It’s here! All the best music from the Bay Area in 2024. Or at least the best of everything we listened to (there was a lot).
In this final of four parts, we’ve got selections from the likes of Soeneido, Sour Widows, Space Ghost, Sylvester, Tomu DJ, Toro y Moi, and the No Bias and Capp St Crews, spanning a wide spectrum of sounds – blissful drum and bass, funky city pop, hip hop, lo-fi indie pop, club centerpieces, and more.
Soulox, Soeneido – FR041
Nearly a year after FR023, Oakland and Sacramento junglists Soeneido and Soulox reprise on Future Retro London with a new blissful drum & bass pairing. On both tracks, FR041 bubbles with crying vocals, woven in and out of clean punchy beats. “It Been” smoothes the edges with nostalgic, calming IDM sounds, while “Why” rides juke-like through sharply spliced 8-bit gamer trinkets.
— Ronny Kerr
Sour Widows – Revival of a Friend
Revival of a Friend by Sour Widows is a moody alt rock hinterland, an extravagant grunge palace assembled from simple pieces of the craft. What sets it apart? Touch. Texture. Co-produced, engineered, and mixed by Tiny Telephone’s Maryam Qudus, the album sounds pristine: each floor tom, snare, guitar string, and crying out voice given its space to breathe separately—and to organically meld into the whole. Traversing these sonic landscapes, one feels cradled by a warm, furious heart. Instead of cruelty or bitterness, there is a grounding gratitude strummed in love.
— Ronny Kerr
Space Ghost – Dream Tool
Continuing the slinky city night drive funky house that made Dance Planet irresistible, Oakland producer Space Ghost returns with Dream Tool. It is not just four tracks of mind-caressing, ambient-laden grooves; it is also a statement. After years working with Apron Records, Pacific Rhythm, PPU, and Danish label Tartelet Records, the artist debuts this new music on his new label Peace World Records.
Just as Space Ghost’s music is supremely retro, tapping into 80s city pop seratonin and 90s ambient house minimalism, it is also very much of the current era, infused with finely polished productions and a new generation’s dedication to intention and self-care. Equally, it is dance music for the world but decidedly, as the label launch represents, dance music from the Bay.
— Ronny Kerr
Stunnaman02 – “Eat a Salad”
Not yet reviewed by White Crate (but it’s hella funny and inspirational).
GENRES: hip hop, rap, hyphy
Sutro – Sutro
Not yet reviewed by White Crate.
GENRES: hip hop, rap, r&b
Sylvester – Live at the Opera House
“I have no real projections except I want to play the San Francisco Opera House. I am—and I’m saying this—I am going to play the opera house! It’s going to be a fabulous show with a full orchestra, lots of costumes, lots of lighting and lots of everything. Lots! And whenever you think you have too much, you should put on more, just to be safe.” — Sylvester, in an October 1977 interview with The Advocate.
On the evening of March 11, 1979, Sylvester’s resolution came true. Previously released in edited form as the LP Living Proof on Fantasy Records, the complete two-hour event at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House can now be enjoyed in its entirety thanks to a new release from Craft Recordings, Live at the Opera House.
It’s a dazzling set, with Sylvester performing many beloved hits—”You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”, “I (Who Have Nothing)”, “Dance (Disco Heat)”—alongside a full band, including Patrick Cowley on synthesizers and the singing duo Two Tons O’ Fun, later known as The Weather Girls. There’s fast and steamy disco, of course, but Sylvester also performs gospel, blues, jazz, and ballads that regularly stretch past the 10-minute mark as he sings, scats, and tells stories.
In addition to the tunes, the release is a document of an SF legend, with the recording capturing the moment when city supervisor and gay rights activist Harry Britt, acting on behalf of then-mayor Dianne Feinstein, joined Sylvester onstage to officially declare March 11th as Sylvester Day. Far from a rigid, bureaucratic ritual, the moment finds Britt emotional and laughing with joy as he reads aloud the formal city decree.
The recording is bursting with joyous moments like this, and despite the grandiose venue (far larger than the local spots where Sylvester first started), it feels like a personal, intimate celebration for friends and family. On “You Are My Friend,” he thanks his community for supporting him from the early days performing the Elephant Walk at 18th and Castro and squeezing in “our first rehearsal in a Volkswagen on our way to Marin County” to his growing stardom as he traveled the world. Yet he professes his determination to stay in San Francisco when referencing his visits to LA, New York, and Paris: “That was fabulous, but it ain’t like it is right here.”
— Ronny Kerr
Tomu DJ, Petty Getty – “Tortfeasor”
Not yet reviewed by White Crate.
GENRES: electronic, drum and bass, club
Tony Jay – Knife Is But a Dream
Truly a “Treasury of Reveries,” as one song here is aptly titled, Knife Is But A Dream is the latest album by Tony Jay, aka Michael Ramos. Jointly released by Bay Area labels Paisley Shirt and Slumberland as well as Japan’s Galaxy Train, the lo-fi endeavor was entirely composed and recorded at home by Ramos alone. Well, alone with his cat Penny going “through a time of delicate health.” You probably wouldn’t know it, but Penny provides guitar muting, keyboard playing, and backup vocals on a few tracks.
