’s voice suggesting that we melt the North Pole, or another’s declaring that “pretty much everything David Lynch does is right-wing coded.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994042\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(L–R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland perform at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the night’s jest blurred with reality. One man’s voice declared that achieving AI goals, despite its ruinous effects on the planet, is more important than achieving climate goals. How many AI zealots think this way? On a similar note, I was plucked from my sound-collage reverie when I actually recognized a sample, of Suno CEO Mike Shulman, claiming that “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/E0YL83U5VWk?si=06719ePx3XfGvAAP&t=1400\">It’s not really enjoyable to make music now\u003c/a>.” (I wrote in my notebook: “Idiots Talking About Art & Technology” ← Theme of the set??”)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This overlap of humor and doom came to a head when men’s voices discussed the need for technology to be violent, and Leidecker, expressionless, introduced an exasperated, terrified woman’s voice into their dialogue, repeating, “Friend?! Friend?! \u003cem>FRIEND\u003c/em>?!”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Throughout, Hosler manned the giant board, sometimes spanning his fingers across something that looked like a flux capacitor, sometimes picking up a Fender bass and playing it with an electric toothbrush, sometimes wincing as if he were playing a heavy metal guitar solo. And just when it was needed most, levity came over the phone lines: David “The Weatherman” Wills, calling in from his home in Seattle, providing a running monologue about refrigerator lights, Kaopectate, short-wave radios and eating Speed Stick deodorant.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Afterward, the band announced that they rarely if ever played songs from their albums live, but for an encore, the beat dropped to their 1987 track (and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Is_Stupid\">media hoax material\u003c/a>) “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/Vrt6o81ku5o?si=Zhn9STORm6TZR3sN\">Christianity is Stupid\u003c/a>.” The crowd audibly whooped. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994038\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(L–R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A Q&A followed, during which Trump was declared “the evil culture-jammer.” Leidecker asked out loud, “How do you have a functioning democracy when there’s no reality?” and advised that while the ideals Negativland worked for have spread wider than they could have imagined, it was important to “make sure you’re pranking \u003cem>upwards\u003c/em>, instead of deceiving everybody.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A confession: the main reason I like Negativland isn’t their agitating, or the ways they’ve undeniably made the music industry and creativity at large better. I like them for their sound output. That may seem like a superficial way of interacting with one of the world’s most important experimental groups, and one could surely argue that their aesthetics are inseparable from their advocacy. But what can I say? I fell in love with them because of their records, not their lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or, as a twisted, effects-laden voice said, and burbled, and sung, at the end of their set on Wednesday: \u003cem>If you don’t understand, the least you can do is enjoy the beautiful music.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994040\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Internet Archive in San Francisco, pictured on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Negativland fans are a lovable bunch. Inside the Internet Archive’s giant hall — a former church, with wooden pews and hymn numbers sharing space with giant servers — strangers struck up conversations that I did not understand. (“We’re big fans of the MX204 and 2100 switch,” for one.) People took photos of the band’s onstage pile of electronic gear. Someone near me reeked of stale weed. Few attendees appeared under the age of 40. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994042\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(L–R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland perform at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But the night’s jest blurred with reality. One man’s voice declared that achieving AI goals, despite its ruinous effects on the planet, is more important than achieving climate goals. How many AI zealots think this way? On a similar note, I was plucked from my sound-collage reverie when I actually recognized a sample, of Suno CEO Mike Shulman, claiming that “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/E0YL83U5VWk?si=06719ePx3XfGvAAP&t=1400\">It’s not really enjoyable to make music now\u003c/a>.” (I wrote in my notebook: “Idiots Talking About Art & Technology” ← Theme of the set??”)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But the night’s jest blurred with reality. One man’s voice declared that achieving AI goals, despite its ruinous effects on the planet, is more important than achieving climate goals. How many AI zealots think this way? On a similar note, I was plucked from my sound-collage reverie when I actually recognized a sample, of Suno CEO Mike Shulman, claiming that “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/E0YL83U5VWk?si=06719ePx3XfGvAAP&t=1400\">It’s not really enjoyable to make music now\u003c/a>.” (I wrote in my notebook: “Idiots Talking About Art & Technology” ← Theme of the set??”)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This overlap of humor and doom came to a head when men’s voices discussed the need for technology to be violent, and Leidecker, expressionless, introduced an exasperated, terrified woman’s voice into their dialogue, repeating, “Friend?! Friend?! \u003cem>FRIEND\u003c/em>?!”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>This overlap of humor and doom came to a head when men’s voices discussed the need for technology to be violent, and Leidecker, expressionless, introduced an exasperated, terrified woman’s voice into their dialogue, repeating, “Friend?! Friend?! \u003cem>FRIEND\u003c/em>?!”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Throughout, Hosler manned the giant board, sometimes spanning his fingers across something that looked like a flux capacitor, sometimes picking up a Fender bass and playing it with an electric toothbrush, sometimes wincing as if he were playing a heavy metal guitar solo. And just when it was needed most, levity came over the phone lines: David “The Weatherman” Wills, calling in from his home in Seattle, providing a running monologue about refrigerator lights, Kaopectate, short-wave radios and eating Speed Stick deodorant.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Throughout, Hosler manned the giant board, sometimes spanning his fingers across something that looked like a flux capacitor, sometimes picking up a Fender bass and playing it with an electric toothbrush, sometimes wincing as if he were playing a heavy metal guitar solo. And just when it was needed most, levity came over the phone lines: David “The Weatherman” Wills, calling in from his home in Seattle, providing a running monologue about refrigerator lights, Kaopectate, short-wave radios and eating Speed Stick deodorant.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Afterward, the band announced that they rarely if ever played songs from their albums live, but for an encore, the beat dropped to their 1987 track (and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Is_Stupid\">media hoax material\u003c/a>) “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/Vrt6o81ku5o?si=Zhn9STORm6TZR3sN\">Christianity is Stupid\u003c/a>.” The crowd audibly whooped. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Afterward, the band announced that they rarely if ever played songs from their albums live, but for an encore, the beat dropped to their 1987 track (and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Is_Stupid\">media hoax material\u003c/a>) “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/Vrt6o81ku5o?si=Zhn9STORm6TZR3sN\">Christianity is Stupid\u003c/a>.” The crowd audibly whooped. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A Q&A followed, during which Trump was declared “the evil culture-jammer.” Leidecker asked out loud, “How do you have a functioning democracy when there’s no reality?” and advised that while the ideals Negativland worked for have spread wider than they could have imagined, it was important to “make sure you’re pranking \u003cem>upwards\u003c/em>, instead of deceiving everybody.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>A Q&A followed, during which Trump was declared “the evil culture-jammer.” Leidecker asked out loud, “How do you have a functioning democracy when there’s no reality?” and advised that while the ideals Negativland worked for have spread wider than they could have imagined, it was important to “make sure you’re pranking \u003cem>upwards\u003c/em>, instead of deceiving everybody.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A confession: the main reason I like Negativland isn’t their agitating, or the ways they’ve undeniably made the music industry and creativity at large better. I like them for their sound output. That may seem like a superficial way of interacting with one of the world’s most important experimental groups, and one could surely argue that their aesthetics are inseparable from their advocacy. But what can I say? I fell in love with them because of their records, not their lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>A confession: the main reason I like Negativland isn’t their agitating, or the ways they’ve undeniably made the music industry and creativity at large better. I like them for their sound output. That may seem like a superficial way of interacting with one of the world’s most important experimental groups, and one could surely argue that their aesthetics are inseparable from their advocacy. But what can I say? I fell in love with them because of their records, not their lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Or, as a twisted, effects-laden voice said, and burbled, and sung, at the end of their set on Wednesday: \u003cem>If you don’t understand, the least you can do is enjoy the beautiful music.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Or, as a twisted, effects-laden voice said, and burbled, and sung, at the end of their set on Wednesday: \u003cem>If you don’t understand, the least you can do is enjoy the beautiful music.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "Two Bay Area institutions came together for a night of soundscapes, sampling and discussion about art.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>The American music industry has a long history of exploitation, but Negativland really got fleeced. With their long, expensive legal fight over fair use, the Contra Costa County collective changed the trajectory of art, culture and mass media in America. Now, the very principles Negativland defended have been commandeered by full-speed-ahead AI companies to invade, steal and poorly regurgitate the world’s body of knowledge and information.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or, as they put it during their sold-out show Wednesday night at the San Francisco headquarters of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/internet-archive\">Internet Archive\u003c/a>, “The AI people are using the Negativland model to justify their business model. Fuck them.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994041\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5319-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle introduces Negativland on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Internet Archive and Negativland make a perfect pair. The Internet Archive is dedicated to preserving knowledge and culture, no matter how mundane or fleeting. Since 1979, Negativland has resurfaced and remixed the world’s culture into entirely new works of art. (In fact, while driving to the show, I stumbled upon an accidental opening act by tuning in to 89.9 KDFC, where a Schumann symphony clashed with broadcast static and snippets of news announcers’ voices — “glass bottles” … “West Marin” … “a Russian envoy” — from a competing radio station.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Before the set, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle held up a copy of the group’s best-known release, \u003cem>U2\u003c/em>, and said that, a decade ago, the Internet Archive began hosting more than 4,000 hours of the Negativland radio show \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://kpfa.org/program/over-the-edge/\">Over the Edge\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. “I can’t tell you how meaningful it was to us,” Kahle said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Negativland fans are a lovable bunch. Inside the Internet Archive’s giant hall — a former church, with wooden pews and hymn numbers sharing space with giant servers — strangers struck up conversations that I did not understand. (“We’re big fans of the MX204 and 2100 switch,” for one.) People took photos of the band’s onstage pile of electronic gear. Someone near me reeked of stale weed. Few attendees appeared under the age of 40. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994037\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5305-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The crowd before Negativland’s performance at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And then, with members Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker at a long table covered in mixing boards, cables, wires, homemade electronic units and hand-scrawled notes, the show began. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“The point is this … we’re getting a little off-course.”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So repeated an NPR-style voice over new-age synths and oscillations hard-panned across the room’s speakers. For over an hour, gurgling sounds, or the sound of raindrops, or strange tympani, bells or drones programmed by Hosler shared space with Leidecker’s vocal samples: \u003cem>“Is the universe just one big brain?” “Please just tell me what is illegal, and I’ll stop doing it.” “Is this real, and do we care?”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This being Negativland, plenty of subversive humor ran through the set. The audience laughed at the more absurd moments, like a man’s voice suggesting that we melt the North Pole, or another’s declaring that “pretty much everything David Lynch does is right-wing coded.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994042\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5340-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(L–R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland perform at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the night’s jest blurred with reality. One man’s voice declared that achieving AI goals, despite its ruinous effects on the planet, is more important than achieving climate goals. How many AI zealots think this way? On a similar note, I was plucked from my sound-collage reverie when I actually recognized a sample, of Suno CEO Mike Shulman, claiming that “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/E0YL83U5VWk?si=06719ePx3XfGvAAP&t=1400\">It’s not really enjoyable to make music now\u003c/a>.” (I wrote in my notebook: “Idiots Talking About Art & Technology” ← Theme of the set??”)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This overlap of humor and doom came to a head when men’s voices discussed the need for technology to be violent, and Leidecker, expressionless, introduced an exasperated, terrified woman’s voice into their dialogue, repeating, “Friend?! Friend?! \u003cem>FRIEND\u003c/em>?!”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Throughout, Hosler manned the giant board, sometimes spanning his fingers across something that looked like a flux capacitor, sometimes picking up a Fender bass and playing it with an electric toothbrush, sometimes wincing as if he were playing a heavy metal guitar solo. And just when it was needed most, levity came over the phone lines: David “The Weatherman” Wills, calling in from his home in Seattle, providing a running monologue about refrigerator lights, Kaopectate, short-wave radios and eating Speed Stick deodorant.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Afterward, the band announced that they rarely if ever played songs from their albums live, but for an encore, the beat dropped to their 1987 track (and \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Is_Stupid\">media hoax material\u003c/a>) “\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/Vrt6o81ku5o?si=Zhn9STORm6TZR3sN\">Christianity is Stupid\u003c/a>.” The crowd audibly whooped. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994038\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5363-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(L–R) Mark Hosler and Jon Leidecker of Negativland at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A Q&A followed, during which Trump was declared “the evil culture-jammer.” Leidecker asked out loud, “How do you have a functioning democracy when there’s no reality?” and advised that while the ideals Negativland worked for have spread wider than they could have imagined, it was important to “make sure you’re pranking \u003cem>upwards\u003c/em>, instead of deceiving everybody.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A confession: the main reason I like Negativland isn’t their agitating, or the ways they’ve undeniably made the music industry and creativity at large better. I like them for their sound output. That may seem like a superficial way of interacting with one of the world’s most important experimental groups, and one could surely argue that their aesthetics are inseparable from their advocacy. But what can I say? I fell in love with them because of their records, not their lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Or, as a twisted, effects-laden voice said, and burbled, and sung, at the end of their set on Wednesday: \u003cem>If you don’t understand, the least you can do is enjoy the beautiful music.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13994040\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/IMG_5388-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Internet Archive in San Francisco, pictured on Sept. 16, 2026. (Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-best-bay-area-albums-of-2025",
"title": "The 20 Best Bay Area Albums of 2025",
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"headTitle": "The 20 Best Bay Area Albums of 2025 | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This week, we’re looking back on the best art, music, food, movies and more from the year. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/best-of-2025\">See our entire Best of 2025 guide here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year is almost over, and we’re working on our resolutions. Out: passively listening to algorithm-driven, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">AI-infested playlists\u003c/a>. In: letting the talented artists in your community move, surprise and even challenge you, restoring your faith in humanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether making hip-hop, punk, salsa or spiritual jazz, Bay Area artists didn’t disappoint this year. The KQED Arts & Culture team and contributors combed through 2025’s releases to bring you our favorite local music of the year. Turn up the volume and hit play. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/6fiG4ui62dDneZQjMFh8ha?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Jamel Griot, \u003cem>Sincerely, Jamel \u003c/em>(Remain Family Oriented Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Sincerely, Jamel\u003c/em>, Oakland rapper Jamel Griot invites us to witness his dark night of the soul, when grief cracks him open and forces him face himself, honestly and unflinchingly. Griot punctuates hard-hitting verses over contemplative, jazzy beats with diary entries, revealing how serial one-night stands turned into a coping mechanism, and how partying has disconnected him from his purpose. “Although you a self-centered n—, you aren’t selfish enough. Because a selfish person loves themselves,” he reads aloud from his journal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find his way back to himself, Griot unpacks childhood trauma with a courageous vulnerability. His lyrics illuminate a new path forward, one that invites listeners to lovingly tend to their own scars. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2YjTKpjohCKRlShBvgWHqQ?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rabiah Kabir, \u003cem>Jezebel: Rewritten \u003c/em>(Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The song “Flute / Overture,” opens Rabiah Kabir’s \u003cem>Jezebel: Rewritten\u003c/em> with a jazzy thesis statement. Birds chirp, shakers shake and keys resonate as the flute’s flow intertwines with comments about the historical importance of the instrument and the artist’s work to dispel sexist notions about flutists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the support of a full band, Oakland’s Kabir shows a range of a flute’s sonic capabilities. The song “Fin.” showcases the wind instrument’s mysticism. “The ReZident” offers a taste of flute funk. And the dark keys and heavy drums at the start of “I Crashed My Car” create an anxious tone that is ultimately resolved, climaxing in a flute run that’s as relaxing as a field of fresh lavender. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4149894761/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Kathryn Mohr, \u003cem>Waiting Room\u003c/em> (The Flenser)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A bell’s hollow rings echo through a room. Static builds. Radio noise chatters in the distance. Sea waves crash. Someone (or something) scribbles. The field recordings that populate Kathryn Mohr’s \u003cem>Waiting Room\u003c/em> — self-recorded in an abandoned fish factory in Iceland — give a sense of isolation and melancholy, capturing the anxiety of anticipation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mohr builds on those recordings using an analog synth and aching vocals, creating subtle, pinpoint-precise melodies. Following the oneiric opener “Diver,” dissonant tracks weave between guitar-driven, ’90s grunge-inspired pieces. In “Petrified,” gentle vocals evoke violent visuals that dance above finger-plucked guitar. Mohr’s full-length debut asks its listeners to find beauty in decay, to sit in feelings of discomfort without the promise of catharsis. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/1MTodq6IqzqFEav64mt1Jg?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Michael Sneed, \u003cem>floaters at the buzzer!\u003c/em> (Michael Sneed/Create Music Group)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Attention spans might be shrinking because of TikTok and Instagram, but rapper and producer Michael Sneed’s \u003cem>floaters at the buzzer!\u003c/em> beckons to be heard from start to finish. “I’ll be your guide, I got you,” Sneed croons on the opening track. From there he puffs out his chest on “blend*” featuring Bay Area trailblazer P-Lo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On “town sh!t 4ever!,” Sneed and P-Lo reinterpret a classic by sampling Mistah F.A.B.’s legendary “N.E.W. Oakland.” The song features Ovrkast. and wrestles with the tension of being pushed out of your hometown yet still trying to love it despite the struggles. This contradiction crescendos with “still ain’t die!,” a trumpet-laced proclamation of the life Sneed and his kin insist on, in spite of the forces conspiring against their thriving. \u003cem>— Sarah O’Neal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=106152191/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>John Elliott, \u003cem>I Am John Mayer\u003c/em> (Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When John Michael Mayer started making music in the Y2K era, he faced a problem: There was another musician on the internet named John Mayer. Vowing to battle for name recognition and acclaim in the public arena, he released song after song, none as schlocky as “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” and lost the fight. Now, the San Francisco musician forced to rechristen himself John Elliott has told the story in a catchy, cleverly written title track, “I Am John Mayer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Possessed of a Jonathan Richman sincerity and a John Darnielle expressiveness, Elliott’s a wide-eyed everyman who soaks up and sings about the world’s joys and pains alike. (Recall his \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912499/song-jfk-drive-car-free-board-of-supervisors-sf\">one-minute song to elected officials about keeping JFK Drive car-free\u003c/a>.) On \u003cem>I Am John Mayer\u003c/em> (currently only available \u003ca href=\"https://www.thehereafterishere.com/store/p/i-am-john-mayer-digital-download\">through his website\u003c/a>, and coming soon to streaming), he’s in top form, including the heartstring-pulling “Out Here,” a plea to an unborn child hesitant to enter the world. \u003cem>— Gabe Meline\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2rPy6g5DGQBsb7g96xXFGI?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Jane Handcock, \u003cem>It’s Me, Not You \u003c/em>(Death Row Records/gamma.)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>It’s Me, Not You\u003c/em> marks a well-deserved ascent for Jane Handcock, the mega-talented Richmond-raised vocalist who’s spent years behind the scenes, penning lyrics for R&B and hip-hop greats like Kelly Rowland, Rick Ross, Tyrese and Teddy Riley. Now signed to the venerable Death Row Records, Handcock delivered a finely crafted album for the grown-and-sexy lover girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effervescent mood of “Stare At Me” featuring Anderson .Paak feels like eclectic sliding through the clouds. The funky, horn-driven “Can’t Let Go” drips with sex appeal, and on “For the Views” — a missive to social-media lurkers — Handcock conjures the atmosphere of a smoke-filled lounge where one might exchange a furtive glance over the rim of a martini glass. \u003cem>It’s Me, Not You\u003c/em> proves Handcock has earned her spotlight and will continue to hold our attention for a long time. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=97838322/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Spiritual Cramp, \u003ci>Rude\u003c/i> (Blue Grape Music)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“What if I went back home to the Bay where I belong? / In the heart of San Francisco, just an hour away from home,” Spiritual Cramp’s Michael Bingham sings on “True Love (Is Hard To Find).” It’s the premise for \u003cem>Rude\u003c/em>, an eloquent new-wave punk love letter to the city that still holds the keys to his soul, even though he’s moved away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Produced by the accomplished John Congleton, \u003cem>Rude\u003c/em> wears that heart on its sleeve at every turn, from the tantalizing melodies of “Automatic” to the endearingly self-deprecating “At My Funeral.” Sharon Van Etten guests on the gleaming “You’ve Got My Number,” a highlight within what should go down as a breakout effort for Spiritual Cramp, who are primed for big things in 2026. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2XeGkDrU1IX9hlqEId3GS3?