Mesh Magazine

Deerhoof, fresh from performing two All Tomorrow’s Party shows in the UK are set to release their new EP, +81, on Tuesday. The title-track is from the band’s forthcoming album, Friend Opportunity (out January 23, 2007), while the rest of the songs are b-sides that didn’t make it onto 2002’s Reveille. The band plays the Bay Area next in late-January with Busdriver at Great American Music Hall.

Track listing:
“+81″
“Sealed With A Kiss”
“Surprise Symphony”
“United He-Ho Brothers”
“Aho Bomb”

And finally, here’s Deerhoof’s Mesh cover interview:

Running Thoughts
Deerhoof breathes life into sound.
By Mila Zuo
Photo by Winni Wintermeyer

The Runner’s Four, Deerhoof’s latest LP, is a Technicolor dream, an avant-pop soundscape that gushes melodic glee with a sense of refined whimsy. Having the liberty to record themselves for the first time at their Oakland studio, the band experimented with their sound more than ever before, creating a tour de force that’s nearly twice as long as previous works. With only self-imposed time restraints, “office hours” as the band describes it, Deerhoof attempted new rhythmic techniques and explored muted melody and paused tension while delivering their signature post-punk paired with distinctive cherub-like vocals. Before leaving for a stateside tour in support of the album, these purveyors of unique avant-pop, vocalist/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki, drummer Greg Saunier and guitarist Chris Cohen meet me at Hotel Nikko with a backdrop of smooth jazz and a chill in the air.
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Till Death Do Us Part
With the release of their long-awaited second album and their new, stripped-down lineup, The Husbands vow to deliver it raw and mean with a veil of sweetness.
By Julia Dodge
Photo by Darcy Holdorf

The Husbands’ Sarah Reed and Sadie Shaw knew they had a bug problem in their apartment, but they weren’t prepared for what was behind the refrigerator.

When they pulled their fridge away from the wall, they were confronted by what Reed refers to as “a black wall of cockroaches.” In desperation, the pair scrambled for magazines, rolled them up into the most effective weapons possible and went to town on the infestation. With eyes closed and heads turned away in disgust, they violently hacked away, screaming in horror as roach parts flew all over the kitchen, a scene resembling the final massacre in an Attack of the Killer Roaches film. As the adrenaline wore off, their paper weapons were dropped to the floor as they fled their apartment. The scene of the crime was so chilling that they didn’t return for a half an hour.
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START Mobile brings underground art to the masses.
By Tim Billings

While you’re text messaging your friends about how lame so-and-so’s Myspace page is, John Doffing is busy turning that thumb-strengthening device into a mobile art gallery. Not only does START Mobile allow you to flair-up your Moto Razr, it’s a way to find out about new art, look at it when you want and show it off to your pals.

Doffing’s impressive resume and education landed him hotshot jobs in technology, but he is an entrepreneur by nature and seems to be one step ahead with most of his ideas. Several startup companies have flourished with Doffing at the helm, and along with Start Mobile, he presently heads a recruiting company for startup technology companies in Silicon Valley (START, INC.), an art gallery (START SOMA), he curates San Francisco’s Hotel des Arts and created their series of Painted Rooms art shows, and he continues to connect emerging artists with new collectors.

Besides being an integral part of San Francisco’s underground art scene, Doffing is a pioneer bringing art to a new medium. Mesh caught up with John first at The Luggage Store Gallery where he was helping his friend Vulcan prepare for his solo show and again at START SOMA to see the foundation of what ultimately motivates Mr. Doffing: art!
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Under The Indfluence
Bay Area MC TopR on How Music Mirrors Life
By Max Sidman

“I think I was always the kid in my crew who was most known for sleeping on couches, the one who was known as the biggest partier and the biggest misanthrope with the biggest not-givin’-a-fuck attitude. Now I’m growing up. I’m almost 30. I live with my girlfriend. I’m not drinking or doing graffiti as much as I used to. I have a dog for Christ sake,” confesses veteran Bay Area battle rapper TopR a.k.a. Topper Holiday a.k.a. Top Ramen. The slightly more domesticated MC is reminiscing over his years in the rap game with a surprisingly zen outlook.

