Listeners and Readers! Hello! My name is Patrick, and I'm going to be dwelling in your blog from now on. I hope that's okay with you, because it's a very nice blog and I don't intend on leaving now that I'm all unpacked. Even if I'm just the Joey Gladstone to your Full House, I'm thrilled to be a part of the KZME family of volunteers.
Whew, okay. Introductions.
What can be said about me? Not much, I'm afraid. I have no writing credits, I don't play any instruments that don't involve hitting things with sticks, and I spend a lot of my free time trying to be funny on raised platforms in dive bars. I'm going to do my best in not trying to be funny in my future blog posts. We'll see how that goes.
As of now, I have a new album to put into my ears. You folks will get to read my take on it very soon. Exciting? Yes, very. As of now now, I am running out of computer time at the library, which means I'll be washing my hands and flitting off into the night. Good meeting you!
107.1FM KZME Musicwhereyoulive,
-Patrick
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
DJ Klyph presents... The Movement
Peace world! The Neighborhood continues to grow with new residents every week and the Portland hip hop scene is getting more recognition from around the country.
Since we last spoke, Portland based DJ Zimmie passed through the station for his first visit to the Neighborhood and he brought DJ Excel and DJ Impulse along. Excel and Impulse form the production due Alfa Paare and played an exclusive track "Sylvia" from their upcoming project on the show. We also heard some great stories of the life of a traveling DJ and some of the history of the NE DJ scene.
You can catch DJ Zimmie spinning in your favorite spot right here in Portland. Check out www.djzimie.com for a schedule of upcoming events and some pretty cool mixes available for free download.
Local journalist Emily Berkey made an appearance in the Neighborhood and flipped the script interviewing me. It was truly and honor to have her as Emily has interviewed some big names in hip hop including Big K.R.I.T., 9th Wonder and Too Short to name a few.
Myke Bogan made a major announcement while on the show, he's re-releasing Pretty Hesh and this time including two new tracks including a Stewart Villain remix of Kushberry Pancakes!
Remember you can always catch any episodes on WTTN that you may have missed or just want to re-experience via the podcast an http://podcast.kzme.fm/djklyph
Coming up on WTTN Neighborhood residents TxE will spend a couple of hours playing beats and talking about their latest project TxE vs. PRTLND which features G_Force flipping samples of some of Portland's favorites indie rock bands and MCs Tope* and EPP effortlessly spilling rhymes. Tune in this coming Tuesday December 3rd - a good time is promised.
Also this month, visits from OnlyOne and 9DM as they are promoting their latest release, Abadawn as he prepares for his west coast tour, Commenter-E passes through just before the Christmas holiday. You may remember he hung out last year and debuted his single "Happy Hollerdays" on the show.
We'll also have Seattle MC and member of Oldominion Xperience calling in from the road as he's on tour promoting his latest release "Revelations" and an in studio visit from Glenn Waco of The resistance. Sending 2013 off kinda nice!
Continue to tune in every Tuesday night from 8-10pm and spread the word.
Until next time!
Blessings
Since we last spoke, Portland based DJ Zimmie passed through the station for his first visit to the Neighborhood and he brought DJ Excel and DJ Impulse along. Excel and Impulse form the production due Alfa Paare and played an exclusive track "Sylvia" from their upcoming project on the show. We also heard some great stories of the life of a traveling DJ and some of the history of the NE DJ scene.
 |
| DJ Zimmie and DJ Impulse |
 |
| DJ Excel and DJ Zimmie |
Local journalist Emily Berkey made an appearance in the Neighborhood and flipped the script interviewing me. It was truly and honor to have her as Emily has interviewed some big names in hip hop including Big K.R.I.T., 9th Wonder and Too Short to name a few.
Emily is truly a professional when it comes to making folk feel comfortable sharing their story. She hosted Sunday Night Hip Hop Slow Jams for KZBR FM and you can catch more of her interviews via YouTube: Emily Interviews.
Big ups to Ibeth Hernandez aka Strictly Bizz for continuing to introduce me to good musicians and great people. Soar Losers made an appearance in the Neighborhood and man what a good time. The crew consists of Neighborhood resident Stewart Villain and first time visitors Myke Bogan, Manny Monday and Tre Redeau.
