That the powers that be charged $27 for this show is truly a shame. Eugene will never be Seattle, as someone so appropriately put it, and for KWVA and whoever else sponsored this to think that people would be willing to pay that much for bands who have played Eugene in the past (for $10) is simply foolish. Islands are a great band live, all the elements of sameness corresponding to their record are there. They leave it to the crowd to add excitement and enthusiasm. Unfortunately for Islands, and for anyone watching, the crowd was so severely dismal that more than a head nod and an occasional hoot would have been too much to ask. Islands soldiered on though, through a set that wasn’t even heavy on the new stuff. The band played loud, and well enough to make the empty intersection full of good music. Read the rest of this entry »
My dad always made a case for The Beatles by saying what he loved about them is that you could take a song and play it after another of their songs and they might sound completely different; like a whole different band. Though that doesn’t say much for quality, it is sure to keep the listening interesting. One artist who strikes me very similarly is Chad VanGaalen.
DJ Koolaid helped get me my first show, came up with a T-Shirt design for us and generally kills it on a nightly basis. He also makes remixes and now- mother approved mixes.
For seven day’s I’ll be posting a song of the day. I will detail how I came about finding it, and why I like it so much.
Vocal experimentation has been something of great interest to me lately. Vocals can not only evoke emotion from the way in which they are sung, but also from what it is they have to say. Although a single note can derive a myriad of emotions (Read: Charlemange Palestine), one can’t deny the duality of vocals, and their ability to do the same in different ways.
It’d been a year or two since I’d seen Daughters. In that time the band has gotten more and more metal in their aesthetic and their sound. Although they’ve always been a great live band, last Tuesday’s set saw them completely outdoing themselves. Live, singer Alexis Marshall’s vocals are incoherent anyway, so it’s suiting that he would spend the majority of the show with the mic stuffed into his mouth. No one could have guessed he would go as far as he did that night, but he certainly emphasized an already frenetic set of amazing guitar and bass. Read the rest of this entry »
Nearly two years ago a tragic thing happened, Beta Band broke up. Not long after the announcement came that of a new band consisting of 3 of the 4 members. Although this may have excited some, others were left to wonder… what about the fourth? Luckily, shortly after the announcement of that new band came another announcement: Fourth member of Beta Band, Steve Mason, was working on a new project called Black Affair. At that time Black Affair already had 5 available tracks, all quite similar and quite exciting. After sitting on those tracks for a year and a half, I am so excited to announce that Black Affair’s debut LP is slated to drop in July on V2 Records. Black Affair is equal parts The Faint, equal parts Muscles, but undeniably something all its own. It’s playful, sexual and so so good. check out first single, Tak! Attack!, below and look out for Pleasure Pressure Point to drop really soon.
If my duty as a music blogger is to inform you of what is good and going on, I may have steered you in the wrong direction. Recall 6 months or so ago when I asked you to please write Fabulous Diamonds and tell them to play Portland. Whether or not you did, they’ve played here twice in the last week. Much to my disappointment, they’re painfully boring. My first thought when watching them Wednesday at Doug Fir was that they were hypnotic and enticing, but as their set went on, it became painfully clear that I wasn’t being hypnotized so much as put to sleep. Like Liars, their drum lines are crucial, (they make up half of the band) but unlike Liars (or better yet, Cryptacize) they fail to construct actual songs from the potential in their percussion. On record they get away with this, coming off polished and pretty. Unfortunately, live, they just didn’t grab the attention of the fifteen people watching. Maybe my ideas about their first ever Portland show were just too high in hopes. Read the rest of this entry »
(… Hope y’all don’t mind this slight bit of self promotion.)
Guidance Councilor (aka Ian Anderson) is a one-man DIY electro-flamethrower, killer barista, and star of Sasha’s birthday party. Also, I just learned that his song “Pullover” is featured on PDX Pop Now!’s 2008 compilation. Awhile back I asked him to lend me vocal tracks from a few songs off of his 2008 debut release “Get Brave.” Culture Junkies is one of his older songs and still one of my favorites; I never get tired of hearing it (in his live sets, particularly.) Latching onto Ian’s “I don’t give a fuck…” mantra, I felt like I had permission to do pretty much whatever I wanted with it. That’s why I wanted it to be 141bpm minimal Techno with 90’s style House-y vocal stabs and sloppy-on-purpose cuts. Now it’s a month later and I have a remix for him (and you). Download it, and go check out Guidance Counselor and “Get Brave”. You won’t regret it!
(Diego wrote this, I just posted it. Thanks Digex!) Electroma was released to theaters a year ago, and now thanks to Vice Records it will be released on wide-screen DVD next month, along with a 40-page book. Check out the teaser if you haven’t seen it or the movie yet.
The film follows two robots (the band, however played by Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich, who played Daft Punk in the video for “Stronger”) as they wander through the desert on a quest to become human. The movie is unique for a Daft Punk release because it doesn’t feature any of their music, unlike Interstella 5555 or D.A.F.T. (which also happened to be home video releases, rather than theatrical). Electroma was directed by Thomas Bangalter (who studied over 200 issues of American Cinematographer in preparation) and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo in the California desert over eleven days and features music from Brian Eno, Sébastien Tellier, and Curtis Mayfield.
