Beats Per Week

Portland's Best Dance Music Options, Sept. 11-17

Graze plays Rotture on Saturday, Sept. 13 with Strategy, Nordic Soul, Lincolnup and Ben Tactic.
By MITCH LILLIE
In this column,
music calendar editor and contributing writer Mitch Lillie helps the discerning club-goer put together their weekly calendar by compiling Portland's best dance-music options for the next seven days. Turn up, tune in, drop the bass. 

Sébastien Léger has been all over the map in his deacde-plus career, at one time making house music that hit the bullseye of the Prydzian zeitgeist. On the freshly-minted Diamond Bridge EP, though, he flaunts his chops for the funkier, more heavily forested side of house. Catch him Thursday at Refuge. (8 pm, $13 advance, 21+)     
Not only does Body Party let Nathan Detroit and Freaky Outty play more left field bangers to a less viciously bro’d out crowd than their weekend moneymakers: Thursday at Holocene will also feature Knomad and Barisone. (9 pm, free, 21+)      

Though Miles Maeda now lives in Tokyo, his musical lineage is early 90s Chicago. Living there and then bleeds through in all of his disco- and soul-inflected house jams. He brings the beats to the Rose on Friday. (9 pm, $5 before 10 pm, $8 after, 21+)  

The Real Me Comes Alive by Miles Maeda on Mixcloud


There’s a reason it’s simply genre-tagged as “beats”: The thumping drums and exploratory basslines dominate every track and they don’t make you want to twerk so much as bounce-grind in slow mo. Great Dane is LA’s top beats dog, and he’s coming to Tonic on Saturday. (9 pm, $7 before 11 pm with RSVP, $10 after, 21+)    
Toronto duo Graze does what all good artists have done: They take a formula and break it beautifully. On “Scrap,” 2013 release Edges’ highlight, the matte shards of a four-on-the-floor techno beat sink deep into a churning bass riff. Don’t try to pick up the pieces, just enjoy the view on Saturday at Rotture. (9 pm, $10 advance, $12 day of show, 21+)    
I LOVE ELECTRO HOUUUUSE! (Ed. note: Not sure what happened here. Mr. Lillie is referring to the Helena show, which will certainly include the genre he purports to love, on Saturday at Whiskey Bar. Please excuse the abstruseness and capitalization.) (10 pm, $13-15, 21+)  

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