The crew was thick that night and even though it was the first visit for a number of these guys, it felt like family for real. We played exclusive material from Manny, took the greatest number of callers in WTTN history from people showing love to Myke [and the crew] and continued the tradition of of artists doing live verses on the air. Peep the clips:
Myke Bogan made a major announcement while on the show, he's re-releasing Pretty Hesh and this time including two new tracks including a Stewart Villain remix of Kushberry Pancakes!
Remember you can always catch any episodes on WTTN that you may have missed or just want to re-experience via the podcast an http://podcast.kzme.fm/djklyph
Coming up on WTTN Neighborhood residents TxE will spend a couple of hours playing beats and talking about their latest project TxE vs. PRTLND which features G_Force flipping samples of some of Portland's favorites indie rock bands and MCs Tope* and EPP effortlessly spilling rhymes. Tune in this coming Tuesday December 3rd - a good time is promised.
Also this month, visits from OnlyOne and 9DM as they are promoting their latest release, Abadawn as he prepares for his west coast tour, Commenter-E passes through just before the Christmas holiday. You may remember he hung out last year and debuted his single "Happy Hollerdays" on the show.
We'll also have Seattle MC and member of Oldominion Xperience calling in from the road as he's on tour promoting his latest release "Revelations" and an in studio visit from Glenn Waco of The resistance. Sending 2013 off kinda nice!
Continue to tune in every Tuesday night from 8-10pm and spread the word.
Until next time!
Blessings
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
CLUBLAND!
Mark Pickerel, Miracle Falls, Sunset Valley - Kelly's Olympian, November 9, 2013
And here I thought I left late. Nope. Thanks to the benevolent fates it was all green lights and an immediate parking space (quick slide no across Washington sideways into a spot a block away, applause) and I'm camped at Kelly's Olympian spot on nine o'clock, waiting for the festivities to begin but this is a rock show, meaning it may well start at whenever o'clock, which is fine with me so long as it starts at whenever o'clock on the dot.
Anyway, what's brought me downtown on a crisp Saturday night in November is a band I actually wasn't sure was still together. Sunset Valley emerged in the mid 90's back when we still bought CDs, Kurt Cobain was only gone a year and Portland, though cool and attention-worthy, hadn't yet landed the cache to have the suffix "-ia" attached to it. Comprised of Herman Jolly, Jonathan Drews and Eric Furlong, Jeff Saltzman and Heatmiser man Tony Lash have since been added. Sunset Valley issued a handful of albums and singles/EPS that compared favorably with a wave of hook-crafted songsmith-fronted bands that swelled around that time (Sunny Day Real Estate, Matthew Sweet, that whole Elephant 6 collective). By the mid-aughts I don't recall hearing much of them and to be honest I was too consumed by the constant 'everything else' always going on in music to notice. Nonetheless they'd gained enough of a footing in my jukebox brain that when our station manager sent out an offer to see them I pounced. Not to jump back into nostalgia but because Sunset Valley always struck me as a band that brought a constant tide of promise to the table so I'm looking forward to it. First though Mark Pickerel minus his Praying Hands and then Miracle Falls who, coincidentally, played last time I was at Kelly's, opening for Australia's laurels back in May. A good night out coming I do believe
Voice in that Handsome Family range, chesty baritone that sounds as if it could build a cabin in the woods all by itself (it's no surprise that the former drummer in Screaming Trees would sound like that, I suppose, and indeed there's a certain Lanegan flavor to it). Plays acoustic as if he's maybe been classically trained. Songs sway from gothic Americana ballad to country rocker (with floor tambourine bashed at by his left foot in true one-man band fashion) to bar band troubadour sans band. "Let Me Down" easy is an early set masterpiece, starting off as a kind of lover,s lament that switches gears half way to go galloping into an emphatic hollerin' rocker. Haven't ever seen him with his band (don't even know if such a thing still exists) so don't know how this solo turn compares but as it stands now the guy can write a song, not to mention bring it and I mean bring it on a live stage. "I Study Horses" is an impassioned tour de force while in the song following, "Graffiti Girl," Pickerel's voice passes by Matt Berninger without waving, racing ahead like he's afraid of being on fire, his voice roaring with a sorrow-tinged conviction. It's not easy standing on a stage with just an acoustic and your voice but Pickerel's all command and no quaver. Not every song transports, the tail end of the set sags some but I'll still get some place early to catch him if he's on the bill - suggest you do the same - and ending his set with a rousing version of "House of the Rising Sun" only doubles down on that intention.
