Slender Gems, Neilson Family, Electric Izakaya – 21+
Slender Gems:Formed in 2018 by longtime DIY musician Jordan LeVeque (lead vocals, guitar), whose punk rock bonafides include a stint as the final resident/booker of North Portland standby Fail House, Slender Gems are a murderer’s row of some of the city’s finest musical talents: rounding out the group are Malcolm Gillooly (bass), Ben Bilotti (guitar), Jack Stringer (drums). Equally influenced by the big, opened-tuned chords of 90s slacker-rock and the elegant shredding of 70s AOR, they are at once grandiose and intimate, with LeVeque’s acerbic observations of our spiritually bankrupt world, a resounding clarion call over their guitar pyrotechnics. Neilson Family:Neilson Family is a guitar rock band from Southeast Portland. Founded in the summer of 2018, they recorded an album (Double Life), released said album, recorded another album (Be Normal), and went on tour. Then the pandemic happened. As is the case with so many in this world, it made them weird. After releasing what was perhaps their finest effort into a quarantined void, recording hundreds of demos, suffering dozens of existential crises per member, learning, forgetting and subsequently relearning innumerable songs, they grew into a new sound. It retains the chiming guitars, sweet vocal harmonies, and wry lyrics of their previous efforts, but adds new elements that reflect this frenetic, fractured age: shifting tempos, odd time signatures, and international flavors. Electric Izakaya: An experimental musical dish from Portland, Oregon that is based in hip-hop grooves, served over a bed of jazz harmony, and garnished with atmospheric flakes of ambient music. A dish best served chilled.
Self Group Collective 14th BDAY Bash! – w/ Yardsss, Glacial Fall, Ellipsism – Benefit for Outside In & Sisters of the Road – 21+
Self Group Collective is celebrating 14 years of DIY collectivism! Since 2010 the collective has been working together in an anarcho-syndicalist practice sharing resources, access to the means to produce and maintain full control and agency over the methods, direction and creative output of each member’s own labor and art. No lone straw holding the cup.This also marks the return and first Yardsss ∅∀‡ show since Rx Fest in February of 2020. As with all SGC events this is a benefit for local PDX nonprofits. Profits from B14 go to Outside In and Sisters of the Road.Additionally SGC will be collecting non-perishable food and cold weather supply donations during the event to distribute to our houseless neighbors. All are encouraged to bring any items they would like to donate and have distributed.Music byYardsss ∅∀‡ • www.selfgroup.org/yardsssGlacial Fall • www.glacialfall.bandcamp.comEllipsism • www.selfgroup.org/ellipsismVisuals by Easy • www.instagram.com/its_easy_okBenefittingSisters of the Road • www.sistersoftheroad.orgOutside In • www.outsidein.org Advance tickets at $10, $15 or $20 (give at the level you’re able to)
Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group, YAWA (Amenta Abioto), Jacque Hammond – 21+
Be Present Art Group:Portland’s finest practitioners of Great Black Music. A spiritual record for the ages. Roman Norfleet And Be Present Art Group play deeply felt sometimes earthy and sometimes cosmic music. A trio (sax, drums and organ) are augmented by additional percussion, soaring vocals and even a vocal appearance by a toddler. This record will take you where you need to go. Don’t miss history in the making. Across six expansive tracks, Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group build from free-flowing ceremony through meditative groove-based prayer and into full-on gales of improvised music. “We build our own time,” Norfleet said, a collective act of liberation through sound. Raised in the Baptist church and trained in the Hindu/Vedic philosophy of Swamini Turiyasangitanada (Alice Coltrane), Portland multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Roman Norfleet travels a lineage of Great Black Music and the world’s spiritualities on his debut for Mississippi Records. The album emerged out of drum gatherings in Washington DC’s Malcolm X Park – a pocket of freedom built on collective improvisation and shared rhythm. In Portland, Norfleet gathered a collective of artists including Jacque Hammond and members of Brown Calculus to transmit the spirit of those DC sessions.A formative encounter with Pharoah Sanders furthered the young saxophonist’s journey via the spaceways, through Sun Ra and into the universe of contemporaries like Angel Bat Dawid.YAWA (Amenta Abioto): Amenta Abioto is a singer, songwriter, producer, performance artist from Memphis, TN. In her one-woman show, she builds vocal and instrumental loops from kalimba, synthesizer, drum machine, and guitar creating atmospheric textures. Weaved into syncopated rhythms and dichotomies of comedic proportions, Amenta surprises and tantalizes audiences with mind bending ideas while skipping musically from soul-shaking gospel to smooth jazz. Boldly mystical and soul-fired, her raw