We close out the year with our new installment of CST Radio
We welcome Loveshadow
San Francisco’s Loveshadow is a dance collective / music project between Anya and Izaak, two bay natives whose underground paths have dotted across the Bay Area, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit, eventually landing in Oakland where their origin story finds them crossing paths working together at the former local Perch cafe. A shared love of a track by Aurra heard through the radio at the cafe becomes the catalyst that would eventually lead to their musical world building drawing from emotive sophisto-pop fused with balearic jazz and funk; through Anya’s vocal and songwriting set against the backdrop of Izaak’s productions. This has transpired through countless DJ sets that span across Fault Radio, Seance Center, NTS, Beyond / Below, among others, a release through Portage Garage Sounds with friend Ryan Spencer entitled S Transporter and their new Music For Memory self titled release.
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~ NEW ARRIVALS ~
Pamela Z - Echolocation
Freedom To Spend issues the pioneering self-released 1988 debut of San Francisco-based composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z for the first time on vinyl, documenting the beginning of a 30+ year career dedicated to exploring "sounds unfelt" through voice, live electronic processing, and sampled sound. Echolocation highlights Z's fascination with language, speech, and the sound of the human voice. Deceptively simple compositions allow the subtlest nuances of each word and phrase to shine. while at the same time live loops transform the voice into abstract textures.
Tip: "In Another World" a spoken word piece that echoes truths on unspoken internalized pain, duality and personal struggle in such an activating way.
"An In" for a more musical leaning track, offbeat stripped down post punky NY downtown feelings
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KUSH AURORA
Berkeley based Kush Arora is a music producer and dj with deep roots in the East Bay. His path through music draws influence from his beginnings around age 12 with industrial, metal, punk, goth, bhangra. In the late 90's his focus shifted to experimental, dub, and dancehall inspired creations. His current work comes under the name Only Now, which combines cyberpunk aesthetics with kuduro, industrial, and tribal experimental sounds and synthesis. These four releases highlight the ever-shifting explorations of Only Now (one cassette released with long time collaborator, Orogen), spanning a wide range of tempos, rhythms, and moods, and influences.
Tip: Only Now Presents: Indian Unclassical Vol. 1 cassette. Love the entire release beginning to end, a real special project. Finding myself particulary returning to ""Inverted Memories" composition feat. Rajib Karmakar". A collaborative project that re envisions influential Indian classical music processing diurnals and ragas into gorgeous drones and resonant reverberations.
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SMARTBOMB
We're honored to offer copies of all three long sold-out volumes from Smartbomb's Light Beings series. Established in 2013 as a series of live art/music parties in Downtown Oakland, Smartbomb is now a creative collective focused on curatorial projects & events to build & strengthen community. This ethos is perfectly captured by Light Beings, mixtapes intended as community time capsules, highlighting the wide spectrum of talents that orbit the Smartbomb universe such Salami Rose Joe Louis, Cheflee, Pacific Yew, Selim X, AshTre Jinkins, IDHAZ, rose cherami, and more. Curated by Asonic Garcia, produced in collaboration with Lower Grand Radio. A symbol of a very vibrant heartbeat from the town spearheaded by a Bay native and his chosen family with their unwavering commitment in pushing boundaries on the local beat scenes' narrative through various creative formats.
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Gabby Wen - a posteriori
Gabby Wen's first release is an intricately woven sonic reimagining of reflections and memories that honor their homeland and ancestors, while also sharing expressions on resistance, civil unrest and the oppression faced from growing up in a authoritarian regime. Through improvisations on the gugin, field recordings extracted through their travels, noise, feedback, folk song and poetry is a collection of compositions that convey these intersections, oscillating from contemplative to visceral and back again while also showcasing the vastness of their sound, influences and curiosities in this beautiful portrait of an artist's observations and questions around home and identity.
Tip: Recommends listening from beginning to end while reading the corresponding notes on each piece.
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IMA - The Flowers Die in Burning Fire - 炎の中で死にゆく花
We have been waiting for this one to come in and are excited to finally share copies. Percussionist Nava Dunkelman (JP) and electronic sound artist Amma Ateria (HK) present their debut album as IMA. Searching for beauty in destruction, darkness, decay, a melange of electroacoustics, percussion, spoken word/poetry that belies ultra-precise composition, no sound out of place. Vacillating wonderfully between quiet and loud, graceful and harsh, sparse and full, each piece moving deftly through various topographies.
