Holocene is turning 15 years old!!
To celebrate, we're throwing a FREE show for our community, headlined by the Northwest's own effervescent electronic producer Manatee Commune, and featuring support sets from celestial funk purveyors Tribe Mars, and soulful DJ sets for your dancing pleasure from Chanti Darling and XRAY.FM’s own Bobby D.
Space will be limited for this FREE event, so we recommend arriving early.
Jeff Rosenstock was an anxious kid who grew into an anxious adult and has also made a bunch of music along the way with a bunch of bands, most notably Bomb the Music Industry! who apparently pioneered giving shit away for free on the internet - or at least got some of the credit for it.
I hope. I don't know, that's what I was going for at least.
-- Jeff
Great Grandpa began in Seattle in 2014 when guitarist & vocalist Patrick Goodwin recruited bassist Carrie Miller, drummer Cam LaFlam, and vocalist Alex Menne to form a humble rock band. Inspired by the pop-sensible alternative rock of the 90's, and offset by a mutual love for noise and math rock, the group set forth to write and record their first EP.
During recording, guitarist Dylan Hanwright joined the group, solidifying the lineup. Great Grandpa began performing in the Seattle area in late 2014, frequenting the city's DIY venues. In March of 2015, their debut EP Can Opener was released on Broken World Media. The EP was met with considerable praise, and has been described as "warm, slightly off-kilter grunge pop", and "knotty, twisted, and warm rock music that's as melodically satisfying as it is, at times, confounding."
Great Grandpa began writing their debut LP soon after, and found themselves touring the western US and performing extensively in the Seattle area. Written in 2015 and 2016, Great Grandpa's debut LP Plastic Cough continues to explore the sonic territory visited in Can Opener, exhibiting infectious melodies across a range of backdrops, from quiet bedroom-pop to explosive, anthemic rock. Plastic Cough is out July 7th via Double Double Whammy.
Rough Cut sneak preview documentary screening of 'Bushwick Bill: Geto Boy’, with Bushwick Bill and filmmaker Gregy Roman will be ther ein person for a live Q&A with the audience, hosted by Shane Bugbee. This is the legendary rappers first ever visit to Oregon.
Sunday, May 13th, 7pm
Clinton Street Theater ( 2522 SE Clinton Street, Portland, OR https://cstpdx.com/)
Rough-Cut Sneak Screening of the Documentary Bushwick Bill: Geto Boy
Live talk and performance from the one-and-only, Bushwick Bill
Plus rare Geto Boys and Bushwick Bill music videos
w/Filmmaker Greg Roman
Hosted by Shane Bugbee
Believe it or not, Hack Oregon doesn’t really do a lot of Hackathons. We form specialized teams to build software and open data stories on important themes in the public interest, while working and iterating incrementally over months to create a product.
The “Buildathon” is the one day where we open up our project teams for guest contributors that want to be part of the magic and build something amazing, but might not have the time to participate in our months-long project season.
What’s the goal?
The Buildathon is a production sprint to create data stories for the upcoming launch of our CIVIC Platform. We’ve laid the groundwork to do research, visualizations, and data storytelling quickly, and we need your help to bring our projects to the next level. Be prepared to make friends and be an instant part of our Hack Oregon family!
How can I get involved?
By joining our sprint, you’ll be placed with a team that needs extra hands on deck in your particular skill set. We’re working toward a big public Demo Day in June, where you can proudly present alongside your team.
Here’s a list of the technical and creative skills our teams are looking for:
Front End Developers with experience in React and Redux
Data Visualization experts
Cartographers
Geospatial analysts, engineers, and architects
Experienced Data Scientists with comfort in Python tools
Data Scientists with advanced Machine Learning skills
Database Architects and Programmers with experience in PostgreSQL
Developers with experience building APIs in Django
Documentarians
Experienced DevOps Engineers
Visual Designers
Illustrators
UI/UX
Graphic Designers
Photographers
Researchers (with interest in policy)
Domain experts in subject matter relating to this year’s themes
Sprint for a Healthy Internet
We're excited to join forces with Mozilla to bring our teamwork to their Global Hackathon Sprint. Mozilla is bringing together a global community of scientists, educators, artists, engineers, students and others to work on projects that make the internet a better place—from board games to promote online privacy to apps for sharing research data to coding languages for artists.
We'll have special opportunities to collaborate on our CIVIC Platform story collection, including technical and non-technical support at all skill levels.
There will be lots of food, caffeine, and camaraderie for the full two-day event.
No need to apply, you can RSVP and save your spot with us.
RSVP to Global Sprint!
For our triumphant return, we bring you Hour co-creator/headhunter, Willamette Week music correspondent and frontman of the internationally touring Doom-Metal act Witch Mountain, the great Nathan Carson; the unforgettable performance Fiction of fellow Cafe Lena veteran Jennifer Robin; a classically Portland poet with whom we are lucky to share a decade, one-woman show Amy Temple Harper; Bizarro/Noir God Garrett Cook, who will command a room like a Baptist preacher when he gets going, except lots more fun... and Oral Storyteller/Folklorist Ilana Hamilton, who memorizes classic stories and tells them dramatically on the fly. Ilana is an Hour favorite, and NOT TO BE MISSED. As well, I will be warming up the stage with a few poems some of you may remember, one of which I actually wrote. Bring your friends, tell everyone you can think of, and let's pack the house and KEEP LIVE SPOKEN WORD ALIVE IN PORTLAND. We're back. Alea Iacta Est.
The Hour That Stretches was conceived by Edward Morris, Justin Montgomery, Ann S. Koi, Nathan Carson and several other members of Morris' writing workshop in August of 2013. No genre restrictions or style restrictions. No fourth wall. Performers get up to half an hour to bring their A-Game. We want rappers. Slam poets. Litfic people. Bizarros. Blues people. Electronic musicians. As long as there is spoken word somewhere in the performance. Morris, a veteran SpecFic/Horror author and poet, hosts and occasionally reads.
More information available at https://www.facebook.com/events/164141170956874/
THIS ONES FOR DILLA w/ DJs SHOESHINE (aka REV SHINES & HOUSE SHOES) + original beat sets from TROX & THEORY HAZIT!!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We're once again paying our annual tribute to the late James Dewitt Yancey, aka J Dilla, one of the most beloved and prolific hip-hop legends of our time...Portland's finest selector, Rev Shines will be joined by Detroit legend and longtime Dilla collaborator House Shoes and the evening will kick off with original beat sets from Trox & Theory Hazit.
