Singer/bassist Jin Salamack was originally from Hawaii before relocating to San Diego and co-founding pop-punk band Wanted Noise with San Diego singer-guitarist Suryendra Sherman. A seven song EP called Plate Lunch was released in 2017, after which the band embarked on their first tour. Last year saw the debut of a new single, “Go Get,” and a single and video for “More Sunrises,” all previewing their upcoming album Next Generation. The video for “More Sunrises” features the band skateboarding around San Diego in search of beer. The surf-skate punks just dropped a Matthew Fitzpatrick-directed video for their new single “Clench.” “‘Clench’ is about clenching your fists and pushing through when life gets hard,” according to Sherman. “It’s about the celebration when your hard work finally pays off. Originally written by our bassist Jin [Salamack] in the early days of our band around late 2014, this song has been rewritten over and over again and turned into a collaborative work, with each member of the band contributing significantly to the songwriting process.”
Based in Ocean Beach/Point Loma, Americana quintet the Cedar Shakers blend elements of folk, country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and bluegrass. Several founding members came from folksy local bands such as Family Wagon, the Young Wild, and Katie Leigh & the Infantry. A self-titled Cedar Shakers EP was released in late 2019, followed in 2020 by a four-song EP, Live From Capricorn Studios. The band’s first full-length, Signs, is available now and features nine original tracks. For the sessions, founding members Calen Lucas (vocals, bass, guitar), Mike Cendejas (mandolin, bass, backing vocals), Craig Sturak (guitar, bass), and Michael Freed (fiddle, backing vocals) were joined by guest drummer Kevin Weiss (Thunderbeast) and banjo players Clinton Ross Davis and Ron DePuy. The band will appear at Grand Ole BBQ Flinn Springs on March 4.
Electronica artist DJ Pnutz moved with her family to the United States at the age of four. At 10, she began studying percussion. Expanding beyond the realm of Art of Noise and Madonna to 1970s and 1980s punk and garage, she got her first set of turntables as a high school graduation present. Driven by 1990s electronic music, hip-hop, and trip-hop, she records with turntables, drums, Roland synthesizers and sequencers, and Ableton computer software. Her debut album Rackmount was followed by The Good Wife’s Guide to Beatmaking. Since her recorded debut in 2012, the multiple San Diego Music Award nominee and winner has put out 18 digital singles and albums, and her music has been featured in campaigns for Tech Deck, reviewed in Mixmag, and spent more than 20 continuous weeks on Canadian College Radio Charts. A new full-length drops March 10, Semi Live Entertainment, preceded so far by singles for “Rhodes To Heaven” and “Hotter Than Hades.” The project features completely electronically manufactured music played by the one-woman virtual band. “The album was predominantly made using the Native Instruments library of plugins, and Universal Audios premier effect and mastering capabilities,” says Pnutz, “highlighting the best of what future music has to offer by reinventing the past through sonic manipulation of 1s and 0s.”
"The Nephews was a kind of Dadaist name that we came up with before the original band started in 1983," says guitarist Tim Ellison. "We revived the group in 2015 as a four-piece with April Drury on keyboards, hence The Nephews and a Niece." The band's new EP John's Fishing Village was recorded at Singing Serpent in Kensington with Ben Moore, recorded and mixed in mono in three sessions going back to November, for a total of eighteen hours. The group's second collaboration with Moore evolved out of discussions about vintage sounds and old records. "The backing tracks were recorded to tape and the whole record is mixed in mono. The songs are a suite of impressionistic tunes about Southern California and San Diego in particular. The record evolved out of a few different creative impulses. Originally, I wanted to try writing lyrics impressionistically, and came up with a couple of short songs. As the writing kept going, we began playing the songs as medleys, made easier by the fact that they share a lot of the same chords. The whole record is really centered in the key of B flat, although it moves around. The medley concept was also inspired by the Who's 'A Quick One (While He's Away).' When it came time to finish the record, we decided to leave them as discrete tracks, but they are in the same sequence that we use for the medleys. The sequence of tracks is actually the order in which they were written." With the impressionistic lyrics, "It became clear during the writing process that it was shaping up as a set of songs about Southern California and San Diego in particular, and that theme becomes a little more explicit on the second half of the record. The songs are also about the subject of memory and our relationships with the past, particularly with regard to perceptions of our surroundings."
A longtime South Park resident, singer-guitarist Esteban Rene attended boarding school in Ensenada, while bassist Beto Bautista grew up in Tijuana. Rene met Bautista while both were working for Hornblower Cruises, and together they formed The Slashes. They’ve earned airplay on local 91X, as well as KXLU in Los Angeles and Radio Free Brooklyn’s The Rodent Hour, based in New York. They’ve performed at venues in San Diego, L.A., and New York, opening for everyone from locals Louis XIV to headliners Moving Units, as well as playing the first San Diego Wonderfront Festival in 2019. A new digital album dropped last year (followed by a limited vinyl run) called Embalmers Blush, tracked during the pandemic lockdown with Ben Moore at the same local facility where they recorded their self-titled debut, Singing Serpent Studios. The band has a new single for “Valentine Slip,” which according to Esteban Rene is “about accepting our true nature, the duality of the good and bad in this character, with one side winning eventually and giving in to his true self.”
