Events

Slowdive is a dream pop/shoegaze band that consist of Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, Nick Chaplin, Christian Savill and Simon Scott. They formed in Reading in 1989 and signed to Creation Records, releasing three albums, ‘Just For A Day', ‘Souvlaki' and ‘Pygmalion'. Since their disbandment Slowdive have become one of the most cited bands of the early 90's with the three albums appearing regularly in charts of the best records of the period.

Pissed Jeans are a rock band from Allentown, PA.

The sound of their music is a combination of sludgy bands from the early Eighties like Flipper and My War-era Black Flag and the noise assault of The Jesus Lizard. 

Their discography includes Throbbing Organ 7” (Parts Unknown), Shallow LP/CD (Parts Unknown), Don’t Need Smoke to Make Myself Disappear 7” (Sub Pop), Hope For Men LP/CD (Sub Pop), King of Jeans LP/CD (Sub Pop), and their February 2013 release Honeys (Sub Pop). 

In an interview with Tony Rettman of Blastitude, Pissed Jeans’ singer described their sound and intent with the following: “The idea was to start a different kinda punk band focused on dead ended carnal cravings, sexual depression…that sort of thing. Mainly we just wanted to bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous droning rock music that just sucks the energy out of you, the musical equivalent to watching a toilet flush.”

Digging deep into the roots of American music, The California Honeydrops embrace the traditions of Blues, Gospel, Second Line New Orleans Jazz, and early R&B. With stellar performances of traditional material as well as their own innovative music, The California Honeydrops get people out of their seats and onto the floor, dancing and singing along. 

Formed in November 2007, The California Honeydrops first performed on the streets and in the subways stations in Oakland, California. Playfully crossing genres from Roots and Blues to R&B and soul, The California Honeydrops’ sound is tied together by soulful vocal harmonies, colorful shouts from brass and horns, and a funky, good-times New Orleans rhythm section. They quickly gained a reputation as the best party in the Bay Area. 

Born in Warsaw, Poland, band leader and front man Lech Wierzynski began playing blues and jazz as a teenager at after-hours jam sessions in Washington D.C. After studying trumpet with Marcus Belgrave (Ray Charles), Lech continued his career after moving to Oakland. Honing his craft with some of the biggest names in American music, such as Maria Muldaur, Dan Hicks, and Jackie Payne, Lech has grown equally as a trumpeter, singer, and guitarist.

Doors: 8:00 PM 
Show: 9:00 PM

21 and over

Xray.fm presents Back Fence PDX: Gone But Not: All Souls/Day of the Dead stories (and other events). A fundraiser for The Dougy Center.

Live stories to commemorate those who we remember from past Back Fence PDX favorites, Actor and Artist, VIN SHAMBRY (PDX) and Emmy-Nominated Writer from the Ellen Degeneres Show/Moth Radio Hour performer, BRIAN FINKELSTEIN (LA); along with Oregon Book Award Winner MATTHEW DICKMAN (PDX), whose poems have appeared in the New Yorker and The London Review of Books; and KAREN FINNEYFROCK (SEA) who has traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy, and of her book, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door, Sherman Alexie said, “It is a hilarious, exciting and painful as anybody’s teenage years. Read it, please.”

HOSTED by B. Frayn Masters + Mindy Nettifee

DJ Blind Bartimaeus will be spinning Gospel and Soul, snacks to feast on from ALMA chocolate, Saint Cupcake, and Porque No, a flower altar provided by Spellbound Flowers, a raffle, plus XRAY.fm will be on hand to record your 1-3 minute story about a loved one. 

Arlene Schnitzer Hall | 1111 Southwest Broadway
(503) 248-4335 | VENUE INFO | FAN CLUB SALE CLOSED | PUBLIC ONSALE

The Portland Mercury and XRAY FM Present: Late Night Action

Now in it's 5th season, Late Night Action is a live-on-stage talk show focused on the people who make Portland awesome. The next show is October 27th at 8pm at Mississippi Studios. More information about upcoming guests and tickets are available at LateNightAction.com

With guests: 

Author of The Kingkiller Chronicles: Patrick Rothfuss

KGW News Anchor Reggie Aqui

Stand-up comedian Kirsten Kuppenbender 

with music from The DoubleClicks

SONIC AVENUES are just four Montreal kids who started riffing punk tunes in 2006, but since getting swept up in the booming punk epicentre of neighbouring Ottawa, they’ve been catapulted into the ranks of the best pop-punk acts in Canada! After releasing a few singles, SONIC AVENUES dropped a bomb in late 2009 with their debut LP on Ottawa’s infamous Going Gaga Records.  Within a few short months, the record had sold-out twice, including a European repress by Germany’s fine Taken By Surprise and Sabotage Records.

