The Bay has been keeping it weird for decades. Experimentation is always the soup du jour.
Here’s the fifth round of our favorite Bay Area albums of 2023. From Bill Orcutt to India Sky, the artists on this list bend the possibilities of storytelling, genre, and even sound itself. Huge thank you to Elise Mills, who wrote the vast majority of these reviews!
Jump on It – Bill Orcutt
American primitive guitar. Freak folk. Experimental acoustic. Those are just words, and this is just music. Jump on It is a 2023 solo album by San Francisco-based guitarist and composer Bill Orcutt, and it’s a beauty. It’s 10 tracks of the instrumental acoustic guitar meditations and improvisations that Orcutt has become known for, fingerpicking his way through a peaceful solitude fit for any hour of the day. Compared to the previous year’s release, it’s the same but different: Music for Four Guitars was just that, converting the contemplative solo acoustic into an electric chamber jam. And all of it’s distant but still connected to Harry Pussy, the Miami noise rock band Orcutt founded in the 90s.
— Ronny Kerr
Beyond the Reach of Light – Field of Fear
“The album arrives and ends on a meditative sine wave – a nod to the looming sense that this depression, while temporarily lifted, will return as it always does. A faithful dog. Another winter. A record that has been written and will continue to be written in terminal loops.”
Anguish is set to a low simmer; tendrils of mind tenaciously grasp onto depression’s relentless waves. On Beyond the Reach of Light, Drew Zercoe (as Field of Fear) hones in on the duality of (dis)comfort that occurs when stuck in a state of throbbing numbness. And how in the depths of depression, you find yourself swimming in a different kind of reality soup. Its industrial noisescape shrouds the head in an all-consuming fog. Pain and numbness bubble and shift strategically between harmful and seemingly harmless guises, overwhelm followed by paradoxical bliss— and you realize you have forgotten to breathe.
Beyond the Reach of Light maintains listenability through moments of respite in tracks like “Cold” and “Lost,” and its swift transitions between tracks. No extent of this harrowing valley is left unhaunted. All emotion is left out in its rawest, least symbolic form—and where no language can interfere.
— Elise Mills
Afro Futuristic Dreams – Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids
As one can expect with anything coming out of the ever-expansive afrofuturist consciousness, Afro Futuristic Dreams is an exploratory, cosmic journey traversing past and future timelines with references to science fiction writers Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delaney, all while deeply rooted in the “urgent reality of the present”—of police brutality, of reclamation of identity, of people power. Idris Ackamoor’s distinctive saxophone style is magical, melting into the budding orchestration of violin, guitar, and keytar. Among more familiar jazz motifs and structures, the album wanders boldly into meditative ambient and rock spaces with subtle sprinklings of electronic ornamentation. It’s almost impossible not to hum along to this, in turn offering an inwardly felt grounding ritual of harmonization.
Labeling this album “experimental jazz” feels a bit redundant and shallow, given jazz’s rich history of experimentation and innovation, all the while celebrating the joy of collaboration and improvisation. It can’t be limited to any one kind of feeling, vibe, or -ism. The album is a whole experience. Afro Futuristic Dreams is best listened to from start to finish. Oh, to see this live.
— Elise Mills
Somewhere Over the Mystic Moon – India Sky
Somewhere Over the Mystic Moon ripples some celestial ocean, ready to whisk you away on soft, silky synth pads. Oakland artist India Sky invites us to re-acquaint the soul and body with pleasure, lightness, and luxuriation. A moonlit waterway funnels the listener through colorful galaxies and rippling futurisms. After swirling about in the sacred honey that is India Sky’s vocal timbre, and backed by a distinctively ‘80s ballroom vibe, you finally arrive at “Bottom of the Sea” to remember how to breathe (beneath the deep). The artist can only offer a hand at the waterfront; it’s up to you to decide whether you will not only meet her there, but allow yourself to surrender to the place you call home. Out now on Ratskin Records.
— Elise Mills
Ngayon – Karl Evangelista’s Apura
“In the Filipino language Tagalog, Ngayon translates to ‘now.’ Appropriately, this sophomore effort from Karl Evangelista’s Apura is intended to capture the feeling of an abstract and transcendent present – a moment apart from the desperation and uncertainty that afflicted the past several years of human life.”