“J Dilla changed my life” is an oft-heard endorsement amongst the hip-hop community as a founding member of the legendary Detroit group Slum Village and member of the Native Tongue movement, J Dilla has produced records for some of the most recognized and celebrated names in the game – Janet Jackson, Common, De La Soul, The Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest and countless others.
Since his untimely passing in 2006, his name and work continue to be celebrated through the hip-hop community worldwide.
Join us in a celebration of the life and work of J Dilla.
PORTLAND, Ore. – The Portland Ballet presents a series of FREE PRE-ballet classes for ages 6-9. The series are each four classes held once a week at TPB’s studio, 6250 SW Capitol Highway.
The FREE PRE classes introduce young dancers to the fundamentals of ballet and help them decide if ballet is right for them. TPB welcomes all new dancers in these commitment-free series with the goal of giving students the basic foundations and an appreciation of dance. TPB is devoted to nurturing, student-centered ballet training.
The final class acts as a placement assessment for the Curriculum Ballet program. Students must attend the full series (all four classes) but are not required to pay an audition fee. Parents who wish to enroll their children must complete a Registration Form. Class sizes are limited, and they may be cancelled if they do not meet minimum enrollment.
Dress code: Female dancers should wear pink tights, pink ballet shoes and a leotard of any color. They should not wear skirts or tutus. Male dancers should wear black tights, a white t-shirt and black ballet shoes.
Dates and times:
- July 10, 17, 24, 31 – Mondays 4:30-5:30 p.m.
- July 15, 22, 29, Aug. 5 – Saturdays 10-11 a.m.
- September 9, 16, 23, 30 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- January 6, 13, 20, 27, 2018 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
To register: theportlandballet.org or 503.452.8448
The Portland Ballet, led by artistic directors Nancy Davis and Anne Mueller, nurtures young dancers from age three to 22. TPB students are trained with professional intent by a faculty that includes some of the nation’s finest dancers and choreographers, with experience at companies such as the National Ballet, the original Los Angeles Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project, and BodyVox. Professionally produced performance experience is at the core of TPB training. TPB graduates have gone on to professional dance careers with companies such as Grand Rapids Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Houston Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Batsheva, LEV, Ballet Memphis, and Ballet West
PORTLAND, Ore. – The Portland Ballet presents a series of FREE PRE-ballet classes for ages 6-9. The series are each four classes held once a week at TPB’s studio, 6250 SW Capitol Highway.
The FREE PRE classes introduce young dancers to the fundamentals of ballet and help them decide if ballet is right for them. TPB welcomes all new dancers in these commitment-free series with the goal of giving students the basic foundations and an appreciation of dance. TPB is devoted to nurturing, student-centered ballet training.
The final class acts as a placement assessment for the Curriculum Ballet program. Students must attend the full series (all four classes) but are not required to pay an audition fee. Parents who wish to enroll their children must complete a Registration Form. Class sizes are limited, and they may be cancelled if they do not meet minimum enrollment.
Dress code: Female dancers should wear pink tights, pink ballet shoes and a leotard of any color. They should not wear skirts or tutus. Male dancers should wear black tights, a white t-shirt and black ballet shoes.
Dates and times:
- July 10, 17, 24, 31 – Mondays 4:30-5:30 p.m.
- July 15, 22, 29, Aug. 5 – Saturdays 10-11 a.m.
- September 9, 16, 23, 30 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- January 6, 13, 20, 27, 2018 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
To register: theportlandballet.org or 503.452.8448
The Portland Ballet, led by artistic directors Nancy Davis and Anne Mueller, nurtures young dancers from age three to 22. TPB students are trained with professional intent by a faculty that includes some of the nation’s finest dancers and choreographers, with experience at companies such as the National Ballet, the original Los Angeles Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project, and BodyVox. Professionally produced performance experience is at the core of TPB training. TPB graduates have gone on to professional dance careers with companies such as Grand Rapids Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Houston Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Batsheva, LEV, Ballet Memphis, and Ballet West
PORTLAND, Ore. – The Portland Ballet presents a series of FREE PRE-ballet classes for ages 6-9. The series are each four classes held once a week at TPB’s studio, 6250 SW Capitol Highway.
The FREE PRE classes introduce young dancers to the fundamentals of ballet and help them decide if ballet is right for them. TPB welcomes all new dancers in these commitment-free series with the goal of giving students the basic foundations and an appreciation of dance. TPB is devoted to nurturing, student-centered ballet training.
The final class acts as a placement assessment for the Curriculum Ballet program. Students must attend the full series (all four classes) but are not required to pay an audition fee. Parents who wish to enroll their children must complete a Registration Form. Class sizes are limited, and they may be cancelled if they do not meet minimum enrollment.
Dress code: Female dancers should wear pink tights, pink ballet shoes and a leotard of any color. They should not wear skirts or tutus. Male dancers should wear black tights, a white t-shirt and black ballet shoes.
Dates and times:
- July 10, 17, 24, 31 – Mondays 4:30-5:30 p.m.
- July 15, 22, 29, Aug. 5 – Saturdays 10-11 a.m.
- September 9, 16, 23, 30 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- January 6, 13, 20, 27, 2018 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
To register: theportlandballet.org or 503.452.8448
The Portland Ballet, led by artistic directors Nancy Davis and Anne Mueller, nurtures young dancers from age three to 22. TPB students are trained with professional intent by a faculty that includes some of the nation’s finest dancers and choreographers, with experience at companies such as the National Ballet, the original Los Angeles Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project, and BodyVox. Professionally produced performance experience is at the core of TPB training. TPB graduates have gone on to professional dance careers with companies such as Grand Rapids Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Houston Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Batsheva, LEV, Ballet Memphis, and Ballet West
PORTLAND, Ore. – The Portland Ballet presents a series of FREE PRE-ballet classes for ages 6-9. The series are each four classes held once a week at TPB’s studio, 6250 SW Capitol Highway.
The FREE PRE classes introduce young dancers to the fundamentals of ballet and help them decide if ballet is right for them. TPB welcomes all new dancers in these commitment-free series with the goal of giving students the basic foundations and an appreciation of dance. TPB is devoted to nurturing, student-centered ballet training.
The final class acts as a placement assessment for the Curriculum Ballet program. Students must attend the full series (all four classes) but are not required to pay an audition fee. Parents who wish to enroll their children must complete a Registration Form. Class sizes are limited, and they may be cancelled if they do not meet minimum enrollment.
Dress code: Female dancers should wear pink tights, pink ballet shoes and a leotard of any color. They should not wear skirts or tutus. Male dancers should wear black tights, a white t-shirt and black ballet shoes.
Dates and times:
- July 10, 17, 24, 31 – Mondays 4:30-5:30 p.m.