live performances invoke elements of both theatrical surprise and magic through ancient African diasporic sounds and stories. Amenta studied drama and was familiarized with the stage. Her solo project made debut in at house show in Spring of 2012. Since then, Amenta has released three projects and toured with The Blow, Secret Drum Band, Typhoon, and The Ghost Ease.Jacque Hammond:Jacque Hammond is a genre-bending singer-songwriter based in Portland. She is a driven, passionate, and charismatic artist with a unique approach to R&B and more. Her music blends the organic feel of old beloved soul classics with the punch and appeal of contemporary music. After picking up a used guitar in 2011, the instrument has been a key component of her songwriting and evolution as an artist. Originally from Joliet,Illinois, she has been based in both Los Angeles and Portland. She released her first albumElbow Room in 2016, which led her song “Two” to be featured on OWN Network’s Original TV show Queen Sugar. Her song “Stuck” also made a debut on Tribeca Film’s and Hulu’s original documentary “Ballet After Dark”. Jacque has written, produced, and performed with several artists including Kelsey Lu, and opened for artists like Sonnymoon. Her latest EP Green is a funky new spin on her classic sound. It’s all about spontaneous energy, uplifting melodies, and emotional vocal performances that connect with the audience on a deeper level.
Forester – w/ Leo Islo (DJ Set) – 21+
The systems of nature are at once deeply complex and gracefully simple. Given that Forester’s music functionssimilarly, it makes sense that they named themselves after the woods.The Los Angeles-based indie electronic duo, David Parris and Xander Carlson, make lush soundscapes both inspiredby and evocative of views from a mountain, deep pink sunsets, wind through the trees and the stars on a clear night.The nourishing effect these things have on a human soul? That’s how they want their music to make you feel. Thecool thing is that it does.“There’s a section along the trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney called Forester Pass,” Carlson says. “Hiking it wasone of the most impactful experiences of my life. The freedom I felt up there, we’re trying to put that energy in themusic.”Based in Los Angeles, the longtime friends launched the Forester project in 2019, working nine-to-five gigs andmaking music together at night. They experienced immediate success with their debut single “Spark” – a deep exhaleof a track that was picked up by YouTube tastemaker Trap Nation, signed to its label Lowly Palace and has sincecollected more than 5.7 million streams on Spotify. True to its name, the song was an auspicious beginning thatcaught the ear of an A&R at Kygo’s Palm Tree Records, where Forester signed in 2020.This was all of course happening in the dark heart of the pandemic, a moment that offered Parris and Carlson, boththen recent college grads, time to just make music. They got in the car and drove north to Carlson’s family cabin inMammoth Lakes, California, on the eastern slope of the vast Sierra Nevada mountain range.“Nobody was around, stores were closed,” Carlson recalls. “We spent months there creating music. It was a prolifictime for us.”Here, at 8,000 feet, the guys further developed the Forester sound, which falls into a dreamy, achingly emotional andthoroughly sophisticated, middle ground between the indie folk of Bon Iver – a hero to both Parris and Carlson – andmelody-focused electronic giants like Avicii. The music made in the mountains became their 2020 sophomore LP, ARange Of Light. The album’s theme is healing through nature – a phenomenon they experienced while making it, withtime off spent swimming, hiking, off-roading in the back country and taking in the night sky.The Forester catalog now encompasses three albums: A Range Of Light, 2019’s Kerosene and 2022’s Watercolor.Together, these LPs have collected an incredible 72.7 million global streams, in addition to a growing fanbase madeup of both longstanding dance fans and scene newcomers.Forester has been meeting these fans out on the road, playing their first live show in June of 2021 at Colorado’s epicRed Rocks Amphitheatre when they opened for Kygo. The Norwegian powerhouse also invited them to open for himat his massive summer 2022 stadium shows in Oslo and Mexico City, gigs that put the duo in front of tens ofthousands of fans. Outsidelands 2022 in San Francisco found Forester not only doing their hypnotic live set – forwhich Carlson sings and plays synths while Parris handles guitar — but playing a DJ gig later that night.A pillar of the project is the preservation of the nature that’s inspired them, with the guys donating a portion of the revenue from their first album to The Nature Conservancy, who used it to plant roughly 1,000 trees. Their ultimate goal is for their streaming to be at net zero carbon emissions.“The Forester project is ultimately a conservation project,” Carlson says. “We want to spread the word that our planetis both beautiful and irreplaceable.”
