Sacramento Electronic Music Festival 2012

Day 3 – Saturday, May 5, 2012

The moon was a big deal on Saturday. A full moon, either in lycanthropic blood mysticism or scientific tidal truths, calls into the locked cellars of our primitive impulses to come out and play. Saddle up the supermoon with the tequila abuse of Cinco de Mayo, and night three of the SEMF was a rowdy, depraved playground.

Salva

Weekend warriors that frequent MoMo’s argued with security as to why exactly they were relegated to the patio, while braceleted SEMF attendees roamed about freely. I fielded endless appreciative comments regarding the finely groomed herd of ladies and equally endless queries as to whether or not the Death Grips’ world tour cancellation would spell doom for a scheduled performance around midnight.

I should have been let down by the no-show. We all should have booed the ever-loving hell out of the acts on stage while demanding our Death Grips set, but SEMF was booked to endure a Death Grips no-show. It only stung slightly when Brian Breneman, half of The Master System, dropped the Beastie Boys’ “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun” remixed over Death Grips’ “Guillotine” (which was goddamn brilliant, by the way) after Shlohmo’s headlining set. Earlier, James and Evander announced before one song they would be blatantly ripping off Daft Punk, and then delivered on their word, but in a respectful manner. Raleigh Moncrief unveiled an unheard archive of EDM meditations that hinted of Watered Lawn being far from a debut fluke.

Raleigh Moncrief

The hype should have fallen on its face, the moon was supposed to have roused our inner villains, but inspired set after inspired set kept the 27th block of J Street from letting the tequila and heat agitate the closing night of the SEMF. In only its third year, the SEMF is official. Now, we count the days until the Launch Festival as Sacramento’s next big power play.

Sacramento Electronic Music Festival 2012
Day 1: Thursday, May 3, 2012

Friday, May 4 was the official Northern California monthly installment for the alt-electronica club night Low End Theory in San Francisco, but an unofficial preview tested the booming systems of Harlow’s on Thursday, May 3 for the opening of the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival. Lorn, Dibia$e, Jonwayne and DJ Nobody are proven low end theorists, earning their stripes at the Los Angeles weekly event held at The Airliner. The four beat masters sent heady vibrations through onlookers’ sternums and the venue’s foundation, but like every year at the SEMF, local electronica talent is in grandiose display.

Lorn

It felt as though we were on the move at the third annual SEMF. The round robin of sets in Harlow’s, upstairs at MoMo’s, and DJ sets on the patio had me hesitant to settle in. Decisions had to be made, compromises even, but the careful selection of performers this year almost guaranteed no disappointing sets. Whatever room you occupied was the place to be at the SEMF.

Young Aundee

Jonwayne took the stage for Dibia$e’s set, to streamline raps, while Dibia$e played selector, mutating his beats with glitch takes, warping from track to track without throwing off his rapping amigo in flip-flops. The set bled into Jonwayne’s slot, as he returned the mic to the stand, plugged in his beat machine and rattled the walls with menacing cuts that blended Southern trap rap bravado like Rick Ross’ proclaiming, “I’m treated like a king when I’m dining,” with boss level 8-bit beats and the baritone keys of a grand piano.

Dusty Brown

The Low Enders are the genuine article, but I found great pleasure in the discoveries, particularly Satellites. The presence of the wooden Pandora’s Box known as the Monome was a rare sight to behold, since I can only think of two other beat makers (Daedalus and Galapagoose) who are masters of its magical properties. He’s impossible to Google, so I still know jack shit about him. But Satellites’ push-button magic set an introductory tone for the L.A. vibes that followed.

Local performers like Paper Pistols, Doom Bird and Dusty Brown instilled the 916 pride in our festival. My hope is that the out-of-towners lurked around for the Dusty Brown set and that word will spread regarding our secret weapon. Dusty Brown opened with the unveiling of two new songs before delivering cuts from his concise and captivating This City Is Killing Me EP, which is destined to be a local classic. Opening with unfamiliar material reeled me in. It’s a dangerous move, but the group is justified in its confidence in their new music. I’m more than ready for a new Dusty Brown album.

Paper Pistols

With heavy hitting headliners like Mux Mool, Lorn, Shlohmo, Death Grips and dozens of other killer musicians slated to perform at Harlow’s and Momo Lounge on May 3—5, Sacramento Electronic Music Festival will surely not disappoint in the audio and aural categories. Neither will it in the visual sense. After a little digging, Submerge got a better idea of what you can expect to see at SEMF when all those sounds are pulsating at you. One interesting installation piece that we got wind of from festival co-organizer Clay Nutting is being created by local artists Sofia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel, collectively known as L/C Mural and Design. No doubt you’ve seen their impressive murals around town, whether you know it or not. For SEMF, the two are working with another artist, Jonathan Messerschmidt-Rogers, on a large installation for the back patio area at Harlow’s.

