IN THE SURGING SEA of nightly fun that is Portland's music scene, it's fuckin' TOUGH to keep people interested. Bands, bookers, venues, and promoters can do one helluva song-and-dance number to get bodies through the door, promising thrills, sexiness, and surprises galore. Lotta the time, it's a great big stupid letdown, but sometimes it results in magical good things and interesting shit for your frayed, overloaded senses.

This, I'm willing to bet, will be what goes down at Vision and Hearing, a night of film and ambient music which event organizer Rob Tyler describes as, "an experience of smooth explosions of image and sound, fusing atmospheric imagery with emotive ambient, obtuse, and calming music."

Up first is Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick's music project Very Stereo, backed by his own 16mm films. Next comes Unrecognizable Now, which Tyler will be working with and projecting "pixilated-looking modern fractals and computer-scapes, and perhaps some images of this cool praying mantis" from his laptop.

Also on the bill is Toronto's In Support of Living. Tyler said he lied to them so they'd come to Portland: "[I] told them that Portland was kind of like Canada (they didn't buy it) and then I told them we had a minor league hockey team so they said they were on their way out."

Headlining is Adam Forkner's experimental music project White Rainbow, along with "some f'ed up animations and movies," courtesy of Alex Hubbard and Portland multimedia artist E*Rock.

Tyler, who will also be working with In Support of Living, projecting hand-painted films behind their "mellow-electro slow music," says there will also be projections set up in Holocene's front room and a DJ to play between sets. All this for $5. What the fuck, man. Portland's the best.