Usually known for it’s rock ‘n’ roll tendencies, the Blank Club hosts a rare hip-hop show for SVSX on Saturday featuring battle rapper Dirtbag Dan, up-and-coming San Jose MC Antwon with Cities Aviv, DJ Ichy the Killer and G.I.F.T.

Dirtbag Dan
12:30am, Blank Club
Dirtbag Dan was born in San Jose as Daniel Martinez. He first got onstage when he was 14 years old and saw LSP (Kung Fu Vampire’s old group) perform at Java Stop in San Jose. At the end of the performance, they invited the audience onstage to freestyle. His friends, knowing he liked to rap, coaxed Dan to try it. “It was the coolest thing ever. I was like, ‘I am definitely doing this. This is my thing,’” he recalls.

He recorded his first solo album, Dirt 4 $ale, in 2003, joining Thunderhut around that time, then Counter Productive a little later. Eventually, he devoted himself to Counter Productive full time. In 2005, he, Able Abilities & Skylar G found a DJ named Ichy the Killer, and the Counter Productive crew was officially complete.

Dan has earned international fame thanks to his dominance in Grind Time, the battle-rap league. Anyone who has seen him perform knows that Dirtbag Dan is impossible to ignore, having one of the weirdest rap personas. As his name suggests, he sports a thick scraggily hobo beard—and a loud, over-the-top swagger.

Antwon with Cities Aviv
11:30pm, Blank Club
San Jose rapper Antwon has been getting a lot of attention lately. In February, he released his video “Helicopter,” which mixes footage from Steve McQueen’s 1968 car-chase flick Bullitt with shots of Antwon and his crew wandering around train tracks, drinking malt liquor and eating heaping platefuls of food (color-corrected, of course, to match the vintage footage).

The video has received favorable attention from several blogs, including on Spin’s website. Yes, the video is good, but it’s backed up by a killer song, too. Antwon has a laid-back, easy flow reminiscent of Biggy Smalls, but he’s not taking himself seriously. He’ll string together a single sentence about smoking weed and eating too much food that is neither comedic nor pretentious. The driving, shuffling funk beat and blaring dissonant organ loop sound like they were plucked right out of a grindhouse movie.

Since his breakout mixtape “Fantasy Beds,” Antwon has released the equally impressive “End of Earth,” which has his latest single, “Living Every Dream.” The video looks like an authentic relic from the VHS era and contains an infectious sample from the famous DNA remix of Susan Vega’s “Tom’s Diner.” Keep your ears on Antwon. This is where rap is heading.

G.I.F.T./First Class
10:30pm, the Blank Club
G.I.F.T. and Bless (Ya’Soul)—two young emcees from the local hip-hop duo First Class—each bring something distinct to the table. Bless, for instance, is an intense rapper with a direct, straightforward flow. He keeps his rhymes positive and uplifting, whether he’s commenting on society or relating his personal experiences. His presence is powerful—almost intimidating. But he balances his force with thought-provoking, compassionate rhymes. G.I.F.T., on the other hand, brings a crazier, offbeat vibe. His raps are full of stream-of-consciousness associations, spun together in unusual rhythms, connecting every loose peculiar idea he has floating around in his head in a clever manner, mixing humor and down-to-earth charm.

Together, G.I.F.T. and Bless combine their strengths into a full-on, well-rounded attack. Even as they work together, they are always working off of each other—in direct competition to see who can spit the best verses. It’s been this way since the beginning, since they first met at age 13 and started writing songs together. The name “First Class” was their way of saying that their skills—when combined—could go up against any other rapper or crew out there. They are currently managed by South Bay musician and producer “Da Hermit.”

Ichy the Killer
10pm, 12:30Am, the Blank Club
DJ Ichy the Killer, also known as Chris Larsen, got his start almost a decade ago with the hip-hop crew Counter Productive. He continues to spin for Dirtbag Dan, also from Counter Productive, and Insolence, Language Arts Crew and various other San Jose groups. In August, Ichy advanced to the final round of the online portion of the DMC DJ battle. As his online video submission demonstrates, Ichy can hold his own without anybody rapping over his beats. He’s got a strong sense of structure and a slick artistic style.

San Pedro Square Market and hosts an all-ages show for SVSX with Careless Hearts, Doctor Nurse, and Dirty Pillows.