Two years later, after obliterating eardrums from stages across North America and Europe, they returned home to record a crushing follow-up, Television Youth, for prestigious Portland-based label Dirtnap Records.  Featuring more of the over-driven guitars, infectious harmonized melodies and blazing 2-3 minute songs that powered their debut, the AVES have nonetheless pushed the limits into new territories with this latest offering. In short, Television Youth is punkier, poppier, louder and dirtier than anything they’ve done before. Armed with this devastating new arsenal, as well as ambitious touring plans spanning the (un)civilized world, SONIC AVENUES are sure to keep fists in the air and beers a-flyin’ for years to come.

Mike Hadreas, also known as Perfume Genius is a singer/songwriter from Seattle, Washington, US. Perfume Genius began when he moved from New York to his mother’s home in Everett, WA. In these relatively isolated conditions, Hadreas felt a compulsion to make music and began composing fragile yet brutally honest songs on the piano. By 2008 he had set up a MySpace page and began offering his music there, along with similarly spare and evocative homemade music videos. Turnstile released the single Mr. Peterson — the tale of a suicidal, pedophile high-school teacher — in 2009. Perfume Genius’ full-length debut, Learning, which presented its tracks in the order in which they were recorded, arrived and released on June 21, 2010

The longest-running Bollywood Halloween party in the world is a Portland original, a wild dance party celebrating twelve years of raucous costumed merriment hosted by DJ Anjali and The Incredible Kid. This year features the sensory assault of five walls of Bollywood Horror visuals by Micah Schmelzer curated from Anjali's collection of vintage and contemporary South Asian horror films.

The centerpiece of every Bollywood Horror is the highly entertaining costume contest hosted by Anjali with fabulous prizes from rad local businesses for the best costumes. Featuring only the wickedest beats from the subcontinent: cower at the thundering dhols, shiver at the piercing wails of Bollywood divas.

Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St.
9pm-2am
$8 ($5 before 10pm)
Ages 21+ only w/ proper ID

Oct. 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, Nov. 1 - 7pm
Oct. 24, 25, 31, Nov. 1 - 9pm

"Screaming with mirth and terrible beauty, Nightmare on Northrup is a wickedly entertaining tribute to BodyVox’s favorite time of year. Featuring new work and audience favorites, this fresh installment of the Halloween classic, BloodyVox, is a dance theater experience that mines cinema and folklore to bring All Hallow’s Eve to life. Bring your friends, and family, and beloved to hold tight...to save and protect you from things that go bump in the night!"

Led by Emmy Award-winning choreographers Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, BodyVox is known for its visual virtuosity, distinctive wit and unique ability to combine dance, theater and film into breathtaking productions rich in imagery, athleticism and humor. Since its founding in 1997, BodyVox has toured to critical acclaim on stages around the world, developed 8 award winning films, 20 original shows and 3 operas, featuring nearly 200 original dances.

To register for event for here: http://goo.gl/3BS1RW 

There will be ushers, dressed in all black and given capes, for this evening. The show is 60min with no intermission.

If “gay rapper” is an oxymoron where you come from, how to get your head around the notion of a gay rapper performing in a sports bar? What in most cities might seem plausible only as some sort of Sacha Baron Cohen-style provocation is just another weeknight in the cultural Galapagos that is New Orleans. Sometime after midnight on the sweltering Thursday before Memorial Day , the giant plasma-screen TVs at the Sports Vue bar (which “proudly airs all major Pay Per View events from the world of Boxing and Ultimate Fighting”) were all switched off, and the bar’s backroom turned into a low-lit, low-ceilinged dance club, where more than 300 people awaited a return engagement by Big Freedia, who by day runs an interior-decoration business and who is, to fans of the New Orleans variant of hip-hop music known as “bounce,” a superstar.

Legendary punk/noise/pop combo from the Bay Area
DEERHOOF
BUSDRIVER, GO DARK
November, 20th, 2014
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 9:00 pm

$15.00 - $17.00

Join XRAY as we sponsor a screening of the British documentary Beautiful Noise, a film that explores shoegaze artists My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush, Curve, Swervedriver, and others. 

You can watch the trailer here.

