Mi Ami 'African Rhythms' 12"
The new sound of San Francisco is upon us with Mi Ami's debut 12" release. What if Kid Creole replaced
the Coconuts with the Raincoats? What if Arthur Russell headed West instead of East and ended up at the Masque
in LA? What if trance music wasn't afraid to give you a hug once in a while? Who cares, just throw this on
and teach yourself how to play a new instrument or paint a beautiful landscape.
There are 400 copies pressed, each on black vinyl with beige DJ jackets. There are 5 test pressings
on black vinyl in white stamped and numbered DJ jackets.
01 - African Rhythms
02 - Feel You
03 - Clear Light
Dusted Magazine:
White-hot post-punk/heavy rhythmic assault action from this Bay Area trio, featuring Daniel McCormick and Jacob Long of Black Eyes. It’s a really strong debut of uptight, polyrhythmic frenzy and a girthy underpinning of dub. McCormick’s vocals are shrieky – really shrieky, so if you never got used to Black Eyes or Arto Lindsay, they might put you off. But the musicianship is so tight and locked down that the vocals fall to the noise side of Mi Ami’s dichotomization of chaos against serious, exacting bass/drum action. “Clear Light” on the B-side mellows out into some vista-expanding deep dub. When people complained about there being too much music like this in the past year or two, they often missed the point: that not enough of it was this good. Mi Ami should have no trouble wading through their wreckage and leading people back to the groove. Only 400 copies pressed, so act fast.
Z Gun:
This San Francisco trio makes no wave the way it god damn should be made: raw and edgy...and that you can dance to this stuff doesn't get in its way, which is a lot more than I can say for that New York bullshit that pass itself off as the now sound...well, at least five years ago. Maybe it is the five-year gap between the no wave revival and now and that the only people getting caught playing with angles and a dance beat are diehard and dorks. There's no payoff in pretence in jamming on yesterday's fad. Great! That means Mi Ami strips away the "see me" and pounds some good funky stuff. "African Rhythms" and its side-mate "Feel You" match Afrobeat style drumming with shatter guitar and bass in a way that reminds me of what !!! could have become had they stayed out of the disco. The B, "Clear Light", is one of those dance dub things that you would find on better on U releases, though a wee bit more garagey.
Released February 2008