I am beaming with excitement right now! The yet unreleased album from The Hold Steady is streaming in its entirety on their myspace page. The physical format real deal comes out on July 15th. The band is going to be at the Crystal Ballroom on July 27th. Things sound good, despite the low bit rates of the Myspace player. It’s a smart move on the band’s part to do this because I am just more excited now to get this on vinyl. Hopefully this stream will stay up for awhile… ideally until the album is actually released.
Huge thanks to Rob Simonsen over at the Portland Mercury’s End Hits, which is where I found out about this. But a sarcastic “no thanks” goes out as well, because now I can’t leave work until I listen to this at least four more times.
I heard of Kocky last summer through a burned CD called “Kingdom Came” that Blake left at my house next to allthe Hot Chip remixes and a few Kid Sister bangers. Of the stack I found the Intro to Kocky on constant repeat with the Jesse Rose remix of “Ready for the Floor” coming in a close second.
Over time I learned that this was the alias for Soul Supreme (real name David Åström), a hip hop producer from Sweden. And next to banging dance music Kocky became a welcome choice for my headphones with unique and extremely clean production showing off amazing pitched-up samples. Yesterday the video for 4-Ever Juvenile showed up on the Swedish mega-blog Discobelle.
I had a great time, good turn out and almost all of my favorite people lost it on the dance floor. Props to Tre, Koolaid and Patricia who all killed it and gave me the chance to play. Photo’s by Fernando.
(This was sent to me by my good friend Ryan of the up and coming post rock/doom/metal band, Nanda Devi.)
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
First day of tour got off to a fairly rocky start, the day before we left, our van took a shit and wouldn’t start and we had to have it towed and fixed up super last minute. We all partied over at Aaron’
s house and were all pretty fucked up still the next morning at 9am when the van was ready. Ansel drove a few hours through some really intense rain until a few miles past Eugene. The rain let up and I took over for a few hours.
A few hours north of Sacramento, it came to our attention that we were going to have to drive as fast as we could and only stop for gas or we were going to be late for the show in Santa Cruz. After much stressing out and getting lost once, we pulled up to the show at the last second and got a chance to play.
The Bike Church is a small bike co-op in Santa Cruz that occasionally has shows. We had about 30 or so people watching us and my friend Sara B, came down from Oakland to watch us and hang out. Since we got there pretty late, we only got to play 3 songs, but a lot of people came up to us afterwards and said they really liked it, which was really nice to hear after a 13 hour drive.
After the show, we went over to our friend Mike’s house to drink and smoke and hang out for a while. We met a ton of cool people, one of Mike’
s roommates reminded me of Sasha so much, he was this amazing cook who had all these amazing stories about his life and he is only 22. There was another guy, Johnny, who was from LA and we talked about living there for a while. Blake and I ended up drinking a lot of beer and smoking a ton of weed out of a pipe that was shaped like a dragon. Everybody got really wasted and went home and I passed out in a wicker dish chair and Blake puked in the dirty bathroom. Overall, a really fucking awesome day.
By now you’ve heard of Montreal’s Islands, but have you heard they’re playing twice in Oregon this weekend? Friday night they’re dropping by the Hawthorne Theater for a show with Sebastien Grainger (DFA1979) and Despot. The following night they’re playing Eugene’s Broadway Block Party Also with Despot and supposedly Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Despot is calling it, “like the dave chapelle one except not like it.” That sounds about right.
If you go to John McCain’s website the first thing you might notice is that he has four sections, tabs or even if you will, priorities for this campaign. They are as follows; Environment, Decision Center, General Election, Obama & Iraq, Golf Gear.
Not long after interviewing Tom Campesinos!, I was off to catch Portland’s own Parenthetical Girls. I’ve seen parenthetical Girls perform a number of times before, but never in such an empty room [3 people watching above are in Los Campesinos!]. I’ve also never seen Parenthetical Girls play so energetic, making amazing use of the space and even stopping to comment, “Thanks for giving us a lot of room to play” and even thanking Los Campesinos! for taking them to such “exotic locales”. I keep deciding that Parenthetical Girls are my new favorite Portland band every time I see them. Although that is currently in debate, it was very much a fact in the heat of their set.
FBM is a blog written about all kinds of music. We often focus on small acts and DJs, promoting and loving what we consider to be the very best in Indy, Dubstep, House and far beyond. We are a collective of (currently) unpaid kids based out of Portland Oregon. We urge you to support this music and hence we will provide the the most accurate show listings and heads up on things to do in Portland.
This is all those things but more then anything else this is about community, about having as many authors contributing as much as possible and promoting all of our friends. I believe in politics as still being important and I believe in this generation still being relevant. Our culture is all we have.
Almost all of this music is sent to us by the creator and is entirely legal to download, if something slips through the cracks and you are the owner of a soundfile you wish removed, simply email us. Thank you.
