Sure they have a silly band name, but Atlanta's Gringo Star crank out some serious pop songs.
9pm doors/9:30 show
$8 adv/$10 dos
21 and over
Join us for Merō's video and EP release!
RONTOMS SUNDAY SESSIONS
SUN MAR 26 / 830 PM / 21+ / FREE
1045p Merō
945p Sheers
9p Nike Ayers
Check out the bands here:
https://soundcloud.com/merotheband
https://sheers.bandcamp.com/releases
https://soundcloud.com/oshunbaaaaaaaaandddd
HURRY UP
soundcloud.com/hurryuppdx
+
COOL SCHMOOL
coolschmool.bandcamp.com/releases
+
LOVEBOYS
loveboys.bandcamp.com/
$5 / 9PM / 21+
Event is 21+
Alex Cameron’s 2016 debut Jumping the Shark landed on many year-end lists, though it was originally self-released for free in 2013. The album’s praise was well-earned, between its subtle synth-pop posturing and Cameron’s carousing lounge singer swagger. But it’s his onstage persona that ultimately endears listeners to his surreal talents. Taking on the identity of a failed entertainer, Cameron’s commitment to the role makes for riveting spectating, specifically on songs with plenty of negative space like “Happy Ending” and “Take Care of Business.” He’s currently touring with the talented guitarist Delicate Steve. Rest assured, this show will be an exposition of extremes.
Monqui Presents:
STRFKR
Saturday, March 25, 2017 9:00PM
Roseland Theater
All Ages | Bar w/ ID
General admission event.
No refunds or exchanges. Tickets are non-transferable.
Event is 21 and over
Kane Strang
Kane Strang's debut album, Blue Cheese, picks up on the rough disaffection of his earlier demo collection, A Pebble And A Paper Crane, which he recorded in a WWII bomb shelter in Germany. Now back in his hometown of Dunedin, New Zealand, Kane spent two curious months alone, housesitting for his parents. Relocated, yet still isolated, Kane composed all of Blue Cheese over those quiet days. Lead-off track "The Web" channels pummeling bass lines punctuated by a twinkling synth that calls upon microscopic pop principalities of restlessness ("Yeah, I met someone else/ Without leaving my little house/ No, I haven't held her yet/ I met her on the internet"). Its abrupt ending parallels Strang's own disconnect. "She's Appealing" weaves day-glo guitar motifs into distant, detached '80s garage pop vocals. "Never Kissed A Blonde" is driven by a slapping delay on both vocals and guitar. Kane never doesn't surprise with his path towards a melody, nor does he miss a hit-on-the-head-obvious-in-retrospect memorable line.
Chastity Belt is a rock band consisting of four friends - guitarists Julia Shapiro and Lydia Lund, bassist Annie Truscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm. They met in a tiny college town in Eastern Washington, but their story begins for real in Seattle, that celebrated home of Macklemore and the Twelfth Man. Following a post-grad summer apart, a handful of shows and enthusiastic responses from the city's DIY community led them, as it has countless others, into a cramped practice space. They emerged with a debut album, No Regerts, sold it out faster than anyone involved thought possible, and toured America, a country that embraced them with open-ish arms. Now they're back and the tab is settled, the lights are out, the birds are making noise even though the sun isn't really up yet: it's Time to Go Home, their second long-player and first for Hardly Art.
In the outside world, they realized something crucial: they didn't have to play party songs now that their audience didn't consist exclusively of inebriated 18-22 year olds, as it did in that college town. Though still built on a foundation of post-post-punk energy, jagged rhythms, and instrumental moves that couldn't be anyone else's, the songs they grew into in the months that followed are equal parts street-level takedown and gray-skied melancholy. They embody the sensation of being caught in the center of a moment while floating directly above it; Shapiro's world spins around her on "On The Floor," grounded by Grimm and Truscott's most commanding playing committed to tape. They pay tribute to writer Sheila Heti on "Drone" and John Carpenter with "The Thing," and deliver a parallel-universe stoner anthem influenced by Electrelane with "Joke."
