Claude VonStroke

• Genre: Tech-House

About

When San Francisco's Barclay Crenshaw isn't busy running DirtyBird, one of the city's key underground house labels, he's ruffling feathers on the dance floor as Claude VonStroke, a purveyor of lascivious, left-of-center funk. His first release, 2005's "Deep Throat," put a perverse spin on the prickly minimalism then coming out of Berlin: the trademark clicking sound came from Crenshaw's own vocal chords, slowed to a crawl. Focusing their efforts on a European public, VonStroke and DirtyBird jumped from underdogs to hometown heroes when the Bay Area got wind of their successes in Berlin's dirtiest discos. After VonStroke's debut album in 2006, Beware of the Bird, he continued to release a slew of almost criminally catchy hits including "The Whistler" and "Who's Afraid of Detroit?" After recording a mix for London's vaunted Fabric club, he followed up with his second album, Bird Brain, in late 2009.

- Philip Sherburne