Careless Hearts
9pm San Pedro Square Market
Careless Hearts began as pure San Jose alt-country. After building up a following in the South Bay and elsewhere since 2005, their career took an unexpected left turn in 2009 when they found themselves backing Iggy & the Stooges guitarist James Williamson at the Blank Club, Williamson’s first performance in 35 years and a warm-up for his return to touring with Iggy Pop. (The Blank Club performance was released as the 2010 album James Williamson and the Careless Hearts.) The event was a turning point in the Careless Hearts’ career; afterward, they released a three-song EP that found their finely crafted roots thunderstruck with Iggy’s (and Williamson’s) fiery “rawk” influence. It remains to be seen what direction the Careless Hearts take next, but with the band’s proven talent and new adventurousness, their next record is sure to be a welcome surprise no matter what.

Doctor Nurse
8pm San Pedro Square Market
Doctor Nurse’s approach to songwriting is similar to that of indie-rock legends Guided by Voices. Both groups pluck the best elements of psychedelic rock, prog-rock, lo-fi indie and power-pop and blend them into an amalgam of gorgeous, offbeat, well written rock & roll.

The similarities stop there; while Guided by Voices churns out partially complete lo-fi gems as quickly as the ideas pop in their heads, Doctor Nurse works slowly and methodically. The band, for instance, spent years working on Calm Seas, Phantom Lights. The album is not only full of intelligent, grandiose psychedelic indie-folk, clearly written by educated music lovers, its production is masterfully nuanced with glistening layers of keyboards, guitars, percussion and vocal harmonies. It is the kind of album worth listening to on headphones to pick out every subtle detail with each listen—or live in concert, where the waves of sound and vibrations overtake you.

Dirty Pillows
7pm, San Pedro Square Market
Formed in 2008 by guitarist/vocalist Alejandro Villanueva (who goes by his nickname “Millhows”) and drummer Jeff Evans, Dirty Pillows plays music that celebrates the pair’s shared influences—Modern Lovers, the Damned, Talking Heads—but also captures the raw, rushing sound of the earliest days of punk.

The South Bay duo’s visibility has been patchy at times, but they’re making a big push right now. Their recent song “Love Happening” sounds like something the Brian Jonestown Massacre might have released. As Evans describes it, “That song is the one that everybody has their own interpretation for.”

Evans and Millhows manage to create psychedelic, pop and garage tones with only two band members. Jeff is not afraid to hit his drum kit, and somehow Millhows makes sense of the army of loop machines and effects in front of him. “I sort of seem to channel this very post-punk, choppy, very angular guitar spirit,” Millhows says of his guitar playing.

Yeshua & the Hightones and Maxx Cabello Jr. are join forces with Mezcal for a night of great music and great food for Silicon Valley Sound eXperience.

Maxx Cabello Jr. & the Breakdown
10pm, Mezcal
San Jose local Maxx Cabello Jr. is known for his guitar chops, his soulful voice and mixing it up with a wide range of styles. He plays everything from slow soul jams, blazing electric blues and Latin rock. In the case of his video, “My Love,” he digs into old-school romantic soul, a throwback to the days before the style was dominated by drum machines and synthesizers.

A quick Google search reveals footage of Cabello playing accomplished eight-minute blues guitar solos (with touches of Duane Allman-esque slide work on “Heartbreaker”), but the simplicity of “My Love” makes it a good place to start for people new to his music. Like the video, the song is smooth and sweet—just a straightforward love song.

The video holds special significance because it helped Cabello land an opening spot at San Jose’s Jazz Summer Fest this year after submitting it to festival organizers in a contest where people voted for the song they liked best. “My Love” won by a landslide.

Yeshua & the Hightones
10pm, Mezcal
Yeshua Orozco’s dreads are sort of like his playoff beard—he’s been growing them for as long as he’s been in a band, and they seem to be bringing him luck. His seven-piece San Jose reggae group, Yeshua and the Hightones, quickly made a mark on the scene and has been getting the kind of rock gigs that are often off-limits to musical proponents of Jah. Maybe it’s something about the blues and Latin grooves they bring to the island sound. Maybe it’s the talent of the musicians he surrounds himself with, who are clearly versed in musical traditions from the world—and able to cut loose on a mean guitar solo, as well. Or hey, maybe it’s the hair.

Straying from it’s usual beat-orientate lineup, The Pagoda Lounge at The Fairmont Hotel presents a full rock-centered lineup for SVSX featuring Will Sprout (Mumlers), Fierce Creatures and Mike Huguenor (Shinobu) followed by an after-party DJ set by B.Lewis.