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Various Artists, \u003cem>Salsa de la Bahia Vol. III: Renegade Queens\u003c/em> (Patois Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s rare indeed when an album makes you rethink the history of a genre, but by focusing on female salsa and Latin jazz artists, \u003cem>Salsa de la Bahia Vol. III: Renegade Queens\u003c/em> offers a deeply informed alternative view of the evolution of Latin music in the Bay Area. Without a dominant group to shape the rhythmic currents, the Bay Area Latin music scene has always cast a wide net. This two-disc anthology shows that same pan-Latin forces at work, showcasing excellent work by women from Venezuela, Cuba, Chile and Colombia and the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both discs open with new music showcasing a brilliant cross-section of women players, many of whom lead their own bands. But it’s tracks like “Cosmo” by the Blazing Redheads, an all-female septet that coalesced at the end of the 1980s with a dance-inducing combination of jazz, funk and Latin beats, that make \u003cem>Renegade Queens\u003c/em> a continual source of delight. \u003cem>— Andrew Gilbert\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/22nSF43OqkoSheKO58Fie1?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lil Yee, \u003cem>Life After Death\u003c/em> (G-Affair/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“They say death is a deep sleep / Wake me up, it ain’t my time,” says San Francisco’s Lil Yee on \u003cem>Life After Death\u003c/em>. After being shot in March of this year, Yee’s latest project illustrates his pain, his family’s love and his devotion to a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He brings the audience into the hospital on “ICU” as he describes the feeling of flatlining. Yee yearns for romantic love on “Love Me FRFR,” and he stunts on tracks with Veeze, 22nd Jim and EBK Jaaybo. On “Chopper Zone,” Yee paints the perils of his community. “Wicked Man” is a blues song about sinister things happening to benevolent people. And on “Sunday Morning,” Yee shares his resilient mindstate after the shooting, and how he’s persevering through it all. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2185729243/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Spellling, \u003cem>Portrait of My Heart\u003c/em> (Sacred Bones)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Portrait of My Heart\u003c/em>, Oakland art-pop luminary Spellling strips away ornate theatricality for punchy guitar rock that speaks straight into the soul of anyone who’s ever felt like an outcast: “I don’t belong here,” she wails on the title track, which simmers with inner turmoil before boiling over into a cathartic crescendo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sharply written album is a cinematic ride through alienation and grief. Spellling pushes the limits of her voice to belt, whisper and growl as she delicately unravels thorny emotions such as shame and fear, letting herself bleed as she narrates her internal battles. Guitarist Wyatt Overson’s distortion-heavy riffs and anthemic solos add weight to the gut punch of Spellling’s lyrical intensity. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2577981795/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Arts and Crafts, \u003cem>1000 Dancing Devils\u003c/em> (Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Prog jazz meets math rock meets influences from South Asia and North Africa in Arts and Crafts’ \u003cem>1000 Dancing Devils\u003c/em>. Guitarist Noam Teyssier, bassist Nadia Aquil and drummer Jeff Klein \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/arts-crafts-1000-dancing-devils-review-ngo-core-2q9oc/\">say their inspirations span\u003c/a> Moroccan ouds, Bollywood films and the band Phish — specifically for the track “Roti,” the three-over-four rhythm from Phish’s “Buried Alive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sounds originate from the San Francisco and Oakland band’s own communities and diasporas, combining and transmuting to form the groovy, upbeat album: Psychedelic opener “Oö” gives way to the cymbal crashes and pulsing surf rock of “Sidi Bouzid.” Named after a Moroccan city of Teyssier’s childhood, that track ends with a sample of the very musicians who played at Teyssier’s wedding. It’s personal and universal and wholly Bay Area. Blast the album during a winding car ride along the California coast, and you’ll find your head nodding, fingers reaching out of the open window to tap along. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2693444777/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Andrés Miguel Cervantes, \u003cem>Songs for the Seance\u003c/em> (Speakeasy Studios SF)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Andrés Miguel Cervantes is a Western desperado whose journeys through the Sonoran and Mojave deserts and up the coast are at the crux of his latest album. \u003cem>Songs for the Seance\u003c/em> sounds like Hermanos Gutierrez backing Sturgill Simpson, and this is rarified air for a Bay Area artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recorded on eight-track tape, sinister guitar, omnipresent pedal steel and twangy violin, garnished with harmonica, guide Cervantes’ rugged baritone staccato. “I saw the devil’s eyes in me,” the Oaklander laments on the title track, pleading to marauding spirits that he’s passionately trying to harness. It’s one of many wonderfully constructed tunes on an album that reveals Cervantes’ gifts as an essential emerging storyteller. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1253547124/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cole Pulice, \u003cem>Land’s End Eternal \u003c/em>(Leaving Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cole Pulice’s work this decade showed improvisers all over the world a way forward for Coltrane-inspired spiritual-jazz saxophone, culminating in the pitch-shifted frenzy of 2023’s longform odyssey “If I Don’t See You in the Future, I’ll See You in the Pasture.” On their new album \u003cem>Land’s End Eternal\u003c/em>, the Oakland improviser takes a breather, pairing the first scratchings of their journey as a guitarist with gentle saxophone leads that snake across the stereo field like the cliff-hugging trails of the album’s namesake park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pulice cited Bay Area art-music legends Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley as inspirations for their meditative approach on this record, but it’s guided just as much by the ineffable something that rolls in with the fog every night. \u003cem>— Daniel Bromfield\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/1fHEmXGVuCHiRI10E9gybP?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Kevin Allen, \u003cem>Mr. Nobody\u003c/em> (Grand Nationxl/Create Music Group)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Fuck the middleman, I had to do it myself.” So begins Kevin Allen’s \u003cem>Mr. Nobody\u003c/em>, a 10-song manifesto from one of the Bay’s most prolific and underrated rappers. At this stage in his career, Allen’s got nothing more to prove, evidenced by the risk-taking on the breezy, exploratory R&B of his 2024 album \u003cem>Don’t Overthink It\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time around, Allen’s the grown lyricist claiming his spot at the Bay Area table, with a well-earned chip on his shoulder (“My baby mama only one who came to my court date,” he raps on “F.W.W.I.D.”). Add an undercurrent of gospel, a dash of the cinematic and a sidearm pitch of romance in the eighth inning (“Put You First”), and you’ve got a solid album with Allen’s voice and vision front and center — no middleman needed. \u003cem>— Gabe Meline\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=658546348/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Raven, \u003cem>Gnosis\u003c/em> (Incienso)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s certain music that timelessly soundtracks a pensive nighttime stroll in the big city. Everything but the Girl’s \u003cem>Walking Wounded\u003c/em> inspires you to find a dance floor and spill your emotions, while Adam F’s \u003cem>Colours\u003c/em> invites you to seek harmony in the chaos of your surroundings. San Francisco producer Raven’s \u003cem>Gnosis\u003c/em> (out on NYC’s Incienso label) has a similar spirit, emphasizing the organic sensory experiences of urban life amid an increasingly tech-saturated landscape: the moisture in the air, cold pavement, tall buildings, lights that flicker and thousands of people with their hands in their pockets making their way across town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wrapped in synths and dark textures, Raven’s ambient techno begs us to dance, but ultimately stays grounded in an IDM sensibility — like floating above a wormhole into a mysterious other side and winning the battle against its gravitational pull. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/47NKcUIh3dBEfKgCfIV475?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>demahjiae, \u003cem>what do you hear when you pray?\u003c/em> (Yalé/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“How is this for alternative?” demahjiae begins, pushing back on being pigeonholed as an artist. \u003cem>what do you hear when you pray?\u003c/em> releases the expectation to have answers, offering a litany of questions instead. In a time when many stereotype the Bay Area as having a single sound, demahjiae puts his foot down, stubbornly crafting on his terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He turns away from the pressure of people and towards the support of a higher power, echoing that in the end “God got me” on “Silver Surfer.” “a ladder to the sky” concludes with keys and violin strings that break through like sun rays shattering rainclouds. “The north star don’t shine on the east too much,” he professes. Yet despite the exhaustion of insisting on a truth few recognize, in defense of a home many denigrate, demahjiae presses on, holding up a mirror to his own contradictions while casting prayers to soften the path.\u003cem> — Sarah O’Neal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2076548456/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hook-Ups, \u003cem>Hook-Ups Presents… Hkup \u003c/em>(Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hook-Ups, the slacker-rock solo project of Castro Valley-based Maxwell Carver, released its most ambitious work yet in the half-hour LP \u003cem>Hook-Ups Presents… Hkup\u003c/em>. After a jingle plays for the fictional radio station HKUP, DJ Scotty2Shoes (voiced by Carver) wishes listeners good morning, introducing himself and his high-pitched, possibly avian co-host Jimmy (also Carver) as the Hook-Ups track “Crawlin’” plays underneath. The gambit is that we’re tuning into Scotty2Shoes’ radio hour as he sets up — and distracts us from — all-new Hook-Ups songs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the musical interludes — or, rather, the album — indie rock earworms like “Wcyd?” stand out with hypnotic loops of guitar and keys as backing vocals whisper and repeat. Meanwhile, in the album’s spoken parts, Scotty gives traffic updates on I-880, takes staticky local calls and needles Jimmy about his love life. Jimmy eventually leaves the show in anger, catalyzing the album’s second half: Jimmy’s replacement Albert (still Carver) asks Scotty to “turn that shit up” by way of introducing “Fine Whine.” And to win Jimmy back, Scotty plays Hook-Ups’ ebullient cover of Dion and the Belmonts’ 1959 “A Teenager in Love” — winning over, too, listeners who might’ve been initially unsure about the album’s out-there concept. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2396630951/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Beth Schenck, \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> (Queen Bee Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Part of the extraordinary 12/12 project spearheaded by Berkeley bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, which has released a dozen albums by improvisation-powered Bay Area ensembles, San Francisco alto saxophonist Beth Schenck’s \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> is among the most striking blooms in this artfully curated garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best known for her folk and chamber-jazz work with Jenny Scheinman, Schenck possesses a bright, gleaming tone and divergent impulses as a composer. Featuring a formidable cast with Mezzacappa, drummer Jordan Glenn, Cory Wright on tenor sax and bass clarinet and Schenck’s husband Matt Wrobel on guitar, \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> toggles between Ornette Coleman-inspired laments (“Every Riven Thing”), tender tone poems (“Wayne’s Gone”) and sinuous, multi-layered investigations (“Playground”). Each mode contains its own particular rewards, starting with the sheer beauty of her sound. \u003cem>— Andrew Gilbert\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/0jHqElEG9tMkgMXk3IKQrV?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Miles Minnick, \u003cem>Via Dolorosa\u003c/em> (Glo/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Via Dolorosa\u003c/em>, Miles Minnick, a former youth pastor from Pittsburg, cooks up some traditional West Coast hip-hop without using a single cuss word. There’s praise and affirmations, melodic hooks and that trademark Bay Area blap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minnick taps Brooke Valentine and Lacrae for features, as well as the Bay Area’s own G-Eazy, E-40 and Kamiyah. Keak Da Sneak is on “Bout Time,” which pulls from his 2003 track “Know What I’m Talking About.” And Mistah F.A.B. is on “Sick Wid It,” a retake of 2005’s “Super Sic Wit It.” Minnick samples Mac Dre’s “Not My Job” but shares a message that differs from Furl’s. “It’s not my job, can’t judge you / Live different, but we still gon’ love you,” Minnick says, summarizing the album’s ethos. The project, the fourth from Minnick in the past two years, is evidence that he’s making religious rap more relatable, not condescending — and he’s doing so without watering down the beats. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3695116657/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Various Artists, \u003cem>Bay Area Renegade Trax Vol. 2 \u003c/em>(No Bias)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you’re searching for the pulse of the Bay Area’s underground electronic music scene, look no further than \u003cem>Bay Area Renegade Trax Vol. 2\u003c/em>, a compilation featuring 31 eccentric, eclectic DJs and producers put together by local label No Bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These high-BPM bangers by artists including Bored Lord, Bastiengoat and DJ Juanny span house, juke, garage, drum and bass and more. They’re dirty, gritty and elastic — a rebuke to background music, and a manifesto for dancing at the forest rave until the sun comes up. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This week, we’re looking back on the best art, music, food, movies and more from the year. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/best-of-2025\">See our entire Best of 2025 guide here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year is almost over, and we’re working on our resolutions. Out: passively listening to algorithm-driven, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13982572/ai-is-coming-for-the-music-industry-how-will-artists-adapt\">AI-infested playlists\u003c/a>. In: letting the talented artists in your community move, surprise and even challenge you, restoring your faith in humanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whether making hip-hop, punk, salsa or spiritual jazz, Bay Area artists didn’t disappoint this year. The KQED Arts & Culture team and contributors combed through 2025’s releases to bring you our favorite local music of the year. Turn up the volume and hit play. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/6fiG4ui62dDneZQjMFh8ha?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Jamel Griot, \u003cem>Sincerely, Jamel \u003c/em>(Remain Family Oriented Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Sincerely, Jamel\u003c/em>, Oakland rapper Jamel Griot invites us to witness his dark night of the soul, when grief cracks him open and forces him face himself, honestly and unflinchingly. Griot punctuates hard-hitting verses over contemplative, jazzy beats with diary entries, revealing how serial one-night stands turned into a coping mechanism, and how partying has disconnected him from his purpose. “Although you a self-centered n—, you aren’t selfish enough. Because a selfish person loves themselves,” he reads aloud from his journal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find his way back to himself, Griot unpacks childhood trauma with a courageous vulnerability. His lyrics illuminate a new path forward, one that invites listeners to lovingly tend to their own scars. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2YjTKpjohCKRlShBvgWHqQ?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Rabiah Kabir, \u003cem>Jezebel: Rewritten \u003c/em>(Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The song “Flute / Overture,” opens Rabiah Kabir’s \u003cem>Jezebel: Rewritten\u003c/em> with a jazzy thesis statement. Birds chirp, shakers shake and keys resonate as the flute’s flow intertwines with comments about the historical importance of the instrument and the artist’s work to dispel sexist notions about flutists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the support of a full band, Oakland’s Kabir shows a range of a flute’s sonic capabilities. The song “Fin.” showcases the wind instrument’s mysticism. “The ReZident” offers a taste of flute funk. And the dark keys and heavy drums at the start of “I Crashed My Car” create an anxious tone that is ultimately resolved, climaxing in a flute run that’s as relaxing as a field of fresh lavender. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4149894761/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Kathryn Mohr, \u003cem>Waiting Room\u003c/em> (The Flenser)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A bell’s hollow rings echo through a room. Static builds. Radio noise chatters in the distance. Sea waves crash. Someone (or something) scribbles. The field recordings that populate Kathryn Mohr’s \u003cem>Waiting Room\u003c/em> — self-recorded in an abandoned fish factory in Iceland — give a sense of isolation and melancholy, capturing the anxiety of anticipation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mohr builds on those recordings using an analog synth and aching vocals, creating subtle, pinpoint-precise melodies. Following the oneiric opener “Diver,” dissonant tracks weave between guitar-driven, ’90s grunge-inspired pieces. In “Petrified,” gentle vocals evoke violent visuals that dance above finger-plucked guitar. Mohr’s full-length debut asks its listeners to find beauty in decay, to sit in feelings of discomfort without the promise of catharsis. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/1MTodq6IqzqFEav64mt1Jg?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Michael Sneed, \u003cem>floaters at the buzzer!\u003c/em> (Michael Sneed/Create Music Group)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Attention spans might be shrinking because of TikTok and Instagram, but rapper and producer Michael Sneed’s \u003cem>floaters at the buzzer!\u003c/em> beckons to be heard from start to finish. “I’ll be your guide, I got you,” Sneed croons on the opening track. From there he puffs out his chest on “blend*” featuring Bay Area trailblazer P-Lo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On “town sh!t 4ever!,” Sneed and P-Lo reinterpret a classic by sampling Mistah F.A.B.’s legendary “N.E.W. Oakland.” The song features Ovrkast. and wrestles with the tension of being pushed out of your hometown yet still trying to love it despite the struggles. This contradiction crescendos with “still ain’t die!,” a trumpet-laced proclamation of the life Sneed and his kin insist on, in spite of the forces conspiring against their thriving. \u003cem>— Sarah O’Neal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=106152191/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>John Elliott, \u003cem>I Am John Mayer\u003c/em> (Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When John Michael Mayer started making music in the Y2K era, he faced a problem: There was another musician on the internet named John Mayer. Vowing to battle for name recognition and acclaim in the public arena, he released song after song, none as schlocky as “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” and lost the fight. Now, the San Francisco musician forced to rechristen himself John Elliott has told the story in a catchy, cleverly written title track, “I Am John Mayer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Possessed of a Jonathan Richman sincerity and a John Darnielle expressiveness, Elliott’s a wide-eyed everyman who soaks up and sings about the world’s joys and pains alike. (Recall his \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912499/song-jfk-drive-car-free-board-of-supervisors-sf\">one-minute song to elected officials about keeping JFK Drive car-free\u003c/a>.) On \u003cem>I Am John Mayer\u003c/em> (currently only available \u003ca href=\"https://www.thehereafterishere.com/store/p/i-am-john-mayer-digital-download\">through his website\u003c/a>, and coming soon to streaming), he’s in top form, including the heartstring-pulling “Out Here,” a plea to an unborn child hesitant to enter the world. \u003cem>— Gabe Meline\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2rPy6g5DGQBsb7g96xXFGI?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Jane Handcock, \u003cem>It’s Me, Not You \u003c/em>(Death Row Records/gamma.)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>It’s Me, Not You\u003c/em> marks a well-deserved ascent for Jane Handcock, the mega-talented Richmond-raised vocalist who’s spent years behind the scenes, penning lyrics for R&B and hip-hop greats like Kelly Rowland, Rick Ross, Tyrese and Teddy Riley. Now signed to the venerable Death Row Records, Handcock delivered a finely crafted album for the grown-and-sexy lover girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The effervescent mood of “Stare At Me” featuring Anderson .Paak feels like eclectic sliding through the clouds. The funky, horn-driven “Can’t Let Go” drips with sex appeal, and on “For the Views” — a missive to social-media lurkers — Handcock conjures the atmosphere of a smoke-filled lounge where one might exchange a furtive glance over the rim of a martini glass. \u003cem>It’s Me, Not You\u003c/em> proves Handcock has earned her spotlight and will continue to hold our attention for a long time. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=97838322/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Spiritual Cramp, \u003ci>Rude\u003c/i> (Blue Grape Music)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“What if I went back home to the Bay where I belong? / In the heart of San Francisco, just an hour away from home,” Spiritual Cramp’s Michael Bingham sings on “True Love (Is Hard To Find).” It’s the premise for \u003cem>Rude\u003c/em>, an eloquent new-wave punk love letter to the city that still holds the keys to his soul, even though he’s moved away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Produced by the accomplished John Congleton, \u003cem>Rude\u003c/em> wears that heart on its sleeve at every turn, from the tantalizing melodies of “Automatic” to the endearingly self-deprecating “At My Funeral.” Sharon Van Etten guests on the gleaming “You’ve Got My Number,” a highlight within what should go down as a breakout effort for Spiritual Cramp, who are primed for big things in 2026. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2XeGkDrU1IX9hlqEId3GS3?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Various Artists, \u003cem>Salsa de la Bahia Vol. III: Renegade Queens\u003c/em> (Patois Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s rare indeed when an album makes you rethink the history of a genre, but by focusing on female salsa and Latin jazz artists, \u003cem>Salsa de la Bahia Vol. III: Renegade Queens\u003c/em> offers a deeply informed alternative view of the evolution of Latin music in the Bay Area. Without a dominant group to shape the rhythmic currents, the Bay Area Latin music scene has always cast a wide net. This two-disc anthology shows that same pan-Latin forces at work, showcasing excellent work by women from Venezuela, Cuba, Chile and Colombia and the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both discs open with new music showcasing a brilliant cross-section of women players, many of whom lead their own bands. But it’s tracks like “Cosmo” by the Blazing Redheads, an all-female septet that coalesced at the end of the 1980s with a dance-inducing combination of jazz, funk and Latin beats, that make \u003cem>Renegade Queens\u003c/em> a continual source of delight. \u003cem>— Andrew Gilbert\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/22nSF43OqkoSheKO58Fie1?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lil Yee, \u003cem>Life After Death\u003c/em> (G-Affair/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“They say death is a deep sleep / Wake me up, it ain’t my time,” says San Francisco’s Lil Yee on \u003cem>Life After Death\u003c/em>. After being shot in March of this year, Yee’s latest project illustrates his pain, his family’s love and his devotion to a higher power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He brings the audience into the hospital on “ICU” as he describes the feeling of flatlining. Yee yearns for romantic love on “Love Me FRFR,” and he stunts on tracks with Veeze, 22nd Jim and EBK Jaaybo. On “Chopper Zone,” Yee paints the perils of his community. “Wicked Man” is a blues song about sinister things happening to benevolent people. And on “Sunday Morning,” Yee shares his resilient mindstate after the shooting, and how he’s persevering through it all. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2185729243/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Spellling, \u003cem>Portrait of My Heart\u003c/em> (Sacred Bones)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Portrait of My Heart\u003c/em>, Oakland art-pop luminary Spellling strips away ornate theatricality for punchy guitar rock that speaks straight into the soul of anyone who’s ever felt like an outcast: “I don’t belong here,” she wails on the title track, which simmers with inner turmoil before boiling over into a cathartic crescendo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sharply written album is a cinematic ride through alienation and grief. Spellling pushes the limits of her voice to belt, whisper and growl as she delicately unravels thorny emotions such as shame and fear, letting herself bleed as she narrates her internal battles. Guitarist Wyatt Overson’s distortion-heavy riffs and anthemic solos add weight to the gut punch of Spellling’s lyrical intensity. \u003cem>— Nastia Voynovskaya\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2577981795/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Arts and Crafts, \u003cem>1000 Dancing Devils\u003c/em> (Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Prog jazz meets math rock meets influences from South Asia and North Africa in Arts and Crafts’ \u003cem>1000 Dancing Devils\u003c/em>. Guitarist Noam Teyssier, bassist Nadia Aquil and drummer Jeff Klein \u003ca href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/arts-crafts-1000-dancing-devils-review-ngo-core-2q9oc/\">say their inspirations span\u003c/a> Moroccan ouds, Bollywood films and the band Phish — specifically for the track “Roti,” the three-over-four rhythm from Phish’s “Buried Alive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sounds originate from the San Francisco and Oakland band’s own communities and diasporas, combining and transmuting to form the groovy, upbeat album: Psychedelic opener “Oö” gives way to the cymbal crashes and pulsing surf rock of “Sidi Bouzid.” Named after a Moroccan city of Teyssier’s childhood, that track ends with a sample of the very musicians who played at Teyssier’s wedding. It’s personal and universal and wholly Bay Area. Blast the album during a winding car ride along the California coast, and you’ll find your head nodding, fingers reaching out of the open window to tap along. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2693444777/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Andrés Miguel Cervantes, \u003cem>Songs for the Seance\u003c/em> (Speakeasy Studios SF)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Andrés Miguel Cervantes is a Western desperado whose journeys through the Sonoran and Mojave deserts and up the coast are at the crux of his latest album. \u003cem>Songs for the Seance\u003c/em> sounds like Hermanos Gutierrez backing Sturgill Simpson, and this is rarified air for a Bay Area artist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recorded on eight-track tape, sinister guitar, omnipresent pedal steel and twangy violin, garnished with harmonica, guide Cervantes’ rugged baritone staccato. “I saw the devil’s eyes in me,” the Oaklander laments on the title track, pleading to marauding spirits that he’s passionately trying to harness. It’s one of many wonderfully constructed tunes on an album that reveals Cervantes’ gifts as an essential emerging storyteller. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1253547124/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Cole Pulice, \u003cem>Land’s End Eternal \u003c/em>(Leaving Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cole Pulice’s work this decade showed improvisers all over the world a way forward for Coltrane-inspired spiritual-jazz saxophone, culminating in the pitch-shifted frenzy of 2023’s longform odyssey “If I Don’t See You in the Future, I’ll See You in the Pasture.” On their new album \u003cem>Land’s End Eternal\u003c/em>, the Oakland improviser takes a breather, pairing the first scratchings of their journey as a guitarist with gentle saxophone leads that snake across the stereo field like the cliff-hugging trails of the album’s namesake park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pulice cited Bay Area art-music legends Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley as inspirations for their meditative approach on this record, but it’s guided just as much by the ineffable something that rolls in with the fog every night. \u003cem>— Daniel Bromfield\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/1fHEmXGVuCHiRI10E9gybP?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Kevin Allen, \u003cem>Mr. Nobody\u003c/em> (Grand Nationxl/Create Music Group)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“Fuck the middleman, I had to do it myself.” So begins Kevin Allen’s \u003cem>Mr. Nobody\u003c/em>, a 10-song manifesto from one of the Bay’s most prolific and underrated rappers. At this stage in his career, Allen’s got nothing more to prove, evidenced by the risk-taking on the breezy, exploratory R&B of his 2024 album \u003cem>Don’t Overthink It\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time around, Allen’s the grown lyricist claiming his spot at the Bay Area table, with a well-earned chip on his shoulder (“My baby mama only one who came to my court date,” he raps on “F.W.W.I.D.”). Add an undercurrent of gospel, a dash of the cinematic and a sidearm pitch of romance in the eighth inning (“Put You First”), and you’ve got a solid album with Allen’s voice and vision front and center — no middleman needed. \u003cem>— Gabe Meline\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=658546348/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Raven, \u003cem>Gnosis\u003c/em> (Incienso)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>There’s certain music that timelessly soundtracks a pensive nighttime stroll in the big city. Everything but the Girl’s \u003cem>Walking Wounded\u003c/em> inspires you to find a dance floor and spill your emotions, while Adam F’s \u003cem>Colours\u003c/em> invites you to seek harmony in the chaos of your surroundings. San Francisco producer Raven’s \u003cem>Gnosis\u003c/em> (out on NYC’s Incienso label) has a similar spirit, emphasizing the organic sensory experiences of urban life amid an increasingly tech-saturated landscape: the moisture in the air, cold pavement, tall buildings, lights that flicker and thousands of people with their hands in their pockets making their way across town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wrapped in synths and dark textures, Raven’s ambient techno begs us to dance, but ultimately stays grounded in an IDM sensibility — like floating above a wormhole into a mysterious other side and winning the battle against its gravitational pull. \u003cem>— Adrian Spinelli\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/47NKcUIh3dBEfKgCfIV475?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>demahjiae, \u003cem>what do you hear when you pray?\u003c/em> (Yalé/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“How is this for alternative?” demahjiae begins, pushing back on being pigeonholed as an artist. \u003cem>what do you hear when you pray?\u003c/em> releases the expectation to have answers, offering a litany of questions instead. In a time when many stereotype the Bay Area as having a single sound, demahjiae puts his foot down, stubbornly crafting on his terms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He turns away from the pressure of people and towards the support of a higher power, echoing that in the end “God got me” on “Silver Surfer.” “a ladder to the sky” concludes with keys and violin strings that break through like sun rays shattering rainclouds. “The north star don’t shine on the east too much,” he professes. Yet despite the exhaustion of insisting on a truth few recognize, in defense of a home many denigrate, demahjiae presses on, holding up a mirror to his own contradictions while casting prayers to soften the path.\u003cem> — Sarah O’Neal\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2076548456/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hook-Ups, \u003cem>Hook-Ups Presents… Hkup \u003c/em>(Self-released)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Hook-Ups, the slacker-rock solo project of Castro Valley-based Maxwell Carver, released its most ambitious work yet in the half-hour LP \u003cem>Hook-Ups Presents… Hkup\u003c/em>. After a jingle plays for the fictional radio station HKUP, DJ Scotty2Shoes (voiced by Carver) wishes listeners good morning, introducing himself and his high-pitched, possibly avian co-host Jimmy (also Carver) as the Hook-Ups track “Crawlin’” plays underneath. The gambit is that we’re tuning into Scotty2Shoes’ radio hour as he sets up — and distracts us from — all-new Hook-Ups songs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the musical interludes — or, rather, the album — indie rock earworms like “Wcyd?” stand out with hypnotic loops of guitar and keys as backing vocals whisper and repeat. Meanwhile, in the album’s spoken parts, Scotty gives traffic updates on I-880, takes staticky local calls and needles Jimmy about his love life. Jimmy eventually leaves the show in anger, catalyzing the album’s second half: Jimmy’s replacement Albert (still Carver) asks Scotty to “turn that shit up” by way of introducing “Fine Whine.” And to win Jimmy back, Scotty plays Hook-Ups’ ebullient cover of Dion and the Belmonts’ 1959 “A Teenager in Love” — winning over, too, listeners who might’ve been initially unsure about the album’s out-there concept. \u003cem>— Caroline Smith\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2396630951/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Beth Schenck, \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> (Queen Bee Records)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Part of the extraordinary 12/12 project spearheaded by Berkeley bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, which has released a dozen albums by improvisation-powered Bay Area ensembles, San Francisco alto saxophonist Beth Schenck’s \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> is among the most striking blooms in this artfully curated garden.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best known for her folk and chamber-jazz work with Jenny Scheinman, Schenck possesses a bright, gleaming tone and divergent impulses as a composer. Featuring a formidable cast with Mezzacappa, drummer Jordan Glenn, Cory Wright on tenor sax and bass clarinet and Schenck’s husband Matt Wrobel on guitar, \u003cem>Dahlia\u003c/em> toggles between Ornette Coleman-inspired laments (“Every Riven Thing”), tender tone poems (“Wayne’s Gone”) and sinuous, multi-layered investigations (“Playground”). Each mode contains its own particular rewards, starting with the sheer beauty of her sound. \u003cem>— Andrew Gilbert\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/0jHqElEG9tMkgMXk3IKQrV?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Miles Minnick, \u003cem>Via Dolorosa\u003c/em> (Glo/Empire)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>On \u003cem>Via Dolorosa\u003c/em>, Miles Minnick, a former youth pastor from Pittsburg, cooks up some traditional West Coast hip-hop without using a single cuss word. There’s praise and affirmations, melodic hooks and that trademark Bay Area blap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minnick taps Brooke Valentine and Lacrae for features, as well as the Bay Area’s own G-Eazy, E-40 and Kamiyah. Keak Da Sneak is on “Bout Time,” which pulls from his 2003 track “Know What I’m Talking About.” And Mistah F.A.B. is on “Sick Wid It,” a retake of 2005’s “Super Sic Wit It.” Minnick samples Mac Dre’s “Not My Job” but shares a message that differs from Furl’s. “It’s not my job, can’t judge you / Live different, but we still gon’ love you,” Minnick says, summarizing the album’s ethos. The project, the fourth from Minnick in the past two years, is evidence that he’s making religious rap more relatable, not condescending — and he’s doing so without watering down the beats. \u003cem>— Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3695116657/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Various Artists, \u003cem>Bay Area Renegade Trax Vol. 2 \u003c/em>(No Bias)\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you’re searching for the pulse of the Bay Area’s underground electronic music scene, look no further than \u003cem>Bay Area Renegade Trax Vol. 2\u003c/em>, a compilation featuring 31 eccentric, eclectic DJs and producers put together by local label No Bias.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>In 1970, Stan Shaff and Douglas McEachern bought a building in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> with a vision to choreograph sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For five years, they tinkered with the former donut shop’s layout and design, testing different kinds of audio speakers and acoustic treatments. And in 1975, they formally opened their final version of Audium, a sound theater \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909188/audium-residency-san-francisco-sound\">known today\u003c/a> for its dark inner sanctum and 176 speakers dispersed over the walls, ceiling and floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To celebrate Audium’s 50th anniversary on Bush Street this summer, Dave Shaff, the director of Audium and son of founder Stan Shaff, is reviving \u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em>, the very first tape piece for the space, created by his father, that will run as an immersive, in-the-dark experience every weekend between mid-July and August. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978439\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978439\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Construction in the early 1970s transformed the former Stempel’s donut shop on Bush Street to Audium as it’s known today. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Audium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Audium experience goes much deeper than simply listening to prerecorded music. “There is a performance,” Shaff says, “and that’s the movement of the sound, literally like the choreography of taking the sound and moving it from one speaker to another.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the lights go out, “you’ve got nowhere else to go but inside yourself,” says Shaff. The sounds bouncing around the room tend to bring up memories, ideas and fantasies, he says, adding that “it kind of touches the subconscious.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the \u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em> performances, Audium’s lobby space will display archival ephemera: an old desk with the writings of Stan Shaff, a telephone that plays a surprise recording when listeners hold it up to their ear, the old analog control board from the 1970s and even the original studio four-track tape machine used for shows. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1513px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1513\" height=\"2000\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics.jpg 1513w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-160x212.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-768x1015.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-1162x1536.jpg 1162w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1513px) 100vw, 1513px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A schematic from the original plans for Audium. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Audium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a lot of memories,” Shaff says about working with the archive. He described the process as “almost too personal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s discovering, like, some parts of my parents and their own personal lives,” says Shaff, “I’ll hear them talking to each other on the tape at points, as younger adults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em> was composed 10 years before Shaff was born. He describes it as “pretty funky” and “out of the bounds of ordinary” — but he also resisted the urge to clean up the experimental composition’s rough edges. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dad liked to throw a lot of sounds at his audience,” says Shaff. “He’s like Jackson Pollock, you know, the painter that just threw paint on the canvas, except he’s throwing sounds.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13909229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The listening room at Audium is outfitted with 176 speakers. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those sounds could include electronic noises, field recordings from nature, melodic passages, fog horns and freight trains. In 2022, the resident artist Victoria Shen called Audium “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909188/audium-residency-san-francisco-sound\">one of the last cool, weird, old-school things in San Francisco\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mission for Audium now, Shaff says, is to keep a little bit of that soul of San Francisco alive, while modernizing it for the present day. \u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Audium VI: Rewind’ runs July 11–Aug. 23 at Audium in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/audium-vi-rewind/\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 1970, Stan Shaff and Douglas McEachern bought a building in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> with a vision to choreograph sound.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For five years, they tinkered with the former donut shop’s layout and design, testing different kinds of audio speakers and acoustic treatments. And in 1975, they formally opened their final version of Audium, a sound theater \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909188/audium-residency-san-francisco-sound\">known today\u003c/a> for its dark inner sanctum and 176 speakers dispersed over the walls, ceiling and floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To celebrate Audium’s 50th anniversary on Bush Street this summer, Dave Shaff, the director of Audium and son of founder Stan Shaff, is reviving \u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em>, the very first tape piece for the space, created by his father, that will run as an immersive, in-the-dark experience every weekend between mid-July and August. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978439\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978439\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/pICT0034-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Construction in the early 1970s transformed the former Stempel’s donut shop on Bush Street to Audium as it’s known today. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Audium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Audium experience goes much deeper than simply listening to prerecorded music. “There is a performance,” Shaff says, “and that’s the movement of the sound, literally like the choreography of taking the sound and moving it from one speaker to another.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the lights go out, “you’ve got nowhere else to go but inside yourself,” says Shaff. The sounds bouncing around the room tend to bring up memories, ideas and fantasies, he says, adding that “it kind of touches the subconscious.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the \u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em> performances, Audium’s lobby space will display archival ephemera: an old desk with the writings of Stan Shaff, a telephone that plays a surprise recording when listeners hold it up to their ear, the old analog control board from the 1970s and even the original studio four-track tape machine used for shows. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978440\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1513px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1513\" height=\"2000\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics.jpg 1513w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-160x212.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-768x1015.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/chematics-1162x1536.jpg 1162w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1513px) 100vw, 1513px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A schematic from the original plans for Audium. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Audium)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“There’s been a lot of memories,” Shaff says about working with the archive. He described the process as “almost too personal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s discovering, like, some parts of my parents and their own personal lives,” says Shaff, “I’ll hear them talking to each other on the tape at points, as younger adults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Audium VI\u003c/em> was composed 10 years before Shaff was born. He describes it as “pretty funky” and “out of the bounds of ordinary” — but he also resisted the urge to clean up the experimental composition’s rough edges. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dad liked to throw a lot of sounds at his audience,” says Shaff. “He’s like Jackson Pollock, you know, the painter that just threw paint on the canvas, except he’s throwing sounds.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13909229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The listening room at Audium is outfitted with 176 speakers. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those sounds could include electronic noises, field recordings from nature, melodic passages, fog horns and freight trains. In 2022, the resident artist Victoria Shen called Audium “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909188/audium-residency-san-francisco-sound\">one of the last cool, weird, old-school things in San Francisco\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mission for Audium now, Shaff says, is to keep a little bit of that soul of San Francisco alive, while modernizing it for the present day. \u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Audium VI: Rewind’ runs July 11–Aug. 23 at Audium in San Francisco. \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/audium-vi-rewind/\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Living Earth Show Dreams Up an Experimental Music Hub in SF",
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"content": "\u003cp>When I arrive at the Odd Fellows Building at 7th and Market Street in San Francisco, the ground floor space — formerly known as cocktail bar Mr. Smith’s — is getting ready for its next act as a nascent creative hub. Ladders, buckets, toolboxes, extension cords, cleaning supplies and half-drunk bottles of water are strewn about the room. A small collection of instruments in their cases are clustered in a corner near the front entrance, waiting to christen the space on opening night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of the chaos, Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews — the experimental chamber music duo known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/\">The Living Earth Show\u003c/a> (TLES) — greet me affably, as if they weren’t in the middle of building what may prove to be one of their biggest experiments to date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graduates of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, TLES has been creating and touring large-scale, interdisciplinary experimental works with a roster of boundary-pushing collaborators such as singer-technologist Pamela Z, Pulitzer-winning Diné composer Raven Chacon and poetry organization Youth Speaks. They’re so busy and artistically free-ranging that even in the middle of their remodel of 34 7th Street, they performed at Great American Music Hall as members of the raucous queer music collective \u003ca href=\"https://commandothebando.com/\">COMMANDO\u003c/a>, followed by a brief trip to Norway to present \u003ca href=\"https://www.ultima.no/en/tremble-staves\">\u003cem>Tremble Staves\u003c/em> \u003c/a>with Chacon at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of its goal to revitalize the struggling downtown area, the city-funded \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketstreetarts.org/\">Market Street Arts\u003c/a> program tapped TLES to inhabit the space and curate a season of shows they’re calling \u003ca href=\"https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/roarshacklive\">Roar Shack Live!\u003c/a> The musicians are preparing to bring some of their touring works home to San Francisco, and perform them, salon-style, in an intimate venue reconfigured according to their imaginations. They will roughly present one show per month with a different collaborator and use a sliding scale, pay-what-you-can model for tickets. (Exact dates are under construction, but trans rights advocate and musician Honey Mahogany, experimental music luminary Terry Riley and rising composer Zachary James Watkins are among the seven featured artists.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TLES’ debut concert on Sept. 20, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-music-for-hard-times-tickets-995596986387\">Music for Hard Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, will bring what originally started as an early pandemic project, composed and created via virtual modalities, to a physical space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What follows are excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1845px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964462\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1845\" height=\"1230\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2.jpg 1845w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1845px) 100vw, 1845px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews (left to right) of The Living Earth Show.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicole Gluckstern:\u003c/strong> So in regards to the series, you’re going to start off using \u003cem>Music for Hard Times\u003c/em>, which is a really interesting piece to kick off with because a lot of it is very contemplative, right? Dreamy and soothing, which I think was part of the mandate [when creating it]. So I’m curious to know how it’s going to be presented in this space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> So the music was created by Danny Clay. And the other wonderful San Francisco-based artist on it is Jon Fischer, who created an ambient film, and is working on creating projections [for the live show] that’ll go a variety of places to have ambiance and coziness be at the fore of the experience, as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By designing the projections, do you mean he’s going to create a new visual, or use the existing film?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> Kind of both. It’ll be certainly rooted in the film. Because that’s the piece, right? It’s not an accompaniment to the piece. It is the piece. So it’s elaborating on and expanding on that work. That is as integral to what the piece is as the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Travis Andrews:\u003c/strong> We started envisioning, what if there wasn’t a bad seat in the house? What if we had a main channel of video and images and geometries, and had two supplementary feeds? So if you’re one of the 53 people that come to these shows, you can always see like two of those channels. So [gestures to bar] putting scrim over this beautifully gilded mirror, have a channel there. [Gestures to makeshift stage near the front door.] One behind the performance space, which will be much more visible when the door is shut, and then having a third channel for the people that are behind the bar and at the bar on that wall [gestures to wall opposite bar].\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964465\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2375px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964465\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2375\" height=\"1755\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score.jpg 2375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-800x591.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1020x754.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-768x568.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1536x1135.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-2048x1513.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1920x1419.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2375px) 100vw, 2375px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The visual score for The Living Earth Show and Danny Clay’s ‘Music for Hard Times.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of The Living Earth Show)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> It was a piece that was made visually. So what’s subversive about Danny’s work is [it’s] designed to be as beautiful when played by virtuoso trained musicians as by his elementary school students. Which is an extremely subversive act in our traditional classical music that cherishes virtuosity über alles. There’s a very specific definition of what that means, and why, and what a score is. And Danny really does kind of flip that on his head, in the most beautiful and moral and humanistic way possible, and that has a very different context for a classically trained musician and a seven year old. But both are equally valid and lead to amazing places. So he made the entire piece that way, and we made hundreds and hundreds of samples. Me, Travis and Danny, and Danny compiled them into the album.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1564682992/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’d like to hear a little bit more about the Roar Shack Live! season. Maybe you can’t talk about specific performers. But I’m secretly hoping M. Lamar is on the list.