“In life, everyone goes through phases and hopefully people grow and mature, and if you’re a musician, then whatever you do is gonna reflect that, and the music is going to mature along with life. I know some people are gonna want me to keep making the same music that I’ve always made, but it’s always gonna change and evolve with the way I change and evolve, and that’s not a necessarily a bad thing. That’s just the way it needs to be.”
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Comets on Fire plays with Crime In Choir and Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound at 12 Galaxies on Saturday, December 16th. The show is $10 and 21+. Here’s the cover feature that ran on Comets on Fire in Issue 6 of Mesh.

Comets On Fire was born in the foggy haze of Santa Cruz in 1999. Lifelong friends Ethan Miller and Ben Flashman (both originally ail from Eureka) joined forces with analog and Echoplex maestro Noel Harmonson and drummer Utrillo Kushner, formerly Belcher, to form a dangerously unstable mix of classic hard psyche, noise experimentation and blistering punk. The recent addition of fellow Santa Cruz resident and under ground folk hero Ben Chasny, of the incredible Six Organs of Admittance, filled out their sound and solidified Comets as one of the more sonically playful rock bands of this era. Comets’ first, self-titled record came out in 1999, and was a straight-to-vinyl release, although it was recently re-issued on CD by Alternative Tentacles. It is by far their most straightforward and aggressive record to date. On their second release, Field Recordings from the Sun (Ba Da Bing!, 2002), the band diversified their sound, and their new album, Blue Cathedral (Sub Pop, 2004), continues in that vein, and features their best work to date. Ethan Miller, Comets’ vocalist and lead guitarist, recently fielded a few questions about the development of the band’s music and the band itself.

You guys have progressed a lot from Field Recordings to Blue Cathedral. Describe how those changes came to pass.
When we made Field Recordings, we were three brothers bringing a new man (Utrillo) into our thing and learning to play with him and learning to live musically with him. By that, I have to say that he was breaking us into his thing as well, not just one way or another. I’m not sure that I’ve heard a musician have such a drastic effect on a band’s sound since Gram Parsons joined the Byrds, or since Fleetwood let Lindsey Buckingham make Tusk. It was a joyful thing. Anything could happen. We felt as if volatility was skimming on a surface of totally incredible, brutal, raw talent and drumming power. Also, Chasny, another volatile element, was guesting and becoming a very close friend of mine during that period of time. But what you hear on Blue Cathedral is a family of dudes that have been through some ups and downs and are still together, creating and making a single vision. We’re still volatile, but there is a love and understanding of each other—we’ve just learned to love and accept each other better, both as musicians and as brothers.
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From the Mesh vaults, here’s an interview we did with Sam Flores, who has an opening tomorrow night, Saturday, December 2nd at White Walls Gallery (835 Larkin & O’Farrell).

Expressive Imagery
Sam Flores’ artistic mythology opens eyes.
By Kendra MacLeod

The first time I ever saw Sam Flores was a few years ago at Studio-Z. I watched from behind as he painted a large-scale image of a woman, long hair whipping around her, eye’s closed, holding out a rectangular box with black birds pushing open the lid and flying away, becoming dark shadows in his sky. If you had asked me the next day what Sam Flores looked like, I wouldn’t have had any clue, but his painting intrigued me, and I filed that image away for safekeeping. Since then, Sam’s artwork has become a part of the San Francisco scenery: from his monumental mural outside Upper Playground on Fillmore to his whimsical stickers thrown on bus hutches and stop-sign poles across the city.

For most urban art-lovers, Sam Flores is a name synonymous with an image: enigmatic characters with peculiarly exaggerated limbs, vacant eye’s eerily whitened and heads often weighted down with curious objects or covered with animal masks. The mythical nature of his work found in juxtaposing almost lifeless characters and rich environments flush with beauty and possibility.

Paintings saturated with budding flowers, luminous plants and noble animals constructed with bright colors and decisive lines conflict with his stolid characters, creating a complexity that is fast making him an iconoclast in his field. Still, Sam remains largely unaffected by the peripheral hype; he would rather his images speak for themselves. His imagination creates works that are both comical and powerfully moving.
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Live Forever
Dub legend Lee Scratch Perry takes care of his lightning.
By Max Sidman
Photo by Drew Goren

It’s difficult to pen meaningful words about a legend. What is there to say that hasn’t been said before? At 70 years old, Lee Scratch Perry is the kind of artist whose music and pedigree speak volumes. With a career that spans nearly 50 years and began as an engineer—he cut his first album in 1959— Perry, born Rainford Hugh Perry, was involved in the seminal Studio One and Black Ark labels, and has been a present and influential character through the careers of artists like Bob Marley and The Wailers, Junior Byles, The Heptones and many, many more.

