The Oakland-based pop-soul band Bells Atlas are gearing up to drop a standalone single, “Spec and Bubble.” Attempting to neatly describe the sounds that Derek Barber (guitar) Geneva Harrison (drums, percussion, keys) Sandra Lawson-Ndu (vocals, percussion, keys) and Doug Stuart (bass, vocals, keys) produce together is no easy task. Kaleidoscopic and richly layered, each new foray by the band expands the wide, colorful sonic palette from which they paint dazzling, vibrant structures from.

Sunset Exotic is the solo project of singer/songwriter/producer Charlie Foltz. His first mixtape titled “Oddity”, consists of the two flagship songs of Sunset Exotic, recorded at Charlie’s studio in Santa Rosa, California in June of 2016. The mixtape borrows elements of 80’s new wave, London synth pop, and modern french electronic music and explores the themes of love, manipulation and bitterness in a revealing tone full of brutally honest self assessment. Sunset Exotic aims to be sonically massive with moody undercurrents that are reminiscent of artists like Talking Heads, Gorillaz, Blood Orange, The The, and David Bowie. Currently, Charlie is wrapping up the debut EP that will release early next year under the Sunset Exotic banner. ​

"I started building up this collection of synthesizers from the 80’s and 90’s back in 2014 and immediately began to shoehorn them into just about every FRENCHGIRLS song we were making at the time. At the beginning of this year, I got really obsessive about making these grandiose productions with a combination of guitars, bass, drums, drum machines, and my synth collection to a point where I just figured, “Why not make a few albums of this?” Recently, I’ve found myself being inspired by a lot more artists like Midge Ure, Gorillaz, Talking Heads, Blood Orange, The The, Tame Impala, and Prince. They have this crazy ambitious production style that taught me how to think of individual roles within a band as non-static and flexible vs confined to just the one instrument that each member plays. Its been a pretty liberating way to write and for right now, I’m really digging that style of arranging and producing. “Oddity" is kind of my way of finally turning in a few pages of overdue lab notes from a bunch of late nights in the studio this year." –Charlie Foltz

Don’t miss Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival’s 2016 music line up on October 8th!

This Year’s Ocean Beach Festival’s Music Line Up This year the world-renowned Noriega Street will be home to the third annual Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival. This FREE festival will be dedicated to the cultural and historic value of Ocean Beach. The Outer Noriega Merchant Association (ONMA) along with its great residents are joining together to celebrate the vibrant beauty that is Noriega Street. This family friendly festival will feature six stages, over ten food vendors, two beer gardens, over twenty live music acts, live art installations, a kids zone, mobile petting zoo, and a pumpkin patch. So please join us on October 8th for a day to remember!

Travis Hayes
O
Meernaa
Claire George
Spooky Mansion
Down and Outlaws
Tino Drima
The Electric Arrows
French Cassettes
Chickenhead Johnson
Bear Call
The Old Folks
Edward Dix
James Houdini
DJ Platinum Patton

Bay Area based singer-songwriter, Emily Afton has released a new collection of hauntinly beautiful songs. Her album is entitled, Archetype and can be heard in its entirety via Soundcloud.com. We’re always excited to share new music with The Deli readers and this new album is a total gem!

Archetype is a crossroads of Emily Afton’s path as a songwriter. It brings together new ideas & old concepts, taps into her psyche, and draws from the canon of contemporary tastes while creating something distinct. The album is indicative of Afton’s changing artistic tides, ebbing from guitar and piano driven folk and flowing to alt pop circuitry and back over a period of about a year. Her decision to change her name from ‘Emily Moldy’ (her last name is Moldenhauer, Afton is her middle name) was also inspired by the broadening musical horizons in full view on Archetype. The album is a perfect introduction to Afton’s inspired persona, drawing the listener in close with a Siren’s song that stops before the rocks get too close.

​The San Francisco based metal, math rock band​, Aberrant Phase​ ​is gearing up to release a new album entitled, Below. This dark, merky metal record will appropriately be released next month on Halloween. You can get a taste of Below‘s vibe and tone by checking out their new single, Anodyne​. Enjoy the new music and support independent musicians!​

Another classic neo psych show is headed your way on September 25th at The Elbo Room. Neo psych aficionados, The Asteroid #4, Dirty Denim, The Spiral Electric and Federale will perform in celebration of the release of Federale’s new album, All The Colours Of The Dark. Don’t miss the event. DJ Joel Gion of Joel Gion & the Primary Colours and The Brian Jonestown Massacre will be spinning records all night!