Well, in truth not much to add to the last post about Miracle Falls except they're all that much stronger now and I'm ready to declare them Portland's best kept secret. I'm also ready to just let the notebook go and enjoy them. There's a 90's indie vibe crashing into the trance beat of psych with shoe gazing tendencies to boot (ha!) which is just too much tangled excitement for me to handle so see you at the far end of their set...
...and here I am. Let me just say this: finishing off their evening with a mesmerizing, enchantingly jarring rendition of "Venus In Furs" with a Warhol clip of the very recently passed Lou Reed in dark shades drinking a Coca Cola on the screen behind them is a highlight that will be hard to match. It's as moving as it is reverent as it is just scorchingly good. An enormous bravo! is due them and they indeed get it. Go see this band if you get a chance (and here's their website to help you out).
Word was Kelly's was going to be sold out tonight and it would seem it's close. We're not sardined but there's not a lot of space between the leaning waiting bodies as Sunset Valley run through their soundcheck. And then, with a creeping melodic build, we're off and it's Beatles circa the White Album notched up with pure Portland energy, Jolly immediately in control, the audience in his pocket. The Tommy James & The Shondells-meet-The Pixies of "Blanketville" has the majority of the crowd in a collective state of wow and bounce, its refrain of "you make me disbelieve in time" a most appropriate theme to the entire scene of seeing SV in an Portland institution like Kelly's here in 2013. And boy, people certainly remember them, erupting in little knots of joy when this or that song begins, and/or simply thrilled to be in the presence of such an assured, in sync rock band.
Refreshingly, they're not that shy or precious about their sound, allowing themselves to indulge in the tropes of their heyday - clear pop structures, merry melodies, college party harmonies - what could, at the time, have been described as a Pacific Northwest version of Britpop and no one would have objected. Whatever you call it, it's a triumph, we're here to celebrate and we do, from the lip of the stage to the vibrating windows facing Washington. In a way, Portland was a more hopeful place back in the mid-to-late 90's in that the cultural success it's since achieved, where the New York Times can't seem to keep their journalistic hands off us, was but a nascent dream. In that sense it was a more earnest time and Sunset Valley reflect that. They'll bludgeon you with a kind of sonic hope and you'll bloody well enjoy whether you want to or not (how could you not?) Joyous, rockin' like hell, stretching for the high notes, SV are here to represent and represent they do, repping that odd sense of eternal youth that existed then (it was just for a moment, like it always is), an energy matched by their abiding tunefulness, an asset they always carried effortlessly. The band is buoyant, ebullient even, Lash bashing like the zen master he is, Jolly Drews and Furlong grooved together like the three-headed rock monster they are, "Statue Robot"'s in-the-basement boogie like an underwater Cheap Trick (where do I come up with these things? Dunno. Go with me here) is a particular highlight. But here's the deal: if you've ever wondered where someone like the Shins sprang out of, take a ride out to Sunset Valley. You'll find seeds of that stuff growing everywhere out there.
- Dave Cantrell
Thursday, October 31, 2013
DJ Klyph presents... The Movement
It would be easy to just point you to my Twitter, Facebook, website, Instagram...
It's amazing really all of the avenues available to get to "connect" with artist nowadays. But on the real, there is nothing like building community person-to-person. This is what we do, peep the visuals:
It's really become a special part of how we work, artists coming through and doing what they do LIVE!
An artist who really needs no introduction to fans of WTTN - Luck-One
Just two of the artists representing the northwest hip hop scene that you should be up on for sure. Tune in every Tuesday great music and great conversation and you can always join the conversation by calling in or connecting on social media.