There’s literally nothing quite like this present moment. This one. Right now. How do you capture it? Many ways: For example, you could lose yourself in the stunning mantra of repetitive minimal techno blaring on the dance floor of some underground rave. Or, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum, you might unfurl your soul along the threads of some wild and free experimental jazz poetry, no two bars ever identical.
This latter is what’s achieved on Ngayon by Karl Evangelista’s Apura, a band featuring Andrew Cyrille (drums), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), Rei Scampavia (piano), and Francis Wong (saxophone). The group plays as one led by Evangelista’s holy guitar, surging forward into the present, the ever-changing present.
— Ronny Kerr
Machines – Nihar
I have long been an admirer of Nihar Kirtidev Bhatt’s releases, DJ sets, and his esoteric techno label Left Hand Path, which he co-runs with Chris Zaldua. Squirrels on Film has also consistently showcased the best of Bay Area subculture, where avant-garde and experimental artists are free to explore the bounds of mind/body dance music.
Nihar’s latest release Machines (via Squirrels on Film) draws from a palette of darkwave, techno, and industrial sounds. Delving into twisty, dark, and unsettling places, it takes listeners on grotesque journeys through blood vessels and filaments, reshaping flesh into powerful metallic symbiosis, much like implanted cybernetic armor. As time slows and suspends, the body slowly knits itself together, with neurons firing and regenerating forgotten connections and memories, while simultaneously forging newer, stranger ones. All these elements pulsate together, forming a strangely familiar yet unfamiliar living entity—a pleasant hallucination for some; perhaps a nightmare for others.
Squirrels on Film aptly describes Machines as angular and geometric. Like a more intricate game of Tetris, let its angularity infiltrate every crevice of your mindscape.
— Elise Mills
pouring water in the dark – rose cherami
“you had to be there.”
pouring water in the dark by rose cherami is an eerie noise-ish album by the self-proclaimed “spell stutterer.” Amidst warped instrumentals, this short but powerful album features raw vocals with the ability to cast spellbinding nets on innocent passerby. rose cherami explores the edges of new goth and psychedelic noise, introducing an experimental siren-folk quality while cranking the overdrive to 10; this creates an abrasive and estranging effect, which keeps the listening ear in a state of constant intrigue, aching for that afterbuzz resolution. The track “selfesteem” is a literal play on this defamiliarization concept, as the artist recontextualizes The Offspring’s Smash hit from 1994 into new weathered terrain (and not without a clamor).
— Elise Mills
Akousmatikous – Salami Rose Joe Louis
“I am enamored with the concept of listening to a sound when we don’t know the source. The act of listening in this great expanse of the universe, for answers, for questions, or just for something undefinable that we seek.”Lindsay Olsen
I wasn’t ready. I’m not sure you’re ready either.
The setting is funky indie space opera, where Lindsay Rose Olsen dares to explore the mind-melty techno-symbiotic relationship between plants, humanity, and machine in an almost endearing post-apocalyptic sandbox “after dimensional collapse.” With a little ‘70s jazz tea infusion, and ethereal synthy and vocal magic, we look down to find our fleshly vessels evolved: “the earthlings have their heads and hands transformed into screens, which is where we begin the album. The earthlings get stuck in a never ending video feedback loop between their heads and their hands.”
The Salami Rose Joe Louis project is no stranger to making-strange. There’s some serious craftsmanship to this album, from the production to the imagination, to the life-world Salami Rose Joe Louis and her collaborators breathe into being. In a world literally overwhelmed by too many screens, too much noise, and way too much B.S. as we witness climate disaster and toxic social structures collapse in real time, let Akousmatikous breathe some life back into your tired bones in hopes of innovative and fulfilling relationships, collaboration, and a genuine spirit of collectivism.
— Elise Mills
Immortal Sin 03 – Various Artists
These four bangers may as well be a belated love-letter to the late ‘90s/early ‘00s techno heads. The third edition of the Immortal Sin compilations from SF label Squirrels on Film strays a bit further from the left-field, avant-garde computer music of earlier releases in the series, and throws us back to Orbital’s Blue Album era in a major way. These ferocious, absolutely sinister sounds will definitely be spotted at your next warehouse underground. Sure to relieve a revved crowd at peak hour, Immortal Sin 03 allows listeners to explore their limits in the descent through a late-capitalist take on mythic asphodel meadows. It’s one hell of a squelchy trek, that’s for sure. Enjoy, fellow heathens!
— Elise Mills