Recorded by José Díaz Rohena at the Unknown, a deconsecrated church and former sail factory in Anacortes, and mixed with a cathedral's worth of reverb by Matthew Simms (guitarist for legendary British post-punks and one-time tourmates Wire), Time to Go Home sees Chastity Belt take the nights out and bad parties of their past to their stretching points, watch the world around them break apart in anticipatory haze, and rebuild it in their own image with stunning clarity before anyone gets hungover.
Floating Room
"The type of sadness felt at 4 in the morning, reserved for the heartbroken and nervous, is a tender and surreal one. The world feels like the wrong size; the moment small, quiet and solitary, the rest of the day foreboding at a gargantuan scale. It’s a moment of contingency and introspection, and it’s soundtracked by Floating Room’s new album Sunless.
The record tracks the end of one relationship and the beginning of another, with lyrics and a sound that comprehend every aspect of this delicate time. Maya Stoner and Kyle Bates, Floating Room’s creators, are able to channel a heightened level of intimacy and emotional competency with their combined musical history and shared personal connections. “Kyle and I were discussing writing and recording at a house show when the idea of collaborating first game up. I had a lot of love and respect for Kyle’s project, Drowse, so I was excited to see how his brain worked,” recants Stoner. The melancholy, textured aspects of Bates’ aforementioned project meld well with Stoner’s past experimental guitar rock bands, Sabonis and Forest Park. They meet in a place of sensitivity and experimentation. With the assistance of bass player and frequent collaborator Alec Van Staveren, Floating Room has classic emotive aspects that also include electronic influences and dark beats and bass lines that work to transcend the usual bedroom tape project. With a name referencing the gloomy weather of the band’s Pacific Northwest home, the album is evocative of overcast despondency–but refuses to wallow.
“We started playing music together when we started dating, writing these short, confessional songs and capturing them with our cell phones; we quickly discovered a mutual love for artists like Mirah, The Microphones, Duster, and Bedhead.” Bates and Stoners’ gendered voices, musical compatibility and parallel perspectives of growth are audible. Stoner’s lyrics appeal to relatable feelings whilst staying specific enough to tell her story, with Bates sonically interjecting his own. Finding lyrical inspiration in conversations had with her female friends, Stoner uses unabashed dejection and candidness to create a new form of emotionally charged and empowered music, self-described as “gray pop.” On the crushing track “Fun,” Stoner proclaims her strength by using past insecurities and hesitations to detail the feeling of being silenced by oppressive systems and individuals, but finding resilience within those experiences. Stoner’s vocal power backed by buoyant guitars makes for a song set to inspire.
The intimate confines of the bedroom in which Stoner and Bates record and create together are heard in the warmth and indulgence of each song, bookmarked by personal clips of the two exchanging questions or the whimpering of a dog. But, with each track their cozy realm grows.Sunless is the sound of sharing fears, and becoming stronger as a result.
Revolution Hall Presents
WHY?
with Open Mike Eagle
Friday, March 24th
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 9:00 pm
General Admission / 21+ Floor / All Ages Balcony
THIS EVENT IS ALL AGES
Info: bit.ly/2kvoWyl
Tickets: ticketf.ly/2h2IbOY
On Sale Now!
21+
There probably isn't a single space-related word that hasn't been used to describe Pure Bathing Culture. Sure they're dreamy, astral, and euphoric—they'll turn your eyes into diamonds, your arms into flowing robes! They're downright mystical, and the reason we're running out of words to contain them is proof that you should have seen them live by now.
21+
NE Sandy’s Tonic Lounge has been through ups and downs and even a name change or two, but now it’s back as the Tonic and putting an emphasis on its best self: a rock ’n’ roll den with a great showroom, homey front bar, and an excellent patio. Tonight the club kicks off its latest chapter with a psych blowout from trance-inducing volume rockers Dead Meadow and Matt Hollywood, who’s sure to put swirls in your eyes.
Teenage Fanclub
The wait is over! On September 9, Teenage Fanclub return with Here, the band’s first album in six years.