One of those bright lights in the Bay Area indie music constellation, Ramos also performs with Flowertown and Al Harper, and recently collaborated with Chime School on their album The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel. So it may come as no surprise that the sounds here fit neatly into our local fog pop scene—melancholy, sedate, mellow strumming rumination. Amid the sung pieces, instrumentals (“Doubtfully Yours”, “The Softest String”) fade in and out like apparitions, reinforcing the work as some sort of lost film depicting not just people and relationships, but landscapes, lifeless things, the passing weather.
— Ronny Kerr
Toro y Moi – Hole Erth
Not yet reviewed by White Crate.
GENRES: pop, new age, psychedelic
The Umbrellas – Fairweather Friend
All aboard the streetcar to another instant chamber pop classic from the Bay. Fairweather Friend by The Umbrellas criss-crosses the familiar with the new in the way that only a maturing indie band can do. Steeped with knowledge and nostalgia of indie classics over the decades, yet confidently sounding like today, the SF jangle quartet plays with stop and go rhythms, varied lead singers and harmonies, light-hearted strumming, brief heavy jams, and fog-lifting morning musings into a pastel collage pleasing from the start. Lyrics above from album highlight “Echoes.”
— Ronny Kerr
Various (No Bias) – Bay Area Renegade Trax
No Bias is a nexus of the Bay Area electronic music underground. A little over three years, a single called “IN TUNE” by RITCHRD (aka Tal Robinson) made it to Bandcamp, marking the label’s very first release. More than 40 singles and EPs later, the label run by Robinson has given platform to dozens of producers, from critically acclaimed creators like Bored Lord and Tomu DJ to all the lesser known but no less talented artists with ties to the Bay.
Bay Area Renegade Trax, the label’s latest release, celebrates that inspiring, interconnected community with a compilation of 23 tracks by 24 artists. Arranged in alphabetical order by artist name, the collection kicks off with Agropol’s “Waiver,” a 145+ BPM techno piece signaling what’s to come: Most of the compilation is hard and fast. Sometimes there’s an ear worm, sometimes it’s just gritty. Here it’s unrelenting, pounding four on the floor; there it’s jittery and breaking apart, a juke two-stepper, or something rhythmically harder to identify. Everywhere, it’s high-quality taste, pushing forward the potency of club music—and that’s exactly representative of No Bias.
— Ronny Kerr
Various – Capp Street Project, Vol. 5
Precise and incisive from beginning to end, Capp Street Project, Vol. 5 presents eight shapeshifting techno productions, collaborations between @@, Zero Idea, Brick, Skiis, Agropol, Jmo Corleone, and Benji Bassline. It varies from the viciously mechanical (“DRAIN”) to the funky bouncy (“THE FLOOR”), from the minimal and progressive (“CAPP STREET TECH”) to the ethereal and free (“PINT DREAMS”). If it’s not obvious that the producers have been influenced a spectrum of styles, just visit one of their parties, where within the space of a few minutes you’ll encounter a concoction of UK garage, disco house, and dubstep materials. Definitely worthwhile stepping into this mesmerizing SF techno menagerie.
— Ronny Kerr
We Are Neurotic, 3kelves – “Hyperservice”
High-tempo disco heights return with the debut of C3DO Recordings, a new label founded by international crew of producer/DJs Dylan C. Greene, We Are Neurotic, and 3kelves. This year, Indonesian trio We Are Neurotic dropped the label’s first single “Hyperservice” with contributions by SF producer 3kelves, diving straight into an energetic, light-and-fast house track glazed with a piano solo in the breakdown.
— Ronny Kerr
What’s Important – bloodsoaked castle
Not yet reviewed by White Crate.
GENRES: pop, emo, lo-fi
Yea-Ming and the Rumours – I Can’t Have It All
I Can’t Have It All cements Yea-Ming and The Rumours as one of Oakland’s most cherished songwriters. With 60s pop-rock and 90s/early aughts college radio references, The Rumours’ dreamy music could make a lovesick mixtape from any decade—rediscovered from the past, yet effortlessly fresh.
Out now on Dandy Boy Records, I Can’t Have It All showcases Yea-Ming Chen’s skill with contrasting lyrical truths against carefree melodies. The album starts and ends with “Pretending,” melodically infectious but blunt: “You need to know something… I’m pretending it’s just fine and it’s killing me inside.” Then comes the title track, where there’s no missing the album’s themes: the dissonance of living through limits and disappointments alongside the necessity of keeping it together. “Old Frog” dips briefly into full-fledged melancholy, where a stripped-down arrangement allows Yea-Ming’s vocals to shine and deliver, with sweet resignation: “If that water keeps rushing down, well that’s just the way it goes.”
— Ainsley Wagoner
4d. – Juxtoposition
Lotek, an all-jungle imprint founded by local producer/DJ Soeneido, just last week released its first-ever full length album: Juxtoposition by 4d. Opening with a frenetic, noisy free jazz intro overlaid with cartoon sounds and sampled news broadcasts declaiming the serious challenges of affording life here, the album is simultaneously a love letter to the artist’s home in the Bay while also a no-rose-colored-glasses portrait of the wealth inequality that has completely transformed the area. It’s also an absolute party, briskly blending together bebop, dub, and soul palettes into its drum and bass vortex, elegantly juxtaposing tranquil half-tempo ambiance with 160+ BPM breaks as effortlessly as it juxtaposes the themes of struggle and love.
— Ronny Kerr
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