The Ape presents CAT PATROL, an hour of character-driven sketch comedy that explores bad spoken word, the creepy lives of twins, one-woman shows and the musical stylings of Darth Vader. Directed by Chris Caniglia, CAT PATROL marks the first major debut of a sketch comedy production at The Ape theater. It is also the first full length production produced, written, directed and starring the founders of The Ape - Brooke Totman (MADtv, The Benefits of Gusbandry), Alissa Jessup (The Mindy Project, True Blood) and Chris Caniglia (30 Rock, The People’s Improv Theater of N.Y.).
After years of performing and writing sketch shows in Portland, Brooke Totman was hired to cast and direct a new sketch company at a comedy club in town. Alissa Jessup came in to audition (Alissa and Chris Caniglia had just moved to Portland from Los Angeles) and immediately caught Brooke’s attention. “Alissa got on stage and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Her comedic timing was spot-on and she was the only person on stage creating characters!” says Brooke. “I scanned her resume and saw that like me, she trained at The Groundlings. - I knew I had found a comedy soulmate.” (The Groundlings is known as the foremost sketch comedy training ground in Los Angeles and has been the launch pad for countless careers including: Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow, Paul Reubens, Will Forte, Maya Rudolph, and Kathy Griffin.)
The two women became fast friends and collaborators, creating sketches for the show Identity Crisis at Portland Center Stage. “After Identity Crisis, we knew we had something special and we had to make our own show,” says Alissa. “We sat down with Chris (a veteran of New York and Los Angeles comedy) and the three of us started to dream up all the things we could do if we joined forces on CAT PATROL and beyond. What if we started our own comedy-based theater? A theater where as artists, we can create the kind of acting based, character-driven comedy that we love? And while we’re at it, why don’t we kick off our debut season with CAT PATROL?” “The collaboration chemistry was immediate.” says Brooke. “Alissa and I both grew up watching funny women like, Carol Burnett, Laverne & Shirley, Gilda Radner, Lily Tomlin, and Lucille Ball.” “And then you add our Groundlings sensibilities to the mix, it’s magic.” adds Alissa, “When we write it’s so easeful. It’s like we share the same twisted comedy brain, it just works.” Chris adds, “We all offer something very different and distinct to the process. Brooke is a master of both subtle and bold, physical comedy. She can transform into a character so completely, that you literally forget she’s on stage. Alissa is an amazing actor with the comedy chops to match. Nothing is too big, too broad or off-limits. If a seemingly impossible idea is pitched, Alissa is the one to figure out how to make it work on stage” “Chris brings a very calm, intentional focus to the process.” says Alissa. “He has this knack for listening, processing and with one or two suggestions, making the entire piece stronger. He’s the CAT PATROL whisperer.”
THE APE FOUNDERS
About Brooke Totman
Brooke is an actor, writer and sketch comedy performer. After receiving a degree in Theater performance, Totman headed to the bright lights and smoggy hills of L.A. to train at acclaimed sketch and improv company, The Groundlings.
Brooke became a member of The Groundlings Sunday company, performing alongside Melissa McCarthy, Mitch Silpa and Michael McDonald. It is here that her skills for writing sketches and creating unique comedy characters were developed. Auditioning with characters created at The Groundlings, Totman was cast on MADtv as a featured cast member during its 5th season. Other selected TV credits include: The King of Queens (CBS), Less Than Perfect (ABC),Judging Amy (CBS) and Life After First Failure (The CW). She is currently starring in the critically acclaimed series, The Benefits of Gusbandry, available on Amazon Prime. Brooke is co-founder of The Ape Theater, a comedy based theater and training ground committed to creating new work that ignites, engages and entertains. She also heads The Ape’s Sketch Comedy division, teaching, coaching, producing and directing.
About Alissa Jessup
Alissa is a writer, director, and actor with over 20 years’ experience creating and working in theater, film, and television. She likes that clowns are kind of creepy. As an actor, she has performed and developed new plays with Sundance Theatre Lab, The Flea Theater, ACT Theatre, 13P, Soho Rep, P.S. 122, and Playwrights Horizons. Selected T.V. credits include The Mindy Project (Hulu), True Blood (HBO), Grimm (NBC), and The Mentalist (CBS). She has written and performed comedy at The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade NYC and U.C.B. Los Angeles. In 2015, Alissa founded Growly Pictures to produce content that is made by women for women. Alissa wrote, directed, and stars in the comedic short film, ‘chickadee’, which she produced with an all-female cast and crew. Alissa is co-founder of The Ape and serves as the Artistic Director, where she also directs, teaches acting, directing, writing and collaboration classes.
About Chris Caniglia
Chris Caniglia started his improv career in 1986 with a group called Mental Floss in Miami. He performed over a crappy little garage that worked on foreign cars. After a little more seasoning and a move to the Big Apple he founded Big Black Car, New York City’s longest running long form improv team, and winner of Emerging Comics of New York’s award for best improv group. That group was Tom Ridgeley, Justin Akin, Ellie Kemper, Chris Caniglia, Megan Martin, Kristin Schaal, Scott Eckert and Matt Oberg. This was at the Peoples Improv Theater, where he was also a member of the teaching faculty. Chris has performed at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, The Magnet Theater in New York, where he was a member of House team Sweet Crude, directed by Armando Diaz, U.C.B. L.A., I/O West, the Chicago Improv Festival, and the D.C. Improv Festival. Chris is co-founder of The Ape and also serves as the head of its Improv division, where he coaches, teaches, produces and directs.