- July 15, 22, 29, Aug. 5 – Saturdays 10-11 a.m.
- September 9, 16, 23, 30 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
- January 6, 13, 20, 27, 2018 – Saturdays 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
To register: theportlandballet.org or 503.452.8448
The Portland Ballet, led by artistic directors Nancy Davis and Anne Mueller, nurtures young dancers from age three to 22. TPB students are trained with professional intent by a faculty that includes some of the nation’s finest dancers and choreographers, with experience at companies such as the National Ballet, the original Los Angeles Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project, and BodyVox. Professionally produced performance experience is at the core of TPB training. TPB graduates have gone on to professional dance careers with companies such as Grand Rapids Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Houston Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Batsheva, LEV, Ballet Memphis, and Ballet West
When Grizzly Bear came to the end of the road with their fourth album, 2012’s ‘Shields’, the future was unclear. No dramatic decisions were made, no arguments were had, but there was a feeling as there always is with the foursome that a breather was required. The band who emerged in 2004 in Brooklyn, New York, have forever functioned as a self-described “democracy”. It’s equal and it’s fair but it can also take a lot of out of them. And so they went their separate ways and bedded down in different corners. Vocalist and songwriter Ed Droste adapted back to life in Los Angeles, his new adopted home and decided to distance himself from music and the industry, vocalist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rossen moved to a remote area of upstate New York and continued to write and record on his own, drummer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Bear continued playing with various projects and worked on scoring a TV series, and vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Chris Taylor decided to go West to LA after a one year stint in Berlin. He produced for other artists and made a solo record under the moniker CANT. Taylor, however, got restless. The band’s mediator since the beginning, his feet started to itch after the usual six months of downtime. “I kinda kept writing everyone,” he says. “Telling them that we should start making a record. I wanted to be making music with my band again. I stayed busy, I wrote a cook book, produced other people, but my favorite thing to do was work with my band. I was getting bored over here.” He laughs. While all four members were strewn across their various corners, he took it upon himself to start a cloud account – essentially a dropbox. The intention was to allow the band a gentler entry point for starting to think about coming together again. It was new for them, less pressurized, far more relaxed and a guaranteed prevention measure against creative stalemate. The dropbox was a home for inspiration, mood boards, ideas for music, demos, even songs. It was, however, quite a slow process, starting in March 2015. “Painfully slow,” chuckles Taylor. They did have one song – ‘Losing All Sense’ – that made it to the record, but Rossen was reticent to call this the beginning of something. The word ‘album’ was a forbidden utterance at this point in time. “We got into the water with one toe at a time to avoid freaking everyone out,” recalls Taylor. “Yeah this time around we came to it slowly,” agrees Rossen. “Tip-toeing towards a conversation.” “Chris Taylor started this motherfucker,” adds Droste. “I’m so grateful to him because I don’t know whether it would have organically happened otherwise.” Taylor even bought a guitar after five months of little progress and wrote in Big Sur. The song ‘Sky Took Hold’ got its start in one of those sessions. Taylor wrote the song ‘Systole’ during his time in Berlin, and it is his first lead vocal for the band. “I learned guitar so I could write songs for the band,” he says, as eager as he was then to be in conversation about Grizzly Bear. Once that catalyst came, there was still the question of whether or not it was going to work. “I’m of the mindset that I never know if we’ll make another album, no matter how good or bad things are,” says Droste. “In a way it’s a miracle this album happened because for a while it was to be decided. When it started to come together there were a lot of ideas. Some didn’t work. Eventually when things started to work we were like, ‘Oh my god it’s happening.’” That relief, that momentum, that sense of a band really relishing the chance to relocate their mojo is apparent on the album, which wound up taking two years to make, via remote writing trips taken variously by Taylor and Droste, and Bear and Rossen, then a retreat to Allaire Studios in New York in June 2016 once there was more of a cohesive collection of songs. That’s where they recorded a lot of 2009’s ‘Veckatimest’. In addition to Allaire, they recorded in Vox Studios in Hollywood and at Taylor’s LA studio in Echo Park. Rossen also continued to track parts for the record at his home upstate. “It was so exciting when it was starting to work,” says Droste. Perhaps what was different this time around was the communication barriers were set free. There was a nakedness to receiving each other’s ideas and a lack of tying expectations to particular results. The whole affair was positively zen. “I was coming at it like – I have to be open with everything,” says Droste. “Let’s try anything and let it go. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Don’t be precious or get upset when other bandmates don’t like it. Keep trying.” The resulting fifth Grizzly Bear album ‘Painted Ruins’ benefits from having the songs develop in a completely organic way. “We had a lot of fun making the record,” says Rossen. “Even though there are serious themes we tried to keep the sound as light as possible. Maybe it’s a matter of being a little older and not assuming that there should be so much wrapped up in what we were doing.” That’s what immediately bleeds forth when you listen through to the eleven tracks. “Does it sound totally different?” asks Droste, champing at the bit to get the juggernaut started again. “More inviting?” Indeed there’s a deep warmth, a flirtatiousness to the sonic ideas, and a sense of playfulness that’s perhaps the most surprising of all. It’s a direct reflection of the joy they experienced while making it. It chimes with collective exhales, and the genuine love that came from reuniting with old friends. “You forget that you have this great thing going on with us, even though it can be really difficult,” says Droste. “When we finally got together it felt like there was a musical chemistry that was as real as it was when we were kids. That was thrilling in a way that was still the case,” adds Rossen. You could almost say that the band’s propensity to chuck lots of ideas at the wall to see which ones stuck was the closest an established act can get to tapping into that energy that exists while recording a debut. For all four members the results of the sessions were unexpected. Droste points to ‘Mourning Sound’ and closing track ‘Sky Took Hold’. “That song was fleshed out in a very different way, then one day they added an ominous horn section that repeats and it changed the whole thing for me,” says Droste. “That’s what I love about working with them. They just have ideas I would never have, and vice versa. It’s a challenge to be in a democratic band with strong opinions but I also thank god because we get all these different creative ideas that don’t come naturally. It’s very much four people. It always has been. It always will for as long as we continue on. These are the three people who continually surprise me.” Rossen came up with the title ‘Painted Ruins’. As usual, the band are more comfortable leaving the visuals, the lyrics, the themes to the listener’s imagination, so you