The Menlo Park area is the consummation of the Bay Area’s worst inclinations. It’s home to the Meta headquarters and next door neighbors with Stanford University. Its few headlines come from Stephen Curry’s notorious anti-housing development NIMBY-ism and an adjacent zip code with the highest median housing price in the country. To find any esteemed Bay Area culture, you’re best off heading 30 miles north to San Francisco or 40 miles northeast to Berkeley, Oakland, and the East Bay.
Considering the mundane reputation of the area, it was a surprise to see a potpourri of underground artists gathered for a showcase. At the Sounds Like (You Had To Be There) festival, bizarre pairings made a sum much greater than its parts.
The stage seemed unconcerned with any singular aesthetic direction. The handful of shoegazers and indie rockers including Kraus, High Sunn, acloudyskye, and Lowertown, have little to do with the chic (and broad) electronics from Technopagan, Ada Rook, Somewhere Special, death’s dynamic shroud, or Chuquimamni-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, the avant-garde siblings who perform together as Los Thuthanka. With the stage barely able to fit all of the equipment required by all nine acts, there was little smoke or flare for the artists to hide behind. Instead, it felt like a talent show, where every act brought forward a small palette of the material that made them standouts in their respective scenes.
Organized by Zack Hage, a Bay Area born-and-raised native, this is the third show he has organized in the Bay, including a show at San Francisco DIY club Bottom of the Hill featuring Canadian producer CFCF, the now-defunct ambient project Argo Nuff, and shoegaze band Midrift. As Hage was looking for venues that were “off the beaten path” to host the show, he got it in his head to host it at the Guild Theatre, a home venue for the Menlo Park native.
“I’ve noticed I have a subconscious addiction to stress. I’ve always wanted to have a job that could encapsulate that,” described Hage of his interest in organizing concerts. He detailed a particularly stressful 2024 that led to the show taking on the scale it had. “All of that stress just made me get more and more ambitious with this. It definitely got to a point where the venue asked ‘are we serious here?’”
The show was opened by local gabber DJ Technopagan before Ada Rook, formerly of the tumultuous duo Black Dresses, formally took the stage and blazed through a set in twenty minutes, the time most of the artists were allotted. Shoegaze socialite Kraus followed with a sonically dissimilar set of equal volume. The geographic range of artists invited was one of the night’s most stunning aspects. Pulling from New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and more, it was special to see an artist like Somewhere Special in Menlo Park. Though Simone Alysia, who handles the duo’s vocals, was out sick, producer Bruno Zero still represented Somewhere Special and New York with a DJ set that dropped Fcukers, Snow Strippers, and at least two Charli xcx remixes. acloudyskye, also a New York import, organized the vibes with his bedroom indie pop that made for an amicable break before the following acts.
The one-two combo of Los Thuthanka and death’s dynamic shroud is the kind of billing that will bulge avant-garde eyeballs for the rest of perceivable time. Though the Crampton siblings have been active since the aughts, Chuquimamani-Condori having found underground success as both E+E and Elysia Crampton, both Joshua Chuquimia Crampton and Chuquimamani-Condori have found a recent second wind in their material. While the former began releasing material under their own name at the beginning of the decade, the latter has found a massive amount of notoriety, especially surrounding their 2023 album DJ E. The revitalization was vividly felt during Los Thuthanka’s set; with Joshua on guitar and Chuquimamani-Condori splitting duty on two keytars, a CDJ, and a sampler, the duo blasted their sublime halfway interpretation of traditional Latino music and avant-garde electronic collage. The assault of their sound evoked a nearly spiritual reaction; as Chuquimamani-Condori slammed away at the synthesizer keytars and rhythms chugged out of the DJ decks, centuries of musical etymology coursed through the room, which mostly stood in awestruck confusion.
death’s dynamic shroud followed with an equally washing performance. Though they’re credited heavily with moves in the vaporwave world, the set showed off the best of their pop sensibilities, playing through some of their more popular and recent material like “Judgement Bolt” and “Messe de E-102.” Their setup was a sublimity in and of itself; watching Keith Rankin and Tech Honors move over the potpourri of guitars, laptops, and MIDI controllers was like watching Michaelangelo paint David (the group operates under the moniker regardless of attendance; in this case, James Webster was missing from the typical trio).
The evening and its lineup was an exhibition for the remaining value of strong DIY infrastructure in an era where live music is monopolized by a small handful of companies. “I’ve heard so many Live Nation horror stories. Knowing how much they tend to have a monopoly on venues, whether it be ticketing or operations, made me really cautious.” Hage said, “From what I’ve heard, Live Nation is really strict about lineups…[for this], they maybe would’ve been like ‘these genres are a little bit too different.’ I absolutely love these artists, but Live Nation would’ve been like, ‘who the hell is [Chuquimamani-Condori]. We can’t even find him online’”
The night landed on its most orthodox legs. High Sunn, the project of San Francisco child prodigy Justin Cheromiah, played its last United States show ever. Though it was an honorific moment for the project, which has been active since Cheromiah was in 8th grade, the performance itself was unpolished and rugged, as if the band was running on the fumes of its last days. Atlanta-New York indie rock band Lowertown played the night’s longest set, even though Olivia O., founding member and vocalist, was on sick leave as well. It was sparser than a typical Lowertown set, though it was still worth its larger piece of the evening’s pie.
Though the Bay Area is not without its own burgeoning and vibrant scenes drawing from most corners of music, it’s a welcome surprise when erratic lineups like Sounds Like: come along, which are typically reserved for hubs like New York. “When you do an event like this, there’s a lot of skepticism from people,” Hage said.
It’s harder to create or find infrastructure conducive to events like Sounds Like, but once the foundation is laid, the results are all the more rewarding. While planning the event, Hage found himself reselling physical media from thrift stores to record stores in the area, just to make a quick buck. He was able to strike up connections with the record stores he patronized and, in turn, they were instrumental in “All of these record stores paid it forward by promoting my event, more than they would promote any other event. You take the time out of your day to help them with stuff, it always gets paid forward. That slow pay-it-forward mentality is an emblem of the Bay Area to me.”
