hyperadmin

On Thursday, September 28th @ 2PM, Excuse My French speaks with Paris based trio, Oracle Sisters, before they play the Rickshaw Stop later that same evening.

Creators of artistic dream rock, Oracle Sisters make music that is at once sonically soothing and lyrically compelling. Intricate vocal harmonies over lilting arrangements make an otherworldly vehicle for poetic stories of human connection, home and longing.

The trio is composed of childhood friends Lewis Lazar and Christopher Willatt, and Finnish musician Julia Johansen. Their debut album, Hydranism, was recorded on a remote island during the pandemic, it embraces larger than life ballads, intimate folk songs, table thumping rousers and a vision of the world suspended in a timeless place.

Tune in on Wednesday, September 27th @ 1PM when Jack The Stripper hosts Japanese four piece band, CHAI, for a live in-studio interview before they hit the stage at SF’s The Independent later that same night.

CHAI is a four-piece band formed by miracle twins MANA and KANA, and the super rhythm section YUUKI and YUNA. They dub themselves the “NEO-New Exciting Women Band”.

The group’s new self-titled album finds CHAI returning to their roots, drawing inspiration from their Japanese cultural heritage and the music that raised them. “Everything reflected in the lyrics expresses our experience as Japanese women,” MANA says, explaining why they chose to self-title this album. CHAI’s ethos is one of inclusion, and lead single “We The Female!” – recorded live off the floor to honor the band’s riotous performances – beckons all listeners into the mission. “We are human and were born as female, but we have both female and male aspects in each of our souls, each with our own sense of balance,” CHAI said in an accompanying statement. “We can’t just label ourselves into clear-cut, simple categories anymore! I’m not anyone else but just ‘me,’ and you are no one else but just ‘you.’ This song celebrates that with a roar!”

Each CHAI album borrows aesthetic inspiration from specific musical movements, and on this album, the quartet wanted to make direct comparisons to city pop, a Tokyo-born sound popularized in the ‘70s and ‘80s. City pop was a Japanese take on Western lounge music, borrowing from jazz, boogie, funk, and yacht rock to create a sound that straddle two cultures. Only recently has city pop become a pop culture phenomenon in the U.S. thanks in part to TikTok and YouTube exhuming songs by artists like Tatsuro Yamashita, but for CHAI, city pop was just the music of childhood. They tapped previous collaborator Ryu Takahashi to produce, who shared their love of city pop and eurobeat, as well as the melodies of J-pop artists like Maria Takeuchi, which also contributed to the CHAI moodboard. “They wanted to dig into their Japanese identity, not in a traditional sense, but in this filtered Western way,” Takahashi says.

Photo Credit: Yoshio Nakais

Brooklyn based singer-songwriter, Gus Dapperton, joins Sex 14’s on Tuesday, September 26th @ 1:30PM to discuss his current album, Henge, and upcoming San Francisco shows at Bimbo’s 365 Club (9/30) and The Independent (10/1).

Gus Dapperton has always been obsessed with building new worlds. It’s been part of his passion since he started making songs in GarageBand, a creator’s mindset that eventually shaped two independent albums of defiantly original alt-pop.

Supalonely, his collaboration with New Zealand singer-songwriter BENEE, went viral during lockdown in 2020 and amassed more than one billion streams on its way to becoming a double-Platinum hit. “It gave me and other indie artists credibility,” he says. “It showed that alt-pop songs can be massive.”

Now signed to Warner Records, he goes even further on his new project, Henge, steeping himself in bold details and immersive songwriting to conjure a twilight world that permanently hovers between sunset and sunrise over the course of 11 mercurial songs.

Instead of starting with the music, Dapperton plotted out moods and titles and worked backward, taking inspiration from film scores, ’80s-inspired new wave, and ’70s funk. While the album’s scope is vast and ambitious, Dapperton’s music maintains the intimacy that made his previous offerings so resonant. At its core, the album is a way of processing a post-lockdown world. “I think most people can relate to wanting change and chaos, but also monotony and protection,” he says of the album’s tug-of-war between night and day, socializing and solitude. “I’m always internally battling those two sides.”

Photo Credit: Jess Farran

On Monday, September 25th @ 10AM, Sex 14’s welcomes pioneering feminist punk band, Frightwig, to the KALX studios for a live interview ahead of the group’s 40th Anniversary // Record Release show at Bottom of the Hill in SF on September 29th.

Since forming in San Francisco in 1983, Frightwig has had two objectives: Spread joy and smash the patriarchy. For 40 years, they’ve succeeded on both fronts with a mix of in-your-face hardcore energy and a fearless activist spirit. A formative influence on the Riot Grrrl movement and beyond, the band embraces fellow freaks, sinners, and misfits — and the coven of Frightwig devotees has only grown larger and stronger with time.

Birthed by Deanna Mitchell and Mia d’Bruzzi, Frightwig invented the template for the Riot-grrl phenomenon that followed over a decade later. Funny, funky and furious, Frightwig produced the full-length albums Cat Farm Faboo (Subterranean Records 1984) and Faster Frightwig Kill Kill (Caroline Records 1986), as well as the EP Phone Sexy (Boner Records 1988). The first two LPs were re-released as the double album Wild Women Never Die… (Southern Records 1994). Frightwig has widely been credited as one of the most original, intense and fearless feminist bands by musicians, critics and fans alike.

New album, We Need to Talk… (Label 51 Recordings) will be available on September 29th along with a special bonus 7″ single dedicated to their late but forever-present drummer Cecilia Kuhn who transcended this earthly plane in 2017.

@frightwigofficial

Join Astral Projection on Sunday, September 24th @ 4PM when they speak to indie-pop singer-songwriter, Tessa Violet.

Tessa playfully integrates saccharine-sweet pop with a sharp and sultry edge, like sinking one’s teeth into sour candy. Her coy lyricism is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to female sexuality, burgeoning confidence, and the search for love that lasts.

Well known for her social-media savvy (she began building a fanbase on YouTube back in the late aughts) Tessa Violet has racked up a slew of viral hits since the release of her debut album Bad Ideas in 2019. She has collaborated with fellow tastemakers in the pop genre like Cavetown, Lovelytheband, MisterWives, Chloe Moriondo, and Will Joseph Cook.

Latest album, MY GOD! is a masterful culmination of Tessa’s years as an artist in the public eye, combining her ear for viral, algorithm-friendly pop hits with a soulful, vulnerable expression of finding self-love and pursuing one’s fantasies against the pressures of the spotlight and the pains of past loss.

Photo Credit: Sarah Pardini