Tycho

Tycho and the Command Collective look to the next decade of Sacramento Electronica

Sacramento is a cowtown; we cannot escape that fact. Living in a city disrespected by the rest of California keeps us out of the Hypemachine, to a fault, but it’s also a benefit. Our artists move to San Francisco and blow up, resulting in press that neglects to mention origins prior to the Bay Area. Ambient electronica darling Tycho is one of our lost children. But not lost entirely as Tycho, who in a brief interview, enlightened me to the reunion of a lost scene he once helped cultivate in his true hometown.

“We used to have this thing called Command Collective,” Scott Hansen said. Hansen is Tycho, and Tycho is on the rise in national exposure with the Coastal Brake 12-inch on Ghostly International. Hansen was raised in Fair Oaks and lived in Midtown for eight years, where he made his first two (and a half, somehow) albums. Circumstances lacking relevance to this story resulted in Hansen moving to San Francisco, but he spoke with candor of his fledgling years in Sacramento designing Tha Fruitbat’s album art, Blue Bell compilation covers and Command Collective show posters.

“Doing those show posters and compilation covers were the impetus to my whole style,” he said. “I talk about it like it was a big deal in my career, at least in my head, but I don’t know how much of an impact it had on the random people who went to the shows.”

The early Noughties were ripe with enthusiasm for electronic music. A new millennium aroused hope of flying cars and space-age fabrics that would dress us down in shiny suits. Electronic music, devoid of organic instruments made of brass, wood, sheep intestines, gourds and bones, was an evolutionary step providing temperance to our insecurities about relying on advanced technologies as the providers of aural fascination. Unfortunately, for some, watching a nerdy dude stand at a laptop, nodding to his push-button performance lacked the visceral visual aesthetic of rock star power poses and frenetic shirtless drummers drenched in sweat.

Opinions varied, but according to reports, there was a consensus that between 2002 and 2004 Command Collective shows at Espresso Metro were “the scene.” For those who lived for it, it was a window of fortunate times. For some outsiders trying to understand the emerging scene, attention spans were tried with grueling self-indulgent sets.

“It was a pretty loose deal,” Hansen said. “It wasn’t like we were a group making music together. The reality of it was we were the only electronic musicians in Sacramento. We might as well play these shows together rather than open up for a bunch of rock bands.”

Command Collective was Dusty Brown, Evan Schneider (who operated as Tha Fruitbat and formed the groups Hysteresis Loop and Two Playa Game), Park Avenue (now known as Lifeliner), Tycho and Chachi Jones. DJ Mupetblast was the resident DJ of the collective, filling in the downtime between sets at the Metro. “Donald [Bell, Chachi Jones] and Tycho put [the collective] together to reel in all the top dudes from the different crews that were doing beat shows,” Schneider said. The collective focused on IDM, jungle and ambient sounds. There was a dance scene, that cannot be ignored, but it was another scene entirely.

Schneider began in ’98 with his band Hysteresis Loop. He and Dusty Brown came up together as operators in the drum and bass scene at raves and underground venues. Later, Schneider and Dain Fitzgerald, known as DJ Mupetblast, had Synthetic Sundays, a weekly (later became monthly) night of electronic music at The Press Club.

Schneider said the impact of Command Collective as a voice for the electronic scene resulted in the inclusion of an electronica award in The Sammies. The addition was prompted by a biting letter from Bell to the editor, who responded to a negative review of a Metro show. “He was the writer in the group,” Schnieder said. “It was great that he used his skills to volley some back at the critics.”

Several factors contributed to the dissolution of Command Collective. The Rave Act limiting the underground shows, a dwindling support of electronic music by venues, promoters and fans, the revivals of rock and folk as respected genres and the collective’s members’ lives changing. Chachi Jones moved to San Francisco for a six-figure editing job, and Hansen had his journey to pursue as well. Everyone carried on, but the name slowly dissipated with the scene.
“It felt like things died a couple years after it got started,” Hansen said. “Metro got sold, which was one of the only venues sympathetic to our cause at the time. People knew about those shows and it was a really cool centralized location. After that [closed] the whole movement lost steam.”

As for the “dude at a laptop” performance criticism, Schneider said it was a crutch of the era adapting to change. “When you’re someone who started with racks of samplers, synths and shit and you finally get a laptop with all that built inside of it, you do have a whole studio onstage. It’s just hidden,” he said. “It also wasn’t very affordable for any of us to do a sick multimedia show.”

