Xiu Xiu • Pleasure Thief • Hearsay • DJs Kelly and Parker
Tue 10/22/24
7:00PM
All Ages
music
$20 Early Bird // $22 ADV // $30 DOS
Show Lineup
Xiu Xiu
(San Jose, CA)
Genre: Electronic, Experimental, Indie
Xiu Xiu makes beautiful music for hard times. For nearly 20 years, the band has a track record of crafting experimental music for moments when life’s harsh realities meet its existential mysteries. On the latest album, Jamie Stewart explores a recent revelation and is reminded of the power of the band’s music to surprise and connect. Listening to the songs on OH NO, it is hard to feel truly alone. Instead, it is a reminder that even when we’re alone, we’re alone together.
OH NO, the group’s newest album, is an album of duets, with Stewart sharing the stage with an array of guests who have made an impact on him personally and musically. This is the first Xiu Xiu album where every song spotlights Jamie Stewart and a collaborator. The album features artists across the musical spectrum, including Sharon Van Etten, Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr, Grouper’s Liz Harris, Alice Bag, Chelsea Wolfe, Owen Pallet, and Twin Shadow’s George Lewis Jr., all drift into Xiu Xiu’s distinctive soundworld.
The album was born out of anguish and isolation, but exists as it does because of a profound rediscovery of community and friendship. It is the sound of finding one’s place in the world after the destructive powers of jealousy and mistrust make any map seemingly unreadable.
Xiu Xiu have been called “self flagellating”, “harsh”, “brutal”, “shocking” and “perverse” but also “genius”, “brilliant”, “unique”, “imaginative” and “luminous.”
The band is Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart.
Pleasure Thief
(Milwaukee, WI)
Genre: Experimental
Best known for her virtuosic and soulful vocal work in groups like No/No, Cat Ries normally brings a dark, soulful and occultist approach to elctro-R&B jams to her project Pleasure Thief. However, Cthonios finds Ries in a more meditative mode, droning out ambient sounds with barely there vocals mixed deep within the crevices of these two tracks. Deeply spiritual and cleansing. Let the sound wash over you as your mind wanders.
Hearsay
(Los Angeles, CA)
Genre: Post-Punk, Punk
Hearsay is the solo project of Matt Picola, combining bass and sampler-driven music with a playful but nihilistic worldview. With a background in creative writing, Matt crafts introspective and ideologically charged lyrics that critique modern society and capitalism. Musically, Hearsay features distorted, self-destructive automated rhythmic textures paired with post-punk bass lines. The initial demo offering titled “A Day” was recorded in one take and mixed in one day, in LA with Adam Laidlaw, and released in September 2024, with further elaborations to come this year.
His tracks explore themes such as “Waves of Void,” discerning the willful ignorance required to rent property and work; “Surreal Feel,” talking about subconscious desires of conformists; “Song and Seed,” discerning the human imperative to procreate as capital itself reproducing through labor; “On a List,” bemoaning government surveillance; “Days Go Bye,” existing as an economic grain of sand on a beach; “Checkerboard,” about experiencing subjectivity in a technological society overdetermined by capital; “War,” women having to endure being commodified the moment they leave the home; “Boiling Pigs,” about succumbing to the urge to eviscerate authority figures; and “Bang My Vein,” about the ubiquity of dopamine addiction.