Tonight, The Independent in San Francisco will host a completely local line up, consisting of M. Lockwood Porter, Vandella and Travis Hayes. It’s pretty rare to see a full on San Francisco based line up at The Independent, so make sure you go out and support these hardworking artists who earned this awesome gig.

Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music. Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines.

We’re excited to announce that San Francisco’s Heron Oblivion will be performing live in San Francisco in support of Dinosaur Jr. at The Independent for three nights: September 26th, 27th and 28th!

Three shades of light run through Heron Oblivion: Meg Baird’s rich, beautiful vocal approach, the locked-horns bass and drums of her and Ethan Miller’s streamlined-but-motorik rhythm section, and a twin guitar tapestry that both aligns with the dreaminess of the songs and crackles out of containment to froth over the rim. It’s a seamless but pronounced thing: “Oriar” sports dramatic spires of solos that fly high out of the gate, slowly settling in to lilting verses then exploding again, “Rama” drifts like an Opal/Fairport wedding with more tumbling, syrupy electric lines all around.

Pastoral pummel. Listening to Heron Oblivion’s album feels like sitting in a lovely meadow in the shadow of a dam that’s gonna heave-ho’ any minute. Members of this new San Francisco combo have put in time in both raging and relatively tranquil psychedelic sound units—this is the premise and the synergy behind this very unique and special new (self-titled) album.

The Oakland based rock duo, Steel Cranes has released a new music video entitled, Ebb from their new album, Tango which was released last month.

Tango is a more dynamic take on the “grit” and “raw, relentless power”. The debut Steel Cranes album. With a vision for the sound of Tango that was more expansive, Shapiro and Schukle were initially stalled when considering the logistics of accomplishing these time-consuming sonic refinements in a studio environment. It soon became clear that the best option was to record and mix the record themselves.

This education ultimately yielded the more passionate and layered version of the Steel Cranes sound that is heard on Tango. Once freed from the confines of creative deadlines and traditional studio environments, Shapiro and Schukle took full advantage of their new work paradigm.

Chasms is the San Francisco based project of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden. The duo crafts percussive dirges that are at once beautiful and menacing. Labrador’s haunting vocals and hypnotizing guitar work wade between rhythmic bass lines and bursts of Madden’s stinging feedback, laid on a bed of pummeling drum programming. The band’s affinity for industrial rhythms, swelling textures, precise minimalism, and chaotic eruptions of noise sounds as equally informed by shoegaze as drone and doom metal—to choose just one would be a disservice.

On The Legs Of Love Purified is the band’s proper debut full-length album. Written over the course of several years, the album explores the healing force of love and the exorcism of pain that inescapably accompanies it. Light cannot exist without dark, bliss without suffering. …Love Purified conjures this atmosphere of duality as it drifts through an expanse of emotion.

LOTUS THIEF is a San Francisco band that merges post-black metal, space rock and ambient music, seamlessly blending the genres into a unique and greater musical whole. Originated by two members of celebrated “green metal” group BOTANIST – drummer Otrebor and multi-instrumentalist / composer Bezaelith — LOTUS THIEF is its own entity; a project with a stated purpose of “lauding knowledge and illuminating ancient words and art through song”. The group will release its new album, Gramarye, on September 16 via Prophecy Productions.

“The Book of the Dead is a beautiful text of its time, a sort of instruction manual for the afterlife compiled over about a thousand years and often inscribed on sarcophagi or tomb walls, hence the title “coffin spells,” comments Bezaelith. "For us, the song needed to be as vast and colorful as possible to approach the text, jumping from wild passages of harsh vocals to building solos, to calm ideological eyes of the storm from one moment to the next.”

Bay Area based band Great Apes are gearing up to release a new album, California Heart.The record was recorded over four days this past spring by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden. Asian Man Records is releasing the material on 12” LP and in digital format in October.

California Heart is the second full length and sixth release from San Francisco’s Great Apes. The record, akin to much of the band’s earlier material, is thematic. With California Heart, the concept is a fictional one, revolving around an alienated adolescent residing in Fresno, CA. Each song is written in first person and tackles a myriad of subjects including mental illness, suburban doldrums, creativity, nature as a sanctuary, social isolation, perceptions of adulthood, cliques, bullying, drugs, suicide, and an ever-crystallizing and often cynical view of the world. In its entirety, the record is intended to be a portrait of navigating coming of age as an outcast, in a stagnant and less-than-nurturing environment. Although the writing is founded in fiction, it’s undoubtedly inspired by personal experiences, and anyone who grew up feeling weird, anxious, down, and/or angst-ridden in a place they wanted out of should have no problem finding points of relation.

Live Show:
Saturday, September 17th This is my Fest – Oakland, CA @ Oakland Metro House