can take from their art what you will. “I don’t relate to a lot of explicit storytelling music,” explains Droste, before making up something on the spot. “’Her name was Jenny and she broke my heart and then I went on a cruise…’ Ok, don’t know Jenny, haven’t been on a cruise!” Instead ‘Painted Ruins’ has a different meaning to each member of the band. “It’s the idea of dressing up something that’s falling apart and making something out of a situation that’s crumbling,” says Rossen. “In a way that’s how a lot of this music came together. Some of it was a pastiche and it found its way into a cohesive form.” There’s also clearly a connotation with the general breakdown that’s happening in the wider world, which can also be mirrored in the band’s lives as they reached their late thirties. “We all were hoping to achieve a sense of personal decay or breakdown representing a larger whole or situation, not necessarily writing topical music but writing personal music that could represent larger strife,” adds Rossen. For Bear, the album is about personal reflection. “Observing yourself,” he explains. “Seeing how you’re interacting when you’re going through change. It’s not a breakup record or a social commentary record, there’s a lot of sides to the human experience.” ‘Painted Ruins’ isn’t a passing pleasure, it’s a body of work intended to be lived in. Its psychedelic grooves, challenging composition and pensive lyrics require repeated listens and develop significance, attachment and deep-rooted appreciation over time. That said it strays from getting too intense or introspective. Some of the tracks take on a more personal bent. The likes of ‘Wasted Acres’ and ‘Neighbors’, the former of which is about Rossen’s life in upstate New York. “That tune started as a simple and direct lyric about collecting firewood with my dog,” says Rossen. ‘Four Cypresses’, on the other hand, with its refrain of “it’s chaos but it works” is more political, though the band would prefer to keep the overtones less explicit. Droste has been a staunch advocate for politics online via social media these past few years. The band recognize the importance of that but don’t feel that it necessarily needs to be written into the music. “As soon as the Election was over I thought about how valuable it is to be able to connect with other people through music,” says Rossen, who’s anticipating touring this record more than anything. “It’s even more valuable in this political climate, where you can impart a sense of shared experience, compassion, empathy or just humanity. You look at the news every day and it feels overwhelming and truly bleak, you feel like giving up. There’s a huge value in the ability to make something that connects with other people.” Having met with so many accolades that would have been deemed unfathomable to them in the early days, you wonder what Grizzly Bear set out to achieve with another album. They opened for Radiohead on their debut (“a total mindfuck” according to Droste). They played Radio City Music Hall on their last record ‘Shields’. Are there any tangibles they’d love to chase? “I’d just like to reach new people,” says Droste, simply. “I want to grow. A lot of writing has to do with selfish reasons. Getting shit out of your system, self-therapy. My favorite thing of all is the performing and the connection.” For Rossen, it’s all about the music. “If we can continue working together and enjoy what we’re making and feel that it’s vital to us, if we can do that in a sustained way that’s about as much as I can hope for.” Taylor, on the other hand, wears his heart firmly on his sleeve. “I’m excited that I’m better friends with everyone in the band than ever,” he says. “Life is too short not to enjoy what you’re doing. We’re in a lucky situation.
Experimental electronic music producer Flying Lotus, born Steven Ellison, is a grandson of Songwriter Marilyn McLeod (the co-writer of Diana Ross' "Love Hangover"), as well as a great-nephew of pianist Alice Coltrane, and therefore a cousin of saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. Ellison made beats for the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim network before releasing his debut full-length, 1983, which resembled the work of fellow avant-garde hip-hop producers Madlib, J Dilla, and Ammoncontact on Plug Research in 2006. Following the six-song EP Reset, he released his second full-length, Los Angeles, on Warp in 2008. A three-part series of satellite EPs consisting of remixes and additional productions trailed through the next year. Cosmogramma, his third and most complex album, was issued on the same label in 2010, while the relatively pared-down Until the Quiet Comes followed in 2012. The suite-like You're Dead!, on which he was joined by Herbie Hancock, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and Captain Murphy (Ellison's rapping alias), among others, came two years later. Ellison's considerable quantity of additional production and remix work is scattered across dozens of releases on revered labels such as Tectonic, Hyperdub, Ghostly International, and Ninja Tune -- the last of which is the distributor of his Brainfeeder label, home to releases by the likes of the Gaslamp Killer, Austin Peralta, Martyn, frequent collaborator Thundercat, and Taylor McFerrin.
Special FREE memorial presentation of the 2006 documentary by Kate Fix and Jason Summers.
Tickets are first come, first served on the night of the show.
UNKNOWN PASSAGE chronicles the lives of Fred and Toody Cole, heroes of Northwest rock scene since the mid 1960's, and Andrew Loomis, who's done everything Keith Richards has done, but with way less money. The movie goes back as far as Fred's first musical foray at the age of 15 as "Deep Soul Cole, "the white Stevie Wonder" and moves forward through the 60's psych scene, the 70's / early 80's punk scene, the late 80's country scene and ends with the glorious 16 year long career of Dead Moon. Furiously DIY, these folks built their own Ghost town in Clackamas, made their own records on the legendary lathe that cut "Louie Louie", homesteaded deep in the wilds of Canada with just an ax in hand, ran a Portland music store, and raised kids and wrote songs and played gigs all throughout. With Andrew, they formed Dead Moon - the greatest rock band of all time (according to Mississippi Records....millions of Germans and Dutch folks agree)
Because Fred Cole passed away last week, the Hollywood Theatre, Mississippi Records, Kate Fix and Jason Summers are offering this free show to the public for a little mass catharsis. Fred is one of the greatest heroes ever to come out of Portland. Come on by and celebrate the life of a true legend.
SON LITTLE
For Son Little, the genesis of a musical idea -- the magic -- remains largely a mystery. But his kinetic ability to summon that energy all the same, to command it, hold onto it, and set it in motion, is the stuff of alchemy.
"The magic is this well I can draw from; you can't necessarily see it, you just have to believe that it's there," he says. "If you believe, then you can reach your hand down in there and get it wet. But if you don't feel like it's there, it won't be."
Son Little, the singer and songwriter born Aaron Livingston, is the easygoing musical alchemist of our time. He is a conjurer, and much like those of his heroes Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix, his songs are deconstructions of the diaspora of American R & B. Deftly he weaves different eras of the sound -- blues, soul, gospel, rock and roll -- through his own unique vision, never forced, always smooth, each note a tributary on the flowing river of rhythm and blues. The currents empty into an estuary, and into this well water Son dips his bucket -- trusting innately in the magic's existence. And now, with his second full-length album, New Magic, he has delivered a profound statement, a cohesive creation that captures the diverse spirit of American music in a fresh and modern way.
