Disciples of ’60s pop, razor’s edge punk, and summer rock anthems rejoice! Portland renegades the Suicide Notes are celebrating the release of their debut full-length Is That You? via Hovercraft Records. Since dropping their self-titled EP in 2012, they’ve subsisted on a steady diet of rollicking live engagements. Is That You? marks the culmination of nose-to-the-grindstone songwriting that exists at the crossroads of surf, first-wave rock ’n’ roll, and the melodic real estate of bands like the Bangles and even early Sleater-Kinney. “Mutha Fuckin’ Love” fizzles like a cracked egg on a hot sidewalk, with venomous harmonies spit by the Jessi Lixx/Double A vocal tandem. “Velvet Crime” finds legs in a bottom-heavy rhythmic drive that eventually explodes into an instantly classic chorus. With Mean Jeans and Sleeptalker rounding out the bill, expect your dance card to be completely filled tonight.
White Owl Social Club, Pickathon and XRAY FM Present:
KHUN NARIN'S ELECTRIC PHIN BAND & 1939 ENSEMBLE (a journey into Thai psychedlia) on August 10th, part of White Owl Social Club's outdoor summer concert series.
Doors @ 8 // Music @ 9 // $12 ADV // $15 DOS
KHUN NARIN'S ELECTRIC PHIN BAND:
"It all started over a year ago with the caption “MINDBLOWING PSYCHE- DELIA FROM THAILAND”—the Youtube video that accompanied this head- line on the Dangerous Minds Blog was exactly that. Here was a group of Thai musicians being filmed parading through a remote village hundreds of miles away from Bangkok playing some of the heaviest Psych known to mankind out of a crazy homemade soundsystem. Who were these men and how on earth was this not some unearthed archived footage from the ‘60s or ‘70s?! The Youtube clip quickly made its rounds amongst music enthusiasts leaving many in the Western hemisphere to question who this group of contemporary Thai villagers (loosely named Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band) was.
Six months after that first encounter with Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band, a Los Angeles music producer named Josh Marcy used Facebook and some un- likely interpreters at his local Thai restaurant to get in contact with the band and inquire whether they’d be interested in having him travel to their town to record their music for a global audience. At first the band was naturally suspicious, but through subsequent interactions the group’s leader and namesake Khun Narin (also known simply as “Rin”) warmed to the idea of having Marcy come visit. And so began the journey of uncovering who these mysterious men from an obscure blog post actually were.
Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band’s membership is always in rotation and spans several generations, from high school kids to men well into their 60s. A standard engagement has the band setting up at the hosting household during the morn- ing rituals, playing several low-key sets from the comfort of plastic lawn chairs occasionally working in a cover version of a foreign classic (The Cranberries ‘Zombie’ is a recent favorite) while the beer and whiskey flow freely. After a mid-day banquet, they start up the generator and lead a parade through the com- munity to the local temple, picking up more and more partiers along the way.
The music they play is called phin prayuk. The first word refers to the lead instrument, a 3-stringed lute known as the phin. Beer, the phin player, uses a string of Boss effects pedals, including a phaser, distortion and digital delay to get his sound. He also builds his own instruments, installing Fender pickups into hand-carved hardwood bodies, with elaborate mythical serpents adorning the headstock. The band takes pride in their custom PA system, as well as an imposing tower of 8 loudspeaker horns atop a huge bass cabinet. To capture the essence of the group and their sound, Marcy recorded th em in their natural environment by doing a proper field recording, literally in a field outside the city of Lom Sak, in the valley of mountains that form a rough border between Thai- land’s North and Northeast. The result was 40 minutes of hypnotizing psyche- delia filled with heavy drum breaks that sounds like something RZA would sample for a Quentin Tarantino film." - Innovative Leasure
https://khunnarin.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-R3xKy_wmo
1939 ENSEMBLE:
"1939 Ensemble’s experimental sound is drawn from the contrasts of textures and noise. Originally a duo of drummers, Jose Medeles and David Coniglio played drum kit and vibes interchangeably, and the essential snap of the drums and and crackling noise through effects pedals made an unsettling and strangely beautiful bed for the vibes’ warm, bell-like sound. The brief songs might unwrap a melody only to erupt into ecstatic or forboding waves before receding as abruptly as they started.
