BLANK BLUE @ Echoplex

9pm / $8 adv; $10 day of show; $11.00 @ the door / 18+

Anika || Listen || Watch
Here’s something healthily irritating: The 23-year-old singer Anika comes from Surrey, near London; she’s got an unmistakably southeastern English accent in her speaking voice; but when she sings, she’s a German singing English, making syllables long and slow, affectless and severe. Essentially, she’s Nico.

Anika — real name is Annika Henderson — has a German mother and has explained in interviews that she’s just opening her mouth and letting childhood sounds tumble out. O.K., but the happier explanation is that Anika isn’t betraying her own singing, because she isn’t really a singer at all. She was working as a journalist and booking bands in Cardiff, Wales, not long ago when she met Geoff Barrow, formerly of Portishead and now of the band Beak. Mr. Barrow assembled Beak around her in a studio, playing clanky, relaxed dub and post-punk grooves, and for her self-titled debut album they made judiciously chosen cover versions of songs by female singers, including Yoko Ono’s “Yang Yang,” Skeeter Davis’s “End of the World,” the Pretenders’ “I Go to Sleep” and “Terry,” a girl-groupish song from 1964 by the momentary English star Twinkle.

Her voice is faltering and off-key, but dogged. The grooves are minimal, with the bass pushed way up front, and the sound is fresh and lumpy: the songs get your attention; they’ve got texture. The longest song is a version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” and her delivery is as shell-shocked and haranguing as the song’s mood demands; at one point, she stops singing, you hear a siren, and then the voice of an American Iraq war veteran, Mike Prysner, from an antiwar speech he gave two years ago. (“The real terrorist is me, and the real terrorism is this occupation,” he says.)

Because “Anika” is made the way some rock records in the late 1970s and early 1980s were both recorded and felt — with everyone playing together simultaneously, with scuffiness and bitten-off ideas quite the point, and with a space for enthusiastic amateurs — it’s startling. By Ben Ratliff, published in The New York Times

Peanut Butter Wolf || Facebook || Watch
You can read more about Peanut Butter Wolf and Stones Throw Records in the History section of stonesthrow.com. But for PB Wolf the DJ/recording artist/producer, here’s a quick rundown.

As a young kid growing up in San Jose, Chris Manak soon realized he needed an escape from the realities of suburbian life in the Silicon Valley. The age of nine was his coming of age. This was the year he discovered sports (Pittsburgh Pirates), video games (Pac man), girls (Anita Balderama), and hip hop (“Rappers Delight”). Alongside partner Sweet Steve, young Chris fashioned primitive mix-tapes (using the pause button) and ran amok at the local roller rink.

He took on the name Peanut Butter Wolf in the late-80s when he realized that, in an odd turn of events, a girlfriend’s youngest brother feared the “peanut butter wolf monster” more than death itself. Wolf and his more conventionally-named counterpart, Charizma, began recording in 1989 when the two were still teenagers. Within three years, the duo signed a contract with Hollywood Basic (Disney) alongside label mates Organized Konfusion and DJ Shadow. Charizma and Peanut Butter Wolf were riding high, touring Europe, receiving press in magazines such as Billboard and (a then newspaper format) Urb, hanging with radio legends Sway & King Tech on Wake Up Show and performing live shows with groups like House of Pain, Nas and The Pharcyde. Then, in December of 1993, Charizma tragically lost his life. Stunned, Wolf temporarily gave up on music.

After releasing the song “Just Like A Test” with Charizma for David Paul’s Bomb Hip Hop Compilation early in 1994, Upstairs Records, a label known primarily for house music, approached Wolf to record an instrumental LP. Thus, the Peanut Butter Breaks was born; the record became the Wolf’s calling card, leading to meetings and collaborations with like-minded DJs like Q-bert, Cut Chemist and Rob Swift.

After the release of Peanut Butter Breaks, PB Wolf found himself in demand as a producer. His track for the all-scratching compilation Return of the DJ was labeled “incredible” by The Source magazine. He released a 6 song compilation for South Paw Records in 1995, featuring collaborations with up and coming San Jose MCs. He also produced Kool Keith’s first single as a solo artist “Wanna Be A Star.” These releases, amongst others, led to a picture disc EP for British label 2 Kool Records.

In 1996, Peanut Butter Wolf founded Stones Throw Records. Charizma’s posthumous “My World Premiere” was the single to launch the label. A few highlights in the beginning were the songs “Unassisted” by Rasco, Super Duck Breaks LP by DJ Babu, and hip hop 7” series.

Lately, PB Wolf has moved away from producing (save the odd remix or compilation track) to build the Stones Throw label and to travel as a DJ to Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and across the US. Through his willingness to experiment and provide Stones Throw’s artists with musical carte blanche, he has overseen the releases of Lootpack’s Soundpieces, Quasimoto’s The Unseen, Breakestra’s Live Mix, Yesterdays New Quintet’s Angles Without Edges, Madlib’s Shades of Blue, and Jaylib’s Champion Sound.Windish

Blank Blue || Listen
Elvin Estela, aka Nobody, met Niki Randa at Fingerprints, an indie record store in Long Beach, California, where they have worked together since 2001. Estela was mulling over ideas for a sequel to Pacific Drift, his 2003 release on Ubiquity, and realized that the album he wanted to make needed only one vocalist. He had often heard that “Niki can sing!” and eventually would give Randa a CD-R of beats and tracks that he was considering for his new album to see if she was interested in being the one. In December 2006 the first of their collaborations was finished and given the working title “Sonic What?!” Excited with the results, Estela immediately told Randa about the concept for an album which had come to him in a series of nightmares. Shortly after the two ventured to a book store during their lunch break, grabbed a book blindly, opened randomly, and put Randa’s finger to a page which read ?Blank Blue.? The god?s had christened their project (it?s both the album’s namesake and the name given to the collaboration between Estela and Randa) and for the next twelve months, Estela and Randa would eat, sleep, drink and smoke Blank Blue.

Blank Blue is the surreal story of an Armageddon born out of a massive earthquake off the west coast of the United States and set sometime in the future. The quake triggers a separation of the west from the rest of the country, creating a whirlpool of devastation in its wake. Millions die. Thousands survive. Those that survive eventually sink and drown from the buckling lands, only to have scores of poison mushrooms waiting for them underneath the earth’s masses, loosened from centuries old trees. The poisoned water gives them their first gasp, and miraculously they are able to and breathe and live underwater. The album tells the story from various points of views, from an all-knowing narrator, to a psychic fish that warns people via their dreams, to random characters who watch their loved ones drown or ask the others underwater how to find the ability to breathe. The confusion and sadness is balanced by the fascination of having to start everything all over again; learning how to breathe and swim etc.

?I started to think about making an album that I would want to listen to, that reflected the music that I love to put on and space out to. I loved albums where one vocalist takes you through a journey through different sounds and styles. Niki was the first person I trusted with my idea of Blank Blue and her voice matched the music perfectly. It also helped that we have worked together at a record store for 7 years so we were official record store geeks,? says Estela….Ubiquity Records