About The Ape Theater
With a mission of making serious sketch comedy (for people who aren’t that serious), The Ape is a comedy-based theater & training ground committed to creating new improv, sketch and theater work that ignites, engages, and entertains. Classes and workshops are offered in long-form improv, sketch comedy, writing, performance, and collaboration. The Ape’s training is deeply rooted in the belief that solid acting is the key to great comedic performances.
The Ape is an underground theater. Literally. It is located in the basement of The Alberta Abbey. The Ape is founded by working professionals with over 20 years experience working in New York City and Los Angeles in TV, Film,Theater and Comedy.
Alumni: Upright Citizens Brigade NYC & LA, The Magnet, The P.I.T., The Groundlings. www.theapetheater.com
Dent May
Dent May writes, performs, and produces homemade pop music from his home base in Mississippi. A stylistic chameleon, Dent’s recordings echo folk, disco, R&B, psychedelia, country-western, soul, and funk sounds of the past, present, and future. Increasingly, his songwriting has taken a turn toward existential classicism, channeling the tuneful longings of Harry Nilsson and Brian Wilson at their dreamiest.
Dent grew up performing in school plays and church choirs in Jackson, Mississippi, where he began writing songs and putting bands together by age 13. After dropping out of NYU film school, he moved back to Oxford, Mississippi. There he met Animal Collective while they were recording Merriweather Post Pavilion, and he’s been releasing music on their Paw Tracks imprint since 2009.
Dent recorded his third and latest album Warm Blanket alone in a rented Victorian home in St. Augustine, Florida during February of 2013. In contrast to the relentless optimism and upbeat thump of his previous LP Do Things, the new record is Dent’s most emotionally and musically diverse collection yet. Warm Blanket presents melancholy balladry alongside funky psych-pop with adventurous arrangements showcasing horns, strings, and bubbling analog synths.
Alongside the release of Warm Blanket in late summer of 2013, Dent will be touring the world with the latest incarnation of his live band, a revolving cast of musicians recruited from the ranks of Cats Purring, the self-proclaimed “North Mississippi Infotainment Cult.” He currently lives at their headquarters, the sprawling Cats Purring Dude Ranch, where infamous DIY shows take place and where Dent is already hard at work writing his next album.
Dr. Martens presents the Project Pabst opening party with Guided By Voices and Bitch'n on Aug. 25!
Pick up tickets for the FREE SHOW while supplies last at Dr. Martens (2 NW 10th Ave, Portland, OR 97209).
Complimentary refreshments from Pabst Blue Ribbon, Brew Dr. Kombucha, Thomas & Sons Distillery and Not Your Father's will be provided!
BATTLEME (WITH FRIENDS)
Battleme really began in 2009 on accident when Matt Drenik, the frontman of the Austin-based band Lions, was diagnosed with uvetis, an auto immune disease that affects the eyes of which there is no known cause or cure. At the time of his diagnosis, Matt was coming off of four years recording and touring with Lions who exploded noise and energy – touring nationally and internationally with the likes of the Toadies, Local H, and Monster Magnet. Fans gravitated towards their raucous live shows as spectacles of Drenik’s heavy state of mind.
After he got sick, things began to change. He fell in love all over again with the songs on the Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers, Beck’s Mellow Gold, and Flaming Lips’ Clouds Taste Metallic. With his head full of ideas and a refreshed outlook toward songwriting, Drenik set out to create something different. The music is a clear departure from what he was doing in previous projects. He decided to call this new project Battleme.
Soon after, his songs began to show up in FX’s Sons of Anarchy. He was asked to open for Joe Ely at the famed Cactus Cafe. His version of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My” saw over a million hits on YouTube.
Wanting a change, Drenik moved to Portland, OR in the summer of 2010. He spent the next several months recording over 40 songs in his girlfriend’s basement, bending from one genre to the next. He eventually narrowed them down to an 11 song record. After burning a few CDs for friends, Thomas Turner from Ghostland Observatory got a copy and responded. Drenik thought Turner might offer him a show with Ghostland. Instead, Turner gave him a record deal.
With Turner signed on to produce, the two lived and breathed the songs for the next six months. They sent mixes back and forth, collaborating on the sound. Drenik’s songs took on new forms – powerful hooks, bottom heavy grooves, and ethereal textures blended effortlessly with drifting, falsetto vocals to create an adventurous mix of post-modern rock and soul that would come to define the record. Synthesizers generate “Touch.” A solitary guitar builds into a wall on “Trouble.” The cosmic call to kill the quiet in “Wire” gives way to the sweet satisfaction of a “Killer High.” Genres coalesce, dividing lines disappear, and Battleme allows the sounds to create their own field of vision. A view from the other side. Songs with no boundaries.
Battleme’s eponymous debut on Trashy Moped Records is set for release April 24, 2012.