On the heels of his 2015 self-titled debut and the 5-song EP, Songs I Forgot, that came before it, Son Little found his reach steadily growing. His song "Lay Down" had been played over seven million times on Spotify, he had toured the world with artists as diverse as Leon Bridges, Kelis, Mumford & Sons, and Shakey Graves in addition to his own headlining runs, and also became a Grammy Award winning producer, earning a 2016 Best Roots Performance award for his work on Mavis Staples's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." But in the midst of all this success, so too did he find that the window for writing new songs was shrinking. Where his previous releases had been culled from various eras and scattered sessions early in his career, he now craved an opportunity to sit and write a new album in a distinct, unified direction, one that would establish his place in the world of black music. The only problems were: when, and how?
"I was on the road so much and found myself wanting to write, but I couldn't really find time or space to do it in the way I wanted," Son Little says. "I was playing around with beats or messing with chord changes; I had all these little fragments, thinking I would later piece them together. I kept the wheels turning by doing those exercises, but I knew it would feel really luxurious to be able to sit down by myself and write something from scratch. I was really hungry to get in that space and chisel out something new, without being interrupted by sound checks and rides in vans and radio. All that stuff is cool and I was having a blast touring, but a crucial part for me was missing. I wanted the writing to be broken up as little as possible."
In the meantime, all that motion was filling him with both confidence and inspiration for the next step. The limitations he encountered while performing a debut record with so much studio sorcery via a live band onstage each night were influential in terms of how he began thinking about a followup. "I've often been a guy who was somewhat hiding behind the guitar," he says. "Getting used to being out front and exposing the guitar and my voice, and leaving a lot of space in the material, all really inspired me and got the wheels turning for what I would do with the next group of songs."
Sometimes, in order to see the stars, you have to get far away from the city lights. Finally, in the fall of last year, Son Little found himself in such a place, and it was there at the end of a tour in the remote, tropical Northern Territory of Australia that he looked up in the sky and saw the perfect alignment. Benefitting from several hours free on a string of consecutive days as well as the excitement of alien terrain and the inherent magic in a borrowed instrument, he felt things starting to come together.
"The Northern Territory is a place where things are moving a little slower than anywhere else," he says. "There were these big crocodiles and enormous bats, just wild things I'd never seen. I found myself with a few hours to kill a couple days in a row, and I set up in the hotel and just kinda followed the process: I found a rhythmic idea I liked and then sang and played a little guitar over it. Like a tip jar in a cafe that fills up after the first dollar goes in, you need that first little piece to slide into place and then the whole thing comes together. I ran off five songs all in the same day." (Three of those songs, "Kimberly's Mine," Charging Bull," and "Mad About You," would make the album.)
That process to which he refers stems from an experience he encountered while writing a cornerstone of his early material, the soul-scorching, chanty-like "Your Love Will Blow Me Away When My Heart Aches," one of few moments of inspiration he can still visualize. The song came to him while standing in his bedroom; beginning with a couple of words and a tempo, Son Little started to pound his fist on the dresser and made up the song's melody on the spot. "I was banging on the dresser, and then I don't know what happened. There was no melody, no words...and now there is. I know now that if I get part of the melody, a phrase or two, and a tempo, then the rest will follow. So I wanted to follow that pattern for the new songs and let the idea grow from that without worrying about what the production would sound like or which guitar to use. I was more focused on finding the song and the arrangement."
But, as it happened, the guitar seemed to find him, too. "All those songs in Australia were written with one mic and an acoustic left-handed guitar I was playing upside-down," he says. "It was borrowed from the Australian singer Gurrumul, a blind Aboriginal musician with this angelic voice. I needed a guitar and he was nice enough to loan it to me; I took it upstairs and all those songs came out of it. You hear people say guitars have songs in them, and that one certainly did.
Whether or not Son Little was aware at the time of the overt connection to his pair of R & B heroes -- Stevie and Jimi -- that lending presented is unclear. Let's, again, chalk it up to the magic.
"Those two dudes are a little bit alone there; I can't see how there can be a higher level of musical genius after Stevie and Jimi," he says. "I do think of both of them as R & B guys, but neither was trying to contain themselves there in any way. They were letting themselves be influenced by other stuff, be it jazz or Latin music or whatever, but they were just making songs and musically doing what felt good. That's what I wanted to do here. I do see myself that way, in the branches of the R & B river."
(A quick but magical aside: In the winter of 2015, Son found himself invited to a reading a friend was giving at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, the legendary underground recording facility conceived and once owned by Jimi Hendrix himself. After the event he was invited to spin his debut album on the studio's speakers, and while it played an employee asked him if he would like to "see the river" -- a trickling branch of the seldom seen Minetta Creek that runs under parts of Manhattan. "I put my record on -- which was a trip, like I was playing it for Jimi -- and we went back in the corner behind where the amps are set up, and they pulled this panel up, and sure enough, there's running water right under the floor. You can stick your hand in there and get it wet.")
Flowing water is a recurring theme in Son Little's music, in addition to its symbolic inspiration. From his debut's hit "The River" to a lyric in "Mad About You" ("Now you say it's different, baby/ After I took you to the river"), his work tends to be thematically waterlogged. "My well is fed by the different tributaries, the other water sources that pour into it," he says. "When you dip your bucket into it, you're gonna get all kinds of different water. Water behaves that way underground, too; you can dig if you know where it's at, and there are people, like the Aboriginal water diviner, who can find the water. My music has a kind of magic in it, being connected to whatever those forces are."
Having been handed the divining rod in Australia, Son Little was able to connect the dots and finish New Magic by early spring. The trio written Down Under form the heart of the album's vibe, with "Kimberly's Mine" leading the record off with its Old Blues soap-operatic feel, and "Charging Bull"'s funky, fevered groove and the D'Angelo-inspired R & B minimalism of "Mad About You" -- a lovelorn, aching track Son Little claims found itself only when he stripped it down to its barest essentials -- holding anchor in the middle. But the song that serves as the album's true centerpiece is "Blue Magic," a Philly Soul inspired number deconstructed almost like a rap song or the best of production savants like J Dilla, Madlib, and Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, complete with chiming glockenspiel bells and old school female backing vocals. With its origins predating the Australia trip, the song has the appeal of an instant classic, a feeling that did not escape its maker, either.
"I knew 'Blue Magic' would be my focal point from the second I made it up," Son Little says. "I was just goofing around before a show -- and I wish I could explain where something like this comes from but I have absolutely no idea -- and I was freestyling with the guitar. The thought occurred to me that people were characterizing my music as this new blues thing, even though I was never exactly trying to heroically 'save the blues' or anything like that, or even put myself in a place where everything had to be bluesy. But suddenly I'm telling you in the song I've got the 'blue magic,' and even though there are things called 'blue magic' I hadn't seen that phrase anywhere or heard anyone say it. But I said it, and then there's a pressure to back it up, to support that claim. I think I'm addicted to that pressure; this thing is hanging in the balance, and the whole thing can go up in smoke if I don't figure this out and put these pieces together in motion. I enjoy the feeling of not knowing what's gonna happen from there; it doesn't always end perfectly but I think you have to resolve that pressure, and not knowing how is really exciting to me. That feeling is somewhat hanging over this whole album: watch me make something out of thin air."