“We really wanted to be able to use what we know about making a space cool and use it as a chance to for the first time combine what we usually do, which is outdoor murals or art installations, with something we’ve never done before, which is projection,” Lacin told Submerge. “So we are collaborating with Jonathan and he, Hennessy and I are going to create kind of a moving piece that’s all about connecting people through music.” The approximately 8-foot-by-8-foot piece is made of wood, is a weird “cluster shape” and will feature “projections coming in from all around the space and congregating on our canvas.” Sounds dope. Lacin further explained the duo’s concept: “You always have to have a really strong concept, and so we asked ourselves what is this festival about? What are music festivals?” she said. “We just kind of realized how unique it is to draw all of these people together from different backgrounds, different places, and then they’re all drawn together for their common love of music, so we wanted to make the piece about that.”

On top of that piece from Jonathan and L/C, expect wild multi-angle projections from Creative Projections in Harlow’s main stage area, mind-bending laser shows from Double D Productions and more installation art from local Danny Scheible. “Together they are going to transform it with badass laser shows and visuals,” Nutting told Submerge. “It’s going to be bananas, it will not look like Harlow’s.”

No doubt it’s going to be a wild weekend full of both aural and visual stimulation, so get your three-day pass now at Harlows.com for just $30. Learn more about Lacin and Christophel’s work at http://lcmuralanddesign.com/. Learn more about SEMF at http://sacelectronicmusicfest.com/.

Mux Mool’s Planet High School gets its point across without speaking

It may not be an easy task for a lyricist to pen a song that accurately depicts what he’s feeling at any given moment, but he has one important tool that an instrumental artist does not: words. Such was the dilemma electronic music auteur Mux Mool (aka Brian Lindgren) faced when he sat down to compose his latest album Planet High School, released Feb. 7, 2012, on Ghostly International.

In the following interview, Lindgren, who will make an appearance at this year’s Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, divulged details about his creative process while offering pointed social commentary and voicing his opinions on experiencing electronic music in the live setting.

I was checking out the “Cash for Gold” video, and I thought it was a really neat clip. Did you have a lot to do with the concept of it?
The reason why I think I’ve hesitated on music videos for so long was because I never wanted to do a music video with me looking really cool with really cool things–anything flashy or anything like that. I actually wrote the story to the music video–the screenplay and everything was based on. It was just about being yourself and sticking it to your boss.

Do you think cinematically when you write your music?
I just think I think cinematically story-wise. I think narratively as opposed to a random collection of things.

The album does have a bit of a funk feel to it. Is that indicative of the music you were listening to while you were creating it?
No, it just was funky. I was definitely not listening to any more or less funk than I was in the past year.

So your funk intake has remained consistent throughout your entire music career?
Yes, it’s been almost entirely the same.

The album just came out in February, but are you already looking at what’s next? Are you the kind of artist who’s constantly writing?
Yeah, it’s an ongoing process. It’s not really done in blocks. You just have to work when you feel like working, which is not always. Some people like to post that they work every single day and nonstop and all they do is work between flights and, “Oh my God, I’m on my way to a show and I’m working on a song,” and I don’t buy it for a second. Everybody has a limit where they’re like, “I don’t want to work on music. In fact, I don’t want to listen to music, and I don’t want to talk about music.” Everybody has that. I definitely have that. I definitely work quite a bit, every single day, but with these songs it was all in the moment when I started making them at least.

Is that “in the moment” process something you utilized just for Planet High School, or was that also the case with your previous album?
With the last album, the record label wasn’t sure what I was going to do career-wise, so they wanted as many songs as they could get. At the time, they wanted to grab everything, so Skulltaste had less focus in terms of an album, because I think maybe about 12, 13 of those songs could have been an album and seven of those were songs they just grabbed.

When you commented on people bragging about how they’re constantly working, it occurred to me that that may play into the idea of prolonged adolescence–sort of like the kid who’s too eager to answer questions in class.
There are some high-school-type social elements even among professional musicians… To me, there are these dudes who want to post, “Going into the studio!” every day, and it’s like, “Well, you’re a professional musician. That’s just your job.” It’s not like if you’re a janitor you’d post “Scrubbing toilets!” and everyone’s like, “Oh, dude, that’s dope. You’re scrubbing toilets.” It’s not all brag-able. It really isn’t.

Plus, all they seem to talk about is how much they’re working. To me, it seems like real-life experiences are the things that should inspire you to write songs. If your entire life experience is sitting in the studio behind a computer, it’s like, what is a computer song inspired by other computer songs? There’s just no feeling there.

