HOUSEPITALITY feat. AKUFEN (Perlon, Musique Risquee) NIKOLA BAYTALA & TYREL WILLIAMS February 6, 2013

( ( ( ( (H O U S E P I T A L I T Y) ) ) ) ) is beginning February with a bang with an exclusive appearance from internationally renowned DJ/producer:

::AKUFEN (Musique Risquée, Perlon | Canada)::

with support from

::NIKOLA BAYTALA (Bionic, Pets Recordings | San Francisco)::

Groove Lounge:

::TYREL WILLIAMS (Acid Test, Housepitality | San Francisco/CHI)::
**Special "reflecting on influences" set**

The details:
FREE before 11pm with RSVP at www.housepitalitysf.com/rsvp
otherwise $5 before 11pm, $10 after
FREE champagne from 9pm-10pm
$5 Jameson (with mention of Housepitality discount)

2012 was a huge year for Housepitality, one that truly helped us find our voice, and cemented our status within the community. We've had amazing parties, amazing headliners, and we've felt the love that our fans can bring. Given the support we've been shown, we have to keep upping the ante and bringing the best events that we can to our midweek audience, all for the low price that our fans deserve.

With all of that in mind, we've decided to make our first gig of February into a monster: we've booked Akufen, one of the biggest names in underground house and techno. For those who don't know, Akufen, aka Marc Leclair, has been a bedrock figure in our scene. With his early releases on Perlon records, he established a new sound; glitchy minimal techno and house made out of samples from FM radio. Whether or not you're aware of it, you've probably heard his tracks, and the artists you know and love have benefited and been influenced by his sound.

He was booked by the Sunset crew for their illustrious Campout in 2011, and it's not with a huge smile on our faces that we are announcing his set at our cozy little party. Ladies and gents... AKUFEN will not disappoint.

Opening up the room with a 3 hour set, the perfect match for Akufen, we've booked Nikola Baytala. Nikola is one of SF's greatest success stories. He's played for SF's legendary [KONTROL] party as a resident, and has been responsible for bringing more techno to SF than just about anyone. He's opened for the biggest DJs in the world, and thus we didn't have a single doubt about who to book to open for AKUFEN.

In the back, playing a very special "reflecting on influences" set, our very own Tyrel Williams will play all night. Tyrel, as described in the SF Weekly, is "disgustingly talented," and can play sets to fit into almost any time slot. Catch this very special set, and understand why we at Housepitality are blessed to call him one of our residents.

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Akufen

Marc Leclair aka Akufen has come a long way in the six years since the release of his now-classic debut album, My Way (Force Inc. 2002). In that time he’s garnered a reputation as one of the planet’s most in-demand DJ’s – not to mention one of the scene’s most talented – delivering prime-time sets to exuberant crowds all over the world.

He’s started his own label, Musique Risquée. And bucking all expectations, his follow-up to My Way was not another Akufen mission statement, but an altogether different beast, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes (Mutek_Rec, 2005), released under his own name, which showcased a more experimental bent to his restless sense of artistry.

You could say that, true to his credo, Marc Leclair still does things his way.

For a lot of producers, the Akufen way has simply become the way to assemble tracks. After the release of My Way, Leclair was humbled by the unparalleled accolades and legions of admiring peers who began paying homage to his micro-sampling aesthetic. And yet, for Leclair, like any true artist, making music has always been a matter of where to go next, to find those stones still left unturned.

“The aesthetic for the Akufen stuff is changing a lot,” he explains. “It’s become much more old-school, funkier and more downtempo, with a bit more hip-hop favour”. To be sure, no matter which way you break it down Akufen is still in the business of making dance music. As for now, he’s meticulously composing his next attack and looking to show us new ways of dancing. He’s gauging the temperaments he culls from the world’s dance floors while DJing and then crafting his response.

Rest assured Marc has seen more of the world’s dance floors in the past four years than he has daylight. “I’m touring like crazy. I’m gone three weeks out of every month.” Every stop is like a tutorial for him, every dancer a lesson. For those who show up looking for a whirlwind micro-house extravaganza, along the lines of his monstrous Fabric 17 mix (Fabric, 2004), walk away knowing that Akufen is a DJ who shows up not fulfill expectations but to trump them. Give him half a chance, and he’ll fuck with your head.

“My DJ sets are getting more experimental, more technological dance music than techno, with still a little bit of house thrown in. Actually, I’m even clearing out the house records to create a more mental experience from the DJ set, by playing more electronic music with an edge.”

When he’s not DJing, Leclair considers himself a conceptual artist first and music producer second. Perhaps his most considered artistic statement of late has been his least recognized. In 2005, Leclair issued a second full-length called Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes, a boldly experimental meditation on the cycle of pregnancy. He has performed the piece at London’s Tate Modern and across the world.