Following that lead are the pair of "Bread and Butter," a playful, modern take on James Brown, and "The Middle," a classic drinking-blues, both deconstructed through a filter of musical Cubism. "ASAP" is Son Little's fiery, direct take on a Hendrix rock and roll song, and "Letter Bound" reminds of a yearning, crooning Bobby Womack joint, with the "little cry" in Son Little's voice, as Mavis Staples calls it, taking the spotlight. The album ends with the ethereal, gospel-tinged number "Demon to the Dark," which serves as the singer's conversation with Washington Phillips, a little known blind musician and church deacon from early in the 20th century whose song "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today" utilized the dulceola, a novelty instrument comprised of two autoharps essentially stuck together. Phillips was a man of strong faith, a deacon in his church, and in his music Son Little found a source of forgiveness as well as an inspiration to carry on. As chiming strains of Omnichord take us out, the electricity in the air is palpable, the belief and trust in the spark at its peak.
What is the new magic? How did that deep well get there in the first place, and what is the source water of all these confluents pouring in? To Son Little, there is an attitude running through his makings and his music, a mighty river of superstition and Spanish castles that runneth over. And despite its murky and mysterious origins, the musician's divination ability is just that -- divine.
"There is this vein of the blues in it, and it can be distilled or boiled down just to the guitar and voice -- or even just the voice," he says. "And that process of me in my bedroom, making 'Your Love' with the dresser as the drum -- I did that same thing as I wrote these songs. It's that same scenario of making something out of nothing. And even if I am capable of doing that, I can't really explain it. That's the gist of the magic. I don't know where it comes from, but it's there, and I can call on it. I can call on it standing by the dresser, walking down the street, driving a car, on a train, a plane, in a hotel room, in the green room, during an interview...it's just there. I'm trying to pay tribute to that fact. It's had a really powerful and in some ways increasingly healing effect on my life. Hopefully other people have that experience with it as well. I'm just happy that it's there, wherever it comes from."
JADE BIRD
Working on her debut EP at the moment, Jade and her band (all at the young age of 18) are proving to be well beyond their years. With venues such as the National Portrait Gallery, The Museum Of London and St Pancras Church under her belt and gigs lined up around the country, we know it won't be long before Jade Bird is a household name.
Singer/songwriter Nate Lacy spent the years since his teens exploring his inner world and his connection with the universe at large. The result of his efforts was a small collection of songs that, when finally recorded and released as Mimicking Birds in 2010, received such accolades as Pitchfork's assessment that the debut LP was "extremely gifted with cyclical melodies: thorny fingerpicked spines around which he can snake a range of sounds simply for ambience."
These days, Lacy is focusing his gaze further outward, exploring what he calls "the infinite and the infinitesimal," while also keeping lyrical watch on the crossroads where our digital future and our pastoral past bump up against each other.
Few are the artists who are able to bring such thorny and thoughtful issues to bear in their music, but that is just one of the many reasons that Eons, the new album from Mimicking Birds, is so very special.
How this comes out through Lacy is in toothsome lyrics that are filled to bursting with imagery, philosophical questions, and deep personal concerns. That he finds ways to tie these concepts together without losing his way or our fascination with them is a testament to his songwriting prowess.
The rest of the band, Aaron Hanson and Adam Trachsel, works to remain connected to the Birds' of yore, emphasizing fingerpicked acoustic guitars, the sturdy tones of a stand-up bass, and restrained drums, while pushing into the future as well.
Mimicking Birds "Layers Of Us" will be released on January 26th 2018 on Glacial Pace Records.
Nurses is Aaron Chapman and John Bowers. They split their time between Portland and Astoria, OR, and Los Angeles. Aaron Chapman and John Bowers bring their experimental pop project Nurses back to the Mississippi Studios stage for a Halloween dance party that doubles as an album release show for their latest full-length, Naughtland.
On September 22, 2017, singer/songwriter Haley Reinhart will release What’s That Sound?, her debut release for Concord Records, where she recently signed as a recording artist. The album finds Reinhart digging into her rich musical heritage and reimagining some of rock-and-roll’s most legendary songs.
Hailing from the Chicago area, Reinhart has previously shown her rare gift as a song interpreter with her certified-gold remake of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (a 2015 release whose video has amassed over 20 million YouTube views). The L.A.-based 26-year-old has also emerged as the leading artist on Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, with her jazzed-up versions of tracks like Radiohead’s “Creep” earning more than 112 million views to date.
What’s That Sound? features 11 renditions of classic songs from the 1960s, as well as three original tracks from Reinhart. A captivating vocalist who started singing in her parents’ rock band when she was just seven, Reinhart purposely honed in on songs originally released between 1966 and 1969.
"There is an undeniable connection between the late ’60s and now,” says Reinhart. “They're both turbulent, yet hopeful times. As I thought of what songs I'd like to reinterpret, I wanted to bring these similarities to the forefront. I also feel the urge to spread the revolutionary idea of people coming together through love and music.”
In co-producing What’s That Sound? with GRAMMY Award-winner John Burk, Reinhart stayed remarkably authentic to the sonic landscape of the ’60s. Made at the historic Sunset Sound, the album was recorded to tape in order to achieve a warm, vibrant feel true to the era. According to Reinhart, the thrill and challenge of analog recording brought a potent energy to the production of What’s That Sound?.
"We recorded each song live as a band and there’s something special that happens when everyone’s all grooving together like that,” says Reinhart. “There’s no way to replicate the feeling—so even though I thought I’d go back and re-cut the vocals later on, I ended up keeping most of the raw takes. I think it really fits this record and reflects my roots.”
Mixed by Bill Schnee (a GRAMMY winner known for his work with Marvin Gaye, Rod Stewart, and Steely Dan), What’s That Sound? was also recorded using solely vintage instruments. Much of that gear was personally supplied by Reinhart’s lineup of veteran musicians, a cadre that includes her father (Harry Reinhart) on guitar and her mother (Patti Miller-Reinhart) on backup vocals.
Also joining Reinhart on What’s That Sound? is her Postmodern Jukebox collaborator Scott Bradlee, who plays piano on her masterful covers of The Beatles’ “Oh! Darling,” The Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon,” and The Mamas & The Papas’ “Words of Love.” In addition, Reinhart’s longtime musical cohort Casey Abrams appears as a vocalist and bassist on her glorious update of The Zombies’ “Time of the Season,” Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” and her anthemic original “Bring the Love Back Home.”