Now a quartet with Josh Thomas and Knate Carter, the group’s expanded sonic palate includes trumpet and electric guitar. They still take turns playing the vibes. We met up with the group at Revival Drum Shop in S.E. Portland, to hear them play from their upcoming release New Cinema, in a showroom full of vintage drum kits and percussion." - David Christensen, OPB
https://1939ensemble.bandcamp.com/
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 10th -- 1971's SHAFT
In 1971, famed photographer Gordon Parks followed up his quiet, semi-autobiographical film The Learning Tree with what is arguably the commercial and critical peak of blaxploitation genre filmmaking. Powered by Isaac Hayes’s Grammy Award-winning soundtrack, Shaft catapulted star Richard Roundtree into the zeitgeist as John Shaft, a New York City private dick who finds himself precariously positioned between rival Italian and Black gangsters while investigating a missing persons case. The film’s unexpected success spawned two sequels with Parks remaining on board for 1972’s Shaft’s Big Score! “Shaft’s brilliance is in the way its title figure’s confidence became contagious—both in the urban theaters where it was a hit and the dozens of blaxploitation films that would follow.”—Josh Larsen, Larsen on Film.
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.
Golden Retriever
As the duo Golden Retriever, Matt Carlson and Jonathan Sielaff have explored an ocean’s worth of sound. Primarily working with the intersection of modular synthesis and amplified/effected bass clarinet, the duo has done eight releases for labels like Thrill Jockey, Root Strata, and NNA Tapes. Their music combines an intense emotional immediacy and meditative focus with strong melodicism and an organic, naturalistic approach to experimental electronic sound. Rotations features the duo expanding their sonic palette to incorporate a full chamber ensemble. The results of this stunning collaboration are meditative, lush, and emotionally arresting.
Rotations began when Golden Retriever received a grant from Portland’s Regional Arts & Culture Council to organize and perform new works. The public performances took place in October of 2015 at Portland’s historic The Old Church. For the performances, Golden Retriever created a series of pieces for an expanded ensemble that included piano, strings, wind instruments, percussion, synthesizer, and pipe organ, which became the foundation on which Rotations was built. While their duo recordings and performances are typically developed from studio improvisations that evolve into specific musical structures, in this case Golden Retriever began with simple acoustic compositions, improvisations and fragmented ideas between bass clarinet and piano and used them to develop melodic and harmonic themes. After transcribing the various parts into notation and adding layers of additional instruments, the result of their collage process creates the effect that Golden Retriever are playing the ensemble as their instrument, and through careful arrangements, have integrated improvisation and composition.
Through the course of the creative process of choosing, editing and arranging the pieces, the duo saw a clear theme: a meditation on the cyclical nature of life and on going through something difficult but emerging on the other side of it with hope. Pieces such as “Pelagic Tremor” tell the story of a tumultuous seascape, stormy and churning. “Tessellation” weaves a tapestry of overlapping patterns that are impenetrable and sifting. In contrast, the sounds of “A Kind of Leaving” (whose title is a reference to a Bei Dao poem) evokes quiet and contemplative imagery, and “Thread of Light” is perhaps Golden Retriever’s most minimal piece to date, finding beauty in simplicity. Within each piece, the instruments cycle together rhythmically, harmonically, and texturally. And the album itself forms a cycle made up by the ebb and flow of each piece that is both dynamic and engaging.
Rotations was recorded throughout September and October 2015 by Matt Carlson with help from Branic Howard of Open Field Recording. The album was recorded at Golden Retriever’s studio at Yale Union in Portland, with the exception of the pipe organ, which was recorded at The Old Church. Musicians who contributed to the album include Mousai Remix String Quartet: Erin Cole (violin), Shin-Young Kwon (violin), Jennifer Arnold (viola), Marilyn De Oliveira (cello); Jen Harrison (french horn), Colin Frey (pipe organ), Catherine Lee (oboe), Matt Hannafin (percussion), David Coniglio (vibraphone), and John Savage (alto flute).
