San Francisco has such a wealth of experimental, avant-garde, and/or electronic music going on at all times that it’s a shame it isn’t front and center as one of our tourist attractions, civic gems, and arts discourses. Part of me thinks that’s fine, let ’em cook without all the distracting normie attention. But the other part of me wants to scream form the mountain tops, ‘There’s no such thing as normie! Everyone will find at least something interesting.”
The annual SF Tape Music Festival has become an unexpectedly popular date night, spots like the Audium, Envelop, Peacock Lounge, Chapel of the Chimes, Grace Cathedral, Noisebridge, the Center for New Music, and our various museums are drawing crowds with sound installations, listening parties, and oddball performances, sound baths are all the rage…. and of course our electronic dance music scene is unparalleled in its embrace of diversity and the vast legacy of sonic experimentation in the Bay Area. In short, go hear something new!
You’ve got a great chance this weekend at the 23rd Annual SF Electronic Music Festival, which runs Thu/19-Sun/22. The fun starts Thursday on the Audium‘s pristine constellation of 176 speakers, as “Danishta Rivero’s Heretical Voicings bathes the audience in Rivero’s live voice, which modulates processes for sound spatialization and signal processing. Ronald Peabody’s AFRICALIEN, uses recorded brainwaves of an elderly trauma survivor to guide an immersive exploration of beauty in confusion. Sally Decker and Brendan Glasson’s site-specific work ‘ouroboros’ explores the qualities and trajectories of movement through timbre, pitch, and dynamics.”
After that audio cabinet of curiosities, the fest moves to experimental performance nexus the Lab in the Mission for the next three days, featuring performances from Evicshen (doing absolutely incredible things with vinyl records), Sholeh Asgary, Julie Herndon, Pedestrian Deposit, Amanda Chaudhary, and more to tickle your digital-analog ear. You can drop in as you wish, so feel free to catch something on the fly. Truly neat stuff—and stay tuned for next week’s Other Minds Festival if you can’t get enough (I can’t).
MORE EVENTS OF NOTE
ONGOING THROUGH DECEMBER 14: “FICTIONS OF PRESENCE” This fascinating group show at /slash Gallery presents works by artists who explore “the mediation of the physical world and history through digital and analog technologies, including optical character recognition, generative adversarial networks, physical computing, and internet-based experiences.” Artsists include Chelsea Thompto, Lee Blalock, Xiaowei R. Wang, Abram Stern, and Dorothy R. Santos. /slash Gallery, SF. More info here.
THU/19-0CTOBER 13: SF OPEN STUDIOS The big Megillah of public studio visits throws open the doors of hundreds of local artists’ sodomains for the 50th year in a row. Each weekend brings a different zone of the city—this one lauches with “North”—so set your artistic compass appropriately. More info here.
THU/19-SAT/21: MANISACRIFESTRIXX The incredible Trixxie Carr brings her inimitable blend of eye-popping drag and cabaret theatrics to this latest show: “This is a story of the horror of being misunderstood while knowing one’s self; the fragility of strength, and the strength found in being fragile. The assumptions held by mainstream society that the artist, the woman, the human, must suffer and sublimate themselves to gain acceptance and success are crushed underneath her high heels as she slays the stage yet again!” Little Boxes Theater, SF. More info here.
FRI/20-SUN/22: GREEK FOOD FESTIVAL When I tell you how I whooped in celebration when they moved this festival, one of my absolute favorites, from the same weekend as Folsom Street Fair to this one! This is an old school culture fest at a church (Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, to be exact), where you buy your food ticket from the nice people in the cafeteria and the proceed to chow down on some of the most amazing Greek food ever, washed some with some wine or ouzo, of course. Then peruse the many Mediterranean wares and dance til your feet hurt to the traditional band and DJ. It’s so wholesome and delicious! Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, SF. More info here.
FRI/20: FIESTA LATINA Celebrate Latino Heritage month with two live bands, Razteria & Edú Bega, alternative latin pop from across the Americas—Bolivia to the Dominican Republic—plus DJ Rad Rican. Last year’s concert was a community hoot. 8pm, Brick and Mortar, SF. More info here.
FRI/20 CINTHIE Dubbed the “Berlin queen of house,” producer, DJ, and label- and record store-owner Cinthie is in huge demand on the international club circuit. Here’s your chance to hear her at the intimate Lossless Wax party for its Signature Sound Series. 9pm-2am, The Foundry, SF. More info here.
SAT/21: HOW WEIRD STREET FAIRE The 25th installment of this celebration of all things weird, wacky, and otherwise perfectly San Francisco was due to arrive on May 4th — thus, of course, the “Star Wars” theme—but after a freak wind storm kiboshed that plan, it now brings its nine dance stages and Burning Man, underground rave, wild art vibes to us in the merry season of autumn. Noon-6pm, Second and Howard Streets, SF. More info here.
SAT/21: SF CHEESE FEST Smile, and say… well you know. That won’t be difficult when the SF Ferry Building fills with more than 20 local cheesemaking artisans, complemented by several local brewers and winemakers to wet your tasting whistle. 5pm-9pm, Ferry Building, SF. More info here.
SAT/21: PRINCESS: GREEN DAY’S ‘AMERICAN IDIOT’ 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY The masterpiece of Bush Era pop-punk rebellion legends turns two decades old this year, so of course it deserves a spectacular drag tribute from the outrageous queens of the Princess party at Club Oasis. 10pm-2am, Club Oasis, SF. More info here.
SUN/22: HIS NAME IS ALIVE One of the most interesting and storied underground acts of the 1980s, releasing on the lauded 4AD label alongside the likes of the Cocteau Twins and the Pixies, this experimental synth-pop band, founded in Michigan, is coming to Oakland to preschool us all in retro-avant-garde. 7pm, New Parish, Oakland. More info here.
TUE/24: FONTAINES D.C. Man, I am going to be camped out at the Warfield all this coming week. Not only do they have Johnny Marr, James, Snow The Product, Peter Hook, and Sepultura coming through (see below), but also my recent faves, outspoken Irish rock band Fontaines DC, who have taken a wonderfully complex detour from immersive, poetic guitar anthems into reinterpreting quintessential ’90s baggy-shoegaze-alt rock sounds on latest album, Romance. I’m addicted to the hallucinatory asthmatic multiverse video for “Starburster,” especially. 7pm, The Warfield, SF. More info here.
WED/25: SEPULTURA Is there any more thrash metal track more prophetic right now than the Brazilian powerhouse’s “Territory.” Honestly, it sums up why I love this genre so much, from its thundering riffs to its video limning the exhausting eternity of the Middle East “conflict.” Viva Sepultura. 6pm, The Warfield, SF. More info here.
