A little over a year ago, the ultra-modern club Apotheke,
which was oddly located above the trendy Peruvian restaurant Andina and
entirely focused on exceedingly experimental music, closed for
business. To the disappointment of weird music lovers across Portland,
a bar that provides as its soundtrack anything from the din of chirping
crickets to epic walls of scratchy white noise is evidently too far out
there for the Pearl District scene.
The end of Apotheke meant the end of Aleatoric, the venue’s flagship
monthly event hosted by Coco Madrid and Mike Jedlicka. After an
extended hiatus from booking the ambient/experimental night, the two
finally found another space that fits with their concept, the Someday
Lounge.
Madrid explains the original idea behind Aleatoric, “We wanted to
create a sanctuary where people could just relax, drink, and have a
conversation, but the music in the background isn’t just background
music—it’s intelligent, something that everybody can be a part
of.”
Jedlicka continues, “The idea was really to go for an anti-dance
electronic music. There were so many shows with house and techno and
trance, and we wanted to do something that was the opposite. We wanted
to really focus on experimental live PA acts, so it wasn’t just DJs.
The original idea was to have all local people because there are a
shitload of artists making this kind of music right here in
Portland.”
For their first show back, the lineup features local ambient cellist
the OO-Ray and a pair of out-of-town headliners from Dragon’s Eye
Recordings: Son of Rose and Wyndel Hunt. Regarding the visiting guests,
Jedlicka explains, “They are different artists, but can almost be put
in the same boat. They move in between pure ambient without any kind of
beat, into experimental that kind of turns into a beat, but not
like a straight drum-kit or anything. The music goes from being very
relaxed to really putting you on the edge of your seat with this eerie
tension, and then it chills out again. They’re amazing. You just have
to hear it, it’s very emotive.”