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Dilettantes usually produce art that's mediocre at best and awful at worst. For proof, look at Hollywood actors such as Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis, who have made lamentable stabs at rock stardom in their spare time. Portland painters Arnold and Jacob Pander already seemed like notable exceptions; last year, the brothers delivered a critically acclaimed graphic novel, Triple X, Jacob won the 1995 New York Underground Film Festival with his short "The Operation," and they've made visually arresting music videos for now-defunct bands the Dharma Bums and Hitting Birth. Recently, the Panders successfully teamed in another guise, as record producers. Secret Broadcast, an ode to free radio, is the first notable compilation of electronic music to come out of Portland, and it's the debut album on the brothers' record label. The idea for the collection germinated when the Panders holed up in an Amsterdam art studio nearly a decade ago, working on the series of comics that would eventually become Triple X. Listening to Dutch free radio stations that played acid house and other nascent forms of electronica, the two imagined assembling such music as a soundtrack for their graphic novel. Though it never came to fruition, the Panders revisited the concept when Oni Press, an upstart Portland comic book company, asked them to contribute a story for its debut issue. Arnold and Jacob delivered "Secret Broadcast," a graphic account of renegade radio DJs in Portland. "The story evolved out of the activity that's been happening locally," Arnold says, seated across from his brother in a Pearl District cafe. "I wanted to have these young people doing this radio station freely, and not realizing that they were doing something illegal. That it was just a form of their free expression in the information age." The story loosely relates to stirrings last year in the Portland electronic music scene. The microbroadcast station Subterradio--which has been airing ambient, trip-hop and techno on and off for the past year without an FCC license at 104.1 FM--provided the Panders fodder to develop a comic and an accompanying CD. (The two items are available separately now, and will be packaged together beginning in July.) Frequency, a regular Thursday night electronica event at downtown club the Jasmine Tree was another inspiration for the Panders' project. "It's not a huge scene here," says Jacob. "It's emerging from people's basements. Frequency is like the first showcase for it." "It's like a beatnik scene," adds Arnold. "Instead of reading poetry, they're playing with DAT machines." The Secret Broadcast album includes tracks from Bay Area, Miami and New York acts, but it features local artists such as Anal Solvent, Allon Beausoleil, Dr. Zomb's Stereo Obscura, Between Friends and California. Surprisingly, the Portland artists included on the CD are qualitatively in the same ballpark as accomplished performers such as Miami's Supersoul, New York's Organic Grooves and San Francisco's Pistel, all of which share space on Secret Broadcast. It's a remarkably cohesive compilation that mines the low end of electronic sound, concentrating on dub, illbient and dark drum'n'bass. Though intended as a soundtrack for the comic book, it also reflects the oppressive nature of a perpetually overcast Portland winter, with muted blips and relentless beats simulating the omnipresent drizzle and echoing raindrops. With Secret Broadcast, the prolific and wide-ranging Pander Brothers have documented this city's underground electronic music scene, and packaged it in an artistically stimulating fashion to present to the outside world. Portland Postscript: After seven months as an all-ages punk-rock outpost, the Maul hosted its final show Sunday. The intimate Northeast club had a hole in its roof that the landlord refused to repair, according to representatives of the Maul, and city officials demanded its closure. The finale's grrrl-dominated lineup confirmed that the Maul had become the premier local forum for young women's music. Highlights included a set of emotionally charged indie-pop from the Lookers, some spirited punk-pop from the Third Sex and the debut of Cadillaca, a trio that features Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker on guitar and the Lookers' Sarah Dougher on farfisa organ. The two traded vocals during an entertaining 10-song set of originals that combined a '60s garage-rock feel with the talented songwriters' considerable pop sensibilities. |
