- When you think of California's bustling electronic music community, you probably think of Los Angeles' beat scene, but there's more to the state than just chunky hip-hop. San Francisco, for one, has everything from the toxic hip-hop of EPROM to the chrome-plated dubstep of DJG to the all-around future funk of Salva. The latter heads up the Frite Nite collective and label, probably the best available representation of the city's quirky outlook. The label's first compilation, Surreal Estate, works well as a guidebook for those unfamiliar.
I should state up front that Frite Nite head Salva actually just relocated to L.A. and the compilation has a few tracks from non-SF producers, beginning with a track by New York duo Sepalcure. But what an opener it is; the sensuous sighs and honeyed vocals typify what the duo does best, and their dynamic taste for percussion proves a dominant theme over the course of Surreal Estate. Whether it's the unusually spectral "Rites" from DJG or the squirmy synth of Distal's fantastic "Mamanimal," the disc is loaded with mellifluous, malleable percussion. That's not to say the album doesn't have its share of curveballs: SF local Comma provides a twinkly bit of pleasant wallpaper rudely ripped to shreds by a Reese bassline, while Starkey and Epcot deliver a short and surprisingly flighty grime track. Then there are producers who show hints of future directions, like XI's blunted broken beat stunner "Whiteout" or Salva's increasingly nimble percussive antics on "Policy" which juggles an unstable melody over what feels like a rickety suspension bridge.
Though there's no real blunder anywhere to be found, at seventeen tracks and almost eighty minutes, Surreal Estate is not the kind of thing you're going to want to listen to all the way through more than a few times. But it is excellent fodder for cherry-picking and rearranging. Which is maybe what compilations are for in the first place in this era. If we look at it that way, Surreal Estate is a success, a diverse and comprehensive look at a stateside scene that's brimming with creativity and doesn't seem to suffer much in the way of conservatism.
Tracklist 01. Sepalcure - Deep City Insects
02. Comma - Vacancy
03. XI - Whiteout
04. Kuru & UFO! - Aoki
05. DJG - Rites
06. Distal - Mamanimal
07. Starkey & Epcot - Surreal Estate
08. Eprom - Twerkul8
09. B. Bravo & Teeko - Drop It!
10. Quitter - Street Codes
11. NastyNasty - Suffocating
12. Cosmic Revenge - Frostbite
13. Ghosts on Tape - Video Void
14. Salva - Policy
15. S0n!ka - Down Time
16. Danny Corn - Curiophilia
17. Wheez-ie - As I Watch It Unravel