If we might say so ourselves, NIGHTCLUBBING is on fire. Everyone knows Thursday is the best night of the week to party. And the party people know NIGHTCLUBBING brings in the best djs in the world and highlights the best of the local scene to produce an un-miss-able dance party each and every month. This week they welcome perennial favs Runaway!!!!!
Brooklyn's Marcos Cabral & Jacques Renault have steadily been releasing dance floor burners under the Runaway pseudonym since 2007. From their introductory 12" gem "Ain't Afraid To Beg / Shadows" on Wurst, through current releases on their own On The Prowl imprint, the duo show no signs of slowing down. Over the years their output includes tracks on DFA (including NIGHTCLUBBING staple "Brooklyn Club Jam"), Rekids, I'm a Cliche, Chinatown, Aus, Wurst, Mule Musiq, Endless Flight, Play Out!, Throne Of Blood, Hell Yeah, Money Studies, Needwant, Solardisco, Crue-L, and Permanent Vacation / Service. Aside from music production, these guys are amazing DJs. Expect a perfect mixture of Disco and House, as could be heard in the coolest most exclusive Brooklyn loft party.
And once again NIGHTCLUBBING'S resident house band Miracles Club will be performing live! Unless you've been camping out at Dugan Falls all summer certainly you've seen the way these guys and gals can wip a crowd into an absolute frenzy. Let's find out how their West Coast tour went (it was amazing!).
And of course your gracious hosts for the evening will be Linger & Quiet who continue to tighten their grip on the hearts of the Portland dance crowd with extended, eclectic dj sets at NIGHTCLUBBING and their steadily sublime podcast: Linger & Quiet Radio.
Please join us from 5-8pm for our weekly Aperitivo Happy Hour, which--in European style--features an impressive array of free appetizers straight from the Holocene kitchen (while they last). We'll also have great (and cheap!) Cava, and delightful Continental cocktails. This week we welcome once again the ADD-friendly, 90s-nostalgic, and completely fun DJ duo of Gordon Shumway and Baba Booie!
Come celebrate the release of Mind-Reader, the latest from local disco-pop wonders Strength!
"Three guys make strutting vocal disco that drips with sex in the style of Rod Stewart's "D'ya Think I'm Sexy" and Rolling Stones' "Miss You."" -XLR8R
"Holy shit, you haven't lived until you've seen Strength live. No matter the venue--sweaty basement show, radio station benefit or drunken hipster club--the boys of Strength put on an incredible show that is unrivaled in this city. And for what really amounts to, umm, gay Euro-disco, the band's songs have mad hooks. The kind of hooks that get stuck in your head for days. The kind of hooks that make you lose your shit and flail your arms in the air, singing along to songs about pouring brandy on your lover and cruising in a non-cruising zone. Each and every word is sung from the Jagger-lite lips of frontman Bailey Winters without a hint of irony, and the band puts the equally jubilant sound of like-minded act U.S.E. to shame. So get off your ass and go dance this mess around. You won't regret it." - Willamette Week
World domination, butts, drank, money, records, but mostly butts.
ABSOLUTELY /THE/ DANCE PARTY FOR LABOR DAY WEEKEND. From its humble beginnings in 2002 as a small birthday party for a few friends, Booty Bassment has grown into one of California's best rap-based dance clubs. Veteran DJs Dimitri Dickinson and Ryan Poulsen have turned this night into a success with monthly installments in San Diego and San Francisco, and now Portland!
A FREE indie rock party, brought you by your friends at Future Sounds, Cravedog, Pampelmoose, Trumer Pils, Tonegazer, KBOO, Music Millennium, and High Scores and Records! Trumer Pils specials all night!
DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR.
Our love for DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR. knows no bounds, as this Detroit based duo are crafting infectious blissed out psych-folk rock coupled with thumping drum beats. DEJJ are all over the place right now and the chance to see them before they blow up is not to be missed.
"Pay special attention to "Nothing But Our Love," a somber lover man jam that is a perfect track for a summer night. "Vocal Chords" ain't bad either." - Prefix Mag
NORMAN
NORMAN are an alt-country five-piece in the vein of Blitzen Traper with the haunting qualities of Fleet Foxes that we can't get enough of. Their sophomore release Hay, Hay Make a Wish and Turn Away is full of folky/soulful gems like "No Clouds," that we can't wait to see on stage.