As ever, song-wise the Fanclub present a textbook representation of democracy in action, the record offering four each by Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley. From the almighty chime of opener “I’m In Love” through the ecstatic soul-search of “The First Sight” and the paean to unerring friendship “With You,” Here is a collection of twelve songs about the only things that truly matter: life and love. As is befitting of a record that took its time to arrive, Here uses reflective space to dazzling effect. “Steady State,” with its gorgeous ebb and flow, has echoes of The Notorious Byrd Brothers’ astral jangle, while “I Was Beautiful When I Was Alive” unexpectedly curves off from dreamlike beginnings into a semi-acoustic/motorik outro, sonically replacing the steady beat of the German autobahn with the vast open skies of the Pacific Coast Highway.
Not for one second is Here the sound of procrastination or headscratching. It’s the effortless work of a band entirely confident in their own craft—the consolidation of nearly three decades of peerless songwriting and almost telepathic musicianship. Here is a record that embraces maturity and experience and hugs them close.
XRAY's Dave Cantrell from Songs from Under the Floorboard is raising money for his incredible post punk festival Out From The Shadow III by throwing a fundraiser/show. Besides featuring three of Portland's finest new bands (OK, new-ish so far as Murderbait is concerned), this is also a benefit to help raise funds for the Out From The Shadow III festival, so you can feel DOUBLY good attending! As with the showcases, three bands for five bucks. That's the deal.
https://murderbait.bandcamp.com/releases
https://fleshhpdx.bandcamp.com/releases
https://atomiccandles.bandcamp.com/album/eyez-ep
XRAY.FM is 3! Let's celebrate with our biggest bash yet!
CHANTI DARLING :: KARL BLAU
w/ Women's Beat League
+ XRAY DJs in Bar Bar all night and a sneak peak at "XRAY TV"
8:00 Doors, 9:00 Show
$12 ADV or DOS, $5 FOR XRAY MEMBERS
Hosted by hilarious comedian Caitlin Weierhauser and DJ Klyph of Welcome to the Neighborhood
Thanks to our generous sponsors:
Wieden + Kennedy
Hammer and Hand Seattle
Hifi Farms
Potato Champion
Rerun
Rudy's
-----XRAY DJs in Bar Bar all night long:-----------------
Encyclopedia Sound's DJ Detective, Honest John of Savage Beat Radio, DJ Kiki of Music for Neighbors, PDX Mandem, DJ Yoni
and DJon Mustard!
AND THAT'S NOT ALL:
You are invited to a pre-party! XRAY TV will premiere on the big screen at Mississippi Studios from 6pm-8pm RSVP and find more information here:https://blog.xray.fm/2017/02/20/xray-fm-presents-xray-tv/
Los Angeles’ own Latin soul/rock powerhouse
CHICANO BATMAN
w/ special guests 79.5 and SadGirl
STAR THEATER
PORTLAND, OREGON
FEBRUARY 24, 2017
8pm / 21+
Don’t miss this chance to experience the contagious energy of these musical iconoclasts.
Chicano Batman, a quartet from Los Angeles, embrace a kind of cultural ricochet effect, playing fuzzed-out soul with pan-Latin grooves and rhythms that reflect and demonstrate their Mexican, Central and South American heritage, but with musical roots pointing back to Curtis Mayfield and James Brown. If the music of the African diaspora boomerangs all over the world— picking up bits of regional flavor wherever locals develop a taste for jazz, blues, gospel, reggae and other styles—then certainly, Chicano Batman’s sound is steeped in Tropicália from Brazil, Peruvian psych-rock and Mexican garage jams, as well as American soul. The styles all reflect off each other in one way or another. The band makes excellent use of wah-wahs, overdriven organ and generally retro effects, playing dance-friendly music that is still totally 21st-century American.
Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner spent the last part of the new millennium's first decade becoming the go-to bassist for practically every artist in black vanguard music. His nimble, syncopated, groove-heavy basslines were heard on albums by Erykah Badu, Sa-Ra, Flying Lotus, and others. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Bruner had the good fortune to be part of a music family. His father, Ronald Bruner Sr., was an accomplished drummer, working with artists like Diana Ross, the Temptations, and Gladys Knight. Bruner's older brother, Ronald Jr., a Grammy-winning drummer, has worked with esteemed artists such as Kenny Garrett and Stanley Clarke. The Bruner brothers were members of Young Jazz Giants, a quartet with Kamasi Washington and Cameron Graves, that released a self-titled album in 2004.