When you’re out on the road, do those experiences fuel what you’re writing?
Yeah, because you’re seeing stuff, and you’re away from home. I saw this thing on Reddit the other day that I thought was really funny, because it was like, “Bus window is a first year philosophy class,” and it’s kind of true. Because as soon as you sit there and you’re by yourself, and you have nothing to do but look out the window and think about stuff, you start thinking some basic philosophical stuff. But when you do that forever, you do that for three years, and that’s every single day, you’re thinking about a lot of stuff for a lot of time.

Before you mentioned you wrote the story for your video. Do you often write stories and do those inform your songwriting?
I think the reason why I wanted to put the message behind the video, of just being yourself at all costs, it’s just more or less what I’ve had to go through in the past couple years, which is just being able to do music for a living, which is not always easy. It’s not always easy to convince people that it’s a viable career, but being myself has always been worth it, because that’s the message I’ve always agreed with.

Is it weird for you to hear yourself say that you’re a professional musician?
I don’t really tell people that. People I meet, I don’t really say that, because everybody’s a fucking DJ. Everybody is.

I’m the same way about telling people I write. I mean, I do, and I get paid for it, but the reaction is always weird.
Right, because they’re like, “Yeah, of course you are, dude.” And you’re like, “No really. I make money at it. It’s a job.” And they’re like, “Uh huh.”

Either that, or they think it’s more interesting than it actually is.
Oh yeah and that, too. That’s the other side of that. That’s when you play shows and people come up to you like, “Oh my God, that was so incredible,” and you’re like, “Calm down. I didn’t just cure cancer. I didn’t give your mom heart surgery or anything. I played with my computer in front of you. I’m glad you’re impressed, but let’s be realistic.”

You mention playing on your computer in front of people. How is it for you to connect with the audience? Do you sometimes have to be more physical to get people involved?
For me the show isn’t about what I’m doing physically. There are a lot of people who go out there with their sets pre-programmed, they press play, they tweak on filters for the next hour and a half and they dance around and throw their hands up during the exciting part of the song. They get a lot of credit, and they get really far that way, and I think that’s a fucking joke. I’m not a clown. I’m not up there to be a clown and choreograph the songs to whatever shitty dance I’m doing. I’m trying to create the mood, but I think about it in a more European style, which means the mood should be created by the songs I’m playing and the order I’m choosing to play them in and how those things are working. It’s definitely more of a listening experience. I don’t dance. I don’t jump. I don’t even make funny faces. At least, I try not to.

Mux Mool will be featured on day 2 (Friday, May 4) of the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, which will take place at Harlow’s. The festival runs from May 3—5, 2012. For more information and to get a glimpse of the full lineup, go to http://sacelectronicmusicfest.com/

Submerge’s very own Adam Saake and his crew at Sacramento Electronic Music Festival, including Clay Nutting of Concerts for Charity, have really outdone themselves with this year’s lineup. The three-day festival will take place on May 3—5, 2012 at Harlow’s and Momo Lounge, and Submerge is proud to be the media sponsor again this year. If you remember anything about last year’s SEMF at Townhouse, you know it was the hottest ticket in town that weekend (there was a line down the block!), and this year will be no different with heavy hitters like Death Grips, Shlohmo, Mux Mool (pictured), Lorn, DJ Nobody, Salva, Dibiase, B. Bravo and Starship Connection confirmed. Also performing will be Giraffage, Raleigh Moncrief, Dusty Brown, Yalls, Doom Bird, Favors, Little Foxes, James & Evander, Dolor, Adoptahighway, Chachi Jones and more. It really is an incredible mix of national and local talent and you can get your three-day pass for a steal, just $30, at Harlows.com. Individual day tickets are $13 a pop. Learn more about SEMF at http://sacelectronicmusicfest.com/ and keep an eye out for coverage right here.

Sister Crayon Steps It Up Further on Debut LP

It was a gray and windy afternoon on the beaches of Malibu. A tidal wave warning was in effect, but there local band Sister Crayon stood, fully-clothed, sharp shoreline rock at their ankles, as photographer Eliot Lee Hazel barked orders to capture the frozen chaos of crashing white caps for the band’s debut album art.

Lead singer Terra Lopez slipped during one shot, cutting her leg, but Hazel ran his shoot like a drill sergeant. “He just said, ‘Get up. Don’t smile. Don’t look at me,’” Lopez said. “Well, he’s a sweetheart, nice guy, you can sit down and talk to him, but when he’s taking photos he is so intense.”

As absurd as it feels to the members of Sister Crayon, Lopez and drummer Nicholas Suhr spoke of the shoot as one of their most memorable music experiences–even though it had little to do with music. Along with Hazel’s artwork, the band has a high-def music video done by celebrity photographer Robert Ascroft. Browsing both photographers’ websites, perusing the tastefully gratuitous images of Devendra Banhart, Usher, Mariah Carey, Edward Sharpe and Brad Pitt, Sister Crayon will be the first to tell you how privileged, yet out of place they feel. Are these the last remaining minor moments of Sister Crayon before they receive Coachella bookings and Japan tour offers?