Visible Cloaks
Visible Cloaks’ Reassemblage is a collection of delicately rendered passages of silence and sound that invokes – and invites – consciousness. The foundation of the duo’s second album is gently poured upon the ground their musical predecessors explored, using the materials of chance operations, MIDI “translation,” and other generative principles that favor inclusive musical environments over the narrowly constrained.
In 2010, Spencer Doran, one part of Visible Cloaks alongside Ryan Carlile, prepared the first volume of Fairlights, Mallets, and Bamboo, a mixtape indicated by Doran as “an investigation into fourth-world undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music, years 1980 – 1986.” These mixes contextualized the outré orbit of Yellow Magic Orchestra-related solo projects and their abstract, radiant forays as forever futuristic modes of music.
Reassemblage evokes similar musical futures celebrated on the Fairlights mixes, but does so observantly rather than reverently. The title Reassemblage, for example, is taken from a film essay by Trin T Minha-ha, which explores the impossibility of ascribing meaning to ethnographic images. The author aims to “speak nearby” rather than “speak about.” In other words, to embrace lapses of understanding, and realize that the impulse to map direct meaning across a cultural gap often results in further disconnect.
In an effort to “speak nearby” rather than “speak about,” Visible Cloaks filters and forms source material to become young again. Often the duo strip tonal elements of their specificity or randomize melodies so they become stirring and lucid. Essential patterns emerge, conscious experience heightens. In these moments, the musical language of Reassemblage finds unlimited resonance and presents a path to uninhabited realities.
The origin of this language could be described as translingual or polyglottal, working within the eastern / western feedback loop of influence, Fourth World ambiguity, and the universality of human emotion. Incorporating an international array of virtual instruments to advance the idea of pan-globalism through digital simulation, tones and colors cohere into a living, breathing pool of sensorial experience in Visible Cloaks’ environs.
Beyond embracing the fluidity of worldly musical influences, Visible Cloaks works fluently between mediums. The contribution of stalwart digital and installation artist Brenna Murphy’s dream dimensions to Reassemblage’s cover artwork and surrounding videos extends the album’s exploration of global headspace into a visual, visceral reality.
In the tradition of Fairlights, Mallets, and Bamboo and Interiors, Doran compiles an hour of literal and figurative musical interpretations for the Translations mixtape. Divided into Day and Night sides, the former weaves Japanese music through deconstructed human voices and contributions from peers and contributors to Reassemblage. The Night side bends introspective with choral music from the Eastern Bloc, Italian spiritual minimalism, and early software-based generative music experiments.
Visible Cloaks Reassemblage will be released on February 17, 2017 on LP, CD, and digital formats. The Translations mix will be released on cassette, and only available in this limited format.
Dolphin Midwives
echo jungle chaos magic moon milk ocean murmurating orchid sleeper holy hands/helping hands interface nodes/architecture/lace gravity doesn't exist change the laws of physics levitation shapeshift/shadow energy density clarity prismic sound microtonal vision quest whirling rainbow vortex portal opening reverberating witch sister who plays harp/zither/voice/noise/electronics and everyday objects
Ilyas Ahmed (DJ Set)
Born in Pakistan, Ahmed was raised in New Jersey. After travelling throughout the US, he settled in southern Minnesota. His first, self-released albums were recorded on an isolated farm.