"Their blend of alt-ish country and folk-pop are catchy and upbeat," - Bona Fide Darling
ONUINU
ONUINU (formerly Tropics/Deau Bird), aka Dorian Duvall, is part of the tape revival permeating PDX after his spot at the Ape Tapes party this month. Riding the wave of chilled out ambient tunes, ONUINU brings the bouncy psych-shoegaze with tracks like "Born a Satellite" and "Feel Free."
Come celebrate the release of the debut recording from STLS, a 7" on Kill Rock Stars, plus the release of a split 7" between Palo Verde and Hot Victory!
STLS is two women performing drums -- just drums. Lisa Schonberg (Explode into Colors, Kickball) and sts (The Haggard, Cadallaca) play standing up, facing each other, on two drum sets. Their sound is huge and their syncopations are rhythmically energizing and entrancing. Their drumming utilizes the tones and textures of the drums to play melodic patterns that recreate the dynamic structure of a typical pop song. The band was born out of an invitation by a friend to come to NYC and perform entirely percussion-based shows. STLS played their first shows at the Art Book Fair at PS 1 and at an art installation by Fritz Haeg, and have since continued to perform in interesting and unexpected settings, as well as the usual venues, in the Northwest, California, and NYC, often collaborating in performance with dancer Janet Pants.
Portland Mercury writes of Palo Verde: "Everyone's favorite female improv sludge rock duo...Drummer Lauren K. Newman combines her musical skills with guitarist Terrica Kleinknecht in live collaborations that bring brutal drum solos and bruising, pedal-fed riffage to the sonic limits."
Willamette Week writes of Hot Victory: "Metallic, bombastic, trippy, uplifting and often rudderless for long stretches...no matter who Hot Vic plays with, I dare say the band is a shoe-in to steal the show."
Cold Cave are an experimental electronic pop group from Philadelphia and New York City who make melodic synthscapes with jackhammer beats. They acknowledge the dark roots of synthesizer music as well as its potential for making the brightest pop with their hard songs celebrating the contradictory beauty of the human condition. Cold Cave strive for balance, between the ugly and the beautiful, between rupture and rapture. As with their ancestors, for Cold Cave the synthesizer is as much about mayhem as it is melody. It is a means of conveying, via dissonance, ideas about disturbance and decay as effectively as the harshest guitar rock. It comes as no surprise to learn that mainman Wesley Eisold is a writer with a past in hardcore punk and noise bands. Caralee McElroy has spent the past few years performing and recording with the acclaimed Xiu Xiu. Manhattan-based Dominick Fernow is known for for performing as the noise group Prurient, and as the owner of the NYC record store and label Hospital Productions.
Reporter: In a dark room, through a haze induced by fog machines, you observe celestial projections and pulsing lights. An infectious sound floods your brain-space, a driving synth-rock voyage guided by a female voice which commands attention in its come-hither breathiness. You can hardly make out the shadowy figures responsible for this electrifying experience, and much to the chagrin of photogs, you won't have much luck capturing their live set on camera. However, this disassociation proves blissful: you find yourself dissolving into their sonic atmospherics, dissolving into the packed dance-floor where your body is part of a massive, churning tide. This transcendent experience is called Reporter. It's been popping up in warehouses, nightclubs and basements all over Portland, Oregon for the past several years.
Please join us from 5-8pm for our weekly Aperitivo Happy Hour, which--in European style--features an impressive array of FREE appetizers straight from the Holocene kitchen (while they last). We'll also have great (and cheap!) Cava, and delightful Continental cocktails. Tunes aptly selected by DJ Stoned Werewolf (Niko from Sex Life), whose eclectic taste should make for a blissful arty party on this early fall evening...
AU (pronounced "Ay-you") is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. Currently a full time duo with Dana Valatka on drums, it is a loosely defined amalgam of players that can swell to double digit numbers with full choir in tow and sees some of Portland's finest lending a helping hand. Their experimental pop seamlessly segues through new and unlikely ecstatic extremes with an arresting economy. These warm, Appalachia-informed gems have found many favorable comparisons to the far-reaching likes of Arnold Dreyblatt, Animal Collective, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Grizzly Bear.
Tiny Mix Tapes raves of AU: "It would take a malcontent of the highest order to find many faults with this superb example of modern songwriting."
On her latest album Kairos, we find White Hinterland exploring the edges of minimal pop, accomplishing a delicate but lively seduction through deep, patient bass throbs, prismatic synth textures, and direct, intimate songs sung with an empowered gravitas. Here Casey Dienel tailors the acrobatics of her former songwriting into a slender focus, folding it into deeper grooves. Beneath the baroque arrangements and intellectual lean of Dienel's previous musical efforts was a sexiness that Kairos exposes, showing the artist for what she is: powerful and comfortable in her own skin, with a glittery voice weaned on pop R&B.