In 2005, at the prestigious Ars Electronica festival, Leclair debuted an audio-visual version of Musique as part of a project called 5mm, which includes fellow Montrealer Gabriel Coutu-Dumont, who handles the visual component of the performance. The pair will be presenting the audio-visual incarnation of the ever-progressing work at the 2006 edition of the Mutek Festival. A CD-ROM release of this performance will soon follow. Then he leaves for China, where he will spend a month working on his next audio-visual project, which will focus on ancient Chinese music.

And yet, when not recording music or traveling around the world’s nightclubs and museums, Leclair finds time to remix other artists, run his own label, and even work on side projects. These days, he’s remixing Mike Shannon and Radiq, two more names to add to a reputable roster that already includes Richie Hawtin, Cabaret Voltaire, Yello, Massive Attack, Thomas Dolby, and Thomas Brinkmann, to name but a few.

As for Musique Risquée, Leclair’s boutique label, its catalogue continues to swell with new and respected talent alike. Whether it’s the latest whim from his own studios, or the work of artists like Atom TM, The Rip Off Artist, Philippe Cam, Crackhaus, The Mole, Stephen Beaupré, Trendsetter & the Followers, or Bruno Pronsato, Risquée records live up to their namesake and go a long way toward lining the Akufen DJ bag.

Leclair has even released some new music on the Perlon label’s popular Superlongevity 4 compilation, as Horror Inc. And this is what he seems most excited about at the moment. “The new Horror Inc. stuff is totally cinematic, jazzy and really dark”, he says. Whatever he has in store for us, we’re listening.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/akufen
https://soundcloud.com/marc-leclair

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Nikola Baytala

San Francisco DJ Nikola Baytala has become a crucial component of the minimal-techno collective known as [KONTROL]. But don't typecast him as a one-dimensional droid with a M-nus Records logo tattoo. He's been exploring the upper echelons of the techno/house continuum since the early '90s (including the last 10 years at The End Up and the legendary Top, hosted weekly by S.W.A.T., aka Special Weapons and Tactics), gaining a reputation as an incredible DJ, with acclaim coming from house-music legends like Cassy, Lee Burridge, Derrick Carter, and Richie Hawtin. Moreover, Baytala's list of musical influences and loves is vast, eclectic, and impeccable. The following roll call just scratches the surface: dub/reggae (Lee "Scratch" Perry), jazz (Pharoah Sanders), world (Ravi Shankar, Mulatu Astatke), funk (Cymande), soul (Bill Withers), hiphop (Gang Starr), Krautrock (Can), electro (Egyptian Lover, Kraftwerk), disco (DJ Harvey), Latin (Tito Puente), soundtrack/new age (Vangelis), rock (Steely Dan), post-punk (ESG, Liquid Liquid), and post-rock (Outhud). As for his bread and butter, Baytala similarly displays excellent judgment, with a heavy preference for quality-pushers like Levon Vincent, Caribou, Basic Channel, Camea, Todd Terje and Mr. Fingers. When you see a DJ possess such wide-ranging, outstanding taste, it instills confidence that he/she will rarely, if ever, veer into obvious trends. Baytala clearly has put many hours of study into his craft, and it's paid off with smooth mixes and world-class track selection. Besides his formidable technical skills and profound knowledge, Baytala reportedly exudes a lot of personality and passion behind the decks, which must have served him well while opening for acts like Jane's Addiction, The Prodigy, M.A.N.D.Y., Swayzak and Beastie Boys. Everything I've heard by Nikola Baytala suggests that his sets avoid the supposed pitfalls of typical dance music. They're kinetic, dynamic, and, of course, commericial-free.

https://soundcloud.com/nikola-baytala
http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/nikolabaytala
https://www.facebook.com/djnikolabaytala

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Tyrel Williams

Tyrel has been a mainstay of Chicago’s underground House scene for years. He began mixing records in 1999. Soon later he landed a job at Gramaphone Records where he spent the last decade building a mighty collection of 12” dance records. He spent 2009-2011 building his Acid Test residency at Smart Bar, which is an ongoing all vinyl House / Techno weekly dedicated to the true art form of DJing. Guests have included Miles Maeda, Derrick Carter, Tevo Howard, Traxx, and Justin Long. Tyrel has recently moved to San Francisco where he is a resident DJ for Housepitality and has also started his Acid Test party with Bryan Bai-ee and Miguel Solari.

https://www.facebook.com/djtyrelwilliams/
https://soundcloud.com/tyrelwilliams
http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/tyrelwilliams

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Enjoy handcrafted cocktails by our very own groove lounge mixologist.

World class acts, world class music, every Wednesday night..

We got you!

Located at F8 (formerly Icon Lounge)
1192 Folsom
Folsom St. at 8th St., SF

9pm-2am | 21+ | 3 Rooms

Official Website: http://www.housepitalitysf.com