Will Sprott
11:30pm, Pagoda Lounge, Fairmont
South Bay fans may wonder where Will Sprott of the Mumlers has been. The singer/songwriter known for sparking the South Bay’s wave of freak-rock a few years ago hasn’t been nearly as ubiquitous here since he moved to the East Bay. But he’s been perhaps busier than ever. It’s been a couple of years now since the Mumlers’ second album, Don’t Throw Me Away. If the folky debut was surprising and offbeat enough to get Sprott national media attention, the follow-up surpassed it in every way with its grittier, Stax-on-acid soul.

Sprott, however, felt that in many ways he didn’t get to capitalize on the album’s strengths live, because it was just too hard to get the big Mumlers lineup on tour. In 2011, he decided to do some dates as a solo act.

He’s also been working on his follow-up to Don’t Throw Me Away, though he doesn’t yet know if it’ll be released under the Mumlers moniker, his own name or something else entirely. The upcoming album promises to be something unexpected. It’s not a revisiting of his sound on the last record—in fact, there are no horns at all. Instead, Sprott is focusing on bizarre new uses for vocal harmonies.

Fierce Creatures
10:30pm, Pagoda Lounge, Fairmont
Being a seven-piece indie-rock band gives Fierce Creatures the maneuverability to play exactly the kind of music they imagine. It also gives them plenty of room to layer in as many sounds and harmonies as they need to create gorgeous, dynamic-enriched arrangements.

They combine guitars, keyboards, drums, percussion and even some less-standard instruments like an occasional mandolin, harmonica and some bells—a tactic that creates a wall of sound larger than any one instrument. They work together to create new soundscapes, intense moods and crescendos, rather than focusing on any one member and showing off their chops.
Fierce Creatures tinker with musical styles indiscriminately, tactfully hodgepodging bits of pop, folk, soul, classic rock and experimental sounds into their songs to create something that is all their own. They dig for the most basic thread of childlike musical expression and re-interpret the standard rock & roll conventions to give new life to pleasantly familiar simple songs.

Mike Huguenor
9:30pm, Pagoda Lounge, Fairmont
“Agues,” the first song off Mike Huguenor’s solo album, Bardamu, is a solid, quirky alt-rock jam that rests nicely between the musical extremes of his various bands. There is Shinobu, his on-again-off-again neurotic jangle-pop quartet. Then there’s Hard Girls, the sophisticated, post-punk power trio. And of course there’s the Classics of Love, his old-school punk-rock group that’s fronted by none other than Jesse Michaels, the former lead singer of Operation Ivy.

Somehow, Huguenor also found time to record this solo EP and even shot a music video for “Agues,” which features him as every member of the band and every person in the audience. His solo material isn’t as overtly offbeat as Shinobu, or as complex as Hard Girls, or even as fierce as the Classics of Love. But what it does have is a newfound level of maturity that marries all of these elements and delivers them in an understated, clever way.

B. Lewis
12:30am, Pagoda Lounge, Fairmont
Producer and beatmaker B. Lewis is one of many local musicians influenced by Peanut Butter Wolf. Born and raised in San Jose, B. Lewis quickly came to appreciate Wolf’s legacy as a trailblazer once he started making music in 2009. “He definitely led the way, in the right way,” says Lewis.

Only 23 now, Lewis ironically didn’t discover labels like Stones Throw and Brainfeeder until he went away to Expression College in the East Bay. After college, Lewis moved back to San Jose. This spring, he finished the Egg Black EP, with singer Miles Bonny. What might surprise those who are only familiar with Lewis’ more experimental beats is the sleek and smooth sound of the songs’ soulful R&B.

Lewis’ newest release, A Lion’s Aperture, came out in late July, and delivers further proof of his willingness to push boundaries in a late-night groove. “Priority Number One” kicks off with spacey pinging sounds that evolve into an otherworldy wash of sound and vocal abstractions. “World Frozen Over” spins off in a swirl of sonic scat, anchored by strong keyboards.

The Hedley Club at Hotel DeAnza will host a variety of vocal talents at SVSX that play along nicely with the art deco decor of venue. Anya & the Get Down headline with Amy Dabalos and Sweet HayaH on the bill.