Guitarist Jason Buehler and percussionist Mark Shirazi have been carrying the name Nice Nice since 1999. The intense rhythmic dialogue heard in their songs speaks volumes about the connection between the two as they layer runaway melodies and free-form noise into some of the most creative beat-based rock music you will ever hear. Most shocking is the fact that it's largely improvisational and always live. No overdubs, no samples. Certainly not the first band to successfully trap virtuoso playing into loops that you can dance to, Nice Nice has definitely done so with the least amount of pretense, making it both intellectually stimulating and fun as hell to listen to.
Big Freedia is the recognized "Queen Diva" of Bounce Music in New Orleans, where she performs six or more times a week in various venues throughout the city. Bounce Music is an original urban music rising up from the intimate and fun-loving nature of the New Orleans housing projects which dominate the city's street culture, and Freedia performs a derivative of Bounce reserved for self-proclaimed "Sissies" that has risen to prominence in recent years and features explicitly gay and cross-dressing musicians and themes. Since 2009 Freedia has begun traveling outside the city regularly with her dancers and live DJ, Rusty Lazer, playing to audiences on the East and West Coast alongside (or onstage with) artists such as Spank Rock, Galactic, Ninjasonik, Japanther, Monique and many more.
Since January 2009, Friends of Family Farmers has hosted InFARMation (and Beer!) each month in Portland. This is an opportunity to bring the issues that Oregon family farmers face onto the radar of urban consumers, and the community in general. The topic changes each month, but always focuses on the larger picture of the connection between food and farms in our state. When eaters connect with farmers, it makes our food web stronger, and real changes in our local food system are possible. InFARMation (and Beer!) is always free and open to the public, on the 2nd Tuesday of each month from 5:30-8:30pm.
Tuesday September 14: Organics! More info to follow.
Dark and ethereal psych-pop from San Francisco's Tamaryn.
ADVANCE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROWNPAPERTICKETS + PORTLAND MERCURY.
Following a spate of EPs and singles comes the debut album by Tamaryn on Mexican Summer, entitled The Waves. After collaborating with producer Rex John Shelverton (ex-Vue/The Audience/Portraits of Past), Tamaryn left New York and settled in Rex's hometown of San Francisco to record their first full-length. Whereas Tamaryn's earlier material was rooted in traditional goth-psych overtones, The Waves represents an incredible step forward in terms of her approach. These nine songs combine driving pop and lush balladry with layered, guitar-driven ethereal atmospheres, against which Tamaryn's voice, languid and restrained, melts against its surface. The Waves is a masterful collision of hypnotic psychedelia and bittersweet dream pop.
"Another band from San Francisco? Yes, but while many Bay Area bands are embracing a breezy, clean, light-dappled aesthetic, SF duo Tamaryn have a comparatively dense sound that seems to come from miles away from Golden Gate Park-- like the Nevada desert, maybe, something heard while squinting at the midday sun amidst its blazing heat... There's nothing like the element of surprise, and on "Sandstone" Tamaryn utilize it well, choosing to bury you in slow-burning beauty before the magic starts to wear off." - Pitchfork
Please join us from 5-8pm for our weekly Aperitivo Happy Hour, which--in European style--features an impressive array of free appetizers straight from the Holocene kitchen (while they last). This week's musical stylings are provided by that connoisseur of Soft Rock, DJ Kendall Holladay...
Kendall Holladay Soft Rock Dee-Jay is taking care of your Friday eve with a Soft Rock Happy Hour @ Holocene. From 5-8 pm, Kendall will be playing only the best to satisfy your Soft Rock needs: America, Seals & Crofts, Bob Welch, Bread, Ambrosia and other stalwarts of the softest pop era ever. A seasoned practioner of the Soft Rock aesthetic, Kendall wades through the muck of Michael Bolton and the mire of "I Just Called To Say I Love You" to get to the heart of the matter: soft guitars, warm drum sounds, maybe a flute, and the softest, smoothest vocals that grown-up, bearded men were able to get away with. All played on the original vinyl of the day to enhance the "rec room" vibe. Grab a white wine spritzer, cozy up to your lover or friends and let Kendall Holladay Soft Rock you.
