Violent Change

***"Arriving with the latest Cindy collection from Sloth Mate comes this new long player from fellow San Fran mainstays, Violent Change. Headed up by Matt Bleyle, the force behind Sloth Mate and a former Rat Column no less, and completed by a rotating cast of other scene notables (you'll not be surprised to hear that Stanley Martinez [Famous Mammals, Children Maybe Later, Non Plus Temps, et al] is also involved), Violent Change have been circling the Bay Area waters long before our current fascination with that part of the world. Their debut came out over a decade ago, but time seems an irrelevance when you're talking about these kinds of sounds, Starcastle feeling as if it could be a product from almost any era of San Fran over the past four decades. Garage rocking, DIY art bent melodicism that connects the dots between the Kinks, Swell Maps and TVP in ways we're familiar with yet somehow can never resist. The recent Now and Famous Mammals LPs are obvious points of comparison/connection, each pulling from that same electrically charged spirit that underpins those hilly streets and splashing it with the same pastel shades of its neighbourhood buildings. Maybe it's cliched to talk of such things, but this is music that feels like it could only be from that part of the world, a further expression of a lineage that no-one but the city can ever own. That makes Starcastle Environmental Music in its own kind of way, an expert divination of a very specific kind of San Fran folk song, bottled and shuck. Keep 'em coming forever more (i doubt we've any say in the matter."—Stephen (World of Echo)