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Mike Huguenor on February 17, 2021
Electronic musician Kazuma Matsui holds a lotion bottle to the microphone. The cap pops open with an audible snap. As one half of the group Happy New Year, “Cupertino’s only ambient band,” Matsui is demonstrating one of their preferred instruments. “I’ll edit it to the point where it sounds like a kick…
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Mike Huguenor on February 10, 2021
On Christmas Day, San Jose emo group Awakebutstillinbed surprised fans with new EP, Stay Who You Are, their first new set of songs since 2018’s striking debut album What People Call Low Self-esteem is Really Just Seeing Yourself the Way Others See You (the band stylizes its name and album titles in…
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Mike Huguenor on January 20, 2021
Last July, as the local economy scrambled to survive the third month of the coronavirus pandemic, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took to Twitter with some economic figures of his own. “Excited to announce our Q2 numbers showing strong growth across the board,” Ek tweeted on July 29, 2020. Linked in the tweet…
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Mike Huguenor on June 17, 2020
Last Friday, The Chinkees, Mike Park’s all-Asian ska-punk band, unexpectedly put out their first new set of songs in 18 years. K.A. Music, the blazing four-song EP, was released by Park’s Monte Sereno-based Asian Man Records and quickly sold out of its initial vinyl pressing.
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Bill Kopp on April 22, 2020
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, top first priorities should be health and safety, and taking care of basic needs. But once those needs are addressed, maintaining some semblance of normalcy is important as well.
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I understand the need to make a living, but there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents. So, seeing the flashing, neon “OPEN” sign in the window of your beauty salon presented, for me, a moral conundrum. Should I snitch you out? Through the window, I could see you styling a…
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I saw you. You were sitting next to me at the wedding—the one we were all concerned about attending, given the novel coronavirus pandemic. Well… most of us were concerned. You were just running your mouth, doing everything in your power to bring our polite conversation back to the topic of guns.…
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Wallace Baine on March 11, 2020
Straight out of the musical hotbed of Austin, Texas, comes Steel Betty, an all-acoustic trio of multi-instrumentalists who reflect the crazy quilt of today’s American roots music. Their music is a tasty stew of country and Western, Tex-Mex conjunto, three-part harmony folk and, most prominently, old-timey mountain bluegrass—these guys can totally rip…
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The mysterious, balaclava-sporting Malaa brings his ambiguous identity and hard-hitting ghetto house tunes to Sunnyvale. The producer and DJ has managed to keep his given name under wraps for five years, even as his stature has grown. Some suspect Malaa is the singular name of multiple big-name selectors, including DJ Snake, Tchami…
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Wallace Baine on March 11, 2020
Dreamers’ Circus is a trio out of Copenhagen, Denmark that fuses classical music and Nordic folk (with jazz influences as well), a formula that has made them one of the most big-ticket acts in their home country. Using the basic ingredients of piano/accordion, violin and cistern (a string instrument similar to a…
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