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CONSTELLATION TATSU
A new offering from Oakland's Constellation Tatsu's Winter 2022 batch. All strong in their own right, while also complimenting each other as a collection. Emotive and textural soundscapes from Alex Albrecht (of Albrecht La’Brooy - personal favorite), rediscovered hidden 90s synth leftfield balearic dance recordings from Soshi Takeda and a collaborative international exchange of sonic wave of ethereal piano tape manipulations between Oslo's Julia Gjertsen and Chile's Nico Rosenberg.
Tip: all 3 are perfect for that upcoming long road trip. Soshi for the uptempo and Albrecht + Gjertson & Rosenberg for chill out, etheral ambient zones.
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Chrissy - Physical Release
San Francisco-based DJ and producer Chrissy presents ‘Physical Release,' the first full length on Sherelle and Naina's Hooversound imprint. Blending elements of ravey techno, house, and jungle that have run through his previous work, the final result is an exploration of what our scene’s physical spaces mean and how they feed into themes of politics, family, connection and joy. While the sounds here conjure moments past and speak to Chrissy's rave history, they're also firmly rooted in the present and looking toward the future with optimism; imagining a time and space where everyone can gather and experience the euphoria of the dancefloor.
Tip: "Take Me Away (Again) for that 90s jazzy vocal dnb feelings
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Jes Young
Jes Young is a multidisciplinary artist, maker, story-teller, educator, and curator from the SF Bay Area based in Oakland, CA. Their practices in material storytelling combine Chinese and “Western” craft based healing / processing rituals that include patchwork quilting, natural dying, photography, ceramics, and familial / communal / herbal research. Their practice is a continuation of material storytelling from many generations before them, and from these roots they (re)write and (re)contextualize stories that honor complex truths.
Now offering a small selection of stoneware pieces available in the shop.
Tracy Ren is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator based in Oakland, CA. They work primarily with an architectural and object-oriented visual language while moving through the world as an intuitive, process-oriented, queer, second-generation, Chinese-American person.
Drawing inspiration from cultural / domestic symbols, rituals, spaces, and things, they make sculptures, photographs, installations, and craft objects with the intent to highlight the ways in which we simultaneously and reciprocally create, activate, and are held by one another both within and across space and time.
As a whole, their creative pursuits serve as a personal compass within the continued processes of physical, spiritual, historical, political, and subconscious wayfinding. It is a means through which they can celebrate and uplift the members of their community who have been made to feel unsafe, overlooked or underestimated, and an opportunity to playfully pursue the creation and consumption of knowledge and beauty.
Now offering small ceramic and clay scupltures available in the shop.
Krusty Wheatfield loves to draw from life, from death, and from everything in between. Her long-term interview comics with counterculture publisher V Vale, large-scale drawings, and tiny tattoos are all made in pursuit of the glittering edge where the sacred and absurd meet. She loves the crust of bread, and of LIFE! Squanderlust is a recurring comics zine series now on its 6th issue, every page plucked live and squirming from the pages of the rapidly rising pile of field notebooks she refuses to leave the house without. Printed by Irrelevant Press in Oakland, spiral binding.
Now offering a selection of works from the catalog of Toronto-based Slow Editions, an independent publishing press run by artist Eunice Luk, collaborating with artists, poets, and musicians to realize unique artist books and multiples since 2014. This selection highlights their singular vision across a range of media, from cassette reissue of Japanese new age masterpiece "Botanical Sunset," to the playfulness of Son Ni's "Eternal Sun" and Luk's enamel pins, the delicate pairing of Kitsutsuki Shiro's haikus with Luk's artwork, and the sculptural weight of Vanessa's Maltese's "Several Observations."
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V/A - Donne Che Corrono Coi Lupi
Limited cassette compilation from Osàre! Editions enlisting 21 artists from around the world to create works inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés canonical text, "Women Who Run with the Wolves" (1992). The result, the eponymously titled "Donne che corrono coi lupi" is a dedication to feral feminine energy, connection and sisterhood. While the sounds vary wildly, from dark abstract ambience, hypnotic synth wave, sludgy techno, and post-punk noise, they are all run through with the same mystical feeling.
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OTHER NEW ARRIVALS
UPCOMING IN STORE EVENTS
KEVIN CORCORAN & GABBY WEN Live Solo Electronic Sets Saturday, 1/8 times TBD
ANNA LUISA PETRISKO & BEAST NEST Live Solo Electronic Sets Sunday, 1/23 6PM
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Archives of Cone Zone 15 and 16 up on the site now
CONE SHAPE TOP is a small arts & music project space + music/book shop + mix series based out of Oakland, CA.