Right from its first featured cover, What’s That Sound? shows the full force of Reinhart’s formidable vocal work. A longtime staple of her live set, “Baby It’s You” proves her knack for powerful belting. Although the song was originally recorded by The Shirelles, Reinhart’s horn-backed and sweetly gritty version draws inspiration from a rendition by blues/psych-rock band Smith—a track that, in a serendipitous twist, was mixed by Bill Schnee back in 1969.
Another song spotlighting Reinhart’s stunning vocal range, her fiery cover of The Box Tops’ “The Letter” finds her brilliantly matching Alex Chilton’s moody growl. “He has such a guttural, raspy tone to his voice, and I wanted to try to create the girl version of that,” says Reinhart. “It ended up coming way more naturally to me than I even thought it would.”
The era-defining track that gave What’s That Sound? its title, “For What It’s Worth” opens with a quietly haunting intro before unfolding into a full-fledged anthem. With its stirring string accompaniment (courtesy of esteemed composer Tom Scott), the song reveals Reinhart’s supreme vocal command as she lends new weight to Buffalo Springfield’s ever-poignant lyrics.
In each of the original tracks featured on What’s That Sound?, Reinhart’s timeless sensibilities are found to closely inform her own songcraft. Those gracefully arranged pieces include the album-opening “Let’s Start,” which gives a breezy nod to Brazilian music with its bright harmonies and tropicalia-inspired rhythms.
From her sorrowful howl on “Oh! Darling” to the steely intonation of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” What’s That Sound? exudes a vocal confidence that Reinhart’s honed through a lifetime of singing. Thanks to her parents’ long-running band Midnight, she grew up on rock-and-roll, jazz, funk, and blues and began mastering each genre in early childhood. Along with joining Midnight onstage throughout her youth, Reinhart studied jazz in college and played in jazz festivals across Europe while still a teenager. After finishing in third place on season 10 of American Idol at age 20, she released her acclaimed 2012 debut Listen Up! via Interscope Records. Arriving in 2016, Reinhart sophomore album Better featured “Can’t Help Falling in Love”—a spirited remake that’s garnered over 56 million streams on Spotify.
In addition to collaborating and touring with Postmodern Jukebox since 2015, Reinhart recently ventured into voice-acting by starring alongside Bill Burr, Laura Dern and Justin Long in F Is for Family (a Netflix original animated series whose second season premieres May 30). Also known for her impassioned live performance, she had her first solo headlining tour of the U.S. last summer and recently completed her first solo headlining European tour.
For Reinhart, creating What’s That Sound? ultimately deepened her connection to the music that’s long colored her world. "The beauty in the simplicity of these songs hit me more than ever while recording,” she says. “Most of the original versions aren’t even three minutes long, but there’s so much power in their words and melodies — they leave you wanting more.”
In introducing each song to a new generation, Reinhart hopes that power will have a lasting impact on listeners. “I’d love for people to hear this album and think about how it relates to our modern world,” she says of What’s That Sound?. “Even though we’re all faced with challenges, it’s also a chance for us to become more aware and more in tune with each other. Hopefully these songs will move people in a positive way and help them realize that good things will happen when we stick together.”
The New York Times reviewed Portland Queer Comedy Festival as, "My most enjoyable experience [about Portland]" and, " The performances were more than punchy enough to stand up on their own — no controlled substances necessary" [Cheap Charms and Altered States of Portland, Ore -Travel 9-8-17] and now… Portland Queer Comedy Festival presents: incomparable Sandra Valls!
From Showtime, Nickelodeon, BET to ABC; Sandra has made her mark on the comedy landscape.
Curve says, "Sandra takes comedy to a new level."
L.A Times writes, "Talented...Hilarious"
Sandra Valls is a comic, actor, singer, writer, and badass. She is a funny, high energy, smart, sexy, outspoken Latina, best known for her powerful, electric, stand up comedy performances in Showtime’s, THE LATIN DIVAS OF COMEDY (nominated for an Alma Award) and PRIDE: LGBT COMEDY SLAM!, hosted by Bruce Vilanch (both available for viewing now on Hulu.com). Her unique mix of physical comedy and ridiculously brilliant storytelling make it easy to see why the Los Angeles Times calls Sandra “Talented and Hilarious” as well as being voted one of the Top 33 Bad Ass Comics with Latin Roots by Latina Magazine, one of the Top 10 Funniest Lesbian Comics by Curve Magazine, one of the Top 100 Women We Love by Go Magazine, as well as one of the Top 10 faces to watch in 2010 by Diva Magazine.
With:
Belinda Carroll is a stand-up comedian, writer, and vocalist with appearances on Portlandia, GRIMM, and MTV. She is the co-founder of Portland Queer Comedy Festival, and has performed with and produced shows for Kate Willett, ANT, Julie Goldman, and Guy Branum among others. Belinda has also been seen in Bridgetown Comedy Festival, San Francisco International Comedy Competition, and All Jane Comedy Festival.
Hosted by:
D Martin Austin is a nonbinary black writer and comic residing in Portland, OR. They are a regular contributor to The Portland Mercury, host of Your Fault for Listening (on iTunes and Stitcher), which won "Best Showcase" at the 2017 PNW Black Comedy Festival. They were also voted "Best Male Performer" at the 2017 PNW Black Comedy Festival.
“For me if this record could do anything, it would be to bridge a divide. To say, hey, yes, Middle America I see you, I believe your economic woes and drug problems are real, but also, don't let your patriotism and your anger be exploited by con men, don't let your values be eroded by spite.” — EMA
EMA began with the urge to self-exile. After the success of Past Life Martyred Saints and 2014’s prophetic The Future’s Void, EMA retreated to a basement in Portland, Oregon – a generic apartment complex in a non-trendy neighborhood, with beige carpeting and cheap slat blinds.
She returns with a portrait of a world both familiar and alien: The Outer Ring, a pitch-black world of half-empty subdivisions, American flags hung over basement windows, big-box stores and strip malls and rage. In a year dominated by working-class alienation, EMA — a Midwesterner who has never lost her thousand-yard stare — has delivered an album that renders American poverty and resentment with frightening realism and deep empathy.
The Outer Ring is the suburban world of people who’ve been pushed out of city centers by stagnating wages and rising expense, forced up against rural communities swallowed by sprawl. It’s far more diverse than traditional images of “the suburbs” – vape shops and living-room hair salons exist next to Mexican grocery stores and Dollar General. But it’s also more deeply marked by poverty and tension, and by the anger that comes from having your story and your struggles erased from the narrative.
