Revisiting Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz in the era of hyperpop Noah Larsen October 12, 2020 Album Review, Columns and Opinions, Reviews, Uncategorized As I was scrolling through the #sufjanstevens tag on TikTok (as one naturally does), I clicked on a high-quality video in which user @boyjr.69 covers Sufjan Stevens' indie hit song “Mystery of Love” in the...
The Immersive Sound Sphere of Envelop SF with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Async Dylan Medlock March 1, 2019 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Reviews Bay Area consumers, yearning to be entertained in novel ways, are no strangers to technological innovation. Robots can make our coffee and deliver our food, virtual reality is constantly mined for new immersive...
A “Preliminary Outpouring”: an interview with experimental indie-rocker Elijah Egbert Veronica Irwin and Bianca Lu March 24, 2018 Interview As a student musician trying to conquer a new music scene as a junior transfer, one might expect Elijah Egbert to be loud, talkative, and perhaps a little too eager to get you to listen to his music. But this U...
Emotions flow at a wholesome night spent with Cuco and friends Harmony Lee February 28, 2018 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Uncategorized “This place looks poppin’!” our Uber driver announced as she pulled up to a sketchy pool hall that was blasting Latin music and flashing disco lights from within. After checking the place out a bit, we ca...
Surveying the scene: how Low End Theory has recovered since parting ways with The Gaslamp Killer Veronica Irwin January 9, 2018 Uncategorized 1 Comment A weekly Wednesday night event in a seedy pocket of East Los Angeles, Low End Theory has always been cooler than it should have been: with better-than-thou fashionable attendees despite its un-instagrammable ae...
“Always celestial vibes”: an interview with The Seshen Veronica Irwin December 11, 2017 Interview, Uncategorized Bay area-based band The Seshen has always been hard to pin down. Falling somewhere between dub, R&B, electronica, and synth-pop, their music lies outside of all genre expectations. Groovy without a doubt, t...
The Seshen preview and ticket giveaway Veronica Irwin November 29, 2017 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Previews, Previews, Uncategorized Bay area-based R&B group The Seshen is set to grace the Cornerstone stage in Berkeley this Friday. Opening will be LoCura, Space Captain, and DJ Dream Queen. Characterized by Akiyoshi Ehara’s synthy-di...
Four years later with The Underachievers Fiona Duerr November 2, 2017 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Multimedia, Photos, Reviews Four years ago, I was still in high school, and tickets to FYF FEST were only 100 bucks. FYF was the first music festival I ever attended and I went with a group of friends and my brother, Joe. On the second da...
Ways to trip sober: isolation tanks, white noise, and attending a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard concert Veronica Irwin October 17, 2017 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Reviews If you’re a young person in the Bay Area, especially in Berkeley, it’s very possible you might be surrounded by people who never outgrew their teenage fascination with psychedelia. A random (and undeniably ...
Moses Sumney starts tour off with a bang after dropping Aromanticism Anna Nguyen September 29, 2017 Album Review, Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Reviews Moses Sumney is talented, majorly talented. If the first minute of his show couldn’t tell you that, his features on tracks of big name artists like Flume (“Weekend”) and Solange (“Mad”) should. With...
Sufjan Stevens Traverses Galaxies at the Fox Kavitha George July 31, 2017 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews For years, Sufjan Stevens has produced the kind of music that makes me wonder if he isn’t a medium for some higher cosmic forces. The sweet and dreamily sad Carrie & Lowell (2015), exuberant compositi...
In penultimate North American show, Jean-Michel Jarre stuns at The Greek Jordan Aronson June 11, 2017 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Reviews Lasers danced across the sky like holograms, settling on the treetops at the back of the theater, in time to the warm sounds of electronic vibes combating the chilly Bay Area evening as spectators high in the b...
Xiu Xiu continue to excite and frighten on the turbulent Forget HR Huber-Rodriguez March 8, 2017 Album Review, Reviews Xiu Xiu, led by South Bay native and creative genius Jamie Stewart, are one of the most interesting, refreshing, consistently abrasive, and unpredictable bands this side of Death Grips. In some ways, they are t...
Nicolas Jaar fills the UC Theatre with dread, dreams, and dance on Halloweekend Brian Grossman November 5, 2016 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Reviews Nicolas Jaar isn’t the type to keep with conventions. With the release of Sirens this past September, he further blurred the line between electronic dance and experimental music, filling its 41-minutes wit...
Ween reunites at Bill Graham Rebekah Gonzalez October 20, 2016 Concerts, Festivals, and Live Reviews, Photos This past weekend, October 14 and 15, Ween stopped by the Bill Graham Civic Center Auditorium in San Francisco, on the first tour since their disheartening breakup in 2012. With over two decades under their b...