Bruner's first major work came as a teenager; while still in high school, he joined Ronald as part of the L.A.-based punk band Suicidal Tendencies, replacing Robert Trujillo, who moved on to play with Metallica. At live shows, the young Bruner displayed flair and dexterity, playing some of Trujillo's three-finger riffs with just his thumb. Possessing a kinship and interest in the L.A.-led movement of genre-mixing black music, Bruner began collaborating with some of its foremost creators. His basswork on "The Cell" was, perhaps, the standout musicianship on Badu's New Amerykah, Pt. 1. He appeared on J*Davey's version of Frank Zappa's "Dirty Love," Sa-Ra's "Love Czars," Shafiq Husayn's "Cheeba," and Bilal's "Levels," and even collaborated with bass legend Bootsy Collins on Snoop Dogg's "We Rest in Cali," among dozens of other cuts. During that time, he performed live with conductor Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, who led the Suite for Ma Dukes orchestra, a contemporary ensemble that revisited J Dilla's Donuts.
Bruner's most prolific and fruit-bearing musical relationship has been with DJ/producer/instrumentalist Flying Lotus, for whom he provided both bass and vocals for 2010's Cosmogramma. Lotus then served as executive producer for Bruner's 2011 debut, The Golden Age of Apocalypse, which he released under his Thundercat moniker on Brainfeeder. Golden Age received considerable acclaim, notably for Bruner's acrobatic bass and his repurposed take on '70s-inspired fusion from George Duke and Jaco Pastorius, the bassist to whom he's most compared. Bruner's darker second album, 2013's Apocalypse, was recorded in the wake of close friend and collaborator Austin Peralta's passing.
AUSTRA w/THE RANGE
MON FEB 13
8:30 PM
$17.00 - $20.00
TICKETS
This event is 21 and over
We're thrilled to welcome Toronto based electronic pop artist Austra, touring on her new album FUTURE POLITICS on Domino.
The future won't look like the past: dystopian dread takes this for granted, but utopian imagination is just as valid. Future Politics, Austra's third, and most ambitious album to date, calls for radical hope: "a commitment to replace the approaching dystopia," says Katie Stelmanis, who leads Austra with the support of Maya Postepski (Princess Century, TR/ST), Dorian Wolf, and Ryan Wonsiak. "Not just hope in the future, but the idea that everyone is required to help write it, and the boundaries of what it can look like are both fascinating and endless. It's not about 'being political,' it's about reaching beyond boundaries, in every single field."
Future Politics, a collection of urgent, but disciplined anthems for dancefloor and headphones, asks each of us to remember that apocalypse is not an inevitability, but the product of human decision-making. It aims for a world without borders, where human compassion and curiosity drive technological innovation rather than profit, where the necessity of labor is replaced with time for creativity and personal growth, and the terror and destruction wrought by colonialism and white supremacy is recognized as a dark age in human history. The album is radicalism distilled: to galvanic beats, gorgeous, kinetic melodies, and the vulnerable majesty of Stelmanis's voice. "Future Politics," with its steady, propulsive beat and siren-like synth hook, is both anthem and ultimatum: we have a duty to imagine better, and to imagine big.
Stelmanis, wrote, produced and engineered the album, with Maya Postepski adding production on half the tracks. It was mixed by Alice Wilder, the band's live engineer, and mastered by Heba Kadry in New York. But its haunting first single, "Utopia," is heart-filling, irresistible pop that feels pulled from the air. "Freepower" deals with the paradox of a physical world in peril while our collective consciousness evolves—there is no denying our reliance on each other and the systems we invent. "To solve the problems of global capitalism," Stelmanis says, "you need to think on the level that global capitalists are thinking."