Upcoming guests include Emily Berkey, TxE, Mike Bogan, Stewart Villain...the list continues to grow along with the community.
Until next time,
Be blessed,
Klyph.
It's amazing really all of the avenues available to get to "connect" with artist nowadays. But on the real, there is nothing like building community person-to-person. This is what we do, peep the visuals:
It's really become a special part of how we work, artists coming through and doing what they do LIVE!
Matty representing in the Neighborhood at KZME.
An artist who really needs no introduction to fans of WTTN - Luck-One
Just two of the artists representing the northwest hip hop scene that you should be up on for sure. Tune in every Tuesday great music and great conversation and you can always join the conversation by calling in or connecting on social media.
Upcoming guests include Emily Berkey, TxE, Mike Bogan, Stewart Villain...the list continues to grow along with the community.
Until next time,
Be blessed,
Klyph.
pets without legs: THE CABIN PROJECT
I was immediately struck by how nice all there of them are. I mean, all the folks who come out to visit with us are nice, but these three were so nice I wanted to ask them if I could join the band and be their new best friend.
I attended the CD release show at Mississippi Studios later that night and what a party it was! It was clear that I was not the only one who felt all warm and fuzzy to share in the band's celebration of releasing their second album. Fans, like myself, fed off the great energy coming off the stage as the band performed songs off of their new album and no one wanted them to stop playing. Don't you just love it when that happens at a show?
Click here for photos.
Here is a video of one of my favorite songs on the new album, called The Lining:
Heliotrope is a never-ending magical journey lead by what feels like a village of people who just know where we are headed. You can clearly feel the majesty and the down home connection between the words, the music and the music makers. Purchase the CD and listen to it during a blustery Pacific Northwest winter day or during a summer drive to the beach. You will feel better. Promise.
CONNECTIONS
Band Website
Band Facebook Page
Sunday, September 8, 2013
CLUBLAND! MFNW edition # 5
Oh hell, I'm doing the best I can. Once again arriving at Pioneer Courthouse Square well into a band's set, in this case Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, I'm there just in time for all of one and one-half songs, but their enough to charm me, those harmonies, Thao's obvious charisma, I'm pretty sure I've missed out on a perfect sunset set from the Portland/Seattle quintet so add them to my list of the gotta-see's, a recurring theme for this year's fest, though I trust it is for just about anyone dashing to and fro, trying to catch as much as possible on almost the least possible sleep. As crazy as it is, I have to admit it's part of what I like best about this festival, the frantic scheduling, the adjustments to that frantic scheduling, the running around. Makes ya feel alive, I tell ya.
After a quick bite and a glass of spilled water at Ringlers, I'm back at the Crystal waiting on Shuggie Otis, legend, visionary, scion of another legend Johnny Otis. Oddy, in my view, he's on the bill before Charles Bradley. Nothing against Mr Bradley and his many fans, he's a fine musician deserving of his following (one of which, when I was leaving after the set to catch another band elsewhere, was incredulous. "You're not staying for Charles? But he represents!"), but compared to Shuggie Otis? His stature wanes.
But in the meantime, we're treated to the soft groove soul of Morning Ritual, an ensemble I'm wholly unaware of, an organ-let five piece, two of whom are background singers a la classic Tamla/Motown. The mood is mellow, the bass exquisite. They'll be at the Mississippi Sept. 19th if you want to check them out and by the strength and sway of tonight's performance, you do.
Oh, and by the way, the Crystal is unusually sweaty tonight, even by their standards, close to unbearable but then again maybe it was that Captain Neon burger? The bite of jalapeno? Nahhhh!
But here's the deal. I take the opportunity to inch up close to the stage to take the above shot of Morning Ritual - not too crowded yet, mysteriously - and, recognizing it for the chance it is - seeing an historic performance of Shuggie Otis from this close - decide, despite the pressing heat, to stay put. This..should be good.
Trumpet, sax, bass, keys, drum and Shuggie on guitar, is that classic enough for you? They haven't even begun yet and I'm already blown away.
