Illustration by Christine Hipp.
Illustration by Christine Hipp.

ARTS

 

Retrospective | Prospective: Peter Elsea – 

April’s Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music spotlights music theorist and UCSC electronic music program director Peter Elsea and his amorphous multimedia body of work that would make producer Brian Eno blush. Elsea’s sonic experiments are recorded, disambiguated and composed in proto-techno fashion, pioneering the thought from laden mantras of the electroacoustic discipline with installations and performance pieces. Admission is free and open to the public.

April 17, 7:30 p.m., UCSC Music Center Recital Hall

Mount Eerie / Swanox – Skeletal lo-fi meditations coil and materialize between two mysteries of the noise-rock and hauntological variety. Fragile, wispy vocals ease out when the telephone melts, sealing dissonant melodies and mounting percussion begotten of savant sensibility. Intimate, fleeting, a wind’s poem — an elusive lynchpin in the undergarments of black metal. $10 at door.

April 15, show at 9 p.m., The Crêpe Place

 

ENTERTAINMENT

 

Tegan & Sara / Stars – Canada’s indie rockers emerge from the snow into the commercial limelight to throw down four-on-the-floor club thumpers coated with saccharine Canadian pop sensibility on their seventh studio album “Heartthrob.” The sister act carouses syrupy synth-pop hooks in loving spoonfuls, a brave departure from the acoustic power ballads and tween rock anthems that put them in the same conversation as contemporaries Metric and the New Pornographers. Nevertheless, the duo forecasts a shock to your system as they rev up their touring engines with indie pop suit Stars for a bold, harmonically complex foray into critical mass sure to electrify both old-school and new-school fans. $35 in advance, $40 at door.

April 18, doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m., The Catalyst