In the next few weeks, the band is playing humbler venues like Townhouse for the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival and Luigi’s Fungarden for the Bellow album release party. So our indie darlings have yet to grow too big for our sleepy city. Lopez looks like a siren Viking vixen in the video for “(In) Reverse,” but when I met with her and Suhr at Mondo Bizarro (formerly Butch & Nellie’s) for an interview, she was back in her Midtown garb, a second-hand green army jacket and jeans–the Lindsay Weir of Freaks and Geeks look. She’s still the same shy songwriter, fronting a gloomy pop act that seeks inspiration in the lonesome despair of poets like Jean Genet and Fernando Pessoa.

The Bellow sessions scattered across the span of a year and a half. The newly realized lineup of Sister Crayon crammed in 18-hour shifts at The Hangar with engineer Scott McShane, who described the process as “tense” and a “guerilla recording style.” McShane produced the first Sister Crayon EP, Enter Into Holy (Or)ders, and the band never entertained the thought of working with anyone else. “Recording already is a really intimate thing. We bond so well with him. He gets what we’re trying to do, even before we understand it,” Lopez said.

“He’s able to throw out ideas that’s not in an insulting way. It’s just full-on experimenting and you know that it’s for the best. He pushes us to succeed,” Suhr added.

The tension came from the hourglass pressure of paying for studio time and the unfamiliarity of having a new drummer join two weeks prior, writing his parts on the fly. Suhr was not a complete stranger, knowing Lopez from her stint in The Evening Episode, but he and Lopez talked of the anxieties surrounding a debut full length. “We were zombies. We’d spend 18 hours in the studio and you can hear it in the record,” she said.

Originally, Bellows was intended to be a five-song EP, written by Lopez and synth-keyboardist Dani Fernandez, with “I’m Still the Same Person” being the only pre-released song to make the album. But once the band wrapped recording those five songs, creativity was running high and five more songs were written collectively. “Scott kept telling us there was a lot of tension on the record,” Suhr said. “If you know what was going on at the time it makes sense. There was a lot of time spent coming to an agreement on things, but whenever we’re writing together there’s no awkwardness. It was easy to go into the next five songs with an open mindset.”

Indeed, the settling in is brazen and culminates with a spacious piano ballad called “Ixchel, The Lady Rainbow,” in which Lopez’s visceral croon soars over a piece written by former member Genaro Ulloa. “Ixchel” was the last song the band recorded, a one-take recording done well past the midnight hour. “We did it live tracking,” Lopez said. “He was in the other room and I was in the main room singing. We could see each other through a little window, but that was it. It was the first take and it was incredible. I know it sounds corny, but there were tears in everyone’s eyes. We were all exhausted. Even Scott had tears in his eyes.”

Suhr added, “It’s one of those songs. Every other song on the record we did multiple takes because we felt we could do better. At the end of that song, everyone was just like what the fuck. It’s one of those songs where if it didn’t sound like that, with the imperfections left in, it wouldn’t have worked.”

The gloomy pop instrumentation informed by the troubled words of dead poets is an appropriate setting for an album titled Bellow, but Suhr said a lot of the mood is owed to McShane’s guidance. “I heard the five songs written before I joined, but the mood had changed through Scott’s ears.” Lopez said his touch is most prevalent on “Here We Never Die and “(In) Reverse” as he took the band’s ideas and focused them into a cohesive sound.

In addition to McShane, the Sister Crayon sound, most notably the lyrics, is in homage to the writings of Fernando Pessoa, a 20th Century poet and literary critic. Lopez only admitted her obsession with Pessoa’s work. She has a Pessoa tattoo and her Pug’s name is Ophelia, after Pessoa’s secret crush to whom he never confessed his love. “It’s the despair,” she said. “It sounds dramatic, but he was such a lonely individual. He was very mysterious and obviously people are drawn to that.

“I think that is a huge part of Bellow. ‘Here We Never Die’ is my talking to a lover in that way. The despair and sadness that he wrote is so sad that I can’t even finish one of his books. I have to read a sentence a day sometimes because it’s so much. It just floors me. I have no option when it comes to his presence in my music.”

As intense as Sister Crayon is sonically and visually portrayed, Hazel’s insistency that the band stop smiling as the chilly Pacific waves capsized on their heads speaks of the band’s unbridled joy in its work. As arresting as “Ixchel, The Lady Rainbow” is, Bellow closes with “Souls of Gold,” a cheery campfire sing-a-long with a blasting brass section and woozy synths. “We’re always such a serious band and a lot of our songs are really dark,” Lopez said. “I do like that the album ends on a lighter note than what it could have been.”

See Sister Crayon live at their release party for their new album Bellows at Luigi’s Fungarden on Feb. 19.