HOWARD IVANS
Ivan Howard has encountered this character before. Surely he was an uncredited guest when the Rosebuds recorded a song-by-song cover of Sade’s Love Deluxe. And when Prince showed up at a Gayngs show and ripped a solo offstage on his unplugged purple Strat, Ivan Howard and Howard Ivans watched him in disbelief, flickering back and forth in that sublime, surreal moment. But the first proper appearance was on a 45 for Spacebomb Records, “Red Face Boy b/w Pillows”; then the man could really breathe, stretch out and hear his own voice, see his hands in the light. There is a strange duality between the unassuming country boy who grew up barefoot on a tobacco farm in North Carolina and the neo-soul entertainer crooning over staccato Billie Jean guitar lines, but it’s not a reflection, more a yin and yang situation, interlocking bodies of shadow, imagination, and abstracted history. The tension is fascinating. No past or future, only a presence.
Beautiful Tired Bodies is Howard Ivans’ opus – is it the magnum or a sweet 750 ml? Only time will tell. Either way, it’s pure magic, a soft funk tone poem to lost identity, the grip of love, and trying to live in the present as time rushes under the bridge. Feelings at the edge of feeling, a sound that Ivan Howard dreams about. What a sound to dream about, lush, muscular, brooding, rising and falling with the lungs of live musicians, crystalline guitars, enchanting string arrangements—a real show. Alongside the team of Spacebomb co-producers Cameron Ralston and Trey Pollard, and a first call cast of Richmond, Virginia’s finest musicians, Howard Ivans has signed his name to a smooth statement of purpose. And whoever he is, he’s playing an idiosyncratic R&B game with passionate skill.
DANA BUOY
Description
Dana Janssen left Brooklyn in 2010 for the allure of an unknown life on the West Coast. Also a key member of the experimental art rock band Akron/Family, he moved to Portland, OR and shortly thereafter began his new indie-pop project, Dana Buoy. Inspired by his new surroundings and a new romantic interest, it wasn’t long before he wrote and released his full-length debut 'Summer Bodies' in 2012. Conceptually based around the excitement and mystique of finding someone to fall for, 'Summer Bodies' is upbeat and care-free, as has become so characteristic of Dana Buoy’s music. Now with 2014s’ 'Preacher,' a five-song EP, Dana’s youth and attitude are still front and center but with a new depth as a result of growing up and moving on. Written and performed entirely by Dana Buoy himself, and co-produced by Dana and Abe Seiferth, this EP's cathartic pop is more polished than ever. From the head-bob inducing “It’s Alright,” to the warm and fuzzy synths that weave together the title track, 'Preacher' is infectious and real, and ready for every moment to feel good.
NATRON
Current line-up
Diego Fanelli - Vocals
Domenico Mele - Guitars
Lorenzo "Fünj" Signorile - Bass
Max Marzocca - Drums
Former/past member(s)
Vocals:
Mike Tarantino (Penis Leech)
Raffaele Fanelli (Motherly Sin)
Guitars:
Marco Aromatario (Exhumer (Ita), Requiem K626, Mutala, Ad Noctem Funeriis (as Nihil), Corpsefucking Art, Stench of Dismemberment)
Bass:
Michael Maggi
Vito Laterza
BATTLEME (WITH FRIENDS)
Battleme really began in 2009 on accident when Matt Drenik, the frontman of the Austin-based band Lions, was diagnosed with uvetis, an auto immune disease that affects the eyes of which there is no known cause or cure. At the time of his diagnosis, Matt was coming off of four years recording and touring with Lions who exploded noise and energy – touring nationally and internationally with the likes of the Toadies, Local H, and Monster Magnet. Fans gravitated towards their raucous live shows as spectacles of Drenik’s heavy state of mind.
After he got sick, things began to change. He fell in love all over again with the songs on the Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers, Beck’s Mellow Gold, and Flaming Lips’ Clouds Taste Metallic. With his head full of ideas and a refreshed outlook toward songwriting, Drenik set out to create something different. The music is a clear departure from what he was doing in previous projects. He decided to call this new project Battleme.
Soon after, his songs began to show up in FX’s Sons of Anarchy. He was asked to open for Joe Ely at the famed Cactus Cafe. His version of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My” saw over a million hits on YouTube.
Wanting a change, Drenik moved to Portland, OR in the summer of 2010. He spent the next several months recording over 40 songs in his girlfriend’s basement, bending from one genre to the next. He eventually narrowed them down to an 11 song record. After burning a few CDs for friends, Thomas Turner from Ghostland Observatory got a copy and responded. Drenik thought Turner might offer him a show with Ghostland. Instead, Turner gave him a record deal.
With Turner signed on to produce, the two lived and breathed the songs for the next six months. They sent mixes back and forth, collaborating on the sound. Drenik’s songs took on new forms – powerful hooks, bottom heavy grooves, and ethereal textures blended effortlessly with drifting, falsetto vocals to create an adventurous mix of post-modern rock and soul that would come to define the record. Synthesizers generate “Touch.” A solitary guitar builds into a wall on “Trouble.” The cosmic call to kill the quiet in “Wire” gives way to the sweet satisfaction of a “Killer High.” Genres coalesce, dividing lines disappear, and Battleme allows the sounds to create their own field of vision. A view from the other side. Songs with no boundaries.
Battleme’s eponymous debut on Trashy Moped Records is set for release April 24, 2012.