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> He’s coming in February! He’s [possibly] the least “San Francisco-y” of our collaborators, but he has such a deep connection to the city. Right? SFAI alum, lived here, it’s in his work. And he’s a great example of someone we’ve worked with for years and years. We’re making our next piece, \u003cem>Machines and Other Intergalactic Technologies of the Spirit\u003c/em>. And in February we’re going to play that show at the Met Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s kind of crazy that the infrastructure to do work like that in San Francisco doesn’t really exist. Like interdisciplinary work, at that scale, in that manner. So we’re gonna do it the week before, here. It felt really, really important to us that we could build it and present it here in a way that cost is not a barrier to entry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964453\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964453\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former cocktail bar Mr. Smith’s has been under construction as it prepares for its next incarnation as a music venue. \u003ccite>(Nicole Gluckstern)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’re helping to build out this space, so it supports your performance series. And then at the end of ten shows, are you no longer part of this space?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> We’d love to be, but you know, one season at a time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Travis Andrews:\u003c/strong> We can say that there’s nothing but desire to continue to do that. This is the first time we’ll have an entire hometown season in one venue, ever. And I think what I mean by I’d love to keep this place is to just have something like this [gestures] — which felt so out of reach until a couple of months ago — but it’s such like a grounding, lovely feeling. We’ve never had an opportunity like this before to invite people to just a stable, curated environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> Our overall mission, really, is to show what it means to make San Francisco a place where culture is created and not just consumed. In order for San Francisco to live the values that it says it wants, about using the arts to revitalize downtown, it needs to invest in infrastructure and ecosystem at every scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, work that exists in a development stage; work that exists uncompromisingly; a place for artists to try things they otherwise wouldn’t; and allow the art itself and the practice to scale with its audience. What’s really important for us is to find a way to model that infrastructure and model that piece of the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve never turned a bar into a concert hall before, but it felt like a way to tell a story of place, and be part of space together in a way that a performance here will be very different from a performance anywhere else in the world. And that’s kind of exciting and special!\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>After \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-music-for-hard-times-tickets-995596986387?aff=ebdsoporgprofile\">Music for Hard Times\u003c/a> on Sept. 20, The Living Earth Show performs with Zachary James Watkins for Roar Shack Live!: Double Wall on Oct. 20. \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-double-wall-tickets-1014313548127?aff=erelexpmlt\">Tickets and details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When I arrive at the Odd Fellows Building at 7th and Market Street in San Francisco, the ground floor space — formerly known as cocktail bar Mr. Smith’s — is getting ready for its next act as a nascent creative hub. Ladders, buckets, toolboxes, extension cords, cleaning supplies and half-drunk bottles of water are strewn about the room. A small collection of instruments in their cases are clustered in a corner near the front entrance, waiting to christen the space on opening night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of the chaos, Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews — the experimental chamber music duo known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/\">The Living Earth Show\u003c/a> (TLES) — greet me affably, as if they weren’t in the middle of building what may prove to be one of their biggest experiments to date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Graduates of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, TLES has been creating and touring large-scale, interdisciplinary experimental works with a roster of boundary-pushing collaborators such as singer-technologist Pamela Z, Pulitzer-winning Diné composer Raven Chacon and poetry organization Youth Speaks. They’re so busy and artistically free-ranging that even in the middle of their remodel of 34 7th Street, they performed at Great American Music Hall as members of the raucous queer music collective \u003ca href=\"https://commandothebando.com/\">COMMANDO\u003c/a>, followed by a brief trip to Norway to present \u003ca href=\"https://www.ultima.no/en/tremble-staves\">\u003cem>Tremble Staves\u003c/em> \u003c/a>with Chacon at the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of its goal to revitalize the struggling downtown area, the city-funded \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketstreetarts.org/\">Market Street Arts\u003c/a> program tapped TLES to inhabit the space and curate a season of shows they’re calling \u003ca href=\"https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/roarshacklive\">Roar Shack Live!\u003c/a> The musicians are preparing to bring some of their touring works home to San Francisco, and perform them, salon-style, in an intimate venue reconfigured according to their imaginations. They will roughly present one show per month with a different collaborator and use a sliding scale, pay-what-you-can model for tickets. (Exact dates are under construction, but trans rights advocate and musician Honey Mahogany, experimental music luminary Terry Riley and rising composer Zachary James Watkins are among the seven featured artists.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>TLES’ debut concert on Sept. 20, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-music-for-hard-times-tickets-995596986387\">Music for Hard Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, will bring what originally started as an early pandemic project, composed and created via virtual modalities, to a physical space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What follows are excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964462\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1845px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964462\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1845\" height=\"1230\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2.jpg 1845w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/tles-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1845px) 100vw, 1845px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews (left to right) of The Living Earth Show.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nicole Gluckstern:\u003c/strong> So in regards to the series, you’re going to start off using \u003cem>Music for Hard Times\u003c/em>, which is a really interesting piece to kick off with because a lot of it is very contemplative, right? Dreamy and soothing, which I think was part of the mandate [when creating it]. So I’m curious to know how it’s going to be presented in this space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> So the music was created by Danny Clay. And the other wonderful San Francisco-based artist on it is Jon Fischer, who created an ambient film, and is working on creating projections [for the live show] that’ll go a variety of places to have ambiance and coziness be at the fore of the experience, as much as possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By designing the projections, do you mean he’s going to create a new visual, or use the existing film?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> Kind of both. It’ll be certainly rooted in the film. Because that’s the piece, right? It’s not an accompaniment to the piece. It is the piece. So it’s elaborating on and expanding on that work. That is as integral to what the piece is as the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Travis Andrews:\u003c/strong> We started envisioning, what if there wasn’t a bad seat in the house? What if we had a main channel of video and images and geometries, and had two supplementary feeds? So if you’re one of the 53 people that come to these shows, you can always see like two of those channels. So [gestures to bar] putting scrim over this beautifully gilded mirror, have a channel there. [Gestures to makeshift stage near the front door.] One behind the performance space, which will be much more visible when the door is shut, and then having a third channel for the people that are behind the bar and at the bar on that wall [gestures to wall opposite bar].\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964465\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2375px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964465\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2375\" height=\"1755\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score.jpg 2375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-800x591.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1020x754.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-768x568.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1536x1135.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-2048x1513.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/music-for-hard-times-score-1920x1419.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2375px) 100vw, 2375px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The visual score for The Living Earth Show and Danny Clay’s ‘Music for Hard Times.’ \u003ccite>(Courtesy of The Living Earth Show)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> It was a piece that was made visually. So what’s subversive about Danny’s work is [it’s] designed to be as beautiful when played by virtuoso trained musicians as by his elementary school students. Which is an extremely subversive act in our traditional classical music that cherishes virtuosity über alles. There’s a very specific definition of what that means, and why, and what a score is. And Danny really does kind of flip that on his head, in the most beautiful and moral and humanistic way possible, and that has a very different context for a classically trained musician and a seven year old. But both are equally valid and lead to amazing places. So he made the entire piece that way, and we made hundreds and hundreds of samples. Me, Travis and Danny, and Danny compiled them into the album.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1564682992/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’d like to hear a little bit more about the Roar Shack Live! season. Maybe you can’t talk about specific performers. But I’m secretly hoping M. Lamar is on the list.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> He’s coming in February! He’s [possibly] the least “San Francisco-y” of our collaborators, but he has such a deep connection to the city. Right? SFAI alum, lived here, it’s in his work. And he’s a great example of someone we’ve worked with for years and years. We’re making our next piece, \u003cem>Machines and Other Intergalactic Technologies of the Spirit\u003c/em>. And in February we’re going to play that show at the Met Museum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s kind of crazy that the infrastructure to do work like that in San Francisco doesn’t really exist. Like interdisciplinary work, at that scale, in that manner. So we’re gonna do it the week before, here. It felt really, really important to us that we could build it and present it here in a way that cost is not a barrier to entry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13964453\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13964453\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern.jpeg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/TLES_7thStreet_UnderConstruction_photocredit_NicoleGluckstern-1920x1280.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former cocktail bar Mr. Smith’s has been under construction as it prepares for its next incarnation as a music venue. \u003ccite>(Nicole Gluckstern)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’re helping to build out this space, so it supports your performance series. And then at the end of ten shows, are you no longer part of this space?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> We’d love to be, but you know, one season at a time!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Travis Andrews:\u003c/strong> We can say that there’s nothing but desire to continue to do that. This is the first time we’ll have an entire hometown season in one venue, ever. And I think what I mean by I’d love to keep this place is to just have something like this [gestures] — which felt so out of reach until a couple of months ago — but it’s such like a grounding, lovely feeling. We’ve never had an opportunity like this before to invite people to just a stable, curated environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Andy Meyerson:\u003c/strong> Our overall mission, really, is to show what it means to make San Francisco a place where culture is created and not just consumed. In order for San Francisco to live the values that it says it wants, about using the arts to revitalize downtown, it needs to invest in infrastructure and ecosystem at every scale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Specifically, work that exists in a development stage; work that exists uncompromisingly; a place for artists to try things they otherwise wouldn’t; and allow the art itself and the practice to scale with its audience. What’s really important for us is to find a way to model that infrastructure and model that piece of the ecosystem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve never turned a bar into a concert hall before, but it felt like a way to tell a story of place, and be part of space together in a way that a performance here will be very different from a performance anywhere else in the world. And that’s kind of exciting and special!\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>After \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-music-for-hard-times-tickets-995596986387?aff=ebdsoporgprofile\">Music for Hard Times\u003c/a> on Sept. 20, The Living Earth Show performs with Zachary James Watkins for Roar Shack Live!: Double Wall on Oct. 20. \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roar-shack-live-double-wall-tickets-1014313548127?aff=erelexpmlt\">Tickets and details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘Audium V: Rewind’ Revives the Chaotic Electronic Music of the 1960s",
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"content": "\u003cp>When I first learned about the 1960s in elementary school, the peeling textbook pages and grainy documentary footage couldn’t possibly capture the time period’s full, unrestrained creativity. The decade, ripe with social change and revolution, was a booming period of experimentation — where an unfettered desire to rebel against tradition coursed through various rising subcultures. LSD-laced music and sensibilities, maximalistic and unapologetic, grew in popularity. Most of all, the ’60s were \u003ci>loud\u003c/i>, as people searched for a new sense of self and way of being. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the music world, electronic musicians were also exploring in unprecedented ways. With analog equipment like oscillators, tape recorders, filters and fuzz units, composers tinkered with manmade and environmental noise to create immersive and disorienting soundscapes. The momentum of this electronic innovation soon took over the Bay Area, leading to the founding of the Center for Contemporary Music at now-defunct Mills College, the now-defunct San Francisco Tape Music Center, and the still-standing San Francisco institution known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/\">Audium\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First opened in 1967, Audium is an intimate sound theater nestled between Pacific Heights and Nob Hill, where for over a half-century co-founder and musician Stan Shaff performed compositions that bounced up, down and across the dark space for curious crowds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931064\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-800x497.jpg\" alt=\"A board is filled with different notes, brochures and notices at Audium.\" width=\"800\" height=\"497\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-800x497.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1020x634.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-768x477.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1536x955.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-2048x1273.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1920x1194.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A board sits in the lobby at Audium, filled with announcements and tidbits about the theater. \u003ccite>(Kristie Song/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today, electronic music composer \u003ca href=\"https://www.daveshaff.com/\">David Shaff\u003c/a> is both continuing and revamping his father’s legacy at Audium. When I call him, he is cleaning his trumpet as he recounts his initial reluctance in being part of the sound theater. “I was always kind of like, ‘No, Audium — that’s Dad’s thing. It’s not me,’” says Shaff. But after noticing a lack of experimental art spaces geared towards immersive, spatial sound work, he saw the importance of keeping Audium alive, both as a place to archive his father’s work and to create a collaborative environment for new musicians to work on experimental sound projects. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From now until July 22, Audium is presenting Shaff’s performances of \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/audium-v/\">\u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a reworking of a composition that his father created in 1969. The first in a new series of the senior Shaff’s digitized classic works, \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i> began as a puzzle. Stan Shaff’s basement contains various boxes with old tapes, and when David found one labeled “Audium V,” he set out to organize the tapes and play the mix from start to finish. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_12248119']“It’s funny because Dad never was trying to preserve these things for posterity or anything like that,” says Shaff, who had to search for missing tapes and figure out an order according to each tape’s time length. It wasn’t a matter of just digging up the tapes to play together — he had to make sense of what they must have sounded like in 1969. When he had finished his work, he played the composition for his father. “He was like, ‘I don’t remember a damn thing,’” says Shaff. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When his father asked him who was playing on the tapes, David exclaimed: “That’s you, Dad!” Unable to remember how exactly he had composed the piece so many years ago, the senior Shaff encouraged David to make the piece his own — to transform it how he saw fit. Working on \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i>, then, became more than just historical preservation: it became an act of love that combined past and future, and a way to experiment with a work that was always meant to be experimented with. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have totally different technology now than when they were doing it back in the day,” says Shaff. “So it’s his work, but it’s also kind of my work as well.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931065\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-800x620.jpg\" alt=\"Four figures huddle around a large sound sculpture. They are bathed in blue light.\" width=\"800\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-800x620.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1020x791.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-768x595.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1536x1191.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-2048x1587.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1920x1488.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attendees surround a sound sculpture in Audium’s lobby space created by artist Ava Koohbor. \u003ccite>(Kristie Song/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I arrive for a recent Thursday evening show, I enter a dark lobby lit by various sound sculptures made by artist \u003ca href=\"https://avakoohborarts.com/\">Ava Koohbor\u003c/a>. Twenty other people mingle in the room, wandering from object to object, before we’re ushered through a narrow pathway that leads to the main theater. Several chairs are arranged in a large circle, and my eyes struggle to adjust to the absence of light. Then the scattering of dim floor lights fades and we’re plunged into pitch-black darkness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the performance, here are some notes I wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The sound of seagulls, foghorns, it feels like you’re enshrouded in mist at the ocean.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>I imagine dark skies, a lighthouse. Whispering dies down, people move in their seats. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>There’s the sound of droplets, a leaky faucet or crack in the ceiling, plop plop plop. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>A machine comes to life, beeping. Whirring voraciously, the plops become violent trickles. The sounds grow louder, echoing across the entire room. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times, especially in the first act, where I was overtaken with anxiety. A sound would begin as a faint murmur before it suddenly erupted in front of me. It could surge from the ground, or fall from above, moving chaotically and unpredictably. In utter darkness, I felt trapped. I even pondered crawling out of the theater just to escape all the noise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13909188']“Dad talks about how, back in the day, audiences were much less prepared for something like this,” Shaff explained to me afterward. “But even so, I feel like this work in particular is quite overwhelming even by today’s standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each iteration of \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i> is different, and Shaff adjusts his live mix based on the audience’s response. Listening for chatter or silence, Shaff will amplify and experiment with the room’s 176 speakers to jolt and stir something in attendees. The piece is not static, and each performance is just as irreplaceable as it was in 1969: a container of that exact audience’s experiences that will never again be the same. “The energy that was happening at that time in the ’60s is still resonating to this day in the Bay in various ways,” says Shaff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words: It resonates and reverberates, glitching and warping, intertwining itself with a dynamic history that centers individuality, liberation and defying conventions. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>David Shaff’s performances of ‘Audium V: Rewind’ run Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through July 22 at Audium in San Francisco. Tickets are $30. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=1760\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When I first learned about the 1960s in elementary school, the peeling textbook pages and grainy documentary footage couldn’t possibly capture the time period’s full, unrestrained creativity. The decade, ripe with social change and revolution, was a booming period of experimentation — where an unfettered desire to rebel against tradition coursed through various rising subcultures. LSD-laced music and sensibilities, maximalistic and unapologetic, grew in popularity. Most of all, the ’60s were \u003ci>loud\u003c/i>, as people searched for a new sense of self and way of being. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the music world, electronic musicians were also exploring in unprecedented ways. With analog equipment like oscillators, tape recorders, filters and fuzz units, composers tinkered with manmade and environmental noise to create immersive and disorienting soundscapes. The momentum of this electronic innovation soon took over the Bay Area, leading to the founding of the Center for Contemporary Music at now-defunct Mills College, the now-defunct San Francisco Tape Music Center, and the still-standing San Francisco institution known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/\">Audium\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First opened in 1967, Audium is an intimate sound theater nestled between Pacific Heights and Nob Hill, where for over a half-century co-founder and musician Stan Shaff performed compositions that bounced up, down and across the dark space for curious crowds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931064\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931064\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-800x497.jpg\" alt=\"A board is filled with different notes, brochures and notices at Audium.\" width=\"800\" height=\"497\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-800x497.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1020x634.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-768x477.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1536x955.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-2048x1273.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-board-edited-1920x1194.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A board sits in the lobby at Audium, filled with announcements and tidbits about the theater. \u003ccite>(Kristie Song/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today, electronic music composer \u003ca href=\"https://www.daveshaff.com/\">David Shaff\u003c/a> is both continuing and revamping his father’s legacy at Audium. When I call him, he is cleaning his trumpet as he recounts his initial reluctance in being part of the sound theater. “I was always kind of like, ‘No, Audium — that’s Dad’s thing. It’s not me,’” says Shaff. But after noticing a lack of experimental art spaces geared towards immersive, spatial sound work, he saw the importance of keeping Audium alive, both as a place to archive his father’s work and to create a collaborative environment for new musicians to work on experimental sound projects. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From now until July 22, Audium is presenting Shaff’s performances of \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/audium-v/\">\u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, a reworking of a composition that his father created in 1969. The first in a new series of the senior Shaff’s digitized classic works, \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i> began as a puzzle. Stan Shaff’s basement contains various boxes with old tapes, and when David found one labeled “Audium V,” he set out to organize the tapes and play the mix from start to finish. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s funny because Dad never was trying to preserve these things for posterity or anything like that,” says Shaff, who had to search for missing tapes and figure out an order according to each tape’s time length. It wasn’t a matter of just digging up the tapes to play together — he had to make sense of what they must have sounded like in 1969. When he had finished his work, he played the composition for his father. “He was like, ‘I don’t remember a damn thing,’” says Shaff. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When his father asked him who was playing on the tapes, David exclaimed: “That’s you, Dad!” Unable to remember how exactly he had composed the piece so many years ago, the senior Shaff encouraged David to make the piece his own — to transform it how he saw fit. Working on \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i>, then, became more than just historical preservation: it became an act of love that combined past and future, and a way to experiment with a work that was always meant to be experimented with. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have totally different technology now than when they were doing it back in the day,” says Shaff. “So it’s his work, but it’s also kind of my work as well.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931065\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-800x620.jpg\" alt=\"Four figures huddle around a large sound sculpture. They are bathed in blue light.\" width=\"800\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-800x620.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1020x791.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-768x595.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1536x1191.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-2048x1587.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Audium-V-crowd-edited-1920x1488.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attendees surround a sound sculpture in Audium’s lobby space created by artist Ava Koohbor. \u003ccite>(Kristie Song/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I arrive for a recent Thursday evening show, I enter a dark lobby lit by various sound sculptures made by artist \u003ca href=\"https://avakoohborarts.com/\">Ava Koohbor\u003c/a>. Twenty other people mingle in the room, wandering from object to object, before we’re ushered through a narrow pathway that leads to the main theater. Several chairs are arranged in a large circle, and my eyes struggle to adjust to the absence of light. Then the scattering of dim floor lights fades and we’re plunged into pitch-black darkness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the performance, here are some notes I wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The sound of seagulls, foghorns, it feels like you’re enshrouded in mist at the ocean.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>I imagine dark skies, a lighthouse. Whispering dies down, people move in their seats. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>There’s the sound of droplets, a leaky faucet or crack in the ceiling, plop plop plop. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>A machine comes to life, beeping. Whirring voraciously, the plops become violent trickles. The sounds grow louder, echoing across the entire room. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were times, especially in the first act, where I was overtaken with anxiety. A sound would begin as a faint murmur before it suddenly erupted in front of me. It could surge from the ground, or fall from above, moving chaotically and unpredictably. In utter darkness, I felt trapped. I even pondered crawling out of the theater just to escape all the noise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Dad talks about how, back in the day, audiences were much less prepared for something like this,” Shaff explained to me afterward. “But even so, I feel like this work in particular is quite overwhelming even by today’s standards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each iteration of \u003ci>Audium V: Rewind\u003c/i> is different, and Shaff adjusts his live mix based on the audience’s response. Listening for chatter or silence, Shaff will amplify and experiment with the room’s 176 speakers to jolt and stir something in attendees. The piece is not static, and each performance is just as irreplaceable as it was in 1969: a container of that exact audience’s experiences that will never again be the same. “The energy that was happening at that time in the ’60s is still resonating to this day in the Bay in various ways,” says Shaff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words: It resonates and reverberates, glitching and warping, intertwining itself with a dynamic history that centers individuality, liberation and defying conventions. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>David Shaff’s performances of ‘Audium V: Rewind’ run Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through July 22 at Audium in San Francisco. Tickets are $30. \u003ca href=\"https://www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=1760\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "tune-yards-boots-riley-im-a-virgo",
"title": "How Tune-Yards Became the House Band for the Boots Riley Cinematic Universe",
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"headTitle": "How Tune-Yards Became the House Band for the Boots Riley Cinematic Universe | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930965\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"a white man and a woman pose on a rock in front of a lake\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1920x1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square.jpg 1976w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Brenner and Merrill Garbus are Tune-Yards, whose experimental indie pop sets the tone for Boots Riley’s new show, ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pooneh Ghana)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Given the many delightfully strange elements packed into \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kqed.org/arts/13836455/in-sorry-to-bother-you-an-alternate-universe-oakland-is-still-true-and-familiar&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1687838246775907&usg=AOvVaw1djNgiIIFJwO-81Fyq3ZsQ\">\u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Boots Riley’s 2018 directorial debut, one could be forgiven for overlooking its musical score. But from start to finish, the vocal-looped compositions created by Tune-Yards (Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner) play a key role in bringing Riley’s surreal version of Oakland to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13836455']The same is true in \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em>, Riley’s new series for Amazon Prime, which debuted on June 23 to rave reviews. The story, which follows a 13-foot-tall 19-year-old named Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) as he first discovers life outside his house, spans tones and genres; the plot contains elements of a superhero story, a heist movie, a romance, a buddy movie — there’s even an animated show-within-the-show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s consistent is the score, which works subtly but powerfully, almost as its own character. No one in modern pop music uses vocals as an instrument quite the way Tune-Yards does. Garbus’ voice surrounds the viewer, becoming a siren, then percussion; it’s layered into a Greek chorus; its timbre shifts nimbly with the show’s mood. The effect here is expansive — it adds weight to the storyline’s central tragedy, brings a light sweetness to Cootie’s experience of falling in love, and imbues action scenes with a colorful, off-kilter urgency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYfpWY330mM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff\">p\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Virgo\u003c/em> also seems to confirm that Tune-Yards has become the house band for the Boots Riley cinematic universe — the Danny Elfman to his Tim Burton, if you will — which means we can likely expect more from the partnership in years to come. (Riley has said he thinks of \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> and \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> as tracks No. 1 and 2 in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/boots-riley-interview-im-a-virgo-anti-capitalist-revolution-amazon-prime-1234772623/\">seven- or eight-track “cinematic album.”\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Garbus and Brenner work on material for a new Tune-Yards record, the score to \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> should be released on vinyl later this year. We called them up to hear more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emma Silvers: How did you and Boots meet? Were you fans of each other’s work first?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> I believe \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/gabbylalamusic/?hl=en\">Gabby [La La]\u003c/a>, his wife, liked Tune-Yards, and showed him some of our music. And then maybe he saw us at Stern Grove? But the first time we really met was New Year’s Eve 2012, when he opened for Erykah Badu at the Fox. His energy when he performed was just unbelievable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus: \u003c/strong>[His son] Django was only a couple months old at the time, and he was like, wearing him, with the little headphones on, hanging out between sets at the Fox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13927554']I grew up on the East Coast, so I only knew of the Coup peripherally, but once I started listening it was just completely up my alley. Coming from where I come from — my grandparents kind of hovered around the communism of New York Jews in the ’40s and ’50s, and I have a background in a lot of the stuff that I was hearing in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Had you ever scored a film before \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>? How did that part of your partnership begin?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> He was like “I’m making a movie, and I want you to do the music. Can I send you the screenplay?” A lot of times when people say they want Tune-Yards to score something, they mean they want us to write “Bizness” over again, or they want us to write “Water Fountain” over again. But with Boots, I had a feeling he was like, “No, I want all the weird of you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honestly, it sounded too amazing to ever be made into a movie. But I was like, sure, I’ll make some weird music. So we started demoing and recording, and we’d meet at Awaken Cafe and just talk. He wanted a lot of my vocals, and I was using a lot of this harmonizer pedal I was into at that time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no, we had never scored a film before. If you had asked me before if I wanted to, I probably would have been like “Ha! Sure.” But — maybe because I didn’t go to school for music — it always seemed out of the realm of possibility for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/reel/CtsDLj7g_oF/?hl=en\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was your process like for the \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> score?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> We had a lot of time before they even started filming, on both \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> and \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em>. We uploaded probably 100 demos to a SoundCloud, and he was still writing the script while he was listening to those. So he’d be like, ‘Oh, that was cool, you guys sent me that thing and I changed the script to fit it.’ I think he also wound up playing demos for the cast as they were shooting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Boots is really clear about the sounds in his head, including instrumentation. When he told us the concept of the show, I was like ‘Oh, do you want superhero music?’ and he was like ‘No, I don’t. Here is what I want.’ And he gave us a couple references that were wildly different than what I ever would have conceived of: carillon bells; the 1956 Japanese film\u003cem> Street of Shame\u003c/em>, with music by [avant-garde composer] Toshiro Mayuzumi; \u003cem>Cape Fear\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> Throughout the process he’d text us at, like, midnight on a Sunday, being like “Check this out! I don’t want it to sound \u003cem>like\u003c/em> this, but maybe have a similar vibe…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931048\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931048\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-800x534.jpeg\" alt=\"a man and a woman in a music studio, the woman is wearing headphones and sitting at a computer and giving a thumbs up\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563.jpeg 1499w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tune-Yards at their studio, working on the score for ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pete Lee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Having a really strong melody was important to him. He didn’t want it to be abstract music. But he also didn’t want it to be repetitive, like in \u003cem>White Lotus\u003c/em> where you hear the theme over and over again and you can’t get it out of your head … so a lot of the intuition about how to be musicians scoring a television show went out the window. As it did with \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>. We’d be like “Well, typically in movie scores they do this…” and he’d be like, “Erase that from your mind! I don’t want to do typical movie music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> Also, he remembers \u003cem>everything\u003c/em>. He’d come over, like, two nights a week after our kid went to bed, and we’d play him something, and he’d give us notes. “OK, what if we tried a tambourine on this one?” And then we’d have a million things to do, and he’s busy, but four weeks later he’d be like “Let’s hear that tambourine.” He’s always throwing out so many ideas, you think he can’t possibly be keeping track of all of them. But he is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CtkKuRkyH8U/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This show is set in a surreal version of Oakland. Were you consciously thinking about the sound of the Town when you were writing this score?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> I think about Oakland and Oakland music traditions all the time, with the discomfort and self-consciousness of not growing up here, having moved here in 2009. I think Nate and Boots share a lot more of the George Clinton and Bootsy [Collins] thing, Nate grew up listening to that music. But I came to the Coup late, I came to E-40 late. I grew up on the East Coast with New York hip-hop and, like, Dave Matthews Band, the music of suburban Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is all to say, with the exception of the our very first record, all our albums — the music that has really made Tune-Yards Tune-Yards — has been when I’ve lived in Oakland, and it’s \u003cem>always\u003c/em> me trying to figure myself out here, myself as a white person here. I almost want to say “as an expat.”[aside postid='arts_13894750']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With this show, though, I thought a lot about wanting to honor the fact that he asked \u003cem>us\u003c/em> to do this, he wanted Tune-Yards music. So we’re gonna do Tune-Yards music, knowing that Oakland is being filtered through us. Or maybe we’re being filtered through Oakland. Also, the references he gave us were so out there — like, from a Japanese film from the ’50s. If he wanted music that came from Oakland, he knows how to do that. But he wanted the world. He wants everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931049\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931049\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-800x534.jpeg\" alt=\"a woman sitting on the floor and a man sitting on a couch in a music studio\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705.jpeg 1499w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Merrill Garbus and Boots Riley, working on the score for ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pete Lee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were there any particularly challenging scenes or elements?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Definitely the psychic theater [a few segments in which Jones, an organizer played by Kara Young, delivers monologues about capitalism]. The last one is like seven and a half minutes of a character breaking down the exploitative and racist nature of capitalism. It really needs the music to help an audience stick around for that — even though Kara’s acting is amazing, and it’s extremely dynamic. But that’s another problem: how do you use music to move it along and also not get in the way of the dialogue?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpagmvYZKRc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff\">p\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Those scenes are so wild to watch — for me, there was an element of “I can’t believe this is real, that this is going to be on a TV show distributed by Amazon.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> It’s definitely the first time I’ve seen an organizer as the main character in a TV show. There are just so many things [in this show that] we haven’t seen in mainstream culture. But there are organizers all over this country. And now someone could see that and think, ‘Oh, I want to do that in my community. I’ve never seen it before.’ It feels really instructive of how to use art in a way that can tap into people’s imaginations, open them up to different futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ll just say I hope this continues to be the time in our lives where we get to keep working with Boots Riley. \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> was a big change for me, and how I related to music. I think that indie pop, Pitchfork-y world of the mid-2000s that Tune-Yards came up in — I started to feel kind of constricted as an artist, as a creator. And it’s so satisfying to see Boots kind of bloom in pop culture at this particular moment in time. Just to be around him and be part of his creative universe has really opened my mind … It’s reinvigorated my sense of curiosity and inventiveness and wanting to do things that have never been done before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We worked harder on \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> than we have in a really long time, up late at night after our kid went to bed. Even just the amount of music that we wrote … it was all super intense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner: \u003c/strong>It’s one of those where, when you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, oh, we need a vacation as soon as this is over. But then when it’s over you’re like … what am I doing? And you just want to be working on it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘I’m A Virgo’ is streaming now on Amazon Prime. Tune-Yards is scheduled to perform at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma on Aug. 22 and at the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley on Aug. 23; \u003ca href=\"https://tune-yards.com/tourdates/\">details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930965\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"a white man and a woman pose on a rock in front of a lake\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square-1920x1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/tuneyards.square.jpg 1976w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nate Brenner and Merrill Garbus are Tune-Yards, whose experimental indie pop sets the tone for Boots Riley’s new show, ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pooneh Ghana)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Given the many delightfully strange elements packed into \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kqed.org/arts/13836455/in-sorry-to-bother-you-an-alternate-universe-oakland-is-still-true-and-familiar&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1687838246775907&usg=AOvVaw1djNgiIIFJwO-81Fyq3ZsQ\">\u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Boots Riley’s 2018 directorial debut, one could be forgiven for overlooking its musical score. But from start to finish, the vocal-looped compositions created by Tune-Yards (Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner) play a key role in bringing Riley’s surreal version of Oakland to life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The same is true in \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em>, Riley’s new series for Amazon Prime, which debuted on June 23 to rave reviews. The story, which follows a 13-foot-tall 19-year-old named Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) as he first discovers life outside his house, spans tones and genres; the plot contains elements of a superhero story, a heist movie, a romance, a buddy movie — there’s even an animated show-within-the-show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s consistent is the score, which works subtly but powerfully, almost as its own character. No one in modern pop music uses vocals as an instrument quite the way Tune-Yards does. Garbus’ voice surrounds the viewer, becoming a siren, then percussion; it’s layered into a Greek chorus; its timbre shifts nimbly with the show’s mood. The effect here is expansive — it adds weight to the storyline’s central tragedy, brings a light sweetness to Cootie’s experience of falling in love, and imbues action scenes with a colorful, off-kilter urgency.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/DYfpWY330mM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DYfpWY330mM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff\">p\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Virgo\u003c/em> also seems to confirm that Tune-Yards has become the house band for the Boots Riley cinematic universe — the Danny Elfman to his Tim Burton, if you will — which means we can likely expect more from the partnership in years to come. (Riley has said he thinks of \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> and \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> as tracks No. 1 and 2 in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/boots-riley-interview-im-a-virgo-anti-capitalist-revolution-amazon-prime-1234772623/\">seven- or eight-track “cinematic album.”\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Garbus and Brenner work on material for a new Tune-Yards record, the score to \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> should be released on vinyl later this year. We called them up to hear more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Emma Silvers: How did you and Boots meet? Were you fans of each other’s work first?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> I believe \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/gabbylalamusic/?hl=en\">Gabby [La La]\u003c/a>, his wife, liked Tune-Yards, and showed him some of our music. And then maybe he saw us at Stern Grove? But the first time we really met was New Year’s Eve 2012, when he opened for Erykah Badu at the Fox. His energy when he performed was just unbelievable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus: \u003c/strong>[His son] Django was only a couple months old at the time, and he was like, wearing him, with the little headphones on, hanging out between sets at the Fox.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I grew up on the East Coast, so I only knew of the Coup peripherally, but once I started listening it was just completely up my alley. Coming from where I come from — my grandparents kind of hovered around the communism of New York Jews in the ’40s and ’50s, and I have a background in a lot of the stuff that I was hearing in the music.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Had you ever scored a film before \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>? How did that part of your partnership begin?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> He was like “I’m making a movie, and I want you to do the music. Can I send you the screenplay?” A lot of times when people say they want Tune-Yards to score something, they mean they want us to write “Bizness” over again, or they want us to write “Water Fountain” over again. But with Boots, I had a feeling he was like, “No, I want all the weird of you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honestly, it sounded too amazing to ever be made into a movie. But I was like, sure, I’ll make some weird music. So we started demoing and recording, and we’d meet at Awaken Cafe and just talk. He wanted a lot of my vocals, and I was using a lot of this harmonizer pedal I was into at that time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But no, we had never scored a film before. If you had asked me before if I wanted to, I probably would have been like “Ha! Sure.” But — maybe because I didn’t go to school for music — it always seemed out of the realm of possibility for me.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What was your process like for the \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> score?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> We had a lot of time before they even started filming, on both \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> and \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em>. We uploaded probably 100 demos to a SoundCloud, and he was still writing the script while he was listening to those. So he’d be like, ‘Oh, that was cool, you guys sent me that thing and I changed the script to fit it.’ I think he also wound up playing demos for the cast as they were shooting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Boots is really clear about the sounds in his head, including instrumentation. When he told us the concept of the show, I was like ‘Oh, do you want superhero music?’ and he was like ‘No, I don’t. Here is what I want.’ And he gave us a couple references that were wildly different than what I ever would have conceived of: carillon bells; the 1956 Japanese film\u003cem> Street of Shame\u003c/em>, with music by [avant-garde composer] Toshiro Mayuzumi; \u003cem>Cape Fear\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> Throughout the process he’d text us at, like, midnight on a Sunday, being like “Check this out! I don’t want it to sound \u003cem>like\u003c/em> this, but maybe have a similar vibe…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931048\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931048\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-800x534.jpeg\" alt=\"a man and a woman in a music studio, the woman is wearing headphones and sitting at a computer and giving a thumbs up\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/vrgo_s1_ut_100_221024_leepet-00563.jpeg 1499w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tune-Yards at their studio, working on the score for ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pete Lee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Having a really strong melody was important to him. He didn’t want it to be abstract music. But he also didn’t want it to be repetitive, like in \u003cem>White Lotus\u003c/em> where you hear the theme over and over again and you can’t get it out of your head … so a lot of the intuition about how to be musicians scoring a television show went out the window. As it did with \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em>. We’d be like “Well, typically in movie scores they do this…” and he’d be like, “Erase that from your mind! I don’t want to do typical movie music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner:\u003c/strong> Also, he remembers \u003cem>everything\u003c/em>. He’d come over, like, two nights a week after our kid went to bed, and we’d play him something, and he’d give us notes. “OK, what if we tried a tambourine on this one?” And then we’d have a million things to do, and he’s busy, but four weeks later he’d be like “Let’s hear that tambourine.” He’s always throwing out so many ideas, you think he can’t possibly be keeping track of all of them. But he is.