DIRECTOR: ERIC GREEN

Beautiful Noise features interviews with many interesting characters including Billy Corgan, Wayne Coyne, Robert Smith, Trent Reznor, and several others.  

“An in-depth exploration of the dense, sensuous, and extremely loud movement 
in ‘80s/’90s U.K. rock tagged “shoegaze” by the British press. Tracing its influences back to the Cocteau Twins’ ethereal ambiance and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s brash guitar sound, the film explores how bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Lush fused these two disparate sounds together to create a distinctive, new musical style that furthered the genre’s ideals of sonic experimentation without the grandiose stage personas of traditional pop stars. First-time director Eric Green scores a coup by getting this notoriously press-shy bunch to open up about the class politics behind the genre’s poor treatment in the British press, MBV’s infamous falling-out with Creation Records, and how that band became sonic innovators whose music is only now truly receiving its  due respect.”—Seattle International Film Festival. (90 mins.)

More on the Reel Music Festival can be found here:  NW FIlm Center

Welcome to our 32nd edition of Reel Music. We’ve been on the lookout all year for new works—and timely classics— for this annual celebration of sound and image, music and culture, and the origins of sounds infused in our experience. Whether your passion is jazz, blues, rock, soul, folk, funk, or punk, we hope you find this mixture of old and new, familiar and strange, to be full of inspiration and discovery. As always, our special thanks go to Music Millennium, Willamette Week, Walker, Day & Koch LLP, Oregon Music News, KINK.fm, MusicFestNW, All Classical Portland, KIND Healthy Snacks, XRAY.FM, KMHD, PDX Pipeline, Yelp!, Vortex Magazine and Portland Radio Project.

Unless otherwise noted, all movies are shown at the Whitsell Auditorium, in the Portland Art Museum.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. are an American indie-pop band from Detroit, Michigan, consisting of Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein. Zott and Epstein met each other while playing in other Detroit music projects and began recording in Zott’s basement in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. was formed in late 2009 by members Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott. The band also includes drummer Mike Higgins and the group’s newest addition, keyboardist Jon Visger. The band initially began as a basement recording project with few intentions of reaching the public. 

In July 2010, the band released Horsepower EP via Quite Scientific Records. The Horsepower EP consisted of songs “Nothing But Our Love,” “Vocal Chords,” “Simple Girl,” and a cover of The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” Months after their EP was released the band’s genre was described as ‘psych-retro pop,’ ‘an inspired mix of hip-hop and folk,’ ‘minimalist altera-pop,’ and ‘beach wave.’ The band came out with a second EP titled My Love Is Easy: Remixes Pt.1 via Quite Scientific Records on November 2, 2010. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. was noted as ‘one of the best new bands’ of 2010 and became very well-liked from various sources such as Stereogum, SPIN, Under the Radar, Real Detroit, and The Metro Times. The band later came out with We Almost Lost Detroit EP via Warner Bros. Records and Quite Scientific Records on April 21, 2011. Dale Earnhardr Jr. Jr. released two singles, “Morning Thought” and “Simple Girl” on April 8, 2011 and September 9, 2011; respectively.

Rose Windows is an American psychedelic rock band from Seattle, Washington, United States. 

The band was started by songwriter Chris Cheveyo in the fall of 2010 in the Central District of Seattle, Washington. The project began with a few rough demos done alone at home and slowly began to take shape as the band amassed members. Bandmates were primarily friends of Christ Cheveyo. Rabia Shaheen Qazi began provides vocals, David Davila performs on piano and organ. Former bandmates of Cheveyo, Nils Petersen and Pat Schowe were enlisted for electric guitar and drums. Richie Rekow and Veronica Dye play bass and flute respectively. 

Label-less at the time, Rose Windows began making plans for recording The Sun Dogs in November 2011. The band sought out local producer Randall Dunn based on his past success with Sunn O))) & Boris, Earth, and Master Musicians of Bukkake. Other local musicians were later brought on board to add harp, pedal steel, viola, and cello.

In June 2013, Rose Windows released their debut album, The Sun Dogs, for Sub Pop Records.

The band follows standard Western traditions in their instrumentation, using the basic tools employed in past decades of American and British rock music. Elements of The Band’s folk-infused rock, The Doors organ-driven psychedelia, and Black Sabbath’s blues-based dirges can be heard in Rose Window’s debut album The Sun Dogs.

Melvins are a rock band that formed in Montesano, Washington, United States in 1983. The band currently consists of Buzz Osborne (vocals, guitar), Jared Warren (bass), Dale Crover (drums) and Coady Willis (drums). Osborne is the only remaining original member, although Crover has been a member since early in the band’s career.