Songs like “I Wanna Destroy” (which shares a title with her 2015 MoMA PS1 exhibition) and “Down & Out” flicker between self-loathing and nihilism — an anger born of pain from being neglected by those in power, but no less alarming when we realize that “the kids from the void” might burn the world down.
The voices we hear in these songs — druggy, surly societal outcasts; Byronic blue-collar nihilists bringing down fire — speak to a rebellion that’s typically reserved for men. Think Bruce Springsteen’s similarly bleak outlaw portraits in Nebraska, or the quintessentially American (and quintessentially dudely) voices of Jack Kerouac or Charles Bukowski.
“During the process of this record I realized that I was ‘socialized male’ in my teen years,” says EMA. “I hung out with groups of dirtbag boys, listened to their music. I understand them, even though I was never fully a part of them. ‘Rebellious teenage dirtbag boy’ is such an outsized force in America especially... his insecurities have hijacked the nation, and his penchant for ‘joke racism’ has turned really fucking ugly. Yet I also have empathy for this person.”
Exile in the Outer Ring claims that same dirtbag alienation for women — “a woman who swallowed a scumbag teen boy whole,” as EMA puts it. “He's still inside her but in the end she's the actual spine of steel, nihilist with the gaze, wiser survivor.”
Navigating the rough terrain of femininity is not new for EMA. The Future’s Void read as a prescient statement on surveillance, but it also detailed EMA’s fears about being publicly female — a potential subject for online abuse and media trivialization, all too easily reduced to just another girl with a past and proclivities. She toured less, turned down interviews, and hid her face on the album cover, taking control by refusing to play into the trope of the blonde trainwreck.
For Exile, EMA returns to the question of how to be female without being devoured (“between a babe, and a crone, there is a queen, but I refuse to perform that,” we’re told on “Fire Water Air LSD”) while casting an eye on how male violence shapes the world. In these songs, the abuser who tells his victim she “made him crazy” in “7 Years” is not all that different from the famous white supremacist standing outside his casino in “Aryan Nation,” and both have more power than they deserve.
The album’s sound defies traditional “Americana.” An auteur in her own right, EMA has tapped Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra to co-produce an album that reflects her full range, while also returning, in many respects, to her roots – namely, noise-folk outfit Gowns, and their 2007 album Red State.
The album veers from spoken word (“Where the Darkness Began”) to straight-ahead thrash (“33 Nihilistic and Female”), with detours through everything from psychedelia to raw acoustic balladry along the way. Static becomes percussion on “7 Years;” “Down and Out” soundtracks economic despair with oddly poppy synth strings. The seven-minute track “Breathalyzer” (a seven-minute noise epic in the Gowns tradition) extends modular synth solos over a simple, almost chant-like melody, until the tale of one woman’s heroic dose in the backseat of a Camry turns into an exercise in suspense.
All of these threads come together in the anthemic “Aryan Nation.” Feminist alienation becomes working-class alienation, just as one person’s abuser becomes the systemic abuse of a nation. It’s an expansive vision that brings together concerns from every corner of our present moment — and themes that have recurred throughout EMA’s career, from the brutality of late capitalism to the collapsing boundaries between private and public — into one dark portrait of what it means to be American in 2017.
“I’m actually pro-Outer Ring,” says EMA. “It feels more vibrant to me right now than most city centers. It’s got more diversity and lower overhead. It’s where the freaks and the artists and the culture are going to end up, and it could be beautiful if it doesn’t destroy itself first.”
EMA never loses sight of the possibility of healing. If Exile spends a lot of time addressing rage, it also asks what growing up submerged in all this violence does to one’s ability to connect with others (“Receive Love”) or whether it’s even possible to run away from pain (“Always Bleeds,” a song originally written with Gowns). The result is a deeply personal, confrontational, but ultimately redemptive album from a quintessentially American artist at the peak of her form.
The Blow is Khaela Maricich and Melissa Dyne. A shape-shifting entity, The Blow has taken various forms over time and manifests in an array of media, employing popular music as a vehicle for broader explorations. Operating between contexts and genres, the duo works with sound composition and recording, performance, installation, writing, and physical media, aiming to address and expand the limitations encountered within each framework. Their recent album “The Blow” received critical acclaim, being featured on both of the New York Times’ best songs of 2013 lists as well as selected as the top album of the year by NPR’s All Songs Considered. They curate the website WOMANPRODUCER.com, a collection of images and web-links of female music producers, engineers and sonic innovators. Their performances have been presented at art centers such as The Wexner Center, The Kitchen, Artists Space, The Warhol Museum, On The Boards, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and Pulse Art Miami as well as in traditional music venues such as The Henry Fonda Theater, Great American Music Hall, Joe’s Pub and The Gramercy Theater. They live and work in New York City.
After Three Mile Pilot began an open-ended hiatus in 1997, singer/guitarist Pall Jenkins and multi-instrumentalist Tobias Nathaniel embarked on a darker, more subdued journey as The Black Heart Procession. In the many years and albums since, the band's line-up has expanded and contracted, but at its heart and soul remains Jenkins and Nathaniel, creating timeless, heart-wrenching classics that are adventurous, eclectic, and consistently brilliant.
In 2017, they'll bring you their first record, from start to finish. Here's what they'd like you to know:
In a small town, with but a small chance, two lowly miscreants toiled feverishly into the small hours of the night creating ballads of loss and self-deprecation, in hopes of illuming the world with their particularly despondent brand of mischievousness.
Nearly twenty years later, these very same scoundrels have arrived upon your doorstep to drown your sorrows, ease your pains and release your hearts.
The Black Heart Procession, purveyors of all things disconsolate, would like to formally invite you to attend a singular event, a forlorn gala, a mournful celebration of the dour. It's your town, your desolation, your reclamation.
Join us in the revelry of sorrow, as we honor the 20th anniversary of our first album. Laugh, cry and absolve your sins with us. Together, we'll brighten the world, confront the shadows beneath our beds and...
...well...you could just come to the show in your town where we'll be performing our first record from start to finish, with some extra stuff for the encore. Hope to see you all there, tears of laughter and sorrow alike.
Sam Coomes
Alongside bandmate Janet Weiss, Sam Coomes has released nine albums with his band Quasi over the last two decades and toured all over the world. Concurrently, Sam Coomes has played and recorded with the likes of Built to Spill, Elliott Smith and Jandek, worked as a producer and scored numerous soundtracks for underground films and art installations. In short, he is not a newcomer to the scene.