Colossal Yes
Accept not false soft rock shenanigans!

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Essie Jain
Essie Jain (NYC, Ba Da Bing Records): "The point at which tolerance reaches its limit and her frustrations boil over, the lyric itself sounds the opposite of angry. Not as much from indolence as much as attempted decorum, Jain thoroughly suffuses her album with the same sort of stately, delicate, and often somber understatement...Jain's thoroughgoing anti-dynamism emphasizes her distanced lyrical appraisals of situations that seem to be irrevocably broken...her plaintive voice suggests a chilly resignation, however, her words offer hope for reconciliation and repair. The accompanying music is as minimal as the songs' single-word titles; typically, Jain accompanies herself only with piano or acoustic guitar. Other instrumentation comes and goes as necessary-- stand-up bass, accordion, bowed strings, hushed drumming strategically implemented for utmost effect." - Pitchfork

Giant Skyflower Band
During a sabbatical from regular duties in The Skygreen Leopards, Glenn Donaldson (never one to rest) dreamt of Giant Skyflower Band, an exotic, flowery and crumbling new recording project with nods to fruity new age, psych, prog, folk, and pop songwriting. Donaldson quickly invited multi-instrumentalist Shayde Sartin to “smoke marijuana & make up strange pop songs, ” and thus the band was born. With Gong's seminal Magick Brother as a starting point and a sitar close at hand, the duo created a dark, peregrine pop transmission from their shoddy analog recording studio in San Francisco. Blood of the Sunworm is the duo’s debut offering.

Giant Skyflower’s purpose is to examine in detail the idiom of Bummer Psych; the strain of damaged Anglo-pop music pioneered by Syd Barrett that arguably reached its apex with The Television Personalities’ Painted Word LP in the mid-80’s, but found new life in Japan via the genius of Tori Kudo and like-minded acts such as Nagisa Ni te and Tenniscoats. Indeed, Blood of the Sunworm consists of depressing pop songs and damaged instrumentals - teeth bared and falling apart as they are cobbled together – on a hazy, cryptic journey through a busted kaleidoscope, behind a dusty mirror & up through the rafters. (biography)

Replicator
"Tight, terse, aggro, noisy post-punk...'It's kind of, for lack of a better term, big rock,' says vocalist-guitarist Conan Neutron." - SF Bay Guardian

Moggs
"Alternates between angular rhythmic notches and stretches of muted and lingering noise.” – All Music Guide

Shearing Pinx
"Make way for the specific and somewhat imposing presence of Vancouver’s Shearing Pinx, cutting ties with all music since Sonic Youth in ’83 and kicking up a mighty cloud of clattery guitar racket. Displaying quite a bit of punk-alley abandon and anti-heroic anthem to go with the Thurston/Lee soundclash, the trio bashes away at these mostly longer songs with patient precision, muddled by a lo-fi, redline quality to dirty things up. Their own EP has some moments of untogether sprawl, but the material on the split shreds, violent and thrashing." - Dusted

Red Nurse

Origami

Punk Rock Sideshow w/DJ Tragic & the Duchess of Hazard, every Monday

Raccoo-oo-oon
Davenport, Iowa's Raccoo-oo-oon fits in nicely with the Bügsküll, Jennifer Gentle, and Animal Collective branch of noise rock, but while those groups take the music into more pop directions - Bügsküll sounding more indie rock, Jennifer Gentle sounding more Barrett or Zappa, and Animal Collective sounding more Beach Boys or Olivia Tremor Control - Raccoo-oo-oon keeps the music close to the soil, following a bit more closely to the rules of rock and roll. Riffs are the foundation for them to build ecstatic clutter on top, not the other way around. While the songs are very rock, the influence of primitivism is still profound. This melange of hard guitar, crazy sax, and primal grunting makes the band seem much more punk rock than those directly before them." - Fakejazz

Death Sentence: Panda!
Fighting for fights and freedom of ghosting. Marching freedomists grace the valley as the funk takes over your mind. Join us, as fancy ladies flee from the righteous flag of obscurity and the festival descends over all who trust in it. (Death Sentence: Panda! mission statement)

Numinous Eye
Improvisational psych-cosmic-noise-rock project centered around guitarist Mason Jones (SubArachnoid Space).

Fucked Up
"Toronto's Fucked Up can invoke the melodic anthems of British Oi, the brawny directness of early ’80s American hardcore and the artistic autonomy of a band that doesn't care what its forebears have done before. Gruff, raspy vocals reminiscent of Negative Approach's John Brannon topple over driving guitars, sometimes favoring melody, sometimes a chaotic, down-stroke frenzy, threading the best elements of Killed By Death obscurities through the Undertones' melody, Black Flag's aggression and Minor Threat's Marshall-driven guitars." (bio)

William Hooker's Bliss Trio with Oluyemi Thomas and Damon Smith
"William Hooker is a one-man planet of force, dynamics, overtones and space." - Alternative Press

"Skimming through Hooker's bulky résumé, one finds that the musician's lifelong pursuits have been about nothing less than self-growth. Born and raised in New Britain, Conn., Hooker got off to an early start as a drummer for the Flames, a rock 'n' roll group that backed up singers and bands such as Dionne Warwick, Freddie Cannon, and the Isley Brothers. At college he studied 20th-century composers and independently researched the Blue Note Records catalog while performing in ensembles that played straight-ahead jazz, or "tunes," as Hooker referred to the music. He says his late-'60s move to the Bay Area was what really shaped his musical perceptions, a discovery that allowed him to hone his skills as a free-jazz musician.

After relocating to the East Coast, Hooker finally established his home base in NYC in the mid-'70s, when he was involved in the loft scene with cats such as David S. Ware, Cecil McBee, David Murray, and Billy "Bang" Walker. He continued to perform in a number of jazz ensembles throughout the '80s before mingling with lower-Manhattan noise rockers like Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay, and Elliot Sharp during the '90s.

Hooker may have moved on from the free-rock aesthetic, but his limits have been boundless for some time now, especially when it comes to experimentation. Playing in support of his new album, Dharma (KMBjazz), a duet recording with reedist Sabir Mateen, and his forthcoming Season's Fire (Important), a trio full-length rounded out by Bill Horist and Eyvind Kang, Hooker acknowledges that he's just trying to connect with listeners who are on "a certain level as far as free jazz goes." He believes he's found two of those people in reed player Oluyemi Thomas and bassist Damon Smith, who are in his Bliss Trio.

'I'm looking forward to what's going to happen when we play at the Hemlock, because both of these musicians are very good,' Hooker says. 'There's no doubt about that.'" - Chris Sabbath, SF Bay Guardian

Willow Willow
Harmony singing is a kind of alchemy that gives two or more notes a golden glow they don't have on their own. The technique can be learned, but the magic comes from kinship, whether familial (the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys) or street-steeped and friendship-bred (the Four Seasons, the Beatles, Indigo Girls).
Miranda Zeiger and Jessica Vohs come by their virtual sisterhood honestly: By the time they formalized their singing relationship under the appropriately evocative name Willow Willow, they had more than two decades of intimate harmonizing behind them. "We were in the same classes in kindergarten through second grade," Zeiger explained recently over a late-afternoon lunch at a downtown Oakland cafe. "We would sing walking home from school," Vohs chimed in, "and make up songs."
Now 30, Zeiger and Vohs have finally finished their first album, a concise self-titled collection of 10 delicately produced but sturdily sung original songs. Their singing is a blend that lends beguiling radiance to the simple, sometimes naive sentiments of songs with such titles as 'Follow the Spring,' 'The Fog,' 'Stuck in Time' and 'Feel Love.'" - SF Gate

Blank Tapes
On the cover of the Blank Tapes' LP, 2005's Landfair, is a drawing of a white river winding through snow-capped mountains, a benevolent sun shining down. It's a bucolic scene, one that feels appropriate for the rustic, lazy-day folk you'll find on the record within. You'd never guess that these 23 tunes were recorded in an Orange County garage, between parties and surf breaks, by future San Francisco resident Matt Adams. Or that prior to 2001, Adams wasn't even that interested in songwriting, intent instead on a career in illustration and cartooning. But now, with a clutch of amazing songs that recall the Beach Boys, Lee Hazlewood, and Leonard Cohen, he's spearheading the next wave of local folk music. - SF Bay Guardian