Therein lies a vital adaptation by electronica, the inclusion of visual aids to pull your attention away from the man at the laptop. Tycho’s live set is ripe with live tweaked visuals based around his graphic design. Schneider said he tries to bring a “video guy” to his bigger shows as well.

When Hansen blogged on his ISO50 design Web site about the Sacramento Electronica Music Festival, he did not hesitate to mention the partial reunion of Command Collective; partial because Chachi Jones is not playing. The SEMF could be the first step in a resurgence of the scene and Schneider feels the climate is right for it. “Everybody is stoked on the post-Command Collective stuff,” he said in regards to Tycho. “The scene has expanded as far as people making more diverse music. Most of the indie rock and IDM people have heard of Tycho. I’ve been to Seattle and have people know who Tycho and the Command Collective are.”

When Hansen attends shows that Dusty invites him to, he gets the occasional scene supporter of yore regaling him with “I miss those days” comments. Besides nostalgia for the tight-knit scene he once cultivated, Hansen said he misses Sacramento in general. Schneider said with the name garnering a buzz, he hopes for an integrated scene once again. He mentioned Sister Crayon and CityState as the fresh talent emerging that could bring new life to the scene. “My exposure to the scene now is whatever Dusty is doing,” Hansen said. “From what I’ve heard from Dusty, things are on the upswing again.”

Catch Tycho along with a long list of performers at the Sacramento Electronica Music Festival from Jan. 28-30. For a full lineup and more information, go to www.sacelectronicafest.tumblr.com

A look at the Sacramento scene shake-up in 2009

It was a difficult year for the local musician as at least eight bands met their demise. Swansong shows were played, vans were crashed and relationships collapsed in bittersweet endings. The silver lining in the shambles of bands lost? As we transition into a new decade, we’ll be greeted by fresh and lovely new bands.

That’s how this thing works. Take last year’s demise of The Evening Episode. Had they not called it quits, Terra Lopez would not have gone on to create our beloved Sister Crayon and fill that indie-pop gap in our lives. For now, it’s the breakup that is fresh for these fallen bands. Only last month, Buildings Breeding unplugged from the scene, citing a lapse in dedication as its reason for departure. Vocalist and guitarist Chris Larsen said Buildings Breeding hit a rut after founding guitarist Evan Hart moved to Oakland.

“I can’t really pinpoint what it was that made the decision,” he said. “It seemed the better we’d get, the less people would care.”

Fresh off a May tour, the band experienced a transformation from its lo-fi roots into a polished songwriting style that would become its Kite Fire EP. A man down, the group brought in Kevin Dockter on guitar and Justin Titsworth on drums. “It made the band feel brand new; finally it felt like we had something,” he said. “Even our oldest songs were fresh again. It definitely gave us a second wind.”

Buildings Breeding booked an extensive tour for November to promote the EP, only to learn that three of its six members weren’t available to travel. The band attempted to have friends fill in as best it could, but Larsen said it was apparent from those reluctant moments the band was kaput. “Chris [Vogel] and I would speak every night,” Larsen said. “When we kept coming to the same decision, we knew we had to end it. We decided to honor what local shows we had and add two farewell shows.”

The farewell show happened so frequently this year it could have been considered a fad. Bright Light Fever played its final show at Harlow’s on Sept. 10. The group had a six-year run eulogized by a can of soda.

“We bought a six pack of Sunkist orange soda before we started pre-production on our first record,” Matt Ferro, Bright Light Fever’s guitarist, said. “We drank them all but one can and kept that can in our practice room as sort of a good luck charm for the whole time we were together. When we were loading up for our last show, we looked at it and—no joke—the expiration date was Sept. 10, 2009. Same day as our last show. Poured it out in the back parking lot of Harlow’s.”

It was to Bright Light Fever’s benefit they did not share the newly expired soda. The band’s lifespan was marred by unfortunate events the members wore like an honor badge sash. Within a month of its debut’s release in Oct. 2006 on Stolen Transmission (an offspring label of Island/Def Jam), Bright Light Fever lost its distribution. By July 2007, Bright Light Fever was dropped from Stolen Transmission. The group wrecked two vans in Wyoming on two separate tours. BLF self-recorded and self-released its second record, eventually putting it on the Internet for free download due to “months wasted on empty promises and overall snakery by outside parties.”

