Caribou Fri May 27 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd Caribou–Canadian producer/Mathematics PhD Dan Snaith–has a habit of using clichés for album titles, but that’s the only thing hackneyed about his music. On 2003’s Up in Flames and the new The Milk of Human Kindness, Snaith exhilaratingly reinvigorates shoegazer and Krautrock, respectively. By contrast, his debut […]
Dave Segal
Posted inMusic
Impossible Dance Music
Autechre’s Unnatural Abstractions
Autechre Thurs May 19 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd When you find yourself fed up with the maddening predictability and conservativeness of much electronic music–and of all genres, for that matter–you can always count on Autechre to deliver the ultra-weirdness. England’s Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been bending minds for the UK label Warp […]
Posted inMusic
Essence Rare
Gang of Four Return the Gift
Gang of Four Thur May 5 Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside In a return that is only slightly less momentous than that of God’s son, the original lineup of Leeds, England quartet Gang of Four have reunited and are touring America a quarter century after their peak. And if the response at January’s sold-out U.K. […]
Posted inMusic
Mellow Doubt
Mercury Rev’s Long, Slow Descent
Mercury Rev Wed May 4 Aladdin Theater 3017 SE Milwaukie With death-and-taxes certainty, everyone will feel double-crossed by a band they adore. But there are varying degrees of unfaithfulness, and the one some aging aficionados feel toward Mercury Rev is arguably among the most painful in the annals of musical obsession. The long path from […]
Posted inMusic
Respek
Grime Pays for Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee Rascal Thurs March 31 Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside Dizzee Rascal is a brain-joltingly distinctive MC and producer who released two devastating albums by age 19. He is also a terrible interview. And while his responses to a journalist’s questions sound like the clichés athletes reflexively spout, Dizzee’s music is anything but trite. […]
Posted inMusic
Miserable, Naturally
Hood’s Brooding Moods
Hood Thurs March 24 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd Hood are miserable bastards–and it’s a really big part of their charm. Dealing primarily in a particularly British strain of triumphant defeatism, the Leeds, England quartet began in 1990 as an unassuming, lo-fi rock unit with a knack for satisfying sensitive indie rockers’ desire for melancholy […]
Posted inMusic
Madchester Redux
Kasabian’s Dilutions of Grandeur
Kasabian Wed Feb 9 Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside What’s all this shit about British restraint? Ever read the UK music press? It’s about as restrained as a gaggle of 13-year-old girls at a Justin Timberlake in-store. By UK music press, I mainly mean the NME, a London-based rag that serves as the music industry’s […]
Posted inMusic
Laugh Tracks
Sage Francis’ Stand-up Agitation
Sage Francis Fri Feb 25 Roseland 8 NW 6th “I’m the motherfuckin’ Bill O’Reilly of this hiphop shit,” cracks Sage Francis on “Ground Control” off his new album, A Healthy Distrust. It’s a rare moment of facetiousness on a disc whose title sentiment applies to all political persuasions, belief systems, rappers, and even his own […]
Posted inMusic
Ellen Wheels
Ms. Allien Techs Over
Ellen Allien Fri Nov 19 Holocene 1001 SE Morrison Sometimes you just want a hot chick behind the decks. Spare us the sight of yet another skinny white boy with dreads, or a chubby, ball-capped gay behind the Technics. Give us instead Berlin DJ/producer Ellen Allien, who fulfills that not-quite-unreasonable demand of female pulchritude, and […]
Posted inMusic
Aural Anomalies
Mush Records Quirks It Out
Mush Records Tour Sat Oct 9 Bossanova 722 E Burnside Boundary-dissolving indie label Mush favors the wandering aesthetic. Before settling in Los Angeles, Mush’s owners started in Cincinnati and shuttled through three other cities; the label’s artists similarly roam all over the map. Since 1999, the imprint has issued a head-spinning array of underground hiphop, […]
Posted inMusic
Music Falls from the Highest Sphere
Ghost And Six Organs’ Odd Folk Trips
Ghost, Six Organs of Admittmance Fri Oct 1 Berbati’s Pan 10 SW 3rd Folk music has been getting dosed by hallucinogens for nearly 40 years–it only seems right and natural for a music that has roots in pagan cultures to be influenced by mind-altering substances. It’s been hypothesized by people with advanced degrees that drugs […]
Posted inMusic
Sublime Subliminals
Sixtoo and Signify’s Hiphop Miracle
Sixtoo Wed Sept 8 Holocene 1001 SE Morrison Underground hiphop has never been stronger. Tip of the iceberg examples: MF Doom, Madlib, Dalek, Danger Mouse, Blueprint, and most of Mush, Lex, Big Dada, and Def Jux’s output. You could go broke trying to keep up with the left-field goodness filling bins right now, although you […]