Kevin Linn is at the heart of so much of the great music that comes out of the San Francisco underground. His label Paisley Shirt Records is awash with incredible outsider sounds, he lends his instrumental talent as and when it’s required, and puts out gloriously skewed DIY-pop with his own Sad Eyed Beatniks project.
Present Electric was an unfamiliar name to me when it landed on Bandcamp this week, but it only took a few seconds of the first released track Snurr-Skivan for me to work out who was behind those elastic-like guitar lines and beautifully fractured beats. A slow trawl back through Bandcamp revealed more of this dark chaotic anti-pop and it soon became apparent that this alter ego was yet another way for Linn to express the creativity that seemingly bursts from his every pore.
Whilst heavier and a few shades darker than his Sad Eyed Beatniks material, this vital, urgent music could only have come from the same wonderfully open mind. Raw and uncompromising, and rough at it’s centre let alone around it’s edges, Present Electric provides yet another pathway through the ever evolving Bay Area underground. In the battle between finesse and feeling there can only ever be one winner for me, and these sprawling experimental soundscapes feel like exactly the kind of place I want to be right now.
Pre-order now via Paisley Shirt Records.
LISTEN/BUY/SHARE:
heavymetalkids.uk 