REAL NUMBERS (Minneapolis, Slumberland recs) :
https://real-numbers.bandcamp.com/
VERNER PANTONS:
https://thevernerpantons.bandcamp.com/
PLASTIC CACTUS:
https://plasticcactus.bandcamp.com/releases
FRENZ:
https://frenzpdx.bandcamp.com/
Naomi Punk
Olympia/Seattle's Naomi Punk are at least partly inspired by their grunge forbearers. The genre's basic elements are well-represented: The sludgy erosion over the guitars, the drums blasting with machine-grade heaviness. Since the old formula goes "one part metal, two parts punk, and one part psychedelic weird shit," it's not a stretch by any means to consider Naomi Punk a grunge band. And while t
hey're clearly a part of a long lineage of bands taking their influence from the Seattle rock scene of the early 1990s, Naomi Punk's songs are not cheaply manufactured recreations of Soundgarden or even TAD. The Feeling, originally released on vinyl and now being issued by Captured Tracks digitally and on CD, captures the trio studying the grunge rulebook just to tear it in half. Naomi Punk's approach to grunge is one of deconstruction and rebuilding in different places with fewer parts.
With their own blend of pure pop for now people, Maurice and the Stiff Sisters is made from only the finest local ingredients.
Inspired by troubadours such as Nick Lowe, Robyn Hitchcock and Jonathan Richman along with horn-powered soul and rock ’n roll, Maurice and the Stiff Sisters push the boundaries in pursuit of fine songcraft. Filtered through the rose-tinted glasses of psychedelia and power-pop, the music weaves daring horn lines and serpentine guitar riffs through Merseybeat rockers and cheeky sambas. It’s an undeniably upbeat, positively danceable affair.
The band’s origins can be found in Chico, CA with frontman/songwriter Maurice Spencer and his lust for snapping audiences out of their navel-gazing slumber. His background in theater and music journalism was the spring-loaded platform that propelled him from curating song compilations and theatrical composition to an impresario fronting a bonafide live experience.
There’s something rare in the grand cacophony of today’s musical class: bands that provided a live experience. Not just a performance, not tuning for two minutes between songs, not offering excuses about why something sounded better in rehearsal the night before kind of affair, but a real experience. Something that people talk about afterwards; a group that melts faces, that puts on a show, and that never forgets the whole purpose is to entertain so that for one short hour people could forget about their long, boring, meaningless hours working at the vape store, the karaoke bar, or the Tatertot Taco cart (which is amazing, everyone should go there...) and have an honest to goodness thing happen.
Every band needs a story. The Maurice and the Stiff Sisters story is that they put on a ripping live show. Sometimes people need to be told it’s okay to fucking dance.
From their headquarters in Portland, Oregon, to their rural compound in picturesque Hockinson, Washington, Maurice and the Stiff Sisters add accelerants to the fire, smoke life to its filter and dance through the ashes.
In September 2012, at 40 years old, Bangs gave birth to her beautiful daughter, Adelaide. One
month later, profoundly sleep deprived, Bangs was admitted to the Providence Psychological
Inpatient Unit. What came next was an extraordinary journey, one she has transformed into a
non-fiction storytelling experience that is both wildly funny and terribly tragic.
A reported 15 - 20% of women will experience a postpartum mood disorder of some kind. The
true number is much larger due to the fact that stigma and fear leave women feeling isolated and
simply enduring, rather than seeking help.
While this show is definitely for parents that have experienced a rough postpartum patch, it is
equally for anyone that has experienced loss. Bangs says, “We’ve all had our postpartum
psychosis. Yours might have been cancer, divorce or the death of a dear one. For anyone that has
ever arrived in a moment in life in which the bottom momentarily drops out and there is no
instruction manual, this story is for you.”
She hopes that by telling this story with a large dose of truth, humor and self-love, she will give
others permission to tell their stories, shed shame, overcome paralysis and follow their guts.
Join Melissa for an evening of true stories full of bewilderment, chaos and hilarity. Bangs has a
knack for telling true stories that cut to the bone of our shared, vulnerable human condition. Her
true gift, however, comes in the moments in which she’s able to strip away the shame or agony
of an experience and transform the room into an uproar of laughter.
In September 2012, at 40 years old, Bangs gave birth to her beautiful daughter, Adelaide. One
month later, profoundly sleep deprived, Bangs was admitted to the Providence Psychological
Inpatient Unit. What came next was an extraordinary journey, one she has transformed into a
non-fiction storytelling experience that is both wildly funny and terribly tragic.