Now a resident of Switzerland with his wife and children, Perry still records and plays music, and still performs live frequently throughout Europe, the U.K. and the U.S. He won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003 for Jamaican E.T. and with a new release to his credit every two or three years, the master is showing no signs of slowing down. (more…)

Bob Frank & John Murry perform live at 12 Galaxies with Rykarda Parasol on Tuesday, December 5th. 21+.

Murder Ballads
A conversation with Bob Frank & John Murry
By Chuck Prophet

Many moons ago, while playing guitar and backing up my guru of voodoo, Jim Dickinson, Jim pulled out a song called “Wild Bill Jones,” a killer tale of blood and lust. When I asked who wrote it, he said, “That’s Bob Frank. The greatest songwriter you never heard, long since disappeared from the face of the earth.”

I filed that away and kept an eye out for Frank’s self-titled debut (and only) record originally released by Vanguard in 1972. One day I scored big when Frank’s face on the album cover looked right back at me from the used record store bin like a dope-running, Jesus loving, Davendra doppelganger.

In 2002, Frank broke his silence and released Keep On Burning, his first album in 30 years. I got wind and ordered it straight from the source: the man himself. (more…)

Drifting Home
An Interview with Jolie Holland
By David Ma

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After moving from Austin to New Orleans to Colorado to Vancouver and finally settling in San Francisco, Jolie Holland released a homemade CD that found its way into the hands of the one and only Tom Waits. After singing its praises and nominating it for the Shortlist music prize, the release, Catalpa, was heralded and soon discovered by music critics willing to echo Waits’ sentiments–and understandably so. With colorful lyrics and moody music that is reminiscent of a dusty record from the ‘50s, Holland’s old musical style was surprisingly, of all things, fresh sounding.

Catching up with the present, Holland has just zig-zagged the globe to perform and promote her new record, Springtime Can Kill You. “Oh my god, this is the best job in the world,” she says, having just gotten back from London and is still getting used to all press that accompanies a popular buzz. “Its weird to have to do so many interviews. I’m not sick of them, but I’ve had to do more interviews recently than I’ve ever done. But it’s basically just talking to people. There’s bad interviews and there’s good interviews. Sometimes, like in Europe, there’s a language barrier. But even then, I’ve noticed this cool thing where, if they just sort of understand what I’m saying and they dig the music, than the interview is more heartfelt. It’s a cool thing.” (more…)

Femme Fatales
An Interview With Artist Sylvia Ji
By Angel Baker

Daughters of native Korean parents, Sylvia Ji and her sister were raised in a home accepting of their nascent creativity but the familial tongue kept itself distant. Perhaps this is part of the reason Ji has an admitted problem with communication. Caught in self-reflection, Ji found a fiery outlet that could overshadow the diminutive but prolific painter, now making a name for herself in Los Angeles.

After earning a B.A. from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, Ji landed a job as a full-time lingerie designer in Southern California, but satisfies her passion for painting after hours, working until 2AM almost every night. Ji’s apartment is in Rowland Heights, near East LA, as is her studio, where she plays movies in the background to keep her company because she only paints alone.

When did you realize you had a talent?
When I was really young. I wanted to draw and my sister was the artist in the family and I would look at her work and want to copy her. Growing up in my family, which was artistic, I wanted to follow in that. And in high school I went to a couple art classes in San Francisco and I wanted to see where that went and I went with it.

What was your first medium?
I started with charcoal, like most, and oil and then acrylic and then eventually everything.

When you first started as an artist, what was your focus?
Ever since I was little, I’ve been drawing women and girls. It’s kinda funny. I look back at my sketches and doodles and it’s always been cute girls in dresses and costumes.

How did you start getting involved in shows?
In my last year of school, I had a friend, Josh Song, and he did an art show at Romeo Five in Japantown, and he said, “Well, maybe you can do a show.” And I said, “Why not?” I decided to do a solo show and I posted it up on Fecal Face Dot Com, and it just snowballed from there. I did an open studio at White Walls Gallery and then got my Web site up and started to self promote. So far it’s been pretty great. I’ve been working a lot and trying to get my name out there. (more…)