Local News and Reviews

[April 5th, 2006]

^Blotter

CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES.

Acme , the inner Southeast club that has recently become one of this town's most enjoyable spots for local music and cigarette-smoking, will be getting all family-friendly on us. A smokehouse will soon be going up out back, along with an outdoor stage, says totally preggers club booker Seann McKeel , giving Acme more of an all-ages restaurant feel with some shows for the kiddies. But worry not, drunken rocker: The joint will only be all-ages until 10 pm, then it's all yours. >> Looking perhaps to completely escape all moisture in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's lashing of its regular home, the recording-geek converence TapeOpCon 2006 will be pitching its gear-filled tent in sunny Tucson. The annual conference, co-produced by local Jackpot! Recording Studio proprietor and Tape Op magazine publisher Larry Crane, will fill the desert with the informed yammering of Steve Albini , Ross Hogarth , Jim Dickinson and more, June 16-18. See www.tapeopcon.com for more info. >> Speaking of Mr. Crane, the longtime recording guru will be moving his Jackpot! studios from Southeast Morrison Street sometime this summer, making room for more condos. Because the world needs more condos. Say goodbye to the walls that Elliott painted, while you can.

Sate our thirst for Portland music news. Email localcut@wweek.com.

^Valet Thursday, April 6

Honey Owens reintroduces Portland to her mirror men.

[PRETTY TRIPPY] Valet's Thursday performance/installation will be only its fourth since Honey Owens began the project in 2002 as a solo escape from the Portland free-electronica trio Nudge. Like World—Owens' collaboration with Adam Forkner—Valet makes extreme psychedelic music, featuring bands of heavily effected and delayed guitars played above Owens' ghostly bent-blues vocals, all working together to slip underneath your skin and vibrate your bones. The installations that accompany the music add to the visceral experience. At Holocene, Owens unveils Valet's most recent one-night-only installation, "Tribe of Mirrors," the follow-up to last December's "Gone Fishin', Pretty Trippy" at Valentine's. Last week, we chatted about Portland's growing cult of psychedelic music, mirror men and why hippies should be listening to D. Yellow Swans. MICHAEL BYRNE.

WW: What can we expect from "Tribe of Mirrors"?

Honey Owens: I made two Mylar men that hung by watching the [December Valentine's] event as sort of mirror watchers. Since then, these Mylar men have been hanging in the house that Adam [Forkner] and I live in. We've become quite smitten with these guys, as their energy is calming and reflective, representing a sort of nothingness, reflecting the moment of space. I decided I wanted more of them, a tribe of them to hang out and dance with me at the Valet show.

Do you think Portland's growing into this style of music? I'm seeing some pretty random cats at World and White Rainbow shows lately, way beyond psych addicts and experimental-heads.

I definitely think people are changing their palates. You might say it's collective consciousness at work. The only thing we can count on is change. Thank God.

At the same time that psych music is catching on, noise is as well. Do you see your style as being in truck with the broader noise movement? You've worked with D. Yellow Swans....

Noise is another expression of ambient music, only louder. It is definitely a body experience, the way the frequencies hit you—sometimes at the neck and head, sometimes in the stomach. Definitely chakra music! I think we have similar goals [with D. Yellow Swans] as far as the assault being loving and the aggression being on the same side as opposed to against the listeners, like the sound of revolution with resolve.

Valet plays with Tara Jane O'Neil and the Evolutionary Jass Band at Holocene. 9 pm. $5. 21+.

^Live Friday March 31 at KPSU

The delicate art of improvised rock and live radio.

[UNIVERSAL ROCK ON THE RADIO] In the childlike atmosphere that fills KPSU's basement studio, it's easy to forget that there are only two minutes till airtime of the college radio station's weekly in-studio performance/interview show, Live Friday [from the Department of Disclosure: the writer's band played on Live Friday in March].

Speechless Brothers, this week's guest band, is prepping for their performance while guitarist Jacob Anderson tries to sound out the riff to "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" so he can work it into the band's upcoming improvisational set. The broadcast begins and the duo starts in, Anderson hopping eagerly in the direction of drummer Aaron Reyna when he wants to rock out harder. It becomes clear that the two members of SB (both former members of Yuma Nora) have an uncanny communication, as Reyna, a toned, slender, arachnid powerhouse of a drummer (read: Hella's Zach Hill), skillfully signals emotional shifts, taking the music from anxious to nostalgic to epic with a well-placed set of cymbal pings or a tom roll.

After the set, the show's host, KPSU program director Austin Rich, steps in with a slick DJ voice. If his smooth over-dramatization of band names were being applied to acts other than the underground local and touring acts he's hosted on Live Friday for the past two years, I'd swear he was a KNRK DJ.

My skepticism is allayed as he leads the interview with just what's on my mind: the demise of Yuma Nora. It's good radio when Reyna modestly mocks himself, saying he's had to hit a lot more drums to fill in the two-piece dynamic, but overall the 15-minute interview is pretty superficial.