A reported 15 - 20% of women will experience a postpartum mood disorder of some kind. The
true number is much larger due to the fact that stigma and fear leave women feeling isolated and
simply enduring, rather than seeking help.
While this show is definitely for parents that have experienced a rough postpartum patch, it is
equally for anyone that has experienced loss. Bangs says, “We’ve all had our postpartum
psychosis. Yours might have been cancer, divorce or the death of a dear one. For anyone that has
ever arrived in a moment in life in which the bottom momentarily drops out and there is no
instruction manual, this story is for you.”
She hopes that by telling this story with a large dose of truth, humor and self-love, she will give
others permission to tell their stories, shed shame, overcome paralysis and follow their guts.
Join Melissa for an evening of true stories full of bewilderment, chaos and hilarity. Bangs has a
knack for telling true stories that cut to the bone of our shared, vulnerable human condition. Her
true gift, however, comes in the moments in which she’s able to strip away the shame or agony
of an experience and transform the room into an uproar of laughter.
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
Orquestra Pacifico Tropical - orquestrapacificotropical.bandcamp.com
Candace - candaceisaband.bandcamp.com
Ah God - ahgod.bandcamp.com
9PM / $6 ADV / $10 DOS
Advance tix: http://ticketf.ly/2umL4kc
In September 2012, at 40 years old, Bangs gave birth to her beautiful daughter, Adelaide. One
month later, profoundly sleep deprived, Bangs was admitted to the Providence Psychological
Inpatient Unit. What came next was an extraordinary journey, one she has transformed into a
non-fiction storytelling experience that is both wildly funny and terribly tragic.
A reported 15 - 20% of women will experience a postpartum mood disorder of some kind. The
true number is much larger due to the fact that stigma and fear leave women feeling isolated and
simply enduring, rather than seeking help.
While this show is definitely for parents that have experienced a rough postpartum patch, it is
equally for anyone that has experienced loss. Bangs says, “We’ve all had our postpartum
psychosis. Yours might have been cancer, divorce or the death of a dear one. For anyone that has
ever arrived in a moment in life in which the bottom momentarily drops out and there is no
instruction manual, this story is for you.”
She hopes that by telling this story with a large dose of truth, humor and self-love, she will give
others permission to tell their stories, shed shame, overcome paralysis and follow their guts.
Join Melissa for an evening of true stories full of bewilderment, chaos and hilarity. Bangs has a
knack for telling true stories that cut to the bone of our shared, vulnerable human condition. Her
true gift, however, comes in the moments in which she’s able to strip away the shame or agony
of an experience and transform the room into an uproar of laughter.
Aldous Harding
Singer/songwriter Aldous Harding first drew praise for the gothic folk and stark emotionality of her 2015 debut that brought about comparisons to both Kate Bush and Scott Walker. She grew up as Hannah Harding in the town of Lyttelton near Christchurch in New Zealand to musician parents. Her mother was folk singer Lorina Harding, and it was on her Folk-Tui-winning record Clean Break that the 13-year-old Harding made here recording debut. Despite this early foray into the music business, the young Harding had no interest in pursuing a career as a musician, believing it to be a precarious existence. Just a couple of years later, she began to let go of her dreams of becoming a vet when she started singing and writing songs alongside friend and fellow musician Nadia Reid. By 2008 she was performing backup vocals for the traveling string band the Eastern, and Harding got an early break when she was spotted busking by Anika Moa, who on the back of that performance invited the young musician to open for her at her show that same night. In 2012 Harding changed her forename to Aldous and asked Marlon Williams and Ben Edwards to co-produce what would become her debut record. The self-titled release garnered much critical acclaim, and Harding toured the album extensively. For her follow-up, she signed to British independent label 4AD, and enlisted the help of John Parish (Sparklehorse, PJ Harvey) to co-produce the record. Her sophomore album Party was released in 2017, and was preceded by the singles "Horizon" and "Imagining My Man."
