It’s been nearly a week since we first stepped into Golden Gate Park for Outside Lands, but with the return to the daily grind it feels like even longer for most of us. This year’s festival, yet another record-breaking one by attendance, featured all the amenities that make OSL special–amazing food, craft beers, a star-studded comedy lineup, the beautiful backdrop of Hellman Hollow and of course a top-notch bill of musical performances. With its rapid expansion came some growing pains as well, though, and our main gripe was the inaccessibility of the Heineken House, which featured some great DJs, due to overcrowding. At the same time, the greater depth of the lineup made the previously overlooked Panhandle stage the place to be and when the crowd came together at shows, the energy was unbelievable.
In the stupor that follows music festivals, it can be easy to allow your precious experiences to fade in the rearview of your memory bank, but there will always be sets that you’ll never forget. We’ve recounted 14 sets that have been stuck in our minds all week and also tried something a bit new with this review by asking random fans to review our favorite sets. If you were in attendance this year, we hope this brings you back and, if not, it might just make you want to check out OSL next year.
All images by Ninja Dominic Powell. All writing, unless otherwise noted, by Ash.
It’s that time of the year in San Francisco when everyone’s either scrambling to find a ticket or stressing schedule overlaps for Outside Lands Music Festival. Hosted in the heart of Golden Gate Park’s picturesque forest, OSL has quickly become the Bay Area’s most sought-after festival ticket since its inception 7 years ago. In the last couple years particularly, though, the demand has exploded with tickets selling out faster than ever and a ravenous (and frankly obnoxious) secondhand ticket market. That’s all with good reason, though, considering Another Planet Entertainment raises the stakes every year and 2015 is looking to be no different with one of the strongest lineups in the festival’s history.
As always, the Outside Lands bill combines local acts, up ‘n coming bands from around the world and established contemporary stars with a few legends sprinkled on top. There’s a marked depth to the lineup this year including the Heineken House, which will serve as the designated non-stop dance tent for the weekend. As Ninjas, and senseis in the art of festival-ing, we’ll always vouch for at least one stop a day at these stages. We’ve crafted a playlist, including our favorites from the Heineken House, in chronological order of performance that we hope helps get you prepared for OSL 2015. For all of you who won’t be able to make it, you can live stream performances from the Outside Lands website. Continue reading →
Electronic music is often at its most fascinating when it pulls from seemingly unlikely influences. San Francisco duo Niteppl, although certainly inspired by genre’s greats, are a perfect example–incorporating disco, 80s-revivalist and even some Beach Boys-era styles in their music. Their 2013 debut, Cult, was a mostly instrumental project that showcased a distinct nu-disco sound, particularly on our favorite track “Transmission”. The latest iteration of Niteppl features two members, Alton and Sawyer, and their upcoming album, Nu Flesh, builds off the style established on the debut project adding a marked emotional depth with Sawyer’s vocals and unique songwriting ability.
We’ve got the premiere of the second single from that upcoming project and it’s one that we haven’t been able to stop playing since we first heard it. “Shadows” features an ominous backing synth melody giving it a neon-80s atmosphere particularly when combined with additional instrumental layering. Paired with Sawyer’s haunting vocals, it’s an enchanting tune that draws you in while proving strangely addicting. See what they had to say about the track below:
Sawyer: Well, “Shadows” initially began as a simple lyrical line I had written after having a girl enter my life, tug on my heart strings for a bit, then disappear. So I suppose the song is questioning the reality of brief but significant interactions with another person. Did you affect each other in the same way; or was one of you really there at all?
Alton: “Shadows” vocally, I think, comes from a really personal place for Sawyer, as do I think all the lyrics on Nu Flesh. This is the third track on the album and it comes after two pretty big, opening tracks. We placed it in a specific way so that it could add a bit of emotional introspection early in the record.
Check out the single above, grab a free download here, and get to know Niteppl a bit better in the rest of our quick Q&A below. Nu Flesh drops on August 18th on Popgang Records. Continue reading →
We’ve been serving up the latest and greatest tracks for close to six years now. From embedded SoundCloud links, to streaming HTML5 players, we’ve covered all the bases in the Internet music game. Now, it’s time to add a new medium with some old school flare, to our clan. That’s right, we’re getting an online radio show on the coolest station in San Francisco–Best Frequencies Forever aka BFF.fm!