HOWARD IVANS
Ivan Howard has encountered this character before. Surely he was an uncredited guest when the Rosebuds recorded a song-by-song cover of Sade’s Love Deluxe. And when Prince showed up at a Gayngs show and ripped a solo offstage on his unplugged purple Strat, Ivan Howard and Howard Ivans watched him in disbelief, flickering back and forth in that sublime, surreal moment. But the first proper appearance was on a 45 for Spacebomb Records, “Red Face Boy b/w Pillows”; then the man could really breathe, stretch out and hear his own voice, see his hands in the light. There is a strange duality between the unassuming country boy who grew up barefoot on a tobacco farm in North Carolina and the neo-soul entertainer crooning over staccato Billie Jean guitar lines, but it’s not a reflection, more a yin and yang situation, interlocking bodies of shadow, imagination, and abstracted history. The tension is fascinating. No past or future, only a presence.
Beautiful Tired Bodies is Howard Ivans’ opus – is it the magnum or a sweet 750 ml? Only time will tell. Either way, it’s pure magic, a soft funk tone poem to lost identity, the grip of love, and trying to live in the present as time rushes under the bridge. Feelings at the edge of feeling, a sound that Ivan Howard dreams about. What a sound to dream about, lush, muscular, brooding, rising and falling with the lungs of live musicians, crystalline guitars, enchanting string arrangements—a real show. Alongside the team of Spacebomb co-producers Cameron Ralston and Trey Pollard, and a first call cast of Richmond, Virginia’s finest musicians, Howard Ivans has signed his name to a smooth statement of purpose. And whoever he is, he’s playing an idiosyncratic R&B game with passionate skill.
DANA BUOY
Description
Dana Janssen left Brooklyn in 2010 for the allure of an unknown life on the West Coast. Also a key member of the experimental art rock band Akron/Family, he moved to Portland, OR and shortly thereafter began his new indie-pop project, Dana Buoy. Inspired by his new surroundings and a new romantic interest, it wasn’t long before he wrote and released his full-length debut 'Summer Bodies' in 2012. Conceptually based around the excitement and mystique of finding someone to fall for, 'Summer Bodies' is upbeat and care-free, as has become so characteristic of Dana Buoy’s music. Now with 2014s’ 'Preacher,' a five-song EP, Dana’s youth and attitude are still front and center but with a new depth as a result of growing up and moving on. Written and performed entirely by Dana Buoy himself, and co-produced by Dana and Abe Seiferth, this EP's cathartic pop is more polished than ever. From the head-bob inducing “It’s Alright,” to the warm and fuzzy synths that weave together the title track, 'Preacher' is infectious and real, and ready for every moment to feel good.
NATRON
Current line-up
Diego Fanelli - Vocals
Domenico Mele - Guitars
Lorenzo "Fünj" Signorile - Bass
Max Marzocca - Drums
Former/past member(s)
Vocals:
Mike Tarantino (Penis Leech)
Raffaele Fanelli (Motherly Sin)
Guitars:
Marco Aromatario (Exhumer (Ita), Requiem K626, Mutala, Ad Noctem Funeriis (as Nihil), Corpsefucking Art, Stench of Dismemberment)
Bass:
Michael Maggi
Vito Laterza
Top Down Rooftop Cinema is an annual outdoor film series. Classic, campy, and always entertaining, films screen every Thursday night in August amid Portland’s ideal summer weather.
Thursday August 24th -- THIS IS SPINAL TAP!Rob Reiner’s 1984 faux-documentary portrait of Spinal Tap, a tin-eared, British heavy metal band, practically spawned its own sub-genre of comedy filmmaking. Following the band on a comeback tour that’s not quite connecting with its dwindling fan base, the film savages not only its fictional subject, but also the music industry and metal culture as a whole. Featuring bombastic musical performances of poor taste “classics,” such as “Big Bottom,” “Sex Farm,” and “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight,” This Is Spinal Tap is a note-perfect skewering of rock ‘n’ roll ambition that also rocks like nobody’s business. “The result is 80 minutes of total joy, its momentum utterly uncompromised, every single second an invitation to snort uncontrollably.”— Jim White, The Telegraph.
Join us atop the Hotel deLuxe’s parking structure at SW 15th and Yamhill for our 13th annual program of cinema under the stars. Doors open at 7 pm with food and beverages available for purchase from Aladdin’s Café, Brass Tacks Sandwiches, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Music begins at 8 pm and films begin around dusk. Entry for advance ticket holders is guaranteed until 8:30 pm. Advance tickets ensure that you will not have to wait in the ticket purchase line but do not guarantee entry after 8:30 pm. A limited number of chairs are available on a first-come, first-served basis, so feel free to bring a chair, pillow, or blanket, along with a light sweater or jacket. Advance ticket holders who arrive after 8:30 pm but are not admitted to the screening (in the case of a sell-out) may exchange their tickets for another Top Down screening. There are no refunds or exchanges for arrivals after the film begins (c. 9 pm) or for entirely missed screenings. Please, no pets or outside food or drink.
Each film will be preceded by a short film by a Northwest filmmaker.
Advance tickets are available at nwfilm.org: $10 general; $9 student/senior/PAM member; $7 Silver Screen Club Friend. Tickets at the door are $12 general; $11 student/senior/PAM member; $9 Silver Screen Club Friend.
Huge Career Hiring Event
Ready for a new career? National Career Fairs is under new ownership and we are driving employers and future employees together faster then ever before.
Now Is The Time, Start or Advance Your Career Today!
