[SONG OF THE DAY] Spacey Jane - "Cold Feet"

Prepare yourselves fam for I have found the perfect little bop to trick you into believing it’s actually warmer outside than it actually is. Western Australia’s Spacey Jane have crafted the perfect blend of indie pop in the form of their song, “Cold Feet”, which is off their EP, In The Slight, which was released last week. Fans of Car Seat Headrest, Alvvays, and the like will def catch a vibe from their EP. From the looks of things these Aussie babies are quickly gaining some good momentum in the land down under with no signs of slowing down and I’m HERE FOR IT. They just secured a slot at Falls Festival in Freemantle early next year so if you happen to be down that way do not miss these little indie darlings.

Upcoming Documentary "God Said Give 'Em Drum Machines" Seeks To Share Lost Stories Of Detroit's Underground Techno Scene

Dance music hasn’t always been EDM bros and globetrotting DJs. The history of dance music is often overshadowed by the present day highly commercialized version of it that’s dominated primarily by white men. The roots of techno music, specifically, saw its beginnings courtesy of black producers in Detroit. In fact, producer/DJ Juan Atkins is credited with coming up with the term “techno”. Director Kristian Hill and producer Jennifer Washington seek to tell the full history of Detroit’s techno scene in their upcoming documentary, God Said Give ‘Em Drum Machines: The Lost Stories Of The Detroit Underground. The film project is already underway but needs help funding the last bit of production in addition to the cost for some music clearances and has taken to Kickstarter for a little financial assistance. With just a week to go, the Kickstarter is currently only at 40% of their goal, so there’s still time left for you to pitch in on this wonderful project.

You can learn more about the project via the video below.

[SONG OF THE DAY] Sure Sure - "Idiot"

No one in music right now is having as much fun being in a band than LA’s Sure Sure.

No one. It’s just not possible.

This band is so pure that it’s next to impossible to not get the warm and fuzzies from merely thinking about them. I have had the pleasure of catching these guys twice and their live shows are jam packed full of laughs and super fun synchronized dance moves. We love good people making equally as good (if not better) music. We love them even more when their hoodies are the softest thing of your entire life.

As the band explains, their latest single, “Idiot”, is a song “about judging a person from afar and then realizing you are that person. It’s also about embracing your dysfunctionality and ripping a guitar solo.”

The band has been out on the road with other SKOA favorites Wilderado and there’s just one show left of the tour. If you happen to be in Salt Lake City and could use a posi-party then head to Kilby Court on Friday (11/16)….and definitely grab a hoodie good Lorde that thing is seriously so soft. I’ve barely taken mine off since I got it.

[SONG OF THE DAY] Chris Ayer - "Need Somebody"

Last week Cali crooner Chris Ayer shared his latest single, “Need Somebody”, which will promptly deliver a swift hit right in the feels so prepare yourself. The song details the feeling in your gut when you know that you’re in a relationship that’s bad for you but you don’t want to break up because you’ve gotten so attached to them.

Been there, bro. It fucking sucks.

I really admire the amount of vulnerability that’s been coming through with the last few singles he’s released. If you haven’t peeped “Ringing In My Ears”, “11:59”, and “Stranger” definitely love yourself enough to go have a listen to those as well.

NY fam mark your calendars: Chris Ayer will be opening for Matt Simons at Mercury Lounge this Thursday (11/15) which means you have more than enough time to learn all of these new songs. 😎

[SONG OF THE DAY] Bay Ledges - "Electric Dream"

Photographer credit Meddy Hurd

It’s been a minute since I checked in on LA’s Bay Ledges. Like many who’ve come to love the band, my gateway drug into their lush melodies with synths and punchy beats scattered throughout was “Hearts”. Last year the band released two EPs, The EP and Fountain Tropical. Yesterday they unveiled their latest single, “Electric Dream”, which comes from their forthcoming In Waves EP, which will be dropping at the end of the month on November 30th. The single follows songs “Whenever You Sleep” and “I Remember”, which will also be included on the EP.

On Thursday singer and mastermind behind Bay Ledges Zach Hurd spoke to PopMatters about the song, where he explained,

“It's about going out and dancing. The whole scene - standing in line at some club, hoping you might meet someone that night and trying to break out of your self-awareness. For me, there's always been this hump I have to get over of forgetting about what I look like to other people when I'm dancing. The song observes that conflict of not wanting to be judged but also really wanting to move and be free.”

Bay Ledges is currently on tour with Magic City Hippies in the southeast. Make sure you go check them out if you’re able. Dates below!

