San Diego bands kicking off 2016 with new music

This week, Nathan Williams’s Ghost Ramp Records is launching a monthly subscription service featuring exclusive vinyl releases, starting with a Wavves/Best Coast 7-inch, a Wavves/Cloud Nothings 7-inch, and a Sweet Valley 12-inch, with more to be announced. Desert Suns’ self-titled debut album is being reissued on vinyl by Ripple Music (U.S.) and HeviSike Records (U.K.).

Crow Squawk, featuring Marcelo Radulovich, Scott Sayre, and Chris Conner, will play their first concert at the January 3 release party for Existentialism Run Amok at the Treehouse, a house concert venue at 34th and C Street. “It’s rock with lots of electronic funk, bossa nova, folk, blaring horns, and three-part vocal harmonies,” Radulovich says.

On January 9, Orange County’s Ignite will wage A War Against You at Brick by Brick, while locals Voice Actor are rolling out their newest CD on January 12 at Soda Bar.

Octagrape, the subject of a new documentary called Why Are We Doing This in Front of People?, will release their Aura Obelisk album on January 22. In other documentary news, the just-released More Love chronicles the career of Loam and Dead Rock West frontman Frank Lee Drennen and was produced by photographer David Fokos and Reader contributor Barbarella Fokos.

Ace Frehley has been recruiting locals like Ray Brandes to help with an upcoming album covering tunes by the Kinks, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, and more. Brandes also has a new book hitting Amazon just in time for Christmas, Getting Nowhere Fast: The Untold Story of Independent Music in San Diego 1976-1986.

Speaking of Christmas, Danielle LoPresti’s new video, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” co-stars her real-life spouse and child in a progressive LGBT interpretation of Tommie Connor’s 1952 Christmas classic.