Abronia, Ak’chamel, Derek Monypeny – presented by Megalith and Holocene — 21+
Abronia (words from Byron Coley) A lot of bands who fly the psych banner these days have a minimalist view of the music, and choose a sort of post-shoegaze lassitude to present their “vision.” This can be astoundingly great, of course, but it also fails to address the central gobble-crazed nature of true psychedelia. Many of history’s greatest psych outfits were hewn from bizarre hybrids of disparate parts. Frankenstein monsters in search of sacred ecstasy. One gets the same vibe off of Abronia. Totally unexpected bits pop up amidst their rhapsodic jamming, conjuring shards of memory as disparate as Relf-era Renaissance, Joseph Byrd’s United States of America, and even (at least in spots) real early Siouxsie. These are just a few examples of how wide Abronia cast their net. Their instrumental brunt moves from neo-prog to folk rock to thunderheads cast in the same mold as the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s (I shit you not!). Derek Monypeny Born in the Arizona desert, a veteran of multiple explorations into the Sahara desert via Morocco and Western Sahara, and now a resident of the Mojave, Derek Monypeny sees his musical mission as adding to and expanding on what he calls the “desert continuum;” the psychedelic sirocco swirl of desert-based stringed instruments played with utter abandon by musicians the world over. Derek is a former member of the bands Oaxacan (Oakland, CA), ALTO! (Portland, OR), and Sir Richard Bishop’s Freak Of Araby Ensemble. In addition to his solo work, he has an ongoing duo project with Bryan Hillebrandt, OAE (Oakland Afternoon Ensemble). He has performed and toured with artists such as Bill Orcutt, Jozef van Wissem, Eva Aguila/Kevin Shields, Arrington de Dionyso, and many others. Ak’chamel Ak’chamel, The Giver of Illness is an enigmatic duo from a border state. Fourth World Post-Colonial Cultural Cannibalists Circumcising The Foreskin of Enlightenment.Performing in homemade costumes and masks, they have played festivals in various cities around the U.S gaining international attention from Vice, The Wire, Tiny Mix Tapes, Consequence of Sound, and many more. They have amassed over 10 cassette albums and 1 VHS full length film.
Ethan Bortnick: Luna Park Tour
with special guest ivriThis event is All Ages OFFICIAL TICKETS:ETIX is the official ticketing source and partner of Holocene. The official website of Holocene is holocene.org. We cannot guarantee the validity of re-sold tickets purchased from secondary ticket resale marketplaces such as Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, etc. ALL SALES ARE FINAL. PLEASE, DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR ORDER BEFORE PURCHASING. NO REFUNDS.
GLOBAL BASED – w/ DJ JUANNY (AMOR DIGITAL, SF), CASUAL AZTEC, DJ ALOSO, MIJO – 21+
JOIN US AT HOLOCENE FOR ANOTHER ROUND OF GLOBAL CLUB SOUNDS, BROUGHT TO YOU BY GB VETERANS + FOR THE FIRST TIME IN PDX: DJ JUANNY FKA JUANNY DEPP 🔥 GLOBAL CLUB MUSIC ALL NIGHT SOUNDS BY: DJ JUANNY (AMOR DIGITAL, SF) SUPPORT: CASUAL AZTEC DJ ALOSO MIJO HOSTED BY THE SUCIXS$15 ADV – $25 DOOR
Millington – w/ Good Terms, College Radio, All Hype – presented by Mammoth NW – All Ages
Founded in 2018 by Cody Okonski, Millington began as a recording project with the mission of bringing a modern sheen to a genre (Ska/Rock-With Horns/Horn-Fueled Pop-Punk) that was largely left behind by big budget labels. With the success of Millington’s early releases such as Cold In The City and University, it became time to put together a live band. After a handful of shows however, the pandemic hit. During the pandemic, while live performances halted, the band continued to work on producing new music. 2020 saw the release of their latest EP, Beatdown Generation, as well as a cover album titled Brass Emo Vol. 1. ​As live shows returned, the band made it’s comeback to the stage play its first show back at NYC’s Governors Ball festival 2022, and has hit the ground running ever since. With its signature, self-proclaimed “Brass Emo” sound, the 6 member, horn section charged band brings high energy performances to both studio recordings and the live shows.