Starting this week, Bay Area editor Ash will be hosting Music Ninja Radio every Friday from 4-6PM PST. For those of you who’ve been following us for a while, you might already recognize BFF as we’ve been guest DJing monthly with our friends at Make it Funky, who’ve also got an awesome show on the station. Music Ninja Radio will be everything you know and love about us–an eclectic mix of the latest tunes across genres fused with material from the pioneers who inspired our contemporary favorites. We couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the BFF community and to have yet another medium to spread our passion for music to the world.
You’ll be able to listen straight from the BFF website or on the Soundtap or TuneIn apps. If you can’t tune in live, you can find full archives on our show page, where you can also read a more in-depth description of our plans for Music Ninja Radio.
We’re really excited to be teaming up with the Make It Funky collective for the second installment in a series of California showcases highlighting local talent. This time around, we’ll be at Brick & Mortar Music Hall in San Francisco on Saturday bringing yet another myriad of vibes featuring psychedelic indie-rockers Coyote Trickster with support from the soulful Fire and funktastic Color TV. To get you all familiar with our fantastically quirky headliners, we had a unique interview in which we asked the band members–Terence (bass), Paul (guitar), Eric (guitar and vocals) and Huli (drums)–a few questions and then had them finish ten sentences. Get to know the band through their answers and grab your tickets at the link below.
Eric: There was a big group of meilleur casino en ligne france people at Santa Clara [University] that played music together. Kind of an amorphous group of people playing in a cloudy haze, bumping into each other and hearing things out. And then there was a party that came around and the people who were hosting wanted bands to play. So, the big blob full of people that played music together all kind of formed into different bands for the party and one of the bands was Coyote Trickster. That was our first gig. We played with a different drummer then. We moved up to San Francisco after college and then met Huli up here and started playing with him.
Terence: I think once I started playing with Eric–we lived in the same dorm freshman year– and jamming with these guys, I realized it was something I really want to be a huge part of my life. Long story short we ended up living together in a pretty cool space where we can live and play and create. We’re doing what we can and seeing where it goes.
TMN: Tell us a bit about the recording process behind your debut LP.
Paul: We did all the tracking at our house in San Francisco in our garage. I did guitar parts in my closet. Eric put up a bunch of mattresses for a vocal booth. The most disgusting Craigslist mattresses (laughs). We did all that and mixed at Tiny Telephone here in San Francisco and then we got some guy to master it pretty much because we saw he did something for Jerry Garcia.
TMN: Between the soulful vocals, psychedelic elements and jazzy jams, it’s pretty hard to place your music. How do you think about your sound?
Eric: I think we’ve all grown up in an age where genres are so fluid and changing all the time. We never listened to pure rock or pure soul or pure blues—it was always a mixture of all these things together. So, I think we always just search for a groove in all of the songs. They all have to have some kind of rhythm that hooks us and gets people moving. If you see us on stage we’re always bouncing a bit. That’s the core of anything we’re trying to find that works with the band–that kind of groove or rhythm that we all get locked into and excited by. We’re just looking for something that has that appealing background to it and then we’ll combine all the different pieces to fill around that groove.
FINISH THE SENTENCE…
When I was 13, I couldn’t stop listening to…
Huli: Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars by Fatboy Slim
Paul: Led Zeppelin.
Terence: The Fugees.
Eric: I have the worst one out of everyone. I was probably rocking Third Eye Blind—the self titled album. That’s a great album.
The first song I ever made…
Huli: …was called “Healthy Gums” and only used FL Studio presets.
Paul: …was in high school, I don’t know what it was called, a country song with very dirty, sexual innuendo in the lyrics.
Eric: I probably stole from someone else and told people I made it. It was probably like a Good Charlotte chord progression that I slowed down.