Rich later explains to me that he likes to "keep the interview casual" to help the band feel comfortable and to keep himself from getting nervous. Though this seems wise in theory, Rich fails to mention Anderson's endearing, childlike hops, and I'm the one who, as the band packs their gear, asks the energetic guitarist why he calls his music "universal rock." (He says it's "rock that channels the energy of the universe—or something....")

With eight years of radio experience under his belt, Rich effortlessly avoids the common dead air and stuttering pitfalls of college radio. And although he did foster the low-key environment that helped the band achieve one-mindedness during their set, it would have been nice if he had been of that mind as well and picked up on some of the subtler cues Speechless Brothers gave him. JASON SIMMS. Live Friday airs every week at 5 pm on 98.3 FM downtown, 1450 AM citywide and www.kpsu.org online (where previous shows are archived as podcasts). The featured band Friday, April 7, will be the Mayonnaise vs. Venn.

^Siren's Echo Follow the Sounds (Stepchild Records)

Portland's first ladies of rap play show and tell.

[SOULFUL RAP] "All the chess pieces are there," says a giddy Toni Hill on Siren's Echo's new DVD, Follow the Sounds. "They're starting to move, and we're about to do checkmate here in a minute." That might appear a bold statement for the emcee duo, but it's not entirely off the mark. The soulful sound of the two Portland ladies has been turning enough heads in the Northwest in the past four years to earn them a good share of confidence.

It's there in Siren's Echo's performances, Hill and her colleague Syndel exchanging broad smiles and knowing glances with one another on stage. They're both genuinely excited, not only to perform, but to watch and play off of each other. It's a sight to behold but, unfortunately, one that video can't quite capture, though Follow the Sounds (directed and edited by Karl Lind) is a commendable attempt.

The DVD's footage is largely taken from an undated performance at the Ash Street Saloon, where the emcees are backed by a full band, local jazz-soul-funk outfit the BlackNotes. The band creeps along soulfully, slowing the pace at times while providing Portland's first ladies of rap with a rich backdrop for their increasingly Erykah Badu-like R&B interludes. This works wonders on soft tracks like "Perfect Peace" and "Big City of Dreams," where Hill's loose, gospel-influenced vocals are given room to breathe. While well-executed and lush, these performances are distinctly different from DJ-backed Siren's Echo shows, where cues are built into the prerecorded tracks and the emcees are more inclined to roam to the corners of the stage to hype up the crowd.

Between performances, Follow features ho-hum interviews with Hill and Syndel. The two are informative and unguarded, but the sit-down interview format makes the clips feel more like promotional material than a definitive portrait of the group. Where's the in-van tour footage, the interviews with fifth-grade teachers, the childhood talent-show videos? Show is always more fun than tell, and that's where Follow falls flat.

Still, I think Hill is right when she talks about those chess pieces. If nothing else, this video will ensure that Siren's Echo is seen by a larger audience, which is just one more move in the right direction. CASEY JARMAN. Siren's Echo performs with Tre Hardson, Fugawi, Speech, Modill & Longshot and DJ Chill on Sunday, April 9, at Berbati's Pan. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.

^Order of the Vulture Self-Titled (Aborted Society)

Meet Order of the Vulture, the Strokes of local Metal. Sort of.

[BLACK METAL] I like to think I know WW's readership, and let's be honest: If you heard this record, you'd probably call it noise and say all the songs sound the same. But Order of the Vulture is doing something you know very well, indie fan—taking a retro style and looking at it with hindsight. And, in doing so, they have accomplished something few imitators (and often not even the originals) can do: They've created an album with a decent creative arc.

After a few minutes of ambience, the record's first track, "Cryptesthesia," breaks open with a fast, driving, punk beat that's a little crustier but just as frenzied as Finland's Impaled Nazarene's. If Order of the Vulture leadman Junkyard Jackass didn't have such over-affected vocals, he would sound similar to Norwegian black-metal gods Mayhem's fourth vocalist, Dead.

A restricted, metronomic vibe keeps up for the first two tracks, and just when you start to fear a monotonous album, "Chaotic Evil" sets in, kicked off by a darker, machine-gun riff. While on the first two songs, J.J.s' guitar momentarily hints at leads between chugs, here we get a full-on wail or two, and a dirty midrange lead at the end (read: Maiden if their noses were pierced), which combines with double-time drums and guest female operatic vocals for a truly epic and chill-inducing conclusion to the a-side.

In the ambience before the b-side begins, you have time to realize that the first two tracks were palate-cleansing: What follows is a series of looser, more confident approaches to Order of the Vulture's early '90s Scandinavian underground style. The clearest example comes from the track "Harvest the Darkness," which begins with a heavy stomping riff before becoming the fastest song on the album, including an almost intelligible, almost punk chorus, and ends with a mini drum solo.

None of the musicians here is all that virtuosic or original, but what makes this the sort of record you want to play over and over on a wet Portland day is the creativity, focus on group dynamic and attention to detail. And the skeletons. The skeletons are key. JASON SIMMS. Order of the Vulture's record-release show is Friday, April 7, at Ash Street Saloon with Inhaste and Deterrorformed. 9 pm. $5. 21+.