Santa Cruz, CA live-instrument electronic dance-rock group STS9 just wrapped their 2016 Fall Tour with two nights in the San Francisco Bay – for all intents and purposes, a homecoming closer that was everything a die-hard fan could want in a weekend.
On Saturday, November 19th, the quintet hosted a three hour, two set throw down at The Masonic in San Francisco. Anybody and everybody was encouraged to attend, no matter where in the country you live. To make the offer a little more appealing, the band limited admittance to the tour closer the next night, tying the tickets together.
The next night, Sunday November 20, was hosted at the legendary Fillmore, their first performance at the venue in almost eight years – a four night run to end February and welcome March of 2009. Together, these two shows in the city mark the first time in over a year that they hit San Francisco proper.
And boy did they deliver.
With months of preparation for the tour closer, STS9 brought it big to mark the happy accident that is finishing a tour at home and kept the shows interesting: although there were no tour debuts, the band nonetheless curated an exceptionally intricate and exploratory musical adventure. Fans that weren’t able to make the trek for the weekend were able to enjoy the ride at the own pace through a free last-minute video stream of the show.
The lights went down around 8:30PM as the deep space transmissions of “Supercluster” filled the room, the first of six cuts from the groups newest record The Universe Inside. Even though the evening was heavy on their newer material, the very next song, “Tap In” reached back to the groups 1998 debut album Interplanetary Escape Vehicle.
What happened next was best described by a fan post-show as an otherworldly audible hallucination. The band began “Out Of This World” from Universe, but fans quickly recognized the STS9 favorite “Scheme”. Before long there was a recognizable lift from another section of “Scheme” over a new section of “World”, and STS9 continued to warp and mash the songs together until it was clearly a new and thought out composition that was dubbed “Out of this Scheming World”.
“Sun, Moon and Stars” followed the insanity with some lighter intensity dance grooves and wavy synth leads before busting into “ReEmergence”, the lone cut from 2005’s Artifact to round out the middle of the set. Even though the band played “Golden Gate” in Oakland back in January of this year, it was the only acceptable repeat.
But it was not a normal “Golden Gate”, it was rife with “Arigato” teases before they actually transitioned into the tune, a fellow track from 2011’s When The Dust Settles, to close the set. David Phipps’ note placement and general overtone meshed with the clean pop-and-snap of Alana Rocklin’s bass lines that seemed to resonate into high level harmonics thanks to the sweeping design structure of the Masonic. Drummer Zach Velmer got so amped up by guitarist Hunter Brown’s fretboard acrobatics he jumped onto the speakers behind him to pump up the crowd before he ended the set with an textbook example of giving it your all behind the kit.
The second set was rowdy from start to finish and could have received high praises based off of the carry-over of energy alone, but STS9 doesn’t dial it in, period. Opening with a pair of non-album favorites “Vapor” and “Luma Daylight” as well as “Worry No More” from The Universe Inside, Phipps’ beautiful mastery of a classical sounding piano piece caught the attention of many in the crowd early in the second set.
When the band reached deep into their Interplanetary Escape Vehicle and pulled out a “Moon Socket”, the venue erupted with cheers. The song took on an overly sinister vibe thanks in large part to Brown’s crunching guitar tones before a simulated transmission failure help[ed segue the track in and out of “Mischief of A Sleepwalker” from 2000’s Offering Schematics Suggesting Peace.
“Oil and Water” seemed an appropriate segue amid the growing animosity from the entire Bay Area in general concerning the battle over oil and water in Cannonball, ND near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The track carried sublime nuances of Bay Area favorite Tycho and provided a calm and reenergizing moment for the audience before busting out “Circus”. Check out the video below and see for yourself the fantastic percussion work of Jeffree Lerner:
They closed the evening with two more tracks from the newest album: “World Go Round”, which featured a miniature rave on the floor, and the single song encore of “Get Loud” left fans hungry for night two, their return to The Fillmore.