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This show is set in a surreal version of Oakland. Were you consciously thinking about the sound of the Town when you were writing this score?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> I think about Oakland and Oakland music traditions all the time, with the discomfort and self-consciousness of not growing up here, having moved here in 2009. I think Nate and Boots share a lot more of the George Clinton and Bootsy [Collins] thing, Nate grew up listening to that music. But I came to the Coup late, I came to E-40 late. I grew up on the East Coast with New York hip-hop and, like, Dave Matthews Band, the music of suburban Connecticut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is all to say, with the exception of the our very first record, all our albums — the music that has really made Tune-Yards Tune-Yards — has been when I’ve lived in Oakland, and it’s \u003cem>always\u003c/em> me trying to figure myself out here, myself as a white person here. I almost want to say “as an expat.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With this show, though, I thought a lot about wanting to honor the fact that he asked \u003cem>us\u003c/em> to do this, he wanted Tune-Yards music. So we’re gonna do Tune-Yards music, knowing that Oakland is being filtered through us. Or maybe we’re being filtered through Oakland. Also, the references he gave us were so out there — like, from a Japanese film from the ’50s. If he wanted music that came from Oakland, he knows how to do that. But he wanted the world. He wants everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931049\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931049\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-800x534.jpeg\" alt=\"a woman sitting on the floor and a man sitting on a couch in a music studio\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-800x534.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-1020x680.jpeg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/iav-1705.jpeg 1499w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Merrill Garbus and Boots Riley, working on the score for ‘I’m A Virgo.’ \u003ccite>(Pete Lee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Were there any particularly challenging scenes or elements?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> Definitely the psychic theater [a few segments in which Jones, an organizer played by Kara Young, delivers monologues about capitalism]. The last one is like seven and a half minutes of a character breaking down the exploitative and racist nature of capitalism. It really needs the music to help an audience stick around for that — even though Kara’s acting is amazing, and it’s extremely dynamic. But that’s another problem: how do you use music to move it along and also not get in the way of the dialogue?\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/lpagmvYZKRc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/lpagmvYZKRc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #ffffff\">p\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Those scenes are so wild to watch — for me, there was an element of “I can’t believe this is real, that this is going to be on a TV show distributed by Amazon.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Merrill Garbus:\u003c/strong> It’s definitely the first time I’ve seen an organizer as the main character in a TV show. There are just so many things [in this show that] we haven’t seen in mainstream culture. But there are organizers all over this country. And now someone could see that and think, ‘Oh, I want to do that in my community. I’ve never seen it before.’ It feels really instructive of how to use art in a way that can tap into people’s imaginations, open them up to different futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ll just say I hope this continues to be the time in our lives where we get to keep working with Boots Riley. \u003cem>Sorry to Bother You\u003c/em> was a big change for me, and how I related to music. I think that indie pop, Pitchfork-y world of the mid-2000s that Tune-Yards came up in — I started to feel kind of constricted as an artist, as a creator. And it’s so satisfying to see Boots kind of bloom in pop culture at this particular moment in time. Just to be around him and be part of his creative universe has really opened my mind … It’s reinvigorated my sense of curiosity and inventiveness and wanting to do things that have never been done before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We worked harder on \u003cem>I’m A Virgo\u003c/em> than we have in a really long time, up late at night after our kid went to bed. Even just the amount of music that we wrote … it was all super intense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nate Brenner: \u003c/strong>It’s one of those where, when you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, oh, we need a vacation as soon as this is over. But then when it’s over you’re like … what am I doing? And you just want to be working on it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘I’m A Virgo’ is streaming now on Amazon Prime. Tune-Yards is scheduled to perform at Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma on Aug. 22 and at the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley on Aug. 23; \u003ca href=\"https://tune-yards.com/tourdates/\">details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Rising Experimental Musician Lucy Liyou Channels Her Inner Songbird Supreme",
"headTitle": "Rising Experimental Musician Lucy Liyou Channels Her Inner Songbird Supreme | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>One of Lucy Liyou’s formative musical experiences came upon hearing Mariah Carey for the first time as a child. At the time, the San Francisco-based experimental musician mostly listened to her dad’s classic rock and the Chopin nocturnes she practiced as a piano student. But when her cousins played her Mariah, she knew she was hearing something special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was just like an explosion,” Liyou recalls over Zoom from Switzerland during her April European tour. “Imagine I’m listening to \u003cem>Hotel California\u003c/em> or whatever, and then suddenly you hear somebody just use the elasticity of their voice in such crazy ways. It changed so much for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This might be surprising if you came to Liyou’s music through her 2020 debut \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em>, sung entirely by a text-to-speech app that sounds like a malevolent robot. But for her new album \u003cem>Dog Dreams (개꿈)\u003c/em>, the 25-year-old sought a more intimate feeling, one that required getting in touch with her inner Songbird Supreme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2603181734/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scheduled to release May 12 via Chicago label \u003ca href=\"https://american-dreams.zone/\">American Dreams\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> is Liyou’s first album to foreground her own vocals. It’s no less outré than her past work, eschewing drums almost entirely on songs that flirt with or surpass the 10-minute mark. In the record’s best moments, Liyou makes a case for herself as an avant-garde answer to elegant, inspirational divas like Mariah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes she’s belting grand, theatrical exhortations of desire. The rest of the time, she’s whispering mere inches from the microphone, and her vocals are sometimes mixed so quietly they become as much of a textural element as her piano and synth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928906\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928906\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucy Liyou performs at Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands on April 8, 2023. \u003ccite>(Stephan C. Kaffa)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I think I realized from a young age what singing could do,” she says. “I just think it took a really long time for me to realize that that was something I could do, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liyou identifies desire as one of the album’s primary themes — for a lover, for a friend, or more broadly “to understand what it means to truly feel at home with who I am.” Liyou, who identifies as transgender, says that these desires are “interconnected and woven together for a lot of people who are trans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its best, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> creates an alternate plane of reality where those desires can become real. In contrast to the alienness of \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> or the slice-of-life sound collages on her 2021 follow-up, \u003cem>Practice\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> sounds opulent, glassy, luxurious. There’s a moment where Liyou wishes for “Disney strings” and immediately receives them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928909\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928909\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucy Liyou performs at Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands on April 8, 2023. \u003ccite>(Stephan C. Kaffa)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mariah Carey’s voice appears twice on the album, once in recognizable form and once abstracted, but the sense of aspirational glamor through which the “Fantasy” singer enchants her legions of “lambs” is present in every moment of this very experimental music. Though \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> is Liyou’s most accessible release thanks to its quiet textures and foregrounding of vocals, it’s still a formidable package: three songs in 35 minutes, two of them over 10 minutes long, proportions more akin to a prog-rock or free jazz album than \u003cem>The Emancipation of Mimi\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think there’s something really powerful about consolidating so many different ideas and emotions into a succinct three minutes,” says Liyou. “But I didn’t really think too much about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only part of the album where Liyou was “adamant about the length of something” was the 14-minute title track, which takes up the entire first side of the LP version and opens with a long passage composed primarily of the distorted sound of the musician’s own saliva. [aside postid='arts_13928718']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liyou co-produced the album with New York-based musician Nick Zanca, formerly known for his downtempo productions as Mister Lies. Zanca initially objected to the album starting with “three minutes of silence.” Liyou, by contrast, describes this passage as “three minutes of growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The birth of these stories and these dreams and these ideas comes from the mouth,” she explains. “The world literally builds from the saliva in that song. So that’s really, really important to me. And it takes time. Worlds don’t build in a minute.” [ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zanca was one of many musicians Liyou reached out to when she was a teenage artist unaware it was even in the “realm of possibility” that other people would hear her work. Another was British electronic artist Klein, who heard a draft of \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> and released the final album on her Ijn Inc. label. (\u003ca href=\"https://lucyliyou.bandcamp.com/album/welfare-practice\">\u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> was recently reissued\u003c/a> by American Dreams alongside \u003cem>Practice\u003c/em> as a single album.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1742030360/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The record received acclaim from both mainstream publications like \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucy-liyou-welfare-practice/\">Pitchfork\u003c/a> and more underground, avant-leaning blogs like \u003ca href=\"https://toneglow.substack.com/p/009-lucy-liyou\">Tone Glow\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://foxydigitalis.zone/tag/lucy-liyou/\">Foxy Digitalis\u003c/a>. Since then, Liyou has established herself as part of a rising contingent of young, American, mostly LGBTQ+ musicians making diaristic, personal, experimental electronic music; her spring European tour included a show with the acclaimed, indie-beloved Texas percussionist and sound artist Claire Rousay, plus appearances at vaunted venues like London’s Cafe OTO and The Hague’s Rewire Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em>, inspired by Korean p’ansori music, deals unflinchingly with Liyou’s relationship with her parents, with whom she’s currently living in San Francisco while waiting to move to Los Angeles to study composition at University of Southern California. Anyone with a difficult relationship with their own parents might find \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> keenly relatable, impossible to listen to, or both. \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> may go down a little easier, but it’s still an intensely personal record. [aside postid='arts_13927554']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You gotta make stuff thinking like nobody’s gonna hear it, and you gotta make stuff just not thinking about anyone else’s opinions or anyone else’s perspective on it,” she says. “I operate, or at least I attempt to operate, with that level of fearlessness and limitlessness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11687704\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-800x60.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"60\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-400x30.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-768x58.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>One of Lucy Liyou’s formative musical experiences came upon hearing Mariah Carey for the first time as a child. At the time, the San Francisco-based experimental musician mostly listened to her dad’s classic rock and the Chopin nocturnes she practiced as a piano student. But when her cousins played her Mariah, she knew she was hearing something special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was just like an explosion,” Liyou recalls over Zoom from Switzerland during her April European tour. “Imagine I’m listening to \u003cem>Hotel California\u003c/em> or whatever, and then suddenly you hear somebody just use the elasticity of their voice in such crazy ways. It changed so much for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This might be surprising if you came to Liyou’s music through her 2020 debut \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em>, sung entirely by a text-to-speech app that sounds like a malevolent robot. But for her new album \u003cem>Dog Dreams (개꿈)\u003c/em>, the 25-year-old sought a more intimate feeling, one that required getting in touch with her inner Songbird Supreme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2603181734/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scheduled to release May 12 via Chicago label \u003ca href=\"https://american-dreams.zone/\">American Dreams\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> is Liyou’s first album to foreground her own vocals. It’s no less outré than her past work, eschewing drums almost entirely on songs that flirt with or surpass the 10-minute mark. In the record’s best moments, Liyou makes a case for herself as an avant-garde answer to elegant, inspirational divas like Mariah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes she’s belting grand, theatrical exhortations of desire. The rest of the time, she’s whispering mere inches from the microphone, and her vocals are sometimes mixed so quietly they become as much of a textural element as her piano and synth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928906\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928906\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_001-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucy Liyou performs at Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands on April 8, 2023. \u003ccite>(Stephan C. Kaffa)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I think I realized from a young age what singing could do,” she says. “I just think it took a really long time for me to realize that that was something I could do, too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liyou identifies desire as one of the album’s primary themes — for a lover, for a friend, or more broadly “to understand what it means to truly feel at home with who I am.” Liyou, who identifies as transgender, says that these desires are “interconnected and woven together for a lot of people who are trans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its best, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> creates an alternate plane of reality where those desires can become real. In contrast to the alienness of \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> or the slice-of-life sound collages on her 2021 follow-up, \u003cem>Practice\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> sounds opulent, glassy, luxurious. There’s a moment where Liyou wishes for “Disney strings” and immediately receives them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928909\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928909\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/LucyLiyou_-_Rewire_20230408_-_Stephan_C_Kaffa_010-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucy Liyou performs at Rewire Festival in The Hague, Netherlands on April 8, 2023. \u003ccite>(Stephan C. Kaffa)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Mariah Carey’s voice appears twice on the album, once in recognizable form and once abstracted, but the sense of aspirational glamor through which the “Fantasy” singer enchants her legions of “lambs” is present in every moment of this very experimental music. Though \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> is Liyou’s most accessible release thanks to its quiet textures and foregrounding of vocals, it’s still a formidable package: three songs in 35 minutes, two of them over 10 minutes long, proportions more akin to a prog-rock or free jazz album than \u003cem>The Emancipation of Mimi\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think there’s something really powerful about consolidating so many different ideas and emotions into a succinct three minutes,” says Liyou. “But I didn’t really think too much about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only part of the album where Liyou was “adamant about the length of something” was the 14-minute title track, which takes up the entire first side of the LP version and opens with a long passage composed primarily of the distorted sound of the musician’s own saliva. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Liyou co-produced the album with New York-based musician Nick Zanca, formerly known for his downtempo productions as Mister Lies. Zanca initially objected to the album starting with “three minutes of silence.” Liyou, by contrast, describes this passage as “three minutes of growth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The birth of these stories and these dreams and these ideas comes from the mouth,” she explains. “The world literally builds from the saliva in that song. So that’s really, really important to me. And it takes time. Worlds don’t build in a minute.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zanca was one of many musicians Liyou reached out to when she was a teenage artist unaware it was even in the “realm of possibility” that other people would hear her work. Another was British electronic artist Klein, who heard a draft of \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> and released the final album on her Ijn Inc. label. (\u003ca href=\"https://lucyliyou.bandcamp.com/album/welfare-practice\">\u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> was recently reissued\u003c/a> by American Dreams alongside \u003cem>Practice\u003c/em> as a single album.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1742030360/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The record received acclaim from both mainstream publications like \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucy-liyou-welfare-practice/\">Pitchfork\u003c/a> and more underground, avant-leaning blogs like \u003ca href=\"https://toneglow.substack.com/p/009-lucy-liyou\">Tone Glow\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://foxydigitalis.zone/tag/lucy-liyou/\">Foxy Digitalis\u003c/a>. Since then, Liyou has established herself as part of a rising contingent of young, American, mostly LGBTQ+ musicians making diaristic, personal, experimental electronic music; her spring European tour included a show with the acclaimed, indie-beloved Texas percussionist and sound artist Claire Rousay, plus appearances at vaunted venues like London’s Cafe OTO and The Hague’s Rewire Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em>, inspired by Korean p’ansori music, deals unflinchingly with Liyou’s relationship with her parents, with whom she’s currently living in San Francisco while waiting to move to Los Angeles to study composition at University of Southern California. Anyone with a difficult relationship with their own parents might find \u003cem>Welfare\u003c/em> keenly relatable, impossible to listen to, or both. \u003cem>Dog Dreams\u003c/em> may go down a little easier, but it’s still an intensely personal record. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You gotta make stuff thinking like nobody’s gonna hear it, and you gotta make stuff just not thinking about anyone else’s opinions or anyone else’s perspective on it,” she says. “I operate, or at least I attempt to operate, with that level of fearlessness and limitlessness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11687704\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-800x60.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"60\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-400x30.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/Turntable.Break_-768x58.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The festival’s name wasn’t intended to evoke the increasingly precarious status of the Bay Area’s most celebrated outpost for new music. But it’s hard not to read a double meaning into \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://performingarts.mills.edu/programs/mills-music-now/fault-zone/index.php\">Music in the Fault Zone\u003c/a>: Experimental Music at Mills College (1939 to the present)\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A program of eight concerts that runs over four days, April 21-24, \u003cem>Music in the Fault Zone\u003c/em> brings together a broad swath of the world’s most venturesome musicians, many of whom studied at Mills. Together, they’ll perform works by epochal Mills-associated composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Darius Milhaud, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Roscoe Mitchell, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley and Henry Cowell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presented by the Mills College Music Department and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mills.edu/academics/graduate-programs/music/center-contemporary-music/index.php\">Center for Contemporary Music\u003c/a>, the festival showcases a priceless legacy—and one that’s at risk, as seismic forces threaten to swallow a music program that’s long served as a proving ground for the future of music the world over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912032\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912032\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-800x547.jpg\" alt=\"An elderly man at a string of laptops on stage.\" width=\"800\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-800x547.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-1020x697.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-768x525.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Morton Subotnick, perhaps best known for his late-1960s album ‘Silver Apples of the Moon,’ co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center at Mills College in 1961. He is shown here in New York City in 2004. \u003ccite>(Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Acquired last year by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11888178/mills-college-to-merge-with-northeastern-university-after-months-long-court-battle\">Northeastern University\u003c/a>, Mills is “merging” with the non-profit Boston school in a deal that’s slated for completion on July 1. Efforts by Mills alumni to halt the process haven’t gained legal traction, and much of their campaign has focused on the loss of yet another all-women undergraduate institution. (The loss of Mills leaves just under three dozen of them across the United States.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the graduate music program has always accepted men, women figured prominently in the Center for Contemporary Music long before they were welcomed at other music schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_12248119']“When I first moved to the Bay Area from Fresno in 1967, I spent a lot of time there because that’s where the action was,” says composer Charles Amirkhanian, who has collaborated with, commissioned and presented dozens of musicians associated with Mills as music director at KPFA from 1969-1992 and as founder of the new music organization and festival \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/team/charles-amirkhanian/\">Other Minds\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pauline Oliveros, who co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961 with composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, became director of the pioneering electronic music laboratory (later re-named the Center for Contemporary Music) when it moved to Mills in the fall of 1966, “which inspired a bunch of woman,” Amirkhanian says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a way station for people like Laurie Anderson. I remember seeing a concert she gave in the Mills cafeteria for about 10 people. We were so stunned by what she did. She couldn’t get a gig anywhere else, but Mills welcomed her. It’s sad to think such a big piece of music history is evaporating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcl6dS4_HnU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Northeastern has revealed few details about what the campus will look like after the merger establishes what’s to be known as Mills College at Northeastern University and the overlapping Mills Institute, which is slated to focus on “advancing women’s leadership and to empowering BIPOC and first-generation students,” according to Northeastern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mills and Northeastern are working closely together to create new programs that leverage each institution’s unique strengths,” a representative from Northeastern told KQED, when asked about plans regarding the Center for Contemporary Music and its extensive, historically important archive, which contains scores of recordings and cutting-edge instruments dating back 60 years. “Mills’ world-renowned music program remains a high priority for both institutions, and so is the preservation of the program’s historical archives. ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUfd6KI90gQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Featuring two concerts per day with intimate afternoon sessions in Lisser Hall, followed by evening performances in the gorgeous Littlefield Concert Hall, \u003cem>Music in the Fault Zone \u003c/em>conveys a proper sense of what’s at stake. The festival kicks off Thursday, April 21, with a celebration of the late Oliveros, titled “Pauline Dreams,” by her partner, the playwright, poet and sound artist Ione, joined by Anne Hege, Brenda Hutchinson and Jennifer Wilsey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912040\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-800x345.