ROCKBOX is a dance party. Pure and Simple. The triumvirate of DJ KEZ (KBOO, THE FIX), Matt Nelkin (KPSU), and Dundiggy (THE FIX) play a masterfully blended mix of fun, dance oriented Hiphop, R&B, and Old School Electro with a dash of Bmore, Dancehall, 80s, and House thrown in for good measure.
As die-hard record collectors all three Dj's play exclusively vinyl. Every set and every ROCKBOX dance party is a custom experience with these cats digging into their seemingly bottomless crates to pull out the beats that make you want to sweat out the work week. More than just another gig for these talented three, ROCKBOX dance party represents their long held vision of merging the classics alongside the progressive.
Berlin-based sonic architect Pantha du Prince threads found sound meditations through techno landscapes, for a dance party unlike any you've experienced.
ADVANCE TICKETS FOR THIS EVENT ARE AVAILABLE AT BROWNPAPERTICKETS, JACKPOT RECORDS, AND PORTLAND MERCURY.
On his new album, the producer and DJ Pantha du Prince, who lives in Berlin and Paris, claims: music slumbers in all matter; any sound, even silence, is already music. The mission, then, must be to render audible what is unheard and unheard of: black noise, a frequency that is inaudible to man. Black noise often presages natural disasters, earthquakes or floods; only some animals perceive this "calm before the storm." Black noise is something archaic and earthy. Some tracks on Pantha du Prince's third album--the first to be released on Rough Trade--are based on field recordings and improvisations produced in collaboration with Joachim Schütz (Arnold Dreyblatt Trio) and Stephan Abry (Workshop) in the Swiss Alps. On his quest for the magical acoustic moment, Pantha du Prince burrows through the acoustic debris. He transforms the materiality of the fundamental sounds found or recorded on the Swiss Alp (natural noises and avant-garde folklore) into an expansive and highly speculative acoustic architecture. The music on Black Noise balances precariously on the slippery threshold between art and nature, between techno and folklore. Although the music goes beyond the conventional techno format in a variety of ways, the dramaturgy always remains intelligible and physically captivating. An introductory phase that is on the somber side ends in euphoric relief with "Stick to my side," a postmodern hymn, inimitably sung by Noah Lennox a.k.a. Animal Collective's Panda Bear. Another guest on Black Noise is Tyler Pope of !!! and LCD Soundsystem, who plays bass in "The Splendour." In addition to Detroit techno (thus in "Behind the Stars," a made-for-Ibiza killer) and deep, stumbling house of the Theo Parrish variety, Pantha du Prince a.k.a. Hendrik Weber's introverted brand of tripping techno draws on traditions of British pop, including Durutti Column's avant la lettre shoegaze and noisepop. Having played bass in the Hamburg-based band Stella, Hendrik Weber has plenty of indie rock experience under his belt. Influenced by electro-acoustic neo-avantgardes (Morton Subotnick, Luigi Nono), Krautrock and deep techno, he shapes a novel kind of club music that is probably best described by the term "sonic house." Black Noise blurs a whole number of antitheses: acoustic v. synthetic, powerful v. fragile, epic v. bashful, catchy v. mysterious. The most diverse acoustic sources and moods are folded into one another and bathed in an imposingly well-composed continuum. Pantha du Prince is still a Romantic Conceptualist. And the message we hear him murmuring: beauty is possible even after the disaster; where there was debris and noise, there shall be great art.
Holocene's annual record fair and local label celebration returns for another year of top-notch mingling, peddling, and local love!
Local record labels present this evening will include: Marriage Records, Kill Rock Stars, K Records, Gnar/UHU Tapes, High Scores and Records, Eggy Tapes, Tender Loving Empire, Bladen County Records, Jealous Butcher, Community Library, Slender Means Society, Boomarmnation, and more!
An evening with Creative Music Guild, the non-profit Portland institution which seeks to nurture and further our community of experimental and improvised music.
We are losing our MINDS over the complete and utter awesomeness of this bill! Do NOT sleep on this one - get your ticket now to see this unfuckwithable lineup.
ADVANCE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT BROWNPAPERTICKETS, JACKPOT RECORDS, AND PORTLAND MERCURY.