3 Steps To Your Future...
1. Register
2. Attend Event
3. Get Hired at The Event
WE ARE HELPING AMERICA GET BACK TO WORK!
Laetitia Sadier
Another New Year, and new shapes are forming — if only we are fortunate enough to notice them! As we spin through this world, we are witness to all manner of combinations unfolding before us — familiar arcs and breaking waves alike, upon all of which it is our choice, our chance and our challenge, to possibly ride. Find Me Finding You, the new album from the new organization called the Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, manages to strike new chords while touching familiar keys in the song of life.
From its percolating opening beat, Find Me Finding Youlocates new systems within the sound-universe of Laetitia Sadier. This in itself isn’t a surprise — Laetitia has relentlessly followed her music through different dynamics and into a variety of dimensions over the course of four solo albums since 2010 (not to forget her three albums with Monade and the long era of Stereolab) — but the nature of the construction here stands distinctly apart from her recent albums. Laetitia was inspired by a mind’s-eye envisaging of geometric forms and their possible permutations. As she sought to replicate the shapes in music, this guided the process of assembly for the album.
Part of the freshness of Find Me Finding You comes from working and playing within the Source Ensemble and exploring new sound combinations via a set of youthful and evolving musical relationships. Laetitia recognized the energy of the tracks in their initial form, and sought to preserve their vitality by not retaking too many performances — instead, the rawness in the tracks was retained and refined at the mixing stage, maintaining an edge throughout. When we hear synth lines diving, lifting and drifting, unusual guitar textures, the plucked sound of flat wound bass strings or the bottomless pulsing of bass pedals stepping out of the mix with an exquisite vibrancy, this is the sound of the Source Ensemble.
A key to Laetitia’s music is her use of vocal arrangements. Throughout Finding Me Finding You, the shifting accompaniment creates space to bring this element gloriously forward. Arranged by Laetitia with Joe Watson and Jeff Parker making string charts that were subsequently transposed to vocal parts for several songs, richly arranged choirs of voices provide depth along with the thrilling presence of extra breath in the sound. Laetitia’s community-politic is well-served by the groups of voices lending support to the machining of the song craft, providing additional uplift to her quintessentially for-ward-facing viewpoint — as well as massed voices from three different countries sharing space in harmony!
Working in collaboration is Laetita’s traditions, and a key to this album’s view on being free together (it is necessary, prefer-able and right!). The designation of Source Collective implies a new togetherness phase; alongside long-time collaborators Emmanuel Mario and Xavi Munoz, keyboard and flutes parts played by David Thayer (Little Tornados) were essential contributions, as well as further keys, synths and electronics from Phil M FU and several intense guitar sequences from Mason le Long. Chris A Cummings (aka Marker Starling, Laetitia’s favorite composer) graciously wrote “Deep Background” for her. The duet with Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor on “Love Captive” (not to mention Rob Mazurek’s distinctive coronet playing!) gives voice to an ideological cornerstone of Find Me Finding You — that, should we be responsible enough to endeavor into a world of basic incomes and open relationships, we would make astonishing strides as a society. These sorts of things can only be done in agreement with others.
Expressing great compassion and expectation with startling immediacy, as well as an abiding belief in an underlying unity that permeates and intimately binds all things and beings, Find Me Finding You combines a rigorous process for music-making with a deeply invested mindset, making captivating music that promises many stimulating spins to come!
Heather Trost
Performing as a duo featuring Heather Trost (Hawk and a Hacksaw) and Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel).
Kevin Morby
City Music is an airplane descending over frozen lakes into Chicago. City Music is riding the Q Train out to Coney Island to smell the ocean and a morning in Philadelphia where greats cranes reconfigure the buildings like an endless puzzle. City Music is a quiet afternoon moment on a bench in Baltimore, a highway in Seattle at night where the distant houses look like tiny flames and a bottle of red wine being drained on a bridge in Paris. City Music is a bus pulling into St. Louis at dawn where the arch looks like a metal rainbow reflecting the days early sunlight. City Music is also the new album by Kevin Morby. Full of listless wanderlust, it's a collection inspired by and devoted to the metropolitan experience across America and beyond by a songwriter cast from his own mould. As he puts it: "It is a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me." His fourth album, City Music works as a counterpart to Morby's acclaimed 2016 release Singing Saw, an autobiographical set that reflected the solitude and landscape in which it was recorded. It was imagined as "an old bookshelf with a young Bob and Joni staring back at me, blank and timeless. They live here, in this left side of my brain, smoking cigarettes and playing acoustic guitars while lying on an unmade bed." And now follows City Music, the yang to its yin, the heads to its tails. It is an collection crafted using the other side of its creator's brain, the jumping off point perhaps best once again encapsulated by an image. "Here, Lou Reed and Patti Smith stare out at the listener," explains Morby. "Stretched out on a living room floor they are somewhere in mid-70s Manhattan, also smoking cigarettes." It finds Morby exploring similar themes of solitude, but this time framed by a window of an uptown apartment that looks down upon an international urban landscape "exposed like a giant bleeding wound." Morby rose to prominence as bassist in Woods, with who he recorded seven albums on Woodsist Records (Kurt Vile, The Oh Sees, Real