Near Dark Fest!

“I felt like Oakland needed a dark punk fest. There is so much good music here and everyone is really supportive.” 

Gina Marie of local goth punk band Otzi muses on the initial inspiration for the Near Dark Fest. Over the weekend of August 5-6 at various locations in Oakland, a diverse line up of international and local darkwave/anarcho punk acts will perform. For many of these bands it will be their first time touring to us in Oakland. Gina, with the help of Brianne from Kurraka, another one of the acts performing this weekend and with a few other helping hands, it has a been a project that started forming last summer.  

So here’s what to expect: the weekend starts on Saturday, August 5 over at Granny's with our local Esses project, End Time and Lovestruck Paranoia (LA) in the day time from 2-6pm. Granny's is an awesome spot that has hosted some special events-plus their backyard really lends itself to a good time. The Fest then continues over at the Golden Bull with Pawns from NY (with a new record out on Mass Media), Espejo Convexo (straight from Mexico City!), Cruz De Navajas (who also hail from Mexico City) alongside our local lovelies Otzi (Gina’s band!) and Screature.  Rikk Agnew headlines the show (Christian Death and Adolescents fans anyone? Swoon!).

On Sunday we start the party again over at Eli’s at 3pm. There will be a host of vendors from records to zines and clothing such as SOS zine, En tu Kara records and Foolish Fetish. Then for some anarcho-punk sounds we have Terminal A (visiting from LA), Kurraka (Texas), Bay Area’ s False Figure, Primary, Remnants (record release show!) and anarcho legends Omega Tribe (U.K on Crass records)- it’s their only Northern CA show! Check it out a rad preview video for it here!

We asked Gina if there were any bands she was particularly looking forward to seeing-

“I don’t want to play favorites. But I am really excited to see Omega Tribe. I've loved them for a long time and I never thought I would have a chance to see them.  Like, I actually booked them?! They've never been to the U.S!  I've never seen Kurraka before- and my fest partner Brianne plays drums for them!  I mean I love them all, so It’s kind of a dream come true!

Get your tickets today for this international Near Dark Fest here! 

For event pages on Facebook go here!

And of course in the style that is Oakland- everyone is invited and welcomed and celebrated! 

Pharmakon and the culmination of Contact: The Elbo 7/13 with Chasms and V.E.X.

    Shrieks, shrills and trills done vocally and synth-etically inspire a quixotic nausea of the existential kind in the ten year concept that is Pharmakon. Creating this music installation from NYC, Margaret Chardiet’s solo project has released the output titled “Contact” in which she examines “what it takes to be human” in dabbling with trance states and primal vibrations. In her words she explains “Despite all our rambling rejections, we cannot transcend all of our instincts-just animals lost in a confused dream…”.

     One of her fans on Bandcamp.com describes it as “This album sounds exactly as (the cover art) looks like. It makes you feel disgusting. It’s very, very good”. Taking a look at the album cover photo of pink, grubby, slimy fingers, mushing hair and the glistening flesh of a face is a reminder that we are all existing inside a sack of meat, a sort of biological nihilism. Yet, if we accept “this tiny sliver of time it opens us to revel in it, to make CONTACT”. On first listen, I felt ill. I turned the song "Nakedness of Need" off, only to be left with a sense of intrigue. 

     If you are in the mood for the intensity of say, Swans in their Filth-era paired with the dark unpredictability that Nurse with Wound has mastered with bleak relentless synth incisions and human cries from the depths of uncomfortable darkness this is for you.  I would recommend coming to indulge in this show if you want to  trudge in the fear and the glimmer of the human experience.  It might make you sick in a way, but doesn’t life? In the word’s of Chardiet,  “When the mind uses the body in order to transcend- escape it!” 

Also the Chasms duo visits their home town of SF after a move to LA to perform their heroine-gaze-y collaboration as well as Oakland’s own masked demons of light V.E.X., doing their dual synth queer-core weirdness that hopefully involves some improv sax.

Be there and be moved….