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Charlie Salas Humara is telling Marius Libman about the PETA commercial they'd make together.
"It'll be you giving birth to me, for some reason," Salas Humara tells him excitedly. "Then, as I'm coming out, I carve up a turkey and eat it and you shoot me with a gun and I die."
Libman seems to agree. After all, the first rule of improv is never say no.
Heavy Breather, the radio show Salas Humara and Libman share on microstation XRAY.fm (107.1) each Thursday at 6 pm, is two hours of transient outbursts with occasional music. It may be the only radio show you'll ever hear a 22-year-old talk about on the street—and they're already streaming a best-of album on xrayrecords.com.
"We did have somebody call in the other day and tell us to stop talking and play some music," says Salas Humara. But for the most part, he says, people seem to get it.
The two hosts have known each other for close to 11 years, and aside from their radio show, they play in Portland wall of sound (and 2013 WW Best New Band runner-up) Sun Angle. The hosts' chemistry and complementary senses of humor—Salas Humara manic, Libman deadpan—are what create the unique flow of the program.
"In the beginning, when it was completely just us improvising, it would be us just finishing each others' sentences," Salas Humara says. "I don't know why we're on that same wavelength."
When the two of them get tired of talking with listeners about abandoning their children to the care of goats, they take breaks to play a broad range of obscure music—from the post-punk instrumentals of Swell Maps to Negativland's experimental sound collages.
And despite the fact that their radio station isn't even audible in all of Portland, Salas Humara and Libman's hilarious banter is spreading across the continent on XRAY.fm podcast.
"We have people calling from all around the country," Salas Humara says. "I don't actually understand how they find us."
Willamette Week