Trim and decked out in a black broadcoat with bright white frills spilling out at the neck and the sleeves, knee-high black riding boots and the coolest dark glasses you've ever seen (well, they're not that unusual but given who's wearing them..), Shug's the definition of star power, smiling, a man content with his legacy being finally allowed to flower.
Occasionally funk-tinged blues soul of the very best order. It's no surprise the band on are crack form, but man are they on crack form, in the groove pocket, the horn charts popping, organ providing that smoooove floor (when it's not taking the silky lead), the bass player, as usual, the coolest guy on the stage, the drummer steady-crazy good.
The (purportedly) first-time-ever-played "Special" skips along on a jouncing disco groove (sorry I keep using that word but there ain't no other) that just don't stop, it's eternal in its funkaliciousness.
With "Me And My Woman" we return to the sleek West Coast blues the man made his name in, Shuggie's blue Epiphone cryin' out in a type of pain that can't fail to bring the greatest joy to those down front here.
Naturally there are echoes of Sly, intimations of Arthur Lee & Love, but come the title track from the great 'lost' album Wings Of Love (unreleased for 30+ years, now issued with as a double with Inspiration Information, which I'd hoped to purchase at the merch table but no Shuggie to be had there, sadly), we are talking pure Shuggie Otis, a deliberate, yearning, soul stirrer of a song featuring some of his most eloquent soloing of the night, full of grace and fire and clearly the push-off point for that notorious little guy from Minneapolis that's also prone to the occasional frilly shirt, and there's little wonder Prince took what this guy had started and flew with it on, indeed, wings of love.
Superb, and I'm going to shut up now and just...groove.
I finally have to wait in a line for admission, at Roseland for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the monumental post-rock titans from Montreal. Nothing serious, ten minutes or so, and once in it's all forgotten. What an astonishingly beautiful racket. Besides being here just to hear such breathtaking noise (and it will take your breath away), I'm also trying to redeem myself for having missed them at the Aladdin back in 2000. There was little excuse for not going that time aside from a sorry lack of initiative, a state of affairs I do my best to avoid these days.
So OK, I'll just lay it out straightaway: this is psychedelic music for the over-stimulated digital age, complet with droning visuals projected on the screen behind them (makes sense if you were there, all B&W media smears and flashing bits of lost text). Symphonic, hypnotic, relentless, heavy, portentous, restless - sound like I'm describing 2013 yet? Those visuals emphasize media saturation, the sonics ambient overload. Why it's all so beautiful is another story.
Very little compares to this band - Sunn O))) maybe, Mogwai almost (not really). Apocalyptically orchestral with a taste for aching doom and the poignant hope for salvation through persistence, GY!BE are a floating soundtrack to everything that's wrong and everything that's right with the world.
They are wordless but more profound than most any other band by several miles. You don't really need to see this band (which is good, as I'm shoe-horned in at the back), there's nothing all that much to see, no presentation per se and certainly no histrionics. What you need to do is hear this band, stand there and be assailed by a building majesty, a sometimes sorrowful, sometimes hopeful, oftentimes mysterious majesty. All of this is manifested by a guitar, keyboards, a bass player, violin, the occasional cello and a double drummer drama that punctuates the soundscapes like Thor if he'd been obsessed with Wagner.
And then this word comes to mind: elegaic. Something cries in you hearing this band live, even as you rejoice. Sounds pompous but once you hear/experience them, crescendos building, resolving, then being instantly rebuilt, understanding will flow, trust me.
Sadly, by 11:00, my barely rested legs betray me, they can take it no more (absolutely no place to sit at Roseland at the moment; hardly any place to stand). Trooper that the rest of me is being, the rest of me that wants to stay, my legs declare Go home or we're falling off. Not to be argued with, surely. Yet the heavenly noise coming off the stage, riveting, seductive, it's such a marvel to witness as it's being created live and I'm almost persuaded to perservere. Almost. However, in the spirit of 'the spirit is strong but the knees are weak,' I gotta go.
Tomorrow night the finale: Neko Case.
