(antiMusic) Wallpaper have announced a string of West Coast dates that kick off next week in Sacramento, California and will find them bumping between the state capitol, San Francisco and Los Angeles in March, April and May before wrapping it up where it all began. Who is Wallpaper? Wallpaper is the enigmatic onstage existence of Oakland music addict Eric Frederic. In another life, he fronts a prog-rock powerhouse (indie stalwarts Facing New York), but in this one, he's a pop-pushing kingpin as interested in art as artifice. The Wallpaper project began in early 2005 as tweaked satire, Frederic funneling his earliest influences (P-Funk, New Jack, East Bay rap) into two EPs of diced, digital beats and lyrics caricaturing the pop vernacular. But as the Hyphy hip-hop movement crested in Frederic's backyard, something changed.
"I saw that classic Bay Area sound resurfacing," he says, "that same psychedelic, drippy, care-free, funky approach that reigned from Sly Stone to Digital Underground." He needed to pay tribute, and in a hail of house parties and homemade discs, Wallpaper was reborn as Ricky Reed, Frederic's disco-smashing doppelganger. This glitz 'n' grit champion of the groove has since become a gilded name in the underground, wooing crowds with a computerized croon, live reinventions of R&B classics, and tales of excess in the Information Age. Live, Wallpaper is joined by Arjun Singh on drums. They have blown spots alongside such notables as Subtle, Darondo, LA Riots, Electric Soft Parade, and Nino Moschella.
March
24 Sacramento, CA - Club Pow @ Press Club
27 Los Angeles, CA - Hell Ya @ The Echo
28 San Francisco, CA - Blow Up @ Rickshaw Stop
April
4 Sacramento, CA - Venue TBD
29 Los Angeles, CA – Cinespace
30 Los Angeles, CA - Club Moscow Hollywood
May
1 Los Angeles, CA - Dance Right @ La Cita
8 San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop
9 Sacramento, CA - Old Ironside's