The band finally toured without losing money last November. Alas, its follow-up summer tour led to law enforcement issues in Arizona, hitting a deer in Omaha, eight of 12 shows paying nothing and its newest member quitting. “We all genuinely loved the band, so we did it for as long as we could keep our sanity,” Ferro said. “Honestly, all the bad luck inspired us to work harder at what we were doing.”

Punk band Blame Betty attempted to bear the brunt for four years. Lead singer Brooke Sobol said being in a band exposed her to a potential she never understood, but when your band is in a constant shuffle of members, the lack of dedication wanes the drive. The band burned through four drummers, four bassists and two lead guitarists. “The more we accomplished, the more I wanted to accomplish,” she said. “When the dust settled, we had a good, solid group for a long time.”

Blame Betty broke up in September. Sobol said she was exploring a business opportunity that monopolized her time. The stability of Blame Betty suffered. “I just couldn’t do both,” she said. “The pressure of being the front person got to be more than I wanted. I actually have stage fright. There’s a lot of pressure on the front person.” Sobol said she wants to be the girl standing next to the lead now—drinking a beer and playing her guitar like a crazy woman.

Buildings Breeding split without its inner-band relationship suffering. Larsen and drummer Melanie Glover are still together. “Being able to share music with my true love Melanie, it was at times difficult, but so incredible to see her grow as a musician,” Larsen said. This is the exception.

David Mohr found out the hard way when he split with Meg Larkin just before the summer, leaving Sacramento without its premiere dance duo, 20,000. “I tell people now not to be in a band with your significant other,” Mohr said. “People warned me. I should have taken their advice.”

When Mohr ended his six-year run with previous band Didley Squat, he said it felt like an actual breakup, the intimate kind; but losing his band and girlfriend in a breakup was a crushing blow to his psyche. To make matters worse, the laptop they used to make their music was Meg’s computer. Mohr tried to record on his old four-track, but found the process frustrating.

20,000 never had an official last show. The breakup happened amidst scheduled dates around Midtown, each of which drove the nail deeper into the coffin. Mohr remembers one show in particular at Luigi’s Fungarden. “I was dreading that show,” he said. “It was right after we broke up and the plan was to keep the band going. It was just too weird to get on stage with your ex-girlfriend and pretend to have a good time, pretend to be into the songs when really you’re done with it.”

So why is this happening? Mohr said he is concerned by an influx of negative energy. In Bright Light Fever’s bassist Don Suave, he astutely wrote in the band’s obituary, “it has been frustrating to see our fan base consistently waning while, from my point of view, the quality of our work has been consistently waxing. What I’m saying is, ‘It’s all your fault.'” Similarly, Larsen expressed a frustration with the abandonment that came with his band exploring hi-fi aesthetics.

“I think [the band] was let down by that fact because we were all extremely proud of the stuff we were creating together. Add the hopes of being signed to a new label and having them leaving you dead in the dirt, that is sure to shake any band up.”

Blame Betty spent two years convincing a club to let them play and brought 75 paying attendees out on a Thursday night, only to have the rest of the bill spot four people and split the door money. “[The club] didn’t return any of my calls to get another show booked there,” Sobol said. “But, the other band still does shows there.”

Let’s not forget the silver lining. With the dissolution of such great bands, an absence is left within the artist. As Ferro put it, “playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band makes you cool. Like smoking cigarettes. So right now, I’m lacking cool.”

He and his brother Evan immediately continued writing music under the moniker Roman Funeral. The duo hopes to record an album by the spring and tour in 2010. Larsen is doing a “solo-y thing,” while his ex- bandmates have taken to other local acts like bands with ex-The Matches members and playing with Chelsea Wolfe.

Mohr obtained a laptop and has released two free digital records as Favors. His new venture retains the 20,000 sound, but with a lot more heartbreak. He is currently practicing with Ben and Chris of Impotent Ninja, as well as Chris’s girlfriend, which made Mohr wary at first. “I definitely spoke to Chris about it, but I think they might be stronger than Meg and I,” he said. He hopes to do Favors shows by the summer.

Through all the bullshit, each band had no problem expressing its gratitude for the little moments shared among bandmates and fans. For Ferro of Bright Light Fever, it was traveling in a van across the country with brothers and close friends and taking a piss while your bandmates all meet Iggy Pop on a street in Texas. Larsen recalls the feeling after Buildings Breeding’s last show as he thought, “If this many people came to our shows all the time, I would never quit. I could just play Sacramento and Davis the rest of my life.” Sobol recently caught a show with her bandmates. They still flirt with the idea of reforming again, pending a lead singer shows up. Mohr is doing his best to remain friends with Larkin. As of this week, he hopes he can give his friends one last 20,000 record. The two finished, but never released, an album before the breakup. “Up until about a week ago, I didn’t want to get it out,” he said.