Anya and the Get Down
11pm, Hedley Club at Hotel De Anza
Led by classically trained singer/songwriter Anya, the Get Down’s first EP got the local scene buzzing, its Amy Winehouse-type confessional rock blending effortlessly with dubstep, reggae and hip-hop. Then there was the revelation of Anya’s vocals—powerful, sensual and unpredictable. But if that first release established the noir side of Anya and her talented, versatile band, their newest EP expands their range, especially on the slow-burn “Gotta Be Got” and the emotional “Maybe.” The Bangerz’s DJ Cutso also contributes a wild remix of “C’est La Vie” that puts a dance-floor spin on an already disorienting swirl of genres wrapped into a single anthem. “Gone Baby Gone,” however, remains their signature song, its video especially capturing the mix of vintage style and dark, futuristic edge that makes Anya and the Get Down one of the most exciting bands to hit the South Bay scene in years.

Sweet HayaH
10pm, Hedley Club at 
Hotel De Anza
World beat may be a minor influence on Sweet HayaH’s sound, but its subtle undercurrent can definitely be discerned. With a mish-mash of rock, soul, blues and folk music, Sweet HayaH’s songs sound like the self-reflective work of songwriters like Tori Amos and Alanis Morisette at their core but flushed out into more diverse musical settings—almost like No Doubt, but with more passion.
As far as their penchant for the international, they not only sing songs in English, but in French and in Spanish as well—not to mention the second half of their name, HayaH, which is Arabic for “life.” But where their worldliness really reveals itself is in the stripped down, bare-bones, acoustic versions of the songs. (They have been known to play electric and acoustic sets.) The rhythms have a slight Latin and African bent to them. Meanwhile, the vocals evince a poetic timing and intonation that tie in smoothly with the music. This isn’t to say that Sweet HayaH aren’t a rock/soul band. They are. Lead vocalist Nehal Abuelata combines the soul of Aretha Franklin and the heart-on-the-sleeve cries of Janis Joplin.

Amy Dabalos
9pm, Hedley Club at Hotel De Anza
Young jazz/R&B vocalist Amy Dabalos is noted for her song interpretations. Beginning her musical journey in the jazz world, Amy was inspired by the improvisational freedom of the music. Her style and approach to singing are greatly influenced by vocal jazz legends, as well as her undergraduate training in classical voice.
Amy takes standards, and some songs not so familiar, and makes them all her own—new harmonies, different rhythms and a modern take on beloved numbers. Most recently, she has performed at City Lights Theater, Left Coast Live, the San Pedro Square Market and the San Jose Jazz Winter and Summer Festivals.

The Silicon Valley Sound eXperience highlights more than 20 local bands at nine venues in downtown San Jose starting at 3pm on September 22. Purchase tickets HERE.

SVSX gets a dose of jazz, R&B and more at The Mmoon on Saturday with performances by Veronica Malki and The Line-Up.

Veronica Malki
7:30PM, The Mmoon
Veronica Malki joined local singer/songwriter Ben Henderson for First Fridays this past August, doubling up his already soulful vocals with her equally passionate harmonies. Besides being skilled at singing together, she and Henderson have a lot in common. Both are technically folk-singer/songwriters, yet they both continuously float around the genre, playing anything but—mixing soul, jazz and rock elements.

Malki’s arrangements, though minimalist, have subtle traces of Latin music and a slight jazz swing. She strums dark, somber chords, reminiscent of Neko Case or Lucinda Williams and picks those sad, lonely notes of mournful, heartbroken Americana. Yet she doesn’t linger in the macabre for very long. Her songs evoke images of love, nature, bicycle rides and meditating on the beach as the sun sets. Even when she’s expressing her most painful sentiments, it is always entwined with beauty that is all around here—even the beauty of pain itself. Her greatest gift is her voice. She has a searing, powerful tenor range that cuts right through everything else with her directness and strength, yet there is a sense of compassion and gentleness to it.

The Line-Up
8:30PM, The Mmoon
This young group of talented musicians focuses its attention on the classics of the American song tradition. Expanding on jazz standards, the Line-Up toys with bossa nova R&B and even reggae as a way to reinvigorate and reinvent the genre. The Line-Up’s lineup: vocalist Michael Carter, bassist Veno Bender, drummer Kosuke Okamura and pianist Bennett Roth-Newell.

The Silicon Valley Sound eXperience highlights more than 20 local bands at nine venues in downtown San Jose starting at 3pm on September 22. Purchase tickets HERE.