- Dave Cantrell
After a quick bite and a glass of spilled water at Ringlers, I'm back at the Crystal waiting on Shuggie Otis, legend, visionary, scion of another legend Johnny Otis. Oddy, in my view, he's on the bill before Charles Bradley. Nothing against Mr Bradley and his many fans, he's a fine musician deserving of his following (one of which, when I was leaving after the set to catch another band elsewhere, was incredulous. "You're not staying for Charles? But he represents!"), but compared to Shuggie Otis? His stature wanes.
But in the meantime, we're treated to the soft groove soul of Morning Ritual, an ensemble I'm wholly unaware of, an organ-let five piece, two of whom are background singers a la classic Tamla/Motown. The mood is mellow, the bass exquisite. They'll be at the Mississippi Sept. 19th if you want to check them out and by the strength and sway of tonight's performance, you do.
Oh, and by the way, the Crystal is unusually sweaty tonight, even by their standards, close to unbearable but then again maybe it was that Captain Neon burger? The bite of jalapeno? Nahhhh!
But here's the deal. I take the opportunity to inch up close to the stage to take the above shot of Morning Ritual - not too crowded yet, mysteriously - and, recognizing it for the chance it is - seeing an historic performance of Shuggie Otis from this close - decide, despite the pressing heat, to stay put. This..should be good.
Trumpet, sax, bass, keys, drum and Shuggie on guitar, is that classic enough for you? They haven't even begun yet and I'm already blown away.
Trim and decked out in a black broadcoat with bright white frills spilling out at the neck and the sleeves, knee-high black riding boots and the coolest dark glasses you've ever seen (well, they're not that unusual but given who's wearing them..), Shug's the definition of star power, smiling, a man content with his legacy being finally allowed to flower.
The (purportedly) first-time-ever-played "Special" skips along on a jouncing disco groove (sorry I keep using that word but there ain't no other) that just don't stop, it's eternal in its funkaliciousness.
With "Me And My Woman" we return to the sleek West Coast blues the man made his name in, Shuggie's blue Epiphone cryin' out in a type of pain that can't fail to bring the greatest joy to those down front here.
Naturally there are echoes of Sly, intimations of Arthur Lee & Love, but come the title track from the great 'lost' album Wings Of Love (unreleased for 30+ years, now issued with as a double with Inspiration Information, which I'd hoped to purchase at the merch table but no Shuggie to be had there, sadly), we are talking pure Shuggie Otis, a deliberate, yearning, soul stirrer of a song featuring some of his most eloquent soloing of the night, full of grace and fire and clearly the push-off point for that notorious little guy from Minneapolis that's also prone to the occasional frilly shirt, and there's little wonder Prince took what this guy had started and flew with it on, indeed, wings of love.
Superb, and I'm going to shut up now and just...groove.
I finally have to wait in a line for admission, at Roseland for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the monumental post-rock titans from Montreal. Nothing serious, ten minutes or so, and once in it's all forgotten. What an astonishingly beautiful racket. Besides being here just to hear such breathtaking noise (and it will take your breath away), I'm also trying to redeem myself for having missed them at the Aladdin back in 2000. There was little excuse for not going that time aside from a sorry lack of initiative, a state of affairs I do my best to avoid these days.
So OK, I'll just lay it out straightaway: this is psychedelic music for the over-stimulated digital age, complet with droning visuals projected on the screen behind them (makes sense if you were there, all B&W media smears and flashing bits of lost text). Symphonic, hypnotic, relentless, heavy, portentous, restless - sound like I'm describing 2013 yet? Those visuals emphasize media saturation, the sonics ambient overload. Why it's all so beautiful is another story.
Very little compares to this band - Sunn O))) maybe, Mogwai almost (not really). Apocalyptically orchestral with a taste for aching doom and the poignant hope for salvation through persistence, GY!BE are a floating soundtrack to everything that's wrong and everything that's right with the world.
They are wordless but more profound than most any other band by several miles. You don't really need to see this band (which is good, as I'm shoe-horned in at the back), there's nothing all that much to see, no presentation per se and certainly no histrionics. What you need to do is hear this band, stand there and be assailed by a building majesty, a sometimes sorrowful, sometimes hopeful, oftentimes mysterious majesty. All of this is manifested by a guitar, keyboards, a bass player, violin, the occasional cello and a double drummer drama that punctuates the soundscapes like Thor if he'd been obsessed with Wagner.
And then this word comes to mind: elegaic. Something cries in you hearing this band live, even as you rejoice. Sounds pompous but once you hear/experience them, crescendos building, resolving, then being instantly rebuilt, understanding will flow, trust me.
Sadly, by 11:00, my barely rested legs betray me, they can take it no more (absolutely no place to sit at Roseland at the moment; hardly any place to stand). Trooper that the rest of me is being, the rest of me that wants to stay, my legs declare Go home or we're falling off. Not to be argued with, surely. Yet the heavenly noise coming off the stage, riveting, seductive, it's such a marvel to witness as it's being created live and I'm almost persuaded to perservere. Almost. However, in the spirit of 'the spirit is strong but the knees are weak,' I gotta go.
Tomorrow night the finale: Neko Case.
- Dave Cantrell
Saturday, September 7, 2013
CLUBLAND! MFNW edition # 4
After last night's tempest, tonight we're treated to a beautiful summer's night pall hanging over Pioneer Courthouse Square.I'd tell you all about my plans for night four of Music Fest Northwest but I just got to get straight to it. Arriving at the Square over half hour into Dan Deacon's set I find a stuffed patio of folk joyously, unhingedly sproinging around to what's obviously Dan Deacon but there is no one on stage.
There are strobes and lights a-plenty but no Dan Deacon. Turns out, enquiring of a stranger, that our Dan is down on the bricks with us, jammed against the stage, unloosing some of the slammiest indie techno dance noise ever heard on planet Earth. Frenetic but melodic but pounding and clearly utterly infectious. I don't know that I've ever just stepped into a scene like this, this sea of kids bodies hangs mid-air on Deacon's every beat. Ain't long I'm pulled slightly in then of a sudden, it ends. I'd hoped to catch thirty minutes but instead have to settle with fifteen, fifteen very catchy minutes. Alright by me, I'm now officially primed. Next up Animal Collective. Been meaning to see them for yars and yars. I do make a note to myself though: next time Dan Deacon is in town, get there on time. And with a lot of saved up energy.
There are strobes and lights a-plenty but no Dan Deacon. Turns out, enquiring of a stranger, that our Dan is down on the bricks with us, jammed against the stage, unloosing some of the slammiest indie techno dance noise ever heard on planet Earth. Frenetic but melodic but pounding and clearly utterly infectious. I don't know that I've ever just stepped into a scene like this, this sea of kids bodies hangs mid-air on Deacon's every beat. Ain't long I'm pulled slightly in then of a sudden, it ends. I'd hoped to catch thirty minutes but instead have to settle with fifteen, fifteen very catchy minutes. Alright by me, I'm now officially primed. Next up Animal Collective. Been meaning to see them for yars and yars. I do make a note to myself though: next time Dan Deacon is in town, get there on time. And with a lot of saved up energy.
Puffy plastic indecipherables on either side of - and behind - the stage. At the appointed hour distorted, f'd-up vocal samples meet up with dim flashing graphics and then the Animal Collective boys come ambling on stage, donning guitars and head lamps. Tripping time!
Somewhat low-key since 2011's album-of-the-year Merriweather Post Pavilion, it will be curious to hear where their power lies. Theirs is a difficult pop, always has been. Woozily angular, swamped at times in synthesizer washes, there's also something so centrally human to their sound, there's the excitement and doubt and jittery wonder and the uncertainty of where your next beat is coming from.
And a beats here are both murky and huge and occasionally crisp just to mix things up. Mostly what their sound is, though, is busy. Not a lot of space in Animal Collective songs. Once they get going they go in several angles all at once, somehow converging into a splendid whole. How they do it is the crux of their success. Repeated motifs dominate, vocals sometimes secondary, backgrounded as if they're meant to reflect our ultimate voicelessness in the face of all the noise going on around us all the time.