Sister Crayon to Release Its First Album as a Full Band

When Submerge spoke to Sister Crayon’s Terra Lopez, she and the band were mired in Southern California traffic. Currently on the road on the Broke Bitches tour along with fellow Sacramentans Agent Ribbons, Sister Crayon weren’t holed up “in a big van” like their tourmates. Instead, Lopez and company were situated in a cozy station wagon—a red Volvo.

Genaro in The Crawdad, a reliable yet cramped tour vehicle. She got us to where we needed to be

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Lopez says of Sister Crayon’s modest transportation. “But it’s been really good overall.”

Sister Crayon is still relatively young. The seeds for the band were first sown three years ago when Lopez’s prior band broke up and left her performing solo. She went on alone for about a year until she met Dani Fernandez, who plays drum machine and synthesizer for Sister Crayon. It was through this pairing that Sister Crayon’s sound began to take shape. Lopez says that when she was on her own, her music was “very quiet”—just Lopez and her guitar. Though she had used loop pedals and beat machines in her previous band, it wasn’t until she started working with Fernandez that Lopez began pooling all of her influences into her music. Lopez says that she and Fernandez “just clicked” and the two began incorporating hip-hop elements into Lopez’s not-quite-folksy singer/songwriter material.

“We both love hip-hop, but we like just all kinds of different music,” Lopez explains. “The first song we wrote together was ‘Lavender Liars'”¦ I played this weird organ and she just played beats over it, and it just stuck. We figured out that was what we wanted to do. When I met Dani, that’s when things changed. I was like, ‘I finally met someone who could help me out with the sounds I had.'”

Chelsea Wolfe and I at the Smell in L.A. This show was with VOICEs VOICEs
and had Keith Haring murals!

Even when Lopez was performing on her own, she recalls that she always felt as if her music would lend itself to a bigger sound.

“When I was playing by myself, I liked what I was doing, but I always heard more,” Lopez says. “I always wanted more.”

Sister Crayon’s sound became even fuller with the addition of keyboardist Genaro Ulloa-Juno. The band operated as a twosome for about a year until Ulloa-Juno entered into the mix. Lopez says that the multi-instrumentalist was an easy fit into the band’s dynamic.

“It came together really simply, actually,” she says. “I asked him over to my house one day to listen to some stuff and see if he could add any thing, and we just hit it off.”

The band grew even further only just recently. Nicholas Suhr hopped on board only a few months ago. Hailing from the Bay Area, Suhr is now Sister Crayon’s drummer, adding a visceral snap to the band’s ethereal electronic beats.

Dani at a mansion (literally) 5 houses down from Snoop Dogg. Crazy story how we ended up staying at a mansion but it was by far the best night on tour. Thank you Pomona, Calif.!

“It’s really awesome to have a fuller sound,” Lopez says.

Suhr’s drumming came at a crucial time for the band as they were preparing their first proper CD release. Lopez released a Sister Crayon album, Loneliness Is My Mother’s Gun, earlier in 2009 via Chicago indie label Juene Été Records; however, she says their upcoming effort will be more indicative of Sister Crayon’s current sound.

“That album is just my stuff; they’re bedroom recordings,” Lopez says of Loneliness”¦. “Dani’s on a couple of tracks on that as well. I never intended to put that out. I was just going to sell that for $5 at shows”¦but the label contacted me and they were like, ‘We really like what you’re doing. Can we put this out?’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’ They paid for it all, so I was like, ‘Sure.'”

On the other hand, Enter Into Holy (Or)ders, Sister Crayon’s upcoming release, features the entire band—including Suhr, who had only joined the group a “week or two” before they went into the studio.

Chelsea Wolfe, Nicholas Suhr and I passed out after the house party in Pomona, Calif. We were up until 5 a.m. with the most amazing new friends we met earlier that night.

“He had to learn and write all of his parts while we were recording,” Lopez says of Suhr’s kind of trial by fire. “It was really cool that he was able to do that, because we had all been playing those songs for months, and he had to learn everything in the studio.” Lopez called the recording sessions for the album “intense,” saying that the band was logging 14 – 18 hour days at The Hangar, where “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded, produced by the band with help from Scott McChane, including “really long practices.”