Born out of the love of hip hop's ethos to consistently push the boundaries forward by extrapolating what was unique about the past and what is radically refreshing about the future, Radioclit's Etienne Tron and Johan Karlberg have teamed up with Malawian songsmith Esau Mwamwaya to form The Very Best, an epic global partnership with the sole aim to re write western pop rules in a language which is not English. Esau who moved to London 7 years ago ran into Etienne in the second hand furniture store he ran in Hackney, located on the same road as their production studio. After regular chats about the state of global music the French/Swedish DJ/Production duo decided to invite Esau into the studio to lay down some betas, what was born out of fun and a mutual love of rhythm became something far grander. Fans and enablers of Ghettopop and bongo dance, Radioclit have patiently been accumulating friends in high places, heralded by Justice, Erol Alkan, 2 Many DJ's, Annie Mac, Pete Tong etc. As Producers they've painted their unique style colaborating with artists like Tv On The Radio, M.I.A, Bonde Do Role, Diplo, Santogold etc. Their collaboration with Esau is the birth of a great partnership allowing a Pop platform for traditional African Harmonies and Hymns.
Co-headlining the show is Warpaint, who weave intricate guitar lines, hypnotic vocals and driving post punk rhythms into gorgeous, sprawling songs that skirt the line between psychedelia and intimacy. Both live and on record, Warpaint sound like they're channeling something truly otherworldly, and mystical. Rough Trade will release their long-awaited debut full-length album The Fool on October 26th. Combining dreamy ambiance with razorblade-sharp lyrics, the foursome (Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman on guitar, Jenny Lee Lindberg on bass, and Stella Mozgawa on drums) trade off vocal duties, which adds dimension and textures to the group's already rich sound.
In the last year, Zola Jesus's profile has grown exponentially. Her video for "Clay Bodies" debuted on The Fader and her likeness was plastered all over the Internet. She's made dozens of year-end lists including The Wire, Pitchfork, The Fader, and Dusted. She will be heading out on her first proper tours this fall, (three of them back-to-back, actually) supporting Fever Ray and Xiu Xiu abroad and The xx stateside. Born and raised in the backwoods of Wisconsin, Zola Jesus, aka 21 year old Nika Roza Danilova, was literally raised by wolves (well proximally anyways). Trained as an opera singer from a young age, she applied to Julliard. At 10 years old. Rejection didn't slow her down, though, as she went on to complete high school in three years and just graduated from university with a double major in French and philosophy in the same amount of time. Her latest EP, Valusia, will be out on October 12. Gone are the morose, gothic lo-fi vibes, and in their place is a tightly produced, airy, almost dance sound that still sounds as true to form as other endeavor Danilova has ever undertaken.
Featuring an amalgamation of DJs from around the city, this thing promises to be a dance party staple for the ages. We want to see Esprit, Bum Equipment, Mossimo, overall shorts, Cross Colors, all that..Think Ninja Turtles, Crystal Clear Pepsi, Bill playin sax and Frankie says relax. Pay homage to Color Me Badd, White Town, BBD and a young Snoop D O double G. If you can still do The Running Man, The Whop, Kid 'n' Play or that jiggle thing across the stage that MC Hammer used to do, then you'll fit right in...We're gonna sex you up, knock your boots and maybe even zoom a zoom zoom in your boom boom.
The fine folks at Floating World Comics have dug even deeper into the vaults of psychedelic animation to curate a heroic dose of visionary video art for this year's animation fest.
For our fourth annual animation fest it was time to focus on what we liked best from previous shows and continue to seek out films that really embrace the infinite mysteries that resonate with us. The result is DMTV, a program that goes further into experimental realms of video art and abstract visuals.
Highlights of this year's program include:
Travel, aka The Trip (1973) -- Kihachiro Kawamoto studied puppet animation in Prague in 1963 before going on to create his own haunting puppet and cut-out animations drawing from his own Japanese heritage. Travel depicts the journey of a young girl into the Dali-esque landscape of her own psyche.
Apeiron (1996) -- Eurico Coelho depicts a modern technological labyrinth where society has surrendered to the cold lamps of their computer screens. The entirety of this ten minute film was animated on a Commodore Amiga 4000, giving the film a completely fresh aesthetic that has outlived the technology with which it was created.
Whose Toes (2009) -- Barry Doupé's films are as surreal as any Lynch or Jodorowsky movie, but with an added level of weirdness because they are rendered with Sims-like polygon graphics. Showcasing the late Princess Diana and JFK as its main characters, we are invited to return to past events that have caused discomfort, and to re-imagine a misstep in time.
The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D (2009) -- This original animated web series is based on graphic novelist and comic book artist Dash Shaw's latest book of the same title. Shaw's animation has been widely praised for its eclectic style, innovative design and emotional depth.
