When “FOMO-inducing” Noise Pop Festival returns to San Francisco this February 21-27, the Bay Area will once again become a checkerboard of independent music and arts events every night. As well as hosting many well-known performers like Alex G and The Microphones, the festival also turns the spotlight on emerging artists, each with a song to sing.
The S.F. Noise Pop Festival began in 1993 as a “5 bands for 5 dollars show,” and has since expanded into over 90 music, film and art events over the course of a week. Recognized for the early exposure they bring to up and coming indie artists, the festival helped bring stardom to the White Stripes, The Flaming Lips, Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins, Bright Eyes and others.
Unlike a conventional music festival with a large venue and stage, music promoter Noise Pop transforms the entire city of San Francisco into its festival grounds during their namesake event: the Noise Pop Festival. After a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the promoter is ecstatic to put on the 29th edition of the event.
Brett Ruffenach, the marketing manager at Noise Pop, described the music promoter as a champion of independent culture. “The live music scene is dominated by large corporations working with big names to do very large tours all over the country,” he said. “What Noise Pop does is find new and exciting artists that are different, and don’t have the resources or backing of big record labels to be able to have their first performances be in the Bay Area.”
“Noise pop” is a music genre that falls under alternative and indie-rock. It is “pop music wrapped in barbed-wire kisses of feedback, dissonance, and abrasion,” music database All Music describes. “Noise pop often has a hazy, narcotic feel, as melodies drift through the swirling guitar textures.”
The offbeat music genre is typically identified by its distorted layering of experimental indie-rock over catchy pop lyrics. Some of the most favored noise pop albums include Yo La Tengo’s “I Can Hear The Heart Beating as One” and The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” which have been featured at Noise Pop Festival.
Noise Pop Festival once exclusively featured music within the noise pop genre, but over time, it branched out dramatically into many different genres, according to Ruffenach. “There are pop and rock artists coming, we have a series of jazz and hip hop artists like headliner Azealia Banks,” Ruffenach said. “So it’s moved away from the ‘noise’ and more towards the ‘pop.’”
James Lopez is the senior talent buyer at Noise Pop. He works to curate art programing, book bands and conceptualize special events with the team. “I personally put a focus on independent artists, either they are on an independent label, independent management firm or an independent booking agency. They don’t really need to be within a certain genre,” he said.
Each Spring, Noise Pop sends an email to booking agents, the representatives that find their artists’ performances. Sometimes they ask if any of the artists connected with those agents are interested, and other times they reach out for specific bands.
“And then as time progresses, we start booking local and opening slots, where we do a mass reach out to the public. ‘Hey, are you local? Would you like to perform at the festival?’” Lopez explained. “And this year we got around 1,000 artists’ submissions just from that. So we review them all to try and make sure that we’re not missing out on great talent. It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun if you’re a music head.”
Noise Pop reached out to The Greeting Committee, an indie-rock band looking to make a stop in San Francisco on their upcoming tour. The band began in 2014 when the mothers of lead-singer Addie Sartino and guitarist Brandon Yangmi tried to set them up. “It’s really funny to think about because I have a girlfriend now and he does too. We tried it for a second and decided that we’d rather just play some music together,” Sartino said.
They played open mic nights at the local art museum in Kansas City, and one summer decided to make a band, eventually including Pierce Turcotte on bass. The band’s newest album, Dandelion, was made in collaboration with Dave Fridmann, a big mixer famous in the music industry for his work with rock bands.
Sartino is excited to be playing in San Francisco again. She and her girlfriend love the coffee shops, the restaurants and the inclusivity of the city. “We loved how diverse it was and how we weren’t the only lesbian couple holding hands walking down the street.”
photo by Naomi Taxay
The Greeting Committee, named after a t-shirt with the phrase that John Lennon once wore, is playing at Bottom of the Hill on February 23 at 7:00 pm.
The same night at the New Parish, Moor Mother is playing solo for Noise Pop as well as with her band, Irreversible Entanglements. “I’m excited to share the energy with the other guys, and then solo, to really harness that energy and send a message to the audience,” she said.
Moor Mother is a poet, rapper and singer. Her art enters the worlds of hip hop and jazz, poetry and visual art, as well as activism and workshop facilitation. “To me, art is a way of life. Not just something that I do,” she said.
Her main message is for people to really come together, to celebrate women and to stand up for human rights. She wants to “create works that not only sound good, but can be used as a tool to unite, unify, heal and inspire,” she described.
One of Noise Pop’s aims is to debut new, alternative programming and help smaller bands get noticed. Ruffenach believes the lineup for the festival really reflects that. This year, he is excited to see DJ and producer VEGYN and best new artist nominee Arooj Aftab.
The festival leans towards engaging with the local concert-going community rather than trying to get people from elsewhere to come to San Francisco. Ruffenach described the target audience as people who are interested in music and cultural discovery, and expanding what they are interested in. The festival has so much programming and variety, that it is also really about going to random shows and discovering what is there.
art by Megan Badilla
Graphic Designer Megan Badilla has been going to the festival for years, and this year she got the opportunity to design the artwork for it. She was inspired by classic still lifes that include fruit and various tablescape accessories. “I wanted to add the twist of having bugs and making the colors really vibrant and exciting. The Noise Pop team had the super fun idea to have the bugs also playing instruments, so I definitely made sure to include that,” she said.
“I love the little characters playing instruments on rotten fruit,” Ruffenach added. “It has this feeling like the last two pandemic years were kind of rotten, and now we’re making the most out of it by having a party!”
This year’s events take place throughout San Francisco and East Bay in dispersed historic music venues, bars, clubs and hipster joints — some of which allow only those above the age of 21 to enter.
The majority of Noise Pop’s events are open to all ages, however because some of the venues restrict who can enter, festival goers have multiple options when it comes to buying tickets. They can buy a $199 badge through the Noise Pop website that gives them access to all general admission concerts and events, or they can buy tickets for the individual shows they want to see. Prices for individual concerts range from $15-$40.
The badge does fall short in terms of the individual venue capacities set due to COVID-19. If a venue is full, even a badge holder will be unable to enter.
Noise Pop is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 guidelines. Ruffenach assured the venues the festival is working with are prepared to handle the regulations for a “mega event,” 500 people or more. “We don’t envision the festival not happening, we’re feeling pretty optimistic. We’re hoping this subsides as quickly as it skyrocketed,” he said.
Ruffenach summarizes Noise Pop as a festival of discovery, “We encourage people to come check out the shows even if they haven’t heard of them because that’s what’s exciting about this festival, that it has a unique array of artists.”