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman with glasses sits at a tape machine; An African-American woman in her 60s or 70s smiles at the camera, wearing a black and blue patterned shirt.\" width=\"800\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-800x345.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-1020x440.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-160x69.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-768x331.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pauline Oliveros (left) was a professor at Mills College and director of what came to be called its Center for Contemporary Music; Oliveros’ partner Ione (right) will perform a tribute to Oliveros with Anne Hege, Brenda Hutchinson and Jennifer Wilsey on April 21 as part of ‘Music in the Fault Zone.’ \u003ccite>(Oliveros Courtesy the CCM Archive, Mills College; Ione courtesy the artist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The opening-night program also includes the ambient Americana of Saariselka, a project by Mills graduates Marielle Jakobson and Chuck Johnson; Gamelan Encinal performing works by John Cage, Lou Harrison and Daniel Schmidt; and a closing set by feminist noise reggaeton duo Las Sucias featuring Mills alumni Danishta Rivero and Alexandra Buschman. Like all \u003cem>Fault Zone \u003c/em>concerts, it will be available for viewing via livestream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDlTgY5n5_c\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thursday’s evening concert includes Opera Parallèle’s Nicole Paiement conducting “La création du monde” and “L’homme et son désir” by French composer Darius Milhaud, who taught at Mills from 1940-71 after fleeing the Nazis (among his many students was the future jazz star Dave Brubeck).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other half of Thursday’s program features works by Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Roscoe Mitchell, whose influence still reverberates widely in the Bay Area after his 12-year stint as a Mills professor holding the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition. Pianist Sarah Cahill and violinist Kate Stenberg perform the world premiere of Mitchell’s “Cards in 3D Colors,” and Steed Cowart conducts “Distant Radio Transmission” for improvisers and orchestra along with “Sustain and Run” for orchestra and solo improvisers (including Mitchell himself).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885086\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-800x535.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-1020x683.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-768x514.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-1536x1028.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Longtime Mills College professor Roscoe Mitchell. \u003ccite>(Ken Weiss)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The sheer density of musicians and composers brought together on the festival’s stage echoes the creative frisson sparked at Mills over the decades, as adventurous musicians regularly flew into each other’s orbit. For percussionist William Winant, going to work in the Mills music building was a daily sojourn into the unknown. For some four decades, the his studio door stayed open to sonic adventures with protean artists who’d then go on to compose music for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday night at \u003cem>Fault Zone\u003c/em>, as part of an improvisational trio with James Fei and David Rosenboom, Winant performs the music of the legendary composer/multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, who taught at Mills from 1985 to 1990. Saturday evening’s concert concludes with a duo improvisation featuring Winant and French bass virtuoso Joëlle Léandre, who served as Milhaud Professor for several years in the aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcBhXjCb8R8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That was one of the incredible things, I never knew who would be across the hall,” Winant said. “Roscoe, Braxton, Lou Harrison, Joëlle Léandre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She would hear me practicing for hour after hour, and she would be doing her thing. We got to be good friends. When she was invited to come play the festival she asked to do a duo with me, and I was very touched. She’s one of the great artists of all time, one of the best bassists I’ve ever heard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winant performs in two different settings Saturday. The concert opens with a work by David Behrman performed by a trio with Winant, computer music pioneer John Bischoff, and harpist Zeena Parkins, the current Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition. The final concert concludes with a performance by the William Winant Percussion Ensemble playing music by John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Steed Cowart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of music at Mills is uncertain at best. Winant worries that \u003cem>Fault Lines\u003c/em> will bring down the boom upon an astonishing legacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912022\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912022\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-800x533.jpeg\" alt=\"A white man plays a variety of drums as a seated audience looks on.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Winant performs as part of ‘Music in the Fault Zone’ at Mills on April 24. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I have a feeling it’s the end of an era,” he said. “It would be good if Northeastern keeps the program going, but I’m not sure if they’re aware of the incredible history over the last 100 years, in terms of supporting innovative and creative music. For a small little college, it’s incredible. And it continues in the 21st century. Mills is still producing amazing students all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cem>‘Music In the Fault Zone’ runs April 21–24 at Mills College in Oakland. \u003ca href=\"https://performingarts.mills.edu/programs/mills-music-now/fault-zone/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Correction\u003c/strong>: A previous version of this article classified Northeastern University as a for-profit college. It is a 501(c)(3), a non-profit university, and not a for-profit college. KQED regrets the error. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Watch a KQED ‘Spark’ episode about Pauline Oliveros from 2004 below:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ2W42bOQxY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The festival’s name wasn’t intended to evoke the increasingly precarious status of the Bay Area’s most celebrated outpost for new music. But it’s hard not to read a double meaning into \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://performingarts.mills.edu/programs/mills-music-now/fault-zone/index.php\">Music in the Fault Zone\u003c/a>: Experimental Music at Mills College (1939 to the present)\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A program of eight concerts that runs over four days, April 21-24, \u003cem>Music in the Fault Zone\u003c/em> brings together a broad swath of the world’s most venturesome musicians, many of whom studied at Mills. Together, they’ll perform works by epochal Mills-associated composers, including Pauline Oliveros, Darius Milhaud, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Roscoe Mitchell, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley and Henry Cowell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presented by the Mills College Music Department and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mills.edu/academics/graduate-programs/music/center-contemporary-music/index.php\">Center for Contemporary Music\u003c/a>, the festival showcases a priceless legacy—and one that’s at risk, as seismic forces threaten to swallow a music program that’s long served as a proving ground for the future of music the world over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912032\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912032\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-800x547.jpg\" alt=\"An elderly man at a string of laptops on stage.\" width=\"800\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-800x547.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-1020x697.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick-768x525.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/MortonSubtonick.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Morton Subotnick, perhaps best known for his late-1960s album ‘Silver Apples of the Moon,’ co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center at Mills College in 1961. He is shown here in New York City in 2004. \u003ccite>(Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Acquired last year by \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11888178/mills-college-to-merge-with-northeastern-university-after-months-long-court-battle\">Northeastern University\u003c/a>, Mills is “merging” with the non-profit Boston school in a deal that’s slated for completion on July 1. Efforts by Mills alumni to halt the process haven’t gained legal traction, and much of their campaign has focused on the loss of yet another all-women undergraduate institution. (The loss of Mills leaves just under three dozen of them across the United States.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the graduate music program has always accepted men, women figured prominently in the Center for Contemporary Music long before they were welcomed at other music schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“When I first moved to the Bay Area from Fresno in 1967, I spent a lot of time there because that’s where the action was,” says composer Charles Amirkhanian, who has collaborated with, commissioned and presented dozens of musicians associated with Mills as music director at KPFA from 1969-1992 and as founder of the new music organization and festival \u003ca href=\"https://www.otherminds.org/team/charles-amirkhanian/\">Other Minds\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pauline Oliveros, who co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961 with composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, became director of the pioneering electronic music laboratory (later re-named the Center for Contemporary Music) when it moved to Mills in the fall of 1966, “which inspired a bunch of woman,” Amirkhanian says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a way station for people like Laurie Anderson. I remember seeing a concert she gave in the Mills cafeteria for about 10 people. We were so stunned by what she did. She couldn’t get a gig anywhere else, but Mills welcomed her. It’s sad to think such a big piece of music history is evaporating.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Gcl6dS4_HnU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Gcl6dS4_HnU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Northeastern has revealed few details about what the campus will look like after the merger establishes what’s to be known as Mills College at Northeastern University and the overlapping Mills Institute, which is slated to focus on “advancing women’s leadership and to empowering BIPOC and first-generation students,” according to Northeastern.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mills and Northeastern are working closely together to create new programs that leverage each institution’s unique strengths,” a representative from Northeastern told KQED, when asked about plans regarding the Center for Contemporary Music and its extensive, historically important archive, which contains scores of recordings and cutting-edge instruments dating back 60 years. “Mills’ world-renowned music program remains a high priority for both institutions, and so is the preservation of the program’s historical archives. ”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/oUfd6KI90gQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/oUfd6KI90gQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Featuring two concerts per day with intimate afternoon sessions in Lisser Hall, followed by evening performances in the gorgeous Littlefield Concert Hall, \u003cem>Music in the Fault Zone \u003c/em>conveys a proper sense of what’s at stake. The festival kicks off Thursday, April 21, with a celebration of the late Oliveros, titled “Pauline Dreams,” by her partner, the playwright, poet and sound artist Ione, joined by Anne Hege, Brenda Hutchinson and Jennifer Wilsey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912040\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-800x345.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman with glasses sits at a tape machine; An African-American woman in her 60s or 70s smiles at the camera, wearing a black and blue patterned shirt.\" width=\"800\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-800x345.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-1020x440.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-160x69.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_-768x331.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Oliveros_tape.Ione_.jpg 1240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pauline Oliveros (left) was a professor at Mills College and director of what came to be called its Center for Contemporary Music; Oliveros’ partner Ione (right) will perform a tribute to Oliveros with Anne Hege, Brenda Hutchinson and Jennifer Wilsey on April 21 as part of ‘Music in the Fault Zone.’ \u003ccite>(Oliveros Courtesy the CCM Archive, Mills College; Ione courtesy the artist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The opening-night program also includes the ambient Americana of Saariselka, a project by Mills graduates Marielle Jakobson and Chuck Johnson; Gamelan Encinal performing works by John Cage, Lou Harrison and Daniel Schmidt; and a closing set by feminist noise reggaeton duo Las Sucias featuring Mills alumni Danishta Rivero and Alexandra Buschman. Like all \u003cem>Fault Zone \u003c/em>concerts, it will be available for viewing via livestream.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RDlTgY5n5_c'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RDlTgY5n5_c'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Thursday’s evening concert includes Opera Parallèle’s Nicole Paiement conducting “La création du monde” and “L’homme et son désir” by French composer Darius Milhaud, who taught at Mills from 1940-71 after fleeing the Nazis (among his many students was the future jazz star Dave Brubeck).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other half of Thursday’s program features works by Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Roscoe Mitchell, whose influence still reverberates widely in the Bay Area after his 12-year stint as a Mills professor holding the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition. Pianist Sarah Cahill and violinist Kate Stenberg perform the world premiere of Mitchell’s “Cards in 3D Colors,” and Steed Cowart conducts “Distant Radio Transmission” for improvisers and orchestra along with “Sustain and Run” for orchestra and solo improvisers (including Mitchell himself).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13885086\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13885086\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-800x535.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-1020x683.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-768x514.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss-1536x1028.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Roscoe-Mitchell-by-Ken-Weiss.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Longtime Mills College professor Roscoe Mitchell. \u003ccite>(Ken Weiss)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The sheer density of musicians and composers brought together on the festival’s stage echoes the creative frisson sparked at Mills over the decades, as adventurous musicians regularly flew into each other’s orbit. For percussionist William Winant, going to work in the Mills music building was a daily sojourn into the unknown. For some four decades, the his studio door stayed open to sonic adventures with protean artists who’d then go on to compose music for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday night at \u003cem>Fault Zone\u003c/em>, as part of an improvisational trio with James Fei and David Rosenboom, Winant performs the music of the legendary composer/multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, who taught at Mills from 1985 to 1990. Saturday evening’s concert concludes with a duo improvisation featuring Winant and French bass virtuoso Joëlle Léandre, who served as Milhaud Professor for several years in the aughts.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/vcBhXjCb8R8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/vcBhXjCb8R8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“That was one of the incredible things, I never knew who would be across the hall,” Winant said. “Roscoe, Braxton, Lou Harrison, Joëlle Léandre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She would hear me practicing for hour after hour, and she would be doing her thing. We got to be good friends. When she was invited to come play the festival she asked to do a duo with me, and I was very touched. She’s one of the great artists of all time, one of the best bassists I’ve ever heard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winant performs in two different settings Saturday. The concert opens with a work by David Behrman performed by a trio with Winant, computer music pioneer John Bischoff, and harpist Zeena Parkins, the current Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition. The final concert concludes with a performance by the William Winant Percussion Ensemble playing music by John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Steed Cowart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of music at Mills is uncertain at best. Winant worries that \u003cem>Fault Lines\u003c/em> will bring down the boom upon an astonishing legacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912022\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912022\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-800x533.jpeg\" alt=\"A white man plays a variety of drums as a seated audience looks on.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-800x533.jpeg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-160x107.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/William-Winant.jpeg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Winant performs as part of ‘Music in the Fault Zone’ at Mills on April 24. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the artist)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I have a feeling it’s the end of an era,” he said. “It would be good if Northeastern keeps the program going, but I’m not sure if they’re aware of the incredible history over the last 100 years, in terms of supporting innovative and creative music. For a small little college, it’s incredible. And it continues in the 21st century. Mills is still producing amazing students all the time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cem>‘Music In the Fault Zone’ runs April 21–24 at Mills College in Oakland. \u003ca href=\"https://performingarts.mills.edu/programs/mills-music-now/fault-zone/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Correction\u003c/strong>: A previous version of this article classified Northeastern University as a for-profit college. It is a 501(c)(3), a non-profit university, and not a for-profit college. KQED regrets the error. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Watch a KQED ‘Spark’ episode about Pauline Oliveros from 2004 below:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/eQ2W42bOQxY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/eQ2W42bOQxY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "It's a New Era for Audium, San Francisco's 'Theater of Sound'",
"headTitle": "It’s a New Era for Audium, San Francisco’s ‘Theater of Sound’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s a Wednesday night in San Francisco, and I’m sitting in pitch-black darkness. In one minute, I’m sailing on the sea, and the next minute I’m in an airplane with loose, squeaky wings. Eventually I’m floating through a glass factory. Then the lights come up, and I’m back in a futuristic-looking room on Bush Street, snapped out of my reverie. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since its opening here in 1975, this room, \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Audium\u003c/a>, has been one of San Francisco’s most adventurous first dates. Billing itself as a “theater of sound,” Audium hosts attendees in a circle and pipes experimental music, noises, and soundscapes out of the walls, floor and ceiling in total darkness. Call it surround-sound gone berserk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, in the words of Audium’s director David Shaff: “There’s 176 speakers, we turn the lights out, you listen for an hour, and hopefully it takes you somewhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The listening room at Audium, seen from the control booth, is outfitted with 176 speakers. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For over 50 years (the venue’s first location opened in 1967), the sound composition at Audium was programmed solely by co-founder Stan Shaff. In 2018, his son David began sharing the control booth. Now, Audium’s first-ever residency program is providing the Bay Area’s deep listeners with new work by three young Bay Area artists: Victoria Shen, Alexa Burrell, and Noah Berrie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if the final rehearsal for \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/new-voices/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">New Voices\u003c/a>\u003c/em> is any indication, they’ve brought a fresh approach and truly imagined Audium as, in the words of Shaff, a “composable being” unto itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shen’s \u003cem>Terpsichore\u003c/em> is an homage to Audium, mixing her own analog background as a builder of modular synthesizers and \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/evicshen/status/1403368102742532096\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">turntable manipulator\u003c/a> with the space’s new digital setup. \u003cem>A(void Fire)\u003c/em> by Alexa Burrell is an “Afro-surrealist techno-horror fairytale” influenced by surviving the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire, and the 2017 wildfires that burned down her mother’s house. Noah Berrie’s \u003cem>Organ Music\u003c/em> draws on voice, skin textures and other “bodily things,” with a custom-built instrument to augment the soundscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the three had visited Audium before applying to the residency, but all show a deep respect for the venue. Burrell calls it a “deeply emotional and spiritual” experience to sit in darkness and “sink into listening and hearing.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909227\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909227\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Shaff sits at Audium’s master control. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shaff tells me that he was intentionally looking for artists who work outside of his father’s magnetic-tape, musique-concrète style; “people who can have a conversation with this place, and figure out what works and what doesn’t,’ he says. “That was the conversation that Dad was having for 50 years, but it was just one conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The elder Shaff, now 92 and still involved in a consulting capacity, made Audium a destination. Musicians like Pierre Henry and members of the Grateful Dead and the Sun Ra Arkestra would come to marinate within its walls. Engineers from Dolby, Disney and Meyer Sound also visited, drawing on its pioneering approach to inform their own digital sound advances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, Audium itself used the downtime to switch over to digital. The sound is crisp and clean now out of each speaker, Shaff says, instead of being “smudged” into certain areas of the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while there may be longtime Audium fans dismayed that the old Ampex reel-to-reel tape console now sits unused, and the old analog board with its knobs and switches is dismantled and perched on its side, the digital shift befits Audium’s spirit of exploration and newness. (It doesn’t seem to have changed Audium’s core mission, either. On a butcher-paper brainstorm for Audium’s future hanging on the office wall, under a section titled “Values,” I notice that someone’s written, “Money: OK, if there is intent. Art + Listening = #1.”) \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909294\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The old Ampex tape console at Audium. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shaff plans to make residencies with Bay Area artists an annual tradition—along with inviting others in for a month at a time, like Amy X Neuburg’s takeover of the space this coming July. But he’s keeping one foot firmly planted in its history, and the irreplaceable legacy of the family business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the crew takes a pizza-and-beer break out on the sidewalk beneath Audium’s distinctive \u003ca href=\"https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/53198839328553529/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">wooden facade\u003c/a>, Shen says it best: “It’s one of the last cool, weird, old-school things in San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘New Voices’ opens Thursday, Feb. 10 and runs through April 2 at Audium (1616 Bush St., San Francisco). \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/new-voices/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "It's a New Era for Audium, San Francisco's 'Theater of Sound'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s a Wednesday night in San Francisco, and I’m sitting in pitch-black darkness. In one minute, I’m sailing on the sea, and the next minute I’m in an airplane with loose, squeaky wings. Eventually I’m floating through a glass factory. Then the lights come up, and I’m back in a futuristic-looking room on Bush Street, snapped out of my reverie. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since its opening here in 1975, this room, \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Audium\u003c/a>, has been one of San Francisco’s most adventurous first dates. Billing itself as a “theater of sound,” Audium hosts attendees in a circle and pipes experimental music, noises, and soundscapes out of the walls, floor and ceiling in total darkness. Call it surround-sound gone berserk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or, in the words of Audium’s director David Shaff: “There’s 176 speakers, we turn the lights out, you listen for an hour, and hopefully it takes you somewhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909229\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Room_.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The listening room at Audium, seen from the control booth, is outfitted with 176 speakers. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For over 50 years (the venue’s first location opened in 1967), the sound composition at Audium was programmed solely by co-founder Stan Shaff. In 2018, his son David began sharing the control booth. Now, Audium’s first-ever residency program is providing the Bay Area’s deep listeners with new work by three young Bay Area artists: Victoria Shen, Alexa Burrell, and Noah Berrie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if the final rehearsal for \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/new-voices/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">New Voices\u003c/a>\u003c/em> is any indication, they’ve brought a fresh approach and truly imagined Audium as, in the words of Shaff, a “composable being” unto itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shen’s \u003cem>Terpsichore\u003c/em> is an homage to Audium, mixing her own analog background as a builder of modular synthesizers and \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/evicshen/status/1403368102742532096\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">turntable manipulator\u003c/a> with the space’s new digital setup. \u003cem>A(void Fire)\u003c/em> by Alexa Burrell is an “Afro-surrealist techno-horror fairytale” influenced by surviving the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire, and the 2017 wildfires that burned down her mother’s house. Noah Berrie’s \u003cem>Organ Music\u003c/em> draws on voice, skin textures and other “bodily things,” with a custom-built instrument to augment the soundscape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the three had visited Audium before applying to the residency, but all show a deep respect for the venue. Burrell calls it a “deeply emotional and spiritual” experience to sit in darkness and “sink into listening and hearing.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909227\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909227\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.DavidSheff.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Shaff sits at Audium’s master control. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shaff tells me that he was intentionally looking for artists who work outside of his father’s magnetic-tape, musique-concrète style; “people who can have a conversation with this place, and figure out what works and what doesn’t,’ he says. “That was the conversation that Dad was having for 50 years, but it was just one conversation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The elder Shaff, now 92 and still involved in a consulting capacity, made Audium a destination. Musicians like Pierre Henry and members of the Grateful Dead and the Sun Ra Arkestra would come to marinate within its walls. Engineers from Dolby, Disney and Meyer Sound also visited, drawing on its pioneering approach to inform their own digital sound advances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, Audium itself used the downtime to switch over to digital. The sound is crisp and clean now out of each speaker, Shaff says, instead of being “smudged” into certain areas of the room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while there may be longtime Audium fans dismayed that the old Ampex reel-to-reel tape console now sits unused, and the old analog board with its knobs and switches is dismantled and perched on its side, the digital shift befits Audium’s spirit of exploration and newness. (It doesn’t seem to have changed Audium’s core mission, either. On a butcher-paper brainstorm for Audium’s future hanging on the office wall, under a section titled “Values,” I notice that someone’s written, “Money: OK, if there is intent. Art + Listening = #1.”) \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13909294\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13909294\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Audium.Tape_.2.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The old Ampex tape console at Audium. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Shaff plans to make residencies with Bay Area artists an annual tradition—along with inviting others in for a month at a time, like Amy X Neuburg’s takeover of the space this coming July. But he’s keeping one foot firmly planted in its history, and the irreplaceable legacy of the family business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the crew takes a pizza-and-beer break out on the sidewalk beneath Audium’s distinctive \u003ca href=\"https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/53198839328553529/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">wooden facade\u003c/a>, Shen says it best: “It’s one of the last cool, weird, old-school things in San Francisco.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘New Voices’ opens Thursday, Feb. 10 and runs through April 2 at Audium (1616 Bush St., San Francisco). \u003ca href=\"https://www.audium.org/new-voices/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Residents’ New Book Illustrates 50 Years of Art-Rock Weirdness",
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"content": "\u003cp>Ask even the most ardent fans of \u003ca href=\"https://www.residents.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Residents\u003c/a> about their first exposure to the art rock group, and their responses are likely to focus on the visual rather than the aural—the unsettling, unforgettable sight of four men in top hats and tails whose heads have been replaced with giant eyeballs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My first memory of seeing The Residents was on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nightflightplus.com/videos/night-flight-40th-anniversary-the-residents-peformance/60bae3fa274731000169a648\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Night Flight\u003c/em>\u003c/a> back in the ’80s,” remembers graphic designer \u003ca href=\"https://sugarpressart.com/artists/aaron-tanner/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Tanner\u003c/a>. “However, I was too young to comprehend what my still-developing brain had actually witnessed. Fast forward to the early ’90s when Primus covered ‘\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/DOyy501jsgc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sinister Exaggerator\u003c/a>,’ and all of those memories of ‘creatures’ with eyeballs for heads came flooding back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13907920\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13907920\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cover of ‘The Residents: Site for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1,’ a visual history of the famed art rock group. \u003ccite>(Melodic Virtue)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Or as \u003ca href=\"http://thirdworlds.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Death Grips\u003c/a> drummer and co-founder Zach Hill puts it, “Being a Bay Area/Northern California native, the eyeball was like the weirdo kids’ Mickey Mouse. And you’d see it before even knowing what it was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area mainstays The Residents remain masters of media and mystery. Though the band has been around in one form or another since the late ’60s, no one is entirely sure who the members of the group are (although there are \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Residents#Identity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some theories\u003c/a>). The enigma has an undeniable allure, and The Residents add to their strange appeal through off-kilter music—jazz-inflected psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation that warps and wriggles like a worm under a heat lamp. Their striking album art, film and video work, and eye-popping stage performances make them all the more intriguing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It feels entirely appropriate then that the first official book to track the history of this unique group, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.melodicvirtue.com/products/the-residents-a-sight-for-sore-eyes-vol-1-deluxe-edition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Residents: A Sight For Sore Eyes Vol. 1\u003c/a>\u003c/em> (out Jan. 7 via Melodic Virtue), is an almost entirely visual document. The hefty tome tracks through group’s evolution from their earliest days as hippie dropouts who landed in San Mateo in 1968 to their 1983 performances of \u003cem>The Mole Show\u003c/em>, a stage show featuring magician and collaborator Penn Jillette. The volume is a sumptuous feast of photos, film stills, promotional material and collages of critical reactions to the music. (“Somehow, I thought of it as sounding like what Steely Dan or Frank Zappa might sound like on strong acid,” said one critic of the Residents’ 1977 album \u003cem>Fingerprince\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/PJ7qaCSRIUY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though it was created with the active participation of The Residents and their appropriately named management group, The Cryptic Corporation, the book itself was initiated by Tanner, who made his way into their circle through another similarly unclassifiable group that he works with closely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been \u003ca href=\"https://ween.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ween\u003c/a>’s primary designer for over 15 years, and all of their self-released albums were distributed through MVD,” Tanner says, referring to the entertainment company. “After I had started producing books and realized that MVD was also working with The Residents, I asked for an introduction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, Tanner was allowed access to The Residents’ voluminous archives. “Digging through those old boxes was my version of visiting Disneyland,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He unearthed all manner of ephemera, including the legendary rejection letters the group received after submitting their demo tapes to Warner Brothers Records’ merchandising director, Hal Halverstadt. “I hate to tell you this,” reads one, “but \u003cem>Baby Sex\u003c/em>”—the group’s now-fabled 1971 demo—“did not (repeat, did not) set Burbank on its ear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other surprises include some stark digital visuals that the group put together in 1992 as a proposal to turn their 1979 album \u003cem>Eskimo\u003c/em>, an unsettling ambient work, into an opera, and pictures of a prototype video game for the Atari 2600 based on their 1981 album \u003cem>The Mark of the Mole\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/0BoU1YTWENA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tanner also didn’t shy away from including the controversial album art and promotional photos for the group’s second album, \u003cem>The Third Reich ’n Roll\u003c/em>. The former includes a cartoon of \u003cem>American Bandstand\u003c/em> host Dick Clark in a Nazi uniform, and the latter finds the band members dressed up as oversized swastikas. All of it tied into the concept for the album—the original liner notes are a snarky treatise on the ways “rock and roll has brainwashed the youth of the world,” and the music is made up of heavily edited and deconstructed versions of pop hits like “The Twist” and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag.” Still, the album was originally banned in Germany, and a window display announcing its release caused a protest at a Berkeley record shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew I was going to deal with a few taboo artifacts before taking this project on,” says Tanner. “But ultimately, the use of Nazi symbols by The Residents in 1976 was done as satire and in no way represents our or their support for that ideology. It’s unfortunate that there’s been an unironic resurgence of this iconography, and that it’s no longer just history but evidence of a current threat within the U.S. and abroad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/WsEz1OAUBBM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is not included in \u003cem>A Sight For Sore Eyes\u003c/em> is any kind of critical essays or liner notes to walk the uninitiated through this period of The Residents’ past. (That work was already done by the 2015 documentary \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2833768/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Theory of Obscurity\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.) Instead, Tanner peppers short quotes and tributes from artists that have worked directly with the group or cite them as an influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an appropriately motley bunch. The Zach Hill quote above is taken from the book, and he’s joined by Pee-Wee Herman creator Paul Reubens, “Weird Al” Yankovic, XTC’s Andy Partridge, Dan Deacon and Ween co-founder Aaron Freeman, who says that hearing “Constantinople,” a track from the Residents’ 1978 EP \u003cem>Duck Stab\u003c/em>, “fucked up the way I hear music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to the legacy of this singular American ensemble, there’s really no higher praise than that.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Ask even the most ardent fans of \u003ca href=\"https://www.residents.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Residents\u003c/a> about their first exposure to the art rock group, and their responses are likely to focus on the visual rather than the aural—the unsettling, unforgettable sight of four men in top hats and tails whose heads have been replaced with giant eyeballs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My first memory of seeing The Residents was on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nightflightplus.com/videos/night-flight-40th-anniversary-the-residents-peformance/60bae3fa274731000169a648\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Night Flight\u003c/em>\u003c/a> back in the ’80s,” remembers graphic designer \u003ca href=\"https://sugarpressart.com/artists/aaron-tanner/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Tanner\u003c/a>. “However, I was too young to comprehend what my still-developing brain had actually witnessed. Fast forward to the early ’90s when Primus covered ‘\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/DOyy501jsgc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sinister Exaggerator\u003c/a>,’ and all of those memories of ‘creatures’ with eyeballs for heads came flooding back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13907920\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13907920\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-800x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Melodic-Virtue-The-Residents-A-Sight-for-Sore-Eyes-Vol-1-Cover.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cover of ‘The Residents: Site for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1,’ a visual history of the famed art rock group. \u003ccite>(Melodic Virtue)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Or as \u003ca href=\"http://thirdworlds.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Death Grips\u003c/a> drummer and co-founder Zach Hill puts it, “Being a Bay Area/Northern California native, the eyeball was like the weirdo kids’ Mickey Mouse. And you’d see it before even knowing what it was.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area mainstays The Residents remain masters of media and mystery. Though the band has been around in one form or another since the late ’60s, no one is entirely sure who the members of the group are (although there are \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Residents#Identity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some theories\u003c/a>). The enigma has an undeniable allure, and The Residents add to their strange appeal through off-kilter music—jazz-inflected psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation that warps and wriggles like a worm under a heat lamp. Their striking album art, film and video work, and eye-popping stage performances make them all the more intriguing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It feels entirely appropriate then that the first official book to track the history of this unique group, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.melodicvirtue.com/products/the-residents-a-sight-for-sore-eyes-vol-1-deluxe-edition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Residents: A Sight For Sore Eyes Vol. 1\u003c/a>\u003c/em> (out Jan. 7 via Melodic Virtue), is an almost entirely visual document. The hefty tome tracks through group’s evolution from their earliest days as hippie dropouts who landed in San Mateo in 1968 to their 1983 performances of \u003cem>The Mole Show\u003c/em>, a stage show featuring magician and collaborator Penn Jillette. The volume is a sumptuous feast of photos, film stills, promotional material and collages of critical reactions to the music. (“Somehow, I thought of it as sounding like what Steely Dan or Frank Zappa might sound like on strong acid,” said one critic of the Residents’ 1977 album \u003cem>Fingerprince\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/PJ7qaCSRIUY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/PJ7qaCSRIUY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Though it was created with the active participation of The Residents and their appropriately named management group, The Cryptic Corporation, the book itself was initiated by Tanner, who made his way into their circle through another similarly unclassifiable group that he works with closely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been \u003ca href=\"https://ween.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ween\u003c/a>’s primary designer for over 15 years, and all of their self-released albums were distributed through MVD,” Tanner says, referring to the entertainment company. “After I had started producing books and realized that MVD was also working with The Residents, I asked for an introduction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, Tanner was allowed access to The Residents’ voluminous archives. “Digging through those old boxes was my version of visiting Disneyland,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He unearthed all manner of ephemera, including the legendary rejection letters the group received after submitting their demo tapes to Warner Brothers Records’ merchandising director, Hal Halverstadt. “I hate to tell you this,” reads one, “but \u003cem>Baby Sex\u003c/em>”—the group’s now-fabled 1971 demo—“did not (repeat, did not) set Burbank on its ear.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other surprises include some stark digital visuals that the group put together in 1992 as a proposal to turn their 1979 album \u003cem>Eskimo\u003c/em>, an unsettling ambient work, into an opera, and pictures of a prototype video game for the Atari 2600 based on their 1981 album \u003cem>The Mark of the Mole\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/0BoU1YTWENA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/0BoU1YTWENA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Tanner also didn’t shy away from including the controversial album art and promotional photos for the group’s second album, \u003cem>The Third Reich ’n Roll\u003c/em>. The former includes a cartoon of \u003cem>American Bandstand\u003c/em> host Dick Clark in a Nazi uniform, and the latter finds the band members dressed up as oversized swastikas. All of it tied into the concept for the album—the original liner notes are a snarky treatise on the ways “rock and roll has brainwashed the youth of the world,” and the music is made up of heavily edited and deconstructed versions of pop hits like “The Twist” and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag.” Still, the album was originally banned in Germany, and a window display announcing its release caused a protest at a Berkeley record shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew I was going to deal with a few taboo artifacts before taking this project on,” says Tanner. “But ultimately, the use of Nazi symbols by The Residents in 1976 was done as satire and in no way represents our or their support for that ideology. It’s unfortunate that there’s been an unironic resurgence of this iconography, and that it’s no longer just history but evidence of a current threat within the U.S. and abroad.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WsEz1OAUBBM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WsEz1OAUBBM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>What is not included in \u003cem>A Sight For Sore Eyes\u003c/em> is any kind of critical essays or liner notes to walk the uninitiated through this period of The Residents’ past. (That work was already done by the 2015 documentary \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2833768/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Theory of Obscurity\u003c/a>\u003c/em>.) Instead, Tanner peppers short quotes and tributes from artists that have worked directly with the group or cite them as an influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an appropriately motley bunch. The Zach Hill quote above is taken from the book, and he’s joined by Pee-Wee Herman creator Paul Reubens, “Weird Al” Yankovic, XTC’s Andy Partridge, Dan Deacon and Ween co-founder Aaron Freeman, who says that hearing “Constantinople,” a track from the Residents’ 1978 EP \u003cem>Duck Stab\u003c/em>, “fucked up the way I hear music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it comes to the legacy of this singular American ensemble, there’s really no higher praise than that.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Experimental Music Returns to Vallejo’s Mare Island With ‘Channel’",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.re-sound.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Re:Sound\u003c/a>, Vallejo’s experimental music series, returns with a Saturday, Nov. 6 afternoon performance in a new, yet still-resonant space on Mare Island. \u003ci>CHANNEL\u003c/i>, the series’ first event since the summer of 2019, will feature performances from Evicshen, Suki O’Kane’s Ensemble of Revered Collaborators and “sonic imagery” from John Davis and Keith Evans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previous Re:Sound events (the series started in 2015) took place in a building called A-168, a concrete and therefore extremely echo-y former munitions storage magazine often surrounded by head-high fennel plants. Jen Boyd, the sound artist and organizer behind the series, says the new venue (1024 Nimitz Ave., Building 34) is smaller than its predecessor, but “feels just right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_11350207']“The environment around the building is spectacular,” she says. Located in the historic core of Mare Island near the dry docks, the new site offers glimpses of osprey nests in the shipyard cranes, Boyd says. Re:Sound has always been about a thrilling juxtaposition of experimental sounds, semi-abandoned spaces and natural beauty. The name \u003ci>CHANNEL\u003c/i> no doubt reflects on the event’s proximity to the narrow strait of the Napa River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, \u003ca href=\"https://evicshen.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evicshen\u003c/a> (sound artist, experimental music performer and inventor Victoria Shen) shares a practice concerned with the relationships between the physical properties of sound and the human body. One of her self-built electronics projects is “Needle Nails,” a set of deliciously pointy red acrylic nails with turntable needles embedded in their tips. Users can play records with the touch of a finger—or play five different tracks of a record all at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator \u003ca href=\"https://sukiokane.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suki O’Kane\u003c/a> says to expect “the big drum and the small, hand-held projections, the slow things and the ambiguous things, realized with subtle practitioners” from her performance. Her revered collaborators will include Adria Otte (electronics), Jacob Felix Heule and Kevin Corcoran (drums and hand-held projections).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last but not least, moving image and sound artist \u003ca href=\"https://www.noiseforlight.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Davis\u003c/a> and “paranaturalist” Keith Evans (who primarily works in expanded cinema and performance) will create works on the theme of transfiguration using visual and sound artifacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boyd suggests guests bring a chair or blanket to insulate against Building 34’s concrete floor, noting that food and drink is available at nearby \u003ca href=\"https://www.mareislandbrewingco.com/Coal-Shed-Brewery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Coal Shed Brewery\u003c/a>. “We are so excited to see you all,” reads the Re:Sound event announcement. “It has been a long time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Re:Sound ‘CHANNEL’ will take place on Saturday, Nov. 6 at Vallejo’s 1024 Nimitz Ave., Building 34. Proof of vaccination is required for guests ages 12 and up. \u003ca href=\"https://events.eventgroove.com/event/Resound-Channel-56529\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The environment around the building is spectacular,” she says. Located in the historic core of Mare Island near the dry docks, the new site offers glimpses of osprey nests in the shipyard cranes, Boyd says. Re:Sound has always been about a thrilling juxtaposition of experimental sounds, semi-abandoned spaces and natural beauty. The name \u003ci>CHANNEL\u003c/i> no doubt reflects on the event’s proximity to the narrow strait of the Napa River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, \u003ca href=\"https://evicshen.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evicshen\u003c/a> (sound artist, experimental music performer and inventor Victoria Shen) shares a practice concerned with the relationships between the physical properties of sound and the human body. One of her self-built electronics projects is “Needle Nails,” a set of deliciously pointy red acrylic nails with turntable needles embedded in their tips. Users can play records with the touch of a finger—or play five different tracks of a record all at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator \u003ca href=\"https://sukiokane.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suki O’Kane\u003c/a> says to expect “the big drum and the small, hand-held projections, the slow things and the ambiguous things, realized with subtle practitioners” from her performance. Her revered collaborators will include Adria Otte (electronics), Jacob Felix Heule and Kevin Corcoran (drums and hand-held projections).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last but not least, moving image and sound artist \u003ca href=\"https://www.noiseforlight.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Davis\u003c/a> and “paranaturalist” Keith Evans (who primarily works in expanded cinema and performance) will create works on the theme of transfiguration using visual and sound artifacts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boyd suggests guests bring a chair or blanket to insulate against Building 34’s concrete floor, noting that food and drink is available at nearby \u003ca href=\"https://www.mareislandbrewingco.com/Coal-Shed-Brewery\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Coal Shed Brewery\u003c/a>. “We are so excited to see you all,” reads the Re:Sound event announcement. “It has been a long time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Re:Sound ‘CHANNEL’ will take place on Saturday, Nov. 6 at Vallejo’s 1024 Nimitz Ave., Building 34. Proof of vaccination is required for guests ages 12 and up. \u003ca href=\"https://events.eventgroove.com/event/Resound-Channel-56529\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
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"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
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},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"order": 18
},
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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