Estate) while also forming The Babies with Cassie Ramone of Vivian Girls. Two albums and a clutch of classic singles with the latter followed. Morby's 2013 debut solo work Harlem River was a homage to New York and featured contributions from artists including Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley (of White Fence), while 2014's Still Life garnered universal critical praise. "It's easy to picture Morby with a wineskin under his arm," noted a Pitchfork review. "His every worldly possession hitched to his back, an eye constantly fixed on some faraway point on the horizon." Recording at Panoramic Studios, a central Californian home-turned-recording studio, City Music saw Morby joined once again by former The Babies cohorts Megan Duffy (guitar) and Justin Sullivan (drums). Here the vocals were at recorded night, in darkness, overlooking a Pacific Ocean illuminated only by the stars, the wash and whisper of the ebbing tidal a distant soundtrack. Six weeks of European touring had left the trio speaking a secret language that only a band can speak. "The language of a musical family," explains Morby. "There was an outdoor shower with no curtain and deer ran through the front yard during the meals we cooked for each other..." The record was completed with Richard Swift in Oregon (producer of Foxygen, sometime member of The Black Keys). From the widescreen opening of 'Come To Me Now' through the bubblegum stomp of the Ramones-eulogising '1-2-3-4' (which also references late poet Jim Carroll's litany of friends lost, 'People Who Died'), a stripped-back and wistful cover of 'Caught In My Eye' by nihilistic LA punk wrecking crew Germs and on to Leonard Cohen-evoking closer 'Downtown's Lights', City Music reads like a selection of musical postcards composed and posted in the moment. It is a forensic and poetic examination of a modern America in love with the myth of itself. At the big beating heart of these songs is the voice and conscience of the city. All cities. We see them viewed from differing angles; from down in the gutter, and drifting up into the celestial firmament. "I am walking through a Chinatown in a major American city and now I am a guitar part taking place in my head," offers Morby by a way of a commentary for the album's inception. "It falls around me like rain, dancing with the neon lights coming off of the signs of the restaurants and bars. Now I am a lamp full of hot air floating away, looking down. The city is beautiful like one million candles with different sized flames, moving in their own directions. A line finds me and grabbing it I hold on tight. I sing to myself, 'Oh, that City Music, oh that city sound...'" Here the album gives voice to the all those cities speaking the same universal language of chaos and commerce and culture. It views the city as an Oz-like experience, with your host cast as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, a narrator by turns innocent, awestruck, fearful and fearless. Where a world once black and white is now rainbow coloured. "I am a city and I have many moods," it says via its human conduit. "I am dangerous and I am gorgeous. Like a proud forest made of metal and brick I am constantly changing shape, growing bigger and smaller all at the same time. I hold you but you do not hold me...." City Music. Let it hold you.
Shannon Lay
https://shannonlay.bandcamp.com/
$10 ADV / $12 DOS
It makes sense that in order to hear local jazz musicians pushing the envelope, you have to venture to the edge of the city's envelope, as the Portland Metro Arts Center hosts artists such as Essiet Okon Essiet Quartet, David Friesen Quartet, Blue Cranes, Ezra Weiss Sextet, Trio Subtonic, and more for two days of improvisational adventure.
Local Portland dream-core rockers King Black Acid will be returning to the stage on the heels of a brand new full length album "Super Beautiful Magic" with new players and new songs. King Black Acid just learned that they will be inducted in to the Oregon Music Hall Of Fame this year and the feature film The Texture Of Falling which they scored will be released soon. They will be joined on stage by local Portland organic alt. pop favorites The Parson Red Heads who just released an album of there own called Blurred Harmony. Opening the show will be yet another Portland favorite, LiquidLight who will be bringing their own unique brand of psychedelic pro-pop to the stage.
House band The Sincerelys will host this evening of #PDXmusic. BYOB welcome. $5-10 suggested donation.
It makes sense that in order to hear local jazz musicians pushing the envelope, you have to venture to the edge of the city's envelope, as the Portland Metro Arts Center hosts artists such as Essiet Okon Essiet Quartet, David Friesen Quartet, Blue Cranes, Ezra Weiss Sextet, Trio Subtonic, and more for two days of improvisational adventure.
Vortex Music Magazine & XRAY.FM Present
The 3rd annual
Portland PsychFest
Schedule:
12:25 Dead Meadow
11:05 The Warlocks
10:05 The Prids
9:00 Matt Hollywood & the Bad Feelings
8:15 Daydream Machine
7:30 Pastilla
6:45 Cellar Doors
6:00 Souvenir Driver
5:15 Super 78
4:30 Firefriend
3:45 Plastic Nudes
3:00 Burning Palms
2:15 Kingdom of the Holy Sun
1:30 La Cerca
12:45 Pets
12:00 Nodding Tree Remedies
11:30am DOORS (DJ Major Sean)
Shed the skin of your chameleonic ear drums and Fear Not the Death of Liberty, Wanderlust and Love. All is well if you're tuned to the frequency that comes from within and rises up in the brain blood. Music is a drug. The power of Rock n Roll is real it destroys men and womans minds and compels all ages and walks to take their clothes off, as in the sunny meadow. As below, so above. You know what you came for -- Sexual Release in the face of a Volcanic God! Lighten up, Dance, move, be as one. We're all Brothers and Sisters sprung from the same bacteria at the beginning of the explosion and after the flood. Space rocks formed into moons, bars, caves, beaches, rings around planets both hotter and colder than earth mud. The sound you hear is the Evolution of your Senses through the secret passageways into Other Universes. Faster and faster, hotter and denser, tighter and brighter, until finally -- twitching and multiplying -- the crowd forms, the bands disappear into the music of the bareheaded stars.