Here is a quick rundown of what to expect at Pickathon 2016.
We first suggest pulling up a copy of the Pickathon 2016 Map, as this will help you familiarize with what the Pendarvis Farm layout looks like. This will also give you an idea of what amenities we have to offer at the festival including showers, wellness & medical locations, food carts, beverage gardens, free drinking water spigots, dish return & washing stations, ADA camping, camp host and camp host gear drop off locations, port-o-potties, ATM, artist & festival merchandise, and locations of available camping options.
Whether you drive, shuttle or bike to Pickathon the first step is always the same; you will temporarily park in our front gate lot (which is across the street from the festival site) and present your physical or print at home ticket to one of our lovely front gate volunteers. Once scanned they will provide you with a weekend or day wristband (or wristbands depending on how many you purchased). They will also provide you with a parking “cling” (if you purchased parking) which magically sticks to the inside of your front windshield.
With wristbands and a parking sticker in hand you will be directed to our parking lot where you will either park for the day or the weekend.
When you arrive on site and intend on tent camping in the woods, you will first want to check in with our Camp Host to get info on prospective campsite locations as well as your spot in the gear shuttle line.
Once you have an idea of the general area where you want to camp, we suggest having one person scout and the other manage the gear drop off & pick up (if coming solo, well, you’re on your own for that one…).
The terrain is generally sloped and often it takes a bit of exploration to find the perfect site, especially as it gets later into the weekend. Generally speaking, those with smaller tents have an easier time finding adequate nooks, so maybe if you are a larger group or family, think about tent size and options that could help you best fit.
It is no secret that not all campsites at Pickathon are created equal, but we do work very hard to make sure that everyone with a weekend ticket can find a decent place to pitch their tent. Being neighborly and mindful of your footprint goes a very long way. Arriving on Thursday is always going to provide the most ideal camping locations.
Once you’re settled Pickathon is your oyster! Music and activities start Thursday evening and continue on through Sunday night. We have some hand picked craft vendors and a veritable cornucopia of the finest food and adult beverage vendors in Oregon. Choose your own adventure!
Bobby Bare Jr
With a big-as-the-room persona, an ability to rock the doors off the most jaded of clubs, the heart to hold a room completely still with just his guitar, and a genius for arrangement, Bobby Bare, Jr. and his band of merry makers are one of the most unique bands around. They are adept at abandoning common sense in favor of laying themselves at the feet of a rambunctious, freewheeling, and unfettered and unhinged muse.
In the late 90's, he fronted the boss hog rock band, Bare Jr. With their two records, Boo-tay and Brainwasher, they memorably rocked out on a Nirvana-on-Skynryd-not-Sabbath groove, more indebted to the homebrew than "The Other H." These days he keeps himself even busier by appearing on albums by indie rock heroes like the Silver Jews and Frank Black.
Few that we have found can combine humor, pain, and anger in such an effortlessly well-crafted manner. If encountered in public, beware: Bobby is a big, gregarious, good-natured fellow who will giddily talk music (from the Smiths to Roger Miller to Metallica to Dolly Parton--sometimes in one breath) until the bartender is tossing you both out.
From his first release on Bloodshot, Bobby has testified as one of the most innovate songwriters and performers, content on warping the classic Nashville sound and embracing the eccentric. Bare has been known to pair up with some of the most unlikely suspects to contribute to his sound, including everyone from Shel Silverstein to Duane Dennison of Jesus Lizard to Andrew Bird.
"What's most remarkable about Bare's songs is how effortlessly catchy they are...The only real curiosity about Bare's career to date is that he hasn't yet become a big name in modern rock--the kind of artist whose every album is awaited with the eager anticipation that greets the latest from Spoon or the Shins." Noel Murray Nashville Scene
"Bare works the audience like a carnival barker who also happens to write tender, honest songs that move the room to awed silence. Do not miss the opportunity to catch the healing power of this band live, who will put a smile on your face and drink one with you after the show." Mario Villanueva, Upstate Link
8/3 Weed w/ Young Hunter...FREE
8/10 Pickathon Presents: Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band w/ 1939 Ensemble...$12 ADV.