Singer/bassist Jin Salamack was originally from Hawaii before relocating to San Diego and co-founding pop-punk band Wanted Noise with San Diego singer-guitarist Suryendra Sherman. A seven song EP called Plate Lunch was released in 2017, after which the band embarked on their first tour. Last year saw the debut of a new single, “Go Get,” and a single and video for “More Sunrises,” all previewing their upcoming album Next Generation. The video for “More Sunrises” features the band skateboarding around San Diego in search of beer. The surf-skate punks just dropped a Matthew Fitzpatrick-directed video for their new single “Clench.” “‘Clench’ is about clenching your fists and pushing through when life gets hard,” according to Sherman. “It’s about the celebration when your hard work finally pays off. Originally written by our bassist Jin [Salamack] in the early days of our band around late 2014, this song has been rewritten over and over again and turned into a collaborative work, with each member of the band contributing significantly to the songwriting process.”
Based in Ocean Beach/Point Loma, Americana quintet the Cedar Shakers blend elements of folk, country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and bluegrass. Several founding members came from folksy local bands such as Family Wagon, the Young Wild, and Katie Leigh & the Infantry. A self-titled Cedar Shakers EP was released in late 2019, followed in 2020 by a four-song EP, Live From Capricorn Studios. The band’s first full-length, Signs, is available now and features nine original tracks. For the sessions, founding members Calen Lucas (vocals, bass, guitar), Mike Cendejas (mandolin, bass, backing vocals), Craig Sturak (guitar, bass), and Michael Freed (fiddle, backing vocals) were joined by guest drummer Kevin Weiss (Thunderbeast) and banjo players Clinton Ross Davis and Ron DePuy. The band will appear at Grand Ole BBQ Flinn Springs on March 4.
Electronica artist DJ Pnutz moved with her family to the United States at the age of four. At 10, she began studying percussion. Expanding beyond the realm of Art of Noise and Madonna to 1970s and 1980s punk and garage, she got her first set of turntables as a high school graduation present. Driven by 1990s electronic music, hip-hop, and trip-hop, she records with turntables, drums, Roland synthesizers and sequencers, and Ableton computer software. Her debut album Rackmount was followed by The Good Wife’s Guide to Beatmaking. Since her recorded debut in 2012, the multiple San Diego Music Award nominee and winner has put out 18 digital singles and albums, and her music has been featured in campaigns for Tech Deck, reviewed in Mixmag, and spent more than 20 continuous weeks on Canadian College Radio Charts. A new full-length drops March 10, Semi Live Entertainment, preceded so far by singles for “Rhodes To Heaven” and “Hotter Than Hades.” The project features completely electronically manufactured music played by the one-woman virtual band. “The album was predominantly made using the Native Instruments library of plugins, and Universal Audios premier effect and mastering capabilities,” says Pnutz, “highlighting the best of what future music has to offer by reinventing the past through sonic manipulation of 1s and 0s.”
"The Nephews was a kind of Dadaist name that we came up with before the original band started in 1983," says guitarist Tim Ellison. "We revived the group in 2015 as a four-piece with April Drury on keyboards, hence The Nephews and a Niece." The band's new EP John's Fishing Village was recorded at Singing Serpent in Kensington with Ben Moore, recorded and mixed in mono in three sessions going back to November, for a total of eighteen hours. The group's second collaboration with Moore evolved out of discussions about vintage sounds and old records. "The backing tracks were recorded to tape and the whole record is mixed in mono. The songs are a suite of impressionistic tunes about Southern California and San Diego in particular. The record evolved out of a few different creative impulses. Originally, I wanted to try writing lyrics impressionistically, and came up with a couple of short songs. As the writing kept going, we began playing the songs as medleys, made easier by the fact that they share a lot of the same chords. The whole record is really centered in the key of B flat, although it moves around. The medley concept was also inspired by the Who's 'A Quick One (While He's Away).' When it came time to finish the record, we decided to leave them as discrete tracks, but they are in the same sequence that we use for the medleys. The sequence of tracks is actually the order in which they were written." With the impressionistic lyrics, "It became clear during the writing process that it was shaping up as a set of songs about Southern California and San Diego in particular, and that theme becomes a little more explicit on the second half of the record. The songs are also about the subject of memory and our relationships with the past, particularly with regard to perceptions of our surroundings."
A longtime South Park resident, singer-guitarist Esteban Rene attended boarding school in Ensenada, while bassist Beto Bautista grew up in Tijuana. Rene met Bautista while both were working for Hornblower Cruises, and together they formed The Slashes. They’ve earned airplay on local 91X, as well as KXLU in Los Angeles and Radio Free Brooklyn’s The Rodent Hour, based in New York. They’ve performed at venues in San Diego, L.A., and New York, opening for everyone from locals Louis XIV to headliners Moving Units, as well as playing the first San Diego Wonderfront Festival in 2019. A new digital album dropped last year (followed by a limited vinyl run) called Embalmers Blush, tracked during the pandemic lockdown with Ben Moore at the same local facility where they recorded their self-titled debut, Singing Serpent Studios. The band has a new single for “Valentine Slip,” which according to Esteban Rene is “about accepting our true nature, the duality of the good and bad in this character, with one side winning eventually and giving in to his true self.”
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