Writen by: Michael W. Roberts
This years lineup includes.
Dead Meadow (Official)
The Warlocks
Matt Hollywood and the Bad Feelings
Pastilla
Souvenir Driver
Daydream Machine
The Prids
Super 78
La Cerca
KINGDOM OF THE HOLY SUN
Firefriend
Cellar Doors
Burning Palms
Plastic Nudes
Pets (the band)
Nodding Tree Remedies
DJ's
Sean Cavanaugh
DJ Hippie Joe
DJ Andy Maximum
John Mason IV
Rachel Good
Jason Edmonds (Magic Castles)
Bacline provided by Benson Amps
& Kirsch Drums
Vendors
http://blackwillowjewelry.com/
Brighton Place- https://www.etsy.com/shop/BrightonPlace/items
Kirsten Elise- https://www.etsy.com/shop/kirstenelisepdx
Crystal Seed Tarot - https://www.facebook.com/crystalseedtarot/
Curious Trappings - Vintage Clothes
http://www.instagram.com/katietastic.art
//ALL AGES//
8p - 11p
A musical even to honor our friend Edmond Lapine and raise funds for the scholorship in his name featuring:
TENDER FOREVER - https://tenderfore.bandcamp.com/
THE MAXINES - https://youtu.be/lYN3JbhNIMc
SELECTOR DUB NARCOTIC - https://selectordubnarcotic.bandcamp.com/
THE LUNGS - Members of EBT BBQ, Family Stoned & Pill Wonder
75% OF ALL PROCEEDS GO TOWARDS THE EDMOND WILLIAM LAPINE ll SCHOLARSHIP at THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE
QUANTIC (LIVE)
After a year of travelling and recording through Puerto Rico, Panama and Colombia the album 'Tropidelico' was released; itself a sonic adventure through Cumbia, Soul and Salsa. With a move to Cali, Colombia in 2007, Holland explored an ardent interest in tropical rhythms of the region and it was there he established his Sonido del Valle studio. This culminated in records from side projects Los Miticos Del Ritmo, Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro and Ondatropica, as well as the soulful and psychedelic LP 'Look Around the Corner' with long time collaborator Alice Russell. He also produced a 2011 EP with Serato: 'Hiphop en Cumbia,' which saw Holland paying tribute to his hip hop favourites in accordion laden Cumbia-style. Holland released his fifth studio record 'Magnetica' in 2013 under the Quantic moniker; it received critical acclaim for its marriage of South American folklore and a strong return to Holland's signature electronic aesthetic. Nidia Gongora, a Colombian Pacifico folklorist, a frequent collaborator from Holland's time Cali was prominently featured on this record. Holland's pioneering and enigmatic productions as well as his musical expressions as Guitarist, Accordionist, DJ, Studio Engineer & Music Compiler have earned him an international fanbase and constant engagements as a music selector, remixer and band director. He has 16 studio albums under his belt, as well as several compilations. He has collaborated and recorded with the likes of Ana Tijoux, Jorge Drexler, Shinehead, Anibal Velasquez, and more. Currently residing in Brooklyn, Holland has a new musical release (or two!), planned for 2016.
FLAMINGOSIS
Top Down Rooftop Cinema is an annual outdoor film series. Classic, campy, and always entertaining, films screen every Thursday night in August amid Portland’s ideal summer weather.
Thursday August 17 -- ARMY OF DARKNESS 1992
Happy-go-lucky S-Mart employee Ash is ripped from his 1990s existence and transported back to medieval times, where he must struggle against warring factions of men and an army of the dead that threatens all existence. The third film in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy puts the pedal to the metal with an endless array of sight gags, one-liners, and demon busting action sequences. Can Ash retrieve the ancient tome known as the Necronomicon and banish the evil forces it summons from the face of the earth? Or do we even care about plot with a film as wickedly fun and frenetic as Army of Darkness? “Sam Raimi’s “Army of Darkness” is a goofy, hyperventilated send-up of horror films and medieval warfare, so action-packed it sometimes seems less like a movie than like a cardiovascular workout for its stars.” – Roger Ebert
Join us atop the Hotel deLuxe’s parking structure at SW 15th and Yamhill for our 13th annual program of cinema under the stars. Doors open at 7 pm with food and beverages available for purchase from Aladdin’s Café, Brass Tacks Sandwiches, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Music begins at 8 pm and films begin around dusk. Entry for advance ticket holders is guaranteed until 8:30 pm. Advance tickets ensure that you will not have to wait in the ticket purchase line but do not guarantee entry after 8:30 pm. A limited number of chairs are available on a first-come, first-served basis, so feel free to bring a chair, pillow, or blanket, along with a light sweater or jacket. Advance ticket holders who arrive after 8:30 pm but are not admitted to the screening (in the case of a sell-out) may exchange their tickets for another Top Down screening. There are no refunds or exchanges for arrivals after the film begins (c. 9 pm) or for entirely missed screenings. Please, no pets or outside food or drink.
Each film will be preceded by a short film by a Northwest filmmaker.
Advance tickets are available at nwfilm.org: $10 general; $9 student/senior/PAM member; $7 Silver Screen Club Friend. Tickets at the door are $12 general; $11 student/senior/PAM member; $9 Silver Screen Club Friend.
