Secret Sidewalk - “Does anyone Knock Anymore?”

Secret Sidewalk is a Bay Area quintet featuring saxophone, synths, scratching, and other electronic sounds. Very jammy and exploratory and fun vibe from these folks. Mike Boo is a scratch dj and composer who has created droney productions, while his bandmates Alex Abalos builds custom synths, and Marcus Stephens (sax) and Michael Reed (drums) contribute acoustic and electronic sounds.



FCC’s - Last few seconds on Side B (John may edit out); otherwise all clear



Favorites: I really enjoyed “Side A” because it felt like an extended jam/improvisation. “Side B” is great too but has a slightly more disconnected vibe.





“Side A” - 14:28 - (Short review) Long song with 3 different sections. Has driving, almost rocky parts, spacey and funky parts, and ends on sort of meditative/uplifting/positive note. Very dynamic, fun and interesting song to listen to.

(Longer detailed review)Starts off with funky uptempo drums and pounding bass; about a min in transitions to drums and high pitched synth and then transitions to funkier bass/drum combo mid tempo groove with modulating sounds and saxophone creating spacey melodies. Saxophone with interesting effect takes the center for a few min. Looped scratch and modulator noise transition at about 4:20 into driving programmed drums before transitioning to what feels like a separate movement in the song at about 5:00 in. This part features saxophone and drums and synthy bass again, mid tempo groove. Subtle scratches provide nice funky texture. Very nice groovy spacey scratching, synth, and sax with driving drums go on until about 9min. The next section is looped drums and more scratching for the first minute and then the drums and scratching drop out and a meditative hypnotic synth comes in at about 10min in; scratches on top add nice spacey texture. The last min of the song has fuzzy synths playing sort of uplifting feeling tones. Very nice way to end.

“Side B” - 14:54 - (Short review) many pieces that are shorter and some what more disconnected on this side; still great stuff; much more saxophone and somewhat more beat-driven. Sounds like a bunch of different compositions put together, while Side A sounds more like a coherent jam.

(Longer detailed review) Starts off with delay/echo effected saxophone, followed up by an accompanying synth for the first couple of minutes. Things start to get wild by min 2 and continue until min 4. At this point, a beat drops with some spacey synth twinkles and continues until about 5:45 where we blast off into synth space and arrive around 6:40 at some dramatic extraterrestrial sounds - very warm and as the filter comes in it sounds super soothing. At 7:25 live drums kick back in with a droney bass and scratching for about 30 seconds until everything explodes and the saxophone comes back in at 8:05 with some programmed drums creating a funky groove and eventually dropping out and just leaving at the sax. Things change abruptly at 8:55 where some cool and weird modulating sounds lead into live boom bap drums and bass support the modulation. Things end abruptly again at 10:25 and an upper tempo meditative beat starts all at once, including scratched synth - really nice vibe on this track; contemplative but driving and forceful. 12:20 or so brings in a rocking groove of bass synth, live drums, and modulating sounds.