In the early days of their career their dark, heavy, oppressively slow sound made them innovators of genres like sludge, grunge, and doom metal. Melvins’ music is influenced by Flipper, Black Flag’s My War-era hardcore punk and Black Sabbath-style heavy metal, but their idiosyncratic approach, bizarre sense of humor, and experimentation make neat categorization difficult. Singer/guitarist Buzz Osborne (aka “King Buzzo”) and drummer Dale Crover are constant members while several bass guitarists have cycled through the group. Melvins usually performed as a trio until 2006 when two members of Big Business became permanent members of the band.

The band was named after a grocery clerk at the Thriftway in Montesano, Washington where Osborne was employed. Melvin was the most-hated fellow employee and the band felt it to be an appropriate name. Like SF noisenik predecessors Flipper, their love of slow tempos and sludgy sound were a strong influence on grunge music, especially Nirvana and many other bands from Seattle. Their protegés, however, tended to use more conventional musical structures with this sound.

XRAY.FM PRESENTS SUDANESE ARTIST SINKANE, WHOSE MUSIC IS A MIX OF SUDANESE POP, KRAUTROCK AND EARLY '70S FUNK SINKANE  

You can listen to my new album “Mean Love” on NPR right now. 

DOORS: 8:00 PM / SHOW: 9:00 PM

Via NPR:  

"You know I love you, but you're mean."

Here's one of those eternal refrains. Nobody owns it; it's been in the air since forever. Maybe it was initially uttered by a songwriter toiling deep in the Brill Building, or first sung by a girl group.

Because it carries the essential DNA of the done-me-wrong song, such a familiar sentiment can be a test: Whomever is singing has to sell the slight, and the hurt, and the story behind it. Ahmed Gallab, Sinkane's singer and leader, understands this mission. In the title track of his suave and eclectic third record (his second under the Sinkane name), Gallab brings a slight quiver to the verses — and then, gathering all the resolve his thin and perfectly rounded voice can muster, he delivers the tagline as a straightforward declaration. It's like he's resigned to his plight and no longer cares about editorializing it by appearing too vulnerable. He sings about it plainly, with little in the way of garish ornamentation. His voice offset by weepy steel guitar, he repeats the line, sometimes adding the words "mean to me" as punctuation, and by this point any hint of contrivance is erased: To the Sudan-born, Ohio-raised, Brooklyn-based Gallab, this is less about singing a pop song than telling a truth.

It's an art, being believable in this way, and Gallab has it nailed: Whether riding the waves of a brisk African dance ("New Name") or working through a tightly woundCurtis Mayfield-conjuring funk vamp ("Hold Tight"), he infuses the vocals with unusual intimacy, the desire to be felt first and understood later. Even if, as happens throughout Mean Love, the refrains start out simple and veer toward the blunt. At first, this seems like lowballing, but there's wisdom in the approach: As on Sinkane's previous album Mars, the backdrops are a thick stew, with elements of both East and West African music, James Brown, free jazz and shoegaze. Gallab recognizes that Sinkane's broad range of influences can come across as busy — or, worse, muddled. So he places the focus on terse, easily repeated catchphrases, many written by his lyricist collaborator Greg Lofaro. These cut to the core message of the (often love-minded) narratives, and their simplicity contrasts with the oscillating, ever-changing mix-and-match accompaniment schemes in the background. The result is a formidable type of persuasion: Clear, earnest voice meets memorable hook over wickedly inventive groove.

This streamlined approach to songwriting is one of the ways Sinkane has grown since Mars first broke through. There are moments when Sinkane lunges in the direction of recent exotica-spiced hits by Bruno Mars, and moments when the glances are all in the rearview, toward the volcanic soul of the '60s and '70s. There are also more overt and confident evocations of African music — Gallab served as the musical director for a star-filled celebration of Nigerian iconoclast William Onyeabor earlier this year. The most gripping of these include the last song, "Omdurman," named for Gallab's hometown in Sudan. Unfolding with a calm, hymn-like grace, it expresses the universal frustration of the young and rootless with likes like, "Where, if I should settle down, will I finally settle?" But the refrain that's likely to get the most attention appears in "Son." It's a vow, sung with extraordinary resolve: "I will not forget where I came from." Gallab again doesn't do too much with it, and he doesn't have to: As happens frequently on Mean Love, the music around him echoes and affirms those words in quietly breathtaking ways.