Making Future Politics was a process of starting from zero. Austra's debut, 2011's Feel It Break, and 2013's critically celebrated Olympia, were followed with five years of non-stop touring, and half a decade without a fixed address. Katie settled in Montreal, where she found herself alone, facing both a language barrier and the dissolution of a few faith-sustaining relationships, romantically and within the band. "I knew writing this record would have nothing to do with music at first," Stelmanis says. "It needed to have a purpose other than just my own ego." The album's center suite, "I'm a Monster" through "Angel in Your Eye," is about the intersection of personal depression and collective despair.
Despair can be paralyzing, but it can act as a compass—the less you can ignore, the more you have to act. "I had a process of overcoming my own cynicism," Stelmanis says. "I came to a whole bunch of philosophers and economists who were writing about real possibilities for reinventing society." Texts that took a realistic approach to climate change and economic disaster, while offering real alternatives: Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams; Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything; David Harvey's Rebel Cities. The album's opener, "We Were Alive," is about "overcoming apathy—becoming more political, and more earnest."
In 2015, Stelmanis moved to Mexico City, where the album was completed. (The cover art was photographed at the Cuadra San Cristóbal, Mexican architect Luis Barragán's famous equestrian estate.) "It was an invigorating, and creatively liberating time—I was entirely immersed in the culture, and in the magic realism of Mexico's rich and violent history," Stelmanis says. "Economic disparity is a huge topic of conversation every day in Mexico, as is colonialism and neoliberalism, and how NAFTA fucked over Latin America. Reading about this history and contrasting it with the white capitalist theory I had learned in school made the issues I was reading about in Montreal feel more global, and feel bigger." The album's final track, "43," is about the 43 students disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero in 2014, written from the perspective of a mother who is searching for her son.
In Mexico, Stelmanis was introduced "to a whole generation of Latin American producers who are mixing traditional folk music with techno beats. It's an underground revolution rooted in the preservation and celebration of Latin American indigenous cultures, and also Latin American independence from the USA—very similar to what A Tribe Called Red is doing in Canada." Inspiration also came from European club culture—Objekt, Peter Van Hoesen, Lena Willikens, and '90s legends like Massive Attack; in all, artists who understand the dancefloor as a source of radical ideas and radical joy.
Stelmanis's music has always had a political charge—after high school she performed in the riot grrrl band Galaxy, with Postepski and Emma McKenna—but this "has become more important as I've gotten older. I've experienced more sexism in my industry, I've witnessed the downfall of the middle class, I've lived through George W. Bush and Stephen Harper." (Her latest album credits only women as producers, mixing and mastering engineers.) This is a reversal of the cliché that radicals get more conservative with age. If you're old enough to have seen both the nightmarish and the fantastical become ordinary, but young enough to imagine the rest of your life, the more radicalism seems like common sense.
Change, Solnit writes, comes from "writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media"—also "artists, club scenes, parties, teenagers, ghettoes," says Stelmanis. "Every single person's idea about the future is valid and relevant, especially the freaks and the queers and the outsiders." This is DIY on a global scale: the ethos of a self-made, self-determining culture, but with global imperatives. "To change the cultural landscape—which is what we do as artists—is to essentially change the mainstream."
Hinton made the computer his primary instrument after falling under the spell of Baltimore club, bringing in his broader sonic influences from early '90s jungle, early '00s grime and mid '00s electronica to a new sonic whole. The software was the thing at home, but what excited the young producer was the network, and where he spiraled was YouTube. Potential uses as its backbone a series of vocal samples that Hinton has found in the forgotten corners of the site, guiding us around the hinterlands of YouTube, introducing us to unknown artists expressing themselves unfettered by the constraints of industry, lost in the infinite potential of an audience unknown.
Potential is a record steeped in histories – of its characters, of its forebears – but is startlingly new and alive: the network may be ones and zeros but the circuitry here runs on blood, still.
Sabertooth PsychedelicStonerRockMicrofest! Feb 2nd and 3rd at the Crystal Ballroom.
Featuring Black Lips, The Oh Sees, Moon Due, Skull Diver, Mascaras, Skulldiver and more. Full lineup and ticket information can be found here.