But - and this is paramount - AC are never 'theoretical,' they don't get lost in being analytical, though, okay, 'cerebral' can be attached to them, no point disputing that. At one point I'm reminded of Lemon Jelly, at others (gasp) Vampire Weekend, meaning there's an undercurrent of playfulness in the air here and it can be hypnotic even as that cerebreality arches over our heads in neon splendor.
Predominant though is the trippyness, music lysergic enough to withstand the fog machines. It's not a stretch to be reminded of Pink Floyd's early years at The UFO Club, though we're more structured here, there's no improv excursions driving into the dawn and here I guess we get to the nubbin: Animal Collective practice the ancient craft of expensive head music within a prescribed framework, each song a psychedelic snapshot, at least sonically.
All of which, come to think, speaks to this time we're living in pretty succinctly. Wanna trip out but not all night, we're too busy, got things to do in the morning.
But boy do they hit complexity's sweet spot and do it often. Not often remarked upon, in fact, is exactly that, the sweetness inherent in Animal Collective's sound. Almost always challenging in some way, seldom do they lose sight of such a central niceties as hook and melody, even if it does frequently sound like those hooks and melodies are coming from four or five different songs all at once. They are in a rarefied league with Dirty Projectors, and as stated in last year's blog post of that show, I've got some prog rock fans that are missing out. There may not be the same emphasis on virtuosity - though these lands can surely play - but that sublimely controlled sense of soon-to-drift-off-the=rails would pull in any Soft Machine fan if only they'd let themselves be pulled in.
As always I do my best to spread the word and after tonight's performance I'll be even more of an Animal Collective evangelist.
I arrive back it Branx (see MFNW blog post # 3) discover two things: an unholy face-melting (but in a good way) racket and, I forgot my ear plugs at home. Oh well, I've lasted this long.
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Wooden Indian Burial Ground are a kind of three headed blues-based boogie psychedelic animal, a Portland power trio that has no truck with any notion of pulling punches. Whatever the guitarist (it's either Justin, Dan, or Paul; an internet search was fruitless in determining who's who) is singing is surely immaterial, this is raw paint-peeling noise (good thing it's exposed brick walls in here) but truly? They're great, a throwback to the Monsters of Rock of yore and naturally stuff like this is always refreshing at least for a while. I've been here 15 minutes so far and I'm still giddily on board. I'll keep you apprised.
One thing's clear: I'll walk out after their set thinking 'That was a blast' and too right I'll be. All that said, though, it's not as if WIBG isn't without sufficient tuneage as they decidedly are. Barrage rock as they may be, the Nuggets-ready (better make that Pebbles-ready) hook quotient is fully present.
Another band I've been waiting to see, its nice to check them off the list and they end with a stormer, much indebted to Alvin Lee & Ten Years After, on the one hand rougher and more garage, on the other, the guitarist, midway, abandons actual guitar and twiddles a suitcase of knobs wherein samples of his guitar runs. Pretty damn cool and in the end I don't care where they come from, that boy can play and he's got the jet fuel rhythm section necessary to help propel you right out of the water. Go see them next time you have a chance, just remember your ear plugs.
I'm back in a very crowded Branx in time for Unknown Mortal Orchestra's set but I have to come clean. For one, the pen I had been using since the original faded on me back at Pioneer Courthouse Square, the spare I pulled from my bag, well, I left it back in the car when I was dictating the above paragraphs. So, no notes. And for two: the wall was finally hit (too bad it was an exposed brick one, eh?), the last hiss of steam fizzled out of me and I was done. I sat for a time in the entryway to Branx, soaking up what wondrous last strains of UMO that I could before being forced to drift in a near coma back to my car and head home. Knew it was going to be a test to hit the first three nights of MFNW while getting up to go to work at 5:40 every morning and I'm pleased I made it this far and didn't see the wall coming until I hit it. So, sorry about that, sorry to UMO, but that just means I'll have to make a special effort to see them the next time they play the Mississippi or wherever. But the good news is, I'm all rested up now, just about to head out the door for Saturday night's go-round. Hoping for Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Shuggie Otis, Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Depends on the lines, depends on the whims of the moment. See you tomorrow.
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