Taj Church, Orkis, So Lately, DJ Sappho – 21+
Taj Church Taj Church is an emerging force in electronic music, blending powerful R&B vocals with cinematic soundscapes, experimental electronic production and avant-garde pop. Since debuting in June 2023 with his EP Wonderland, Taj has begun to build a dedicated following, particularly among those who have experienced his dynamic live performances. Influenced by a spectrum of artists like Björk, The Knife, Jon Hopkins, Igor Stravinsky, and Hans Zimmer, Taj’s sound is a complex tapestry of diverse styles and rich emotions. Currently venturing into uncharted musical territories, Taj is channeling his creative energy into a new project that promises to be a bold departure from the conventional. Themes of futurism, ecology, addiction, love, and spirituality are being woven into a surreal tapestry of sound and texture, challenging and expanding the boundaries of his genre niche. Orkis Orkis is the Darkwave Electro-pop duo of artist and producer, Joseph Lanker and angelic songstress, Casey Hoelting. The duo gives an urge to dance and cry with a mix of electro, techno, nostalgic synths, and atmospheric vocals; all wrapped up in a visceral yet silky dance package. Orkis has captivated the Portland music scene with their theatrical performances since 2020 working with artists such as Soft Kill, Kite, Xibling, Ritual Veil, Secret Shame, The Wheal, Blood Orchid and Lucia Luna. The duo currently continues to perform in full force within the northwest, and continues to expand their territory. So Lately So Lately is a digital-based musician pulling from a wide array of genres, from experimental pop to R&B and downtempo. Their music is a sensory experience that combines haunting vocals, driving beats, and atmospheric synths. Drawing inspiration from lucid dreams and raw relational experiences, the musician’s work blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy, creating moody and introspective soundscapes that are both evocative and surreal. So Lately finds authentic self-expression and escapism in their music, inviting those who listen to detach themselves and step into something strange and new. DJ Sappho With their deep crate-digging and eclectic style, Sappho can rock a party like no other DJ. Like their namesake, they are a poet for the dance floor, providing a transformative, liberating soundtrack that might encompass anything from obscure 70s disco to contemporary house bangers. Throughout their career, Sappho has been known for their commitment to creating inclusive, welcoming spaces in the often male-dominated world of dance music. They are a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and have used their platform to raise awareness about issues such as gender inequality and discrimination in the music industry.
Blue Cranes, Scott Amendola & Phillip Greenlief – EARLY SHOW! – 21+
Join us for an intimate seated early show in our front lounge room.Blue Cranes: Portland jazz ensemble Blue Cranes has long established itself as a forward-thinking entity. The quintet, made up of Reed Wallsmith on alto saxophone, Joe Cunningham on tenor saxophone, Rebecca Sanborn on keyboards, Jon Shaw on bass, and Ji Tanzer on drums, is steeped in the history and sound of the artists that came before them, but too curious and creative to simply replicate the past. Since their formation in 2007, the band has become a key player in the Portland, Oregon creative music/DIY scene and one of the most exciting groups to keep tabs on in the Northwest. They’ve developed a singular musical voice grounded in melody and explosive improvisations–marking off their unique microcosmic territory in post-jazz circles. https://bluecranes.bandcamp.com/music PHILLIP GREENLIEF: Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Reiner, and They Might Be Giants. Albums include two LANTSKAP LOGIC TRIO releases (w/ Evelyn Davis and Fred Frith), THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), Sound American, and Signal to Noise.”The Bay Area’s do-it-yourself ethos has produced a bevy of dazzlingly creative musicians, but few have put the philosophy to work as effectively as Phillip Greenlief.” – Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle SCOTT AMENDOLA: “Amendola’s music is consistently engaging, both emotionally and intellectually, the product of a fertile and inventive musical imagination.” The Los Angeles Times“Amendola has complete mastery of every piece of his drumset and the ability to create a plethora of sounds using sticks, brushes, mallets, and even his hands.” Steven Raphael, Modern Drummer “If Scott Amendola didn’t exist, the San Francisco music scene would have to invent him.” Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian“…drummer/signal-treater Scott Amendola is both a tyrant of heavy rhythm and an electric-haired antenna for outworldly messages (not a standard combination).” Greg Burk, LA WeeklyFor Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His musical associates include guitarists, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and players who have forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz. DUO WEBPAGE: https://www.phillipgreenlief.com/duo-with-scott-amendola