At The Fillmore, STS9 delivered one of the most stunning shows of the tour both on paper and on stage. Playing for nearly four hours with very few breaks or stopped time, the band hit on nearly every point of their career and drew up a set that touched on several albums, perfectly meshing the new with some of their oldest material.
They opened with one of only four cuts from The Universe Inside, the festival favorite “New Dawn, New Day” before turning the auditorium floor into a zoo, seguing into an impressive “Monkey Music” complete with a sultry space-station waiting room bop and nod to the room’s original residents, The Grateful Dead, by way of a full on “Dark Star” jam in the middle.
The band returned to the hype surrounding the near-instant sell-out of 2005’s Artifact vinyl reissue with a standalone “Today”, a track that had fallen out of recent rotation. A solid “Evasive Maneuvers” > “Kamuy” section teased the techno-heavy “Instantly”, foreshadowing the coming second set’s surprises.
But in the moment, a tease was all it needed to be because STS9 had an ace up their sleeve, busting out the old school “Poseidon”, a song that didn’t see any play between 2004 through 2014, and the set closer “Jebez”, another tune that often eludes even the most die-hard fans. The last half hour of the set was dedicated to these tracks, and had all the energy you could want.
Rocklin shone, deconstructing and rebuilding main themes between heavy, black-out jams full of big drum-offs between Lerner and Velmer as well as eerie under-water boss-level video game battles between Brown’s midi controller and the heavy riffage of Phipps’ phenomenal keys clinic.
The hour and 15-minute set left the audience confused and grateful in a trance of bliss – they had just witnessed one of the most fire STS9 sets of the year. Less than 30 minutes later, the band returned to take that trance to the next level.
Opening with a triple threat combination attack of “Forest Hu” > “Really What?” > “Blu Mood” would have been enough to write home about for any other show, but they kicked themselves into next gear and continued the play-calling schemes of the previous night.
The band moved into “Instantly”, releasing a collective wave of validation from the anticipation of it being teased in the first set, but they quickly shifted gears into another non-album track, “GLOgli”. STS9 returned to “Instantly” and then the two songs mashed into one concentrated track.
They rode the peaking wave up and into “Call Jam” before dropping into “Totem”. They didn’t stop there, however, and continued their frenetic onslaught of sound with a “Rabble” > “EHM” > “Rabble” sandwich – sans mashing together of the tunes – before finally ending the hour and a half set – with the last hour consisting of non-stop movement from one song to the next.
The band returned after a few short minutes for a three song encore that guaranteed the FOMO of all who wanted to but couldn’t attend the weekend in San Francisco with “Elsewhere” > “Water Song” > “March”, the highlight being “Water Song” from Offering Schematics Suggesting Peace.
There is no question STS9 is one of the most successful touring bands out there, and their careful attention to details are second to none.
Setlist: STS9 at The Masonic, San Francisco, CA – 11/19/16
Set 1: Supercluster, Tap In, Out Of This “Scheming” World, Sun Moon Stars, ReEmergence, Golden Gate* > Arigato
Set 2: Vapors, Luma Daylight, Worry No More, Moon Socket > Mischief of a Sleepwalker& > Moon Socket, Oil and Water, Circus, World Go Round
E: Get Loud
* w/ Arigato teases
& unfinished
Setlist: STS9 at The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA – 11/20/16
Set 1: New Dawn, New Day> Monkey Music*, Today, Evasive Maneuvers> Kamuy@ Give & Take> Poseidon, Jebez
Set 2: Forest Hu>Really What?>Blu Mood, Instantly>GLOgli>Instantly(GLOgli x Instantly mashup)>Call Jam> Totem>Rabble>EHM>Rabble ( rabble x ehm mashup)
E: Elsewhere>Water Song>March
Notes:
*Dark Star by Grateful Dead jam
@ Instantly teases
Words and photos by Joshua Huver // Must Have Media. See the full gallery of images below.