BAY LEDGES LIVE

November 10—The Southern—Charlottesville, VA*

November 11—Metro Gallery—Baltimore, MD

November 14—Aisle 5—Atlanta, GA

November 15—Jack Rabbits—Jacksonville, FL

November 16—The Social—Orlando, FL

November 17—The Orpheum—Tampa Bay, FL

*with Magic City Hippies

[Interview] FEMMEHOUSE DJ LP Giobbi On Empowering Women Through Production, Going 'Tits First' Into Her Career

Los Angeles FEMMEHOUSE producer and DJ LP Giobbi (born Leah Chisholm) is a bit of an anomaly when it comes to her trajectory into present day and without a doubt Some Kind of Awesome. Raised by a couple of Deadheads in New York, she started playing piano when she was in 2nd grade and experimented playing in bands as she grew up. "I was always the music kid. I played in the bands," LP explains, "I was that person." When it came time for college, her supportive parents encouraged her to pursue her passions, and she found herself taking all music classes at UC Berkeley in Los Angeles, California. She graduated with a degree in jazz piano and, drawing inspiration from her upbringing, sought out a job at Another Planet Entertainment, home of Outside Lands Festival, Treasure Island Music Festival, and more. After reading the biography of legendary rock promoter Bill Graham, who worked with the likes of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and The Rolling Stones, she decided to write a letter to president Gregg Perloff, who had worked directly under Graham for many years.

"I wrote a letter as to why they should hire me and I literally walked down to their office, found their address, rang the buzzer and asked for Gregg Perloff," she recounted. "They assumed because I had so much ignorant confidence that I did have a meeting with him and they let me in." As luck would have it, Perloff actually stepped out of his office around the same time that the APE staff were trying to assess what the then-nineteen year old's intentions were. "I think at that moment they were like, 'There's a stalker in the office'", she said, "but I walked over to him and I said, 'You know, you would really benefit by hiring me and here's a letter as to why'." Completely blown away by her go-getter attitude, Perloff read her letter while she stood in of him and then hired her on the spot.

This is one of the many stories that LP would share with me during our conversation the evening before her set at Brooklyn nightclub Output, alongside Animal Talk labelmates Crush Club and label founders better known as electro pop sensations Sofi Tukker. While her attitude towards life is often more of a "Tits First" policy, leaping into everything assuming that a safety net will appear, it took a while for her to be honest with herself about wanting to pursue music full-time.. "After a lot of soul searching and conversations with the best pals, I learned it was actually fear of not being able to make it as a musician [that] was putting me on the industry side of things," she explained.

By chance, she was approached to be part of an all-female electronic project, LEX (later known as LJ Laboratory), despite not knowing the first thing about making electronic music. "I did not even know what a synthesizer was or how to turn it on," she admitted. In true Tits First fashion, she would spend the next three years familiarizing herself with DAW systems, ProTools, Abelton, and sound design, which helped bring her to her present-day production prowess.

During that time a friend invited her out to catch house legend Tornado Wallace. Entirely unaware of the inner workings of electronic music, the experience blew her away almost instantaneously. She recounted, "I was like, 'Is there a piano up there? Where's all the music coming from? Like how is there one guy playing all this music?'" For the reminder of the set her friend would proceed to break down everything that Wallace was accomplishing on his own on stage, going so far as to pounding on her shoulder during the 2/4 time signatures.

Beyond being impressed by Tornado Wallace's technical ability, LP was wholly captivated by the sophisticated yet simple nature of house music. "What was so interesting about it was that I had spent the last 4 years in college intellectualizing music," she recalled. "When I was at this club listening to this music it was all about the body. It was like meditative almost. It was the first time in a long time that I had a connection with music on a non-intellectual level."

After that encounter she knew that was the kind of music experience that she wanted to curate for her listeners. She explained, "I wanted to understand it. I wanted to know how to make people tick with it. That's what I wanted to be a part of."

LP admits that her "inner music major" can get in the way as she works on new music: she occasionally struggles with over-intellectualizing. "[In college] it was like 'Let me show off and show you how much I can say really quickly'" she said. After graduating college, however, she was challenged by some sage advice from a songwriting partner. "The very first thing she did," she recalls, "was rip up all my music and said, 'I don't wanna hear how many things you can say, I wanna know WHAT you're saying.'

It's something she still battles with in present day. She detailed,

"The note that I get back from Tucker [Halpern (Sofi Tukker)] every time I send him a track that I think is ready to be released, is 'DO LESS'. 'Take things out'. 'Say more by saying less'. My motto in life is 'More is more' so that's been really challenging for me, *laughs* but ultimately it has benefited [me], I think, for like focusing in on what I'm trying to say. It's been a really good challenge for me."

When she's able to achieve the perfect balance of doing less and saying more, the result has been nothing short of deeply impactful. An easy example of this is her debut single, "Amber Rose", which features Hermixalot reciting lines from a poem she wrote 10 years ago about then-girlfriend of rapper Kanye West and present day feminist icon, Amber Rose. When she's not making songs about women reclaiming their agency you can find her making more clever club-filling music. In "These Are Your Children" she pays homage to the history of New York City nightlife by sampling former club kid king Michael Alig’s 1990 interview from the Geraldo Rivera show. Her latest single, "Kupsa Kupsa" features a collaboration with French rapper H3RY LÜCK and is a playful song entirely in French about how making music is akin to cooking and is simply a blend of all the best ingredients.

One of the most admirable things about LP is that despite being involved in the electronic music scene for a somewhat short amount of time that she's already making a point to pour her heart into the community that helped her connect to music on an emotional level. She specifically makes it a point to leverage her white privilege and opportunities to provide a platform for other women, specifically women of color, in addition to the LGBTQ+ community.