The intensity with which “¦Holy (Or)ders was recorded is reflected in the music. Though Lopez says her lyrics and vocals are important to her, she says the album’s focus was more on the music.

“For me, for this album, I wanted the music to be the main focus because it was finally getting more intense, which is what I think we all wanted,” she explains.

Though her lyrics may have been more of an appetizer than “¦Holy (Or)ders‘s main course, Lopez believes the force of the band’s music has definitely rubbed off on her lyric writing. She says that her lyrics may have been more personal when Sister Crayon was a one-woman show; and though they still pull from her private life, her writing has become more aggressive. She says that the lyrics she wrote to the songs on “¦Holy (Or)ders revolve around the events of this past summer: including a relationship she’d entered into and a book she had been reading by controversial 20th century French writer Jean Genet. In fact, the title of the album is taken from a line in one of Genet’s books.

“He was one of the first French homosexual writers,” Lopez says. “His writing is really dirty and really aggressive. That kind of intrigued me.”

Performance-wise, Lopez is also no longer the quiet singer/songwriter with a guitar. She says that now that she has the power of a full band behind her, she’s had to become more assertive on stage.

“I sing a lot louder than I used to,” Lopez says through laughter.

Blessed with a stirring and soulful voice, a louder Lopez can only be considered a good thing. The band should be back home from the Broke Bitches Tour by the time this issue hits the streets. However, the band won’t be able to relax once they’re back in Sacramento. Lopez says Sister Crayon will quickly return to The Hangar to finish mixing “¦Holy (Or)ders so that it’s done by their CD release party on Aug. 21. Further on the horizon, Lopez says the band is hoping to have more of a nationwide tour, and in January, the band will perform in Spain, where their album will also see release.

Sister Crayon

Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009
Luigi’s Fun Garden

On a cold Saturday night, Sister Crayon kept me warm. Not with blankets or pea coats, but with hope for a better Sacramento music scene. Some say it’s dead and gone; that all the good bands are broken up and nothing new can replace them. Others remain optimistic—attending the shows that get ignored and filling the dance floors that are void of moving feet. What we all agree on is our love of good music and the desire to have it here in our great city. Sister Crayon’s recent performance at Luigi’s Fun Garden was a step in the right direction.

The crowd that gathered outside Luigi’s Fun Garden squeaked about on the wooden deck that hugs the outside of the impressive MARRS building on 20th and K. As Sister Crayon set up on the cobalt colored stage, they had a certain air about them. The four of them were positioned patiently behind their respective instruments, fondling them appropriately with an unbreakable focus.

Surrounded by keyboards and synthesizers, Genaro Ulloa was tucked neatly into the left corner, methodically turning knobs and wrestling cables that twisted and hooked like octopus tentacles. Dani Fernandez hovered over an MPC beat machine, picking at it like an impatient child at the dinner table, deciding what she liked and what needed changing. Leon Smith sat hunched over his drum set, a long gray scarf fastened neatly to his neck. After catching up with Terra Lopez, the high priestess of Sister Canyon, I learned that during the course of writing the record Loneliness Is My Mother’s Gun, a Beatles-inspired title no doubt, she’d been slowly compiling a full band, and tonight was their first performance together.

Fernandez played a straight-ahead 808 beat that concisely anchored their first song as an airy, backward guitar loop smeared across our eardrums; thick as paint. The music opened up to a bleeding chorus by Lopez. “It’s so easy to get distracted”¦“ she repeated over and over, her voice mimicking a sampler. The texture took precedence over a constantly changing song structure. The songs were very linear and built with each new layer, be it Smith’s minimal drum playing or Lopez’s use of the Kaos pad to echo and distort her voice, which was undeniably strong. Each ‘down tempo’ gem sucked the easily entranced audience deeper and deeper into Sister Crayon’s universe of other-worldly noises, samples and synth lines. The overall effect was a little reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Coco Rosie and Björk, the latter two being a big influence on Terra. The sound was minimal drums with maximum vocals that glide over the carefully quieting sounds of Ulloa’s keyboard melodies.

The rabbit hole took us to the last song, a nine-minute masterpiece filled with nearly inaudible field recordings of strange voices, reverberated harmonica, dissident guitar and a tardy drum build by Smith. The last note faded and the cold night was forgotten by an eruption of fiery applause.