8/16 Tracy Bryant (Corners . LA) w/ Lavender Flu...FREE
8/17 Wyatt Blair w/ Nick Normal...FREE
8/24 Secret Drum Band (Record Release) w/ Notel...FREE
8/31 Adult Books w/ Woolen Men...FREE
21+
"The Stumptown Improv Festival’s first three years have been bonkers (or, as Jed likes to say, “bonkerz”). We’ve sold out shows and forced audience members to sign up for obscenely long waiting lists. We’ve attracted some of the most well-regarded improv groups performing today from LA, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, BC, Minneapolis, and, of course, Portland. Performers who are vets on the festival scene have raved that “this is one of the best festivals we’ve ever been a part of”. We’ve offered huge gift bags to our comedians and gave people leather coasters embossed with our logo. We are OUT OF CONTROL." -Stumptown Improv Festival
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 3rd -- 1937's The Awful TruthProduced in the same year that McCarey directed Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth is the opposite of that tearjerker, throwing Cary Grant and Irene Dunne into a delightful, screwball scenario as a husband and wife headed towards splitsville, despite the fact that neither one of them really wants out of their marriage. While The Awful Truth scored McCarey his first of two Best Director Oscars, he maintained that the other film he made in 1937 was the more deserving work. Regardless, The Awful Truth remains one of the most popular, enduring, and clever romantic comedies of the silver screen era. “What elevates McCarey’s masterpiece—what makes it arguably the greatest of its genre—is its unobtrusive depth of feeling. Never sappy, the movie is at once light on its feet and grounded at heart.”—Elbert Ventura, Popmatters.
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. Music by XRAY.fm DJ's 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.
Marika Hackman
Marika Hackman; an artist who is more likely to quote proto-feminist ghost stories such as the Yellow Wallpaper than align with audience expectations of a woman prepared to "sing a few nice songs with a pretty voice and then forget about it".
Clearly she's made of more substance than her contemporaries.
A captivating vocalist and incredibly attractive individual who is more interested in challenging perceptions of what songwriting can or should be in modern times, to bring us a greater sense of truth and understanding of current issues, from the forms of the past.
"All mainstream music is written in such a lazy way. It's all a formula of where to put each chorus and hook, its robotic in its creation. People don't really have to listen because they know they'll be able to hum the chorus back after one minute, I think the clever placement of hooks and big chorus' con people into thinking they're actually enjoying it rather than being aware that it's just running along a well beaten track in their brains."
She expresses, asserting that her own frustration with this situation has coloured her approach to bring something better to the masses.
This approach links back to her approach to production, initially working with mentor Johnny Flynn and Adam Beach in a scenario in which inventive ideas were encouraged in a familial and confidence building scenario, before working with Charlie Andrew who had recently completed work on the Mercury Award Winning Alt-J album.
"We took each song and stripped it back to the basic guitar part and vocal and then played around on different instruments to build up the layers. On retina television we decided to not use any instruments at all and try and build up the song only using sounds from my body, so as well as singing and humming I was doing stuff like tapping my teeth and jumping. We drew the line at burping though..."
This inventiveness is sprung from Marika herself as much as her production collaborators though, testified by her unique interpretations on her online covers EP which disclosed a raft of influences from Warpaint and The Knife to Nico (who she also shares a striking visual resemblance to) and Nirvana, and translated into the arrangement of her own material on the new extended play:
"When I've got an idea for a song I make a really rough demo on Garageband so I can try building up vocals and different instruments." She explains in relation to standout track 'Plans': "The layered vocals in the verse was an idea that hit me as soon as I started recording the demo. Once I'd tried it out and decided I liked it, I was spurred on to finish the song. The harmonies in the chorus I developed by singing as many lines as I could over the original melody and then choosing my favourites."
