Photos by Emily Malan unless otherwise noted

Golden Gate Park – San Francisco, CA
Live Review: 8/10/12 to 8/12/12

Occasionally, the music at Outside Lands becomes secondary to other activities and entertainments. This is San Francisco, after all, where drug use and eccentric behavior are par for the course. Sometimes the experience can be ruined by other people, but more often than not, it’s always other people that make the experience. I remembered this only in the last couple of hours of the festival. No amount of second-hand smoke, bullish behavior, and cold weather could ruin what was to be a moving, redemptive final-day set by Stevie Wonder. What follows is a log of the often incomplete, sometimes unsatisfying, and always worthwhile experience of a summer music festival. →

The Satellite – Los Angeles, CA
Live Review: 11/10/11

Sharply dressed in collared shirts, the Brandt Brauer Frick trio performed their classically inspired dance music on stage at The Satellite, two days before their show at the more formal Luckman Fine Arts Complex. The two venues could not be more different, the former a small indie venue in Silver Lake and the other a performing arts center in Cal State L.A. The music of Brandt Brauer Frick, however, fits well in both settings. →

Photo Credit: Ashley Soo

Fox Theater – Oakland, CA
Live Review: 10/30/11

“Tinariwen” means deserts in the Tuareg dialect spoken in Northern Mali. The band which takes the name of “deserts” also calls the Sahara its home. Six members of the assouf guitar band played the Fox Oakland Theatre last night, opening for Cake’s Unlimited Sunshine tour. They played eight songs of African blues music full of rhythmic force and traditional melodies. While the Mississippi Delta may run through the vein of American blues music, Tinariwen invokes the desert-dwelling and nomadic soul of the Tuareg people. Thousands of miles from its origin, the music felt universal in its basic intent: expressing the feelings which anchor you to a place and people. →

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Thundercat – “Daylight”

Growing up in a musical family, Stephen Bruner took up the bass after his older brother Ronald Bruner, Jr. took up the drums. Both brothers later joined the thrash punk band Suicidal Tendencies as teenagers. Over the years, Stephen has shaped his technique around jazz greats Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius, although he is of his own generation with his love for hip-hop, eighties cartoons and video games. Under his stage name Thundercat, Stephen has collaborated with Erykah Badu, Sa-Ra and, most recently, Flying Lotus. →

Photos by dublab, licensed under Creative Commons

In 1999, Mark “frosty” McNeill and his fellow KSCR radio alumni got together and founded dublab.com, a non-profit online radio station and arts collective. The idea was to provide experimental music programming and put together art exhibitions combining visual art and innovative sounds. 12 years later, the collective has grown to include a talented group of artists and DJs who have become a regular fixture of Los Angeles’ museums, galleries and venues.

One of these members is musician, composer and sound engineer Alejandro Cohen, who puts together the annual ambient event Tonalism and makes music under several projects. He is also the curator of dublab’s programming and podcasts. Before tomorrow’s 12-year Anniversary Happening at Atwater Crossing, Ale talks about the ongoing mission of dublab and the vital role it plays for music lovers around the world. →

Detroit Bar – Costa Mesa, CA
Live Review: 9/28/11

The last time I spoke with drummer Austin Tufts of BRAIDS, he described the band’s current live performance as having more “energy and fire” to its rhythmic feel. It’s hard to imagine how much more energy this four-piece could have, given their outstanding performance as an opener for Toro Y Moi back in March. Showing off some new songs and mastering those from their debut album, BRAIDS returned to the Detroit Bar on Wednesday night demonstrating their on-stage chemistry and building up to several cathartic moments. →

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980
Various Locations – Greater Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs
October 2011 to March 2012

This upcoming fall and winter are the first in which the regional arts community, from San Diego to Santa Barbara, is working together to showcase the history of art in California. If you’re not familiar with Pacific Standard Time, it’s a six month-long series of exhibitions demonstrating the wide breadth of California artists from the post-war period to now. There’s no prevailing narrative in the series, just as there’s no geographical center to the region. The series sweeps across the full range of artists working from different regional, ethnic and conceptual backgrounds. →

BRAIDS – Lemonade

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BRAIDS is a four-piece band from Montreal with one of the strongest debuts of 2011. Its full-length album Native Speaker clocks in at a little over 40 minutes, but the resulting effort is so expansive and dream-like, listening to it feels as if you’ve embarked on a day trip through the senses. There are albums which, when listened to as a whole, seem to take on a kind of biological life. The songs breathe and ripple as if an entire ecosystem is taking place →

FYF Fest
LA State Historic Park
9/3/11

8/25/11 update: FYF Fest just sent out an email detailing all the improvements to this year’s event. Changes include multiple entrances, off-site will call, double the amount of food vendors, double the amount of toilets, cheaper water, more shade/misters and water trucks/wood chips to settle the dust at the park. Also, the FYF Fest website has posted a list of comedians who will be performing as well as set times for next Saturday.

Sean Carlson and the folks at FYF have been doing this concert thing for a long time, and over the years, they’ve managed to put together some of the most exciting lineups in the city for very reasonable prices. There were also some bumps along the way, including some not-so-nice logistical errors that made past years a bit less pleasant. →

When Saints Go Machine
!K7 Records
(2011)

As When Saints Go Machine’s Konkylie begins with a plaintive folk melody in the opening title track, vocalist Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild’s falsetto portends a record full of austere ballads. Subsequent songs, however, prove the opposite is true of this Danish pop group’s evocative sophomore record. “Church and Law” opens with a melody laden with spiraling synths and vocals which shed their texture as the drum machine kicks into the song’s second movement. Vonsild sings, “Hardened by church and law / The spell that binds us all” as layers of synth and drums build up to the chorus, where the group announces its particular brand of gothic futurism. →