Alison Wonderland has made quite a name for herself since she began producing music in 2010. Before she developed her energetic and infectious stage presence, she was churning out remixes of her favorite songs from her bedroom, while developing a relatively modest following on Soundcloud. Five years after she first began creating content, AW has honed her production and singing skills, carving out a niche in today’s electronic music scene as arguably the most influential female singer/producer of the year.
AW’s rise to prominence has been put on full display this summer, with her debut albumRun being heralded as an overwhelming success by any measure of the word. Upon hitting the road in March of this year, she kicked off a North American tour in support of her work, familiarizing herself with U.S. EDM fans around the country including an enormous set at Coachella Music Festival. At the tail end of her tour, we were able to catch AW again at the Lightning in a Bottle pre-party at 1015 Folsom, the most popular nightclub in San Francisco. Quoted as calling her album, “all bangers and no mash”, the same Australian slang perfectly sums up Alison Wonderland’s live sets.
Moving seamlessly between the majority of her original productions, AW’s energy and stage presence had even the staunchest wallflowers vibing on the dance floor. Midway through her set AW began mixing in familiar hits such as “Slasherr“, “Fall Over“, and “Do You?” with more of her recent work, including a gentle piano and string based tune co-produced by Lido which she deemed, “her favorite song”.
Towards the latter half of her nearly two hour-set, AW had the entire crowd jumping. In the midst of playing a quirky set list of “Backseat Freestyle,” “Take It To Reality,” Get Ready, and “Simon Says” in succession, it was clear to everyone in attendance that the young artist had come a long way from bedroom productions. Much to the surprise and enjoyment of the packed dance floor, Alison Wonderland ended her set with Drake’s universally popular “Know Yourself“, gaining a city full of raucous fans in the process.
After finishing off her extensive North American tour with a bang, AW’s headed back to Australia hopefully to work on some new material. Next time she’s in San Francisco, we certainly know where we’ll be but, in the meantime, check out some more pictures from the show below. Continue reading →
If you live in the Bay Area, chances are you’ve already been to the California Academy of Sciences either to check out one of their various one-of-a-kind exhibits or for a drink at their weekly Nightlife series, easily one of the best ways to spend a Thursday night in San Francisco. As if an aquarium, planetarium and fully-functioning rainforest weren’t enough to pique your interest, the Academy of Sciences is kicking off its second annual Nightlife LIVE concert series this week, which will transform the museum into a full blown concert venue one Thursday a month through October.
Teaming up with various local promoters and music festivals, Nightlife LIVE has assembled a lineup that features a dynamic collection of both established and up ’n coming artists across genres. The selection of artists are from all over the world, but the Bay Area and west coast are definitely the most well represented with a number of exciting local and regional bands featured. Keeping in the spirt of science, the outdoor stage setup promises to be an experience all its own with an immersive installation from Domestic Data Streams that will use real-time data from the audience to source a piece of digital art. Aside from the attractions inside the museum, there will also be several mini-exhibits from various organizations along other activities at each show. To prepare for this Thursday’s opening and get all our ninjas up to speed, we’ve broken down the acts performing at each show below. You can find some more info and buy tickets here.
Machinedrum’s complex, atmospheric take on drum ’n bass music couldn’t be a better way to open an event series honoring science. With a full live setup, he’ll be bringing his latest album, Vapor City, to life cover to cover. While Machinedrum’s sure to take us on a sonic journey, LA-based producer B. Bravo, who will be opening, should get the dance floor moving with his funk-influenced electronic jams.Continue reading →
It’s been nearly a week since we first stepped into Golden Gate Park for Outside Lands, but with the return to the daily grind it feels like even longer for most of us. This year’s festival, yet another record-breaking one by attendance, featured all the amenities that make OSL special–amazing food, craft beers, a star-studded comedy lineup, the beautiful backdrop of Hellman Hollow and of course a top-notch bill of musical performances. With its rapid expansion came some growing pains as well, though, and our main gripe was the inaccessibility of the Heineken House, which featured some great DJs, due to overcrowding. At the same time, the greater depth of the lineup made the previously overlooked Panhandle stage the place to be and when the crowd came together at shows, the energy was unbelievable.