This approach is always an extension of the lyrical substance behind each song – always confrontational, with shades of Gothicism that reveal themselves beneath an accessible aesthetic like the hidden grotesque and mysteriously hellish details that can be decoded in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
On Cannibal, an outwardly accessible, and eminently listenable song there are some deep ruminations about the conflicts between human evolution and personal greed.
"It's taking the idea of cutting off your nose to spite your face to a new level" she asserts "as you're cutting off your nose to consume it. It's realising that what you're doing is wrong on many levels but being too afraid to confront it and therefore just carrying on. A fear of change I suppose, and a general level of disgust at where our 'evolution' has taken us."
Through taking previously clichéd metaphors and imbuing them with the full horror of their original meaning, she asserts a fresh perspective that both shocks and provides comfort with the tools for the listener to deal with the situation of modern living.
London four-piece The Big Moon formed in the way that any great band should. “I didn’t just want to start a band, I really, genuinely needed to,” says singer Juliette Jackson. “I was working in a fancy cocktail bar in North London where they made stupid drinks flavoured with soil and tomato skins. I had to get out of there. So I started writing songs about love and hangovers, robots and the fourth dimension, ran around London asking everyone I knew if they knew anyone who wanted to be in a band with me.”
Word soon got round and, via a network of friends of friends, Jules began to find some like-minded spirits. “I'd blind-date people in a pub in Islington and suss them out,” she says. Drummer Fern Ford (and organist, she plays the two instruments simultaneously) – who at the time had a series of jobs “serving food out of trucks” – was the first to join, and guitarist Soph Nathan, who was studying in Brighton, was next . “Celia [Archer] joined last,” says Juliette. “It was just us three for a while and then one afternoon she came to our practice room. I answered the door and immediately said, ‘I love you’”. She joined us the next day.
“The first time we all played properly together, I actually had a little cry,” laughs Juliette. “We barely knew each other, but it just instantly made sense. I'd always had a four-piece band in mind and now these songs suddenly sounded so huge. I wanted us to sound like a garage rock band, but with hooks. It’s what I’ve always listened to – White Stripes, Pixies, Kid Congo Powers, but also a lot of really gorgeous melodic stuff like Elvis and Roy Orbison and The Kinks. Stuff that sounds scuzzy, but that you can still sing along to.”
The first track they shared with the world in January 2015 was Eureka Moment – a tangle of twisted rhythms and lush harmonies that scuttles through the corners of the mind. It was picked up by blogs immediately. “We put it online, and people actually listened to it” says Celia. “And then we started getting loads of emails from people. We got shows. It was crazy..” They’ve since played a 12-month run of gigs alongside bands including The Vaccines, The Maccabees, Mac Demarco, and Ezra Furman.
“Playing to young girls feels so good,” laments Juliette. “We’ve supported a lot of big indie boy bands who have a lot of female fans and it’s great to go on stage and by being there, showing them that they can do it as well. People have come up to us after shows and said, ‘We want to start a band now!’. That’s great because we were those kids once too.”
Working with long-standing producer Catherine Marks on their scintillating debut album, ‘Love In The 4th Dimension (released 7th April on Fiction Records), The Big Moon have made a joyful record that bursts with energy, confidence and a reticent self-belief. The almost laissez-faire delivery of Jules’ vocal is blasted in on a rocket of hooks and melodies. It’s smart, assured, and primed for the big stage.
“I don't really think of an album as a thing that has to be listened to all at once. I’m a big believer in songs by themselves. I want every song to be a journey in itself rather than it having to rely on the thing before or after it,” says Juliette. “So we want to make sure every single song on the album is the best possible version of the song that could ever exist. I don't want to feel like anything on the album could be improved upon.” For the moment, though, they just want their music to reach as many people as possible. “I can’t wait for people to hear all the songs and to get to know every lyric and every intricacy,” says Celia.
Ask them what their plans are for the future and they all scream “World domination!” before cracking up at the idea. But with their determination and drive, it feels like nothing is out of the grasps of The Big Moon.