Earlier this month, she partnered with Live Nation and launched the first of a series of events in San Francisco at their new August Hall venue under the name FEMMEHOUSE. The events give women the opportunities to take DJing and sound design classes prior to a series of performances of which there will be a few spots kept open for the women to practice the skills they've learned. "I think our whole goal in all of this is to be gatekeepers where, you know, the gatekeepers have normally been white men, she explained, "We wanna give them a stage and we wanna give them a voice and we wanna give them tools to use those things."

For LP, teaching women music production is a way to empower women in music, specifically vocalists, who are often at the mercy of their male producers."I feel very passionately about having women control that narrative and having them control their own voices," she says, "Or at least be able to speak the language when they do get into the room with a producer. That to me is what FEMMEHOUSE is all about."

LP Giobbi at the inaugural FEMMEHOUSE event on November 1st at August Hall in San Francisco, CA. photo credit: FEMMEHOUSE instagram

“I feel very passionately about having women control that narrative and having them control their own voices, or at least be able to speak the language when they do get into the room with a producer. That to me is what FEMMEHOUSE is all about.”

— LP Giobbi

In addition to FEMMEHOUSE, LP is also responsible for being the driving force behind the Santa Barbara Girls Rock camp being able to expand their course offerings to also have a music production class. Upon leveraging a recently made relationship with Native Instruments, she pressed the company to donate the necessary gear, and then even taught at the inaugural music production camp. "We taught [10 year old girls] how to make a song in Abelton," she gushed, "They used a bunch of like the Native Instruments keyboards and DJ controllers and it was SO FUN." The experience actually ended up inspiring to flesh out her then-initial stage idea for FEMMEHOUSE.

It is no surprise given how excited she was while we talked about her experience at the Santa Barbara Girls Rock camp that she has found a happy home within the artist collective Animal Talk, born from Sofi Tukker members Sofi Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern. According to LP, "Animal Talk is more than a language *laughs* Animal Talk is the best place on earth in my humble opinion."

Born around the idea of tapping into your child or animal, she explained the importance of being a member of the collective,

"Sofi [Hawley-Weld] always talks about how as an adult you go and meet with one of your friends, you sit down and have a beer, and you're like, 'This is what I'm doing with my life', you catch up, and that's it. But as children, we would play. We would build sandcastles. We would play dress up. We would play make believe. We would create things together. That was such a natural state of being and in adulthood that gets killed, so we wanted to make Animal Talk a place, like a physical/spiritual place. Physical in the parties and spiritual, you know, offline. In that reminding people that we can still play, we can still create, we can still be children. A place where they can free themselves and where they can tap into their inner child or inner animal and, you know, remember what it's like to play and to create. I think that that is the key to joy in life."

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

[SONG OF THE DAY] Pat Lok - "Know Me (feat. Kate Stewart)"

We’re just a mere hours away from the weekend and it’s time to D-A-N-C-E, y’all!

You know how I love throwing a vibe on my way out the door on Friday and who better to put you in the mood to get your groove on than Vancouver’s very own Pat Lok. Over the past few months Lok has been dropping sporadic singles (and their accompanying remixes) such as “Might Be On Fire” and “WYG (4 ME)”. On Wednesday he unveiled his latest track, “Know Me”, which features vocal stylings from songstress Kate Stewart.

If you’re just tuning in to the musical stylings of Pat Lok, please live your best life and spend the rest of the weekend dancing to his debut album Hold On Let Go.

Happy weekend!

[SONG OF THE DAY] SG Lewis - "Again (feat. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs)"

Today in Everything SG Lewis Makes Is So Perfect It’s Almost Unfair we have his latest single, “Again”, which is a collaboration with the ever loved Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The track follows “A.A.T” which featured Drew Love of THEY fame and is part of the second phase of his upcoming three-part concept album Dusk, Dark, Dawn, which chronicles the trajectory of a night out through its different moods and genres and serves as a tribute to club and youth culture.

Earlier this year he released Dusk, which was a blend of glimmering disco and electro pop. As you’ll hear on “A.A.T.” and (more specifically) “Again”, this second phase, Dark, is exploring much heavier sounds.

After wrapping a massive US tour, SG will be heading to Europe for a string of dates starting in late November including Bristol and Manchester shows before closing out the tour with a special headline show at London Printworks on December 7th. Dates below Euro fam!

SG LEWIS ON TOUR

Nov 24 2018 - Waagenbau - Hamburg, Germany
Nov 25 2018 - Lille Vega - Copenhagen, Denmark
Nov 26 2018 - Badehaus Szimpla - Berlin, Germany
Nov 28 2018 - Yuca - Cologne, Germany
Dec 03 2018 - Thekla - Bristol, United Kingdom
Dec 04 2018 - Club Academy - Manchester, United Kingdom
Dec 05 2018 - Green Room at The Academy - Dublin, Ireland
Dec 07 2018 - The Printworks - London, United Kingdom