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Listings are
in the opposite order of appearance: headliner is listed at the top,
next is the support band(s),
and the last band listed is the opener.
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Friday November 15
2024  8:30PM doors -- music at 9:00PM ••• 21 AND OVER $15 in advance / $18 at the door Terry Gross instagram.com/terrygrossband experimental pre-post indie Mammatus instagram.com/mammatusband psychedelic rock stoner rock Wife yourwife.bandcamp.com/album/wife punk experimental Terry Gross -from San Francisco, CA -Few bands are as primed to capture their ecstatic live energy in masterful sonic detail like Terry Gross. Composed of three renowned engineer/producers whose studio doubles as their jam spot and communal gathering place, the trio are able to document their longform psychedelic escapades with granular precision. The potency of the fellowship formed by drummer Phil Becker, bassist Donny Newenhouse, and guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am) lies in their ability to utilize their prowess as both players and recording engineers to translate feeling with immaculate clarity. On their second full-length Huge Improvement, Terry Gross embody a complex web of emotion with songs as ferocious and precise as they are agile and care-free, delighting in the catharsis of excising tension alongside one’s most trusted peers. Huge Improvement’s tongue-in-cheek title is rightfully earned. Like their debut Soft Opening, the pieces on Huge Improvement began as improvised studio jam sessions without expectations. The trio’s ability to plug in, play and have each experiment thoroughly documented opens up unparalleled avenues for further exploration and honing. The bulk of the songs were constructed from their now tried-and-trusted process of excerpting the best sections of their lengthy jams and sculpting them into more refined shapes. “Sheepskin City”, a gallivanting ode to impermanence, runs at full-tilt, pushing repetitive riffing to sonic extremes and invoking prog-rock drum and guitar heroics. Terry Gross’s vocal melodies shine with tight harmonies that borrow from Manley and Newenhouse’s time playing in bluegrass bands. “Sales Pitch” implodes from a motorik groove into a sludgy dirge rich with textural nuance hidden in the crunch. The languid “Full Disclosure” is a testament to Terry Gross’s craftsmanship and undeniable chemistry as both a live and studio band, chronicling one of the trio’s jams in its entirety without edits or overdubs. Closing track “Effective Control” draws out an astoundingly pop-inflected edge to their rollicking thunder as it nears closer to the album’s exhilarating conclusion. A throughline of absurdity runs through the themes of Huge Improvement, from the band’s larger-than-life compositions to the facetious titles to the songs’ approach to space rock tropes. The pieces explore bleak futureworld concepts like “annoying sales robots, nanotechnology and massive generational spaceships collapsing,” with irreverence, but refrain from outright pessimism or detachment. The now-defunct titular San Francisco business Sheepskin City which features on the album’s cover acts as a totem for the band’s embrace of humor and genuine concern for preservation in tandem. “Sheepskin City was always a perplexing oddball place on a busy corner in San Francisco’s Mission district,” notes Becker. “They hung the same weathered ragged sheepskins out front daily. Was it a front for something else? Something about it just made you smile when you drove by it. If Sheepskin City is still there, things are alright. And then one day after decades of being there, it’s gone! Things are still alright, but they’re different.” Newenhouse adds: “For us it became sort of an analog for the future and how technological advancements will most likely result in some sort of ultimate letdown.” Manley continues: “These are places in the neighborhood where we have our recording studio, El Studio, which is where we write, rehearse and record. It’s our home base. I feel like we were trying to capture a moment in time. Everything is temporary.” The four mammoth slabs that make up Huge Improvement are driving, unrelenting excursions into the unknown. Whether burning white-hot or smoldering in plumes of smoke, the pieces stretch as much inwardly as they do cosmically, embracing every surprising turn. Terry Gross’s Huge Improvement morphs the trio’s search for communal connection and reprieve into a transcendent respite, a burst of focused energy to be enveloped in while facing the senselessness around us with a smile. releases September 20, 2024 Terry Gross is Phil Manley - Guitar & Vocals Donny Newenhouse - Bass & Vocals Phil Becker - Drums Mammatus -from Santa Cruz, CA -Like Stanley Kubrick, Mammatus are slowing in output as they forge surely and steadily down the path of their artistic legacy. Now, 8 years since their last release and 20 years since their inception as a band, Mammatus have recorded a sprawling masterwork. Expanding Majesty is not just a career defining album for the band but one that pushes the boundaries of 21st Century heavy music. Formed by brothers Nicky and Aaron Emmert in 2005 in Santa Cruz, California, the same fertile Redwoods-and-sea incubator that produced fellow outer-region psych travelers Comets on Fire, Residual Echoes and The Fucking Champs, Mammatus have become increasingly reclusive in the years since their inception. They have also been honing their vision of mathy stoner rock, proto-new age, Kraut-prog and organic proto-metal into a panoramic, ever-expanding visionary world uniquely their own resulting in Expanding Majesty. Engineered by Phil Manley (The Fucking Champs/ Trans Am) at El Studio in San Francisco, four extended side-long pieces take the listener on a journey in which they experience reality only through the mind and vision of Mammatus. Bassist Chris Freels: The record’s theme is about being in awe of the nearly unbearable overwhelming beauty and energy of creation and existence. The theme came about naturally and revealed itself to us throughout the process. We are a very slow acting and methodical band and our creative process reflects that. We drew inspiration from our daily experiences; an epic hike, reading a great poem, listening to new music, our families, God, meditation, prayer, great books, bike rides, camping, great food, the forest, the ocean, the sky, the mountains. The album opens with the 15+ minute ‘Expanding Majesty,’ as guitarist and singer Nicky Emmert strikes a single window-rattling guitar chord and breaks the darkness, shooting a ray of sonic light forth and letting it hang, glowing for a moment before Mammatus begins to assuredly introduce and weave together the album’s strands of DNA; kaleidoscopic guitar notes in infinite double helix, soaring 70’s analog synthesizers, wall-of-amps bass, 100ft drums and finally, no sooner than 71/2minutes into the song, huge and ethereal vocals in cascading harmonic layers. Opener ‘Expanding Majesty’ in its long running, epic arc, travels from the meditative and joyful un-earthed flight of 70’s Kosmische godfathers like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream to the kinds of tectonic sub-surface riffage pioneered by The Melvins and Sleep and these two poles of heavyocity maintain the balance of the albums 69 minutes. Despite the intensity of the music veering between darkness and light, the subject matter and intention of the music is strictly positivism, awe and wonder at the beauty of the natural world and the possibilities of expanded human consciousness. Wife -from San Francisco, CA -hi wer frum sf. all femme. syd on vox shaye on drum liv on geetar kat on other geetar alisa on basse |
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