April Magazine, People Skills, Cindy, Hen House

$12 adv., $15 door, 21+

April Magazine

"There’s something beautifully haphazard to the April Magazine experience: sometimes ramshackle pop workers, sometimes tight ethereal jammers, & sometimes dreamy soundscape makers. When played live they’ll take you someplace far away; when recorded you’ll get a real taste of low fidelity dream pop for a seemingly never-ending afternoon. 

The band is usually composed of Peter Hurley, Kati Mashikian, David Diaz, & Mike Ramos; but from my understanding, an April Magazine recording may include all four members, just Peter & Kati, only Peter, or a slew of other friends filling in. Mike’s minimal drumming & David’s spaced-out guitar playing create the perfect backdrop to Kati’s driving bass & Peter’s lead guitar; while the latter two trade off vocals.” - Paisley Shirt

https://aprilmagazine.bandcamp.com/music

People Skills

‎‏‏‎ "People Skills could probably kill an hour or two watching you scrape the goo off your mukluks after escorting repeated tromps through the brack-befouled trench between music and non-music. You put on a show for him, he’ll put on a show for you. Everyone shows a little leg, we all go home winners.

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On his first new LP since the 2014 (Siltbreeze) and 2016 (Blackest Ever Black) touchstones, he blends “song-related” material with off-kilter signal garble to emit fidelity impaired pop-surrender by the wheeze-load. Haunted visions in the spirit of Kye, M-Squared, and Petri Supply stud the lonesome strum with equipment malfunctions and other miscellaneous environmental gack. Hum of the Non-Engine sheds some more light on bona fide PS singles that trickled out on compilations over the last two years and maps a beautiful merging of derisive collage and the world-weary song-smithery of our friends at the top and bottom ends of the globe.” - Seymour Glass (Glands of Eternal Secretion, Bananafish)

https://peopleskills.bandcamp.com/

Cindy

Cindy is a band built around the singing and guitar playing of Karina Gill. She became a musician only recently, having sat on the sidelines while ex-partners and friends made their stabs at it. Gill describes a chance encounter with an abandoned Squire Strat left in the basement by a previous tenant, “mummified in electrical tape with the remnants of a burrito on the head stock”, that led her to begin carefully strumming her way through simple chords and making her own songs. After one interesting self-released LP, still finding their footing, the band made the masterful and buzzed-about Free Advice, which went from a limited cassette on local SF label Paisley Shirt to vinyl pressings on Tough Love (UK) and Mt St Mtn (USA).

https://cindytheband.bandcamp.com/album/1-2

Hen House

Oakland noise, members of Relay For Death.