Sylvan Esso
Sylvan Esso was not meant to be a band. Rather, Amelia Meath had written a song called "Play It Right" and sung it with her trio Mountain Man. She'd met Nick Sanborn, an electronic producer working under the name Made of Oak, in passing on a shared bill in a small club somewhere. She asked him to scramble it, to render her work his way. He did the obligatory remix, but he sensed that there was something more important here than a one-time handoff: Of all the songs Sanborn had ever recast, this was the first time he felt he'd added to the raw material without subtracting from it, as though, across the unseen wires of online file exchange, he'd found his new collaborator without even looking.
Meath felt it, too. Schedules aligned. Moves were made. And as 2012 slipped into 2013, Sanborn and Meath reconvened in the unlikely artistic hub of Durham, N.C., a former manufacturing town with cheap rent and good food. Sylvan Esso became a band. A year later, their self-titled debut-a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance-arrives as a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term.
These 10 tunes were realized and recorded in Sanborn's Durham bedroom during the last year, an impressive feat considering the layers of activity and effects that populate them-the dizzyingly crisscrossed harmonies of "Play it Right," the gorgeously incongruous elements of "Wolf," the surreptitiously minimalist momentum of "HSKT." Sanborn's production is fully modern and wonderfully active. He enlists obliterating dubstep stutters and crisp electropop pulses, hazy electrostatic breezes and epinephrine dancefloor turnarounds.
But this isn't a workout in production skills or a demonstration of electronic erudition. Instead, his music syncs seamlessly with Meath's melodies, so that the respective words and beats become a string of ready-to-play singles. The irrepressible "Hey Mami" webs handclaps and harmonies around a flood of bass, a strangely perfect canvas for a tale of dudes hollering at neighborhood tail (and, finally, finding the chivalry not to do so). "Coffee" sparkles and quakes, patiently rising from a muted spell of seasonal affective disorder to a sweet rupture of schoolyard glee. These pop cuts condescend neither to their audience nor their makers. They are sophisticated, but with none of the arrogance that can imply; they are addictive, but with none of the banality that can entail. There is sensuality and sexual depravity, homesickness and wanderlust, nostalgia and immediacy. Sylvan Esso acknowledges that the world is a tumult of complications by giving you a way to sing and dance with those troubles, if not to will them away altogether.
When Meath and Sanborn talk about Sylvan Esso, they come back to context-to how, before this project, they felt that their solo endeavors often felt short of it, as if they were lacking a crucial component. That is no longer a concern. When Meath sings to Sanborn a melody that she's conjured and captured, he almost instinctively knows how to respond. And when he delivers to her the backbone of a wordless beat, she adds lyrical bait where he'd only seen white space. Sylvan Esso represents the fulfillment of their fortuitous encounter by, once again, linking parts that too often come stripped of their counterparts. Here, motion comes with melody. Words come with ideas. And above all, pop comes back with candor.
For more than a decade pianist Marco Benevento has been amassing an extensive body of work. His studio albums and live performances set forth a vision that connects the dots in the vast space betweenLCD SoundsystemandLeon Russell, pulsating with dance rock energy, but with smart, earthysongwriting to match. It has led to numerous high profile appearances, ranging from Carnegie Hall to Pickathon,Mountain JamtoTreefort Festival, while headlining shows coast to coast.Marco Benevento's latest studio LP,The Story of Fred Short, and its companion live release,The Woodstock Sessions, is some of his finest and most adventurous work to date-a maestro making "bold indie rock" saysBrooklyn Vegan, while the LA Times raves, "Benevento continues to straighten his twisted sound into the guise of an indie-rock singer-songwriter, harnessing his inventive sonic palette into rewardingly bite-size pop songs that touch on disco and soul." Honing his psych rock and late night dance party sensibilities, the recordings find the pianist citing everything from Harry Nilsson, Manu Chau and Gorillaz as inspiration.As anybody who's seen Marco Benevento perform can attest, with eyes closed, smile wide across his face and fingers free-flowing across the keys, he's a satellite to the muse. With a devout and growing fan-base, Benevento is an artist whose story is only beginning to unfold.Press Quotes"Benevento jams with a concentration on the textures and colors available in his keyboards and arsenal of manipulated pedals and effects. His songs feature deceptively rich, catchy melodies and straight-ahead grooves that expand with subtle mounting gestures." - Rolling Stone"A musician so original that he can ultimately only be judged against his own standard." -All Music"Reminiscent of Dr. John's New Orleans psychedelia and piano chops with a hint of Father John Misty's general coolness, Marco Benevento brings something very unique to the modern pop world." - The Wild Honey Pie"Benevento continues to straighten his twisted sound into the guise of an indie-rock singer-songwriter, harnessing his inventive sonic palette into rewardingly bite-size pop songs that touch on disco and soul." - LA Times"Marco Benevento is one of the most talented keys players of our time." - CBS"Benevento's colorful, improvisational, piano-based compositions stretch so wide and cover so much sonic ground that the idea of genre seems quaint. Very quietly, he has been evolving into one of the most vital figures in jazz or rock or post-jazz or post-rock or-all of music." - Kansas City Pitch"A vocalizing party-starter, Benevento extrudes sinister balladry and hustling disco beats." - Village Voice