New night club opening draws a large crowd
By Atticus Morris
The Guardsman
San Franciscans turned out en masse on Sept. 25 to celebrate the launch of the Mission’s latest nightclub and art space, Public Works—forming a line by 11 p.m. that stretched literally around the block.
The club has a distinctly Spartan appeal, a kind of rugged industrial theme marked by concrete walls and huge I-beams that splay out in various directions. It’s a two-story space, with a massive mezzanine encircling the main dance floor.
The rustic wooden bar occupying the far side of the first level sits in front of a wall that looks as if it wasn’t quite finished. The wall’s naked framework creates a perfect system of shelves for storing liquor bottles.
The atmosphere is pleasantly devoid of pretension; it bears more than a passing resemblance to an underground warehouse party—one with all the amenities of a first-rate nightclub.
This environmental fusion was clearly reflected by the array of patrons. Button-down club goers, Burning Man types and indie nerds were all chopping it up together.
“The possibility of a plushed-out space never occurred to any of us,” said Chris Orr, who has been involved with the project in various ways since its inception. “That’s not where we are from. We came up through the underground party culture, and some of the best nights were just a room with a big sound system.”
And the Public Works sound system was blazing, with speakers filling the room full of brain-massaging sonance—hitting those frequencies (somewhere around 50 or 60 hertz) that make the insides of one’s ears itch.
Headlining act, Mount Kimbie, went on at 1 a.m. The London-based outfit comprising Kai Campos and Dominic Maker, create music that defies easy categorization.
The duo employ a “musique concrete” method of composition, whereby sounds—vocals, guitars, synths, samples, etc.—are stripped of context and re-imagined in new and interesting ways.
In addition to playing instruments, Mount Kimbie rely heavily on the use of “found sounds,” or home-made recordings of everyday noises. These sundry aural bits are spliced, processed and interwoven to form intricate micro-sculptures of exquisite melodious noise. In other words, it’s head(phone) music, the kind you can really get lost in.
When performed live, this enveloping quality of the music not only remained intact, but was amplified 100-fold on a large sound system in a room full of people.
The set itself, which involved Macbooks, guitars, pedals, a drum set and various effect processors, was sublime.
Not content with merely playing the material as it was recorded, Campos and Maker stripped things away, added new melodies, banged on a drum kit, sang and generally improvised all over their compositions. At one frenetic point, the structure of a song completely broke down, its percussive elements scattering like 1,000 marbles into polyrhythmic entropy, only to rejoin again perfectly on the downbeat.
Public Works is tucked away in a back alley between off of Mission Street between 14th and Duboce. The side of the building is graced by a colorful mural, which began with an illicit piece by renowned English street artist Banksy, and was later filled in by various local artists.
Located on the upper level, just off of the mezzanine is a large space set up specifically for artists. The plan is to select four each month for “residency.” The artists will enjoy 30 days of rent-free workspace, and at the end of the month have their art displayed in a show.
The folks behind Public Works see the project as a means to enrich local culture by connecting artistic and business interests.
“Everything new culturally, comes from blurring the lines,” Orr said. “The key word is ‘eclectic.’ We want to celebrate the city for all its diversity—not like some bumper sticker or coffee mug cliché, but as something we’ve all lived through.”