The only refrain in the breakbeat barrage of Doug Pray’s turntablist documentary Scratch was footage of DJ Krush playing to an awestruck and silent throng in Tokyo. The rapid-fire breakbeats and JB horns that fill most of the rest of soundtrack are quelled in favor of eerie tones with a creeping, dusty beat underneath Krush’s […]
Elliott Adams
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New Jazzanova
Thick German Accents, Thick Brazilian Beats
Jazzanova Fri Sept 27 Ohm The name Jazzanova carries an immense amount of respect (and hype) in the electronic music world–especially for six German guys who insist they aren’t musicians, don’t perform live and, until recently, hadn’t released an album of their own material. Groomed to become the next Kruder & Dorfmeister as an electronic […]
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Deeper and Deeper
This is One of Our Geekiest Articles Yet
Deeper Roots Wednesdays Fez Deeper Wednesdays Ohm The absolute worst thing about going out to a club in Portland (besides finding yourself at Banana Joe’s) is getting the feeling that the schmuck behind the turntables just trotted down to Platinum that afternoon and picked-up the same new records that every other schmuck nabbed that week. […]
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Get Off the Wall and Shake It!
A Music Geek’s Guide to Great PDX Dance Nights
One of the drawbacks of Portland’s less than Gotham-esque size is the lack of dance nights. Sure, we have the requisite Polly Ester’s and Banana Joe’s variety of clubs, quenching your thirst for shiny shirts and the “Humpty Dance,” but dance music of a higher pedigree is often only found in tiny bars or at […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Zucka-Zucka-Zucka
Scratch puts the Camera on the Record
Scratch dir. Pray Opens Fri April 19 Cinema 21 With turntables now outselling electric guitars in most of the Western world, the time seems opportune for Doug Pray’s (director of 1996’s grunge¯umentary Hype!) Scratch, a re-tracing of the steps the turntable took from mere household appliance to bona fide musical instrument. As stated in the […]
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In Full Effects
Carpark Tour Gets it Together
Takagi Masakatsu, NudgeThur Nov 1 Blackbird Among the crop of burgeoning electronic labels in the US, only a handful are of relative quality. Not surprisingly, the chaff gets the frenzied dollars still trickling down from the high point of the electronica craze–which leaves the more esoteric, experimental labels to fend for themselves when it comes […]
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Dr. Rockyou
Herbert’s Sampling Roadshow
Sampling often gets a bad rap, which is largely due to artists who rip entire phrases or loops from a dusty 45, laying them underneath a hiphop or electronica track. Englishman Matthew Herbert is doing quite a bit more than lifting the “funky drummer” loop, however; he’s changing the basic tenets of how electronic music […]
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And Mark had a Groove
Dance-floor Soul from the Windy City
The Sound Design Tour w/ DJ Mark Grant Fri Aug 24 Ohm There’s a seemingly endless supply of amazing house music in the world. The problem is that it’s mostly on vinyl, and the only people who buy 12″ house singles are DJs. And while there have been some decent mix CDs put out, sadly, […]
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Pushing Buttons
Invasion of the English Knob Twiddlers
Squarepusher w/ Plaid, MIra Calix Thurs Aug 9 B Complex When Indiana Jones is commissioned to find the Holy Grail of electronic music, he’ll be dodging boulders and eating monkey brains in Sheffield, England. To describe Sheffield’s Warp Records as seminal would be an understatement–they were and are the label that has continually (for the […]
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Ballad of the Funky Laptop
Marumari Breathes Life into Experimental Electronic
Marumari w/ Nudge, Supersprite Wed July 25 Blackbird When Marumari says, “I don’t really like iDM,” it seems like the Cookie Monster claiming no affinity for Soft Batch. (iDM, an acronym for “intelligent dance music,” is characterized by random spurts and stutters of digital noise, and in practice bears little resemblance to dance music.) 1999’s […]
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Massive Attack
Will Big Bucks Spoil Rave Subculture?
If you haven’t heard about the two recent deaths at rave parties, or the same perfunctory rendition of what a rave is, then you’ve presumably cut off all contact with local media since well before the holiday drinking season got under way. Portland was long overdue for what has been regarded as a growing pain […]
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Before the After
New Venue Lights Scene Sparks
Over a year and a half ago, a warehouse in the industrial area of Southeast routinely leaked the sounds of music’s future. Those who knew about it sought out this apparition to see Detroit techno legend Carl Craig, or downtempo outfit Herbaliser. After a short bit of activity, the space lay dormant, and no more […]