Legacy of punk plus a female mix
‘So Sick’ The Side Eyes (In the Red)
Earlier in the summer, this L.A. band celebrated its roots with a gig titled “Punk is Dad.” They shared the bill with iconic L.A. punk band Redd Kross, whose co-founder, Jeff McDonald, is Side Eyes singer Astrid McDonald’s dad. Her mom? Guitarist Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s.
Lineage noted, Side Eyes’ debut album for the lauded northeast L.A. label In the Red is harder, faster and louder than her parents’ bands — at least when they want it to be.
Featuring three- and fourchord songs that seldom extend past the two-minute mark, the dozen jams on “So Sick” are as direct as they are urgent.
“Cat Call” decries public gawkers; “Guy/Chick” addresses Astrid’s desire for “a man who can dress like a chick”; “I Don’t Want to Go to School” is self-explanatory. Punk may be dad, but in Astrid’s hands, punk is daughter, too.
‘Fact Mix #618’ Tara Jane O’Neil (Fact)
For this new mix in the British magazine’s ongoing series, the L.A.-based O’Neil entangles visionary female voices including Judee Sill, Solange, Alice Coltrane, Joni Mitchell and others who combine to create an hour-long series of epiphanies.
O’Neil, who moved to Los Angeles a half-decade ago after years spent in Louisville, recently issued a quietly breathtaking new album on the avant-folk label Gnomonwhich song, and the music she chose for the mix is a precise distillation of her aesthetic.
Among the most striking is “Theme 002” by the Chicago jazz trumpeter Jaimie Branch, which couples relentless percussion with her sparse horn runs. O’Neil segues that into Solange’s “Weary,” from her “A Seat at the Table,” and follows that with a late-period Joni Mitchell piece, “Shine,” from her 2007 album of the same name. ‘Organic Self ’ Carlos Nino & Friends (Leaving Records)
The Los Angeles artist, producer, DJ, arranger and connector has played a quiet but crucial role in the evolution of free-form beat music in Los Angeles. A longtime Dublab operative, founder of Build an Ark and collaborator with composer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Nino hosted the influential KPFKFM radio show “Spaceways,” celebrated musical mysticism, Afrofuturism and free jazz.
The first track to surface from “Going Home,” his forthcoming fifth album under the Carlos Nino & Friends banner, is a wildly propellent track — New Age on steroids? — that opens with the sound of crickets and a tense strings-andsnare pattern.
The song blossoms with bass midway through, as if sunlight has warmed the manic rhythm enough to sprout bottom-end roots. As the piece evolves, chimes and bells swoop in like a breeze.
“Going Home,” which comes out Oct. 20, features friends including Atwood-Ferguson, the Los Angeles-based Ghanian xylophone master SK Kakraba, New Age composer Iosas and hotshot percussionist Deantoni Parks (Flying Lotus, the Mars Volta, Omar Rodríguez-López). Nino & Friends will tour Europe in the fall.