Community Music Center
544 Capp Street SF
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Surplus 1980 - Voco
16th Annual Outsound New Music Summit
KFJC FM 89.7FM co-presents experiments in post-punk and no wave pushing the edges of music at the Bay Area's Creative Music Festival! Advance Tickets at:




Surplus 1980 is a San Francisco Bay Area-based post-punk band founded in 2009 by former Sleepytime Gorilla Museum multi-instrumentalist Moe! Staiano. As alluded to in its name, Surplus 1980's music takes cues from the angular bands of the 1980s such as Dog Faced Hermans and Diagram Brothers and fuses it with the heavy, fierce attack pioneered by The Ex and The Fall to create their own blend of modern no-wave angst. Combined with Staiano’s playful lyrics, Surplus 1980's music is a thick slab of out-jazz, with more than a dash of punk ferocity. Since 2011, Surplus 1980 has played shows all over the region with some of the Bay Area's most notable creative music luminaries, including Fred Frith Trio, miRthkon, Free Salamander Exhibit, Jack O’ the Clock, Moetar, Dominique Leone Band and Grex. In 2012, Surplus 1980 was one of the 8 bands chosen to participate in Undercover Presents' "Black Sabbath Paranoid," a unique show in which an influential album is chosen to have its songs reinterpreted with the personal vision of different artists.
Bill Wolter - guitar; Melne -guitar/vocals; Mark Pino - drums; HL Nelly -bass; Moe! Staiano - percussion/vocals


Voco strives to push the edges of music and the conventional expectations of the power trio. Drawing on an extensive wealth of musical and thematic influences stretching deep into the past, and far into the imagined future, VOCO puts forth 10 original compositions that contort conventional riff-based instrumental rock as they shift genre, tempo, time signature, and dynamics. Listeners will find themselves entrapped in Zappa-esqe guitar solos, beaten by Norwegian Black Metal influenced blast beats, and stimulated with sounds spanning from delicate soft passages to atmospheric re-entry. VOCO is comprised of guitar, bass and drums but frequently enlist guests from the local experimental jazz scene, and modular synthesis sound laboratories. Improvisation is a core element of the band's composition process, as well as live performance. VOCO's music is written to challenge, expand, and develop the artists' vision of instrumental and cinematic music.
Alex Yeung- guitar; Tim Sullivan- drums; Josh Martin- bass


Cost: $15 Gen | $12 Stu/Sen | $55 Pass

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play: